Broken Barnet: Apocalypse Now

On Wednesday, as we know, Tory councillor Andrew Harper astounded us all by making a somewhat unnecessarily hasty and undignified lunge for the vacant leadership of Barnet Council.

Such a move is a little premature, you might well think, coming so soon, indeed, after the previous night's meeting ... but perhaps we might have predicted that, in his case. Let's hope that it doesn't all go horribly wrong: Mrs Angry would hate to see you end up as a member without a portfolio, Andrew ...

And then yesterday .... ha ha: yesterday the local Times published a story:

"Coleman does not rule himself out of council leadership bid"

In Colemanspeak this means our Brian wants to be leader, deserves to be leader, all the other boys at the GLA have been leaders, it isn't fair, but he is not entirely confident yet of being able to wangle enough votes to make it worthwhile to risk the potential embarrassment of badly losing the contest.

Oh dear. Mrs Angry is torn. On the one hand, as a blogger, she would love Brian to be leader, as this would guarantee an eternal supply of stories and amusement. On the other hand, as a resident, she shrinks in horror at the thought of what the consequences would be for us if he was in control.

There will be an awful lot of busy phone lines, this weekend, here in Broken Barnet - would be candidates will be ringing around the quaking Tory councillors, with all sorts of indecent proposals. I am reliably informed that what usually happens is that most councillors secretly promise their support to all of the candidates, so the outcome is hard to predict.

This may all be academic anyway, as of course this weekend is going to be disrupted by events of enormous significance. No, not more engineering work on the Northern Line. Citizens: in case no one has warned you, don't make any plans for tomorrow, after 6pm, as apparently the world is ending.

According to Californian minister Harold Camping, before the end comes tomorrow, just between 'So you think you can dance' and Dr Who, we will see the day of Rapture, when the Lord returns to earth, there will be bit of pointing of fingers and judgement and all that kind of hard core stuff, and sadly, only two per cent of you will then be taken up to heaven, along with Mrs Angry and, oh not sure who else, actually. Mr Reasonable, possibly. The rest will be moved to Haringey.

We know this is going to happen because there have been signs and portents. One of the indications, of course, is the sudden revelation of the identity of the false prophet: the Beast. Hmm.

I love the smell of burning bridges in the morning, don't you?

*Update: tune in to BBC Radio London, tonight, Friday, 6.20pm, to hear local resident Julia Hines debate with Brian Coleman the thorny subject of Barnet's appalling road traffic record.
**Update: Mr Toad is now unavailable, for some reason ...
***Update Saturday, 7.15pm: Mrs Angry apologises for any confusion: apparently the world has not ended, or at least if it has, heaven is not all its cracked up to be ... or am I in Haringey?