Orville_third
Banned
You know who she backed for PM not long ago, right? Not Cameron or Davis...Saxon.
TLIAD: Shuffling The Deck
- Thread starter Meadow
- Start date
That was superb. Best one yet. It was good from the off, but I knew it was going to be a cracker when you had the Metro break a story and couldn't keep a straight face.
It sounds like ITTL, Liz has abdicated in favour of *Charles (who was born after the POD).
I love the Gordon Banks reference continuing the swap of Powell and Foot.
Also Slippery John Major - the best Prime-Minister that money can buy!
Cheers,
Nigel.
I never thought you would have opted for John Major, the most corrupt politician in the world. That was funny and excellent. I like how Sally Bercow manages to become a significant figure with the exact same comment as OTL, only here it is not libel. The Speaker's wife: revealer of the truth.
Major seems to have left the country less likely to trust politicians than even the expenses scandal of OTL. I pity Dave when he takes over (at least, I presume it will be him). A near certain defeat looms for the Tories at the election. Will there be ministers turfed out?
I liked the reversal of the bastard comment, with it now referring to Major rather than him saying it.
There are so many nice touches. And Major is anything but grey here. Bring on the last acts.
Major seems to have left the country less likely to trust politicians than even the expenses scandal of OTL. I pity Dave when he takes over (at least, I presume it will be him). A near certain defeat looms for the Tories at the election. Will there be ministers turfed out?
I liked the reversal of the bastard comment, with it now referring to Major rather than him saying it.
There are so many nice touches. And Major is anything but grey here. Bring on the last acts.
Thande
Donor
Some original ideas there, not I think where people imagined you were going with Major. Is Boris Johnson viewed like Jeffrey Archer in OTL, that's the impression I was getting. I like the earlier use of 'i-' as a prefix (which actually goes back further than people think). I nearly won once of those iMacs in a competition in 2001 as it happens.
While the McAlpine thing is fun, it was a little jarring to read about a Twitter analogue existing and being mainstream (well as "mainstream" as Twitter is, anyway) in 2005/6. I know you can get away with these things because of the early POD, but it seemed a bit out of character given that the otherwise 'in spite of a nail' attitude of things like the Olympics happening in the same cities. I don't know if this was deliberate on your part or an example of this kind of slip (yes, tvtropes has a term for everything).
Heh, Redford calling Major a Bastard. No Book of Bastards though apparently. And Edwina Currie does not make an appearance, though perhaps we should be grateful for that.
I was thinking that you'd have the Queen be a very short reigning monarch in between George VI and Charles III/George VII for the irony against the length of her reign in OTL, but the way you've focused on reversing the abdication issue instead works too.
While the McAlpine thing is fun, it was a little jarring to read about a Twitter analogue existing and being mainstream (well as "mainstream" as Twitter is, anyway) in 2005/6. I know you can get away with these things because of the early POD, but it seemed a bit out of character given that the otherwise 'in spite of a nail' attitude of things like the Olympics happening in the same cities. I don't know if this was deliberate on your part or an example of this kind of slip (yes, tvtropes has a term for everything).
Heh, Redford calling Major a Bastard. No Book of Bastards though apparently. And Edwina Currie does not make an appearance, though perhaps we should be grateful for that.
I was thinking that you'd have the Queen be a very short reigning monarch in between George VI and Charles III/George VII for the irony against the length of her reign in OTL, but the way you've focused on reversing the abdication issue instead works too.
Wow. Berlusconi Major. That is quite something. Comparable to Nixon as well, with the people who want to defend him doing so for similar reasons. I actually reckon Tony Blair will be next, as a Conservative. The deer in the headlights thing compares well to how slick he was IOTL, and if this being remembered differently, then having him be a relative unknown who never expected to gain power and then proving quite effective in the job would be a pretty neat reversal.
Dom
Moderator
Tory Nick Clegg is next, then a Coalition between Tony Blair and Lib Dem Cameron!
...err, Dom, it doesn't quite work like that mate...
In honesty, I think it can only go Dave then Blair - the lads haven't changed allegiances yet, have they?
"Once the Gulf War was over, he breathed a sigh of relief and tried to leave diplomacy to Tony Blair, the gifted and charismatic Foreign Secretary. That Blair wished he had the top job was the worst-kept secret in Westminster, but he respected Brown and the two men had a strong friendship."
Taken from the Gordon Brown update a few pages back.
Dom
Moderator
Yeah, I knew Tony was a Labour hack, I was just saying that in regards to my Liberal Democrat Cameron with a Tory Nick Clegg idea, which was admittedly just a flight of whimsy
All the way back to the iClaudius ?
The implication of computers being refered to as "Turings" is that Alan Turing lived longer ITTL and/or the computing work done at Bletchley Park was commercialised leading to a slightly faster evolution of computers and the Internet. So a slightly earlier *Twitter fits in quite well.
Cheers,
Nigel.
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According to Spitting Image, it should have been Virginia Bottomly.
Edit: Of course, the text says "often with (female) members of his own cabinet" in the plural, so it could be all three of them !
Cheers,
Nigel.
As Mumby said, with a POD in 1942 and an implied earlier vindication for Turing (so much so his name is now the lower-case term for computers) we figured we could easily move up *Twitter by three years or so. Louise Mensch being successful at something is fairly ASB though, I admit.
Only two left (and maybe a surprise or two after that) so Jack and I feel we should be able to get this done today. It's become more of a TLIAW, but we're grateful that people have kept reading.