The Biscuit Test

One little known ritual of British politics is the Mumsnet Biscuit Test.

Umm… ek? What the heck is Mumsnet?

Well, it’s a parenting website with about 5000 active members (larger than Daily Kos actually) and because not all people have their brains totally destroyed by producing offspring (though it’s an incredibly common experience) they take an interest in current events and politics if only to bash the incredible selfishness of the confirmed bachelors and old maids who have willingly or not excluded themselves from Darwinian species survival (you just don’t know what it’s like until you’ve done carpool for a Paddy of screaming football hooligans and realize the one being locked up is you, you bloody poof).

Don’t get me wrong. I like kids, I just can’t eat a whole one.

Another thing we rebel colonials have to realize is that our language is sure something, but one thing it’s not is English. Lift, not elevator (just for the record, in terms of vertical transportation one of the oldest mechanical devices known, common in the neolithic if not earlier. If referring to the “Safety Elevator” with built-in braking so one doesn’t go randomly plummeting to death the proud brain child of Elisha Graves Otis of Halifax, Vermont in 1852). Boot, not trunk (an odd one, even the Brits were not so daft as to strap a piece of footwear on a car or carriage to transport items not desired in the passenger compartment, like children). Crisps, not chips (this one actually makes some sense, there are lots of things you fry besides potatoes and spud slivers can fairly be called “chips” whereas the distinguishing characteristic of the thin salty items dispensed in cellophane packets at a petrol kiosk is that they are “crisp”).

Likewise “biscuit” refers to an entirely different type of baked good in the half civilized western wilderness of North America (the civilized part? Canada.).

I was salesman #2.

In Stars Hollow “biscuits” are low gluten fluffy breads primarily leavened by baking powder and soda served savory with gravy or butter or less commonly sweet with a bit of honey. Among an older crowd they mean a hard baked flat bread more generally referred to as a “cracker”. Biscuits shoved at you from a drive through window with an unidentified sage flavored meat patty are not mentioned in any context as they are not fit even for dogs. In England they are what we would call a “cookie”.

Here in the States we kiss hands and shake babies on rope lines. In Blighty they type slowly in “Ask Me Anything” forums on Mumsnet, the rudeness of more free wheeling sites like /reddit being beneath the dignity of our more mannered mentors. Among the traditional questions-

• What is your favorite word?
• What is your least favorite word?
• What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
• What turns you off?
• What is your favorite curse word?
• What sound or noise do you love?
• What sound or noise do you hate?
• What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
• What profession would you not like to do?
• If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
• If you were a tree what kind of a tree would you be and why?

The one that always comes up is- “What is your favorite biscuit?”

Jeremy Corbyn has stirred up a bit of a fuss by admitting that he’s not in favor of mega-doses of high fructose corn syrup and glucose injected directly into your veins. If compelled by circumstance he’ll nibble on a shortbread.

Clearly this, along with a proposal for child care during Party meetings so that parents can participate, betrays his Trotskyist motivations which, if unchecked by cooler heads in Labour, will result in a Marxist Dictatorship in London driven by legions of Red Pioneers marching through Trafalgar.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.