296. The freedom of 20 years without it…

2019 marks 20 years since I went television-free. Younger folk may be saying – so what! But trust me – many of my generation regard TV as second only to oxygen in their list of essentials. Once, when the TV licence Gestapo came to my house, they even checked the bathroom for signs of TV usage.

But then, I've never owned a microwave / dishwasher / smart phone, never had a Fb or other social media account (this blog is it) never used a credit card despite persistent pressure from my bank. I don’t own a car blah, blah, blah. For the strange and looming month of February why not step out here with me; outside the ring, outside the loop, outside the matrix.

Yes, I know, I’m never going to be 'liked' by 20m people because I post a picture of me with new nail varnish but, I’m just saying, a lot of the STUFF we're conned into thinking is life enhancing and essential really is not. Plus, if you get rid of those ‘time saving’ devices and apps you’ll actually have real time. Time to think. Time to look. Stop following mediocre exhibitionists and you may have time to make your own life special. So, come on out, the air is lovely (in a few remaining places) and the mind space is amazing.

I just mention this because it came to mind as I schlepped into 2019 almost pre exhausted. Also, if things continue as they are, many things we take for granted may soon become scarce. Just yesterday top supermarkets warned that crashing out of the EU with No Deal will lead to shortages and empty shelves.

Of course, if humans continue the way they are, none of this will matter because the planet will become uninhabitable for most living things including ourselves.

So lighten up and chuck some stuff.

And - check out one of my more unusual books

Zero One Zero Two

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1539762602

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1539762602

295. Brexit is Britain’s Hecatomb

Boris Johnson claims he didn’t mention a Turkish migrant invasion during the referendum. Oddly, everyone remembers his scare tactic comments  so clearly there's no need even to fact check. But, in the scheme of things frankly you have to respond – yes, so what?

In Corbyn we have an opposition leader who neither leads nor opposes (any fellow lefties who took me to task when I said – on this blog - that he would be a disaster for Labour - shortly after he was elected - may want to come back to me now with their current arguments about the great man? No? Ok...

We have a leader who does not lead and cannot even claim now to have her own faction – despised as she is by the rabid Brexiteers, the soft Leavers and the despairing Remainers.

We have ten DUP members brought and bought in to prop up a pitiful administration. They, of course represent Ireland. Ireland voted to Remain as passionately as Scotland did and yet the DUP dinosaurs hover like Dementors in the dark screeching and swooping out on a Brexit full moon to feast on Theresa May’s hopes  if she dares deviate from the Brexit disaster they crave.

Gove was one of the big liars of the referendum con and now simply sings out his silly tune about a No Deal being a disaster as if the results of May’s Brexit deal would be a picnic.

And Farage – that maggot in almost-human form – is warning people to prepare for another referendum – when presumably he’d dig up some new improved xenophobia.

The history of war is littered with the trusting masses being led by their social superiors to slaughter. Time and again, throughout the ages, those vain or stupid or stubborn (or all of the above) ‘leaders’ led ordinary men to useless deaths. The Charge of the Light Brigade the famous poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (my mother forced me to learn it when I was a child!) was an attempt to make a silk purse out of that particular sow’s ear. The infamous charge during The Battle of Balaclava 25^th October 1854 was one of the worst massacres of the Crimean War. Of the 675 infantrymen who were ordered into the cannon fire – few returned but they were sent into the horrific suicide charge without there ever being a chance of any other outcome.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a hecatomb.

In ancient Greece – a hecatomb was a great and public sacrifice – initially of 100 oxen. It became a term attached to war carnage on an excessive and pointless scale. Unnecessary sacrifices led to slaughter in other words.

Brexit is Britain’s political hecatomb and above are listed some of its perpetrators.

294. Brex-Zit. If you’re not embarrassed, you should be…

Yes. The big Brexit zit on the face of Britain is still there. 

We may have hoped it would go away over the too short winter break of the Christmas / New Year holiday but it hasn’t. It is the result of eating, not sugary fatty foods but the unwholesome stodge of xenophobia, stupidity and populist soundbites and the horrible zit is unlikely to be lanced by the vote scheduled in Parliament today. We will, instead, like a greasy muddle headed, self-centred teenager – just end up with a messy, infected sore on the face of UK democracy.

A world habitable by humans moves exponentially closer to the precipice while Britain throws time, money (ferry contract anyone?) effort, media obsession, passionless posturing, exasperation and exhaustion into the pointless but cavernous Brexit pit we dug ourselves into.

Prime Minister May is still pretending she has a deal that makes sense to anyone.

Corbyn still has not let us in on the secret of what he actually thinks about Brexit despite the best endeavours of Emily Thornberry (should-be leader of the Labour party) and Keir Starmer (shadow secretary for exiting the EU) and John Macdonnell (shadow chancellor) to come out and pretend to everyone that he has. 

Macdonnell and Corbyn see the current mess – which, as I’ve said many times on this blog, Corbyn was, by his ineptitude and prevarication and confused thinking, complicit in – as their chance for another General Election. I presume these two old farts think they will then ride off to Brussels a couple of hours before the deadline, explain to the 27 remaining countries that they too actually hate Europe in a stuck- in-the-1970s way, not really understanding modern work practices – but could they please have a better deal than the one given to Theresa May?

I wonder how that would go?

Despite the enormous amount of time and effort it has taken for Boris Johnson to contribute to wrecking Britain he has, apparently, found yet another woman to shack up with… He’s still lying his head off while she, presumably, is lying back and thinking of Little England.

And the craziest thing – apart from the way the Scots and the Irish were conned out of a hopeful future by English Nationalism - is that those, dizzy and blinded by the dusty, destructive windiness that is Westminster, seem to think the rest of the world has not been watching every mean, miserable moment aghast.

The idea that the countries formerly exploited by Britain are not now sitting in bemused judgement on us, like young adults watching a senile bullying old uncle slavering into his incontinence pants, is so naïve as to constitute raging insanity.

 But the world is watching this car crash. The world is appalled that a wealthy nation with everything of its own resources and all that it has gained from the rest of the globe over the centuries, should be squandering what other countries can only dream of and we really, really ought to be embarrassed…

Check out my comedy poem on this subject

African Journalist in Britain.

https://youtu.be/IC0agIVMRng