369. Greece here we come…

Back in the annals of this blog (post. 239) at about the time Theresa May was hooking up with the DUP to force through a Brexit deal which wasn't quite as bad as the one we are about to end up with, I outlined how easy the drop from global cultural, social, military, intellectual and economic power to national has-been. How dizzyingly steep the slippage from a premier league functioning state to a basket case. Like Greece (sorry Greece). The difference being that the UK managed it in about two decades rather than centuries.

Your ‘decline pivot point’ may vary. Certainly if you look at the improvements in the lives of British working people post-WWII, you’d say the decline, the crushing of those hard-won rights and improvements, began with Thatcher. Ironically, the Iron Lady was mad and dangerously destructive but not stupid. She was pro- remaining in the EU.

However – as shorter memories are a feature of modern public life, if one discounts the Thatcherite selling off of the national family silver as the very start of the rot (I don’t) then maybe take the illegal invasion of Iraq? Yes – that old chestnut. Undoubtedly the contemporary world has never been the same and devastating illegal invasions never look good on countries that go around the globe claiming to be morally superior to others. Plus of course – as I repeatedly mention on this blog (I’m sorry if reality bores you) it destabilised the Middle East and led to ISIS and yada yada yada.

But if you want to know not when the disease set in or when the roots began to atrophy but when the tree began to topple – you couldn’t do better than June 23^rd 2016. That was when those like Boris Johnson, who had drivelled on for years that the problems facing the UK were not to do with inequality, not to do with impoverished education provision, the selling off of school land, over-crowded classrooms, growing personal debt deepened by student loans, less and less access to the justice system by those at the bottom (as legal aid was cut and cut and cut) attacks on workers’ rights and wages with the spread of zero hours contracts… no – none of those things had brought British society to its knees – it was foreigners and Brussels in particular. Hey presto Brexit.

Foreigner blaming by those who benefit from a rotten system is as old, obscene and stale as the British aristocracy and Brexit is as much of a nationalist self-harming mystery to the rest of the world as Donald Trump. But while he is – please god – about to be shown the door – we are only just at the very start of Brexit horrors as negotiating deadlines slide and the government pretends they’ve won something only to let the very firm next deadline slide and concede more and more until it starts to look like ‘our’ team are just turning up at Brussels begging to be punched in the face just a little harder – oh just one more please, now we really feel like we’re making progress!

Yes. Here we are with the government bickering over feeding poor children while shelling out £7,000 per day to consultants who have repeatedly failed to get covid test and trace to work, a trick South Korea mastered at the start of the pandemic. For ‘consultants’ obviously read, mates of the Tory party. Here we are with a health service which was the envy of the world struggling badly to cope with its ordinary workload after less than 10 months of a predicted pandemic. Here we are with crumbling infrastructure (e.g. transport) , a miserable record on the environment (now being made worse by the ecological destruction caused by HS2) while Boris Johnson frantically tries to make a pigs arse out of a sow’s ear because his “oven ready deal” of January 2020 turns out to have been cold turd pie.

By the time Boris Johnsons and his administration of lunatics and incompetents and corrupt deluded morons is through, banana republic will sound like a compliment…

Greece here we come, minus the warm sea, sun and ouzo...

When Trump is Gone

 

(friday poem)

When Trump is Gone

When Trump is gone I’m gonna smile

Despite the great pandemic

When trump is gone I’ll breathe again

Though triumph be totemic

 

When Trump and his enablers are

Cleaned out like so much litter

I will not mind, for a little while

If victory tastes bitter

 

When Trump is gone I’ll look around

Endeavouring to be glad

Not focus on the grief and pain

The world need not have had

 

I’ll try to block the images of

Young children abandoned in cages

Dampen down the horrors of

The tears that paid his wages

 

When Trump is gone and the air is cleared

And we’ve sluiced out the bile and the slime

We’ll remember not to do this again –

 Until the next time…

 

NB – according to US court  papers recently released – over 500 of the children separated from their parents on the orders of the Trump administration have not been reunited with them despite court orders – some may never be.

368. Boris 'blah blah blah' translated...

 As the real or fake Brexit negotiations continue – or don’t continue – the latest pronouncement from our blob at Westminster is that the UK should ‘prepare for Australia-style trade outcome’. I offer – in this week’s header to translate the latest Boris blah blah blah but in reality – like everything that emanates from the wobbly gob of the blob it's fantasy. There is no Australia-style trade situation. It’s just a euphemism – or lie if you will – for no deal where Britain will be free floating in an ocean of its own shit. Blobbo and Cummings and the other nutters in the fruit house at Westminster are fine with this because they don’t live in the real world but for the rest of us it actually translates to an Australia deal circa 1700s i.e. – brits being shipped to a world they don’t recognise and where they will BURN.

UK newspapers followed each other in 2016 and more recently this summer in dubbing the UK, again, the Sick Man of Europe. They claim, rather predictably and unimaginatively, that the results of the Brexit vote and the subsequent economic and political carnage – has earned that title for Britain once again – a term which it owned when I was born in the 1960s for its ongoing fiscal failures and economic weakness.

This time we are not victims of a post-war decline. This time our sickly status is brought on by a combination of poorly managed world events and a significant dose of political self-harm and crass behaviour fermented delusions of grandeur.

If you don’t believe me look no further than the recent protestations of MI5 that while Russia may pose a great security threat China poses greater ‘challenges’. That word ‘challenges’, hides a multitude of sins/insinuations.

As a blogger who derided the UK government’s reliance on China for tech and infrastructure and was disgusted at our lack of sanctions over the treatment of Muslims held in concentration camps – I am not a fan of the Chinese government behaviour. However, what Mr James Bond fantasy is referring to is that China has surpassed the UK as a world power, world influence and global political player. But who is to blame for that? This is not a rhetorical question – it has a very clear loud answer. Britain is to blame – or more importantly – the English nationalism that has brought the whole union to its knees. We’ve not been surpassed or sunk by pirates we have scuppered our own vessel.

Johnson’s ‘oven-ready’ Brexit deal was a simple lie. Nothing that needs translating. Our world-beating test track and trace system is a bad joke – it needs no interpretation. His constant ‘for us or agin' us’ declamations actually mean that if he has no policy, is inept, uncaring and self-destructive and we – as citizens of this small island - have a duty to go over the cliff with him.

But, lest we forget – as the saying goes – this disaster did not start with Brexit, it most certainly did not start with our 3^rd world approach to Covid. It did not even start with our weak response to the vulgarity and greed-horrors that led to the 2008 crash and all the austerity and mismanagement of subsequent Tory administrations. It began with Thatcher’s abhorrence of working people. It was carried forward by a Blair government that allowed the private sector into Education and Health with PFI and introduced tuition fees that now keep generations of young folk crushed by lifelong debt and then – to top it all – the illegal invasion of Iraq.

If, like me – you actually like to link events rather than looking at what happens today as a self-contained – could-not-be-avoided mystery – which seems to be the way – you could not do worse than track the progress of Britain’s political disease from Iraq – the rise of ISIS – global instability – loss of economic confidence – mass migration s of displaced people – fear of both – and the rise of populist politicians – because they ALWAYS come along and fill that vacuum.

So – I query the press’s predictable dubbing of the UK as the Sick Man of Europe. This time a better description would be the nauseating, demented old fart.

And anything Johnson says does not require translation it needs complete disregard because on a very strong balance of probabilities it will simply be a lie.

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Flush the T-turd on November 3rd (PLEASE AMERICA)

 

Flush the T-turd on November the 3^rd

America please ditch the absurd

Give him the bird

You must have heard

He talks to the unhinged

Their heads Trump is fillin’

With poisoned dementia

Til they’re crazy and killin’

Just a quiet word

On November the 3^rd

Please Please

America

FLUSH the turd…

Another friday extra for ya. If you like the silly friday poems share it around and I'll do some more...

367. Brexit Britain will be the junkie left on a derelict street when Biden takes the US into political rehab.

Trump is the pestilence that matters between now and November 3^rd… for the UK as much as the US.

IF Papa Joe takes the US into political rehab after November 3^rd Britain will be alone on the streets without a supplier and no one to ‘chum’ them – as they say in Scotland. Alone and newly vulnerable on Rogue Western Democracies St…

IF you think Johnson and his mob of morons have finished wrecking Britain – take note that Parliament just voted NOT to protect food standards after Brexit.

We have learnt a lot since March 2020.

One of the main things the UK learnt the very hard way was that – while a significant percentage of the population adhered to what felt like extremely draconian lockdown rules towards the end of March – a late lockdown followed by flipping and flopping and U-turns and the undermining of even the belated rules – have turned out to be both a health and economic disaster. However, if you believed in conspiracy theories - I don't - you might conclude that the political carnage was deliberate as Johnson and Cummings cook up something far worse and long term for post-Brexit Britain.

In summary – the UK falls into the club of countries that have been mismanaged to the extent that it has suffered both high mortality AND extreme economic hardship. Unlike others that fall into that unpopular global club (the US and Brazil) we also still have the economic wrecking ball of Brexit to hit us.

It is worth a reminder that the catastrophe of Brexit happened in the same half year period as the election of Donald Trump – and for broadly similar reasons. The populist lunatics took over the asylum and they are completing their smashing game also in a similar timescale.  Brexit is about to finish razing the UK to the ground – November will show us whether the US has come to its senses in time. The difference is that Brexit will only wreck the UK. Trump – unstopped – could yet wreck the world. Only the UK is in the unique position that it will be further weakened by the failure of Trump whose shitty coat tails Tory administrations have clung to. 

The sense of gloom you feel is almost palpable (if you live in the UK – I can’t answer for other countries). You can almost reach out and grab its grey clammy, flaccid tentacles.

But if you were checking the global as well as the national body politic – you would sense a febrile unit, fragile emotions, general aching and disorientation but you will also detect something else we associate with viruses – lethargy.

I believe the lethargy is not just due to the realisation that we are being led by buffoons, that things are bungled daily, hourly by those paid and trusted to run the country but there is another much bigger question hanging in the air – like a miasma. The US elections.

Yes – Donald Trump – the man who has flouted every rule – political, moral, legal and who has just used up and estimated $100k of medical attention at the Walter Reed military medical facility – having paid approximately $700+ in taxes over the last two years and is currently hell bent on infecting as many other humans who don’t have access to such platinum edged healthcare, is about to face an election. Such is the position of the US in the world – even after four years of mismanagement that the shock waves of the result on November 3^rd (or the morning of nov 4^th) will wash across the Atlantic like a political tsunami.

For us here in the UK the results may be more extreme than anywhere else. Boris Johnson has aped the political style and approach of the White House and the blond blob himself – from the multiple wives and uncounted children – the faithlessness and the daughter-partners, the racism and lack of care of other human beings, has become what we might have called Trump-lite – except ‘lite’ is never something you’d associate with Boris Johnson. His political footprint could have been left by a prehistoric Giant Sloth.

These two men are not only cut from the same cloth, they have had the same divisive effect on the countries stupid enough to elect them and they have been supported by those who thought they could ride their poisonous popularity to victory.

Now the reckoning.

If Trump is re-elected I’d say only this - we (everyone) is screwed. I mean look at what he has done to his own country in just 4 years

If Trump a. loses b. they are able to remove highly contagious and deadly disease which is both metaphorically and literally Trump, from a White House he clearly feels is now his personal property -  Brexit Britain is screwed. I mean even more than we are right now.

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Mike Pence’s fly

 

Mike Pence’s fly

(Based on the children’s rhyme ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly’)

 

I know an old man who hosted a fly

On top of his head, the fly wasn’t shy

I wonder why

 

Pence wittered about

False reality

He must have spent time

With Sean Hannity

 

His head was so full

Of masses of shit

Maybe that’s why the fly

On his pate did sit

 

Mike got a fly

Because he spews rot

Nobody knows

How he got where he got

 

Perhaps the Pence head

Has just spent so long

Up Trump’s derriere

The fly liked the pong

 

The fly sat down

On top of the clown

It stopped to think

Cos he liked the stink

It did not detect

Any sign of life

With Kamala there

Where was [mother] his wife?

 

There was an old man

Who hosted a fly

I dunno why

He hosted the fly

IFthedemsdon’twininNovember we’ll all CRY…

366. NETFLIX/BREXIT scammers & my naked dream...

Like you, I get scam emails. The latest was a febrile, pyretic spew about my Netflix account needing attention URGENTLY. The sort of attention that would – obviously – involve  giving bank details.

Now – as my bleaders (blog readers) will be aware, I’ve not had TV since last century so if you assume I also do not have a Netflix account you would be correct. Suffice to say I did not need to read the email detail to realise it was yet another ruse to empty my already echoey bank account. (Someone should tell these people not to target artists who’ve not had a sniff of work since March)

As I was wearily deleting the email it occurred to me that this scam – which presumably caught some folk or they wouldn’t do it – is exactly like the Brexit scam or Brexit as it is called.

The sad thing is that instead of taking a moment to look around or a second to think – the duped masses who voted for the current self-annihilation simply responded to the fevered nature of the jingoism, the heated rhetoric of the racism and anti-foreigner slurry which has served the ruling elite so well since 1381 and forever. 

The turkeys who voted for Christmas looked at the big red bus and its big purple lie and did not stop and think – hang on – the last time I went to the GP she was a foreigner. The last time I was in hospital it was an immigrant cleaning the ward – it was a Spanish nurse who looked after me. They did not stop to think – hang on – large companies who want to screw over British workers actually do it by shipping call centres out to countries that don’t pay minimum wages – it’s nothing to do with immigration. They did not stop to think that if they don’t want migrants displaced by war and a destabilised Middle East they maybe should be tackling war criminals like Tony Blair not talking about building floating walls in The Channel (presumably – Trump-like – they’d get migrants to pay for it???)

No – they just mentally clicked the link and handed over their lives to the arseholes. Thing is – they handed over mine too – and that’s not fair.

I keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’s all been a stress dream like where you are running naked down the street and there is nowhere to hide. Perhaps it’ll be one of those confusing reveries, like that ridiculous episode of Dallas back in 1986, where an entire series was wiped out by the it-was-all-a dream trick. 

Sometimes I imagine the grown-ups will walk into the room and laugh at me when I say I thought the whole country voted for self-harm based on obvious and ridiculous deceits. Then they will really chuckle madly when I tell them I thought Boris Johnson and a load of other corrupt half-wits were running the country…

Because surely – no one would fall for such an obvious con…

 

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