416. Brexit schmexit & Elizabeth III

Talk-to-the-tank Truss or Lizzie III (judging from the tacky, delusional visuals in her alt-Christmas message to the nation Elizabeth III ) is now in charge of negotiating Brexit with the EU. Yes, the Brexit that was DONE this time last year.

Anyhow – here's a final 2021 Teddy talk with Teddy O’ Leary who has something to say about Brexit schmexit and Ireland. Back to full posts next week.

Do check out My BOOKS and thanks to all those who found this non-social media weirdy-in-the-wilderness in 2021.

415. There may be snow in Africa this Christmas!

It'll be interesting in 2022(not) to see the Tories use their old trick of ditching a problem leader and pretending all the monstrousness was nothing to do with them – tadaahh. Well, it’s worked for them pretty much since forever… 

Meanwhile – as a Christmas card for all my readers, do please click the link where spoof Ted will wish you all Merry Christmas on my behalf There may be snow in Africa this Christmas!

I'm not on social media thanks so much for finding me in 2021

Check out My BOOKS most now available on exp distr UK & US

414. Boris Johnson the clown? – Yes, the Stephen King IT variety…

The serial disdain of the Tory party for ordinary folk has never been more evident and it is hideously personified in Boris Johnson.

Of the privileged elite who have plundered Britain over the decades since Thatcher, he is just a more extreme product – as outlined in this post

British Boarding Schools Breed Posh Sociopaths

At the start of this month there were tepid mutterings when it was reported that French President Macron privately called Johnson a clown. It’s hard to understand the faux outrage when anyone paying attention this side of The Channel was calling Johnson that from day 1. But where is the humour? Johnson had hardly warmed the PM's seat with his lazy fat arse when he illegally prorogued Parliament. 

Back in his jaunty days as London Mayor, there was the purchase of water cannon to use against the folk who were mad enough to elect him. Then the Garden Bridge debacle and huge waste of public funds. 

As Foreign Secretary under Theresa May (who overruled the London water cannon) he helped wreck Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s chances of release in Iran.

His public persona is buffoonish clown. But while this circus has been in town, mass profiteering from the pandemic has taken place, thousands have died unnecessarily due to gross mismanagement, the economy has tanked, the already wide gap between rich and poor has expanded, deaths from alcohol and drug abuse has grown and the precious Northern Ireland peace has been put in serious jeopardy.

Boris Johnson is a wrecker; a man without humanity and certainly no empathy. Yes, he will eventually be gone, and doubtless undone by his own disastrous personality - but there remains the huge unanswered question of how this obvious turd was allowed to float to the top and what that says about Britain.

 What has become clear is that the sort of clown we’re dealing with is the Stephen King IT variety not the entertaining buffoon. 

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Remember - I'm not on social media but do join the other 3 people who have found my creative stuff. 

This is the latest spoof Teddy talk - 

Boris de Pitre Johnson

Plus there are also my books, most now available on extended distribution in the US and UK. 

As well as the adult stuff, check out...

...and remember – there are youtube videos (recorded during the first lockdown for my grandkids)  for each poem in this anthology like Fruit Salad Person or Crazy Clothes or Bish Bash 

Have fun.

413. Famine, homelessness, covid. The solutions are under our noses…

Dogs before People - before I start this Tuesday - just a brief reminder (click the link) - now that this has blown up properly - of my post back in August because it  partly explains the mess we are in when priorities are set on whims and favours by this corrupt uncaring administration.

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Why are we literally hell-bent on ignoring the solutions?

Why do we simply refuse to do the things that work?

The links between covid, homelessness and starvation are clear as their solutions are obvious. We just love to ignore the obvious. Or, in the interests of greed, selfishness and self-interest we pretend there aren’t any straight forward fixes.

During the first wave of covid lockdown in the UK there was an ‘Everyone In’ scheme in place which got nearly 40k rough sleepers in off the streets. Up here in Edinburgh we went from every other doorway on Princes St packed with a body in a sleeping bag – to CLEAR.

The idea that homelessness is an intractable problem was blown out of the water. And yet we are moving back to pre-pandemic levels.

For years we’ve been told by the pharmaceutical companies that the answer to world hunger is genetically modified crops and that nonsense pervades despite the observations of such organisations as Greanpeace  The reality is that the problem is solvable another way –without the profit motive for big pharma – by fair distribution of the abundance of food we have, global fair pay and a reduction in consumption in the West which would massively benefit physical and mental health levels here too.

And we see the same with covid. We knew before covid that the only way to deal with these global diseases is globally. But voices like Gordon Brown’s were ignored in favour of the likes of our old pal and war criminal Tony Blair and the jingoist pig man Johnson. Grab everything for ourselves then back to Costa-del-barf. And – predictably – the virus is having a ball in parts of the world where vaccination rates are minimal – and new variants are ready to come back and bite us on our selfish Western arses.

We know the answers. That is the frustrating thing. We are unprepared, unwilling and as unlikely as ever to do the right thing. Greed and selfishness almost always get in the way. Easier to pretend it’s all too difficult to solve and we have, like Indiana Jones, to make a very costly epic out of searching for some may-or-may-not exist holy grail.

So

Why are we literally hell-bent on ignoring the solutions?

Why do we simply refuse to do the things that work?

The answer is as simple as the solutions we ignore. Greed gets in the way.

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Do check out My BOOKS

And remember the spoof Teddy talks this week - not so much turkeys voting for Christmas as sheep voting for abattoirs.

412. ‘Safe, legal routes for refugees’ is a fiction to hide our shame.

 

I’m sure the usual drivel spewed out in the brief moment of shallow grief for the unnecessary and tragic loss of life in the Channel last week, will be repeated next time.

There will be a next time as the UK's vile and useless Home Secretary Priti Patel well knows.

But the truth is that talk of safe legal routes for refugees is a myth the comfortable West continues to tell itself so it can collectively sleep at night. It is a lie. A falsehood. A dark fantasy. It doesn’t matter how many times politicians say it – or how often it is repeated by a regurgitate-government-press-releases media. It is not true.

Basic rules for those seeking refugee status have changed little since the 1950s. There are – for example – no grounds for migrants seeking the magical and desired refugee status on the basis of the climate crisis we talked so passionately about during COP 26 (The futility is in the name...)which we know has created around 1.4 billion displaced souls worldwide.

There is much distracting talk of the evil of people-smugglers and the money some migrants may have if they can pay the astronomical fees demanded by those profiteering from their misery.  Again – these are smoke screens to hide our lack of humanity.

Clearly – it can be true that people smugglers are nasty AND that the migrants are desperate and in need of our help. It’s not an either/or situation.

Add to the predictable inane government response the fact that anti-French rhetoric almost immediately appears in the press, heated up by this dreadful, failed administration and our disgrace is almost complete. Except, of course, the opportunity to blame immigrants for overstretched and under-invested services rather than placing the blame where it belongs is never missed either.

Privatisation of almost everything that had any value in the UK has gone on unchecked since the 1980s so that potential investment has been creamed off as profit for the last forty years leaving UK infrastructure in the declining state we now see. 

Time for an old doodle (from 2013)…

 

Let us take a moment to remember that Britain and America have done a lot over the decades to destabilise the very places many of these desperate folk come from and have economically exploited them too. If we remember some facts in the face of this abomination – we may find ourselves feeling less faux sympathy and more shame.

 

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Do check out My BOOKS. NB. The majority of the paperbacks are now available in expanded distribution UK and US. Thank you.

411. Boris Johnson pig - Lying & Smirking aint working...

In case you were agog at UK Prime Minister p-p-p-pig's incoherent spew to businessmen (I mean more incoherent than usual), you may have missed my latest published letter (in The Independent) yesterday - which went like this -

As Johnson sees a very slight dip in popularity in the country he has so wronged and vicious anger from his own side - and let’s face it – the latter is the only bit that counts - is it possible that both voters and politicians are waking up to the enormity that you can’t get stuff done by electing a bunch of people who make stuff up and gurn.

Weirdly it seems it is a surprise to some that lying and smirking aint working…

What is amazing in reality is that anyone ever thought this would work. Johnson is a truly abominable example of his ilk but he is just the most incompetent of a type with a long very bad record of dragging Britain down -

Yes, its an old doodle but we are just arriving at the very obvious destination of a road the UK began travelling in 1979.

One thing that has changed though, is how the rest of the world views the UK. That bubble was finally burst in June 2016 - check out this new video -

African Journalist in Britain 

(apologies to Scotland and Ireland obviously)

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Do also check out  My BOOKS and remember all the children's rhymes in Fun Poems for Children have accompanying videos on youtube - with costumes and props and everything :)  

410. COP26 – The futility is in the name.

Should COP stand for Constipation of Power?

I heard many speculate on the acronym in the months leading up to this COP. No – the 26 doesn’t help either. Because it’s depressing to consider this nonsense has been going on for over 1/4 century and still no one who matters seems to be listening. The first COP was in Berlin Germany 1995 and in fact the first Earth Summit was in Stockholm Sweden 1972 half a century ago when I was at junior school. My eldest grandchild is now in his second year of school.

But the COP part does not – as some of thought mean

Climate Objective Priority

Or

Cretins Out Please

Cherish One Planet

Children or Profit

Climate Oblivion Prevention etc etc etc

 

It just means ‘Conference of the Parties. (CotP?) in other words – a meeting of those who are meeting – and have been for 26 years with similar before. The missing‘t’?
Could it stand for Truth?

It is as circular and pointless as the agreements which have emerged from it.

The fact is that the world cannot be saved by committee. No matter that hard-faced Tory and Johnson toady - Alok Sharma -  tried to make his eyes water appropriately for the cameras when the coal-friendly nonsense was agreed so there was something to present to a salty media.

Australia – who we have a much heralded post-Brexit trade deal with - isn’t on board. They have too much invested in coal to China. India, second most populous nation, has been pissing about but they do have amoral argument. Most of those wagging the finger at India have benefited not just from trashing their own environments but much of the rest of the world. And here in the UK, our glorious fuckwit PM cut foreign aid during the pandemic so we cannot expect anyone to take seriously claims that we intend to help less fortunate countries tackle climate crises and those already suffering the results of inaction.

At some point we may need to accept that we just don’t give enough of a crap about something that isn’t affecting comfortably off Westerners very immediately.  Though mired in personal debt  - most have never really experienced hardship, discomfort, or any kind of real shortages. In fact many are drowning in their own accumulated shit in over-heated houses with two cars out front. And that is just the way the system needs it.

It’s the pure profit motive that drives the West and that is anathema to tackling the climate crisis. So while we may have the argument about whether its huge corporations changing their game or you and I reusing our shopping bags – the fact is, it’s the power and the money moving things along.

In last week’s Guardian Ben Okri wrote a wonderful piece exhorting artists to write as if these are the last days  This is something I've done for many years in books such as

Zero One Zero Two

&

Casey & the Surfmen

And while most of my work remains on the er-who-is-she list of people who’ve not signed up to social media, it is obvious to me after many years that the two books folk shy away from when they are checking my stuff out are the two listed above. 

Casey & the Surfmen  was from back in the day when I thought collective action and hope could save us – if we ALL really cared. Zero One Zero Two is written from the point of view of a couple of minutes from where I think we are now. 

We are not willing enough to change, to give up stuff that falsely appears to make living less effort.

I’ve even tried explaining to folk that not having that stuff they think is essential  - smartphone – microwave – car – dishwasher – credit card ( and on and on) is not a hassle. Far from it. So much less to maintain, mend, pay for, distract you from you family. I have none of that stuff and feel I am happier without it - though yes increasingly and further OUTSIDE the ring. It is getting harder to live without the life-tracking all-seeing always-shopping environment-wrecking smartphone but I’ll hang out as long as I can.

Power and money go hand in hand and we keep handing power to people who are only interested in money. It sounds terribly boring but getting young folk to vote would  make a much bigger difference than endless COPs.

But – no – we are going to carry on kidding ourselves that buying a different type of car is the answer. Gadgets that regulate our central heating. PLEASE. Oh – and try telling someone their pet dogs are an environmental disaster (as well as shit machines). Go on. I dare you.

Maybe COP should stand for Constipation of Power. At least we wouldn’t have a spare consonant…

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And - you know I'm doing a series of ted talks - here's no. 3 In Defence of The Royals

409. Boris bollocks.

This week's blog is Teddy talks - talk2. Click the link.

 Boris bollocks

408. Meta Mega Monsters of the Metaverse

Facebook is to be renamed Meta – apparently. But a ruse by any other name still stinks.

So – globally – while we await the outcome of COP26 and what Thunberg so ably spelled out as “blah blah blah” there are already 1.4 billion climate refugees. Though – as a refugee expert explained to me – the climate crisis is not one of the legal listed categories for refugee status even now!

Meanwhile the world’s billionaires show us the gruesome future; one where we fritter away time and resources on nonsense while the clock ticks. Musk spent billions proving he could quite pointlessly and fruitlessly get it up. That old fart Branson also spent the wealth of a small country proving he too is a space cadet.

With the announcement of Fb’s new name, I was reminded of sitting in Glasgow airport (awaiting an arrival) and there was a guy two seats away wearing a VR headset. His body was present but clearly his mind was elsewhere as his intermittent disconcerting and disconnected chuckles and odd jerks and small disjointed movements proclaimed. I can only say it was like sitting in public next to someone masturbating, which seems apt. But with Musk / Branson / Besos it’s self-indulgence on a gargantuan scale.

 Zuckerberg and Clegg – ignoring the harm their algorithms have done especially to young women and girls - simply continue their virtual kiddy fiddling while Rome burns – after announcing the ridiculous name change and plans to move to the Metaverse.

We’ve all seen the movie...

Here in the UK, we don’t need to wait for the planet to become uninhabitable for humans because we chose suicide by Brexit.

 UK rivers are full of untreated shit

The budget was a load of shit (see my first Tedtalk below)

COP26 is shaping up to be a pile of shit

Brexshit is an entirely unpolished turd

Boris Johnson doesn’t give a shit

The pavements are covered in shit (more so since the shit-brained went out and bought millions of dogs during lockdown)

Thatcher’s privatisation shovelled shit loads of money to the wealthy which is why Britain is a wasteland of stripped public assets and thanks to the privatised water companies - why the rivers are now bobbing with shit

This government’s handling of covid was uber shit

The £billions wasted on profiteering and incompetence since March 2020 makes us all feel shitty

Lord Frost has shit for brains and is working on a fish fight with France to muddy the already stinking swamp waters of populist politics.

Remember – it’s only the billionaires who can really escape. That leaves another 7++ billion of us…

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This week do check out my very first Ted talk ft Ted Baker 

Teddy Talks 1 

407. Why have I heard of ‘Rylan’?

 Why have I heard of ‘Rylan’?

I don’t even have TV!

 

I spent the weekend with television

And this is what struck me.

 

I’ve heard of a guy who according to 40 seconds internet research became famous for coming 5^th in the 11^th series of a talent programme I’ve never watched.

 

Even if I hadn’t given up on TV last century I would have avoided this type of offering  like – well – The Covid.

It’s a talent programme where, as far as I can tell from my further ‘research’ on You tube, the aim is to take a song or imitation of a famous person – preferably one well known but not too badly invested with original talent themselves and shit on it. Creatively murder the thing that has been done before by hundreds of others and better by at least 99% of them – but with an unassailable lack of self-awareness.

And , having failed at that – according to my 10 second Wikipedia ‘research’ R went on to another coveted staple of British entertainment – reality TV. And that, it seems is why – having spent the weekend in a house with TV, I saw an orange face with ken doll hair and nuclear teeth and knew this person’s name was Rylan.

WHY?

It used to be that to be famous – you had to do something. Play a thing  - however badly, or sing a new song – however awful, say witty things or write a thing or have something quirky about your personality / have a personality. Even back in the days of Saturday Night at the London Palladium – a guy who could bang a tray on his head in a way you’d never seen a guy bang a pub tray before could get on.

It’s not that I don’t wish this guy as much luck as anyone else. I’ve never met him and am sure he is – on a personal level – as ok as the next person.

BUT

Is this it? Is this now Britain for good? Not an aberration, not a blip. We have to tell our kids that writing, creating, being original is not what counts. Work on your fake perma-tan…

Problem is - I have a sneaking suspicion it – whatever IT is - may explain why the current crop of non-entities, topped off by the pig-in-a-suit, are being paid to masquerade as leaders of the country. The country is, after all, being run like a failed game show.

To look at it from the other perspective – I have less than zero interest in football. The closest I came to any real involvement was back in the dark ages when I was a Newcastle City councillor and sat on the planning committee at a time when St James football ground was given planning permission to extend their premises. That’s it. And yet, I fully understand why I’ve heard of Ronaldinho. The star quality of  Ronaldinho de Assis Moreira  shone so brightly from the firmament that it even glittered far outside the football realm.

But I don’t understand why I’ve heard of Rylan any more than I understand why Johnson is Prime Minister… It matters because Johnson and his ilk are not going to save the planet, they are going to (and are) fiddling while Rome burns.

So I say again. I understand why I’ve heard of Ronaldinho. But why oh WHY have I heard of Rylan?

406. England’s Deference Disease is destroying Britain.

The Deference Disease is rampant in a bizarre England that has, for centuries, supported/ voted for an elite that has never had the interests of the majority at heart. This strange phenomenon – accomplished with sleight of hand, anti-foreigner rhetoric, duplicity and the age old trick of divide and conquer – has had the unfortunate effect – more apparent now than ever – of dragging the less populated countries of the union, down with it. Case in point, either Ireland or Scotland voted for Brexit or Boris.

I’m not fool enough to try and explain Wales…

The Deference Disease was damped down a little after WWI and significantly after WWII but has gone crazy this century. New, less easily recognised but aggressive variants have invaded all organs; the media, politics and wider society.

No, it’s not just the ridiculousness of the royal family – I mean their very existence. A cabal of racist in-breds, currently protecting a suspected paedo – who, despite their wealth are still supported from the public purse as those actually in need forge in food banks.

 It’s not just the different standards so clearly applied to people depending on where the English public see them in the stultifying social strata. It’s not just the starkly differing life chances that still depend on which school you attended and it’s not just that your chances of living a long healthy life directly follows what class you were born into (increasingly so). It isn’t even the worshipful status afforded to the who-even-is-that parallel new elite of done-nothing celebrities who’ve bared their dull souls, shallow personality and baby bump/new partner/near-death experience/new kitchen in an ‘exclusive’. No. It’s all of the above and x1000.

More immediately we’ve seen a Prime Minister too involved in the mess of his own private life – mishandle a pandemic to extraordinary levels but still riding high in the opinion polls. A man who’s cowardice is on open display. He was absent for the I’ll lie down on the runway to prevent Heathrow expansion – vote. And was absent again – sunning his blubber in a mate’s holiday villa with the latest daughter-age blonde – sorry Mrs Johnson 3rd – when the half arsed report was published about the UK’s covid failures.

Is it because the nature of the catastrophic mishandling of covid was so huge, the waste and loss of life so vast? Maybe. I would argue that a similar outcome delivered by a Labour or SNP administration would have been torn to shreds by an enraged public led by a howling press and media. Why do Brits – and especially the English, accept things from those at the top of the social pile that they would not from those lower down? It has to be the Deference Disease. Partly – they are just expected to behave like that and let’s face it – much of life these days is about managing expectations.

Not only has Boris Johnson gotten away with being a racist, misogynistic, lying coward - he was elected PM after these things were known. A la Trump. He has behaved corruptly – buying water cannon to use on the credulous Londoners who elected him mayor. More recently, when the mad idea of a bridge from Scotland to Ireland re-surfaced (presumably the millions of pounds in feasibility will go to Tory mates like the PPE contracts) I scanned the press for reference to his previous bridge scandal – The Garden Bridge – and came up empty handed.

How does this work? (That is not a rhetorical question; if you know tell me…)

Johnson’s Brexit minister Lord Frost is currently bitching and whinging about the Brexit deal he negotiated and his master signed amid claims it was a great deal for Britain. Those of us who could see it was a disaster where ‘doom mongers’ then. Now Frost is expecting (and getting from the fawners and toadies) credit for being tough on old johnny foreigner. The only problem is, as almost anyone paying attention has pointed out, it’s his deal.

Yes – I know that whenever the peasants get restless – the toffs just start screeching and scare-mongering about foreigners and – here’s a flag to wave – and oh look – here’s a rich dullard in dressing up clothes and a crown – how marvellous.  But dear god – that might have worked in 1381 – WHY IS IT STILL?

While this Deference Disease is damaging us from within – preventing the real talent from rising and ensuring that we are governed by the half-baked (Raab), the witless (Frost) the gormless and slimy (Gove) the talentless bullies (Patel) etc etc etc– that is not the worst of it.

When we look ‘up’ and see incompetence and politically and socially incestuous behaviour choking our progress in the world it is a depressing sight. However, for a while now – the rest of the world has not been looking up to Britain. It’s been staring down - in disbelief.

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on a lighter note. Its the Leamington poetry festival this weekend. I'll be performing at the comedy event on Saturday night at The Temperance.

405.The Legends of Eleanor Catherine - real books for real girls!

 

Much as I dislike mentioning the 'C' word before December - for obvious reasons there is more panic than usual and - spoiler alert - Johnson is no more going to 'save Christmas' this year than he did last year. So, if you know young readers who'd enjoy an adventure book where the girl hero is front and centre and, in various guises, the hero throughout, here is a handy suggestion while I have a week off.

'Funny, exciting, quirky...' 

Yes it's a trilogy therefore if you like one, there's pudding. However, each story stands alone so you could just pick the one you fancy. Click My BOOKS or navigate to your favourite online book retailer. Available in e-book or paperback

NB: print-on-demand books are environmentally friendly but take longer to arrive.

404. Toxic Masculinity & Britain’s Careless Patriarchy. We should be worried…

 

…but not surprised.

So, Britain’s growing toxic masculinity problem seems to have come as a surprise even though our main political institution is run by a Toxic Male and our most prominent tourist institution (royal family) is currently protecting a Toxic Male at great expense from facing up to child trafficking charges; both being given the soft glove treatment by a limp UK media.

Britain began the century with a privileged public schoolboy illegally invading Iraq (destabilising the middle East, setting off a wave of migration that further undermined fragile international balance, sending wealthy western nations into a panic – which fed into the 2008 crash [the result of other posh brats’ unfettered greed and lack of regulation]) Now we totter into the third decade, dragging the carcass of Brexit after a massive lurch to the right and increasing macho nonsense. Mix in 11 years of Tory austerity culminating in a populist fool whose middle name – if it weren’t ‘de-Kermit’ might be Careless Toxic Masculinity.

Boris Johnson is a toxic male and it’s partly that trait – covered, as it often is, by the bravura and always accompanied by his own poisonous brand of carelessness – disguised as charm – that got him elected. And the defences wheeled out by all his excusers are of a colour applied to all abusive, powerful, recklessly careless inconsiderate men ‘oh – it’s just Boris’. What does that even mean? Maybe Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe or the Muslim “pillar box” women or the various discarded wives and families could explain. Or even the currently mesmerised one – she of the gold wallpaper -who did once cause the police to be called on her then married partner over ‘a domestic’…

Toxic Masculinity goes hand in hand with failing Right-wing administrations.

The police force and The Met in particular is suffering a crisis of confidence both internally and from the public that has for years been suspicious of its attitude to race. Now, its attitude to women is in the spotlight with falling rape convictions and aggressive attitudes to women in the headlines.  The police approach to the vigil, held for the murdered young London woman, drew unfavourable comparisons set against their attitude to football fans in Glasgow who congregated – also in breach of then covid restrictions - but who were treated with a very different hands-off approach.

These are simply the most visible and news worthy incidents of a society that has become more right wing, populist, fearful and oppressively macho this century.

As the post-war social gains have been steadily eaten away before the very eyes of my generation, lucky enough to have benefitted from at least free higher education – it seems that hard-won steps towards equality are also being eroded.

Racism – which seemed to my naive eyes to be at least moving to the back foot – at least unacceptable in public even if not in people’s heads at the turn of the century, has seen a resurgence under the unfortunate growth of the rabid right and the anonymity of social media.

Women, still having not achieved equal pay for equal work have lost their 5 years of earlier retirement than men - ironically on the basis of a gender equality which takes no account of the effects of maternity breaks or their lower pay, fewer opportunities or the sexism they face in the work place daily. Suddenly our society, so loaded towards men, found it needed equality in one of the few areas that would harm women.

On a much less important level there are parallels with the case of driving insurance (stay with me). It used to be the case that young women could get cheaper car insurance because stats showed they were less likely to have serious accidents than young men. No, no - said the predominantly male judiciary system. On this one we want equality – never mind the figures. So, the ‘facts’ and ‘stats’, that all insurance is based on – were overridden in favour of more faux equality. 

It’s amazing, when the patriarchy suddenly finds itself in favour of equality for women it is never when it is actually going to benefit women.

Right wing societies are often synonymous with overtly patriarchal, sexist systems and have historically denigrated and oppressed woman.

I am only sad that the ‘reclaim the night’ marches of my student days in the 1980s, now morphed into Reclaim these streets - have never seemed more relevant.

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Click here to check out My BOOKS thanks.

403. Brexit is Britain’s self-harm but the climate crisis cannot be mitigated by going begging with pre-Christmas visas…

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana (Spanish American philosopher)

With COP 26 in mind, half -heartedly led by Boris de-Kermit Johnson who is on record as a climate change denier and, it seems, has never really believed in anything in his life – perhaps we could update that truism. Here is a suggestion…

Those who refuse to see the obvious future are condemned to have none.

Oh – and – talking of obvious futures and predictable catastrophes – here is a little post of mine from 2016 as we face certain fowl coming home (or not) to roost – see last week’s post and this one from the archives - Brexit Broke Britain

As this government, with no sense of shame or irony, goes cap-in-hand to foreign lorry drivers and farm workers and vets, we really should tie these two things together and remind ourselves that while Brexit is a national catastrophe for everyone but a handful of the rich, insulated (!) by their wealth from the obvious outcomes of their selfishness, bigotry and cruelty – climate catastrophe is something even they cannot outrun in the end…

Do check out Zero One Zero Two (dystopian novella paperback / e-book)*

+

 Casey & the Surfmen (environmental story read in poetry audio/paperback/e-book)

AND – something different this week

I was part of the Brum Radio Poetry programme which aired on Sunday morning. Hosted by the talented Rick Sanders it's 3 poets (including yours truly) doing poetry and some chat about personal and writing life. It was lots of fun to do Brum Radio Poetry * Includes a reading from Zero One Zero Two

AND – I’ll be performing at the Leamington Poetry festival @ The Temperance in Leamington Saturday 23^rd October 7.30. More info later.

402. Turkeys (if not chickens) come home to roost – but not to roast…

During the EU referendum many on the Leave side said they felt patronised being referred to as ‘Turkey’s voting for Christmas’. But surely we’ve never had a better example of actual turkeys having the last laugh because the metaphorical turkeys who voted for their own demise may not now get the plump fat stupid bird (no – not Boris Johnson) as ‘supply chain problems’ (that would be Brexit to you and me) mean that there is not enough CO2 to get the birds killed in time and there is a lorry driver shortage for all the usual commercial shit that passes for Christmas in consumer mad Britain.

As a Christian, environmentalist and a vegetarian, Brexit finally makes me laugh…

…hysterically!

As John Lewis announce with great fanfare they’ve saved Christmas by luring lorry drivers to work for them and their new commercial cabal – a general cry of relief goes up. The Christmas shit will get here. Hooray.

And if you like your irony mixed with madness and some WTF on the side – how about the not-an-energy crisis the government is blabbering about. Even if enough CO2 is found (and let’s face it there is plenty in the atmosphere wrecking the planet – could we not get some of that?) there might be no gas or electricity to cook the things anyhow. The turkeys if not the chickens are coming home to roost though maybe not to roast…

But those lorry drivers weren’t plucked from under a bush with their John Lewis £1000 golden hellos. They have been pulled from other hard pressed areas that might be delivering things a bit more important than your sparkly table runner and the expensive tat that goes under the tree dying in the corner. I would say its dying in an ever over-heated home but Kwasi (I cannot help but think – Quasi) Kwarteng – business secretary has assured the UK public that the energy crisis will be handled by the government. So that’s ok then. When has anyone in Johnson’s government – or Johnson himself – ever lied to Britain or allowed their incompetence to entirely 100% foul things up?

KK has promised in his best faux Boris doing bad faux Churchill that “the lights will not go out”. For myself – the electricity in my street has been going off intermittently in the early hours of the morning for many months now. NO ONE HAS EPLAINED WHY. It could, of course, just be that a lot of UK infrastructure is no longer fit for purpose since privatisation.

The shortages on our shelves are linked to lack of lorry drivers and that is to do with Brexit not covid.

People dying because they waited – in one case – 40 hours for an ambulance, as the once untouchable NHS slips from 1^st to 4^th place in the world (and sinking) after being hammered by Tory austerity and the effects of – yes covid but also Brexit.

The limp, lame, pathetic, government-enthralled media need to cowboy-up and start calling this what it is and they are going to have to shout loud to be heard above the celebrity shriek of Strictly Come Brain Death, I’m No Longer A Celebrity Which Is Why I’m Here and The Great British Back-hander which is UK TV.

Are folk going to start paying attention when it’s finally time to send the increasing number of poor children back up chimneys? Will the great British public eventually snap out of it when there is a workhouse in every town and the ‘deserving poor’ line up for gruel on a Monday morning?

Will Joe Normal and Mrs Ordinary finally stop literally shopping for England when the last bird has fallen out of the sky? The Independent (a scenario drawn in my audio story Casey & the Surfmen) 

It is all linked. Little England did this, like delinquent 12 year olds that got locked in the school over the weekend with access to matches and kerosene…

We can all smell the smoke, hear the alarms; our eyes are stinging and it’s getting hard to breathe or see through the black sooty smoke but the UK media is still behaving like it’s just the toast burning. And falsely smelling burning toast is such an appropriate sign of senility where the press are concerned.  As for the government – well…

 

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Usually I suggest you check out my books – because I think you’d like some of them but also it makes me happy when I get sales despite not having a mainstream publisher. This week I’m just going to recommend Zero One Zero Two or where we are definitely going from here.

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And - not to overload you with links this week but there is a reading from Zero One Zero Two on Brum Radio's Poetry programme which will air this Sunday 26th Sept at 10am. Brum Radio Poets

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And - finally - i'll be doing the Comedy poetry night at the Leamington Poetry fest in Oct. Details to follow.

401. Britain in 3 doodles!

More relevant than ever - three doodles from previous blog posts...

...becasue you know I'm sometimes lost for words.

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Do check out My BOOKS thank you.

400. From White Van Man to Square Grey Sofa People - explaining public inertia in the face of the UK’s degradation at the hands of Boris Johnson...

 

Square grey sofas show us why so few folk are raging against this catastrophic government, the lies of Brexit and the rotting pile of consequences we can no longer pretend are to do with covid.

It was Emily Thornberry who stepped down from Labour’s front bench under Ed Miliband after tweeting a picture of a house with a white van and two St George’s flags hung outside. She should have learned from Gordon Brown that we now live in a country where you can be a xenophobic bigot but you cannot intimate that someone may be bigoted or xenophobic. In Thornberry’s case – it was not just the white van it was the juxtaposition with the two English flags. And – for what it’s worth – I make the same assumptions she made when I see anyone hanging national flags on their houses.

But that is past history. In fact – judging from the content of much of the media these days – what happens at breakfast is history by teatime. What happened last week or was said by a government minister two days ago is ancient dusty – barely remembered antiquity – never to be contradicted even if the same folk are saying something entirely at odds with what they said or promised in their last interview.

A few days ago I was perusing Gumtree while my partner did the same on Fb, searching for a cheap sofa. What we saw was item after item ad infinitum (!) of square grey sofa. Punctuated by the occasional more colourful settee, obviously from an older household.

Odd – I thought – in a country where all advertising and marketing seems aimed at targeting a person’s individuality. ‘It’s all about you’ says the sexy, whispery voice or the humorous laddish tone – whether its interiors or cars or new kitchens. And somehow – everyone ends up with much the same. And they are bored with it before it’s been paid for.

I then went down a thought alley which meandered around how people also sound the same. Whichever part of the country you happen to be in – people talk in Soap Opera / morning TV / cheap drama soundbites. Everyone is ‘going on a journey’ ‘struggling with my mental health’ (no one is ever just having a bad day anymore). The comedy clichés have worked their way in ‘did you see what I did there?’ after any mundanity. No one seems to be themselves.

I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that the whole of Britain had become a sluggish, less shiny Stepford. Thinking for yourself is dangerous.

Then the alley got dark and thorny. Is this why no one seems to think independently – no one seems to critically evaluate what they read or hear or what is fed to them on their one-line news feeds? Is this why the media seems so lame – just a vehicle for government press releases and staged photos? Is this why the level of anger at the way the poor / disadvantaged / immigrant population are treated is less than tepid. Is this why – unlike me – the vast majority of folk do not seem to be pissing themselves that fairly soon there will be real food shortages and infrastructure breakdowns in even wealthy countries? (Starting with the wealthy country that voted Brexit)

The grey sofa people…

Not stupid just worn out – like their sofas. Not unkind – just flattened by life - like their sofas. Not liking the current situation – just unable to get up – off their square grey sofas.

And – yes – you may argue that the fact that so many square grey sofas are being sold is a sign that the SGS People are coming  out of their stupor – their malaise – their do-what-everyone-else-is-doing or die mentality. But no. If they have all got over Square Grey Sofaitis – it’s only because the next version is due – like the next smart phone or the next shade of eye shadow or the next hairstyle that EVERYONE will have to make themselves feel individual… Maybe this time it will be blue – nothing too startlingly different. Just enough to make the SGS People buy into the next thing that everyone else has that makes them feel a. they are individual and b. like everyone else…

And this mind balancing act takes up time, energy and money so who can worry about global warming or your kids breathing poison air or killer amounts of sugar and fat in food or that fact that the country is run by a dumb arsed, self-obsessed shyster and a circus of cretins whose only instinct is to cream off more wealth for their own tribe?

It’s really a perfect solution to the problem of people not being happy with an unfair world.  It’s a simple solution for a species that – in its natural state - questions and looks with a critical eye at the world around. A final solution. To all our problems.

It’s Stepford Britain populated with the Square, Grey Sofa People fed with the fat and sugar of media candy and talked into a blank torpor by the endless ramblings of their crazy-clown overlord.

No rebellion necessary.

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Should have another comedy gig coming up in October. I'll post details when its confirmed.

Meanwhile - do check out My BOOKS all available on expanded distribution so you can buy from alternative, independent online bookstores. And remember while I'm not on Fb/twit/tik/inst etc etc - there are corresponding youtube videos for ALL the poems in  Fun Poems for Children performed by ME.

399. Dogs over people & state handouts for the rich – Britain 2021 !

‘Urgent’ is not within Johnson’s meagre abilities but he does do accidental irony, which is handy in a country that is now infamous globally for the escape from Afghanistan which prioritised pets over people and where it’s the wealthy who benefit most from the state.

For some it came as a surprise that Dominic Raab (who – as we’ve said many times – didn’t understand the importance of the Dover to Calais trade route when he was BREXIT minister) did not understand that if you’ve been promoted – however irresponsibly and recklessly to Foreign secretary – the least you can do is stop working on your tan when another foreign policy fuck up is underway.

But then Gavin Williamson – Minister for Education appeared to be asleep for the whole of covid as far as the state-educated children of Britain were any concern of his – while the privileged privately educated – non-tax paying schools were able to function in their wealth bubbles.

The only thing that seemed to happen with any energy during covid was the handing out of contracts to government mates – which were “fast tracked” (we know this, thanks to The Good Law Project) so that more state funds found their ways into the pockets of those with contacts – often with nothing to show for it as far as the British people were concerned. Free money then.

Boris Johnson was able to complete his divorce settlement when it turned out the daughter-age girlfriend was up the duff, however, he could not really be arsed to do anything about the start of the pandemic and was in fact far too ‘not arsed’ to attend emergency covid meetings. So, British tax payers were, in effect, paying for him to sort out who he was going to be shacked up with next.

He illegally prorogued parliament – because why should he actually run the country just because he was manoeuvred into the position of Prime Minister by Dominic Cummings and – getting paid out of the public purse?

He’s done f’all about the Northern Ireland Brexit deal disaster despite the fact that he personally created the chaos.

He takes the same lackadaisical attitude as COP26 nears. The self-appointed guardians of this bit of the galaxy we call earth - wealthy nations who meet every so often to make themselves sound worthy before doing really nothing that is significantly altering our chances of having a planet to live on, are due to meet on November the 12^th. Johnsons’ government are hosts – though you’d never know. It’s like Boris Johnson is hosting a tea party for his ex-wives and some of his known children and he’d really rather pretend it’s not happening.

Unlike urgency, irony seems to ooze out of him. Most recently he opined that Brits should “not rely on handouts” when talking about taking the £20 uplift from already mean benefits that have left many in the UK in poverty. This from a man who has done so little of any benefit to anyone while in office that one can only think of his publically funded remunerations as monumentally disproportionate handouts.

While the country sinks and sinks – those still getting the freebies are all at the top – from the royal family (including prince paedo) – to the liggers and hangers-on of government ministers getting the expensive contracts and oiled pathways to power. From those getting the tax breaks to the government subsidies for so-called privatised industries.

The problem is that unattended problems don’t go away.

Whatever Faustian pact Johnson has made, so that almost none of the catastrophes that follow in his wake are ever successfully pinned to him – the disasters, like the bodies, are piling up.

The financial cost is piling up.

The social harms are piling up.

The damage to the UK’s international reputation is the only thing that is diminishing fast.

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And do check out My BOOKS (now available on expanded distribution so you can check out here then buy from your favourite online bookseller) Thank You.

398. ‘World-beating Britain’? Clearly most Brits swallowed the blue pill…

 Along with other ‘remoaners’ I’ve long got over the fact that the bigots, Faragistas and Borishits who chose Brexit over the chance of a future, will never admit that their xenophobia led them into a shit pile. Just as MAGA nutters will never admit that Trump is a cheap con man. However, with Trump as a yard stick, voting in an obvious low-life charlatan like Boris Johnson seemed to be something beyond delusion and self-harm. It was as if the worst of Britain recognised something even more corrupt and crass and craven in him than in the darkest corners of the black hole where their souls shrivelled and died from the effects of jingoist-rot and said – yeah – lets have that – that will show the liberal do-gooders…

But now the extent and depth and width of the shit hole this government and this party has dug for Britain is evident – even to the flag-waving cretins who’d rather torch their own homes than be nice to a foreigner. Where is the anger / disappointment / horror / real-reaction-of-any-kind from the public or the media? Did EVERYONE apart from a couple of crazies (me included) take the blue pill?

 

Let’s take a quick, painful sideways glance at a few of World Beating Britain’s current list of global embarrassments – (an exhausting but not an exhaustive list)

 

• Decreasing life-expectancy in poor areas of Britain
• One of the worst mortality and economic outcomes from covid of any EU country
• NHS slipped from 1^st place in the world to 4^th after a decade of Tory austerity
• Total failure of test and trace during the pandemic (Vietnam and Taiwan did better than the UK…)
• Raab too busy tanning to attend to obviously unfolding Afghanistan crisis
• Increase in gap between rich and poor
• Racism in the royal cabal
• Moralising on Afghanistan while supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons
• Ireland’s fragile peace put at risk by Johnson’s hopeless Brexit deal
• Tory cronies profiteering from the pandemic
• Total incompetence of government ministers e.g. Raab, Williamson, Shapps
• Grubbiness and incompetence of government ministers e.g. Matt Hancock
• Incompetence and proven bullying by government minister - Pritti Patel
• Increase of child poverty
• Food banks becoming a permanent fixture of UK life
• Shortages and catastrophic damage to small businesses (under-reported in a limp media) due to Brexit
• Infrastructure failures (the rail network [generally] – raw sewage being dumped by privatised water company – for YEARS)
• Royal family hiding a suspected paedophile in plain sight
• Waste of money and environmental vandalism of HS2
• Cruelty towards refugees and assylum seekers
• Cutting the aid budget during covid

and so on...

I’m sure I’ve used The Matrix analogy before but clearly this cannot be analogous to any super hero movie I’ve ever seen. Terms Apocalypse and Armageddon are over-used (including by me) when referring to ongoing environmental vandalism and the climate crisis that barely registers with the self-interested clique at the top. It’s certainly not a rom com as there is no feel-good factor. There is plenty of painful-to-watch slap-stick but not the sort to make you smile. Sci-fi ? – no. Although – we are working towards making the planet we rely on similar to Mars - cold and devoid of human life. But despite the real drama of the crisis all around us, the audience seems dead from the neck up. Switched off. Unplugged (or plugged in but not to the real world)?

Can it really be that imminent unstoppable destruction of our only home due to the incompetence, venality and corrupt self-interest of those paid huge sums out of the public purse to represent us and manage the country cannot compete with ‘I’m a Celebrity watch me debase myself’ or ‘Strictly come fake shit’ or ‘Marvel costume pile-up, scriptless, brainless shite?

If there is a next time, please take the red pill…

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Talking of being not plugged in - for anyone reading - NB I am not on any social media - I only exist in what is left of the 'real' world so thank you for finding your way here.

Do check out  MY BOOKS and thank you for finding your way there too if you do.

If any  more gigs come up I will post here.