379 Boris Johnson & the Tories suppressed secret fetish…

…for RED TAPE!

Who knew?

I’m no psychologist but it is a well-known fact/urban myth that if someone has a fetish or addiction they are ashamed of it can deepen and corrupt. In that fuggy confusion of the mind, these folk can become spitefully destructive against that part of themselves that yearns in what is to them, an unacceptable direction. We know of cases of men, for example, who have been grossly homophobic only to come out as gay later in life. Priti Patel, daughter and granddaughter of immigrants – is jolly about her anti-immigrant credentials, gleefully boasting of closing borders that might otherwise let in the new wave of immigrants to help staff our over-stretched NHS, help our failing tech infrastructure or clean/mend our filthy broken streets – in other words do what immigrants have done throughout the ages. One hopes she struggles to sleep at night but I doubt it.

Gavin Williamson, current secretary of state for Education is state school educated (which puts him in a minority of tory cabinet members). Nevertheless, his undermining of the state education system and careless approach to those poorer families losing out most, is beyond catastrophic. I admit, with Gav, it remains speculation whether he is indulging in twisted self-hatred or whether he is just so spectacularly thick (the general consensus is that he is the thickest of a very thick bunch) he is really unable to do any better…

Kwasi Kwarteng – old Etonian Minister for Business blah blah blah,  whose parents are Ghanaian – infamously wrote  one of those twonk public school-boy ‘history’ books on the British Empire and how spiffing it all was. No, I’ve not read this one. I couldn’t stomach it and brain space is precious but I was drip fed the pertinent flavour by a reliable friend. Like other privileged brain-washed-by-the higher-end-private-sector schools, his view of the British Empire seems to be not one of a greedy, murderous, country-decimating rampage of racist aggression and slaughter but a jolly bit of good old elite boys’ adventure. I’m not sure those who lived through - or died through - the British abuses of slavery, gold and ivory trading would agree – but hey – maybe they super loved it and had just been waiting patiently for a bunch of psychotic spoiled brats to come along and annihilate their cultures, land and people. Despite all sensible information to the contrary - maybe my own ancestors enjoyed being slaves...

For other relevant reading try an old post on this blog - 35. Eton Mess - pudding or state of the nation or 187. British boarding schools breed posh sociopaths (it originally said psychopaths but we’ve all learnt so much of the nuance of dysfunctional behaviour since then…) 

And that brings me to Boris Johnson. I’m not saying that at any time during his hideous career, I was stupid enough to believe what he said/wrote but I’d no reason to doubt wanting to rid British industry of the strangulation of RED TAPE. It’s something spouted by most other Tories for most of the entire time we were a member of the EU. It’s been a stick (or whip – or nylon stocking) to beat Brussels with for 4 decades.

As I’ve written on this blog many times before, leaving the EU was always about wholesale deregulation – the kind Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamed of and which Kwarteng seems to be salivating over now.

Last weekend’s news and current affairs programmes were a sad conveyor belt of small business leaders talking about increased bureaucracy, massive amounts of choking red tape, entirely predictable problems with road haulage and vast amounts of complicated, new paperwork. The best that anyone could come up with in terms of positivity was that it might ‘smooth itself out’ and be a bit better in 5 years’ time. Realists such as Michel Barnier point out that creating unnecessary friction was the whole essence of Brexit and friction is here to stay. Friction or no friction, many of the companies were talking about not surviving the next few months. 

Then there was the sparkling advice to those businesses that maybe they should set up headquarters in – I kid you not – France. Is anyone else flattened by the irony?

The Tory party is really getting their cake and eating it – as Boris Johnson himself said would happen – just not in the way he boasted just last month. No surprise there. 

Deregulation and the smashing of painfully won workers’ rights has begun – headed up by the aforementioned KK. Again – no surprise. Not to me. BUT there is economic and business strangulation by massively increased red tape. Surprisingly, our current right-wing, low grade, dumb as shit, head bangers don’t seem as repulsed by the disastrous, depressing spectacle as previous protestations would have suggested…

378. There’s nothing else I want from 2016…

I’m a regular clearer-outer. My kids used to complain that if things were not nailed down they got ‘recycled’ or ‘donated’. Finding lasagne pasta sheets in the cupboard with a use-by date of October 2016 is testament to the dual pulls in my domestic life of clear space and not wasting.

But I thought I’d better draw the line at an open box of pasta that was past its best-before date four years and three months ago, just before a minority of US voters elected Donald Trump and four months after the referendum that Cameron thought would fix his Tory party and exorcise the toxic political spectre of Farage. 

It’s odd to think that Cameron’s “swivel-eyed loons” turned out to be just that as Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” turned out to be – well – deplorable…

As I was making this vegetable lasagne, it occurred to me that there was little else worth keeping from that accursed year; neither the election of Trump to the usual fascist dog-whistle of anti-immigrant nonsense and victim mentality or Brexit, brought about by decades of spite, deceit and delusional neo-colonialism, ushered in by the foul Farage and the ultimate chancer Boris Johnson.

It’s pointless to allude to the comments I made on this blog about the disaster of leaving the EU because we are here now and everyone can see for themselves. Those who were too gullible to mentally challenge the xenophobia and jingoism or the wet dream of deregulation by the wealthy are being most damaged by it. It is futile to list the many, many posts concerning the dangers of the deranged orange blob because everyone knew and some are still, even after the horrific assault on Capitol Hill, defending the indefensible.

Here in the UK, a public who seem inured to the government’s failure to competently handle the pandemic can hardly be expected to have intellectualised Brexit. The reality of significantly better management and mortality and economic outcomes elsewhere across the globe, even in country’s who don’t boast about being “world beating” seems not to dent the public and media’s soft touch when it comes to accountability. Much of the right wing media that paved the way for Brexit are now blaming the government just as the government are blaming the public for their mishandling of covid. (Give me more pasta...)

But, however futile or pointless (or irritating) the I-told-you-sos may be, there is one massive difference. Trump is gone tomorrow. The stench of his time in office will surely linger. Sadly, there is no such comfort with regards to Brexit. The horrors are only just beginning. Fish rot in British ports (see last Friday’s random limerick) and the finance/service sector which IS the UK economy since we stopped making things, is no longer even considered for an ICU bed. Children, here in one of the – to date – wealthiest countries on the planet shamefully go hungry as chums of the government mop up contracts for any of the lucrative big money gifts covid has offered over the last 11 months. We, unlike the US, are most definitely not ushering in a hopeful new era.

The thing is – the crap people have failed. They always do. But the decent folk also failed by allowing them in the door. As I said in this post in 2015 – its time for the decent people to speak up and much louder this time 152. Could the nice people speak up!

America re-joins the world tomorrow, with some energy, if the pile of executive orders pre-ready for Papa Joe is any measure. Britain is crawling away, not to splendid isolation but into quarantine with a disease called stupidity the rest of the globe will be wary of catching.

The only thing that appears to be worth consumption from 2016 is my pasta…

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Absolute Pollocks from Rees-Mogg (again!)

 

Apparently cold-blooded, slimy, flip-flopping Rees Mogg thinks fish are now happier because they are British even though people who actually work in the industry are apoplectic about the catastrophe of Brexit. But when has a little thing like reality interfered with the absolute pollocks spewed by the right wing of the Tory party? So here is another little Friday extra on my bloggy

There was a Waxworm called Rees Mogg

With a head full of jingoist fog

His eyes have a gleam

Since he dated a Bream

But his madness has us all agog!

377. Why no consequences for privileged white men - still?

Laws and rules that apply – often harshly – to working class people and black and brown people somehow slide off easily if you are white, privileged and male.Why? It’s just another question that has been thrown into sharp focus in the hideous 12 months that brought us covid-19, a sort of conclusion to Brexit, the sort of end to Trump and the BLM protests.

The often posed, infrequently challenged question is buzzing loudly in the wake of the multiple failings and double standards of a limp UK administration led by a fool plus the domestic terrorist assault on Capitol Hill by Trump’s MAGA maniacs.

Firstly there was disbelief that some rioters were actually ushered in as if they were attending a viewing at a museum rather than an angry mob whipped up by an absentee Mussolini (Yes – President bone spurs said he would be “with them” but then watched his little coup on TV.) Then there was consternation that so few were initially arrested despite the public nature of their crimes.  All a BLM protestor has to do to get arrested is turn up to a peaceful rally.

FIVE people died as a result of the 6th January insurrection and yet none of the instigators are in custody. Not Donald Trump who fuelled the rage for 5 years, Rudi Giuliani who called for “trial by combat” or Don Jr who crowed about how he was going to “enjoy” the violence.

If you think this is a one-off in a world that congratulates itself when African dictators and perpetrators of crimes against humanity in poorer countries are now subject to international law, take a closer look. In Britain you will see our own ex PM and war criminal currently cosy with boy blunder Matt Hancock and regularly platformed on the BBC and other mainstream media. When Tony Blair – who illegally (ref The Chilcot Report) invaded Iraq became a virus expert is anyone’s guess.

Then turn your regard to the current man ‘in charge’ (I use the term loosely). Boris Johnson is a professional liar, a racist and a man whose tendency to put his foot in his gabbling gobbledegook gob has led to the long term incarceration of a British citizen in an Iranian prison (Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe) and the suffering of her family. Johnson racially insulted President Obama. He inflamed tension with the Muslim community by insulting Muslim women. His private life – if it were one lived by a black or brown or working class person on a council estate, would be eviscerated by the very right-wing press that has always promoted him. And yet – and yet… he is the Prime Minister of a now not-very-united kingdom.

Last week I posted a random quickie about living in The Anarchy of Privilege. I should have said the Anarchy of White Privilege. Though maybe that is almost tautological…

Here in the UK, those who have failed so badly and so often during the pandemic are slyly managing the narrative to switch blame away from themselves and onto literally anyone else. They tried making it young people’s fault when students went back to university despite the enormous toll paid in mental health by the young. They have blamed not following rules. Rules I might add that have often changed 180% at a moment’s notice leaving individuals and institutions flailing with those changes made weeks or months after they were first advised by scientists.

Somewhere along the way, as the media have played ball with the government, the reality that we had one chance to get the pandemic response right and missed it because our PM was busy juggling his divorce and his relationship with his pregnant daughter/partner got lost. It got lost that the UK’s response was too little too late. Let up too soon. There were too many loopholes and while schools were closed many were still flying abroad. Test & Trace has never worked effectively in the UK. PPE was only ever seen as a way to hand lucrative contracts to Tory buddies. Somehow – none of this has been made to stick to Boris Johnson and all other explanations coming up short, it can only be that he belongs to the same elite and untouchable club as Trump and Blair.

There is a deal of talk in the dying days of the Trump abomination about consequences. Any of us who have dealt with toddlers know that consequences need to be closely related to actions in both time and place to be effective. When it comes to those of us lower down the social food chain or people who are not white (or female) that notion of consequences seems to hold. Why then does it rarely apply to privileged white men?

The Anarchy of Privilege!

Johnson has 'perpetrated' Brexit on the UK public and we cannot now escape. However, if you are sick of the term and everything it implies - lies, jingoism, delusion, deceit, economic self-harm, division and downgrading - then try this as a more fitting handle for the new era -

THE ANARCHY OF PRIVILEGE...

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