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…
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…
*
Remember - I am not on any social media but if you are, feel free to link/share this post.
Plus - do check out My BOOKS and for those kind enough to have bought books recently THANK YOU and please do put up reviews - You know few folk will risk a purchase these days unless there is a long list of rave reviews next to the thing....