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