429. Ratty Rishi’s riches leave him red-faced…

…but those jingo bells keep the Tories in power.

 

Many commentators pointed out the obvious after Ratty Rishi dished up a wealth-weighted Spring budget last Wednesday. Where is the help for those whose already monumental struggles just got tougher due to the cost-of-living crisis?

One interview, where he was asked about his uber-wealthy wife’s financial involvement with Russian companies, was one of the most toe-curling I’ve seen in recent months with the chancellor seeming petulant, evasive and tetchy. Like everyone else, I’ve almost got used to the constant embarrassment to Britain that is Boris Johnson’s administration but this was grim. While the chancellor may have found the direct interview style uncomfortable – that is a long way from suggesting this R. rat felt any actual shame. Clearly he did not – just entitled irritation. But it begs the question again – how can these people have any understanding about the daily challenges of the majority they are so extraordinarily far removed from. IN Sunak's case - so removed he was unable to work out how to pay for his poorly-staged 'ordinary person' fuel purchase.

ON many occasions on this blog I’ve suggested that those who went to privileged fee-paying schools are probably not best placed to know how to run state education. Those with expensive private health care who have never had to wait for an operation probably don’t really give a shit about the NHS. And so on.

One of the best and most heart-felt critiques on the budget was from Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee She along with many others pointed out that there was little in this Spring statement for those who actually needed hep and even those things disguised as mitigation for the cost of living crisis, actually helped the wealthy rather than the needy. Overall it was a boon for the haves and another beating for the have-nots.

But one question Polly Toynbee asked – which I have asked in the past and which we should all be asking more often is Why Why Why do the ordinary and even more so – the struggling people of Britain - repeatedly vote for those who a. have never had to endure what they endure. b. clearly do not give a shit about their struggles and c. only ever introduce legislation that benefits their own and harms the poor?

While the admirable Ms Toynbee may be genuinely pondering this question, for me it is more rhetorical. Maybe that is because she is white and I’m black.

Once the xenophobia starts and the racism is ramped up, the UK working class and specifically the English just cannot resist. Like Pavlov’s dogs they start losing their minds as they did over Brexit. Those jingo-bells start a jangling the British public come to heel EVERY SINGLE TIME.

 

Jingo bells jingo bells

Jingo all the way

Tories keep the poor down trod

Bigotry wins the day…

 

*

Do check out my novels, children’s books, short stories and poetry anthologies on goodreads or amazon  or bandcamp

428. Born in 1899 - Macfarlane Burnet understood. Why don’t we?

 I stumbled on a stunning quote recently from the Nobel Prize winning virologist Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Macfarlane was born at the end of the century before last – and that part is important.

It is easy to assume that concerns about man’s crass behaviour generally and the abuse of the planet specifically are recent – or at least emerging strongly towards the end of the 20^th century. In fact scientists and environmentalists (and generally intelligent folk with humanity’s best interests at heart plus writers, artists etc.,) have been telling us for far longer. But few have said it more eloquently or succinctly than Macfarlane Burnet in Dominant Mammal published in 1970 when he was 71 and had the whole of his scientific understanding and life experiences to draw on, spanning the 19^th and 20^th century but speaking to us in extraordinarily prescient tones in the 21^st century -

“A viable and humanly tolerable world – a stable human ecosystem for the earth – is conceptually, ecologically and socially possible, but it will not be reached unless men and women of vision, purpose and intelligence can devise ways of controlling, modifying and redirecting those patterns of behaviour that were consolidated in the course of human evolution and which have brought us to the brink of chaos’

According to The Guardian  last weekend - ex-PM David Cameron’s decision when in coalition with that other wanker ‘cojones’ Clegg (now heading up Fb – sorry- metaverse!) to cut “green crap” (turning away from investing in green energy) now costs each household in England around £150. But that is small beer to what it will cost is very soon. And around the globe, not paying enough attention to ‘green crap’ is costing many their livelihoods and their lives.

Before long, it wont just be the poorer parts of the globe and the mainly southern hemisphere that will be wishing someone in power had paid attention to the likes of Macfarlane.

*

In my own small way I’ll add my voice to this hugely important issue – again -by directing you to my dystopian novella – science fiction not science fact but promoting the same message and outlining the end results if we continue to ignore reality. Check out Zero One Zero Two

On a lighter note – and we all need one right now – my 'darkly humorous' weird romance novel The Companion Contract will be on offer (the e-version) from midnight tonight PST 22^nd March and 8am GMT March 23^rd Check out the FREE chapter by clicking here goodreads

427. A Russian-money Whore Laid Bare!

The war in Ukraine has shown us many things – apart from the ongoing cruelty of madmen.

It has shown Western complacency, it has shown us that other evil men will take advantage of the world’s inability to focus on more than one big story at a time – as Saudi Arabia ramped up the state slaughter machine with 81 executions in a single day last week, including for the crime of holding ‘deviant’ views.

Sadly it has shown us (again) that we are more easily shocked by white suffering than brown.

Fortunately, it has also shown us that international co-operation is still possible; sanctions are the right thing to do and they will work and may discourage similar acts of war in the near future. Though sanctions will do nothing to halt the horrific, immediate death toll and suffering in Ukraine.

But now that the UK Conservative party is fully exposed as a Russian-money whore, it seems the full glare of international shame is burning hard on Britain and we are uncovered in the new, much depleted position we hold in in the world.

While thanks have been forwarded for munitions in Ukraine – we also provide abundant weapons to murderous Middle Eastern regimes and can claim credit for some of the armaments used against civilians in Yemen, so, it’s maybe not something we should shout about.

Following an unprecedented period of callous austerity in the UK, which has meted out a long slow punishment beating on the poorest in Britain, plus the cutting of foreign aid during covid, the ruling party is laid bare as Oligarch oglers and toadies. We even learnt that Boris Johnson was warned that one of his money buddies was a national security risk but ignored that Intel to give Lebedev a peerage after generous donations to Tory coffers. 

The juxtaposition of brutalising the lives of Britain’s most vulnerable and abandoning the world’s needy while bathing in the ill-gotten gains of obscenely wealthy Russians, could not be more morally revolting.

Add that to the catastrophe which is Brexit and the cruelly slow, incompetent response to Ukrainian war refugees plus the dreadfully bad response to covid (for a country with developed health infrastructure) and the corruption and pandemic-profiteering of Tory cronies; wash it all down with a Prime Minister regarded internationally as a dishonest clown and Britain’s global credibility is shredded.

*

Do check out my books on GOODREADS

426. Brexit being shit is Ukraine’s fault? No. It may the other way around.

Rees-Mogg (minister for proving that Brexit isn't a pile of crap) recently and ridiculously congratulated the government on being at the forefront of Russian sanctions – which they are demonstrably not. Frankly, having been the home of vast Russian money laundering for many years, it’s probably best something they shut up about. But there may be another link between the Ukraine war crime and Brexit.

Mad Brexiters told us Brexit was shit because of covid (even though the referendum was 4 years prior and everything was supposed to be marvellous the day after).

Now we are being told (by, for example, the Torygraph last week) its Ukraine's fault. Before he abandoned the rotten, sinking Brexit ship, Lord Frost, then Brexit Minister, threatened the EU with article 16 (a unilateral action trigger within the Norther Ireland Protocol) so many times it became a bad joke. Then Liz Truss, current Brexit Secretary and Minister for foreign photo opportunities did the same. Fanatic Brexiters now say they cannot trigger the fabled article 16 to wave a magic wand over the cold turd which is Brexit and warm it through because of the current international crisis.

At some point will any of them just admit Brexshit is shit because its shit and it’s getting shittier?

The reality is, in history exam questions of the future - along with the Trump effect, Western complacency, eye-watering levels of London oligarch money-laundering, a clown British PM and Putin's own megalomania, something else will be postulated as a green light to Putin to invade Ukraine - the lunacy, self-harm and stupidity exhibited by Brexit.

 

*

Do remember to check out my books on GOODREADS Thank you.

425. Putin is a mad dog but Western hypocrisy has gone nuclear.

In this world of binary arguments it is sadly necessary for me to first state I abhor Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine, (though to anyone paying attention this was predictable – planned in plain sight and encouraged by a torpid West). Also – as I’ve written many times, Britain has no moral leg to stand on having a government awash with Russian Oligarch money and a capital that has been the Russian money laundering centre of the world for many years.

However, the constant euphemism of European leaders that this is shocking ‘because it’s happening in Europe’ needs decoding.

Call me crazy – but I am as appalled by the suffering and displacement we’ve blithely ignored in Syria (for years) and many African countries (for years) and the aftermath of our own Iraq invasion. I am as disgusted by the decades of horrors in Palestine and now, as a result of wrecking the planet, the ongoing tragedy of 1.4 billion climate crisis refugees, mainly in the southern hemisphere and there is no available refugee status for them – even now.

Someone please explain to me why Ukraine is more shocking? Actually don’t. I too have brown skin.

At least Priti Patel, our vile Home Secretary does not discriminate, she is happy for all refugees to be treated like shit to sooth the right wing of this Tory government, pandemic-partying PM and the bonkers Brexiters!

Meanwhile as Putin is rightly (belatedly) being condemned and resisted almost globally, here in the UK, newly knighted war criminal Sir Tony Blair has a cosy Sunday afternoon interview on the BBC with Archbishop Justin Welby about his faith!

It is rank hypocrisy that has gone nuclear. 

*

As always - do check out My BOOKS

And as March 4th is another 'support for artists' bandcamp Friday - do please also have a listen to my audio story (about preventing the other armageddon) Casey & the Surfmen

Just click the links and thank you for reading.