Lament for the Lost Migrants

Thousands of men women and children continue to be cast out to sea in unworthy boats by unworthy people, their plight ignored by unworthy governments. 

As our waterways have become mass anonymous graves, a lament seems appropriate…

 

We pray for those at sea

Degraded like slaves of old discarded devalued dehumanised

 

We pray for those at sea

Condemned by monsters to deep dark dreadful deaths

 

We pray for those at sea

Wretched and betrayed doomed for dollars and dimes

 

We pray for those at sea

Cast adrift for fleeing devastation, destruction, despair

 

We pray for those at sea

Lives despised hopes dashed and destroyed

 

Where are the welcoming words the healing balms the humanity

Where is the humility towards those leaving homes 

wealthy countries helped destroy

They gambled danger against this drudging bigotry

Their futures at the mercy of poisoned hearts and be-suited devils who would dance on their graves if they had any

 

We pray for all of them

Dear God pity them

And pity us

We drown in shame…

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And, as always (or when I remember) do please check out this link to My BOOKS thank you.

'Global Boiling' ...

...when you're in a hole STOP digging!  

This is the literal, metaphorical and spiritual message of my 2-part lyrical, fantasy story poem  Casey & the Surfmen

Parts I & II are available on Bandcamp for another BANDCAMP FRIDAY this week Friday 4th August. 

Bandcamp Fridays were introduced during covid to help struggling artists (moi) and has continued. If you purchase any audio on these special dates BC wave their fees. Suitable for all the family.

Check it out here 

CASEY & THE SURFMEN

482. I’m not sick of being right – I’m scared…

Following the announcement by BT (privatised UK telecommunications giant and sponsor of prestigious sporting gigs despite their crap customer service record) announced that 5k jobs would go due to their tech developments. In other words if you thought their customer service was shite to date – watch this space.

Goldman Sachs anticipates the loss of 300k jobs globally due to the impact of AI.

Are we really going to stumble into this very predictable dystopia the way Britain strode into the obvious long term harm of utilities privatisation and more recently the entirely foreseeable catastrophe of Brexit? The answer seems to be yes. We’re doing it.

Many years ago I got sick of asking the bank clerks who constantly harangued me about online banking, why they were working so hard to unemploy themselves. A year ago I had a conversation with a depressed clerk in a branch which was about to close (one of 5 in my area) and the idea that the wholesale closures were the entirely predictable result of years of insisting on customers banking on-line never seemed to have occurred to her. It’s also worth pointing out that online banking has marched hand in hand with the exponential growth in easy and extensive bank account fraud.

I’ve had literal stand up arguments in Lidl about self-service tills replacing traditional tills (see blog 218). Call me crazy but if I’m going to hand over hard gotten money I want to be treated like a human being and be served by someone earning a wage.

I presume at some point the mega companies will realise that when they have unemployed everyone for profit, there will be no one to buy their shit?

Our chances of remaining below crisis-level global warming are now in the rear view mirror so it seems the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are pretty much on siesta.

I argued against the evils of privatisation of utilities and public services in the 1980s. Most of those horrors have surpassed even the most extreme predictions.

On this blog I have so many posts on how humans are working incredibly hard towards their own economic and environmental destruction I feel I am my own stuck record;

Blog 12 Armageddon Will Not Be Televised sets the scene but then there are posts 18/30/36 – skip to 108 – 147 – 158. Global Danse Macabre or Living in The Penisic Era – 167. Try - 171 Privileged White Men Keep Getting It Wrong.

Really getting to it 202 – The TAT Economy or 208 The Cannibal Economy

See blog post 263 (I may not keep this promise) and so on – take your pick.

310. Extinction - Why Are People Still Choosing The Blue Pill?

354. Post-covid The World Must Ditch Slum Economics With Its ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’

363 Debt Is Compulsory - Reality Is Redundant

Or more recently -

417. Fantasy Futurists are Failing The Human Race

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

 

It’s all packaged up, sci-fi dystopian fantasy form, in my novella -

Zero One Zero Two 

In my more hopeful moments I suspect incompetence may save us...

I recall many years ago (2004) in the UK we were told to ditch our analogue radios as the BBC was going digital. Everything would be digital. On that basis I went out and bought myself a brand new very nice analogue radio at knock down price. I kept it for over 15 years and still use an analogue radio.

It’s the same reason I wonder why so many are taken in by conspiracy theories. Many of them require so much planning and secret keeping and global co-operation all on a scale I’ve literally never seen accomplished.

Ironically, if humanity is to be saved from itself – it may be due to our ineptitude and inability to work together…

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I’m breaking for the summer as I have some festival work based on my children's poetry anthology and hope to crack open the new anthology I put on hold for house renovation.

Meanwhile do check out my other books all listed here My BOOKS or check them out via your own favourite online book store.

481. Brexit Britain - from sick man of Europe, via irritating slightly delusional cousin to pitiable, stuck-in-the-past old git in just 7 years.

Almost no one outside a lunatic asylum now believes Brexit was anything other than a disaster.

What is less often acknowledged is how quickly the harm, predicted by those shouted down by the swivel eyed loons prior to 2016, has happened. Britain has sunk so far already. And I’m not talking just the economy or its self-worth and global reputation. 

My strongly held view is there is a sense in Europe that Britain is starting to look very left behind. 

It’s a feeling I distinctly recall when I used to regularly stay in Ireland pre-The Good Friday Agreement. Something about the ongoing focus on conflict had left the country feeling as if it were stuck in past decades. Way past decades.

As life and the pace of change speeds up exponentially, it should come as no surprise that getting left behind can happen even more quickly.

This came home to me just recently in a conversation with a Polish contractor.

I am (again) in the midst of house renovation (when will I ever learn?) As well as hacking away at 70 year-old glued-on floor tiles and cutting up carpet – 3 layers deep in one room – sorting wasps in the attic etc. there have been a legion of contractors from the rewire to new plumbing.

It was only in talking to the Polish contractor that I began to sense the gentle sympathy of the moving forward for the left behind. And I’m not talking about his noticing that I don’t have a smartphone.

In discussing building materials and practices he uses compared to the British builders, it’s clear he thinks the UK is already a good half decade behind new ideas and practices on the continent. He also seems to feel this is widely accepted as fact in Europe. Phrases such as ‘we don’t do that anymore’ ‘That is not something that is used in Europe any more’ kept popping up.

Early on in this blog I wrote about how quickly the UK could become the Greece of Europe. In fact this has not only happened more quickly than I envisaged –it has happened more deeply and more obviously and more catastrophically than the most Cassandra of Remainers ever foresaw.

But we did foresee. Not because we have special powers but because the lunacy and self-harm of Brexit was always obvious.

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Do remember to check out My BOOKS here or via extended distribution from your own favourite online bookseller.

480. Being force-fed gaudy, expensive homage to a greedy, inbred, half-baked, spoiled old man who has inherited ill-gotten wealth that would make Midas blush is an insult to our intelligence – but, in case they were needed, here are another 20 of the many more reasons why the ridiculous, extravagant weekend royal dressing-up party at public expense was an affront.

 

1.     Europe’s first significant deadly conflict since WWII is ongoing.

2.     Global climate/environmental catastrophes deepen by the hour.

3.     Huge increase in reliance on foodbanks here in the UK.

4.     Growing child poverty here in the UK.

5.     Deadly misogyny in the MET police force here in the UK.

6.     Racism – ongoing.

7.     Debt (personal / student /national) deepening exponentially.

8.     Housing crisis here in the UK.

9.     Corruption / incompetence on an industrial scale (see any recent post).

10.                        Crisis in education here in the UK.

11.                        Crisis in the National Health Service here in the UK.

12.                        Lack of impartiality in the UK’s public broadcaster (see the resignation of its chairman appointed by Boris Johnson after a back room money deal came to light)

13.                        Sewage in English waterways (the party in power voted not to resolve this issue!)

14.                        Infrastructure fragmentation and failures – rail/energy/roads etc.

15.                        Increasing homelessness.

16.                        Increasing number of drug deaths.

17.                        Tory government scapegoating of the poor and migrants (as usual).

18.                        Increasing numbers of deadly dog attacks (something I’ve written about in the press for years)

19.                        The Brexit embarrassment and self-harm – ongoing.

20.                        The cost of living crisis.

In summary, it’s way past time for Britain to grow up.

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Thanks for reading. Usually I put a link to all my books on one site but this week just this one - Zero One Zero Two

 

479. ‘What is the world coming to?’ used to be a rhetorical question…

Whether you are looking at your own locale, in my case Britain, or THE world -‘what is the world coming to?’ is surely the question that should be on everyone’s lips.

Instead, here in the UK the media circus is trying to whip up – well – a circus around the RIDICULOUS freak show that is the coronation of Charles Windsor. Charlie is an old fart, who, in case you missed it, takes bags of supermarket cash from Saudi princes, seems incapable of dressing himself and has a meltdown if a pen doesn’t work. And this chump wants “a chorus of millions” pledging allegiance to him… It’s such a WTF moment I don’t know where to start.

Put aside the purported £150 million cost (+++) at a time of national fiscal crisis. Put aside the unresolved sludge of their hideous treatment of the first black woman in their midst. Put aside the false equivalence of both The Palace and the UK media constantly bracketing trafficked- teenager botherer Prince Andrew with the couple who fled bullying and racism. Never mind that any time one of the liggers or hangers-on is asked to actually come up with evidence every time they fall back on the tired worn out old argument that the monarchy is ‘good for tourism’ – they can’t. The fact is that many non-medieval countries have way more tourism than the UK.

You’d think all was right with the world if we’ve got the time and resources for this nonsense. You would not think the chair of the BBC appointed by his mate Boris Johnson after a financial favour was done has just had to resign. You wouldn’t think the UK was a laughing stock of the world due to – well – it’s a long list but -

Brexit.

Sewage in the waterways voted for by the current party in power.

Failure to deal adequately with Afghanistan

Housing crisis

Failure to deal humanely or promptly with Sudan

Growing child poverty

Constant hideousness from the Home Office – from diverting overseas aid during covid to the ongoing Rwanda/migrant fiasco

Liz Truss crashing the economy during the shortest premiership in history

Rishi Sunak referring to the UK as the Unicorn Kingdom at a meeting of business leaders (yes – I too thought that was a joke at first)

In my last post I gave one example of how infrastructure just does not work in the UK anymore. And that is not one of the big baddies. For that you need to look at railways or education or power companies. I could now turn to The World – the actual wider world – but – as pointed out in many previous blogs – does anyone not know? Check out my Neil De Grass Tyson post The Earth Is Pissed Off

So – apart from the general ludicrousness of it – which cannot be over-stated – how can we possibly justify the nonsense the country is being subjected to this weekend Sat 6^th May – a day maybe not of shame but certainly of catastrophic embarrassment for anyone who has not lost the intellectual will to live…

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Thanks for reading. Do check out My BOOKS via the link or on goodreads or your own favourite online book store.

478. Your call could not matter to us less…

I type this as I continue to wait for a human on the phone to HMRC. Wait so far – 25 minutes. This is a looong way off my top wait time which was – no surprise – back when I was unfortunate enough to be a Scottish Power customer.

But as I hang on it occurs to me that none of what is said between the tiny whiny drive-you-mad ‘music’ that taunts over the weary dreary minutes, is even approximate to the truth.

The brave new world of the telephone menu and bot information is another upside down scenario made of extreme capitalism, uncaring government and IT no one asked for. It is simply shitting on you and laughing at the same time. Can an entity with no humanity laugh? I bet it can.

Take x3 prime examples that are standard in the telephone waiting game we’re forced play now for almost any service -

Thanks for waiting– your call is important to us –please continue to hold

In fact the system is thanking us for adding to the hours we’ll never retrieve spent doing nothing but raising our blood pressure. Last century I recall it was quite a thing for various numerate crazy types to calculate figures such as – how long an average person spent asleep/eating/crying in their car. Not so much these days. It might be dangerous. Most folk may not want to know the proportion of their lives spent staring aimlessly into the smartphone looking at crap they can’t afford or barely funny memes created by other folk not having a life. Our call could not be less important to them and of course – as regards their polite request to continue to hold – I mean – like we have a choice.

You usually get to the point at 30 minutes where you really, really want to hang up – but could the next second be the one where you are put out of your misery? More importantly – if you hang up without your issue sorted you know damned well you have to go through it all again.

Thank you for continuing to hold an advisor will answer your call as soon as possible

They can’t believe you’re still on the line but nor do they care – it’s no skin of their nose. If they cared they’d employ more people and make sure they were properly trained. An advisor will answer your call as soon as they’ve finished dealing with the last demented person who is going off on one because they waited 45 minutes to get through – found they’d pressed the wrong button on the menu and got cut off when the advisor pretended to put them through to the correct department.

Don’t forget there is lots of helpful information on our website, go to www.donotgiveafuck.co.uk

This is one of the maddest statements. We all know there is a website. There is always a website and if we could have got the information there rather than walk around listening to shite music while trying to make the lunch or put the washing on or get on with work – we’d have used it. We only abase ourselves to phone hell because we actually need to speak to a real human in the hope they know something about the thing they are supposed to know about.

In my case – when I got through (it was 53 minutes) to HMRC they still ask the questions the auto voice asked you to answer earlier. And then the security questions. All I wanted to do with HMRC was change my address but I couldn’t answer the security questions related to my tax returns 3 years ago because I’m in temp accommodation and can’t find anything. So then – and this was the biggest laugh – the ‘ADVISOR suggested I write. A letter.

The funny thing is that last year I wrote to HMRC as I wanted to avoid dealing with the phone horror – and my April letter (recorded delivery) was ignored as were two later letters. Eventually I got a threat of a fine for none submission of tax information. When I rang I got through to a lovely young woman who chirpily told me – yes – ALL my correspondence was there – it just hadn’t been put on the system. Oh ha ha. I did not think.

I don’t want to overstate the case but everything IS broken. And NO ONE CARES. And if you think that sounds a bit wound up and a bit hysterical – it’s because I’ve just wasted more of my life waiting on the phone for HMRC only to be told to write a letter even though they’ve acknowledged that letters get ignored no matter how many you write…

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Thanks for reading and do remember to check out My BOOKS

477. The riders of The Gravy Train are Britain’s biggest problem – not the folk on the boats…

 So much smoke and mirrors. So much obfuscation.

Last week I did a piece about how much more important it is to vote than to strike. Striking – like everything else at present - is about dealing spasmodically and piecemeal with the shitty mess that has been shovelled onto Britain by the self-interest of the wealthy over decades.

Covid taught us that no one in the ruling elite draws a line when it comes to lining their pockets. We only need observe the de-facto profiteering that was sanctioned and facilitated by this government even though they belong to the party that supported the death penalty for profiteering during WWII.

But – as has been said many times on this blog  – since 1979 and the Thatcher working class punishment beating that seems to have never ended – every hard won  post-war gain for ordinary folk in this country has been rolled back; from snatching away free higher education to selling off all the family silver.

Meanwhile – the current prime minister ‘legally’ benefitted financially from a new rule he voted for in 2016 according to his last tax returns – and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

THE wealth divide has grown exponentially since that other public school prat Tony Blair (war criminal and facilitator of the private sector in the NHS and schools’ infrastructure) and his New Labour project. Remember creepy Mandelson he of the Russian Oligarch pals who made it a mantra to be very “relaxed” about extreme wealth. And so they were. In fact the very relaxed regulation of the financial sector helped usher in the 2008 financial catastrophe.

Despite what this actively racist vile government tell us and how they try to fudge the mess of a xenophobic Brexit the fact remains, it’s not the poor wrecking Britain it’s the rich. Their pals own the infrastructure. One of their own presides over what was supposed to be an independent BBC. They voted to pour sewage into English waterways. They have allowed the NHS to wither on the vine and have overseen the exponential growth in child poverty and falling education standards.

Yes stop people traffickers profiting from human misery. The easiest way completely resisted by the government is to create safe legal protocols that can then be properly monitored.

However, make no mistake - the thing we need to stop is THE GRAVY TRAIN.

The gravy train being ridden by Britain’s wealthy is the problem. This huge locomotion has almost unstoppable momentum. Folk need to wake up to the very obvious reason the gravy train passengers are always pointing to the desperate people on boats as the problem…

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thanks for reading and as always - do check out My BOOKS

476. The striking thing about strikes is they don’t work.

Before the so-called Winter of Discontent 1978/9 which ushered in the Thatcher government – union membership in the UK stood at over 13 million but has declined since. It is approximately half that today. However, as a proportion of that decreased membership – women and black people are well represented in terms of membership. But, with a more fragmented workforce, the spread of zero hours contracts and the decline of any significant manufacturing base in the UK, overall union membership remains low compared to 1960s and 1970s. Of that reduced membership, according to TUC figures, the vast majority are over the age of 35. In the uncertainty of the post-covid, post-Brexit workplace, do we need to re-educate younger people about the benefits of unionisation or ask why they don’t see the point?

Many people will remember the decision hailed as a victory when Uber drivers were deemed by the courts to be workers and therefore entitled to basic rights. While most saw that as a positive outcome – is it not rather depressing to be fighting for something as rudimentary as the right to be considered a worker in 21st century Britain?

How do unions tackle the new online world and the challenges of shrinking workforces?  Many traditional jobs that were being lost prior to covid are now haemorrhaging. Discount supermarkets with staff-less tills. Banks where even those who will lose their jobs badger you to bank online. These things are all presented as progress – it just means more profit – less employment.

I’ve argued about this – and I mean literally – with a store manager who told me nothing would change when self-service tills were introduced. I’ve joked to you about being a Luddite – for lots of reasons – not least I don’t own a smart phone – but, of course – The Luddites were a real 19th century radical English movement centred on the textile industry who, presciently, saw mechanisation as a threat to their labour rights.

In Britain, significant numbers of black and ethnic minority workers have traditionally worked in the NHS – since the earliest days of its inception and the time of Windrush – and a tradition of NHS service runs in many families of Caribbean heritage including my own. Post covid, English NHS workers were offered 1% pay increase after so many were on the front line of covid and literally gave their lives – as against the 4% offered by the Scottish government. As recently as 2014 Operation Black Vote suggested that black and Ethnic minorities were significantly less likely to vote or be registered to vote as their white counterparts. Which leads me to a singular point - is it more important to encourage people to vote than it is to get them to join a union?

Also, can union membership skew priorities? In the 1990s I was a city councillor in the NE of England. It was a time when Thatcherite cuts were biting hard. One of the sectors suffering terribly were council run homes for the elderly – all since privatised of course which led – in my view – to so many early covid deaths in that poorly regulated, uncoordinated sector. I recall an odd situation occurred because those employed in the Works department were predominantly men and unionised – those jobs were protected. Many homes where mainly non-unionised low-paid women worked – were closed. So there was a lot of trauma for elderly people while the grass verges were still getting cut. Is this one of the downsides of union influence?

Almost 100 years ago – the iconic 1926 General Strike in support of miners, while a triumph of solidarity – ended in defeat and division.

Closer to the present day, unions were – at best naïve about Brexit?  Ronnie Draper of The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, Mick Whelan of ASLEF, Mick Cash of the RMT were pro Leave and Jeremy Corby – who was popular with the many union leaders, barely left London during the EU referendum and, clearly anti-EU, sat on the fence while Johnson was parading the big red bus of lies about and promising xenophobic nirvana. As a group Farmers and Fishermen were broadly pro Brexit and to say they’ve been shafted is a bit of an understatement...

So, what is the point of a strike?  Workers have the right to withdraw labour. These rights have ebbed and flowed since the formation of unions. It is broadly accepted that as well as being remunerated for work, the right to withdraw labour is fundamental and separates the worker from the slave, the indentured labourer, the surf, the mediaeval peasant.

But…

From The General Strike 1926 to the miners’ strike 1984 have strikes ever been genuinely successful? Strikers and their families suffer hardship as many did during The Miners’ strike. Strikes seem to have had little effect on – for example – the privatised railways. Poor service and huge hikes in prices are accompanied by massive government subsidies sucked up by shareholders and chairmen while strikes seem to cause misery only to travellers, commuters and their families.

Currently, unprecedented strikes in the NHS from nurses to junior doctors have not lead to increases that come even near to matching the damage to incomes done by Brexit, government mismanagement and, for example, the catastrophic 49 day premiership of Liz Truss which left a dent in UK economics to the tune of an estimated £30bn

Part of the decline in union membership is down to the fragmentation of the work force and a greater emphasis on small scale businesses in a febrile service driven sector. But how much of the decline is the sense that Unions have just one arrow in their quiver - its blunt and lacking flight…

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475. Arsonists spitting on their own fires expecting a round of applause!

This UK Conservative government may be out of ideas, talent, energy and decency but like an old circus freak show it can still make you goggle.

The current state of play is ineffectual firefighting of fires they started – and expecting credit and/or gratitude from a weary public.

Listening to weekend reports of the holiday backlog on the Dover to Calais route you could be forgiven for imagining that many folk and even more ‘news’ readers have never heard of Brexit. You could be further forgiven for assuming that Remainers didn’t warn that exactly these scenes would follow from the madness of leaving our largest/closest trading partner. It may be comforting to forget that the rampant rabid xenophobes and those powerful entities sweating in anticipation of regulation-free UK where anything went, didn’t deny in the most barefaced fashion that all these problems would be minor and fade away like mist. Instead its a permanent smog.

But this is just one of the self-harms Britain has inflicted on itself and just one of many coming home to roost.

I could site the state of the rail network which has become unaffordable for many while sucking up more in public subsidy than when it belonged to the nation – while acceptable standards of service and reliability are things of the past.

Or more recently I could point to the ridiculous and cruel Rwanda policy still defended by lunatic Suella Braverman. Rarely is it mentioned that part of the issue with the over-crowded and unsafe-for-children hotels the government has resorted to – which exorcise many gobby right wingers – is caused by the governments lack of a grip on asylum processing procedures. Plus – having no plan or policy for those arriving in boats seems to be the plan.

The privatised utility companies are a disaster. Scottish Power now owned by a Spanish conglomerate – is one of the least well performing and expensive to domestic customers but reported an increase in profits of 3.6% in 2022.

Privatisation of the utility companies and all the predictable/predicted failings that follow when profit trumps investment, is nowhere more clearly born out than with England’s water companies. 

Whether you choose to join up all the dots i.e. the inevitable deterioration of water infrastructure as chairmen and shareholders bag millions - or whether you look at very recent history and Boris Johnson's government voting to allow raw sewage dumps into England's waterways, it's a mess.

The pre-local election panic Sunak announcement that the privatised water companies in England may be subject to unlimited fines (if the under-funded Environment Agency can find the staff to follow the stench) is proof we are now in an age where almost all of government is about shaping turds of their own making. Both figuratively and literally...

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do check out My BOOKS

474. The world is like old knicker elastic…

… and the idea we’ll keep returning to the way things were is dangerously delusional.

Anyone who has not sunk themselves into protective oblivion from the truth that the lunatics took over the asylum some time ago, will have given up waiting for ‘normal’ to return after the COVID pandemic.

Covid fall-out is just one element in what is wrong with us; what is wrong with the world.

From the endemic casual use of regular non-prescription drugs (and some prescription drugs) to the increase in problem drinking to careless all day gambling – those seeking ways of by-passing reality are just one large collective symptom.

And yet – try as people might – it doesn’t work. You’ll notice it when you’re out on the street. Fear fuelled anger and short tempers due to the uncertainty that even those not paying attention can sense.

Last week the Bank of England decided to raise interest rates. Those already struggling with the combined effects of broken crumbling privatised infrastructure here in the UK coupled with the more recent appalling self-harm of Brexit will be staring into the financial abys especially as government help for huge fuel bills ends just as this new horror bites.

Ordinary folk have seen their mortgages increase by hundreds of pounds while they strike to desperately force a rise in wages.

Some have spoken about similarities to the 2008 crisis. Well – maybe.

I don’t see it.

In 2008 there was an expectation, born out to some extent that we would ‘bounce back’ as we had before. There was a sense that we had a god given right to spring back to the comfortable ground where we could have it all, shop, ignore the environmental catastrophes happening ‘somewhere else’ and like new knicker-elastic our world would hold up, keeping everything in place  and decent.

This time I think not.

Add into the mix that globally little has been done of any significance to mitigate the destabilising effects of exponentially growing climate and pollution crises. The notion that you can just batten down the hatches – metaphorically or in reality – is utter fantasy.

At the start of the pandemic I whistled into the wind about the numbers dying from pollution every single year and asked why that was never as shocking.

But as many struggle to stay afloat financially, mentally and emotionally what did our government serve up last week – the spectacle of Boris Johnson getting another opportunity to clown about and lie at public expense before the cameras.

You could be forgiven for thinking there were no real problems for real people. Especially as that was followed a few days later with a sting by the group ‘Led by Donkeys’ netting several failed Tory MPs offering their wisdom to an unknown (and fake) Korean business for many thousands of pounds. Delusion clearly has no limits.

Rishi Sunak we learnt the day of Johnsons select committee hearing, benefitted through a tax break to the tune of £300,000 due to a rule he voted for in 2016.

But while the rich and powerful are looking after and focusing on themselves and as the media desperately screams at us to pay attention to the latest royal soap opera and the ridiculous coronation – Britain’s knickers are sagging. We are going to be caught with our pants around our ankles fairly soon. There is no reclaiming our dignity – there is no going back to the way things were.

At the weekend, the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibilities) stated that the economic harm of Brexit would equal covid. But even as the Tories try to blame everything on the war in Ukraine and the truth battles for space in between competing narratives, one thing is clear – people are struggling. 

A country that had the chance to have all things a civilised nation needed to call itself that, has squandered much of the post WWII legacy. Its position in the world is vastly weakened. Some (me) would argue Britain’s credibility and its essential core never recovered its balance after the illegal invasion of Iraq.

My sense is - and you must make of that what you will, I am not an economist –the world itself is tired and drooping. This world in which we have that diminished, battered, belittled position will not bounce back and neither will the UK.

I do not believe the knickers will pull up one more time and stay.

We have worn everything out.

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AS always - do check out my books thank you - My BOOKS

473. Suella Braverman thinks her random Rwanda illegal migration policy ‘is about compassion’.

Does she also think that kicking puppies would help daisies grow?

Does the current Home Secretary think that mugging old ladies would make the sun shine?

Is she cruel or just as deeply deeply deeply stupid as she seems?

The only thing I know for sure is that there is one person we could usefully fly to a far away place on a one way ticket and it’s not a destitute, desperate migrant…

472. Weapons of mass delusion are still with us…

…and as dangerous as ever as we mark the dark 20^th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, a country still disabled by that catastrophe.

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We watch in horror as the predictable and predicted results of the lies of Brexit stifle this country’s future. Similarly, we who have paid attention over the decades, sink in the stultifying inevitability of the madness of having sold off anything and everything of worth as the privatisation chickens come home to roost. We see a wasteland of corruption and dysfunction in our infrastructure as everything that was put in place post WWII for ordinary folk in Britain is now in private hands and fuelling the offshore accounts of the wealthy instead of making life better for ordinary people.

Lineker-gate rocks the already shaky foundations of the public broadcaster - see my letter in The Independent

As the BBC plummets further in credibility, our so-called public broadcaster is currently led by a Tory donor who was advisor to both Johnson and Sunak before being gifted the role of BBC chairman after helping Johnson secure a private loan. There is no better (or worse) example of the power of mass delusion than the illegal invasion of Iraq – orchestrated for Britain by Tony Blair. However, in the wake of the BBC nonsense we should remember the destructive power of wilful delusion and there is no surer symptom of constructed mass delusion than the attempt by weak politicians to control the media.

The 2003 invasion was not just a totally caustic and still corrosive historical madness perpetrated against the people of Iraq knowingly done under blatantly false pretences (like Brexit) – it has deeply, permanently harmed Britain – also like Brexit.

After the slightly saccharine up-beat early Blair years the rot of his ‘rightness’ set in. His own politicians sensed he was leading them down a wrong path. The country certainly knew with one of the biggest mass anti-war demonstrations Britain has ever seen. People like Diane Abbot threatened to resign but then shamefully did not and the madness entered our collective veins leaving its political poison.

 It was a kind of sickness a person might feel when they know they have done something deeply harmful, reprehensible and irreversible. In fact – there is only one thing to do and that is to continue with the delusion. I wonder if that is why Blair is still feted in the media; still interviewed by mainstream papers and on our news. It’s as if no one has read of even heard of the Chilcot Report.

One or two outliers did point out the obvious similarities when Putin invaded Ukraine under false pretences – but – that is them not us.

One of my very early blogs concerned the distortions of  false wars known and felt to be entirely wrong and how it ensnared an American soldier called Lynndie England – in that I outlined the disconnect between wrong doing by the soldiers on the ground and the worse wrong doing by those who knowingly instigated the war.

Abu Grahib was – as was admitted years later – a fertile breeding ground for what we came to fear as global terrorism – and for the UK that had not that long banished Irish terrorism – it should have sickened us more than it did.

Then came fear of migrants and some would argue –me include – as I have often on this blog – the attitude that led us to a racism/jingoism fuelled Brexit with all its xenophobic nonsense and now to the very migrant bashing that brought Lineker out to criticise the vile and idiotic Suella Braverman.

Weapons of mass destruction would have been monstrous if they had existed and let us not forget that Saddam DID use disgusting weapons against the Kurds. This is no defence of his regime.

However – in the long run – it is the insidious weapon of mass delusion that will do for us if not reigned in…

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471. Hell is here...

Sunak is trying to placate the swivel eyed loons after patching up Johnson’s Irish Protocol. His go-to is terrorising the desperate, in this case those crossing the channel in small boats. It’s behaviour now so common and so ugly we might look the other way.

I don’t mean look the other way as we sometimes inadvertently do when passing the increasing number of homeless and desperate prostrate in empty shop doorways in once prosperous towns. I don’t mean the brain tumbling ‘where can I look’ as we try to make that spur of the moment decision about dipping into our pockets, however pathetic our offering may be and however ultimately useless and even while we have the admonishments of homeless charities ringing in our ears about why we shouldn’t hand over money.

I mean we should REALLY look the other way. Away from Westminster – away from the racist posturing by a defunct, deluded and disastrous government well past it sell-by date.

I suggest start with a certain railway bridge in Glasgow.

On Friday night I was out – something that happens so rarely these days I already felt disoriented. But my youngest daughter was taking me to a comedy club for a belated c’mas present. And a lovely time we had too.

However, en route we had to get from Glasgow central and across to the nearest subway which meant going under a long dark, dirty, noisy railway bridge at that time of night which is neither late or early – the twilight zone when the workers are pretty much home but the real party folk are still putting on make-up and aftershave and tanking up on supermarket drink so they don’t have to spend too much in the clubs and bars to achieve oblivion.

The scene which greeted us was something that could equally have been a slum on the outskirts of Mumbai.

Destitution on a scale that is a scandal all of its own.

One of the main homeless charities were setting up hot food stations for the evening with tables stretching from one end of the tunnel to the other. Cordoned off very professionally with food trucks on one side of the road and trestle tables with the food prep on the other and an already forming queue at one end, well before prep was done.

The damk greyness of it was soul-sucking.

It was not a particularly cold night for February in Scotland but somehow the temperature under that tunnel seemed several degrees down on everywhere else despite the heat under the food pots.

And the faces of those early to the queue was one Munch silent scream after another – one emaciated desperate sunken ashen face after the next. Cheekbones and hollow eyes and dirty clothes and the uncared look of the long destitute.

And the only thing you could think is – dear god these are not Auschwitz inmates – this is not Ethiopia - this is Britain – one of the wealthiest countries in the world - 2023. And that contradiction always somehow makes things worse.

I’ve written many times on this blog about what has been taken from ordinary folk since the abomination that was Thatcher. The hard fought gains of post WWII Britain where it was finally accepted that even those at the bottom were entitle to a piece of the pie – however small.

No more.

Hell is HERE.

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470. Bits of Bonkers Britain…

This week some random thoughts from the past couple of weeks…

Tone-Deaf Coronation

We're getting used to the commercial world and even the celebrity universe being more in-touch with the public mood than establishment figures hence brands often moving away from toxic situations before politicians/figures of state have got their ducks in a row.

So, it will be interesting now that big names Adele, Sheeran (and a growing list of other glitterati)  have reportedly turned down the 'honour' of performing at the inappropriately lavish coronation.

Sounds like it will be as literally tone deaf as it is socially tone deaf.

 

Tony Blair and the Amnesia Aftershave

Does Tony Blair's aftershave contain an amnesia inducing chemical?

When Putin illegally invaded Ukraine - a few brave souls pointed out the similarities between Putin's invasion and the horrific Blair/Bush Iraq adventure.

A year on in Putin's nightmare and Blair is schmoozing comfortably in top circles and having his utterances on multiple subjects reported like a normal person by the mainstream UK media 

Why?

Sunak Sans Boussole

As two spectacularly disastrous, failed ex-prime ministers haunt the dark corners of the Tory Party one thing is clear, Rishi Sunak is a nobody PM leading a nothing party and taking the country nowhere...

This week our desperate school prefect is seeking a pat on the head for shaping the turd his party dumped with his 'Windsor Protocol' attempting tidy the Boris NIP mess.

 

Tawdry Tories

It’s a tired and wearying kind of fun – even at Christmas – the ubiquitous pantomime. All that ‘oh yes you did’ and ‘he/she’s behind you’. But its February and the tawdry Tory pantomime is refusing to leave town.

Johnson the clown and the hideous panto dame Truss are still hanging about in the wings not realising their season is over. Gurning like lunatics behind Sunak’s lifeless principle boy, they screech inappropriately, completely unaware that their bad blonde toxic presence is way past its sell-by date. 

The audience have left the building. The props are looking tatty in the daylight. There is rubbish everywhere and we’re well into the new dark reality they’ve not yet accepted.

Is there anything left to add except – gerroff  and  BOOOOOOOOH!

 

Why is Britain only interested in sex equality when it’s detrimental to women?

In just over a year’s time I will qualify for my bus pas here in Scotland. If retirement ages had remained as they were while I was growing up – I would also be due to retire. Not that I have anything to retire from being what we euphemistically call a ‘struggling writer’ with no pension.

But years ago that rug was pulled from under women’s feet. That sense of a little bit back for the low pay and the taking the domestic strain and lack of promotion and remuneration which never seems to have evened out.

Long gone are my dreams that Britain would be so civilised that we’d all work a 4 day week (something recently heralded as hugely successful but unlikely to become mainstream). I imagined retirement ages would fall for all. I especially treasured this idea when my dad died 5 months to the day after he retired having been one of those ‘never a sick day’ kind of guys.

But  I digress

The UK retirement age for women was raised on the basis of equality… Really?

 Somehow all the other stuff that would make things more equal for women are still lagging far far behind.

According to TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak - “Working women deserve equal pay. But at current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to close the gender pay gap.

ANOTHER two decades!!!

Then of course there is childcare and promotion barriers in the work place, sexism in the workplace.

On a possibly more trivial note but nevertheless interesting – I was hugely entertained a few years ago when it was ruled that insurance companies could no longer distinguish between male and female drivers when it came to offering discounted premiums.

 Suddenly the judges were all over equality. That the insurance industry is based entirely on risk assessment seems to have been ignored. That women were statistically safer drivers and therefore earned the discount was ignored. We must have equality said the law – and women's premiums went up.

If you don’t see a pattern here I’ll spell it out.

Society can move to equality very sharply if it feeds money into the system and does away with historic rights. We can move to equality if its women whose benefits are withdrawn.

When it comes to equal pay or any of the things that women have been fighting for for decades – don’t hold your breath…

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