A crumb of happiness!

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It shows how low the bar for ‘political satisfaction’ is set that the fact that a homophobic, racist, unconstitutionally acting, twice fired judge, bigoted, accused paedophile Roy Moore fails to make it to the American Senate as representative for Alabama.  By just over 1% of the popular vote.

As Alabama is a deepest red Republican state, a Democrat successfully elected is a triumph, no matter how small the margin of victory.  It has been estimated that over 70% of the white vote went to the Republican, no matter how vile a candidate was standing to represent them!  And they call themselves God-fearing Christians!

Well, amid the unrelentingly awful progress of Brexit in the hands of a group of Conservatives who, at cabinet level have yet to even discuss what sort of Brexit they are actually working towards, a little ray of reason in the form of the wrong person NOT being elected to office is something to relish.

 

As is the fact that the failed Republican candidate was enthusiastically supported by pussy-groper-in-chief, good old kiss-of-death-to-reason 45, POTUS.  In an astonishingly polite and reasonable twitter 45 actually congratulated the new Democrat Senator!  Could it have been written by 45 himself, or is there someone in his office with a shred of decency who managed to get in first? 

45 has, of course, started to twitter a ‘justification’ (sic) saying that he knew that the Republican would lose which is why he supported his opponent in the Primaries and . . . hold on, I am not going to repeat the mendacious Jesuitical (not that 45 could ever rise to the height of sophisticated casuistry that the Storm Troopers of Roman Catholicism reach) rubbish that spills from his mouth and dribbles from his small handed typing fingers.  He lost.  He backed a loser.  Who lost.  Like him.  Tarred with the same brush of failure.  Sad.

This loss of a crucial vote in the Senate should make the passing of the shameless tax grab by corporations, big business and greedy donors more difficult to pass.  Does anyone truly believe that the new tax cutting laws are going to be revenue neutral, or that they are going to create an economic miracle, just like the similar plans in Kansas didn’t?  One waits and hopes.

But, above all, congratulations to the voters of Alabama for doing the right thing and rejecting a clearly obnoxious bigot from high office - and that is something that I did not expect to write in my lifetime!

Is it just me, or is the triumph of May in the Brexit negotiations anything more than mere words?  Try as I might I can see nothing concrete about any of the three elements of Payment, NI Border, EU Citizens in Britain and we poor British buggers in EU countries.  Yes, vast sums of magic money, billions of pounds have been metaphorically waved in the air (presumably to the sound and rhythm of Boris’s whistling); the Invisible Border has been made concrete (so to speak) but the implications for the rest of Britain, following NI’s lead would suggest that we have no Brexit at all; the gambling chips of EU lives are still being thrown towards the baize table as the wheel revolves.   

It’s an unreal combination of the Emperor’s New Clothes and ghoti.

For those not aware of ‘ghoti’ I should explain that it spells the word ‘fish’.  And here’s how:

Take the ‘gh’ from enough

Take the ‘o’ from women

Take the ‘ti’ from nation

Put them all together and you have all the sounds to make the word ‘fish’

But it doesn’t end there, ‘ghoti’ also has no sound at all!  And here’s how:

Take the ‘gh’ from night

Take the ‘o’ from people

Take the ‘t’ from ballet

Take the ‘i’ from business

Put them all together and you have . . . nothing.

And that, if you still remember what I was talking about, is like what has been ‘agreed’ about Brexit and what the British government (I use the term very loosely) have stated/promised/negotiated/said/suggested/mentioned/insinuated - or any other word you might think of to explain exactly what they have done, because for me, I feel that we are dealing with the second pronunciation of ‘ghoti’ and that we have a wordy nothingness to get on with.

The trouble is, of course, that ‘wordy nothingnesses’ while they might keep the perennially warring EU factions of the Conservative Party momentarily apart, they do nothing for life as it is lived in the real world where real people have real needs.

Living in Spain as I do, what does this ‘triumph’ of negotiation say about my entitlement to healthcare in my adopted country?  What does it say about my ability to travel on the continent on which I live?  My right or not to stay in Spain?  My rights as a Brexit blighted citizen in a re-defined country relationship?

You try finding concrete reality in the vacuous mouthings of dithering, incompetence from the British government, added to the astonishingly lazy arrogance of Davies as he ‘negotiates’ by the seat of his pants with no apparent need for projections of what his airy pronouncements might mean.  Because the Spanish government is going to ask all the hard ‘W’ questions like: What?  When?  Why?  Which?  Who? and so on.  To these our government has no answers, mainly because they have not had the wit to think of the questions themselves.

So, what about the Spanish government?

After the stealing sequestering of art works from Catalonia and sending them to Aragón in defiance of the natural course of law yesterday, the powers that be have today declared that the number of political prisoners jailed at the moment is woefully inadequate and there are plans to incarcerate 40 more of the officials who participate in the dangerously democratic referendum held on the 1^st of October of this year.  You remember, that was the referendum when the world saw pictures and film of members of the Civil Guard and National Police smashing their way into polling stations and into the people who were in them.

Our President is in exile in Belgium and, while the craven Spanish Government has withdrawn the international arrest warrant for him, because it was likely to have been thrown out of court and humiliated the government by its rejection, it has retained the Spanish arrest warrants.  So, if our President were to step foot on Spanish soil he would be immediately arrested.  For the time being our President continues to canvass and participate in the Catalan election via video from Belgium. 

Our President speaks a number of languages including French and English and so he is more than able to communicate with the International Press.  The Spanish President speaks one language, and his command of Spanish has been, um, a little individualist at times.  He has also rejected questions in press conferences which have not been in Spanish.  It is almost sad to watch Rajoy at international gatherings as he attempts to show that he is chums with people who look mildly irritated and embarrassed when he approaches.

We are now only eight days away from an election that could define the course of Spanish history for generations, and indeed the course of European history.  The election in Catalonia involves us all.  What happens to Catalonia will be seen as an indication of the strength of democracy not only inside Spain, but also within the EU and the wider world.

You are involved in what happens on the 21^st.  Keep watching!  Your future is at stake!