Just when you think . . .

 

 

 

 

 

You really don’t know whether to laugh or cry or start sharpening the knives for a major bloodletting! 

     Is it the swift volte-face or the fact that this discredited Conservative “government” even tried (with a three-line whip) to force through a sordid piece of legislation designed to defend poor little Owen Paterson MP?  One has to feel something akin to sympathy (or is it utter contempt?) for an MP struggling along on his MP’s salary in addition to more than £100,000 a year from the two companies that he lobbied on behalf of (against the rules) so assiduously. 

     And what has he done today?  Resigned, after his mate Johnson withdrew his support – as Johnson always does.  Johnson, the man who is liked by everybody except those who know him! 

     Well, I hope that poor little Paterson has managed to save something from the more than three hundred thousand a year that he “earned” to cushion his retirement.  Perhaps Johnson will make him a lord, after all our so-called Prime Minister has ennobled characters even less salubrious than Paterson. 

     Then, at least poor little Owen will have the lord’s per diem to try and encourage him forget the “cruel world of politics” (thank you poor little Paterson) that has been so unfair to him, by revealing (thank you The Guardian) his “egregious . . . paid advocacy” (thank you The Commons Standards Committee).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

Meanwhile the farce of this episode is still playing itself out.  Johnson has completed yet another, not U-Turn, more screeching handbrake reversal.  He forced his MPs to support the unsupportable, and to go on the record defending it and then, when the heat was raised by people accusing him of sleaze and blatant corruption, abruptly cancelling what was deemed so important it needed a three-line whip!

     There must be “decent” (they must exist) Tory MPs who reluctantly supported the government against overwhelming evidence, who will now have to explain not only their own questionable judgement in voting to support the government, but also the complete about turn by the same government within less than 24hrs!  I wish them no luck, and I urge their constituents to question them closely.

     This is yet another example of poor leadership.  This whole episode has been so catastrophically managed that heads should roll, with the first aristo into the tumbril being the person who ordered his MPs to vote: Johnson.

 

G

 

     

 

 

 

 Johnson won’t, of course, resign.  Why?  Because Paterson has.   

     I wonder exactly what incentives he was offered by Johnson to do the "decent "thing?  (See: peerage above!)

 

Enough of the tawdry Conservatives.  I can’t help feeling that some sort of adapted version of my favourite quote from Christopher Marlowe, “Get you away, and strangle the Cardinal” fits this situation!

 

On an altogether more satisfactory note, I am now double vaccinated.  Not for Covid, I had the Johnson & Johnson, Jenssen Jab (so only one needle for me), but double vaccinated in that I had my seasonal flu jab (right arm) and my Covid booster of Pfizer (left arm) in a purpose build portacabin attached to my local health centre.  My booster was given six months to the day from the first Covid injection.  Thank you, health system of Catalonia!

     The only problem I now face is tackling the Byzantine security systems that protect my medical details so that I can download a copy of the vaccination certificate for use, and I have already been informed that proof of vaccination will be needed to participate in a small poetry group in Barcelona.  A sign of things to come perhaps.

 

This evening to Terrassa to celebrate a joint Name Day, with Amazon being an integral part of the way that presents have been sent in situ as another sign of things already conventional!

 

 

 

 

Wither irony?

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, Johnson is flying back to London after COP26 in Glasgow by private plane.  With anyone else of even minimal political credibility this would be a crushing piece of destructive irony – after weeks spent mouthing platitudes about the need to reduce carbon footprints.  But with the charlatan Johnson, it is no more than par for the course for someone who can see no further than himself.

     Add to that the news that the disgraced Conservative MP who sexually harassed a member of his staff is to be allowed back into the Conservative party, and it all fits with the assumption that most Conservatives can do what the hell they like and will be subject to few lasting restraints or consequences. 

     Be grossly incompetent?  Bully your staff?  Lie to the House?  Lobby illegally?  Give your donors preferential public money deals?  Kill people through mismanagement?  No worries with the Conservative equivalent of a perpetual Get out of Jail card ever at the ready to smooth a path for those who have demonstrably done wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     A few days ago, I read a piece about Spike Milligan making the point that if anyone deserved the accolade of King of Satire, it must be him – but the piece also brought up the idea that the last few years have been so bizarre that so-called real life has produced actual event and characters that in their destructive absurdity defy satire.

     Donald Trump and his troupe of grotesques, you would think would be idea fodder for the sort of treatment that was meted out by the latex puppets in Spitting Image – but, when you look at the orange artificiality of Trump’s face and the wispy monstrosity of his hair, and how and what he says, how can any puppet do justice to the abomination that he exemplifies?  

 

 

 

 

 

     Watching Trump at one of his rallies forced you think that you were in a world where Dada, Surrealism and the Black Paintings of Goya were the motivating forces, rather than anything that could be recognized as “normality”.

     In a similar way the continuing car crash of Johnson’s so-called government of Britain would seem to demand that the cries for his instant dismissal and prosecution for wilful dissimulation and corporate manslaughter should by now have reached a crescendo – but still his corrupt and corrupting party had a healthy lead in the polls, and Johnson’s laughable “leadership” is still seen by a remarkable proportion of the population to be something in which they believe.

     And there, I think lies the crux of his popularity.  Facts and figures now mean nothing, or at least very little, to those who think that Brexit was a good idea and that the Conservatives have the interests of the whole of the country at heart.  The Conservative party is now a cult, and belief in Johnson is a core tenet of belief, something beyond mere reality.

     Every time I see Johnson in the newspaper or on the TV, I find that I am now experiencing the same feelings of revulsion that I had for a character like Saville.  Even at the height of his fame, when he was lauded by young and old, rich, and poor, the great and the lowly, I felt a repellence towards Saville.  He was not a person you would want to be near.  I am not, of course, suggesting that there is any similarity in the crimes that Johnson and Saville have committed, but the feeling that they are both wrong ‘uns is compelling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day after tomorrow I get my flu jab, and I hope a specific date for my booster Covid shot.  Although mask wearing is still happening in Spain, young people are more obviously not following the older population where mask wearing in crowded public space is usually the norm.

     I keep remembering the statements from health officials that “until everyone is vaccinated, we are all at risk”, and then I look at the statistics of how many children have been vaccinated and then hear of statistics from Africa and other parts of the world where a tiny proportion has had any sort of protection, and I think that the attitude of “we call all start travelling again in 2022” is blind optimism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today was the last day of my extended birthday.  I like to keep in a birthday mood for at least a week.  So, the excellent paella in the restaurant connected to my swimming pool was a fitting end to the jollifications.  Roll on my Name Day!