Cartoon Politics?

 

 

 

 

For what now seems like the last twenty-something years of my life, a political organization, formerly known as The Conservative Party, has been putting on a mind-bendingly boring charade of Right Wing Cosplay to try and influence the miniscule audience of voters who will elect one of two cyphers who will replace the last lying narcissist to hold the role of Prime Minister, who in his turn replaced the previous vicious (yet vacuous) semi-alive failure in the role, who in her turn replaced the toff-boy coward who walked away (whistling) from his responsibilities.  So, the cyphers do not have to do a lot to fit right in with the bar of competence set at a Mariana Trench level of profundity.

     Truss, the ex-Remainer, ex-Lib Dem, and born-again Thatcher act and Unicorn Brexiteer is using the Johnson tried and trusted technique of blatant lying and blaming everything on everyone – apart from her semi-articulate self, while talking up increasingly far right policies (on the hoof) to try and get the old, white, knuckle-draggers of the Home Counties to vote for her.  She is risible and contemptible and is, let us remind ourselves, the favourite (sic.) to gain the keys to Number 10.

     Her perky, richer than Croesus, “I have no working class friends” opponent is also spewing nonsense, trying to balance (and failing) the need to appeal to a Conservative Membership that he must regard with little less than loathing, while attempting to voice policies that make at least some nod towards the fact that the UK is facing crises of an existential nature.

     Not, of course that you would get a sense of that by listening or reading about the various quasi-Surrealistic “hustings” of party members as they question these “candidates” who have to try and pretend that they are offering something new and exciting to combat the difficulties that they themselves have been creating for the last decade.

     The level of unreality is so palpable that I am sure that the majority of people trying to make sense of the “Noddy in Toyland” level of political acumen on display have truly forgotten that we have had a Conservative Government (I use the term in its loosest possible sense) since 2010.  Two thousand and bloody ten!  And they are acting as if Cameron, May, Johnson are all “resets” and therefore nothing can be blamed on the future Prime Minister, as they will have had nothing to do with previous administrations, apart from being slavishly voting MPs and actual Ministers in the actual government!

     As a Welshman, albeit living in Catalonia, I can take some comfort from the fact that the Conservatives do NOT have a majority in Wales and that we do not have the political dregs in power.  But the UK is governed from London and the monetary allocations are decided in Westminster and England has by far the largest population in the constituent countries of the UK so, although government is partially devolved, England is still calling the tunes – or rather the tiny percentage of the population that makes up the membership of the Conservative and Unionist Party is.

     So, as prices and inflation go up (and up!) and wages go down (unless you are in The City) we have weeks more of the farce that is the election of our next Prime Minister.  Embarrassments playing with props from the political Dressing Up Box, vividly illustrating just how far below the ludicrous our country has sunk.

     Perhaps the most depressing element in this whole charade of political game playing was summed by the Daily Mail who (seriously) averred that Johnson had bucked the trend of the political truism that, “All political careers end in failure.”  That is a rewriting of reality on a par with the everyday life of Trump, where there is an unlimited number of “alternative facts” to fit in with whatever deranged rearrangement of life unscrupulous right-wing demagogues demand the ever credulous to accept rather than believe the evidence of their own eyes.

     Another truism is, “This too will pass” – however good or bad things are, they will change.  Wars will end.  Things will resolve themselves.  But it doesn’t mean that things will be better when those “things” have “settled down”.  You can look at history through statistics, but statistics are human stories and have human consequences.  The removal of the twenty-five-pound uplift to Universal Credit is a story of human misery and political viciousness.  Real people suffered; it is not just an “economic detail.”

 

This is a bitter way to start again to add to my neglected blog, perhaps tomorrow I will be mellower and allow myself the luxury of hope!

Music as balm?

For the first time, asking Alexa to “Play Classical Music!” I have been provided with something other than blatantly recognizable Bach.  Though I have to admit that what I am listening to, although being played on a modern piano, would benefit by being plucked on a harpsichord.  The more I listen to it, the more it sounds like a modern pastiche of the style of something much older.  The great thing, of course, is that I will not find out what the actual piece of music is and so I am safe in what I have written.

As an experiment, I have just asked Alexa what piece of music had just been played.  She answered in a single gnomic word that I didn’t understand, so I asked, “Alexa explain more.”  And I got a neat little explanation of the grammatical uses of the word and a little historical note about Sir Thomas Moore.  Perhaps I should just allow ignorance to lie low!

As the Alexa terminal is hidden behind the computer I usually forget that she is lurking there, unless someone demands something from one of the other terminals scattered around the house and my Alexa jumps to vocalization.  And incidentally, while I have been typing this we have gone from Carmine Burana to Beethoven - it puts me in mind of the worst excesses of Classic FM!

I once listened to whole a day’s worth of Classic FM when I was in a friend’s caravan in Devon where I had sequestered myself because I had to get a piece of written work finished and I needed to be far away from domestic distractions.

The great thing about Classic FM is that it makes all the music it plays sound like sonic wallpaper.  No matter how great the actual music is, the smooth and slightly condescending delivery of the announcers and the sometimes-shocking juxtapositioning of the individual snatches of music means that it all flows together in an unbroken stream of comforting soundliness!

If that sounds dismissive, it isn’t meant to be, as I got the work done and the music obviously did what I wanted it to!

I must admit that I do not listen to as much music as I once did.  Yes, I play (religiously) through the box sets of CDs that I (still) buy for use in the car.  Though my purchases are obviously atavistic: our local computer and electrical store no longer holds CD book-holders, which just emphasises how out of touch I am in still continuing to buy CDs rather than give in and subscribe to Spotify!

I only listen to Radio 3 once in a blue moon, I even forgot to listen to the first night of the Proms and that had a performance of The Glagolitic Mass, I first heard that on an old Supraphon recording that I had in college.  And no, that is not going to be an opportunity taken to vaunt the superiority of the audio on disc rather than the rather more cramped CD.

I find that I am reading more than I am listening to music.  And the reading I am doing is mostly connected to current events, especially in the UK, and specifically political events.  You see how far I am prepared to go before I have to mention the dreaded “B” word.

And I have made an executive decision that I will never refer to the congenital liar who appears to be making his inexorable way to Number 10 Downing Street by his first name (which is of course Alex, and not the one that he has chosen to be referred to as) as I feel not an iota of familiarity or fellow feeling for the odious person that he obviously is.

Next week, I will start the process of applying for Spanish citizenship, as I have no desire to be associated with a country that can allow a character, described by the Guardian’s John Crace as “Priapic Mr Blobby”, to be its Prime Minister. 

Though, there again, will The Country actually allow this lying chancer to take the post?  The Conservatives have a working majority of 3, with the August by-election in Brecon that might well be down to 2 - so all it would take is one principled Conservative (sic!) to change sides for the majority to be wiped out, to say nothing of the machinations of the Neanderthals in the DUP whose bought loyalty to the Conservatives is problematic.

So, can May (you remember, she used to be that vicious Home Secretary and useless Prime Minister) in all conscience (I used the word lightly in terms of the ethics of the present day Conservatives) recommend the kipper-waving liar to Brenda, the unelected (so they will have something in common) nonagenarian Germanic dwarf?

I can hardly wait for the next exciting episode of the tediously unimaginative soap opera that political life has become nowadays.

Meanwhile I continue with my writing and preparing books for publication, which in the circumstances has more in common with Madame Defarge’s knitting than any cultural activity!  

Though, alas, without the end result of execution!

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Traitors?

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it.

Anyone who thinks that the white-faced comments from one political coward, or the scripted seeming-modesty of one failed chief deserve anything other than contempt, is willfully ignoring what they have done.  At least in the quotation from Macbeth above the treacherous Thane of Cawdor “confessed his treasons” and “implor’d pardon” and expressed “deep repentence” – but that was literature.  Unfortunately, in Europe in 2016, we are dealing with what is laughingly referred to as reality.

Anything other than odium lavished on the selfishly parochial Cameron as he wryly accepts that he has to leave the position that he thought he would be able to solidify by his callously gambling with the future of the nation that he was supposed to be serving is obnoxious.  He recklessly used the future status and well-being of the United Kingdom as an easy casino chip thrown away on a throw of the dice, trying to cement his position in the contemptible party which he thought he led.  He was a disaster, and his forced smiles as he made his final jokes is nothing more than a calculated insult to the nation that he has failed.

            Wherever he goes from now and until the end of his sad days he should be treated with the contempt that he richly deserves.  His positive achievements (which I recognize) become irrelevant compared with his great betrayal.  He is little more than a traitor and the fact that he can smile amid the ruins that he has created is disgusting.

           

Which is also and adjective that I would apply to the whole of the Conservative Party.

           

There is nothing more infantilizing that watching (we are, after all, mere junior spectators and should, apparently, be grateful that we are even allowed to observe) the Conservative Party in full halloo after their tradition prey: POWER!

           

Their hands still smeared with the spinal fluid from daggers plunged deep between vertebrae of erstwhile friends, these shameless assassins have the temerity to preach to the population about progress and equality in the chaos that they have created.

           

Prime Minister May (sic) will be judged, in the short term, by who she choses to include in her ‘government’.  There are a few litmus test choices: will she include the blond, lazy, loquacious, lout?  The egoist who helped precipitate this disaster?  Will she include the Minister for ‘Justice’ – proven liar and treacherous colleague?  Will she include any of the utter bastards who have made her (anyone’s) job in the ‘new’ disunited kingdom so much harder?  Will any one of that disreputable crew have the guts to offer a sincere apology to the country that they have offended?  Well, they are Conservatives, so that sort-of answers itself.

           

And what of the Labour Party?  They (it?) have taken internecine fighting to a new level of destructiveness.  At the best of times the present disunity of the Labour Party would be vicious self-indulgence; at a time of national emergency when they should not only be taking the authors of our misfortune to task, but also presenting positive ideas for the stability and progress of the nation – in such times, the present laughable chaos is completely unacceptable.  Except of course in these bizarre times, after a referendum campaign notable for its lack of decency, truth and basic reality, anything goes.  The more I think about the full import of Brexit, the more I fear that the grotesque monster that is Trump stands more than a reasonable (!) chance of making all the way to the White House.  I hope to God not; but then I didn’t think for a moment that Brexit could appeal to a majority of thinking voters.  So what do I know!

           

And, I went for a swim with my mobile phone in the pocket of the shorts that I was wearing when I plunged into the pool.  And it wasn’t waterproof.  And even after a night in a bag of dry rice it doesn’t work.  And I’ve had to buy another one.  I am not quite sure how I am going to blame this disaster on Brexit, but I will think of a way to do so and I will be fully justified in so doing.

           

Roll on something to smile about!