More Power Please!

    

 

 

When my parents bought their first semi-detached house together it was built on a green-field site in Rumney.  When we as a family went to visit, it was basically a field with Michaelmas daisies, a few poppies and lots of grass.  Eventually a rough road was cut into the site, and the outline of the proposed streets began to take shape.

     Foundations were laid and building work began.  But not on our plot!

     We were given various reasons for this delay, the most convincing one being that our plot was a sort of roundabout and roadway for the trucks and lorries serving the site and therefore could not be built on until much of the basic work on the site had been done.

     I had moved schools from Cathays to Llanrumney to accommodate our move into the new house.  Which wasn’t there and continued not to be there as I started Standard Three in Glan yr Avon Primary School.

     The great advantage of buying a new build is that you have some say (as far as the money stretches) to add extras, and so we were able to have double the allocation of power points in the kitchen and the living room.  And, as I recall a fancy tiled fireplace.  We could not stretch to a garage.  I love the way I say “we” as if my seven-year-old self could have contributed anything in the way of actual money to the enterprise!

     By the time that we were fully established in the new house it was the early 1960s and it was rapidly becoming clear that even with double the electrical outlets the power needs were outstripping the sockets available.  This was even more clearly the case in the kitchen where, in our previous home, the only regularly used electrical item (apart from the washing machine with mangle) was the toaster – whereas in the consumer driven 60s more and more electrical aids were deemed essential to the modern home.

     Nowadays so many of the devices, desires and gadgets of ordinary existence have batteries and need feeding on a daily basis that there are never enough outlets in which to plug to keep life going.

     I was going to continue by listing how many things I could see from where I am sitting that need power, but having seen two radios, three fans, a computer, a printer, three lights – I am disinclined to continue before people wonder what else is lurking in the morass of ‘stuff’ on my desk, and how the hell I manage to get anything done in said chaos (cf. earlier blogs!)

     This means, of course, in rooms that are studies, you will always find the ubiquitous trailing socket sprouting an unhealthy (and dangerous) accretion of plugs which, if all were utilized at the same time would probably short out most of the neighbourhood.

     I have to admit that I am guilty of trying to get around the dearth of sockets via the powered raft approach to electrical supply – but the offending articles are usually out of sight, under desks or behind furniture and therefore out of mind.

     Considering that I am surrounded by highly flammable paper in the form of books, magazines and my writing, I like to think that my word production is at least on a par with the danger inherent in moderate mountaineering.  I laugh to scorn electrical adversity!  Right up until the first spark.  And I don’t mean of imagination.

     The only thing that is running ‘hot’ on my desk is my Mac Mini which, with its base giving me more outlets looks as though it is powering a small city.  As a concession to safety I have taken out one of the power drains on it, where it was powering up a mini power bank!

     How many years do I have to regress before I can remember a time where I did not need extra electricity, where the power kept the light on and I needed nothing more? 

     I can still remember the birthday when I was about six, when I woke up to find my present had been placed in my bedroom when I was asleep, a wind-up record player with a very small collection of 78 rpm shellac records for me to play.  My parents were woken from their slumbers by the first of (many) playings of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (a tune and song they came to hate, as I never wearied of playing it) until the needle wore down and had to be replaced.

     I had no radio, or phone, or computer, or television, or ipad, or camera or anything that was electrical.  The most sophisticated thing that I owned was a Raleigh Star Rider bicycle that I was given for passing the 11+

     “The Good Old Days”?  I think not, it’s a meaningless question, there are far too many variables to consider for it to be useful.  But different certainly.  And something to think about.

The Cynical Long Game

 

 

 

 

 

There is a J G Ballad short story entitled, “The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considered as a downhill motor race” that you can read here:

https://evergreenreview.com/read/the-assassination-of-john-fitzgerald-kennedy-considered-as-a-downhill-motor-race/

where the title is perhaps more powerful than the actual story itself.  The rivalry between Johnson and Kennedy was well known and the reframing of the assassination as a race with winners (Johnson) and losers (Kennedy) is one that resonates.

 

   

 

 

That title and the competition that it suggests came back to me when I was momentarily able to supress the frothing fury and disgust that have been my overriding passions as I have been following the Surrealistic circus of None Of The Above trying to get 0.03% of the voting population to elect one or other of the wasters to be Prime Minister of a real country.

     Truss, with the characteristic malevolent disregard for conventional politics has gone all out for the Neanderthal Home Counties Conservative Vote and has thrown what The Guardian has described as “red-meat right-wing policies” to the ravening hordes of ageing, white, comfortable, English Conservatives who are going to elect her.  Her complete lack of effort to try and include the concerns of the rest of the country in her unseemly scramble for power have not held her back from assuming the mantle of The Unicorn and floating ill thought-out and plain wrong “solutions” that, while not working in what might be termed the real world, have all too much “reality” in the closed, petty world of her Conservative electorate. 

     She has shown no shame in pandering to the lowest possible denominator and has misled and downright lied to get her twisted message across.  Her only concern is power and its acquisition; all else is subsidiary.  And, let’s be fair, don’t knock it, it’s working.  Short of (I won’t say a miracle, because “Rish¡” is just as vile and unpalatable) a huge surprise, the shallow, cosplaying, Thatcher-lite cypher is going to be elected to head the Conservative Party and thus be the Prime Minister.

     Both sections of None Of The Above have been playing this election as a game.  Given the probable outcome you could say that Truss has been the more adroit politician but (ironically) at the expense of her wider political credibility.

     Rish¡ has in my view accepted that he is going to lose, but has decided to play the longer game by attacking Truss and her policies in a fairly trenchant way so that he can be seen as “the voice of reason” (or something!) when Truss assumes power and shows herself and her policies totally incapable of dealing with any and all of the problems facing her and her terrifying possible cabinet of the undead. 

      Sunak (I can’t stand his twee logo) is obviously prepared to wait for disaster (Please God!) in the next general election and then to shuffle modestly into the limelight and accept the heavy mantle of defeat by pushing Truss into the wilderness and leading the party forward in yet another “delete all and insert” periods pretending that the last years had nothing at all to do with him and that he is untouched by the crass failure of Truss because, look, he had warned about it all from the start!

     If a week is a long time in politics, then a couple of years (perhaps on the back benches) look like eons – but Sunak, with his untold millions, will be able to orchestrate his position, and build up his support so that by the time the electoral defeat (Please God!) has sunk in, he will be seen as the natural leader to guide the shaken party towards electability once again.

     Sunk has, sort of, made it clear that he would find it difficult to serve in a government led by Truss, but, out of power and out of the cabinet, it is very difficult to maintain a power base on the back benches without appearing to be disloyal.  And disloyalty is something the party cannot stand – unless, of course, you are dealing with a person who has always been serially disloyal, like Johnson - when Sunak’s resignation is seen as a “stab in the back” of a person that the 0,03% would still probably like to be “leading” them.

     Sunak is playing a dangerous personal game, dangerous in the sense that he could condemn himself to marginality in politics, and I’m not sure, having had a taste of power, that he would be prepared to sideline himself for years in the hope of eventual returns.

     What I sincerely hope is that the Conservative Party rips itself to pieces. 

     I am sick and tired of hearing that the Conservative Party is the most successfully resilient in Europe as it constantly re-invents itself to make itself appear to be electable time after time – while ruthlessly pursuing policies that keep the status quo and its wealthy supporters happy.  If only we could have a socialist government that acted with the same passion for the workers of the country rather than the less-than-1%ers!

     I look forward to the political future of my country with absolute dread.  I have no confidence that my country (including the unemployed, the disabled, the low paid, the sick, the old and all the other groups that are marginalized in some way or other, the arts, culture, education, the Health Service etc etc etc) will be better with a Truss government. 

     The wrecking ball of the right wing is swinging, ready to destroy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     I am fond, almost on a daily basis, of bringing up the picture of Goya’s etching, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters – but with the alien throwback Redwood poised to enter government at least one of those monsters can be given a recognizable face.  The only way is down!

 

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 71 – Monday, 25th May

I am still shaken by just how poor a defence Johnson mounted to justify the high-handedness of his arrogant aide.  When even the Daily Mail asks, “What planet do they think they are on!” as a reference to the incredible (literally!) insulting justification for Cummings’ rule breaking, joined with the sickeningly unedifying spectacle of supine ministers docilely toeing the Save The Dom cabinet line, you realize that you are witnessing a government imploding.

     Perhaps I should have said ‘seemingly imploding’ because I do not underestimate the ability of the Conservative Party to survive ‘fatal’ mistakes and misjudgements.  It is undeniable that Johnson is a lessened leader, I don’t say ‘character’ because that is clearly impossible, and if it becomes clear to him that his status is diminished then he will do what any narcissist does when self-worth is threatened: lash out and to hell with the collateral damage.

     Let us never forget that Johnson’s espousal of Brexit was quintessentially narcissistic: he was convinced by his own rhetoric, comparing and contrasting two pieces of his own writing to see which one would afford him greater possibilities for self-advancement.  I don’t know what the opposite of a Damascene Conversion would be to cover his case, but there was no blinding light from an all-powerful deity, but rather a greedy acceptance of his own perceived omnipotence fuelling his ludicrously inflated ego and presented as reason and logic and, god help duty, dedication and us!

     The front pages of the newspapers cannot make easy reading for Johnson, but they don’t make easy reading for the rest of the Conservative Party either.  Most MPs are concerned about their seats; anything that looses them public support is not to be tolerated – and these MPs postbags must be filled with howls of outrage about the preferential treatment of a member of the establishment as opposed to the PBI, or rather Plebs as they think of us.

     You can take the over-entitled git out of the Bullingdon Club, but the sense of them-and-us never leaves.  Johnson is a perfect example of the born into privilege and milking it for all it’s worth with the minimum of effort sort of the undeserving rich.  He is also a bully, a liar, malicious and, as the ‘defence’ of Cummings has clearly shown, a coward.  And cowards in power are dangerous.  As we are finding out every day.

     Unless Johnson takes visible control of the government then even his comfortable majority will not be enough to protect him from the Men in Suits whose only raison d’etre is to preserve power, and to whom Johnson is only a momentary blip on the time line of their sequestration of political dominance.

The fall out from the pathetic defence of Cummings, where we are expected to believe in a sort of Schrodinger’s Lockdown that does and does not allow free movement at the same time, continues.  Johnson’s cringe-makingly inept performance has had the surprising result of uniting all sections of society and all political parties in fully justified revulsion.  Except of course for the ‘usual suspects’ of Brexit insanity, though even some members of the ERG have called for Cummings’ head!  We truly live in strange times!

     As a last resort, Cummings himself is to make a public statement and take questions.  I suppose if Cummings can supress his natural revulsion for the carping criticism of the ‘lesser breeds without the law’ by whom he thinks he is surrounded, then a person of his obvious intelligence and manipulative skills would be the sort of man to carry it off.  But he really will have to out-Houdini Houdini to get away with it and I hope The Daily Mirror and The Guardian hacks have got their linguistic scalpels out and ready to dissect everything that l’éminence désordonée has to say. 

     I keep checking in with The Guardian on my phone to find out the time because I do not want to miss a word.  I have just found out that his statement will take place at 4pm UK time, 5pm my time.  I will be there, don’t let me down Radio 4!

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!