Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The daily temperature graph fluctuates, but its general direction is down.  Windows and doors are still open, but the cloud cover emphasises the cooler temperatures.  At least it is not raining, and I can keep congratulating myself that I am not in the UK.

     Our Prime Minister Without a Popular Mandate has, at last, come out of hiding and given a few interviews to the local media, she doesn’t seem ready to take on the nationals with the threat of the Today Programme on BBC4 a big no, no.

     The key element in what Truss said was that, in spite of virtually all reasonable economic punditry condemning her reckless gamble on the British Economy, she had to do “what I believe is right”!  So, if I understand her correctly, she didn’t need a budgetary forecast about what she was proposing because that would have been based on informed projections and facts by proven experts, whereas what she and her wrecking chancellor were about was more to do with self-justified "belief".

     So, the lying Northern girl who has misrepresented her early life of “grinding middle class poverty” and spread her lies about a “failing school” that somehow managed to get her into Oxford University, has now reinvented herself as some sort of mystic: Our Lady of the Bright Economic Vision. 

     I imagine her as a grotesque reworking of Bernini’s sculpture of The Agony of Saint Teresa, lying back clothed in her carefully selected High Street brands (to demonstrate her un-Rish¡ down-to-earthiness) framed by strips of the golden wallpaper of her disgraced predecessor torn from the wall, calculating eyes half-open (to note and take advantage of the main photographic chance as it presents itself) and waiting for the gilt arrow of the Angel of the 1% to pierce the space where her heart should be so that she can unleash foison on those that already have.

     We really shouldn’t be surprised, as it is the same “belief” that drove forward the absurdity of Brexit and that continues to power its demented defenders in the face of demonstrable disaster. Brexiteers actively and robustly excluded so-called experts (Britain, declared Goblin Gove, has “had enough of experts”) from any consideration of the merits in the discussion for deciding the most momentous question of the new millennium.  It wasn’t facts, demonstrable facts, that drove the argument, it was “belief” – and we have seen just how efficacious that has been in boosting the wealth and reputation of the nation!

    Of course, the most obvious problem with dealing with someone whose ideas are based on “belief” is that there is no argument that can win.  The ‘facts’ may line up against the point of view, but all the holder of it has to say is, “But, I believe differently” and what is there to say to that?

     Belief and prejudice are nearly related, and while I believe that facts may strengthen “belief” and give it a foundation in fact so that it is no longer a belief but something approaching a scientific fact amenable to the ‘scientific method’, I also believe that facts must eventually defeat prejudice – you will have noted that I have used the dreaded word “believe” myself!

     I suppose when you come down to it, the way that you think is governed by what you think society is, and what your response to humanity is. 

     If there is one thing that I believe in, it’s people, working and thinking together.  It is the community, whether it be of science, or economic, or the arts, or nations, or whatever grouping you like to use to define the mass, that determine what is true and what is right.  I pop my daily pills, not in the mere belief that they will do me good, but because the scientific community and the medical establishment have produced, checked, and authorized their use.

     Cult leaders can fleece their flocks by wielding ‘belief’ as an effective tool to part ‘believers’ from their wealth, but I expect more from my political leaders.

     And that last thought might well be a naïf belief.  But it is one I cling to.

We'll let you know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve always felt that Polonius in Hamlet has had a bad press.  He is usually dismissed as a boringly preachy busybody who voices trite truisms and is eventually killed behind the arras, and who cares?

     In my production of Hamlet, Polonius would be a master of state craft and a more intelligently Machiavellian protagonist than the fussy old father that he usually is.  I think that a lot of the advice that he gives is good and has become unattributed aphorism.  It is particularly pleasing to see that our departing Prime Minister has taken one of his homilies to his tiny little heart.

     In what is probably Polonius’s most famous utterance he says, and he prefaces it with a ranking of its importance (“This above all”) “. . . to thine own self be true” – and with his last speech Johnson has personified that dictum, by using his last public performative vomit of words as Prime Minister to lie, lie and lie again!

     His achievement of the first stage of becoming World King (i.e., Prime Minister of Great Britain and The United Kingdom) was through the lies that seeded the victory in the corrupt Brexit campaign.  Throughout his inglorious stewardship of the Government, he has lied to The Queen, Parliament (repeatedly) and The British Public – as well, of course as various lovers, friends, officials, foreigners, wives, colleagues, bosses.  Everyone, in short, with whom he has ever been in contact.

     Everything in his Last Speech was either an out and out lie, a wilful misinterpretation of accepted reality, or a shading of the truth with intent to mislead.  From his false assurance that he would retire to his plough, knowing as he did that his chosen Classical reference was to a man who was called from rusticity to public life again, to his fulsome assurance of his backing of Truss (an assertion of loyalty from a man who made an entire career out of disloyalty) his statements were, one after the other, disingenuous.

     It is remarkable that being Prime Minister during one of the most turbulent post war times has left his character untainted by any scintilla of self-knowledge.  He started the job on a lie, he has lied through his time in office, and his valedictory speech was also a pack of lies.

     His baseness is so profound that nothing, not a near death experience; unnecessary Covid deaths; divorce; marriage; birth of a child; criminality; public disgust; rejection by colleagues; degradation of Britain’s position in the world; breaking draconian rules and being found out; presiding over a cost of living crisis; threatening the destruction of The Union; breaking the law – and so on, NOTHING has been able to dent, nay, scratch his galactic self-esteem.

     His leaving speech reeked of faux humility – lauding his imaginary achievements and parading his equally imaginary victimhood; praising a woman he hopes will fail, so that he can be seen as a Bonnie Prince Charlie character, the king over the water, waiting for the call to take what is rightfully his.

     Johnson should remember that The Young Pretender’s life ended in bitterness, loneliness, drunkenness, and failure and, something that Johnson can all too easily relate to, dependent on the charity of others for his lifestyle!

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 I am building up my strength to respond to his replacement’s speech in little over an hour or so.  Toni has suggested a coffee in town and perhaps a sugar free ice cream in our favourite gelateria.  Sounds like a good way to separate myself from the political anger that is all too evident in my world view nowadays.

 

Oh, and by the way, the “to thine own self be true” continues:

 

“And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man”

 

And to be fair to Johnson, he has been glaringly true to his debased self from day 1, in his twisted world of alternative facts, the only way in which he could have been false to himself, was to have told the truth occasionally, but he had the strength of character to resist such weakness!

 

Lies, Dates and Vacuums!

 

It was just as well that I got my Conspiracy Theory about the Trumpian Virus in quickly as the newspapers and the internet are awash with the assumption that there is more to this than meets the eye.  Trump of course (of course, naturally) fuels uncertainty by doing things like having pictures staged in his hospital presidential suite where he is signing bank pieces of paper: The King of Lies Lying Again!

     The fact that there is even the remotest chance of that vile anthesis getting anywhere near a chance of staying on in the White House is beyond astonishing. 

     After a series of inappropriate sexual liaisons between staff and students coming to light in my university and nothing being done about it, I asked one of my lecturers what someone would have to do to be sacked.  “Well,” he replied, “I think buggering the Dean in the Quad might do the trick!” 

     What would Trump have to do?  The mind cringes at the grotesque extent of depravity that he would have to show before his ‘base’ Base would turn on him.  Though, thinking about it, I would like to hear some of the terminally deluded MAGA supporters try and explain away Trump doing what my lecturer suggested might be a terminal sexual escapade!

     But, enough of such trivial problems when there is the tragedy of my Significant Birthday Party being cancelled.  United Nations Day will now be just one day among many – though at least the two of us can go out and celebrate.

 

I will have reached the age at which, I have been told, getting travel insurance becomes a little more problematical.  As travel is not on the cards at the moment and is unlikely to be for the next six months, or nine months, or?  It is not a pressing problem, but it is one of those niggling tasks that you set yourself and then forget about until you are about to travel and you suddenly discover that the cost of immediate insurance is more than the cost of your holiday.

     Writing about it makes it Something To Be Done and, in my world, the word makes things more real so it is now lodged in my mind as a concept that must be dealt with.  Like the vacuum cleaner.

     I have recently become the proud possessor of a new cordless vacuum cleaner – it’s the three flights of stairs that make a cordless machine essential and I am therefore faced with the problem of what to do with the old one.

     To be fair the old one works intermittently, which in many ways is the worst form of fault.  If the thing is dead it can be thrown out.  But if it sort-of works then there is something deeply uncomfortable with jettisoning a machine that is sort-of useable.

     The problem could be a connection in the floor cleaning (i.e. the most important part) of the hoover.  The thing still has suction, but unless the little blue light comes on you can push the machine around but the brushes are not turning and the efficiency of the thing is low.

     So, I am going to take it to a repair shop.  God alone knows how I am going to eke out my Spanish to explain what I think is wrong; but it is an exciting prospect!  I have passed even more difficult linguistic challenges with the aid of handy Spanish nouns and hysteria with a dash of Marcel Marceau thrown into the exciting performance that comprises my attempt at communicating in a foreign language.

     Unfortunately, my past dealings with the repair shop have not been of the most fruitful, as the last time I brought something in for repair they dismissed my concerns and told me to buy new.  I called (via email and telephone) on the ‘authorities’ of two countries to refute their claims and they had, ignominiously, to admit defeat and replace the defective item.

     I suspect that the fault in the hoover is a simple mechanical or electrical one, but one constantly has to deal with the grasping tendrils of planned obsolescence, the lack of technical ability and a built-in disinclination to repair rather than replace that frustrate a desire to make do and mend.

     You might be asking, “But, you have already bought a new replacement for your ‘broken’ machine, so why not simply get rid of it and make full use of the new?”  A good question, but one that doesn’t really work with the way that I buy things.  My logic is not the sort that says that I have to use a brush and pan while the old machine is repaired.  Buying is an end in itself.  And “argue not the need” (or “reason not the need” as Shakespeare might insist he actually wrote) as sufficient unto the day is the purchase thereof.  So, to speak.

I have heard that . . .

 

Trump invites many things: disbelief, derision, contempt, hatred, fear, amazement, dislocation, bewilderment, denial and on and on and on.  But the fact that such a supremely unsuited, cataclysmically inept buffoon actually made it to the White House compels any reasonably compos mentis observer of the political scene to resort to Conspiracy Theories to explain the inexplicable.

It was not exactly rocket science to work out that a person who swaggeringly dismisses much of the science behind viral spread and who is loath to be seen either wearing a mask or physically distancing (except from his wife, of course) will in the normal course of events succumb to the virus himself.  And lo!  It came to pass that the German demi-god Schadenfreude saw the contempt that Trump displayed for Generally Accepted Science and decided to let Nature take its course and allowed statistical probability to claim another victim.

Let us be very clear, much as I loathe Trump and the grotesquery that he has made of the Republican Party, I do not wish him ill.  Politically I wish him to the oblivion he and his party richly deserve, but I would not wish Covid on anyone.  Not even him.

So, now that I have made my position clear on his personal health, we come to my personal Conspiracy-Theory-Take on the news that Trump and his wife have tested positive for the virus.

The first question I would ask is, “How do we know that Trump is positive?”  Do we have an independent verification of the results?  I would not trust anyone (ANYONE) in the Trump camp to recognize the ethical difference between truth and falsehood. 

The Trump of ‘alternative facts’ lives in a world where the only truth is Trump, everyone and everything else is a reflection of him.  He is the living embodiment of the facile philosophical thought experiment that seeks to discommode you by the unsettling thought that, “Everything in the World is just part of my dream”. 

In Alice through the looking-glass Tweedledum and Tweedledee explain to Alice about the vital importance of the sleeping Red King, “If he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?    You'd be nowhere.  Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!  If that there King was to wake, you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!”

That was an extract from a Classic piece of Victorian children’s literature, a fantasy, unreal whimsical.  Trump takes it as a manual for political life!

So, what do I ‘believe’ is behind the so-called Covid diagnosis of the Orange Leader of the Free World?

Let’s start with how far Trump can delude himself.  We know that he redefines reality to suit his purposes, but surely even he must at least glance at the polls that suggest that he is behind in all the areas that matter.  He must (surely) recognize that there is a very real chance that he is going to lose in November and with that loss comes the very real probability that he is going to be prosecuted for some of the crimes that he has committed during his appalling presidency.

Bearing that in mind.  I do not believe that Trump has a positive Covid test.  He is using the ‘diagnosis’ for his own means.

The first “’Presidential’” debate was an accelerated train wreck of a disaster.  He would be well advised to do no more.  His period of quarantine gives him an obvious excuse to provide a series of videoed, scripted electioneering interventions where serious editing could make even that boor look mildly authoritative.  His quarantine would also give him the excuse not to have rallies filled with his repulsive base ostentatiously not wearing masks or distancing, where his ‘born again’ conversion to the precautions that have been suggested since earlier in the year will not impact the visuals of rallies.

It is in Trump’s interests for him to get ‘seriously ill’ and to have to hand over the presidency to that odious bigot Pence.  As soon as Pence is president, he can then pardon Trump for all the crimes that he has committed during his mendacious, kleptomaniac, nepotistic, terminally corrupt time in the White House.

After being pardoned Trump can either 1) make a miraculous recovery if it seems likely that he can get a second term or, 2) leave the tail-end presidency and disaster of the election to Pence as Trump ‘struggles heroically with the virus’ and laughs all the way to the bank.   Again.

Trump is the acme of untrustworthiness so anything he does or says cannot be taken at face value, least of all his dealings with the virus.  Would that he has a Demesne conversion and becomes a reasonable human being, but that is not on the cards.  He has made a life of lies and there has been nothing over the last four years to suggest that there is any possibility of change.

I will follow the news and look forward to the conspiracy theories linked to the latest developments that match and extend my own!