We're in the final big mudslide before a general election. Political fuckers from all sides are getting their licks in, trying to persuade us poor unejicated plebs what's best for us, in a particular tone taken by Westminster political spods. You know, the ones who are all tied to City of London vampires. The ones who don't want working people to get a fair shake because of some vague ideological standpoint that pay equality is bad.
Don't ask why, it just is. Shut up and keep watching Eastenders, Coronation Street and whatever the current reality TV is. BBC News will keep you informed of what we want to tell you and how you should think about it. We've also got The Sun and The Daily Mail for you to read. Oh, and by the way, inserting rusty pins into your genitals is a fucking fantastic idea.
But I digress. That's a conversation for another time. Or have I said all I need to on the subject already? DRAMATIC MUSIC!
That was an interesting digression. Right out the gate, whoosh, go off ninety degrees to where I wanted. Back on point, fucko.
Since the Scottish independence referendum there's been heightened political engagement in Scotland. We saw droves of people rush to join the SNP and the Greens. In the wake of a number of promises broken and others Satanically twisted in their fulfilment, we watched as Labour turned into a pariah party in Scotland. They and the Tories worked hard to stop people from voting for independence, and they succeeded, in an entirely, hilariously, pyrrhic way. Instead of a small portion of the Scottish population eyeing the Westminster lunch club suspiciously, now a big chunk of the country looking really closely at that prawn cocktail and wondering how many jobs were lost in order for the tubby MP to have it. Not that Westminster give a fuck, their most important voting demographic is also their biggest, funnily enough, and resides around the south east of England – right on their doorstep. Still, it's something of a worrying niggle to them I imagine, like those head aches and the voices. Oh, the voices.
No, Mister Stumpleflush, I can't possibly do that with a corkscrew...
So with all that as a wonderful background, with Scotland's populace suddenly more engaged and in a perfect position to turn the screws on Westminster. What do we start doing the moment we've got this level of engagement? What's the bestest idea you can think of with this all going on? Anybody? Nobody can guess?
We split into tribes. Yay! Something positive is taking place, let's suck all the fucking good from it and turn it into a Who Can Call Each Other Cunts Most contest. Yep. We'll erect tents at either side of a fucking ravine and scowl at each other. Get a nice big animosity inflation unit going to blow huge floats that hurl insults at the people on the other side. And possibly sprays cat piss at them while they're at it.
It's like a fight over territory between two factions of chimps, except without all the screaming, shit-flinging an– oh, fuck it I can't even finish that sentence. That level of lie would implode the entire fucking planet.
It's just really nasty. It's like there's something burrowed in human psyche that means we can't just be a majority on something. We have to schism down the middle and throw bodily fluids at each other. Nice foetid ones at that. The ones we've collected in jars over the years and let get good and decomposed.
There's nothing wrong with being at different side of a political discussion. That whole thing of robust political discourse being an important corner stone of democracy is a valid argument, but the problem is, in our fractious internet age, people retreat to be with people of the same political standpoints as them. It's natural. We don't want to spend every day being told we're wrong and it's good to be around smarter people who can give us ideas to defend our standpoints when we do encounter people who tell us we're wrong. The sticking point comes when we don't leave these groups and they become an echo chamber. Those conditions are arsehole ideology breeding grounds.
It also means when people of different political opinions come together from these places, dripping with the absolute smelly determination they're right, it turns into sloppy shit fight. You know what's horrible in a political discussion? I'll assume you actually want to know and haven't just wandered off with your fingers in your ears going, "I don't do this. I don't do this," like a cunt. It's when anyone, on any side, rolls their eyes and goes, "That's just typical of what your side says," as if to dismiss them. I do it when I'm reading shit the Tories are up to, and I'll probably do it a dozen times today, the difference being is that I'm not in discussion with someone with a differing opinion. Yet this is an accepted part of political discussion, even including the inevitable snorting.
It's not even isolated to internet or private conversations, it's used in the highest political discussions in the land. This is a response you'll see in assemblies and parliaments right across the land. Like it's some kind of all-powerful weapon against ideologies that will cut an opponent off at the knees without a response. They're right about one thing, it is hard to respond to, outside of 'you're a cunt'. Of course it's typical of what one political view would say if it aligns with their political view. Fucking morons.
It ties in with the whole thing of a misunderstanding of what robust debate actually means. Watching footage from the House of Commons is like watching a bunch of unsupervised and undisciplined school kids scream at each other from across the play ground. It's a football away from a couple of MPs rolling around on the floor punching and biting each other. It's rowdy, it's horrible, it doesn't get much done and that seems to be the way our political wanks want it. If that's how top level political discussion goes, what does that leave for the rest of us?
That's right. Festering penis scrapings.
For fuck's sake, we need to be a bit more mature about how we discuss these things. Yes, you disagree with what that SNP person or Tory person is saying, but outright calling them a cunt isn't going to get you anywhere, even if it is justified. Passion is good. Passion gets shit done. Foaming mouthed, eye-rolling raving makes people reach for the fucking cattle prod.
Pack it in you fucking idiots.
Will
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 March 2015
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
Yes, We Do Have Priorities.
"Stop talking about this and think about this!" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot recently. My language might be vague and you're probably already wondering, after a whole sentence, why the fuck you clicked on this blog. You need to bear with me. I have a point, but I'm going to waffle a bit before I get there. Make yourself a cup of tea or relax yourself with some porn, whatever it takes, I'll be waiting*.
Done? Got yer tea and biscuits in comfortable reach. Cleaned up? Dribbled tea everywhere when you thought you'd be a smart arse and try to do both things at once? Sicko. We'll assume you've done whatever thing you needed to relax yourself and we'll say no more. Especially about the stains. Oh, the stains.
You know when you see something so odd that it stops you in your tracks? Sometimes you go, "Oh, right," and carry on with your day and pour out those cold beans from the can and shovel them into your mouth**. Sometimes that weird thing gets you thinking. It could be anything, but let's go with a celebrity's face suddenly changes to something unrecognisable†. It's obvious that's she's had work done. Enough to alter the way she looks so drastically. Now, I don't think it's fair to shame her, she's a victim of a hypocritical system that pulls women one way then another, mocking them for just about any decision they make.
The small rumble of interest caused a few people to start wailing about all the other things wrong in the world. Excuse me? "There are more important things in the world than Renée Zellweger's face!" No kidding, crazy person.
Even stranger, and more odiously, was when Nigel Farage waded into the vague nonsense that was the UKIP Calypso this week. Now, the song was an offensive piece of crap on a number of levels, and I'm not going to link it. But the pan-faced goblin that is Nigel Farage got on his high horse in the Independent. He does the same, "There are more important things to be angry about," rant and then points, obliquely, at Ebola and more blatantly at historical child abuse in Rotherham. In this article you can almost see the straining erection he has for getting more column inches and air time for such a stupid thing and then thrusts a veiny, probably corkscrew-shaped, stiffy in the faces of anyone close by. It was easy publicity for a racism-factory that runs on a sticky fuel of grubby attention‡.
This curious phenomenon of pointing at things that are more important to shift attention away from something seen as fairly trivial does a disservice to people in general. You are aware that we can give thinking time to other things, right? Some things make a bigger impact, and time does dull them – be honest, in a few months both of the examples above will be forgotten. By squealing about them you've got people thinking about them for longer and perversely taking attention away from the thing your trying to point out. People are weird, contrarian and arseholey about that.
People do need to think about other things than all the horrible shit that's going on in the world – even if it is a minor scandal or uproar – because we would become either fatigued or humourless existers who can't eat because they are stuck in constant sad face. It's like having a tiny bit of salacious gossip and screaming at the person, "I don't care if he fell into bed with his brother-in-law's wife, what about fucking PALESTINE§!?"
Yes, giving any thought to the small things is silly, and that's kind of the point. We're still aware of the giant ogres and injustices stomping around the world, we just need something to take the edge of or we'd go fucking nuts. I notice no one ever berates anyone for looking at cute animal vids on Youtube. Sometimes we need something less horrible to be able to deal with the nightmarish shit that's going on.
And then, of course, looking at my half-formed examples above more closely, you'll start to see that they're indicative of much bigger issues with society. Poor Renée Zellweger is a new poster child for our fucked up attitudes towards women – she shouldn't have felt the need to use surgery to look younger, but she conversely shouldn't be pilloried for doing it. Nigel Farage and UKIP are fucking cancerous political spectres, stoking hatred against certain demographics, giving voice to the worst kind of bigotry and polishing it up as mainstream politics. You know why Farage and his particular breed of ghoul are trying to do this? To line their already pretty money-padded pockets. They are an expression of our greedy-shit political system, amplified to a chinless, guffawing, hundred pound note-smoking, poor-mocking caricature straight out of a Dickens novel.
In Nigel Farage's case in particular, you have to ask who benefits from the distraction: the song itself was a distraction on its own, but still shone a spotlight on UKIP's spineless dickery, so Farage§§, the slippery fuck, did a bit of crafty sleight of hand. He got publicity for the party while diverting attention away from their abhorrent policies. He's clearly been getting lessons from David Blane§§§.
So, everyone, just calm the fuck down, take a deep breath and let's just agree that Nigel Farage is a cunt.
* Just keep thinking about that when you're trying to crank one out.
** Oh? That's just me. Okay. Fuck.
† I mean, seriously, if the captions and headlines hadn't said who she was, I wouldn't have known. No, Russell Brand, that's not a result of getting older. Ageing a few years in adulthood doesn't cause that level of appearance change.
‡ And, fucking hell, the BBC have been doing enough of that. How much of Farage's tainted champagne have BBC execs drank to constantly shove that cunt to the forefront of political debate in the UK when UKIP are still essentially a fringe party?
§ But really it's still fucking awful there.
§§ He might be a giant grinning thumb, but he's a sharp grinning thumb, that's why he's so dangerous.
§§§ Is that charlatan shithead still around? Levitation, fucking hell.
Will
Done? Got yer tea and biscuits in comfortable reach. Cleaned up? Dribbled tea everywhere when you thought you'd be a smart arse and try to do both things at once? Sicko. We'll assume you've done whatever thing you needed to relax yourself and we'll say no more. Especially about the stains. Oh, the stains.
You know when you see something so odd that it stops you in your tracks? Sometimes you go, "Oh, right," and carry on with your day and pour out those cold beans from the can and shovel them into your mouth**. Sometimes that weird thing gets you thinking. It could be anything, but let's go with a celebrity's face suddenly changes to something unrecognisable†. It's obvious that's she's had work done. Enough to alter the way she looks so drastically. Now, I don't think it's fair to shame her, she's a victim of a hypocritical system that pulls women one way then another, mocking them for just about any decision they make.
The small rumble of interest caused a few people to start wailing about all the other things wrong in the world. Excuse me? "There are more important things in the world than Renée Zellweger's face!" No kidding, crazy person.
Even stranger, and more odiously, was when Nigel Farage waded into the vague nonsense that was the UKIP Calypso this week. Now, the song was an offensive piece of crap on a number of levels, and I'm not going to link it. But the pan-faced goblin that is Nigel Farage got on his high horse in the Independent. He does the same, "There are more important things to be angry about," rant and then points, obliquely, at Ebola and more blatantly at historical child abuse in Rotherham. In this article you can almost see the straining erection he has for getting more column inches and air time for such a stupid thing and then thrusts a veiny, probably corkscrew-shaped, stiffy in the faces of anyone close by. It was easy publicity for a racism-factory that runs on a sticky fuel of grubby attention‡.
This curious phenomenon of pointing at things that are more important to shift attention away from something seen as fairly trivial does a disservice to people in general. You are aware that we can give thinking time to other things, right? Some things make a bigger impact, and time does dull them – be honest, in a few months both of the examples above will be forgotten. By squealing about them you've got people thinking about them for longer and perversely taking attention away from the thing your trying to point out. People are weird, contrarian and arseholey about that.
People do need to think about other things than all the horrible shit that's going on in the world – even if it is a minor scandal or uproar – because we would become either fatigued or humourless existers who can't eat because they are stuck in constant sad face. It's like having a tiny bit of salacious gossip and screaming at the person, "I don't care if he fell into bed with his brother-in-law's wife, what about fucking PALESTINE§!?"
Yes, giving any thought to the small things is silly, and that's kind of the point. We're still aware of the giant ogres and injustices stomping around the world, we just need something to take the edge of or we'd go fucking nuts. I notice no one ever berates anyone for looking at cute animal vids on Youtube. Sometimes we need something less horrible to be able to deal with the nightmarish shit that's going on.
And then, of course, looking at my half-formed examples above more closely, you'll start to see that they're indicative of much bigger issues with society. Poor Renée Zellweger is a new poster child for our fucked up attitudes towards women – she shouldn't have felt the need to use surgery to look younger, but she conversely shouldn't be pilloried for doing it. Nigel Farage and UKIP are fucking cancerous political spectres, stoking hatred against certain demographics, giving voice to the worst kind of bigotry and polishing it up as mainstream politics. You know why Farage and his particular breed of ghoul are trying to do this? To line their already pretty money-padded pockets. They are an expression of our greedy-shit political system, amplified to a chinless, guffawing, hundred pound note-smoking, poor-mocking caricature straight out of a Dickens novel.
In Nigel Farage's case in particular, you have to ask who benefits from the distraction: the song itself was a distraction on its own, but still shone a spotlight on UKIP's spineless dickery, so Farage§§, the slippery fuck, did a bit of crafty sleight of hand. He got publicity for the party while diverting attention away from their abhorrent policies. He's clearly been getting lessons from David Blane§§§.
So, everyone, just calm the fuck down, take a deep breath and let's just agree that Nigel Farage is a cunt.
* Just keep thinking about that when you're trying to crank one out.
** Oh? That's just me. Okay. Fuck.
† I mean, seriously, if the captions and headlines hadn't said who she was, I wouldn't have known. No, Russell Brand, that's not a result of getting older. Ageing a few years in adulthood doesn't cause that level of appearance change.
‡ And, fucking hell, the BBC have been doing enough of that. How much of Farage's tainted champagne have BBC execs drank to constantly shove that cunt to the forefront of political debate in the UK when UKIP are still essentially a fringe party?
§ But really it's still fucking awful there.
§§ He might be a giant grinning thumb, but he's a sharp grinning thumb, that's why he's so dangerous.
§§§ Is that charlatan shithead still around? Levitation, fucking hell.
Will
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
And Lo, It Happened.
A short one after a long absence. I've just had all the wind knocked out of my sails.
I write this a week after the No voters won*. It's still raw. I was going to go on a rant, but this post covers everything already. Just add something about a moronic war and fracking fucking everywhere.
I will say I'm a tiny bit more optimistic than I was last Friday. There's been this groundswell of political interest as some No voters are realising just what they've done and incensed Yes voters rally to push change. I say I'm only a bit, because, like the promises made by the three main parties a day or two before the referendum, there is no politic interest or will in Westminster to listen to us uppity Jocks. Labour and the Tories will simply turn away and pretend it's not happening. I hope I'm wrong and the collective force of will affects change, but will hope be enough?
* I say won, but they're swimming in the same shit as the rest of us, only some of them are grinning and gloating about it.
Will
I write this a week after the No voters won*. It's still raw. I was going to go on a rant, but this post covers everything already. Just add something about a moronic war and fracking fucking everywhere.
I will say I'm a tiny bit more optimistic than I was last Friday. There's been this groundswell of political interest as some No voters are realising just what they've done and incensed Yes voters rally to push change. I say I'm only a bit, because, like the promises made by the three main parties a day or two before the referendum, there is no politic interest or will in Westminster to listen to us uppity Jocks. Labour and the Tories will simply turn away and pretend it's not happening. I hope I'm wrong and the collective force of will affects change, but will hope be enough?
* I say won, but they're swimming in the same shit as the rest of us, only some of them are grinning and gloating about it.
Will
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Goddamn It! It's Not About THAT!
I'm going to insult some of you. Yeah, I've probably been insulting your intelligence in this blog for a while, but today, I'm just going to come out and say it, I'm going to insult you. To be honest I think the ones I'm going to insult need it. Probably won't achieve much, but...well, I haven't thought much past that. Rest assured there's a good reason, I'm sure you'll come up with one, you brainless fuck.
Got this booklet through the door this morning. Actually, this afternoon, since the poor, overworked postman would be shoving the bloody things through every single fucking door. The booklet was called What Staying in the United Kingdom means for Scotland. It claims to be information. It reads like a fucking book full of patronising orders and flimsy proclamations to me. It's a publication created by the vested interest of Westminster*.
And it was the final straw on whether I should go off on a fucking rant about the question of Scottish independence. I'll tell you right now, I'm for it. Just get that right out there before any ambiguity can set in. I'll be voting yes.
Do you want to know why?
Probably not, but I'm going to tell you. I'm sick of London being the centre of every decision made in this country. It feels like every political and fiscal decision made by the UK government is for the benefit of the parasitic resource sink in the south east. I have nothing against London, it's a wonderful place to visit, but that doesn't mean I want every decision made in the rest of the country used to prop it up. It's not right and it's not fair. Money and people who would benefit areas like Yorkshire, Cumbria and Central Scotland are drawn to the city to the detriment of these places. How the fuck is that right?
It's like the clichéd school bully who demands your lunch money and gives you nothing but pain in return. The rest of the country only gets inflated house prices in return for sending tributes of people and money to the insatiable London. A whole country can't be used to finance a single city.
Yet we, the Scottish people are urged to stay with this abusive relationship, because, we're condescendingly informed, it's better for us. Yeah, I like being scudded in the head with a cane while some cunt who has enough money already dips my fucking pocket. And none of the current national parties will do anything different, because we have a bunch of creepy career politicians who are beholden to equally creepy business interests. Rich folk helping out rich folk, aye they have our best interests at heart. Bunch of fucking cunts.
And you do realise why some of the Better Together people are shouting so loud, right? No? How about if I say they're MPs? That help you out?
They are another vested interest. What happens to all those Scottish MPs in the event of a 'Yes' vote? That's right, they don't get their subsidised trips to London any more. Oh no! Their relevance will twirl away down the toilet. You know and the nice, generous expenses and chance at a juicy peerage. But of course the money and title has nothing to do with it, it's all about doing the best for their constituents. I do wish there was a sarcasm tag.
Let's be clear, too, this isn't some wrong-headed Braveheart** pish about fucking the English. That has nothing to do with it. I think the rest of England could benefit from getting shot of slimy shits that inhabit Whitehall. The UK government doesn't really represent Scotland or the rest of the country as it stands. If the current UK government wasn't hacking up the NHS or punishing poor people for not having enough money or being led around by the nose by tabloid journalism, I might waver a bit more, but what we see is Tories and LibDems slashing at the infrastructure of welfare and finger-fucking the wounds.
And that's another thing, all the fuckwits who think "I don't like Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon," is a valid reason for voting no, please take a swim in the North Sea with bowling balls tied to your legs, because your diminutive IQ is dragging the rest of us down. Yeah Salmond is an egotistical goon, but we don't need to have him forever. An independent Scotland will still be democratic, we won't suddenly become a dictatorship. Vote the fucker out once we have our own country. Simple as that.
I'm sure there's a chance he'll turn on us when he gets into office, but I'd rather take that chance over dealing with the Westminster fuckers who've shown they'll happily slit a newborn's throat if it got them a few extra coppers in their pockets. The breed at the top in the Houses of Parliament at the moment are the most heartless, corporate and ideology-driven fungal-infections you can imagine. In it together; or in it for themselves? You shouldn't need to think about that if you follow the pattern of their behaviour.
Essentially, if you vote 'No' to independence you've forfeited your right to complain about any Westminster government, because you told them you were happy to let them continue to do whatever the fuck they like. I mean they've already fast tracked privatising the Royal Mail, what kind of shit is that? Who's to say the next government won't start to renege on devolution, because, "Clearly you want to have more to do with Westminster. Why else would you stay in the union. Come, this will only hurt forever."
Tell me you can't imagine that walking modelling balloon David Cameron doing something like that to appease the great Maggie. Seriously, can't you just imagine him having a shrine to Margaret Thatcher in his bedroom, with the mask he makes his wife wear when he's fucking her hung up next to unnervingly intimate photos of Thatcher? David Cameron and that smirking goblin Nigel Farage show the same contempt for Scotland as Thatcher did. It's the same contempt they hold for anyone not as rich as them. You want a shit-monger like Cameron to still be making decisions from Downing Street? Fuck, do you want barely there political drone Ed Milliband in Number Ten? What sort of hell do you think he'll rain on Scotland? Those adenoids are just waiting for their revenge, people!
Then you have the leaders of the Scottish Labour party and the Scottish Conservative party, Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson, who hold the people of Scotland in such little worth they don't believe we can think for ourselves. Johann Lamont just out and said it. Ruth Davidson hasn't in so many words, but, because she's a Tory, it's an easy bet she believes it, too.
They all subscribe to the same corrosive notion that rigid capitalism is the most sensible economic option. Yeah, and trickle-down economics works. Fucking hell, the idea of infinite growth for anything is the most preposterous notion ever conceived. Not to sound hysterical here†, but it's a big old lie. It's a lie to keep already frighteningly wealthy and powerful people in the power and wealth they think is their right. It's the same lie that's led to sell offs of public services or the barmy notion that public services should be profitable. That's not the benchmark of a public service's worth; efficiency isn't decided by how much money electricity, public transport, the postal service or healthcare makes, it's how well they're doing to stop society from crumbling around our ears. Taxes from the businesses these services help to support should be invested, not wrenched in bloated bills from the pockets of normal people. The fact that Westminster politicians are so cowardly and lacking in imagination to dare deviate from this dogmatic bollocks scares the living shit out of me and it should you, too.
Do you really want to be still part of that shit? If you do then you're a fucking moron. You don't deserve my respect. Or air, for that matter.
I'll concede, though, both sides in this campaign have been guilty of being cagey on several subjects. It's not been a nice campaign. The Yes side have stooped as low as the No side and that's fucking shameful. We shouldn't let this political bickering put us off getting our own country. The transition won't be easy, my friend, but there's a chance it will be worth it. Can it really be as bad as what we've had shoved down our throats already?
* There's a brilliant ripping apart of it here. Or there was. The fucking links died hasn't it?
** I fucking hate that piece of shit button-pressing film. It's not about freedom, it's about a fucking sociopath annoyed because he can't get his dick wet.
† Dude, already happened, wipe the spittle away.
Will
Got this booklet through the door this morning. Actually, this afternoon, since the poor, overworked postman would be shoving the bloody things through every single fucking door. The booklet was called What Staying in the United Kingdom means for Scotland. It claims to be information. It reads like a fucking book full of patronising orders and flimsy proclamations to me. It's a publication created by the vested interest of Westminster*.
And it was the final straw on whether I should go off on a fucking rant about the question of Scottish independence. I'll tell you right now, I'm for it. Just get that right out there before any ambiguity can set in. I'll be voting yes.
Do you want to know why?
Probably not, but I'm going to tell you. I'm sick of London being the centre of every decision made in this country. It feels like every political and fiscal decision made by the UK government is for the benefit of the parasitic resource sink in the south east. I have nothing against London, it's a wonderful place to visit, but that doesn't mean I want every decision made in the rest of the country used to prop it up. It's not right and it's not fair. Money and people who would benefit areas like Yorkshire, Cumbria and Central Scotland are drawn to the city to the detriment of these places. How the fuck is that right?
It's like the clichéd school bully who demands your lunch money and gives you nothing but pain in return. The rest of the country only gets inflated house prices in return for sending tributes of people and money to the insatiable London. A whole country can't be used to finance a single city.
Yet we, the Scottish people are urged to stay with this abusive relationship, because, we're condescendingly informed, it's better for us. Yeah, I like being scudded in the head with a cane while some cunt who has enough money already dips my fucking pocket. And none of the current national parties will do anything different, because we have a bunch of creepy career politicians who are beholden to equally creepy business interests. Rich folk helping out rich folk, aye they have our best interests at heart. Bunch of fucking cunts.
And you do realise why some of the Better Together people are shouting so loud, right? No? How about if I say they're MPs? That help you out?
They are another vested interest. What happens to all those Scottish MPs in the event of a 'Yes' vote? That's right, they don't get their subsidised trips to London any more. Oh no! Their relevance will twirl away down the toilet. You know and the nice, generous expenses and chance at a juicy peerage. But of course the money and title has nothing to do with it, it's all about doing the best for their constituents. I do wish there was a sarcasm tag.
Let's be clear, too, this isn't some wrong-headed Braveheart** pish about fucking the English. That has nothing to do with it. I think the rest of England could benefit from getting shot of slimy shits that inhabit Whitehall. The UK government doesn't really represent Scotland or the rest of the country as it stands. If the current UK government wasn't hacking up the NHS or punishing poor people for not having enough money or being led around by the nose by tabloid journalism, I might waver a bit more, but what we see is Tories and LibDems slashing at the infrastructure of welfare and finger-fucking the wounds.
And that's another thing, all the fuckwits who think "I don't like Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon," is a valid reason for voting no, please take a swim in the North Sea with bowling balls tied to your legs, because your diminutive IQ is dragging the rest of us down. Yeah Salmond is an egotistical goon, but we don't need to have him forever. An independent Scotland will still be democratic, we won't suddenly become a dictatorship. Vote the fucker out once we have our own country. Simple as that.
I'm sure there's a chance he'll turn on us when he gets into office, but I'd rather take that chance over dealing with the Westminster fuckers who've shown they'll happily slit a newborn's throat if it got them a few extra coppers in their pockets. The breed at the top in the Houses of Parliament at the moment are the most heartless, corporate and ideology-driven fungal-infections you can imagine. In it together; or in it for themselves? You shouldn't need to think about that if you follow the pattern of their behaviour.
Essentially, if you vote 'No' to independence you've forfeited your right to complain about any Westminster government, because you told them you were happy to let them continue to do whatever the fuck they like. I mean they've already fast tracked privatising the Royal Mail, what kind of shit is that? Who's to say the next government won't start to renege on devolution, because, "Clearly you want to have more to do with Westminster. Why else would you stay in the union. Come, this will only hurt forever."
Tell me you can't imagine that walking modelling balloon David Cameron doing something like that to appease the great Maggie. Seriously, can't you just imagine him having a shrine to Margaret Thatcher in his bedroom, with the mask he makes his wife wear when he's fucking her hung up next to unnervingly intimate photos of Thatcher? David Cameron and that smirking goblin Nigel Farage show the same contempt for Scotland as Thatcher did. It's the same contempt they hold for anyone not as rich as them. You want a shit-monger like Cameron to still be making decisions from Downing Street? Fuck, do you want barely there political drone Ed Milliband in Number Ten? What sort of hell do you think he'll rain on Scotland? Those adenoids are just waiting for their revenge, people!
Then you have the leaders of the Scottish Labour party and the Scottish Conservative party, Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson, who hold the people of Scotland in such little worth they don't believe we can think for ourselves. Johann Lamont just out and said it. Ruth Davidson hasn't in so many words, but, because she's a Tory, it's an easy bet she believes it, too.
They all subscribe to the same corrosive notion that rigid capitalism is the most sensible economic option. Yeah, and trickle-down economics works. Fucking hell, the idea of infinite growth for anything is the most preposterous notion ever conceived. Not to sound hysterical here†, but it's a big old lie. It's a lie to keep already frighteningly wealthy and powerful people in the power and wealth they think is their right. It's the same lie that's led to sell offs of public services or the barmy notion that public services should be profitable. That's not the benchmark of a public service's worth; efficiency isn't decided by how much money electricity, public transport, the postal service or healthcare makes, it's how well they're doing to stop society from crumbling around our ears. Taxes from the businesses these services help to support should be invested, not wrenched in bloated bills from the pockets of normal people. The fact that Westminster politicians are so cowardly and lacking in imagination to dare deviate from this dogmatic bollocks scares the living shit out of me and it should you, too.
Do you really want to be still part of that shit? If you do then you're a fucking moron. You don't deserve my respect. Or air, for that matter.
I'll concede, though, both sides in this campaign have been guilty of being cagey on several subjects. It's not been a nice campaign. The Yes side have stooped as low as the No side and that's fucking shameful. We shouldn't let this political bickering put us off getting our own country. The transition won't be easy, my friend, but there's a chance it will be worth it. Can it really be as bad as what we've had shoved down our throats already?
* There's a brilliant ripping apart of it here. Or there was. The fucking links died hasn't it?
** I fucking hate that piece of shit button-pressing film. It's not about freedom, it's about a fucking sociopath annoyed because he can't get his dick wet.
† Dude, already happened, wipe the spittle away.
Will
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
The David Cameron Nightmare Seed.
Hello, people. How are you today? Good? Filled with nonsense and joie de vivre? Want to have that stripped away from you in the most brutal way possible? Of course you do.
Really look at it, ignoring its graininess*. Many of you know this smug, horrible avatar of greedy privilege. Some call him reptilian, but I think that gives reptiles grounds to sue. See those shark-like dot eyes, black with caustic ideology. I bet you can hear his voice, spouting shit so corrosive it's easy to believe his heart doesn't pump blood, but pure bile**.
Now imagine that face, hovering over you, flushed red† with sweat. Perspiration forming rivulets and running down his nose to drip into your eye. Hair plastered to his head. His arms shake with the effort of keeping him above you. He grins at you in post-coital goofiness and withdraws his rapidly diminishing erection, wiping it on your thighs as he does.
He flops down onto his side with a long, drawn-out sigh. He reaches across to his discarded trousers, fishes in the pockets, pulls out his wallet and peels off few notes. These notes he carefully shoves into your mouth until you gag, his post-coital smile still in place, never. As you are about to vomit he lets go and punches you in the face.
Not pretty.
Now, if you're Scottish, think about that. Think about any future Prime Minister of any party, sitting in Westminster, erection and fists at the ready. I could say so much more, but I'll leave that there for you to think about.
* Maybe I should have black-and-whited it.
** Or you're a Tory and think he's a capitalist hero, in which case I am sorry for your illness.
† Redder, if you want to be entirely accurate. I'm always going for accuracy. Except for when I can't be arsed.
Will
Look at this face:
Really look at it, ignoring its graininess*. Many of you know this smug, horrible avatar of greedy privilege. Some call him reptilian, but I think that gives reptiles grounds to sue. See those shark-like dot eyes, black with caustic ideology. I bet you can hear his voice, spouting shit so corrosive it's easy to believe his heart doesn't pump blood, but pure bile**.
Now imagine that face, hovering over you, flushed red† with sweat. Perspiration forming rivulets and running down his nose to drip into your eye. Hair plastered to his head. His arms shake with the effort of keeping him above you. He grins at you in post-coital goofiness and withdraws his rapidly diminishing erection, wiping it on your thighs as he does.
He flops down onto his side with a long, drawn-out sigh. He reaches across to his discarded trousers, fishes in the pockets, pulls out his wallet and peels off few notes. These notes he carefully shoves into your mouth until you gag, his post-coital smile still in place, never. As you are about to vomit he lets go and punches you in the face.
Not pretty.
Now, if you're Scottish, think about that. Think about any future Prime Minister of any party, sitting in Westminster, erection and fists at the ready. I could say so much more, but I'll leave that there for you to think about.
* Maybe I should have black-and-whited it.
** Or you're a Tory and think he's a capitalist hero, in which case I am sorry for your illness.
† Redder, if you want to be entirely accurate. I'm always going for accuracy. Except for when I can't be arsed.
Will
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Swirly-whirly.
Oh shit, look out. They're moving around – reshuffling as they like to call it. Another chapter in the current cycle of Torygeddon started up again this week with MPs coming back from the summer recess and David Cameron shouting, "Change places!" showing, again that his medication isn't at all up to snuff.
The reshuffle itself is pretty much inconsequential, we've still got the same collection of dead-eyed mutant entitled arse shavings that we had before MPs were moved into different seats. Yes, some of the people put in place will allow the PM to do what he wants that little bit more easily. Like, for example, strapping on his Edward Scissorhands gloves and flailing at the NHS and the welfare state, because poor people shouldn't be allowed the security and health that he's never had to worry about. The two institutions are, in England at least*, already bloody and torn messes. That's okay because, idealogue ole Davey-wavey-scumbag doesn't see anything wrong with damaging the people who actually do the grunt work in the country.
Gideon Osborne still resides on his throne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, replete with giant butt plug, sans lube, to make sure he maintains the look of a man who's thirty seconds away from shitting himself with glee or dismissing peasants to go and work in the mines. He doesn't care what mines, any mines, arsenic mines that have been closed for decades, just as long as their in mines, that's where the poor (read non-millionaires) belong.
It amused me to hear about Osborne being booed at the Paralympics the other day. Look at that gommy motherfucker, he doesn't even have the decency to look ashamed of himself for the mess he and the rest of the government have left people with disabilities in. The man's clearly had some kind of shame bypass, which isn't a huge shock, how else can you account for him going out of the house with a face like that for all these years.
Cameron's not even pretending the Lib Dems have got any kind of sway any more. He's just moved more Tory ghouls from one place to another. Lots of nasty pieces of work like Jeremy Hunt as health secretary, who was under investigation for his handling of News Corp's dodgy bid to buy BSkyB and is known to be against the NHS, stem cell research and anti-abortion. Wonder what he'll be doing then. Whatever it is, I bet it won't involve any lube and will end up with lots of people with worse or no health care.
Then there's this cunt, Chris Grayling who cheated the system for £127,000 of expenses and has now been put in charge of the Department of Work and Pensions. Just the person to look after the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society. Let me reiterate that for those who nodded off: another very rich man who will happily fuck the system to get even more money and will shit on people will virtually nothing, from a great height. I think that sums it up nicely.
And let's not forget the nice, tolerant Maria Miller, who's been made minister of equality. A woman who's so into her equality that she's voted against gay rights issues on numerous occasions. She's minister for EQUALITY. Do we see a problem here? David Cameron clearly doesn't as he's happy to have this intolerant dolt in the position. He might as well just set the Catholic church up in an equality council.
That's only a small selection of the horrible bastards the Prime Minister has put in place to screw the country over that little bit more. And old Nick Clegg and the rest of his party look on with happy grins, letting all this happen. Thanks, Nick you spineless scrap of junk sperm.
So here we are, in the early part of the twenty-first century, governed by a regressive bunch of over privileged shits** pulling bits from the country's infrastructure like the highest-stakes game of Jenga in the world. Fucking cunts.
* I will reiterate that I'm Scottish, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about this shit going down.
** Or partially in my case. Scotland's devolved government gives us a buffer against the fuckers.
Will
The reshuffle itself is pretty much inconsequential, we've still got the same collection of dead-eyed mutant entitled arse shavings that we had before MPs were moved into different seats. Yes, some of the people put in place will allow the PM to do what he wants that little bit more easily. Like, for example, strapping on his Edward Scissorhands gloves and flailing at the NHS and the welfare state, because poor people shouldn't be allowed the security and health that he's never had to worry about. The two institutions are, in England at least*, already bloody and torn messes. That's okay because, idealogue ole Davey-wavey-scumbag doesn't see anything wrong with damaging the people who actually do the grunt work in the country.
Gideon Osborne still resides on his throne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, replete with giant butt plug, sans lube, to make sure he maintains the look of a man who's thirty seconds away from shitting himself with glee or dismissing peasants to go and work in the mines. He doesn't care what mines, any mines, arsenic mines that have been closed for decades, just as long as their in mines, that's where the poor (read non-millionaires) belong.
It amused me to hear about Osborne being booed at the Paralympics the other day. Look at that gommy motherfucker, he doesn't even have the decency to look ashamed of himself for the mess he and the rest of the government have left people with disabilities in. The man's clearly had some kind of shame bypass, which isn't a huge shock, how else can you account for him going out of the house with a face like that for all these years.
Cameron's not even pretending the Lib Dems have got any kind of sway any more. He's just moved more Tory ghouls from one place to another. Lots of nasty pieces of work like Jeremy Hunt as health secretary, who was under investigation for his handling of News Corp's dodgy bid to buy BSkyB and is known to be against the NHS, stem cell research and anti-abortion. Wonder what he'll be doing then. Whatever it is, I bet it won't involve any lube and will end up with lots of people with worse or no health care.
Then there's this cunt, Chris Grayling who cheated the system for £127,000 of expenses and has now been put in charge of the Department of Work and Pensions. Just the person to look after the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society. Let me reiterate that for those who nodded off: another very rich man who will happily fuck the system to get even more money and will shit on people will virtually nothing, from a great height. I think that sums it up nicely.
And let's not forget the nice, tolerant Maria Miller, who's been made minister of equality. A woman who's so into her equality that she's voted against gay rights issues on numerous occasions. She's minister for EQUALITY. Do we see a problem here? David Cameron clearly doesn't as he's happy to have this intolerant dolt in the position. He might as well just set the Catholic church up in an equality council.
That's only a small selection of the horrible bastards the Prime Minister has put in place to screw the country over that little bit more. And old Nick Clegg and the rest of his party look on with happy grins, letting all this happen. Thanks, Nick you spineless scrap of junk sperm.
So here we are, in the early part of the twenty-first century, governed by a regressive bunch of over privileged shits** pulling bits from the country's infrastructure like the highest-stakes game of Jenga in the world. Fucking cunts.
* I will reiterate that I'm Scottish, but it doesn't mean I'm happy about this shit going down.
** Or partially in my case. Scotland's devolved government gives us a buffer against the fuckers.
Will
Sunday, 24 January 2010
The record skips and goes to the start of another song.
It’s the same dreary song we’ve heard over again from the same album. All the songs sound pretty much the same; artistic integrity isn’t the point of the exercise. We all roll our eyes, sigh, grumble, shake our heads and mutter, but we get up all the same and dance along with the dreary tune because we don’t seem to have much choice in the matter. After all we don’t want people staring at us for sitting there with our arms crossed over our chests because we’re not doing what everyone else is when we neither want nor need to do it. That’s just crazy.
So, over two thirds of the way through January and we’re being thrust headlong into another round of ‘Terrorismania!’. Note the exclamation point. The exclamation point is important. The exclamation point will dance with your mother. The exclamation point will tell you things about what happened that summer in Greece. The exclamation point will stand on the twelve kittens. The exclamation point has Import.
You can call it Terrorismania! or you can call it Threat Level: Severe. It’s really all down to personal taste. One sounds like a musical in the style of ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’ or ‘Springtime for Hitler’ and is probably more apt, while the other sounds like a straight to video action film starring Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren or Steven Seagal, a film that would be really quite good if it were written with any skill or panache, but just comes off as a bunch of pyros going off with people swearing in between – or in the case of Threat Level: Severe standing around waiting for the pyros to go off and not even having the energy to swear anymore until it peters out.
The UK terrorism threat level has been raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’. Feel the tension in the air here, people. Or don’t. This American-style scale of, ‘are we going to die in droves today’ seems to hover always around the vague bits. It could happen, but then again it might not. This upping of the heat doesn’t seem to mean anything practical for the day-to-day running of the country.
It’s all a little bit Mystic Meg really. Cold reading the country. There could be terrorists plotting something heinous, somewhere in the world right now and they’re probably right, but in general the people planning them are a combination of mad and incompetent, and we don’t ever see them. Unless they decide to become politicians in which case their careers sky rocket.
Now the general theory – denied by MI6, but used by the media and politicians – is that this is in response to the lone clod who failed to blow himself and a planeload of other travellers up in Detroit on Christmas last year (2009 for you future people).
Wait a second. Because a man who seems to have acted alone didn’t manage to do anything beyond scare the shit out of a plane load of people, the UK is expecting some kind of terrorist attack. There’s an interesting jump of logic. It’s almost like saying that nasty dog down the road bit Mister Robertson, all the dogs in the world must be preparing to overthrow mankind!
Never mind that a renegade group of the IRA have been twitching for the last few months, a man with incendiary underpants didn’t do anything was caught on a plane, we must do something! Let’s see, we’ll do a few token things and try to push through a full-body x-ray machine that wouldn’t have detected anything the Nigerian guy was carrying, but will have the benefit of humiliating anyone wanting to travel out of the country!
I am not reassured. I don’t think many people are. I (along with most of the country again) am not that intimidated either.
If it’s going to be Threat Level: Severe I at least want to wake up in the morning with a man (for some reason with a French accent, I don’t know why, I have no reason to believe that the French, Canadians or Belgians are particularly nasty people) sitting next to my bed pointing a gun at my head saying, “Tomorrow it could be you,” before holstering his weapon and walking out of the room. That would be a severe threat level that’s guaranteed to get my attention. Call it Threat Level: Imminent Death or don’t bother with it at all.
The Detroit thing reminds me of the attempted ‘bombing’ of Glasgow Airport a couple of years ago. Another bungled attack that did nothing more than show that the medical students involved were retarded and best off out of the medical profession and made a ned a celebrity for kicking a man who was on fire. It was inspiring, it really was. Apart from the fact that all that would have happened in the worst case scenario would have been a bit of property damage and the two men would have been, at the most, wounded – you see they were clever (in a vicious way) in wrapping the propane canisters up with ball bearings, but they didn’t realise that those tanks are designed to resist high temperatures and when they do explode they tear instead of shattering. Idiots.
What we got then was Gordon Brown (all nice and shiny from the recent hand-over of power) telling us to be more vigilant, essentially that there was a terrorist on every street corner waiting to blow up. A smart move by someone in power.
So in a time of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, the people in charge of the country have decided, in their infinite wisdom to concentrate on attempting to wind the populace up and be the heroes of the hour by shuffling papers and throwing some new terms at us. Oo, I feel about as protected as a cocktail sausage at a Tory Party Conference.
We’d be much happier if you just did your job and helped people back into work and into some kind of comfort.
So let’s get ready to put the record on the turntable one more time; I feel like a bit of a boogie.
Will
So, over two thirds of the way through January and we’re being thrust headlong into another round of ‘Terrorismania!’. Note the exclamation point. The exclamation point is important. The exclamation point will dance with your mother. The exclamation point will tell you things about what happened that summer in Greece. The exclamation point will stand on the twelve kittens. The exclamation point has Import.
You can call it Terrorismania! or you can call it Threat Level: Severe. It’s really all down to personal taste. One sounds like a musical in the style of ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’ or ‘Springtime for Hitler’ and is probably more apt, while the other sounds like a straight to video action film starring Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren or Steven Seagal, a film that would be really quite good if it were written with any skill or panache, but just comes off as a bunch of pyros going off with people swearing in between – or in the case of Threat Level: Severe standing around waiting for the pyros to go off and not even having the energy to swear anymore until it peters out.
The UK terrorism threat level has been raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’. Feel the tension in the air here, people. Or don’t. This American-style scale of, ‘are we going to die in droves today’ seems to hover always around the vague bits. It could happen, but then again it might not. This upping of the heat doesn’t seem to mean anything practical for the day-to-day running of the country.
It’s all a little bit Mystic Meg really. Cold reading the country. There could be terrorists plotting something heinous, somewhere in the world right now and they’re probably right, but in general the people planning them are a combination of mad and incompetent, and we don’t ever see them. Unless they decide to become politicians in which case their careers sky rocket.
Now the general theory – denied by MI6, but used by the media and politicians – is that this is in response to the lone clod who failed to blow himself and a planeload of other travellers up in Detroit on Christmas last year (2009 for you future people).
Wait a second. Because a man who seems to have acted alone didn’t manage to do anything beyond scare the shit out of a plane load of people, the UK is expecting some kind of terrorist attack. There’s an interesting jump of logic. It’s almost like saying that nasty dog down the road bit Mister Robertson, all the dogs in the world must be preparing to overthrow mankind!
Never mind that a renegade group of the IRA have been twitching for the last few months, a man with incendiary underpants didn’t do anything was caught on a plane, we must do something! Let’s see, we’ll do a few token things and try to push through a full-body x-ray machine that wouldn’t have detected anything the Nigerian guy was carrying, but will have the benefit of humiliating anyone wanting to travel out of the country!
I am not reassured. I don’t think many people are. I (along with most of the country again) am not that intimidated either.
If it’s going to be Threat Level: Severe I at least want to wake up in the morning with a man (for some reason with a French accent, I don’t know why, I have no reason to believe that the French, Canadians or Belgians are particularly nasty people) sitting next to my bed pointing a gun at my head saying, “Tomorrow it could be you,” before holstering his weapon and walking out of the room. That would be a severe threat level that’s guaranteed to get my attention. Call it Threat Level: Imminent Death or don’t bother with it at all.
The Detroit thing reminds me of the attempted ‘bombing’ of Glasgow Airport a couple of years ago. Another bungled attack that did nothing more than show that the medical students involved were retarded and best off out of the medical profession and made a ned a celebrity for kicking a man who was on fire. It was inspiring, it really was. Apart from the fact that all that would have happened in the worst case scenario would have been a bit of property damage and the two men would have been, at the most, wounded – you see they were clever (in a vicious way) in wrapping the propane canisters up with ball bearings, but they didn’t realise that those tanks are designed to resist high temperatures and when they do explode they tear instead of shattering. Idiots.
What we got then was Gordon Brown (all nice and shiny from the recent hand-over of power) telling us to be more vigilant, essentially that there was a terrorist on every street corner waiting to blow up. A smart move by someone in power.
So in a time of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, the people in charge of the country have decided, in their infinite wisdom to concentrate on attempting to wind the populace up and be the heroes of the hour by shuffling papers and throwing some new terms at us. Oo, I feel about as protected as a cocktail sausage at a Tory Party Conference.
We’d be much happier if you just did your job and helped people back into work and into some kind of comfort.
So let’s get ready to put the record on the turntable one more time; I feel like a bit of a boogie.
Will
Thursday, 14 January 2010
The Tower Shakes, But Doesn't Fall.
I have a hard time dealing with politics. It’s full of politicians for a start – an old chestnut that, but it wouldn’t be trotted out so much if it didn’t continue to be true on a year-on-year basis. It should be something more interesting, but all the really dramatic stuff that happens is lost in a fog of dull maintenance type debate and insipid protocol. It’s kind of like watching Formula 1 except more repetitive.
Heaven knows that I’ve tried to sit through even a few minutes of overfed men – and a few frightening-looking women – get up to do their little spiel about how the parking policy in their constituency’s hospital needs an overhaul or some such. I’m sure it’s very important to the democratic process and to the people that it affects, but it makes watching televised coverage of the House of Commons a major slog.
Who knows, maybe that’s been the point all along, to stop plebs like myself – brought up on half-hour chunks of television that moves along at brisk pace – from paying that much attention to what goes on there. Maybe before they televised the Commons the MPs stripped to the waist and beat each other with sticks to determine who won a debate.
Oh, fuck. That just put the image of Margaret Thatcher stripped to the waist into my head. I will now inflict it on you, good reader; I’ll be damned if I’m going to suffer that nightmare on my own. You too can wake up in a cold sweat, roused from your sleep by the thought of that evil old crone’s (because, let’s be honest, in the eighties she was still ancient, that kind of evil’s born that way) sagging body and the shrivelled dugs that passed for breasts on her bony chest, pale and blue veined as a wheel of stilton.
It’s good to share.
Anyway, I find it very hard to follow all the meta language that goes on within politics. In general a few moments of thought and I’ll know what they are babbling about and trying to evade, but I’m lazy and have other things I want to do than give too much brain-thinky time to how our government wants to screw us over this time.
(It leaves me with something of a grudging admiration for political correspondents who wade through all this political verbal diarrhoea. It’s how the bastards interpret what they’ve sifted that gets under my skin, but more on that later.)
My general difficulty following and getting intellectually involved in political debate, and the whole antipathy towards the breed known as Politician meant that I almost missed the nugget of decency from the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg that turned up earlier in the week.
Still very much in the shadow of the banks’ failure we’re seeing a bit of political upheaval in this country, after the US managed to shuck of a hideously corrupt regime, we’re going to get the opportunity to do the same; only we’ll just let another corrupt lot in right away. As I’ve said before there are more than two parties in this country, but there might as well only be two most of the time the way people vote. Except for the poor (as in actually impoverished and desperate) people who went mad and voted the unashamedly bigoted in so many ways BNP into a local government in England. It was scary, but I have a horrible feeling that as disgusting as the BNP are to the people of this constituency they may have been the most trustworthy of the lot.
Doesn’t say a lot for the democratic process though: if you feel so let down by a mainstream party, why don’t you vote for a party that has extreme views, that’ll show ‘em. Not the smartest move, I have to say, but it did seem to send a message.
It seems though, that Nick Clegg wants to make some major political changes, even going so far as reshaping Whitehall. Yes, Mister Clegg wants to shake up the whole British political map. He’s even gone so far as to get rid of a good chunk of his party’s pledges because they aren’t realistic in the current economic climate. Big words from the perennial also-rans.
But why should they always be consigned to third or even fourth place? If Nick Clegg were to even keep half of these promises it would mean the country would be a better place in which to live. It would make a great change from the continued bullshit of politicians telling the public, “You’ll have to put up with living in financial uncertainty for a few years more, but don’t worry all the people who caused this will stay rich and so will we. Aren’t you happy for us? Don’t you think we’re doing a stand-up job?”
I’ve intimated in the past that the Lib Dems are a bit of a wishy-washy, airy-fairy party, but with this kind of bold statement, and let’s be clear here it’s an honest statement (something you won’t hear me saying often about a politician of any stripe), he’s admitted that the things that his party has been promising for years are out of bounds and then he’s offered an alternative. An actual, concrete alternative. You don’t get that with the Tories or Labour, from them you get spin and more evasion. Just what the electorate want, vague assurances from the two ‘main’ parties that something will be done…but you’ll have to wait to find out what once you elect them.
In any other arena this would be called blackmail, whereas here people just shrug and go, “It’s politics,” and then go and vote for who they’ve always voted for and probably who their parents and grandparents voted for before them. They have the same kind of disinterest in politics that I try to fight through, but they don’t have the interest or energy to do even that.
Then, of course, you have the pundits and correspondents who rifle through all of these political shenanigans and give their opinions on it. I won’t say that they are all the same, I’m sure there are those who give a balanced and fair appraisal of the political climate. I can’t say, because I don’t read enough of them.
However, I’d just like to turn your attention to the BBC and their lead political correspondent and blogger Nick Robinson. The first time I saw Nick Robinson on television, he struck me as a dry and even sarcastic political commentator – just the type of person that I’d like to see giving opinions on the political landscape. I mean, he’s even had a little snarky banter with George W Bush, what a guy!
Then I started reading what he was actually saying in his BBC blog. The breaking point for me came when he varnished over Nick Clegg’s statements to burble on about the Tories and, in particular, the Labour party. He does more spin doctoring than Alastair Campbell. He does a marvellous job of taking what the Labour party says, interpreting it in such a way that it sounds like something more palatable and totally different.
“The government today unveiled plans for mulching newborn babies and using them as fertiliser. Let’s go to Nick Robinson…”
“When the Gordon Brown says he wants to mulch newborns, what he is in essence saying is that more should be spent on Primary Schools.”
I’ve seen this kind of thing a lot on the BBC. We see a politician saying one thing in the Commons and we go to a studio where the presenters tell us a completely different story of what happened. I mean it’s well-known that Politics is full of double-dealing and linguistic jiggery pokery, but can the meanings be that different from what politicians say and what they mean?
We need a more even-handed way of having politics (and the news in general) presented to us. The BBC have bought into the glossy American style of reporting current events that values bias and big events over telling us what’s happened, although they’ve yet to reach the depths of vacuous hideousness that Sky News (the British arm of Fox News, really) has delved. If they pull back again, they’ll probably be fine.
And this brings me onto the insane and shadowy world of the public opinion parts of news sites, but that’s for another time.
Will
Heaven knows that I’ve tried to sit through even a few minutes of overfed men – and a few frightening-looking women – get up to do their little spiel about how the parking policy in their constituency’s hospital needs an overhaul or some such. I’m sure it’s very important to the democratic process and to the people that it affects, but it makes watching televised coverage of the House of Commons a major slog.
Who knows, maybe that’s been the point all along, to stop plebs like myself – brought up on half-hour chunks of television that moves along at brisk pace – from paying that much attention to what goes on there. Maybe before they televised the Commons the MPs stripped to the waist and beat each other with sticks to determine who won a debate.
Oh, fuck. That just put the image of Margaret Thatcher stripped to the waist into my head. I will now inflict it on you, good reader; I’ll be damned if I’m going to suffer that nightmare on my own. You too can wake up in a cold sweat, roused from your sleep by the thought of that evil old crone’s (because, let’s be honest, in the eighties she was still ancient, that kind of evil’s born that way) sagging body and the shrivelled dugs that passed for breasts on her bony chest, pale and blue veined as a wheel of stilton.
It’s good to share.
Anyway, I find it very hard to follow all the meta language that goes on within politics. In general a few moments of thought and I’ll know what they are babbling about and trying to evade, but I’m lazy and have other things I want to do than give too much brain-thinky time to how our government wants to screw us over this time.
(It leaves me with something of a grudging admiration for political correspondents who wade through all this political verbal diarrhoea. It’s how the bastards interpret what they’ve sifted that gets under my skin, but more on that later.)
My general difficulty following and getting intellectually involved in political debate, and the whole antipathy towards the breed known as Politician meant that I almost missed the nugget of decency from the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg that turned up earlier in the week.
Still very much in the shadow of the banks’ failure we’re seeing a bit of political upheaval in this country, after the US managed to shuck of a hideously corrupt regime, we’re going to get the opportunity to do the same; only we’ll just let another corrupt lot in right away. As I’ve said before there are more than two parties in this country, but there might as well only be two most of the time the way people vote. Except for the poor (as in actually impoverished and desperate) people who went mad and voted the unashamedly bigoted in so many ways BNP into a local government in England. It was scary, but I have a horrible feeling that as disgusting as the BNP are to the people of this constituency they may have been the most trustworthy of the lot.
Doesn’t say a lot for the democratic process though: if you feel so let down by a mainstream party, why don’t you vote for a party that has extreme views, that’ll show ‘em. Not the smartest move, I have to say, but it did seem to send a message.
It seems though, that Nick Clegg wants to make some major political changes, even going so far as reshaping Whitehall. Yes, Mister Clegg wants to shake up the whole British political map. He’s even gone so far as to get rid of a good chunk of his party’s pledges because they aren’t realistic in the current economic climate. Big words from the perennial also-rans.
But why should they always be consigned to third or even fourth place? If Nick Clegg were to even keep half of these promises it would mean the country would be a better place in which to live. It would make a great change from the continued bullshit of politicians telling the public, “You’ll have to put up with living in financial uncertainty for a few years more, but don’t worry all the people who caused this will stay rich and so will we. Aren’t you happy for us? Don’t you think we’re doing a stand-up job?”
I’ve intimated in the past that the Lib Dems are a bit of a wishy-washy, airy-fairy party, but with this kind of bold statement, and let’s be clear here it’s an honest statement (something you won’t hear me saying often about a politician of any stripe), he’s admitted that the things that his party has been promising for years are out of bounds and then he’s offered an alternative. An actual, concrete alternative. You don’t get that with the Tories or Labour, from them you get spin and more evasion. Just what the electorate want, vague assurances from the two ‘main’ parties that something will be done…but you’ll have to wait to find out what once you elect them.
In any other arena this would be called blackmail, whereas here people just shrug and go, “It’s politics,” and then go and vote for who they’ve always voted for and probably who their parents and grandparents voted for before them. They have the same kind of disinterest in politics that I try to fight through, but they don’t have the interest or energy to do even that.
Then, of course, you have the pundits and correspondents who rifle through all of these political shenanigans and give their opinions on it. I won’t say that they are all the same, I’m sure there are those who give a balanced and fair appraisal of the political climate. I can’t say, because I don’t read enough of them.
However, I’d just like to turn your attention to the BBC and their lead political correspondent and blogger Nick Robinson. The first time I saw Nick Robinson on television, he struck me as a dry and even sarcastic political commentator – just the type of person that I’d like to see giving opinions on the political landscape. I mean, he’s even had a little snarky banter with George W Bush, what a guy!
Then I started reading what he was actually saying in his BBC blog. The breaking point for me came when he varnished over Nick Clegg’s statements to burble on about the Tories and, in particular, the Labour party. He does more spin doctoring than Alastair Campbell. He does a marvellous job of taking what the Labour party says, interpreting it in such a way that it sounds like something more palatable and totally different.
“The government today unveiled plans for mulching newborn babies and using them as fertiliser. Let’s go to Nick Robinson…”
“When the Gordon Brown says he wants to mulch newborns, what he is in essence saying is that more should be spent on Primary Schools.”
I’ve seen this kind of thing a lot on the BBC. We see a politician saying one thing in the Commons and we go to a studio where the presenters tell us a completely different story of what happened. I mean it’s well-known that Politics is full of double-dealing and linguistic jiggery pokery, but can the meanings be that different from what politicians say and what they mean?
We need a more even-handed way of having politics (and the news in general) presented to us. The BBC have bought into the glossy American style of reporting current events that values bias and big events over telling us what’s happened, although they’ve yet to reach the depths of vacuous hideousness that Sky News (the British arm of Fox News, really) has delved. If they pull back again, they’ll probably be fine.
And this brings me onto the insane and shadowy world of the public opinion parts of news sites, but that’s for another time.
Will
Thursday, 10 December 2009
In which I talk POLITICS...
In light of the pre-budget report being released yesterday I thought I’d have a political rant. A vaguely informed, rambling rant at that. Read on and be entertained at my lack of informed opinion. Hurrah!
Y’know I stopped expecting any sanity from our esteemed government about ten minutes after I played my part in voting that grinning sociopath fuck Tony Blair and his band of Tory Mark II scumfucks (okay, I’m sure they’re not all fuckers in the current incarnation of the Labour Party, but the majority of the cabinet probably couldn’t be trusted to look after a baby without smothering it) into power. Yes, after almost twenty years of continuous Tory rule, most of it under the crushing madness of Margaret Thatcher and the stripping away of public services to private firms I thought, this Blair bloke can’t be that bad.
Oh, the naïveté. I was young and desperate for some kind of hope for my future and my well-being. Cynical hindsight now tells me that I should have smelled something rotten from the moment that the rebranded New (yes, it would be too awful if it was old Labour, fuck having even a shadow of principle there) Labour used that abomination of a song 'Things Can Only Get Better’ and stormed into government in 1997. They crushed the Tories that year.
And crushing things has become the motif of their time in power. First thing to get crushed was the possibility that your average worker would get a fair shake: we got a minimum wage that was multi-tiered. As ever those under twenty-one were entitled to less than those over that age. I can see those under eighteen getting less, because, in general they have less responsibilities than an eighteen year old. As soon as you’re eighteen you are an adult and should be paid as such, instead this wage band is given the insultingly patronising monicker ‘youth rate’. Not that the over twenty-one minimum wage was any great shake. It still isn’t being just under six pounds an hour, a third of which is taken away in tax right away and then you have all your bills and such. Working at this rate you’re lucky if you have anything left.
Yes, I know that people in other countries have it much worse, but I get the feeling that if any UK government could bring our wages down to those rates they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Let’s be honest, the minimum wage was influenced by all those nice, faceless, monolithic businesses that New Labour wanted to stay friends with. Not that it worked. As soon as most of these corporations hear the words ‘human rights’ they up sticks and find a nice third world dictatorship that they can leech from and give those who run them – each already wealthier than all of the working class in Britain combined – those million pound/dollar/euro bonuses that they so require. Really, really, they’ll be in the poor house if they are brought down to their last million.
Before I go too far into the world of the conspiracy theorist there, let’s mention the mess New Labour have made of the NHS. Or rather let’s talk about how they’ve gone about continuing what the Tories had done all through their reign to undermine and damage something that was once the envy of the world. Those efficiencies that New Labour are so fond of has left large areas without local hospitals and those that are left so disease-ridden (thanks to the fantastic idea of having private cleaning firms take over, always a good idea that) that people are afraid to go in because they perceive that there’s every chance they’ll never come out again.
I mean, there’s a lot more, but those are the most prominent things that I can think of right now.
And we come twelve years later, New Labour is limping along after being caught in many lies and a switch to a Prime Minister with all the charisma of a landed monk fish. We also come to the end of a cycle that was also started by the Tories and allowed to continue unabated by our rosy red saviours: The Markets. I hope it’s the end of a cycle.
The banks and The Markets. One should have been monitoring the other, y’know, instead one cloned the other. As we all know this didn’t turn out for the better, as the banks took on the no-hold-barred money-making ethos of The Markets. The wild, testosterone-fuelled grabbing for wealth and growth was adopted by the bank and things didn’t work out well. Especially, as I’ve already said, the banks were supposed to be watching over the fucking Markets!
Y’see the markets, and capitalism in general, seems to work, as far as I can tell, on the principle that growth can go infinitely, that there are resources in the world to be plundered forever. Which is strange as they seem to only hold one ‘resource’ dear: money. Something artificially created by banks to be infinite, but based on real things. Once upon a time anyway. Now it appears to all the world that money’s based on, well, more money. Which is more than a wee bit weird.
This came to an understated head last year (2008, for those people in the future) when a bunch of investments that were never going to pay back started a bit of a domino effect. This started a ‘banking crisis’. Then a ‘credit crunch’ before the governments of the world held up their hands and said, “We might be in a bit of a recession…”
“…That’s the worst since 1929. And half of you are going to lose your jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t have stripped away all those regulations that were designed to stop this happening again. Oopsie. We’ll fix this. Honest.”
They said a lot, oh yeah. Course they would. Standing, pounding on podiums saying, as people had said almost eighty years before (someone hear an echo?), that this can’t be allowed to happen again. And proceeded to wrist-slap their way through these multinationals and banks, who, in public whined about the restrictions placed on them, when they really had to be laughing their arses off that they’d gotten away with (thanks to those pesky governments, har har).
Cos if the banks were so scared of government reprisals why are they still giving their high-ups ridiculous bonuses? When there are people reduced to poverty and either no longer in their home or afraid that it’s going to be repossessed. They didn’t even learn any lessons from the financial institutions that sank because of their own greed.
And this brings me, finally, to the pre-budget report. In which there is another tiny tap to the wrists of the bankers and then it’s time to look at punishing the public. Oh yes, we had the temerity to have no idea of what the bankers and our governments were doing (while they hid it) so now the whip of budget cuts and tax increases are now on the horizon. Supposedly to tax those of higher incomes, but will only hammer the same people living on the breadline who always take the brunt of these things.
The prevailing theory is this is to win them votes for the general election, by people who intone this as though it should be accepted. We mere mortals couldn’t do better. Perhaps, but at least the politicians could at least be a bit more subtle about it instead of pulling down our collective pants and ordering us to bend over. Or even soften the blow to the people they supposedly represent.
But then British politicians don’t have any loyalty to the people of the country, their first loyalty is to the party.
And all this has prompted their brethren on the right to start screaming, “We’re the only ones who can save you!”
Excuse me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Okay. This is going to happen. I have no illusions about this. The electorate are so blinded to any other parties that they believe that the Tories are the only ones to replace Labour. It’s like forgetting what a bear looks like after it spent a nice long while mauling you. The Tories set this all in motion during the eighties! You’d have to be mad to think that they weren’t going to come in and slink all this back in.
A party that referred, I’m told, to the lower employees in the public sector as ‘minions’. Tells you everything you need to know about their mindset, really.
There are other parties in the UK, but most of them don’t get much of a chance, thanks to the media in the country. Aren’t they nice for showing us all the options? So people think they’re left with just Labour and Conservative; and often start giggling if you mention the Liberal Democrats. Here in Scotland we also have the SNP, Wales has Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland has a bunch of parties. But the central government is still in Westminster.
After another stinging slap in the face by our government, I’m left wondering what can be done. I mean the only way to become an MP now is to have gone to university and studied politics, so we now have a bunch of dead-eyed, indoctrinated creatures whose whole life is politics and they’ve never really done anything else. Doesn’t seem right does it? A nice locked system for those privileged few who know the right people. I know it’s always had that aspect but with this new wrinkle it’s harder for anyone outside of the loop to get in.
I think I’ll just sit and wait for Christmas and New Year, hoping that it will all be much better once the first of January rolls around.
Will
Y’know I stopped expecting any sanity from our esteemed government about ten minutes after I played my part in voting that grinning sociopath fuck Tony Blair and his band of Tory Mark II scumfucks (okay, I’m sure they’re not all fuckers in the current incarnation of the Labour Party, but the majority of the cabinet probably couldn’t be trusted to look after a baby without smothering it) into power. Yes, after almost twenty years of continuous Tory rule, most of it under the crushing madness of Margaret Thatcher and the stripping away of public services to private firms I thought, this Blair bloke can’t be that bad.
Oh, the naïveté. I was young and desperate for some kind of hope for my future and my well-being. Cynical hindsight now tells me that I should have smelled something rotten from the moment that the rebranded New (yes, it would be too awful if it was old Labour, fuck having even a shadow of principle there) Labour used that abomination of a song 'Things Can Only Get Better’ and stormed into government in 1997. They crushed the Tories that year.
And crushing things has become the motif of their time in power. First thing to get crushed was the possibility that your average worker would get a fair shake: we got a minimum wage that was multi-tiered. As ever those under twenty-one were entitled to less than those over that age. I can see those under eighteen getting less, because, in general they have less responsibilities than an eighteen year old. As soon as you’re eighteen you are an adult and should be paid as such, instead this wage band is given the insultingly patronising monicker ‘youth rate’. Not that the over twenty-one minimum wage was any great shake. It still isn’t being just under six pounds an hour, a third of which is taken away in tax right away and then you have all your bills and such. Working at this rate you’re lucky if you have anything left.
Yes, I know that people in other countries have it much worse, but I get the feeling that if any UK government could bring our wages down to those rates they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Let’s be honest, the minimum wage was influenced by all those nice, faceless, monolithic businesses that New Labour wanted to stay friends with. Not that it worked. As soon as most of these corporations hear the words ‘human rights’ they up sticks and find a nice third world dictatorship that they can leech from and give those who run them – each already wealthier than all of the working class in Britain combined – those million pound/dollar/euro bonuses that they so require. Really, really, they’ll be in the poor house if they are brought down to their last million.
Before I go too far into the world of the conspiracy theorist there, let’s mention the mess New Labour have made of the NHS. Or rather let’s talk about how they’ve gone about continuing what the Tories had done all through their reign to undermine and damage something that was once the envy of the world. Those efficiencies that New Labour are so fond of has left large areas without local hospitals and those that are left so disease-ridden (thanks to the fantastic idea of having private cleaning firms take over, always a good idea that) that people are afraid to go in because they perceive that there’s every chance they’ll never come out again.
I mean, there’s a lot more, but those are the most prominent things that I can think of right now.
And we come twelve years later, New Labour is limping along after being caught in many lies and a switch to a Prime Minister with all the charisma of a landed monk fish. We also come to the end of a cycle that was also started by the Tories and allowed to continue unabated by our rosy red saviours: The Markets. I hope it’s the end of a cycle.
The banks and The Markets. One should have been monitoring the other, y’know, instead one cloned the other. As we all know this didn’t turn out for the better, as the banks took on the no-hold-barred money-making ethos of The Markets. The wild, testosterone-fuelled grabbing for wealth and growth was adopted by the bank and things didn’t work out well. Especially, as I’ve already said, the banks were supposed to be watching over the fucking Markets!
Y’see the markets, and capitalism in general, seems to work, as far as I can tell, on the principle that growth can go infinitely, that there are resources in the world to be plundered forever. Which is strange as they seem to only hold one ‘resource’ dear: money. Something artificially created by banks to be infinite, but based on real things. Once upon a time anyway. Now it appears to all the world that money’s based on, well, more money. Which is more than a wee bit weird.
This came to an understated head last year (2008, for those people in the future) when a bunch of investments that were never going to pay back started a bit of a domino effect. This started a ‘banking crisis’. Then a ‘credit crunch’ before the governments of the world held up their hands and said, “We might be in a bit of a recession…”
“…That’s the worst since 1929. And half of you are going to lose your jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t have stripped away all those regulations that were designed to stop this happening again. Oopsie. We’ll fix this. Honest.”
They said a lot, oh yeah. Course they would. Standing, pounding on podiums saying, as people had said almost eighty years before (someone hear an echo?), that this can’t be allowed to happen again. And proceeded to wrist-slap their way through these multinationals and banks, who, in public whined about the restrictions placed on them, when they really had to be laughing their arses off that they’d gotten away with (thanks to those pesky governments, har har).
Cos if the banks were so scared of government reprisals why are they still giving their high-ups ridiculous bonuses? When there are people reduced to poverty and either no longer in their home or afraid that it’s going to be repossessed. They didn’t even learn any lessons from the financial institutions that sank because of their own greed.
And this brings me, finally, to the pre-budget report. In which there is another tiny tap to the wrists of the bankers and then it’s time to look at punishing the public. Oh yes, we had the temerity to have no idea of what the bankers and our governments were doing (while they hid it) so now the whip of budget cuts and tax increases are now on the horizon. Supposedly to tax those of higher incomes, but will only hammer the same people living on the breadline who always take the brunt of these things.
The prevailing theory is this is to win them votes for the general election, by people who intone this as though it should be accepted. We mere mortals couldn’t do better. Perhaps, but at least the politicians could at least be a bit more subtle about it instead of pulling down our collective pants and ordering us to bend over. Or even soften the blow to the people they supposedly represent.
But then British politicians don’t have any loyalty to the people of the country, their first loyalty is to the party.
And all this has prompted their brethren on the right to start screaming, “We’re the only ones who can save you!”
Excuse me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Okay. This is going to happen. I have no illusions about this. The electorate are so blinded to any other parties that they believe that the Tories are the only ones to replace Labour. It’s like forgetting what a bear looks like after it spent a nice long while mauling you. The Tories set this all in motion during the eighties! You’d have to be mad to think that they weren’t going to come in and slink all this back in.
A party that referred, I’m told, to the lower employees in the public sector as ‘minions’. Tells you everything you need to know about their mindset, really.
There are other parties in the UK, but most of them don’t get much of a chance, thanks to the media in the country. Aren’t they nice for showing us all the options? So people think they’re left with just Labour and Conservative; and often start giggling if you mention the Liberal Democrats. Here in Scotland we also have the SNP, Wales has Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland has a bunch of parties. But the central government is still in Westminster.
After another stinging slap in the face by our government, I’m left wondering what can be done. I mean the only way to become an MP now is to have gone to university and studied politics, so we now have a bunch of dead-eyed, indoctrinated creatures whose whole life is politics and they’ve never really done anything else. Doesn’t seem right does it? A nice locked system for those privileged few who know the right people. I know it’s always had that aspect but with this new wrinkle it’s harder for anyone outside of the loop to get in.
I think I’ll just sit and wait for Christmas and New Year, hoping that it will all be much better once the first of January rolls around.
Will
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