Quoting Stewart Lee
"It’s Wednesday morning. A quarter of a century ago, I made the mistake of getting out of a Jeep in the Lake Bonney Riverlands of South Australia, and suddenly every square centimetre of my face and body was covered in swarming black flies. That’s what the news feels like now: so many sick stories coming at you all at once. What is it you want me to satirise this week, liberals of Observer-land? Brexit-supporting holidaymakers incensed by passport controls they voted for? Or Nadine Dorries’s downstreamed tennis pitch dyslexia? Covid cash millions in disappearing suitcases? Or billions wasted on contracted cronies? Sexual misconduct in the cabinet? Or frontbench porn from the internet? Broken replacement red wall funding promises? Or the end of educational Erasmus opportunities? Raw sewage discharging or more fines for partying? Lawnmower insurance dividends or government human trafficking? Channel 4 cultural vandalism or care home Covid scandalism. Which of these news flies to swat first? Answer me! Barrel Scrapper Grant Shapps is Taking us for a Ride"
In the non-sleep zone of last night I read a couple of Guardian articles that made me think and laugh out loud Stewart Lee. Ride-on lawn mowers, yes of course we all have got one and £50 saving on insurance - wow. I know, I'm a Guardian reading sodding liberal, but somehow they just seem to get to a truth I see and it is only Stewart's opinion! Read him here. And don't forget two years before you need to get a MOT, saving you some more money - not much mind you.
What else, a good book called 'Chums: How a tiny caste of Oxford Tories took over the UK a look at how a small Oxford elite has taken over running the country to their own advantage, and we voted them in for god's sake. Perhaps Dominic Cummings in the end got sick of it all.
Does class rule? Downton Abbey you have us at your mercy;) though I believe the new film is just a frivolous romp ending up in the South of France.
Kuper argues that though the clique around Johnson believed they were born to power, unlike the swashbucklers of empire they admired, they lacked a cause to fight for. His book details how that “cause” was eventually drummed up by three other near contemporaries at Oxford, all of whom fell under the sway of Norman Stone, the polymathic history professor, alcoholic and sometime adviser to Margaret Thatcher. The first of those was a young Scot, Patrick Robertson, introduced to Stone by Gove at a Burns Night dinner, the second was Dan, now Lord, Hannan, and the third was the most intense of undergraduates, Dominic Cummings.
I will leave the article on Rees-Mogg out, only because this clown jester of a man was given the rotten egg job of sailing Brexit through our respective intelligences and will be the fall guy for when it fails.
Wow! Powerful stuff to start the day Thelma. Stewart Lee now on my reading list. What a sorry mess this government is. At least Thatcher and May had some integrity however much I disliked their politics. Jan Bx
ReplyDeleteYes Jan. The Robber Barons make me cross. What with the key to the treasury, they rule like little despots;)
ReplyDeleteThank you for this wonderful post to start our day. I do love what you share here for us all to enlighten us and give us a perspective on things that we might otherwise miss.
ReplyDeleteSome would argue it is a one sided view, but I also see the funny side of thing as well. Also, obviously I am not the only one..
DeleteI spent some thinking about the points in the first paragraph last night. I ended up - as I always do - getting angry. They have stopped talking about Brexit opportunities now, having swept it all under the carpet of Covid, and now Putin's war in Ukraine. Boris says that if he was too hard on global business they would cease to invest in Great Britain. Instead of selling everything off to the lowest bidder, why didn't WE invest in our own future? How would we do that? By borrowing to invest. If we had begun doing this in the 1970s we would have made as much money as the foreign investors have - trillions. Certainly enough to finance everyone's generous pensions and pay off the debts accumulated since then.
ReplyDeleteThe sewage in all the rivers is there because the water companies have given most of the huge profits to the investors rather than improve the infrastructure as they were contractually obliged to do. Great Britain will now pay to clean up the rivers, because the investors will ask for more money to do it. You can see why I get angry, eh?
DeleteJust fished the top comment out of the comment section! I think we need better education for people, the young have picked up on it as they see their future going down the drain. Housing too expensive, low paid jobs without contracts, and then there is the miserable sight of food banks and the less fortunate not only not being able to heat or eat. It has to stop, this living off money whether it be investments or housing.
DeleteYes Tom your anger inspires me to take a vengeful course against this government. When we sold the silver we sold our morals as well.
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