Who
knows what goes into all that food she’s been cooking, people will ask? Will they be able to associate her with anything
else than the Grillo Sisters and coke while they’re watching her cooking
program on television? So many
stories, so much innuendo. Will the moralizing BBC continue allowing her to
work on television or squeeze her out
as a bad example to housewives? Who can say? She is after all the daughter of
Margaret Thatcher’s once closest ally, Tory-Boy Chancellor of the Exchequer
Nigel Lawson who’s economic policies kicked off the financial ‘revolution’ from
which we’re still suffering today, the rich excepted that is, while her husband
until only recently Charles Saatchi ran the advertising agency which helped the
lovely Margaret to power. Poor Nigella, caught up in a privileged life of
endless credit card use, drugs, Tory politics and an unhappy marriage. A real
nasty stew if there ever was one and nothing like those delectable little
things she’ll rush up on telly, so far from the kitchen of most women who are,
by necessity, into fish fingers or burgers and chips for their kids. Please
don’t tell me you did all your shopping at Iceland my dear!
So England get thrashed by Australia three
games in a row and lose the Ashes. Then a day or two later we see them on
television having fun and laughing their heads off together in some light
relief test driving. So that was your reward for a gross failure. For a casual
unprofessional attitude and a total lack of commitment, being allowed to go out
and have fun. For treating the game and your country with disrespect you needed
rewarding! It’s all part of the attitude that pervades this country today.
Lords and Ladies absolutely and deeply honorable Members of the House of Lords
checking in for fifteen minutes and then checking out for three hundred quid,
DAILY, FIVE DAYS A WEEK! Now please tell me and tens of millions of hard
working people, millions of those who are unemployed, poor, homeless and
destitute… IS THAT TAKING THE PISS OR ARE YOU LAZY BASTARDS JUST HAVING A LAUGH
ON THE TAXPAYER… LIKE BANKERS OR DIRECTORS OF COMPANIES ALLOWED TO GET AWAY
WITH TAX AVOIDANCE AND OTHER FORMS OF BLUE MURDER BY THE RASCALS AT THE INLAND
REVENUE?
Are you members of the House of Lords just
taking the piss? Fifteen hundred a week for seventy-five minutes work? Okay, I
know it’s not what the jokers in the Premier League are getting so I know there
are some serious issues here, but then
pissing on nurses, teachers, firemen, ambulance workers train drivers and
dinner ladies for an hour and a quarter a week! And then you people being
called Honorable and My Lord and making the laws of this country and all! I
suppose you think you really deserve it, don’t you, your Lordships?
It’s alright then! A Chinese warship cuts
directly across the bows of an armed American Missile Cruiser in the South
China Seas without warning and it’s alright! Never mind that the American
Government have described the incident as serious, as a provocative act, the
response of Chinese officials was to state that the issue was resolved through
formal procedures whatever that meant. What
it actually means is nothing at all! It
means nothing, and it means everything! What it actually means is that the United States with Japan close behind
are gearing up for naval conflict with China over small inlands territory in
the South China Seas whose ownership is hotly disputed. Japan, China and even
South Korea all claim the islands, now currently occupied by Japan and the
clock is now running down. Inexorably ticking to conflict.
It all seems far from us now, however it’s
not. In the last week Japan has announced a multi-billion dollar program to
upgrade its military forces, manpower and equipment. China has now condemned
this as a highly provocative act. The United States has begun moving serious
naval power into the region with ships carrying nuclear armament. And what’s it
all for? Truth to tell, a handful of tiny islands! What is its cause, truth to
tell, China’s fast growing status as a regional power and hence an inevitable
nationalism. The force driving the upcoming conflict is likewise the economic
rivalry and competition between the two Asian powers being irrevocably played
out on the world stage. The microcosm of the conflict, a handful of tiny
islands, much the same as the assassination of one man in 1914 was the
microcosm for a World War. The islands themselves actually mean nothing. It is
their symbolic value that will focus the storm. This year has seen a growing
military preparedness by the two interlocked players, stormy exchanges of words
and near naval collisions. Next year might lead to matters altogether more
serious.
The situation is complex! Washington is a
key ally of Tokyo, yet Washington is in debt to Peking to the tune of trillions
of dollars! If the Chinese call in the debt the US economy will sink. If the
Americans don’t go to Tokyo’s aid in a conflict with China they will lose
Japanese support in all things. Never mind! I feel quite confident that with
William Hague at the helm of the British Foreign Office, Britain’s power and
authority, coming through our lead in the Commonwealth, will prevail upon all
powers involved in any such conflict to see the error of their ways and
immediately desist!
Oh dear, oh dear! The plaster ceiling of
the lovely heritage Apollo Theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue collapsed onto the
balcony below throwing a large number of people who’d paid good money for their
tickets down into the Stalls where they might have got a much better view of
the play but for the fact that many were injured and the fact that the debris
also fell on the actors themselves. Result, many theatre goers got the kind of
participatory performance they’d never expected in something that came close to
a farce never mind a serious tragedy. The sight of trembling bewildered people
covered in blood outside the theatre in various transports heading for hospital
was a sight straight out of a nightmare. Instead of a fun evening out in
theatre land they got something quite unexpected and lo and behold, theatre
owners and associated management bodies all hurriedly rushed to declare that
their buildings were all safe as houses and this was an event quite out of
keeping and character. Unfortunately, events over recent years have proved
quite otherwise.
Their concerns are quite understandable.
Filling the West End Theatres twice a day at this time of year with the prices
of tickets quite serious money is an extremely lucrative business and the well
publicised images of customers emerging from the Apollo covered in blood, and
talk by Westminster City Council of concerns about safety, building inspections
and regulations, along with similar talk of risk by the Fire Brigade isn’t
likely to enhance reputation or takings. What it’s more likely to do is advance
the cancellation of tickets during the key Christmas Season so it was therefore
quite natural for the owners of these places to rush headlong into heavy
assurance. If the televised sight of theatre goers looking like participants in
Julius Caesar was to be somehow assuaged then guarantees and promises of
security and safety had to be given.
One of the ongoing problems of London’s
theatre land is the lack of financial investment for modernizing many of these old and ornate buildings,
particularly the facilities provided for customers. Many toilets, both men’s
and women’s, are seriously outdated and look like something straight out the
ark. Not quite like having to shit through a hole in the floor but not far short
if you know what I mean and quite frankly disgraceful for the price you pay for
a ticket. Dirty, unclean and out of date is the best way of describing the
general situation making it all quite an experience for the fussy middle class
customer. Theatres are a serious business with piles of loot for successfully
packing bums on seats which is why newspaper theatre critics get to be given
stacks of complimentary tickets for themselves, family and friends in the hope
of RAVE REVIEWS for the all-important good publicity they might engender.
Complimentary tickets? Is that all one
wonders! Yes, for the owners it’s a very serious business. Maybe someone ought
to write a deadly black satire about what REALLY goes in in theatre-land with its
implicit stack load of bitchiness. That would really pack all the cynics in but
quite frankly it might spoil the party and would almost certainly never see
daylight. Besides, people go to the theatre to have fun and be entertained and
the truths that might emerge from any such dramatization of social reality
might be too serious to contemplate and never be profitable.
Did anyone ever think that theatres were
about conveying social and political truths to an audience? If so think again.
Theatres first and foremost are about making loot. Still, I do think that some
talented playwright ought to consider it. Written with truth in mind it might
make a perfect subject for having a real belly laugh.
Boris Johnson’s been busy lately. Closing
down fire stations in London and campaigning to build a dirty big island in the
Thames Estuary on which he can plonk yet another airport for London. This
public school Tory boy stalking horse of the Party’s visceral vicious right
wing has suggested that most people in Britain have a low level IQ and in this
he may be right, after all a majority of Londoners voted him mayor, but his
striking up a pose of serious intelligence is quite frankly ludicrous as are
most of his seeming strengths. I use the word ‘seeming’ because that is how
they appear when set against the intelligence and capabilities of so many of
his opponents. The man quite frankly is borderline dense but when set against
the acumen of his opponents and critics he comes out sounding like Einstein.
The question is how does he manage it? Well as I’ve suggested it’s undoubtedly
the inferior qualities of others that magnifies his own, but more important
perhaps is the pose he strikes up, invariably confronting challenge and
criticism with a superb public school air of insouciant bluster that makes
people think he simply must know what he’s talking about or else he’d be full
of bullshit and he can’t be that, can he. After all he’s an ex-Eton public
schoolboy and seems to know all the top Tories!
It’s those winking little piggy eyes of his
and that genuine air of leery insouciance! Mix it all in with his well
calculated bluster and you have the kind of comic book character that the
British lower classes love and find sympathetic. He has all the air of a
wayward bumbling blimp and to anyone seriously intelligent brings a refreshing
touch of a wilfully anarchic idiocy onto the British political stage. Set this
against the dour unfunny charm of Muslim fundamentalist friendly Ken
Livingstone and he’ll come out smelling of roses time after time. He’s a
British political jackanapes who understands his electorate with a
well-manicured charm. Meanwhile he’s managing a city that’s been fast turning
into an immigrant rat hole of countless East European illegals soon to be
joined by numberless more. Under his command London has been turned into a
duality of jack the lad financial rascals in the City and Dockland and a great
sea of on the make begging, importuning, petty theft and East European gang
controlled cheap labour day to day employment in a wide variety of unregulated
off the books employment from the West End to Hammersmith and beyond. It’s a
nasty little place with theatres and museums lodged at its center, cheek and
jowl with islands of immense property wealth at Mayfair, Kensington and Chelsea.
And right at its heart is the well-guarded holy of holies, Buckingham Palace.
These islands of wealth are already seeing charming incursions of Romanian beggars, mainly Roma women with dirty babies, doorstep sleepers and con artists against all of whom the powers of the police seem quite inadequate, instead being used against student demonstrators protesting against Tory welfare cuts, young people for whom Boris Johnson has entirely no sympathy! If the police are short of manpower as they claim the trick is to help recruit this whole army of East European illegals into the police and make them respectable! Then they can help guard all the palaces and officially patrol Kensington and Chelsea instead of urinating in the doorways of all the rich émigré Russians! Make that your major achievement and your return to Westminster with a top job in David Cameron’s Government will be assured, namely as Minister for Pompous Insouciant Leery Bluster and Bullshit.
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