SOMETHING IN THE NEWS

MAKING SAINTS
TONY BLAIR’S SPEECH
MANCHESTER UNITED
ENGLAND A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY?
THE OFFENSIVE BBC
FLYING NIGEL
AMERICA THREATENS JUST ABOUT EVERYONE

 

MAKING SAINTS

Yesterday the Vatican and its Argentinian Pope made two more saints out of former Popes! Now to be made a saint it’s in the rules that you’ve got to have worked some kind of miracle during your time at the top and that miracle had to be witnessed. Okay, that’s fair enough. In the end it’s all a matter of judgement only the people who’ve done the judging down the centuries all seem to have come from the same outfit and let me tell you my friend, we’re not talking Chief Rabbis here!

Naturally once nominated no-one ever gets turned down!

In the current bevy one of the candidates was said to have cured someone with severe back ache by a laying on of hands! Sounds pretty bona fide if you’re one of the goggle-eyed faithful but then think of it another way. Okay, you’re some humble Italian peon out of the sticks who’s gone to the Vatican with a back ache around Easter and been lined up with a few hundred others to meet the man who’s closest to God. Suddenly you look up and see him smiling down on you and next thing you know his hands are massaging your shoulders! Well if that isn’t enough cause for producing divine electricity, next thing you know you’re gratefully kissing his hands out of which he pops a couple of paracetamol. A few hours later your back pain has gone and you know you’ve seen God!

It’s a miracle and maybe it is divine because it’s the Pope that’s done it and he is after all quite simply god’s representative on earth. And it’s with this kind of cred built up over countless centuries that the lads at Saint Peter’s have been able to hold the faith over the humble and keep it preserved. The Borgias were masters at it!

Manicuring the miraculous has been an art form well maintained into the modern era and kindly don’t knock it! The great ceremony at the Vatican with the Pope creating new saints brings tens if not hundreds of thousands of tourists to St Peters and the cash flow generated is as important to the Italian GDP as pop music is to the British. Excuse me, I’m talking serious money here with a vast industry of key rings, fridge magnets, plaster cast saints, virgins, crucifixes, beads, holy water, candles (electronic or otherwise). Most of it straight out of China. And that’s apart from food and hotels. All the media in Italy primed up and ready and everyone taking some kind of cut. Making Saints therefore is as much a traditional part of world catholic culture as eating chips is for the protestant heritage.    

 

TONY BLAIR’S SPEECH

In recent days former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has made an interesting and well balanced speech pointing to the dangers of Islamic extremism making inroads internationally into societies and countries all over the globe. He highlighted its dangers for pluralist liberal democracies, pointed to its areas of advance in recent decades through political manipulation and military violence then laid out the consequences of a political failure of Western societies to act in concert in order to counter its malevolent results. This was a measured, carefully thought out piece of advice. Its words no doubt a consequence of developments over recent decades and how he now perceives the current reality. His argument was succinct and cogent with its major points well integrated throughout.

Yet as I listened to it I had the strange sensation of having been there before! That he was repeating a history of circumstances that we had both certainly lived through but more important than anything else, a history of circumstances that he as a political leader, WAS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING.

Let’s take a look at your time of running the country as Labour Prime Minister from the decade beginning in the mid-nineteen nineties Mister Blair. One of the things that British people remember most was the ease with which Islamic religious radical preachers had no difficulty whatsoever getting into Britain and endlessly preaching fundamentalist religious and racial hate sermons on London and Birmingham streets to large crowds of youths. We remember the character of these speeches and the fact that these people seemed to be able to make them with impunity… that the police did absolutely nothing to stop them and seemed to have the perpetual excuse that there was nothing they could do to stop them. Not only did these preachers seem to have police protection from the Home Office but seemed to be welcomed as part of New Labour’s vision of a tolerant society. Indeed, anyone criticizing these fundamentalist Islamic preachers and their sermons and pointing out their dangers were, under New Labour, ostracized as intolerant. That is what British people clearly remember Tony Blair. That you and your Government welcomed these monsters.

Another thing that British people remember about you and New Labour was the proliferation of attacks against British people and Western Culture by Islamic extremist groups that sprang up and operated with impunity during your time in office, busy with threat and intimidation on the streets of our major cities as well as throughout the electronic communication services with their main focus of their attack on the Jewish Community. Your Government allowed these things to happen and encouraged them. You furthermore encouraged a diplomatic relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran that openly denied the existence of the Holocaust with Jack Straw maintaining a friendly relationship with senior members of that regime.

However the most interesting and visible characteristic of your period in office was the facilitation by your Government of a policy of unchecked and uncontrolled mass Muslim immigration into the United Kingdom. Over a ten year period some three million Muslim immigrants arrived here throughout which time the British people were told that they would all add economic value to British society. And with this a pattern was build up so that those who questioned or criticized this unrestricted mass Muslim immigration were told that they were in some way racists!

It was your New Labour Government Tony Blair that turned northern British towns and cities into large scale Muslim communities and breeding grounds for Islamic extremism AND NOW YOU HAVE THE DAMNABLE CHEEK HALF A DECADE LATER TO POINT TO WHAT HAS HAPPENED WITHOUT SAYING WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR IT. Well thank you for the warning. You yourself did very nicely in financial terms from your time in British politics while also being responsible for fundamentally changing the appearance and character of British society. BUT DON’T GET UP NOW AND TELL US HOW DANGEROUS IT ALL IS WHEN YOU AND YOUR GOVERNMENT WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR PUTTING IT ALL THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

In short Mister Blair thanks for the speech but keep your mouth shut.

 

MANCHESTER UNITED

So, some poxy British English football club fires its manager and it’s a more important news story than anything else happening in the world for almost three days!

But then the club is Manchester United and supposedly it makes all the difference! So what’s so special about Manchester United?

It’s an interesting question. The club is American owned, it has no internationally famous players of great or outstanding ability, it’s not known for any major contribution to charity, its players are moderately educated at best and their behaviour on the football field more often poor with no firm example of diligence set. In terms of the sporting media however, they have developed and nurtured a certain iconographic status, becoming a carefully manicured brand for a fair part of Manchester’s working and underclass population. In short they are a business that has become integral to the culture of one of Britain’s great northern cities.

Not only integral but psychologically essential. To say that it’s only a poxy football club may sound like a heresy but that’s only because of the crucial importance of the game in the modern history of the British working class. And it’s now more important than ever, firstly because of the recent crucial importance of money and finance in the promotion of clubs, mainly through the vast inflation that has permeated player valuation and the transfer system where the REAL profits are made, and secondly, because of the increasing psychological importance to working people of ‘their’ club’s success given that they’ve got so little else of worth in employment or any other forms of status enhancement. In short the club and its players have become everything!

It’s actually something of a joke! These Manchester United players who in general terms are not wondrously or phenomenally skilled or endlessly brilliant, commanding adulation and offensively ridiculous salaries for a ninety minutes performance which would not be earned by a teacher, ambulance driver, nurse or policeman in ten years hard work! Clearly it is not the actual performance that is financially important but the massaging of a player’s capability and therefore value for the transfer market, where profit made on the sale of flesh is everything. So players who earn tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds a week are watched by fans who pay a very fair portion of their income to see them, and in the process, quite frankly, ensure that their own children eat poorer food. In all truth, what kind of working class cultural servility is that? Answer? It’s a cultural servility built up over time and through tradition resulting in the fact that the game itself has become subsumed beneath its clubs, i.e. it’s tribal structure, its players, its clothing (fashion) accessories, its famous names and its whole iconography. The players may be individually pathetic but that doesn’t matter because the fans no longer know any better. Anyway, they’re blinded by a loyalty that verges on an emotional sickness!

The British News media, particularly the rat end of the tabloids along with BBC Television and Sky, well recognise this pathetic character of working class culture and play it up for all that’s its worth. If it’s as important to the working class as life itself it’s because IT IS LIFE ITSELF.

And that is why, when the relatively new Manchester United football club manager, David Moyes was  sacked after only eleven months on the job after replacing the long serving Scot, Alex Ferguson, knighted for services to sport no less, the news became central to the life of the country! More important than the economy, than employment, than international affairs in the world, than war and peace… What does this actually say about its people? Actually there’s a kind of pathos about it, a kind of soporific sickness, that must make banking executives along with the rest of the British upper middle class feel full of contempt.

 

ENGLAND A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY?

Well that’s how David Cameron regards England. As a Christian country. And why not? That is its heritage which I as a Jew who has the privilege to live here gladly accept. It has no problem for me and really shouldn’t have any problem for anyone else only it does. It’s clearly a problem for Muslims many of whom do not want England to be a Christian country but a Muslim one. These are people who do not want to live in a pluralistic, liberal, democratic society where such values as tolerance predominate. They want England to be a society where women get stoned to death for adultery and kids get their hands or legs chopped off for nicking a bottle of water. They want Islamic Sharia law to operate in England and have found themselves a nice little niche to operate out of in BBC Television!

How many people have noticed how BBC television programs, Sundays or weekdays, having to do with questions of Religion or Politics always seem to have a careful concentration of strategically placed  vociferous Muslims, both men and women, sitting right at the front who seem to take over the show whose voices drown out those of any other faith. It has become more noticeable than ever in recent years, particularly when these people are given a kind of endless carte blanche to attack the Jewish State of Israel on every occasion possible by the program’s presenter. Historically and currently England is a Christian country where the values of fair play and tolerance meld happily into all forms of life. These values are now under threat. The leadership of the church itself is of the opinion the England is a post-Christian country due to the decline of Christian worship, the rise of Islam as a religion practiced and the multiplicity of new faiths worshipped and practiced. Quite frankly and to put it bluntly, saying this is to stick your arse up for a whipping. Go into any one of the thousands of churches whose doors are open on a Sunday for prayer or ceremony and you’ll get a friendly tolerant welcome.

Tolerance is everything. It’s often but sadly not always, part of a mutuality. An understanding that people need to work together. Christianity wasn’t always like that. It had to go through modification and change over the centuries to become a more humanized form of guidance and even today it might still work for many. What doesn’t work anymore is an unreconstructed intolerance and the knife at your throat. The English people of the early 21^st century don’t want that kind of thing because they don’t want to be regulated, neither by the bureaucratic strictures of a European polity or the religious strictures of Islam. So let me tell you, packing your bags is easy if you don’t like it here.

 

THE OFFENSIVE BBC

Given the activities of BBC Television and its reporters in recent months is has become increasingly relevant to ask, just how many of you people are working for the American National Intelligence Agency or the British GCHQ at Cheltenham?

Considering the total bias of its reporting of all the events in the Ukraine and the quite extraordinary conduct of its reporters actively participating in various events on behalf of Nazi nationalist groups in Kiev, one cannot but think that their journalistic remit came directly from the British and American intelligence services who were behind the nationalist inspired coup d’état. There is simply no other explanation for their conduct which had an unvarnished surface character of extremism. Let us be clear on this point. I’m not talking about any simple political support for the nationalists. What I mean here is an actual involvement in and manipulation of events.

BBC Television has an interesting history. In the 1950’s it was politically Foreign Office Establishment, packing its Russian Broadcasting service with ex-Baltic States émigrés whose Second World War contact with home grown Nazis was more than dodgy, same as it was with Ukrainians! Never mind, the Corporation was pretty good at using Nazi SS marching tunes as a background for its sports programs. Charming, but that was nothing compared to the unbridled snobbery of its reportage and panel games most of which were presided over by BBC Establishment Snob-In-Chief Richard Dimbleby who’d literally go into utterly reverential hush tones when anything Royal was in the air. It was Dimbleby himself who was the official connection between anything Royal and the masses.

However despite its quintessentially Establishment character it somehow always managed to portray a certain balance of political point of view. Balance is a key word here. You kind of knew which side it was on but the opposing point of view was never left out or openly stated then simply attacked. You might disagree with a BBC Television presentation of facts but it always left room for dialogue and debate which was never far from forthcoming, whether it was Korea, Vietnam, or a wide variety of conflicts. In the case of the Ukraine on the other hand, all of this has been firmly chucked out the window. There had been absolutely no presentation of any other viewpoint except that of the United States with the snappy tones of William Hague yapping like a poodle not far behind. If it wasn’t such a serious abandonment of proper conduct in journalism it would be more like a joke because it is, simply, extreme.

What we are hearing from BBC Television reporters in respect of anything coming out of the Ukraine are the words of the American State Department and quite frankly, why are we paying our license money for that? More important than anything else however is that the abandonment of impartiality has been so total, so shameless. How much did these squidgy people sell themselves for I wonder?

 

FLYING NIGEL

He’s a man at the head of a political party without a single elected representative in Parliament. He’s a man that all the other political parties along with large swathes of the media would love to damage and do anything they can to damage! How about your wife, Nigel, isn’t she German, when the media rats are quizzing him about UKIP’s policy about using European labour… But low blow or high he knows how to take it. Always that indefatigable smile keeping him aloft and flying high over any plain dirt.

Nigel Farage is no ordinary politician. He’s a man with a very serious issue who speaks the same language that so many of us do. If he’s visceral and so naturally at one with such a wide framework of the electorate right now it’s because he and the electorate coincide. They’re speaking to each other in a way that doesn’t demand any effort and with that kind of mountain on his side he won’t be thrown over or dismayed by anything small… any reactionary rubbish in his own camp, any mischance remarks or past mistakes long forgotten. He’ll ride it all like a wave, confident that he’ll return flying high. The same can’t be said for Clegg and the Liberal Democrats or Cameron and the Tories. One more skeleton coming out the cupboard from that neck of the woods like another Lib-Dem paedophile job and Clegg loses it all. As though this pasty faced little mumchancer hasn’t lost it already!

But then Nigel of the sharp profile hasn’t got anything to lose. This is all about Europe, in or out, and he knows instinctively that British people don’t like being bullied or told what to do… and not getting the chance to have their say in a Referendum is more like bullying than anything let alone lack of trust. Enter Nigel Farage and they get the chance to have their say. That’s all it is. If Cameron had given it to them a year back it’s less likely he’d take a kicking now but take a kicking he will. Only thing then is where will Nigel go after the 15^th? Onwards and up I suspect. These May elections are only a springboard for UKIP. The real challenge for the Party will come next year at the General Election. If they can bust the Liberal Democrats, pinning them back to 20 seats and take twenty more off a nervy Cameron, with forty of Nigel’s Blue Devils in Parliament he’ll be a real force to be reckoned with.

With the prospect of national power hanging in the air for the Party only then will we really see what he’s made of. You just never know what power can do to a man!

 

AMERICA THREATENS JUST ABOUT EVERYONE! 

Early in the 1950’s America extensively bombed North Korea on behalf of the United Nations. During the 1970’s it bombed North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and invaded all three countries. From 1960 to 1985 it sponsored invasions of Cuba and Nicaragua and during these decades facilitated the establishment of brutal right wing military dictatorships in Indonesia and Greece, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Bolivia and Guatemala. In the early nineties it was responsible for politically dismantling the federation of states that made up Yugoslavia and then bombing Serbia. Soon after it bombed Iraq then leading a military coalition invaded that country. Meanwhile it bombed Libya, sponsoring the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. It also invaded the British Commonwealth island territory of Grenada removing its political leader. Currently it has an extensive military presence in Afghanistan. This thumbnail sketch of America’s global political and military activity over the last six decades is by no means fully inclusive!

It’s current presence on the world stage however presages potential political and military engagement of an altogether more serious nature bringing it into direct confrontation with Russia, a former world superpower and China, one that’s emerging. The possibility for direct military conflict with either cannot be ruled out at this stage given its recent highly aggressive posturing in both Europe and the Far East. With President Obama’s recent visit to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines still fresh in mind the situation in the Far East has suddenly felt America’s finger on the ignition switch.

The 7^th Pacific Fleet of the United States currently stationed off Japan is the world’s most powerful military striking force. Japan currently has a serious territorial dispute with China over the ownership of a handful of islands in the South China Sea which, by the way, both nations also have with South Korea and the Philippines! Over the last year this dispute has burned mild to lukewarm in the shape of various confrontations involving vessels on all sides ranging from fishing boats to minor naval craft. Nothing serious, but still fraught with potential for matters getting out of hand. Both China and Japan have serious claims on the same islands which are currently under Japanese stewardship. The question always at issue is this… is it worth having a hot little war over a few lumps of rock?

Time to heat up the ante! ENTER THE UNITED STATES!      

During his visit to Tokyo, President Obama reminded his hosts that the United States had a military treaty with Japan which would see it coming to the aid of that country in any military or territorial dispute with anyone else! Obama’s remarks were, make no mistake, very pointedly directed at China and were a clear military threat!

In the context of a dispute over a handful of islands, of the growing military and economic power of China in the region and of the huge trading relationship that America has with that country, with a vast surplus held by the latter, the American military assurance to Japan can only be seen as a sturdily confrontational gesture and a throwing down of the American military gauntlet as a challenge to China. To put it at its best, in any economic or geo-political sense, such an action, whether calculated or not is extremely risky. America is clearly putting a marker down in China’s face as the main economic and military power of the region. The problem with this is that the United States is economically bankrupt and in hoc to China for trillions. The challenge is indeed no more than a very dangerous flight of fancy by a military superpower not quite what it was and military superpowers not quite what they were are psychologically dangerous. The Chinese can certainly afford to wait but they are not quite a people who are likely to forget. The Americans have been around for a few hundred years. With the Chinese it’s thousands!

President Obama’s new Pacific Facing Strategy for the United States is likely to run into the hard rock of emerging Chinese power and might turn out to be an ill thought out win or lose strategy. In other words reckless. In the West however, the gauntlet thrown down by the American State Department to Russia is equally strategically serious. Taking hold of the Ukraine and putting NATO military bases there a short distance from the Russian border would represent a huge strategic advance for the United States military in geo-political interest to contain the old enemy. For the Russians it would represent far more than a catastrophe given the historical circumstances of the relationship between the two countries. The Ukraine was fought over to the death between the armies of the Soviet Union and the Nazis in the Second World War. Russia lost many millions of its soldiers there fighting the Nazi military machine and emerged triumphant after some of the bloodiest battles of the entire war had taken place there. From the early 1920’s the Ukraine had become an integral part of the Soviet Union with its people, both Ukrainian and Russian a key part of that political union. Apart from its agricultural and industrial wealth, both mainly concentrated in the east it would be historically inconceivable for Russia to allow the United States to get a military foothold there, yet this is exactly what the Americans are pushing for and in doing so are inevitably facing up for a conflict with Russia. In this we are seeing them attempt to draw Europe into a combined military camp.

This presages the possibility of a major armed conflict between the military forces of the United States and Russia in the West, the outcome of which could be catastrophic. Yet this is exactly what the current foreign policy of the United States seems to be driving for. As things stand the character of this conflict could indeed become global with the United States engaged militarily with China in the East. As outlined earlier the United States has certainly been no stranger to military conflict in the last six decades. However, such conflict has always involved conventional military hardware. This is hardly likely to remain the case. It is my judgement that for fundamentally economic reasons the United States will provoke global conflict in order to retain the economic hegemony that it is now losing fast. As it once sought to fix national political regimes through local wars, corruption and covert political manipulation, so it will now resort to altogether wider and more dangerous military actions.

The danger currently posed to the peace of the world by the United States to my mind borders on the catastrophic.

GEORGE FORMBY’S SECRET ONE OFF VISIT TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE!

Ee by gum George… It’s turned out nice again!

Ee by gum Your Majesty, it ‘as too at that.

You bein’ ere George, you know, both together on our own, gives me the opportunity to talk to you about Buckingham Palace. I don’t mean about you singing here and all that, George… What I really wanted to talk about was all the windows. They all get a bit grimy in t’winter!

I can see your point Your Majesty. They all need cleaning!

That’s exactly my point George. It gives me the chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do! I mean, you of all people know what I’m talking about!

Now from what you’ve already told me Your Majesty there’s not much doing on the Ground Floor. It’s all going on late at night on the First so that way you’ll need a much longer ladder. ‘Specially if it’s round the back of the building where all those ladies in waiting have rooms.

Exactly George! I’ve had an extra-long ladder made and already tried out my first trip with a bucket and leather! T’were last week after all t’guards buggered off! Weren’t all that easy. Tried it round back at first late afternoon. Tricky bein’ up there at first having your first peep looking in on one of the bedrooms. Light was off but no-one in so I didn’t miss much!

Sorry it was like that Your Majesty. Best views always come when least expected!

Damned right George! Got me best view only two days ago after one of our perishing coppers asked me what I was doing up there. I had a gardener’s coat on so he didn’t know who it was! You should have seen his face! Anyway I went back late night. Lady Cynthia Pallisher’s Room it was. Lady-in-Waiting to one of the resident Duchesses! Light was on and all that. Just waited for her to undress before I raised my head up over the parapet then saw her neat pointed little titties all there as she turned the bedside table light off. Just a lovely little triangle of hair too George. You should have seen it!

Sounds like your first score, Your Majesty, and aristocratic and all. Most of the ones a window cleaner gets sight of in Wigan don’t want talkin’ about!

Plenty of flesh on em eh, George? Like to see some of that if me and the wife come north on one of our meet the people trips. Meanwhile though I’m planning on having plenty of fun down here. I mean the Palace has thousands of windows and all of them need some cleaning what with the London air and all that.

Never know what lovely ladies you might get to espy one evenin’ to the next Your Majesty with so many windows to choose from. Get to be the envy of every window cleaner Up North with all those windows.

Damn right George. Nothing like being a nosey parker if you’re the King! There’ll be bound to be more than a handful of ladies interested in showing their Majesty a fistful of beaver. Anyway, what I really wanted to talk to you about George was the Lamppost! After your first couple of concerts here for Elizabeth, you remember, the ones that Mary attended, I had one of them Lampposts installed.

Sounds interesting your Majesty. Was it downstairs, along one of them streets back of the Palace Courtyard you showed me and Beryl some time back when we visited?

Well I certainly tried it George. I certainly did. Got one of my Secretaries to take a trip up to Warrington where he contacted Corporation. Nowt said. Just dug up a couple in one of the streets and brought it to London on’train. Good man the Mayor. We had the first put up along the end of the quadrangle. Ground staff did the hole and in went the Lamp. Concrete had to set though before I took my first lean. Once it did I put on that cap you gave me from the Working Man’s Club in Wigan, lit a cigarette and just rested back on it all. Can’t tell you how I felt when Lady Cowslip passed by. Almost wanted to give her a whistle! No, a girl like that certainly wouldn’t leave a man flat. In fact when I thought of the words of your song, George, I got an enormous erection!    

So, do you go leanin’ a lot Your Majesty?

Well that’s the whole point George. I had the other one put in at the end of the long gallery just before corner reaches the Royal bedrooms. Quite a bit different to Windsor!

With me little stick of Windsor Rock,

Along the Castle Walls I’ll stroll,
It gets sticky but I never complain,
I’ll just take it out and run it
up the Royal flagpole,
The Ladies of the Town tell me
it makes quite a sight,
They can see the flag flying,
on a dark night,
When they’re going home to their husbands,
It gives them a fright,
cos it’s not what they’re getting,
Let then wish as they might,
For me little stick of Windsor Rock.

Nice to hear you burstin’ into song like that your Majesty. If we could work out a tune you could try it out on the Ukelele. Not sure I’ve heard that one before.

You ‘aint George. I just made it up!

Ha ha… Your Majesty. Nice one! So what happened when you put up t’other Lamppost?

You mean one at end of Gallery in Buckingham Palace George? Well that was the place I had figured out for it you see. The Queen would come along from the Changing Room half way up the Gallery and head for her bedroom on there was me at the end, leaning on the Lampost and waiting for her. When she saw me there for the first time, quite unexpected, I’d thought she’d say GEORGE, IS THAT YOU THERE? but she didn’t. She just looked at me... Come over ere yer daft apeth she said with a smile. I was so happy and surprised I just began singing… You know George…

“There’s no other girl I could wait for

But this one I’d break any date for
I won’t have to ask what she’s late for
She wouldn’t leave me flat she’s not a girl like that…”

Well it’s a song any lad can sing to any lass if he loves her, Your Majesty.

Well that’s not the point of the story George. Her Majesty loved the idea of the Lamppost but she was much more interested with what went with it! It was the Flannelette Nightshirt that started it all off and things just got going from there. It was another of those songs you sang us at Windsor but it stuck in my thoughts…

I’ll put it in my own words…

Now into her bedroom I went quite by mistake,

My intentions were honest you see,
But she shouted with laughter – he-he-
I know what you’re after,
Me Auntie Maggie’s remedy

And that’s when everything perked up!

Your Majesty, listening to you makes me think just how amazing you and Her Majesty really are. Little wonder your popularity with all us working folk up north. If you hadn’t been King you’d have been real competition!

Doesn’t matter George. Together we can still make a fine pair. Me and the wife running the Country for the people, you and your ukulele keeping everyone happy.

Never a truer word was spoken. It was an inspirational relationship that lasted almost a decade and a half and took the British people through the Second World War on a high. King and Queen inspiring their people through the Blitz and the worst that the Germans threw at them. George, Beryl and his ukulele giving rich and poor alike genuine working class magic and an endless smile. As for the story above, you can take it as you please!

NEWSWORTHY PERFORMANCES OF THE WEEK

Ouch ouch! David Cameron jumps out the sea after being stung by jellyfish while on holiday at Lanzarote.

Oh did it hurt Mister Cameron? Now you know how it feels all the time if you’re a Saver in this country getting shit interest rates for your money. Then being stung by those energy companies ripping you off with your partners in Government the cheesy little Liberal Democrats promising this that and the other, lying all the time through their back teeth. Having their emotions pissed on by those endlessly provocative bankers bonuses with most people everywhere in desperate straits. That’s really OUCH Mister Cameron. Not having something slimy pump poison into your arse.

 

The Royals Down Under On Holiday!

Now I’m the Duke of Cambridge,

It earns an honest bob,
For a nice young Royal
It’s an interesting job.

I visit lots of countries,

Where people queue to see
Us eating all their lunches
And then shake hands with Me.

In Oz they’re very loyal

To Granny who’s their Queen,
Kiss anything that’s royal,
And more that’s in between!

We go to church on Sundays,

Like all good royals do,
But all the rest are fun days,
At races and the zoo!

The British people back at home,

All love us don’t you see,
They gladly pay for all our trips
And munch on chips and tripe for tea.

 

To be hummed to the tune of George Formby’s When I’m Cleaning Windows

 

GRAND OPERA

Oscar Pistorius continues to thrill us with his performances from the Opera House in Pretoria of the great universal tragedy, Love Me Or Leave Me, where the lover goes on trial for the murder of his beloved. Just as in all great dramatic masterpieces, the great tenor’s endless cries of anguish over his tragic loss and pleas of innocence echo through our hearts, competing with his grim accuser’s dark insistence of guilt. It’s all very intense yet we can somehow imagine the hero, unseen by us, looking up to heaven, not to commune with the almighty but because he has a vision of Reeva, his lost love, shining down on him like a Madonna.

 

STAGE MANAGEMENT

Congratulation should be given to BBC Television. No, not for its reporters in the Ukraine recently playing an important role in actively stage managing the political takeover in Kiev by openly Nazi supporting  groups on behalf of British and American intelligence services, but for carefully crafting the disappearance from its former intense news coverage of the Malaysian Aircraft tragedy. With the passing of days the once world-captivating item has gradually been allowed to slip down the Ceefax back pages to oblivion with now no more than an occasional murmur about searches by deep sea vessels failing to find anything!

Of course they won’t find anything! Under political pressure from the United States, the entire search effort of Britain and Australia has been little more than a joke with ships and planes searching in the wrong place and only doing this after a lengthy and carefully calculated waste of time so that recorder equipment aboard the aircraft would ultimately fail. The aircraft is where it came down. In the sea south-east of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, see one of my previous posts.  

The area alas now has another disaster with the disappearance from a capsized ferry containing many hundreds of its Captain! Whoops, what was that? Captain disappears from his sinking ship! I mean didn’t that happen only a year back when jack-the-lad Captain of an Italian Cruise ship, Schettino , did a bunk in a lifeboat with his ship rolling over! And now there’s the South Korean Captain admitting that a seriously junior officer was put in charge of his ship while it was negotiating dangerous waters. Hundreds of kids drowned, hundreds still missing. A good time for the inhabitants of these shark infested waters currently dining out on child’s leg soup. Sorry, families and relatives, if you want to get angry don’t get angry with me but get your hands on Government officials who allowed it to happen and the ship’s Captain who put an amateur in charge of his vessel knowing there were hundreds of children aboard.   

FINALLY THE CRIMEA!

So President Obama, with that walking corpse from the State Department, John Kerry, behind him, and further back that noisome little pipsqueak William Hague pretending he’s something more important than an American dummy, piping up from the wings, are all in chorus threatening President Putin and Russia with COSTS and SANCTIONS if they don’t get busy dissuading Russian activists to stop taking over cities in Eastern Ukraine. YES, THEIR WILL BE COSTS AND SANCTIONS!

Yes, it’s either hold out your hand for the cane or over the desk for the slipper!

Quite frankly, even if you regard such threats as a joke they’re still of weak political taste. The United States is economically bankrupt. I mean totally bankrupt to China and Saudi Arabia. In addition more than a few countries in Europe are likewise. Then there’s the situation of one third of Germany’s industrial output being dependent on Russian gas imports and very considerable swathes of the French economy being tied up with Russia, apart from all of which the Ukraine itself gets all its gas and most of its oil from Russia.

All in all then, the endlessly threatening posture of Britain and America are little more than juvenile and whereas it is true that nasty little children can be dangerous, as is only too evident when Child Hague opens his whining little Yorkshire gob, it’s hardly likely that Putin’s quaking in his boots. What is really nasty, however, is that Yorkie Boy Hague has made serious threats against Russia in the name of the whole British people! That’s both in my name and yours.

Well I for one cannot recall giving the said pipsqueak any authority to speak in my name when making threats against another country and its people, so I therefore require of you, said pipsqueak, WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO SPEAK IN MY NAME WHEN YOU THREATEN MILLIONS OF OTHERS?

MARKET TRADING DELIGHTS

I’d originally given this Post the title, PORNOGRAPHY! One of the subjects most frequently accessed through the internet by the British public, among whom may be counted our delightful police! It was actually an experiment. In the past I’ve often observed that the readership of my Posts was directly associated with their title. People attracted by something which informed them about the subject matter and commanding greater attention if it was headed by a pungent or provocative opener rather than something neutral or weak. Without topicality or dramatic punch.

The experiment I thought I’d try out was in a way really no different to many of the headlines dished up by the lower end tabloids, sometimes referred to as the dirt end of the market by the prim and prissy readership of the higher end stuff. It was all very well for higher end readers to snigger and sneer and tell the lower end that they only got what they paid for but quite frankly that’s not always the case. As Rudyard Kipling once pointedly remarked, the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin to say nothing about the Colonel himself and his secret subscription to the lad-mags!

All of this said I was simply curious to find out just how many people would initially latch onto the title and maybe retain their interest, reading further to the real subject matter which are two powerful sketches by a trader recounting experiences from his life on the London street markets. If the resulting download proved considerably heavier than usual it would confirm my initial hypothesis. If not the experiment would still prove educational for its result. The important thing for me was to try out my hypothesis!

Well I did! The blog was initially posted under the title PORNOGRAPHY and a day later I got the result. A really poor visit of 10! Most interesting! Maybe the British are a nation of prudes after all or maybe they were just scared of being caught logging on to the title! Anyway, I’ve changed it to the above but its content remains. I hope you enjoy my revelations!

In beginning my first sketch I have an important confession to make. Once, while working at Covent Garden Market central London I was very rude to some Americans! Americans, let me tell you, are notorious among market traders wherever they are and whatever they sell! It’s a fact. A truth which market traders universally hold to be self-evident! Market traders in general don’t like Americans. That’s because they talk a great deal. Yabber, yabber, yabber and that’s about it. What they don’t do is buy! It’s the general opinion among street traders that they’re just full of shit! That’s not because they’re nasty or unpleasant people it’s because all they like to do is talk rather than buy anything! They’ll talk about what you’re selling and whether they like it and its price. Then they’ll talk about you and your wife and your family. Then about their wife and children and family… and what it’s like back home in Idaho or Texas or Alabama. And it doesn’t matter if you tell them how lovely these places are… well actually it does because then you’ve got another half hour talking crap with them about how you know that it’s lovely! And so you go on and on and on. Unfortunately it’s not at your stall alone that they do it but the one before yours so you’ve already heard it all before they get to you and once they’ve finished at your stall they go on to the next, and the next and the next! Talking endless crap, taking up your time and never buying anything from anyone. NOTHING!

It’s like that talking to you for half an hour or more makes them think that they’ve come away with something and there you are! You’re only there to take money otherwise you wouldn’t touch the filthy market you’re in with a barge pole! It’s like you’re doing them a favor just by being there! All this said, Americans are everyone’s worst customers. Just a nightmare you have to deal with on a daily basis if you’re trading in one of the popular London Street markets like Camden Lock, Covent Garden or Piccadilly. And after the Americans come the French. Adults that is. Famous for their plain bloody meanness. Americans on the other hand are notorious for trying to bargain! The object you’re selling may cost just a quid, maybe fifty pence. Whatever the case they’ll ask for a discount. If its fifty pence then usually half price! What puts traders backs up is the sheer cheek of it. In all truth though it’s more likely something home grown. They come to Europe thinking we’re all somehow like natives, like gormless country cousins, and we’ll take just about anything, even their largesse on a fifty percent discount. Yes, we’re so very pleased to have the honor of your presence standing in front of our stall that you can have anything you like for half price! A view to which most traders will simply think, well take your arses back to Kentucky and go fuck yourselves!

It was on a bright sunny Friday morning when I picked up on the yabber coming from the stall next to me, the one with Skinny Hazel selling the New Age Jewelry, all lovingly handcrafted and made in her workshop at home don’t you know! The usual patter making the Americans think it was all seriously home spun and genuinely ‘crafty’. Hazel working hard to give them the story of homespun originality when she’d actually bought it all in from Nepal! There they were, these two mid-thirties something middle class American academics, as I soon picked up, initially telling her how lovely it all was and that they were looking for presents for their daughters and that it didn’t sound at all expensive. Then their questions about whether she made it all herself, and where she lived and how long she’d been doing it for. On and on, all the usual stuff. Setting her up for a purchase then saying that they’d think about it but would definitely come back, before moving on to my stall and taking in my Gem-trees, semi-precious necklaces of Tiger Eye and Malachite, mineral specimens and all the rest of the shit that I sold.

Taking it in, giving it admiring glances and setting me up for half an hour or more of idle, useless, bollock-wash conversation. And me some miserable little trader standing there all primed up and ready! Mess about with me? I thought angrily, like the creative writer’s brain that I had was only there to serve their bullshit.  No thanks, I had plans! I’d use them for a little experiment of my own. Something psychological! Hello, I said with an ingratiating smile… are you two Americans? They both purred, like I’d somehow recognised their divinity! Yes they were. Americans eh, I responded, well you’d better fuck off!

I said it coldly and loud. Without any rancor. Just told them to fuck off!

For quite a while they were speechless. Just didn’t know whether they’d heard right. Stood there in sheer disbelieve before the man opened his mouth. Did he hear me saying what he thought he’d heard me saying? I nodded my head. Yes, I grinned, I told you to fuck off! His face took on a sheer disbelief. I could see they were both angry by now. Sorry, I quickly added, I simply don’t sell to Americans! I just won’t sell you any of my stuff so fuck off! It was like they didn’t know where to put themselves. Even so they weren’t leaving the stall… I’d thrown down a challenge, which being American intellectuals they had to pick up! Was I refusing to sell them my things because I didn’t like them personally or was it because I was just anti-American. That I blamed Americans for all kinds of things? I smiled inwardly. I already had their curiosity. Now I’d slowly turn it all friendly! No, no, nothing like that, I held up my hands deferentially, that’s not it at all. In fact my wife and father in law are American, I lied affably. I just never sold to Americans because they never bought anything anyway and just liked to talk. They were just wasting my time when I had hundreds of customers to sell my hand-made gem-trees to. They were much in demand. My wife made them. The money we earned bought us our food. She was a talented artist and I was a writer, I lied through my teeth!

And then the primer. Well most traders knew that Americans really didn’t have any money so they were just wasting their time with them anyway! As for me I wasn’t really a rude man. I just couldn’t afford to waste any time I said cool but pleasant!

It seemed to mollify them. Okay, they’d intended going to the management to make a strong complaint about me refusing to sell to Americans but now they wouldn’t. Fine I said. I hoped they’d have a good time in London and with that studiously turned my eyes away, concentrating on the stuff on the table and letting them have a little think. Either they’d move off or start making enquiries! A bit of coughing to attract my attention before they tentatively got down to the latter; especially the trees. My replies came quick and breezy. Almost noncommittal! They were very durable I said, deliberately twisting one up and throwing another onto the floor; made of real semi-precious stones, I said emphatically. No mention of price. I’d let them ask. Meanwhile I’d carefully changed my disposition and became marginally affable. Were they teachers I wondered. Academics perhaps? Now it was my turn to make with the bullshit, but nothing too heavy. I needed to come over likeable. Besides, the trees were seriously craft objects. No-one else made them anywhere except ourselves. It was a very British tradition I said quickly, solemnly turning my attention to a couple of Italians who asked a few questions and bought a couple of miniatures. They were like that the Italians, if they saw something they liked and it sparkled they bought! I put them into bags with a flourish and they were off!

The Americans took it all in. Quick as that eh? A bit of conversation between them and a couple of questions. Yes, I responded. Most of the gems on my trees were birthstones. And I might even give them a discount on two or more as they were genuine people. They were welcome to pick them up if they wanted. That was it. A friendly end of conversation. I’d ascertained that they were definitely drawn in and wasn’t wrong. No more humming and hawing. With birthstones dominating proceedings I sold them three of the smaller trees with a built in discount, artificial of course, then three of the large. One for their home, the others for mothers! And finally a free gift of one of the small jobs with garnets! Those are real garnets I purred, slyly adding that they should keep it for themselves.

And the outcome of my little experiment? Ninety quid in my pocket after a little intelligent work in the psychology of manipulation. I was simply a genius I thought to myself, confirming the fact that all my fellow traders had long realised. After the Americans had left some who’d heard the whole story came over to congratulate me on my work. Yes, I was a true genius I laughed raising my coffee cup. Well, here’s to the next time I tell Americans where to go shove it!

*****

It was a cold dull day at Leather Lane, one of the dreariest, most desperate of all the London Street Markets. Seriously filthy. Only a rush of people walking through between twelve and two, most without any money. If anything sold it was fruit and veg, tee-shirts, crap clothing, a few disreputable looking pots and pans and some cheap looking plaster ornaments. Basically just barrow loads of nothing. To get a stall there, even as a casual, you had to pay Charley, Camden’s slimy Indian market inspector now deceased, a fiver extra from the palm of your hand, or if it was for the better trading at the top end near Chancery Lane, a tenner. Twenty casuals, fiver or tenner a day, five days a week! Charley it was rumored, owned a Rolls Royce!

Yes a cold dull day at this goddamned awful market where most times we took a hundred at best and our stall a complete marvel and novelty to everyone there. The fruit and veg men often came over to gawp at our gem-trees, glowing in many colors near the lights of the shops we were close to, our delicate agate slices, strange volcanic geodes, attractive crystalline necklaces and pendants. There’d never been anything like it in Leather Lane Market and there we were, so close to Hatton Garden, the diamond and precious jewels center of Europe itself let alone London. Our stall and its contents were a total one off. In a word QUALITY compared to everything else, so the two people who ran it had to be toffs! On one side of us Diamond Sid selling god knows what. He was well over eighty and neither of us had ever seen anything at all on his table. Ever! Further down were the Pampermoose Mob. Heavies with whom we always kept it extra friendly and they for some reason with us. Stuff off the backs of lorries was their scene and they called us TREES! Awright today Trees? Was a real friendly greeting.

Today, though cold and dull, everything was going to be different only we didn’t yet know it! It was like the heavens would open up, the sun smile and an angel come down upon us. On me rather as I was alone that day of all days when the miracle would happen. It was midday. I’d stalled out by eleven, middle of the market. Neither good nor bad. Maybe sixty quid if I was lucky! Soon after twelve two or three customers and a handful of lookers. Then some short nondescript guy came along. Reasonably dressed. Neither shabby or smart, eyeing up the stuff on the stall. No questions, just spending time taking it in. I watched with interest. Leather Lane Market wasn’t a place for careful lookers. It was either walk by and glance or stop, ask and buy, but this man was paying careful attention. His first questions were about durability. How strong were the trees? Would they easily break? Then what were they made of? What were the stones?

I went through the list of semi-precious, pointing out each that I named, then the different types of the trees that we had. The tall green ones were palms made of Aventurine or Green Quartz with little bunches of Tiger Eye dates underneath. Then we had small trees, Bonsais made of Crystal, Rose Quartz and Amethyst and Willows that looked beautiful in Crystal and Green Quartz. A finger pointed to the necklaces and I gave him the detail. He nodded for a while, looking everything over even more carefully. I felt increasingly curious but said nothing. Maybe he was a buyer from a department store or some kind of wholesaler, or maybe nothing at all. Just one of those curiosities we occasionally got on the markets. Well at Covent Garden maybe but Leather Lane? Most of the punters were from the office towers nearby out on lunch break, come over from Fleet Street or wandering up from the Garden. Cheese roll and half a pint in a pub then back to the drudge. Some fucking life and me out there telling them tales of minerals and stones, mines in faraway places and the natives we had to deal with to get hold of our gems!

The man looked up and began asking prices. I carefully went through the list, pricing each category along with the necklaces. He held up his hand stopping me short at the minerals then asked me to repeat. I did so casually, even affably, believing it was now end of story. Maybe one, two at absolute best. You lived in hope. It was that kind of day, that kind of market! Yea hope! It wasn’t to be. He thanked me, turned and was off, strangely brisk for my liking. I put it all to one side, rolled a liquorish and puffed. Man and incident forgotten. Half an hour later, by one, I’d sold three or four small trees and a cluster of pendants. Just one of those days I thought then caught the eye of the recently departed. Back again for more questions I thought.

It was nothing like that. Did I have any boxes he asked? Boxes, yes we put them back in their boxes when we packed them away I said, pointing to the long cardboard containers we had under the table. He looked for a moment then asked how I wrapped all the trees. Plastic bags, I said. Each had its own bag.

He again looked over the table. I want all of the large, he said quickly. Everything there on the table. And all the palm trees and bonsais. And I want fifty of the smaller trees. It’s more than you’ve got there. Have you got anything else underneath? I nodded and quickly brought another bag up. He hadn’t yet finished. And I want all the necklaces. Everything there and anything else that you’ve got.

I had a dozen more strings underneath I said coolly. Best quality Malachite! Them too he muttered.

I was staggered. More puzzled than anything. How would he transport it all? He shook his head. Not to worry about that! It’s all sorted out! Now you’ll be wanting some money!

Naturally I thought he was talking cards. The idea made me nervous. Someone pitches up out the blue, clears the table, buys just about everything I’ve got then  disappears up Stephen Hawking’s arsehole leaving me deep in a black hole. I hesitated for a moment. He noticed and a smile flickered over his face. I’m talking notes my son, he said quickly, so total it up.

I began writing it all down on some paper I had with me. Big trees so and so. Palms, bonsais and all the smaller stuff… Then the necklaces… Total well over a thousand quid! I hesitated to tell him. Adds up to twelve-fifty in all, I gulped. No problem. Seconds later he pulled a bundle out of his pocket and began counting out fifties. There we are my son, twelve ‘undred and fifty! Now you’d better get wrappin’.

I put the wad into my shirt pocket, did up the zipper and got wrapping. I was half the way through when I heard the sound of a motor. Looking up there next to the stall was a black taxi. Door open and he was already loading the boxes. I worked hard and careful. Making sure everything was well wrapped and packed perfect. Fifteen minutes later my table top almost empty along with the space underneath he took his leave. Lovely stuff, he said sweetly. Make really nice presents for the wife and kids and the rest of the family.

Together, me and the cabbie having loaded the last of the boxes he gave me a wave and was off. I couldn’t believe it. Stall completely cleaned out in Leather Lane like he was an angel, only he wasn’t. One of the fruit and veg men came over. Got out the nick just a few days ago, he confided. Big robbery. All in the papers five years ago. Police never found what ‘ee did with the money.

I pretended to be busy. Putting anything I had left on the table. A man of real quality I felt. Buying presents for his family and all. Cleaned me out of most of my stock on a cold dull day in the market. One of those miracle days. Only happens to a trader once in a blue moon. Well if he wasn’t saying anything neither was I, and then the money helped pay for my daughter’s wedding three months later. I mean, how was I to know whether the fruit and veg man was telling the truth!

ARE YOU ‘AVIN A LARF?

In recent days Her Most Gracious Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (it’s got to have capitals or it  doesn’t count!) gave the British Police Service a B+ for doing well but marked it down it from an A because it could do better. In other words there was room for improvement! The mark down in fact was due to a wide variety of police naughtiness that came to the attention of the public over the last year or so. Here, in case you’ve forgotten, are a few examples. Firstly their seriously illegal conduct in undercover operations such as having sex with women they were spying on; spying on Stephen Lawrence’s parents while investigating their son’s murder, grossly manipulating enquiries into the murder along with manipulating evidence presented in a public enquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death; falsifying evidence relating to the Hillsborough Disaster; telling lies about Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell and forcing his resignation; the unacceptably large number of deaths of innocent civilians in police custody in the last two years; the repeated refusal of the police to look into allegations of serious sexual misconduct by Jimmy Savile made by many young men and women over many years.

And for that they get a B+ for doing well but could do better!

Actually, ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH? How about the large number of fit-ups and frame-ups of innocent people in recent years, the attacks on members of the public such as the newspaper seller in the City of London resulting in his death, the shooting to death of innocent people like as Charles de Menezes on a London tube train and the endless roughing up of student demonstrators to mention only the tip of the iceberg! This vast backlog of appalling conduct might under all normal circumstances allow you to kick off with a C minus at best, that is if you weren’t doing this assessment of your own conduct yourselves. A C minus from which you’d go steadily down the alphabet. But as it is your very own Inspectorate of Constabulary doing the assessing one naturally expects this only too typical manipulation of judgement.

Added to it all however is the front page news from the Daily Mail this Saturday 12^th April. A nasty little matter already known for some time but now a big breaking story. Namely the appalling cover up of the staggering paedophile activities of Sir Cyril Smith. You remember him don’t you? The jovial 29 stone tub of lard Liberal MP? His was a record that made the long dirty career of Jimmy Savile look like a playground romp. During the course of Sir Cyril’s history of crime over 140 complaints were made to the police by boys he offended against. He was arrested more than once but no charges were brought. The police and Crown Prosecution Service it seems were leaned on by the security services and prevented from acting so all the complaints were ignored. One hundred and forty or more sexually abused children betrayed in a hateful cover up with everyone shrugging their shoulders. The police knew the truth and stayed silent.  

And Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary thinks the force deserves a B plus and could do better next time! Okay, so tell me… for what services to children were Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith knighted?

Were the politicians who organised those rewards ACTUALLY HAVING A LAUGH?

Recently however, as the police have only been too keen to let the public see, they’ve been quick to refer public complaint about police conduct to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the body set up years back to investigate police misdemeanor. So, the police refer most of the serious complaints to this body thinking, that will sort it as far as the public are concerned and in this they are right. The IPCC was set up to investigate complaints about the police and most people accept that as their function. Whether they do it satisfactorily or not is another matter entirely. Indeed it’s not been satisfactory at all for the vast majority of complainants.

The trouble with the so called IPCC, as has been known for many years, is that the name is seriously misleading. This organisation isn’t at all independent! Far from it. A very fair proportion of its staff who make up the teams investigating public complaints about the police are, wait for it, former policemen! In fact the organisation is packed to the rafters with ex- policemen so it’s generally a case of the police once again investigating themselves, same as it’s always been for small scale misdemeanor. With the more serious offences, those likely to attract the attention of the media, there’s a rush to the IPCC. Yes, that ought to do it, the public seeing that we’ve handed things over to an independent body… joke-joke! That means that there’s no reasonable grounds for suspicion, even among all those nasty suspicious people about!

Again, it’s more than clear that over the years too many complaints have strangely got nowhere or simply been airbrushed out of existent while the IPCC, always kept strangely short of genuinely independent staff, have taken on more and more former policemen as people supposedly experienced in doing investigative work to fill the gap, that being to investigate complaints against fellow members of the fraternity! Police investigating police with a permanent high rate of inefficiency and ever low rate of conviction. OH DEAR WHAT A SURPRISE!

So when I see Chief Constables rushing to refer serious misdemeanors within their force to the Independent Police Complaints Commission in cases of police violence or the many other cases of police criminality that invariably get nowhere I can only think along with so many others, ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH?

Okay Mister Pistorius, so you fired four bullets through a closed door thinking there was an intruder in the bathroom?

Yes My Lady!

Well Mister Pistorius, how do you think an intruder got into the gated, high security housing complex that your house is in without being detected and without knowing you lived there chose your window especially to climb into?

I don’t know my Lady. Anything is possible.

Well Mister Pistorius, if anything is possible, when you heard the sound in the bathroom and felt anxious why didn’t you give Reeva a nudge to tell her and make sure she was okay? Why didn’t you think about her for a moment? I mean, just make sure she was there. That it wasn’t her in the bathroom taking a leak or a dump before you fired your gun so quickly. Why didn’t you shout out, Reeva, are you in there taking a leak? I mean, didn’t you think it just might be her?

No My Lady! I was very axious. I thought it was an intruder in there. I had to act fast.

You had to act, you say Mister Pistorius, before checking on Reeva, even though you thought she was right next to you in bed? I mean she would have only been inches away so why didn’t you give her a nudge… Reeva, I can hear a noise in the bathroom… Maybe an intruder’s got in through the window and is taking a leak?

Why didn’t you do that Mister Pistorius?

I’m sorry My Lady, I don’t understand. Why would an intruder be taking a leak?

Okay Mister Pistorius, when you broke down the door and found Reeva inside the toilet why do you think she had her mobile phone with her. I mean, what do you think made her take it into the toilet? Do you think she wanted to talk to you maybe or call one of her friends. I mean there she was. She’d got out of bed and went to the toilet taking her mobile with her then locked the door. Isn’t it unusual to get up in the middle of the night, go to the toilet with your mobile and lock the door? What I’m asking Mister Pistorius is whether she’d done it before? I mean, had you ever had any conversation with her before from the bathroom where she’d been taking a dump and wanted to phone you.

No My Lady. We never talked before on the mobile from the bathroom.

In that case why do you think the bathroom door was locked Mister Pistorius?  If it was an intruder who’d come through the window why would he lock the bathroom door from the inside if he wanted to get into the house?

I had no way of knowing if it was locked My Lady. All I remember thinking was I had to act fast. Maybe someone was coming in to attack me! I picked up my gun by the bed and fired on instinct.

Four loud shots Mister Pistorius, straight through the door, and you say you heard no-one scream. Not even after the first two that you fired? I mean, why didn’t you assume that you’d already killed someone in there if you didn’t hear any screams before you fired another two rounds?

I don’t know My Lady. I heard no one scream.

Now those shots that you fired. They must have been loud. Don’t you think they would have woken Reeva up if she was still lying in bed? That she might have asked you what you were doing or shouted something at you?

No My Lady. I assumed she was sound asleep.

What, even after those loud bangs from the first two shots. Now Mister Pistorius. I’m the Chief Prosecutor of South Africa and I’m putting these questions to you and hear what you say. So tell me Mister Pistorious,

ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH?

Maria Miller looked safe! She’d done the taxpayer for forty-five grand. No problem. Everything looked good till some Labour pipsqueak stepped in and asked for it all to be looked at. Looked at again after the initial enquiry had cleared her for forty. Okay she’d come out on top with forty large. Just pay back the rest, don’t make a fuss and say sorry. It’s all easy-peasy. Say sorry and look like you mean it. You know what it’s like. We do it all the time and for much less! Just sorry, express your regrets and off you go with a quick forty.

Maria was safe. Repay the five grand as required. Don’t get indignant with anyone and promise to be a good girl in future!

But no! Maria was someone with scruples. She was a working class-lower middle class girl who come up through the ranks. She really hadn’t done anything wrong, and she’d looked after her parents! She wasn’t taking advice from any arse-holes. She’d apologize, but only as much as was needed. And more than anything else she had David Cameron on her side. Three times he never denied her. Labour was incensed but the Tories were pissed. She was too up front. After the expenses scandal five years back the House of Commons was now an honorable place, and politicians honorable people. Tory Grandees like Lord Tebbit put in the boot. There was disquiet over the back-benches. It didn’t matter. She was still safe. And looking more like Thatcher than ever. No, she wouldn’t be bullied out of her job!

Not until fate lend a hand. Up spoke Boris Johnson, the leery shifty-eyed jackanapes and admirer of Thatcher. Silence those critics! Maria Miller was brilliant where she was. He wouldn’t have her bullied out of her job… bla-bla-bla. He was on her side with support from the Tory hard right!

That did it! It was Cameron’s decision, not his. He’d supported her up to the eyeballs till now and didn’t need Boris there in the frame. It wasn’t looking good anymore with the electorate. The Tories at the Telegraph were incensed. The moment Boris stepped in Maria Miller was doomed.

ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH BORIS? Thinking that your support carried more weight than mine?

So goodbye Maria, see you in the next life. You never know who your real friends are with the Tories!

BBC Television News, fresh from its wall to wall coverage of recent events in the Ukraine where its reporters played an active role in encouraging the takeover in Kiev by openly Nazi friendly political groups has recently turned its attention to new and presumably more relevant news with extensive coverage given to the early death of twenty-five year old Peaches Geldof. Who’s that you may ask? Was she an important scientist or politician, a major sports star or entertainer, educator, philanthropist or artist who already had remarkable achievements to her name. Alas none of these. She was the mother of two young children and daughter of minor musician Bob Geldof and his wife Paula Yates, herself an entirely artificial celebrity of some notoriety. Why then did BBC television think it important to give the death of this entirely socially unimportant individual such massive coverage? After all, there are many other young mothers out there who die at a tragically young age so why this one, along with the pathetic tweeted tributes of a variety of so called celebrity friends. In short, who the hell was this person who’d done nothing in her life to deserve such attention for the BBC to rummage around in her demise?  

With its recent Nazi friendly coverage of events in the Ukraine the BBC finally lost any trace of respect that anyone may have previously had for its impartial, unbiased reporting. Now, with its seeming obsession for reporting details of individuals whose newsworthy status was entirely dependent on family connections one increasingly feels the need to ask precisely what, tell us, are we paying you a license fee for when your reporting has turned into politically biased or minor celebrity inspired rubbish?

Countless people quite frankly got Peaches Geldof coming out of their eyeballs. The wretched attention you gave to her was as incestuously intrusive on her life as it was tedious, fatuous and unnecessary to ours. The head of your news service must have been mad to think that he was doing us some sort of favour. The public do not want silly tabloid style celebrity crap reportage that competes with the yellow press all the way down to the gutter. They still need to be inspirationally engaged rather than have your reporters rope them in on behalf of the American intelligence services.

So, to the Controller of BBC Television News from a member of the public…  

ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH?

… at the expense of your viewers. Taking their money and giving them cheap celebrity crap because if that’s what you’ve got planned for us in the future I’d much rather watch Al Jazeera who are actually pretty good with the News and News Reporting. Furthermore the public have had enough of your outfit being a reality program channel for estate agents, property developers, the auctioning of old people’s crap, do-it- yourself fixing on behalf of stores such as Homebase and B&Q along with bailiff invasion of people’s homes and police rough stuff activity on teenagers going large a bit to put it in the words of Rudyard Kipling. Your cheap, low cost incursion into people’s lives is only of interest to stay at home underclass long term television addicts and if your program controllers think it’s fun or educational for people to watch police and bailiffs playing at bullies well quite frankly it’s not. Your daily diet of property hash, dished out state violence, oldie auctions, needless celebrity titillation and strictly soft porn is intrusive, uninteresting and boring.

ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH ON THE TAXPAYER BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT THE MONOPOLY ON THE LICENSE FEE?  

Hello President Barak Hussein Obama! So sorry about all the recent shootings of high school kids, university students and military personnel at their barracks in recent weeks. Something must be seriously wrong with America when the whole world can see your people regularly killing each other! Something must be seriously wrong with your country when so many of your people live in the kind of abject poverty we more generally associate with India yet you spend so much time and money threatening other countries, invading them and bombing their people! Something’s just not right when you have so many poor people at home yet spend so much money spying on them, that is, apart from everyone else you spy on round the globe.

Spying on people, threatening them, bullying other nations and bombing them. Then there’s your ghastly system of criminal justice which is an affront to any modern civilized society. Little wonder that you’re on such good terms with Saudi Arabia, Mister President!

But then you also spend so much time telling everyone what a great and free society you are and that your land of the free has so much to admire, to be copied and envied! Tell me Mister President, have you forgotten that one of the first genocides of modern times was one committed by Americans in your own country in the late 19^th century, against your own people, the tens of thousands of Native Americans that you hunted down, shot and killed or put away in Reservations which were little better than starvation camps?

Honestly Mister President, if yours was a society of genuinely free people given to social equality, justice and decency I’d say fine, we consider that you incorporate all the best of human values and inculcate them in your people, but as you actually are, behaving like violent spoilt little children or adolescent juveniles and lecturing everyone about your non-existent virtues, I can only say,

MISTER PRESIDENT, ARE YOU ACTUALLY HAVING A LAUGH?