Skip to main content

Giving the wrong impression

So the G8 are meeting in a secluded island hideaway just outside Enniskillen. Anti-Capitalist protesters converge on the locality, local police stockpile paracetamol and rennies, local shopkeepers gleefully anticipate the sales of thousands of wellies to ill-shod protestors if the weather, as is its wont in that neck of the woods,is a touch mardy. Doubtless much Ballykissangel style whimsy will ensue.

However,one aspect of the imminent wingding rather jarred with your jaundiced correspondent. The town is marred, as are many in these straitened times by a bunch of empty shops. A bleakly eloquent statement on the current state of the ecoomy, gaps in the high street. Yet, mystifyingly, they're being tarted up by the local council to attempt to give an impression of being in use, so the world's mighty aren't upset by the visible effects of their relentless buggering about with macroeconomics. Which rather begs the question,if these are the guys who have to sort the whole sorry mess out, wouldn't it be an idea to show them what the mess is?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chop chop

I was completely ignorant of the fuss over the edited Trump speech in an edition of Panorama until, one moment later, I wasn't. And the reasons for my ignorance are instructive. I had no idea that the story was even brewing until the surprise Sunday night news of the resignations of Tom Davie and Deborah Turness. As I'm sure you are by now aware, this was occasioned by a clumsy edit in an old edition of Panorama, which has already been on the iplayer for a year. It's a non-story. Except people decided to make it a story. The reason I'd heard nothing of it until the resignations was that I'm not on X, where, apparently, it was all the media classes had been talking about for a week. It was an obsession of the unholy right-wing trifecta of the Mail, Telegraph and Times (who, given that they sent a bloke just last week to interview the wrong Bill di Blasio, you'd think would wind their necks in over factual inacccuracy). It was big news on GB news, all self-contain...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creepy old men

I note, somewhat wearily, that creepy old men are back in the news, being creepy. Creepy old men, and their apologists and enablers, who argue that their creepiness is somehow the natural order of things. Old men would have you believe that it is difficult to not be a creepy old man. That it is a task of epic proportions. It is not that difficult. It is a matter of intention. As yet more of the grimness of Epstein unfolds, creepy old men are, sadly, a flaccid topic once again. Whether it be pursuing students thirty years their junior, or simply not asking too many questions about the background of the probably legal young woman who you've just been introduced to by your good pal Jeff. To be clear, I am not referring to criminal creepy old men, the ones who actually committed statutory rape, the ones who fucked trafficked hirls. That is not something which is allowed to get away merely with the contempt of the observer.  That deserves prison.  No , I'm referring to the hinterla...
Post a Comment
Read more