Skip to main content

The convenience of war

The Prime Minister must be thanking his lucky stars that IS exist. So, for that matter, will the Cleggster and possibly even Milibot (though maybe to a lesser extent). All quietly breathing sighs of relief and raising a glass to those wacky murderers Islamic State.
You will recall that, not so long ago, there was a referendum for independence in Scotland, which was pulled out of the bag for the status quo by a little bit of last minute panicking and bandying of promises.

I, too, have been known to make promises I can’t keep for the sake of keeping the peace, so I know whereof I speak. They’ll have woken up the morning after and thought “I said I’d do WHAT?” Predictably, depressingly, with a crushing ineivitability, bickering ensued. The whole wearying roundelay of jockeying for position and clambering for advantage creaked along and nobody but nobody said anything concrete about how they were going to y’know, do the things they’d said they’d do. It was looking a touch awkward. There was no sign of a parliamentary motion.

But what’s this? Ooh, bombs! Planes! Shiny stuff! A motion’s already before Parliament to bomb Iraq (again), amazing how quickly they can pony one up when they have to. And now of course lots of middle class blokes in suits get to look stern and serious and talk about the need for immediate action, the media loses its shit and everything else can just be quietly kicked into the long grass.

Comments

  1. It really saddened me to go down to my local paper shop the other day and see, on almost every front page, pictures of the war planes ready to take off. It was like a death mosaic, where every headline was a happy 'let's bomb the f***ers to kingdom come!'

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last day of the county season

 Look, I never claimed to be cool. As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons. I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket. Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport. Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. N...

D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad.  You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot.  The word I'd use is "stupid". It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration.  I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it. So you...

The three most tedious food debates on the internet.

 I very much only have myself to blame. One of the less heralded aspects of running a business is that one is, regrettably, obliged to maintain a social media presence, it's just expected. And, if I have to do it, I'm going to do it very much in my own voice, as I don't tend to have time to stop and think when I'm bunging something on Insta. It seems to have worked okay so far. But, as a man better versed on the online world than he would prefer, I should have known better than to stick up a picture of our bread rolls, fresh out of the oven. In my defence, I did preface said picture by saying "one of the most tedious debates on the internet is what these are called...". Doubtless you've seen the argument somewhere, it's one of the workaday tropes that shithouse FB pages use to drive engagement. Need a few thousand clicks to raise the profile of your godawful local radio station/page about how everything was better in the past/shelter for confused cats?...