Just looked at ‘The Guardian’. They have a review of her performance at Glastonbury. I mis-read it initially.

Blondie at Glastonbury review – Debbie Harry is an atomic charisma bomb

I saw the word ‘bomb’ and assumed she’d done a Keanu Reeves who with his band ‘Dogstar’ played what is considered to be one of the worst sets ever played there.

But no, 4 stars.

Anyway, I just wanted to finish the story about her that I started the other day. One of the years of the mud. Finding a tent that sold tea and had seating. Sitting down on something dry at last. A shaven headed extra from ‘The Matrix’ coming in and saying that Debbie was outside, wanted to come in and would anyone give up their seats.

The answer was, of course, no. Didn’t stop him asking everyone In the tent though. Same answer.

Back when I was sharing a house with Marge, Joe, and the glorious force of nature that was their daughter, Little Miss Sunshine (LMS), LMS thought that my idea of a good time was to watch “Peppa Pig’ on the computer with her. It wasn’t, and I told her this, but as it suited her needs to do so, she ignored me. I watched so much of it that I ended up venting my frustration in a post entitled ‘Is Peppa Pig mind control’

She was only about 4 and I resigned that it couldn’t get worse. How wrong I was. She then went through her ‘Holly and Ben’ phase, made using a style of animation that might charitably be called ‘naive playfulness’ but to my eyes, made ‘Scooby-Do’ look like the work of a creative visionary. Telling the ‘stories’ of the ‘adventures of ‘Holly’ – a fairy princess – and ‘Ben’- an elf – it was worse than it sounds. But she’d watch, equally enthralled and with an endless appetite for more of them. By now she was about 6, and I owed her.

Because no matter how many different anti-depressants I was prescribed after my brain injury, nothing was as effective as an insistent 2 year old banging on my bedroom door, telling me to get up because she wanted to play. So it was the least I could do, but too late I realised that by enduring both ‘Peppa Pig’ and ‘Holly and Ben’, I’d made a rod for my own back and that rod had a name.

“Frozen’

If you know why this cultural abomination is so reviled by anyone over 10 who has had the misfortune to see it, then you have my sympathy. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. It makes ‘The Greatest Showman’ – which I’ve also watched more times than a grown man should – seem like a towering cinematic achievement in comparison. It’s that bad. But she loved it – I mean she really loved it – to such a point where she could sing all of the aural detritus -‘songs’ – far more enjoyably to my ear than the film versions. ‘Let It Go’ was a particular favourite of hers and she would sing as if she were channelling the spirit of Ethel Merman. That’s high praise, by the way, just in case you think otherwise.

Anyway, I was thinking of ‘Let It Go’ when I saw yet another poll in ‘The Guardian’ seeking to bolster their position that Brexit was a con, that people who voted for it were conned and that anyone who campaigned for ‘No’ was unspeakably guilty of enabling something that they didn’t like. They way they carry-on one might imagine them patiently admonishing a truculent child,

‘Now it would be in everyone’s best interests if we just put the whole thing behind us and pretended like it never happened. We know you had a temper tantrum and we hope you feel better for it now, now you’ve got it out of your system. But that’s all it was, a temper tantrum, and as the adults here it would be remiss of us not just to point out that you were wrong to act in that way to begin with, not just to point out that what you thought would make things better, hasn’t. But more importantly, to make sure you never get such wrong-headed idea’s ever again. Because that would upset us, and we don’t like being upset.’

Thus we had on this bit of democracy bashing on Thursday,

Only 18% of leave voters think Brexit has been a success, poll finds

Mmm. But if 18% think that, doesn’t that mean 82% think something else? What might that something else be, I wonder. Oh hang, a detail that wasn’t worthy of an eyeball grabbing top story clickbait was to be found in the text, once you had clicked on the story and bothered to read a bit that is, that 30% said it had gone neither well nor badly, and 26% said it was still too soon to say.

That means then that if 18% of people polled think one thing but 56% think a combination of other things, that’s, er a total of 74%. That can’t be right, can it, that 26% of people polled just vanish? But it seems that they can and did, because there’s no mention of them anywhere else, but the story just throws up other percentages that prove this and damn that.

It does helpfully note however that the pollsters Public First asked more than 4,000 leavers how they felt now about Brexit. Not helpful enough to tell us how much more than 4,000 leavers were polled – was 1 or 207 – or how the pollsters were able to accurately identify leave voters, but hey, what’s the use a running a story about a poll if you can’t cherry pick the results?

Hilarious, as it turned out. It provided proof that the Law of Unintended Consequence’s can cause embarrassment to be dressed up giving space to an alternative view. Because the next day ‘The Guardian’ ran – or more likely was forced to run after complaints from the pollsters Public First – an opinion piece by Anand Menon, the director of The UK in a Changing Europe, who commissioned the survey and Sophie Stowers, a researcher there. Ostensibly to reinforce the sentiments expressed by the audience in the previous nights BBC1’s ‘Brexit Question Time’, with findings from their survey, they wrote,

One of the most interesting comments last night came from an audience member who was sick of being told she had been lied to. A majority of leavers feel they had all the information they needed to make a decision in 2016. And a plurality think that they had sufficient information from both sides of the referendum campaign to make an informed decision. What they resent is the fact that political leaders have not capitalised on the sovereignty for which they voted; 39% of them think politicians have not even tried to make Brexit work.

Hang on, that’s not quite the narrative that ‘The Guardian’ endlessly perpetuates, that of leave voters being hoodwinked, lied to or subjected to Russian something or other. Nay, nay, and thrice nay! But they weren’t done yet, endowing those who voted to leave with rational thinking, which must’ve been something of a shock to a ‘Guardian reader/organ grinder/sponsor who imagined them all to be pitch-fork wielding illiterates.

Yet while they are frustrated, leavers did not expect instant results. A quarter of them think not enough time has passed to judge whether Brexit has gone well or badly; 61% think Brexit will turn out well or very well in the future. There was a sense among those in the audience last night that they did not expect to wake up on 24 June 2016 in a whole different Britain. Rather, Brexit is an ongoing process that, while politicians have messed it up to date, still holds the promise of greater successes to come.

Steady on! Next you’ll saying that leavers don’t experience any doubt as to the certainty of how they voted, oh, that is what they say

So, it should come as no surprise that many – including most of those in Clacton last night – still back the decision they made in 2016. In our survey, 72% of 2016 leave voters, knowing what they do now, would still vote as they did. There was much groaning and eye-rolling at (Alastair) Campbell’s support to rejoin the EU. For most leavers, even those who are “Bregretful”, another referendum is not the answer.

The Guardian’ is treating its disciples in much the same way that ‘Peppa Pig’, then ‘Holly and ‘Ben’ and finally ‘Frozen’ treated LMS It gives them what they want, a simple and graspable narrative, that they know will get them and more importantly, keep them hooked. The one difference being that LMS was a child and was treated as a child, with no discernible ill effects. ‘The Guardian’, by contrast, treats adults as children, with a poll seemingly every other week, always finding something that’ll reinforce their increasingly contemptuous attitude to democracy. That democracy only works when it works for us, and if it doesn’t, well we’ll just have moan and complain until it does.

I just want to point out, in case you’ve forgotten, that I voted to Remain. I didn’t however, vote to remain perpetually petulant about the result though.

And if I did, then I’d blame 27.2% of voters who could have voted and changed things, but couldn’t be bothered. That’s who the real villains are, the one’s that exercised their democratic right not to vote, that’s who “The Guardian’ should demonise instead, but doesn’t because it doesn’t suit their simplistic narrative.

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

As far as I’m concerned, those who knew knew, but those who came later had possibly only read about Faithless and because they were told they were good and it legitimised them. Those people had no yardstick upon which to base any judgement of if something was good or not, never having been into dance music in any of its forms. They relied on the opinions of others, with more experience, cultural commissars, to do it for them. This partly explains – well to me anyhow – the curious and long-lasting reverence which some have bestowed upon ‘Aphex Twin’. Because no matter how good his press is, no matter how how many laurels the critics put on his wreaths, after one listen to most of his many tracks, most people would be hard pressed to want to listen to anymore.

But those who knew where he came from, had danced to some of the same tunes he had, had some of the same musical influences he had, would know. They’d discern in his music threads of a rich and ever expanding aural tapestry, one that they didn’t need a music critic to explain to them what colours were his. Because, as I wrote in the previous post, we are as much defined by what we don’t like as what we do, and no-one better exemplifies that musical truism better than ‘Aphex Twin’

I know that recent my post about Coldplay was a not exactly what you might call positive about them, but as there are more members in the Coldplay than actually read my posts, there aren’t that many people to call it anything.

But that doesn’t matter, because Coldplay perfectly exemplify my feelings about music.

One is as much defined by the music they do like as much as the music they don’t. Thinking about it, can anyone just ‘like’ music, is that even possible? And even if it were, would even one want to be that kind of person? Not me! No, one either loves a particular type of music or one hates it. There is no like, no easy going toleration, no passive acceptance, no patient indulgence. If someone smacked you in the mouth, you’d have them arrested, wouldn’t you? Why this doesn’t extend to GBH of the earhole is beyond me. I’m also equally aware that some may hate the music that I love and that’s fine, as long as they love some other type of music. If hell existed, people who claimed to like all ‘kinds of music’ would be in there for sure.

Anyway, I’ve always hated jingly-jangily guitar music (JJGM) even before I gave it a name. It was the sort of music ‘The Smiths’ made. Them and ‘U2’, ‘The Cure’ and for those who believed those bands had become too commercial and thus didn’t want to tainted by association with, ‘The Jesus and Mary Chain’ No prizes for guessing that I went to an all boys secondary school, notionally a Catholic one, despite everyone seeming to worship Morrisessy. The way I saw it, if music didn’t make you instinctively want to dance, then it was dirge, an aural pollutant that came in many forms.

School disco’s were therefore hilarious. Sixth-form girls from the local convent school were invited to add to the youthful angst. The smell of wet look hair gel, Clearasil cream and Paco Rabane was overwhelmed by the sweat that only young people can produce when finding themselves at a social gathering where the opposite sex is present and dancing is expected, realise that whilst JJGM had taught them many things, dancing wasn’t one of them. Had I known then what schadenfruede was, I may well have thought it had a sound as well and that sound would be, ‘Walking on Sunshine’ by Rockers Revenge. Or the 12″ version of ‘I.O.U’ by Freeze. Or, or, or. There were just so many great tunes, almost as many as there were bad haircuts on show. It was a harsh lesson, that of the signal importance of being able to dance, was one better to be learnt early on, especially with rave culture on the not too distant horizon, that dancing was, is and always will be an vertical expression of a horizontal intention.

But rave culture, great as it undoubtedly was – and it was – could not have happened without all of the great music that went before it. Disco, funk, electro, the shoulders upon which the great dance music of now is built. And it is great. Old people like me are meant to shake their heads in despair when we hear it. Muttering things like,” It was much better in my day.” as we do. That’s our job. Young people, by contrast, are meant to be young people while they are young shake their tail feathers, while they can. That’s their job. Then they become the old people and find themselves shaking their heads.

And you can’t do that to JJGM. I mean, you can, of course you can, and good luck to you, but really?

I was thinking about this, thinking about how it is the job of people my age to bemoan modern music as much as it is the job of young people not to care. I didn’t when I was young and my parents wouldn’t even have bothered pretending to know who Africa Bambaata was, and even if they did it would’ve been embarrassing. But the organisers of Glastonbury 2023, are clearly stuck in a bizarre musical graveyard if their headliners are anything to go by.

Guns n Roses are headlining on Saturday night and when did they last bother the charts? Same goes for Elton John on Sunday night. I know that the headliners aren’t the main reason people go to Glastonbury, but with the lineup being announced well after tickets have sold out, I just hope that the other reasons compensate for being trapped in a world of outrageous markups, disgusting sanitation and sleep deprivation. The first time I went to Glastonbury I bought my ticket three days before we planned to set off and then only after Eavis’s had grudgingly conceded that yes, as young people wanted to dance, they were going to have dance tent. There was still loads of JJGM ear botheration to contend with then and it seems there is now. Blondie is causing yet more racketeering there I see. Again, when did she last bother the charts? Although she did once gave me an unforgettable Glastonbury moment, not like that!

It was one of the years of the mud. Mud so thick it could suck the shoes off your feet, mud so watery it was like a sea of brown porridge and mud so everywhere that it was like being in the Somme, but with incessant JJGM instead of German artillery. Some of us had found a tent that not only was selling tea, but crucially had lashed together a Heath-Robinson type seating affair. It was the first time any of us had sat down in what seemed like living memory, and everyone in there felt the same, because we had to wait ages to get a seat.

Anyway, this bloke comes in, dressed like he’d stepped out ‘The Matrix’ – dark suit, shaven head – goes up to counter, has a conversation with the proprietor who shakes his head and walks away. Then blokey approaches everyone, has the same conversation which elicits the same response. We wait our turn. When he finally gets to us he asks, “Debbie Harry is outside. Would you give up your seats for her if she came in

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

It was exactly what Danny meant in ‘Withail and I’, when he observed “They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths.’

Aah Sarker is in the news today.

Or to be be more accurate, the news that “The Daily Mail’ (DM) considers news and so they have judged a Twitter post of hers about the ongoing but now increasingly desperate search for the mini-submarine that went to look at the wreck of the Titanic, not just news, but outrage worthy news’

Guardian columnist Ash Sarkar sparks backlash with ‘utterly grotesque’ Titanic sub disaster tweet saying: ‘If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunt they’re not being taxed enough’

Leaving aside the dig that they got in about her writing for ‘The Guardian’, which is a code for meaning she’s soppy left-winger who writes for a soppy left-wing newspaper, which means DM readers can despise her without any guilt, they find space to mention that she has written 23 articles for them but sadly not over what timeframe they were written over.

It could be 23 this year alone. Who knows?

But no matter, the DM’s anger is righteous and in full flow, so go on then, what was this tweet that was so offensive, that so far exceeded the bounds of good taste that Twitter is known for, that another Twitter user felt that they had to reply, branding it ‘utterly grotesque’ and thus enabling the DM to manufacture a 500 word story out of?

I should warn you that this is shocking stuff.

‘If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunts 2.4 miles beneath the ocean then they’re not being taxed enough.’ 

What’s shocking about that is that her tweet isn’t shocking in the slightest, what is shocking is that it conclusively proves that the DM employs a team of people to monitor Twitter to create stories based on someone expressing an opinion that falls foul of the DM’s rather fluid morality.

I agree with her, I mean something is very wrong with the world where going down to explore the wreck of what after all is a mass grave, isn’t consider repugnant, but instead a thing that you can do if you have more money than morals. At what level of delusion do you have to be operating under to think that going 2.4 miles under the ocean is a good idea? The people that facilitate this kind of extremely expensive folly are just as much to blame. They turn a lunatic idea into a very real possibility.

She then had the sheer audacity, to respond to critics of that tweet to tweet back

‘The Titanic submarine is a modern morality tale of what happens when you have too much money, and the grotesque inequality and sympathy, attention and aid for those without it.

‘Migrants are ”meant” to die at sea; billionaire’s aren’t.’

Again, a rational response, so much so that ‘backlash’ continued. To which she responded – and I think a lot of Twitter users should do this, rather the plunge ever deeper into a digital rabbit hole of bile – to a critic by observing,

‘If you don’t like what I have to say, l’m perfectly comfortable with that. But perhaps you might be better off ignoring me, rather than howling incessantly into the void?

Of course the whole issue of the super rich not paying enough tax was always going to invoke the ire of the DM, given as how Viscount Rothermere, the owner of the DM, lives in a mansion in Monaco, identifies as French, has non-com British tax status, and because the DM is registered in the Bahama’s, pays no tax anywhere.

In a recent post I wrote about how business’s were seeking to change our perception of them, so that they became not the rapacious capitalist entities they are, but instead present themselves as somehow at the vanguard of positive social change. I cited Google, but honestly, there are so many at it, all trying to disguise the fact that their primary goal is to sell us things, that it could’ve been one of any number of them. Its as if King Herod announced that he was opening a maternity unit for mothers on low incomes, in order to help people forget his much publicised less than warm-heated attitude to babies.

When exactly did business’s become so obsessed with not only how they were perceived by their customers, but also if that perception was a negative one, one that potential customers found off-putting, to change it to a more favourable one? Or have they always been and I just didn’t notice? But certainly, its got out of hand now, so much so that one could be forgiven for thinking that the actual business of some business’s was nothing more than an embarrassing hobby, a distraction from fulfilling their true purpose, that of being social justice warriors (SJW’s).

I first became aware of this, or to be more accurate, cognisant to the fact that there was a concerted attempt by business’s to do this, after the global financial crisis of 2008 when Lloyds Bank began running a seemingly never ending campaign of disinformation. They weren’t a financial gang of reckless shysters who had only been saved from ruin by a government bailout, no we were meant to forget all that, and imagine that they were always ‘going to be by our side’. No, they weren’t part of a shadowy cabal of charlatans and con-men who had caused untold misery and despair to millions, no they care about mental health now. Obviously not when their feckless lending caused houses to repossessed, business’s to collapse and dreams to be shattered, not then they didn’t, but now, well, now is different.

Now they want us to forget all of that and to of focus on the now, the now being the now of now they care – care that we forget what their basic core instinct is, to make as much money for themselves – and to instead think that commercials featuring a load of CGI horses running amok is somehow going to do that. To forget that the first thing they did after the government – the taxpayer – had bailed them out, was to award themselves huge bonuses for doing something they should’ve been in prison for.

Mind you, the further away we get from 2008, the greater the likelihood that it will all be like Bobby Ewings shower, a bad dream that flees our consciousness, although probably going into a branch of Lloyds and asking for any help with trying to remember it, will soon show how on you side they actually are.

I know it’s easy to criticise the pompous and self-righteous mutual onaism that exists between ‘The Guardian’ and it’s readers, but sometimes they just make it so easy, it’d be rude not to. And one thing I never am is rude. Offensive, maybe, obscene sometimes if I try hard enough, but never rude.

‘The Guardian’ proudly proclaimed in what it hoped would be a cause for celebration from everyone who read its, that basically they were going to cease carrying any gambling advertising on it. Not merely to cease it you understand, but in order to express the gravity of the situation that the same echo-chamber morality that ‘The Guardian’ specialises in, something more was needed. And so;

The Guardian bans all gambling advertising

Ban will apply worldwide to all of media group’s online and print outlets, including the Guardian, Observer, and Guardian Weekly.

The ban covers all forms of gambling advertising, including promotions for sports betting, online casinos and scratchcards. It will apply worldwide to all of the company’s online and print outlets, including the Guardian, Observer, and Guardian Weekly.

Of course, there was no space to detail how much revenue this would lose them or indeed when was the last time any such advertisements appeared in or on any of its outlets. I have Ad Block Plus on my computer so I don’t know. The sums involved could be huge, in which case congratulations and plaudits to them for putting their principles before profit, or it could be negligible, in which case it fully deserves the kind of judgemental opprobrium that it quite happily metes out to others. But instead they get their tube of journalistic lube out;

The decision to exclude gambling advertising from the Guardian’s publications follows the rapid growth of online betting on sporting events, aided by deregulation and the huge increase in the number of smartphone users. The US has recently embraced online betting on sport, following the lead of Australia and the UK, where gambling has exploded in popularity over the past decade.

Many media outlets are increasingly reliant on money from betting companies. British television channels have said their business models increasingly depend on advertising from bookmakers, while TikTok is trialling gambling advertising in Australia, and the US outlet Barstool Sports was bought outright by a casino group.

But not us, we have principles, uppermost being the one that involves amplifying our readers own likes – and in this case dislikes – back at them to make them feel thoroughly virtuous for having those likes or dislikes. I write readers, but then they’re not just readers are they? They’re also the proprietors, well those that keep funding it, anyway. I imagine that ‘readers’ of ‘The Guardian’, aren’t the target audience betting companies want to reach anyway, and that so it’s no great loss to them.

Just as I was about to post this blog, on a whim I decided to google ‘how much revenue does the guardian earn from gambling adverts’ and the first entry that came up was this one, from the Press Gazette. It carries the same sanctimonious waffle from some people who earn big pay checks there, but reading on, came across this

The Guardian’s chief advertising officer Imogen Fox told Press Gazette that globally, gambling advertisements “make up less than 1% of our revenues”, although she added it was “hard to quantify and it has changed over time”.

Mmm, as I thought, so making a big deal about banning something, something that they can use to differentiate their brand from other media outlets and also lift their readers ever higher upon the lofty peak of Mount Morality while doing so, at no great loss to them, isn’t that much of a ban is it?

Maybe it’s me, possibly because I’m brain damaged, maybe because I’ve only had one cup of tea so far today or maybe it’s because of the heat. Whatever it is, it made me laugh like drain when I read the on the BBC that.

A coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire has been warmed up to cope with expected higher energy demand in the warm weather.

Hang on, by implication that means that we are not currently producing enough energy to meet our needs?

That can’t be right, can it?

It would mean that the dream of achieving Net Zero – U.K producing no carbon emissions -by 2050, as this government has pledged to to, and to which both Labour and the Li-Dems fully endorse is trumpery moonshine? That would mean that the dream of soon turning our backs on coal or nuclear energy and instead replacing them with solar and wind generated power would be a nightmare. Politicians and other virtue signalling agitators would have to own up to the fact that solar and wind generated power is nowhere near being capable enough to meet our current needs, and it seems socially irresponsible to suggest they ever will ever be in the near future. No-one has yet explained how wind turbines will generate power when there is no wind, or how solar will generate power when there is no sun. Instead the public is expected to put their faith some as yet unknown but practical and affordable solution to a problem that is oddly present at the time of writing, when then is hardly any wind but the sun is burning so hot that a river in the Lake District, called ‘the wettest place in England’ is drying out.

There’s an inherent contradiction at the heart of all this Net Zero nonsense , a vicious circle that’s as inevitable as it is undeniable. Namely, the more the population expands, the more energy will be needed to support that expanding population and the more energy that an increasing population uses, the hotter the planet will become. And the hotter it is, the more energy that we’ll all need to keep cool and the so the vicious circle will become ever more vicious. Or am I missing something here, a something that’ll magically make everything make sense? Are any political parties strongly advocating an immediate compulsory sterilisation scheme, as both an effective way limiting future energy use and also safe-guarding the integrity of the existing energy infrastructure we as well? If, and that’s a big if, we ever get to a stage where advances in renewable energies, their reliability, their storage and affordability are sufficient to allow a cautious relaxation of said scheme, then fine.

But we’re not there yet and as I’ve repeatedly said, while doing less of this, doing more of that and stopping doing the other may salve the conscience, it won’t solve anything. Consumption is still consumption, and the more people there are consuming, the more that the inherent contradiction at the heart of Net Zero becomes even more contradictory.

For years I was somehow convinced that if I didn’t keep abreast of news and current affairs then something, I knew not what, would happen and somehow that something would be bad. That in some unspecified way it mattered that I knew that ERM wasn’t a sound, or a poor mans Nirvana. Until it finally dawned on me, that actually no, the sky wouldn’t fall in, and that nobody cared either way.

The news is like a snobbily virtuous ‘Eastenders’, a soap opera with an ever changing cast of characters, some of whom disappear only to return years later with a new face, some who just vanish, some who are just there since forever. All of whom are involved in multiple story lines some all at the same time and some storylines beings both so implausibly absurd and seemingly never ending. Who is or isn’t a hero or a villain, or if a love affair is either torrid or tawdry and if a scheme is delightful or dastardly is all dictated by what news you read chooses to tell you.

It’s complicated but because you’ve put the hours in, it isn’t. There are things you know, that you couldn’t possibly explain how you know them but you just do, and to explain them to anyone else would be both impossible and take too long. And besides, if they weren’t going to stick with it, what would be the point?

I thought about this yesterday, as I was reading ‘Private Eye’ and remembered the old Chinese proverb, the one that has it that if you sit by the river long enough, you’ll see the bodies of your enemies float by. My take on it is that if one has been paying attention to the news for long enough, whilst the faces might change and so might the details, the seemingly endemic human capacity for greed, corruption and duplicitous chicanery remain as ever present as they have ever done. Think of ‘Doctor Who’s’ regenerative ability put in a ‘Groundhog Day’ style ongoing surreality show, where no-one is David Tennant and most people think they’re Boris’s Johnson.

Specifically, while I was reading about Patricia Hannah-Wood and her Remoaner style carryings-on the local elections held on 4th May. Despite only getting 177 votes as compared to her Tory rivals 242 in the ward of Marsden West, the returning officer read out the names in the wrong order, and thus she was elected. Has she acknowledged a mistake was made? No. Have her local Labour Party insisted that she admits an error was made and let democracy win instead? No. Has Labours N.E.C. either charged her with bringing the part into disrepute or expelled her. No, quite the opposite, unsurprisingly. The Labour controlled council have offered her seats on several committees and to oust her, the Tory party faces a legal challenge. For which of course, the taxpayer will have to pay for.

Stop me when this all begins to seem familiar….

And like ‘Eastenders’, it all seemed so much better in the past, when we were young enough and naive enough to imagine that there was only one Dirty Den,

Now, it seems there are Dirty Dens everywhere.

Huzzah!

Proof, if any further proof were needed, that democracy is in its final stages in Britain, was provided by the constant hounding, political point-scoring and opportunism that ultimately led to Boris’s Johnson removal from office. His offence, well the official one anyway, was that he lied to parliament. Not about something which has required other M.P’s, in other era’s, with different morals, to resign. Not like John Profumo, for my money someone who set the bar very high for political scandals, one involving sex workers, secrets and Soviets. Or John Stonehouse, who gave him a run for his money by faking his own death to avoid a scandal.

What did Johnson lie about? Some parties, either attending them, hosting them or being in the same postcode where they were happening, its all the same to me, its a manufactured hysteria dressed up as something it so isn’t. He broke lockdown rules. And?

I mean, we all did. Not at first, not for the first few months when we thought everyone was obeying them, but as the weather got nicer, and the rules became more onerous, there began to be a more flexible interpretation of the rules. And the more flexible one interpreted those rules depended on ones own immediate needs and wants. So limited social contact with those in your bubble became more fluid, who was your bubble expanded at the same time that distance required to meet social distancing requirements reduced. When it was people you knew and liked doing it, it was perfectly fine, but when it was someone you didn’t like, it wasn’t. Our landlady would sometimes travel across London just to sit in our garden, and that was fine. But Cummings driving to Durham wasn’t, was totally different. And don’t forget that because of Brexit, because of wanting to commit the unspeakable and actually ensure the result of the EU referendum was carried out, Boris’s Johnson was already public enemy number one.

Even though the pandemic was a rapidly changing, constantly evolving situation on an unprecedented scale, with conflicting scientific advice, some in the media thought it was really helping matters to critcize his handling of the pandemic as a way to express their profound disgust that Brexit had happened. It was rabid, and I’m someone who voted to Remain. But then again, during the pandemic, I was living in a house where Radio 4 was always on, and where ‘The Guardian’ was read, so….

I suppose the thing that bothers me most about all of this is the fact that people who will be shortly asking us to trust them enough to vote them into government, have somehow conflated an inconsequential matter into something serious to warrant a parliamentary resignation. I fervently hope that some of the properly guilty in all of this, the unelected unrepresentive’s of a small minority of the disenchanted, will suffer the same ignominious fate that they have suffered on him.

Because parties? Really?