Tuesday, September 17, 2019

A Little Bit of Bread And No Cheese

we are totally totally fucked

the liberals who want a second referendum with remain as one of the options and the labour party, who want a second referendum with remain as one of the option are going to spend the next election fighting each other

so whatever happens the next government will be a coalition between johnson's reimagined alt-right tories and farage's fascist tribute act 

the most likely ballot box result to the extent that ballots actually matter any more is still tories largest single party but unable to form a government with the liberals and labour having enough mps to form a working majority between them 

but it seems that any lib/lab coalition is ruled out from the start

so we are totally fucked

yellowhammer is the least of our worries 

some of us may die 

remember statistically it is not likely to be you 

but most of us will presumably not die 

there will be food shortages and medicine shortages and riots and martial law nation will rise again nation and there will be earthquakes and famines in various parts of the earth but  probably more fascists will get shot than non fascists and more old people will die than young people and it will all be over long before jodie whitaker regenerates 

assuming there is a still a BBC

is the whole point of the excercise to provide a pretext for martial law i wonder? the right love martial law. it's just like dad's army and the venture scouts 

but afterwards 

afterwards boris... 

aftewards the people operating boris will get what they have always wanted and the damage will take centuries to undo 

no more trades unions no more health and safety laws very low tax and therefore presumably no more of what we used to mean by state education and certainly no more free health care at the point of need

the NHS will continue to exist as a branding concept 

remember that pageant before the olympic games in twenty twelve? 

one of the tableaux insinuated that the national health service was something to be proud of and that nurses were quite a good thing and the right wing press said that this was propaganda and political correctness gone mad

buccaneering britain a northern singapore complete presumably with hanging and flogging but without noodles or cocktails

in that world there will be no place for people like me 

in fairness in that world there will be no place for people like boris johnson either but he is too stupid to see that 

no trendy colleges where we learn critical theory and play dungeons and dragons but no posh schools where we play rugger and learn about homer either just just grandgristic utilitarianism institutes preparing us to be buccaneering tiger sixteen hours a day flexible high skills low pay employment at will zero hours gourmet pork pie factory

that's assuming they don't really hang us from lampposts

i don't know if mine interlocutor is correct that boris is at heart in the american sense a liberal.

but i am quite sure that none of the sacred liberal cows like multiculturalism and hospitals will survive in buccaneering brexit boris britain 

liberal tears 

smash corbyn

still not tired of winning 

we are fucked

tony doesn't want labour to win if jeremy is in charge

tony doesn't want labour to win if jeremy is in charge even if that were possible 

tony thinks jeremy's ideas are wrong ideas

well tony doesn't put it in those terms because tony doesn't think in terms of right and wrong 

tony thinks in terms of new and old and he thinks that jeremy's ideas are old

workers rights and trades unions and trains which people can afford to ride on and hospitals which are not mortgaged to fast food companies are old fashioned ideas 

i get that 

tony doesn't like jeremy because jeremy is a socialist and tony never was 

i understand why my local MP who i have an awful lot of time for doesn't like jeremy

she doesn't like jeremy because she does't think he is a particularly good leader 

not in the sense of rah! rah! rah! leader! leader! leader! but in the sense of managing people and organizing stuff and running departments and running the country 

she doesn't think he is very good at that 

but so far as i can see the jeremy who jo has ruled out having an alliance with labour ever ever ever even though it means boris and the end of the world is the jeremy of faith 

the jeremy of the right wing papers the jeremy who was created by the people who operate boris 

it turned out to be anti-semitism it could just as well have turned out to be a bacon sandwiches or the national anthem 

it doesn't matter 

there cannot be an anti brexit alliance because jeremy 

therefore we are all fucked 

and yes maybe if the socialists had never voted for the socialist we wouldn't be in this mess 

and yet my own oath holds and thus we are all ensnared

what am i going to do

i have a bucket under the sink which catches water from a slightly dripping pipe. i have one in the corner of the bathroom with a mop in it. i think there is a metal bucket in the shed which was already there when I bought the flat, and somewhere I have one of those purple plastic buckets that I used to make sandcastles with when I was a kid 

i am going to do what i always said i would do in the face of the zombie apocalypse

call up old friends

listen to penguin eggs one last time. 

reread moby dick

set up a large and complex star wars role playing game for as long as the internet holds out 

if we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things 

praying working, teaching reading listening to music bathing the children playing tennis chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts

not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs 

i am going to live as much like a narnian as i can even though we are definitely leaving narnia come all hallows eve

we are totally fucked 




I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

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4 comments:

Clarrie said...

Yup. This, pretty much. I've been very aware that my external self, what I talk about or do when I get the choice in talking or doing, has become increasingly trivial over the last year. Chatter and play. But it's the triviality of saying 'look how many people turned up' or 'what nice sandwiches' at a funereal. I hope we - the UK we - can avoid the storm at the last minute. But I hope that, rather than believe it. And I know there's little to nothing I can do to change whether it hits us or not. And so I talk about Northern Exposure or decorate my office. Because there's only so many ways of saying 'I am more scared of the future than I have ever been in my life before'.

Donki said...

I am so close to despair at the moment.

Andrew Rilstone said...

Well, haven't I caught the mood of the moment?

MartynEm said...

Last night I was at a ukelele open mic thing in a pub in Kent. I just moved back to Kent (where I was born, but didn't grow up) from spending a decade having a nice well-paid job in Germany. I didn't like Germany, not because of any war or cup related reasons, just because I didn't really get on with the culture - plenty do, and did, and that's cool. Anyway, at that open mic, a nice young man with a dyed pink beard and a Gogol Bordello t-shirt played 7 Nation Army, and ended with the Glastonbury was-it-2017? "oh-oh-Je-Re-My-Coooooor-Byn" refrain. It reminded me of a more innocent time, when it seemed like Corbyn and Stormzy and The Kids were going to save the UK just in time for me getting back to it. But it also reminded me of some market research stuff Spotify did about young people and their attitude toward creative work - namely that since broadcasting ones music at people no-longer really has any barrier to entry, The Kids are now used to seeing musicians they like in their early, crap stages, and this doesn't really put them off. And it made me think - perhaps the kids, who are so used to seeing people they like and respect make public mistakes and reconciling themselves with still liking and respecting them, and are certainly used to the constant threat of being misrepresented in the (social) media, might still turn out for Corbyn and save us all after all?