Tough Love for Lewis

Reading reports of the Ray Lewis affair is a rather pleasing activity for a Sunday afternoon. In case anyone thinks I'm a Ken supporter (actually, in preference to Boris, I guess I am, but, in preference to Boris, I might possibly support almost anyone) or a racist, I must state that I know a little more about the man than I did yesterday, but that is still very little, so I have no personal beef with him. Always wary of the amount of truth contained in the press, I am nonetheless not over-enamoured by his Academy, as you will see if you read on, but the main focus of my enjoyment is on the fact that that twat Boris has had his stupid toffee nose rubbed in it at last. It took all of two months for the hollow lies around this wanker to start crumbling to bits, and I hope we can now all sit back and watch the show.

What really angers me is the pathetic Tory agenda behind the appointment of Lewis to City Hall in the first place. He is a black man. He runs an academy where kids are forced to wear uniforms and perform military drills in order to prevent them from living a life of crime on the streets of East London. He is a man of 'strong faith' (well, I think you know how I feel on that score) according to that revolting arsehole Steve Norris, who just never seems to go away. Just the kind of talisman that the party of David Cameron wants to wave in front of everyone. All this allows Boris to answer critics who have accused him of racism (whether he refutes these with arguments of context, somehow I think he may have one or two black shirt tendencies) by pointing to his black deputy. It also provides a platform for the Conservatives' dream: of young men in uniform being 'drilled' in order to stop them from thinking about why they don't have a cat in hell's chance of making the kind of money they see being flaunted in front of them all the time.

I've heard, for as long as I can remember, the call to 'bring back National Service' but I used to put that down to the generations that were saying it to me. My parents were war babies, and the expectations around society were different then. A short sharp shock was the norm in the home, let alone out in the institutions. Now, we seem to be hearing the same pointless crap from people who must have grown up in the free lovin' sixties. Why? Were all those kitchen sink dramas and shocking documentaries about Vietnam and homelessness just a waste of time after all? Did the drugs not work? So that's what I think of Ray Lewis and his tough love regime. Typical for this kind of thing to be touted by the clueless idiots (on either side of the house if truth to be told) and seized upon as a means to resolve the countless problems faced by everybody who hasn't been privileged or crooked enough to be rolling around in the proverbial.

For now, I'm just enjoying the spectacle of the Conservative machinery being stuck on a pin, running around frantically trying to cover up the 'reputational damage'. This is a very fine principle upon which British politics is based: do not allow anyone to expose any weaknesses or inconsistencies. If they do, employ every weapon in your arsenal to remove yourself from the ensuing embarrassment.