AV = yes (though I must re-iterate my total lack of faith in organised politics of any kind. I don't assume that having AV will suddenly make things all better, but there are two compelling reasons I've heard today: 1. Thatcher would never have made it to power if AV was in place in 79 [thanks Michael] and 2. Anything which causes those in power to get so worked up must be worth doing [thanks qwghlm]. This does not mean I will be casting a vote)
OBL = stinks to high heaven. The groans of the Bullingdon Club boys in the Commons the other day when challenged about flouting the supposedly sacrosanct Rule of Law say it all for me. You can't just go around shooting people in the face - I mean head - just because you say they are murderous scum. There aren't many apologists for Bin Laden, yet what do we actually know about him? What do we actually know about anything, really? Only what we're told, and we can see from the way this whole Geronimo thing is developing that that ain't much more than a sack of shit. Xeni Jardin has been tweeting about Guatemala, and the tendency of the government there to dump bodies in the ocean when faced with the inconvenience of requests for basic human rights, and I for one find it all very chilling. Is Barack still guided by the shining hand of God? Is he still striving for an America that is all it can be?
Eurozone bailouts = holy shit! Looking at Greece and Portugal, how can Gideon continue to pursue the austerity plan he is so set on? The swingeing cuts (at least for the Greeks) have done nothing to reduce the deficit, and - duh! - the squeeze is actually making things worse by rendering the economy so uncompetitive that it may never have a chance to pay back the money borrowed. Yet here we are relentlessly pushing forward, laying off coppers and then asking them back as unpaid Specials, slashing nurses and teachers and flying priceless hardware over Libyan air space. What can we do but despair?
On top of that, an easy bye for the Rags against the pliant Schalke 04s, but a glimmer of hope that they will be utterly destroyed at Wembley. Fergie at his usual 'best' yesterday when talking about the tribalism of the Premier League. He mentioned 'Yorkshire teams' (such as? Leeds? Bradford? Barnsley? Rotherham? York? Get to fuck, Sir Alex) and London teams and Liverpool teams and of course studiously avoided mentioning the only true Manchester team. I myself was challenged the other day:
"Who do you support, then?"
"Man City."
"Oh right... Are you a Mancunian?"
"No."
Maybe, in days gone by, or if there hadn't been quite so loud a Bob Dylan duo playing, I would have gone on and blathered about Oswestry and TNS and Shrewsbury and Wrexham... But I didn't.
2 comments:
I'm not commenting on the probably success or otherwise of our cuts but there is little comparison between us and Greece. Greece is a total basket case which pretty much everyone agrees will, and should, "restructure their debts" - i.e. default. It's just a matter of time. Hyperbole aside we are not there yet.
That's as maybe, but as Cleggeron likes to remind us, we are in for £400m PER DAY in debt payments. Really, looking around it's hard to see where any economy generation can come from in this country. Unless we can all work in betting shops or coffee houses.
At least Greece has a decent bit of sea.
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