Sideshow

We compare coats
wear imitations on our feet
and borrow sympathetic voices
for sideshows
until insight is a stranger
and tomorrow but an echo

Political incorrectness gone mad

When meaningful is meaningless
And meaningless is meaningful,
Political incorrectness has gone mad;
When the Government is synonymous
With conquering ignoramuses
Why are these Brexits still so fucking sad?

***

‘David Davis is still denying MPs a “meaningful vote” on Brexit’ – “Things can only get bitter.”

Why are Brexits so unhappy? They won. Scrutiny and accountability are fundamental to Sovereignty and Democracy. Well, it might be rather late in the Brexit day but that is exactly what is happening. Brexits said they were fighting to take back control but they are busily trying to give it away with no discernment, whatsoever. And they say it is the remoaners who are not patriotic…

Other words for people doing their jobs:
Saboteurs
Enemies of the people
Mutineers (£)

On Twitter, @ LeaveEUOfficial even précis a link to a ‘Westmonster’ post, today (I won’t dignify it with a direct link), with “The 15 Tory MPs who voted against enshrining the Brexit date into UK law are the cancer within their party and traitors to their country. Total disregard for the people’s democratic choice”

It’s that kind of crazy-arsed paranoia that started all this catastrophic crap.

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‘much worse than that’

World: Are you really this stupid or have you completely lost control?

UK Government: 🍰

**

“Brexit Britain doesn’t even have a solid relationship with the rest of the archipelago it inhabits… If it were a personal ad, it would read: ‘Petulant bolter seeks stable, lifelong relationship.’” – Fintan O’Toole (Guardian/Observer)

”If only we were still in the days when governments did things which were merely stupid. This is much worse than that.” – Ian Dunt

“No One Knows What Britain Is Anymore” – Steven Erlanger (NYT)

“To old friends, Great Britain, as they used to call it, is in the clasp of an inexplicable fever. Renowned for solidity and pragmatism, the Brits have fallen to rage and resentment. Carefully judged self-interest has surrendered to dangerous dogmatism.” – Philip Stephens (FT)

[I highly recommend politics.co.uk and Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? by Ian Dunt, who is widely considered an authority on the matter]

The way the Tories roll

The principle that’s principal
Is risible
Dirigible
The higher ones invisible
The way the Tories roll

Integrity neglected
Law and ethics disrespected
Fact and fiction self-selective
That’s the way the Tories roll

The gap in credibility
Is sizeable
Revisable
And utterly derivable
The way the Tories roll

Logic magic’ly fragmented
Half the party looks demented
Even sound as though they meant it
It’s a leading Tory role

Can’t tell their elbows from their arses
All hot air and whoopsie farces
Sinister, the stink that passes
Whereabouts the Tories roll

Crony ring of tooth and claw
Surviving on revolving doors
And carousels of dizzy poor
Sees Tories on a roll

With patronising platitudes
And breathtaking ineptitude
They then expect our gratitude
Oh, how the Tories roll!

Avoiding liability
Financial incivility
So hostile to humility
There’s no deniability
That Tory heads must roll

For the slope of plausibility
Grows slippery
With trickery
And, trip! There goes fuckwittery
How fast can Tories roll?

 

[November, 2015 – plus ça change…]

Well done, Homespun

Well done, Homespun
You won
In tongues:
Forked-puns
Unhealthy sums
Ten times the burden on our young
Top-table crumbs
Fair-weather chums
New depths to plumb
The right to be somebody else’s never-setting Sun
No actual benefit – zip, nada, none
No fun
No fun
No fun beneath
Your unopposable thumb.

Heartifice

A Brexit-deep state of mind:
Heartifice, by design.
Truth be told, a waste of time
When fiddled faith says
”This is fine.”

Brexit: it boils the blood

You know what makes me the most angry about Brexit, right now? That 17,410,742 people who spouted ill-informed crap throughout the referendum campaign and, afterwards, claimed that they knew what they were voting for, are still spouting ill-informed crap and claiming that they knew what they voted for, even though they failed utterly to base their opinions on any fact and despite the mounting evidence that no one knew or fully understood what leaving meant. And especially when the Brexit pushers admit, daily, to still not knowing the answers to the most basic questions. Christ! Most of them are not even asking them. They are just doubling down on hopium, hyperbole, denial and censorship. It’s all they have.

What makes me so furious is that, even if they genuinely thought they knew exactly what they were voting for then, they bloody well don’t know what that is now. And, if they did not realise what they were voting for, they bloody well should do, by now – chaos, isolation, ridicule and diminution.

People who refuse the responsibility of keeping up with developments that are a direct consequence of a decision to commit a collective act of national self-harm, that they deliberately and knowingly made but have continually refused to ask pertinent and intelligent questions about or accept readily available truths and very strong evidence: they have no fucking right, whatsoever, to their vacuous “will of the people” “respect democracy” “enemy of the people” “you lost, get over it” “stop talking the country down” bullshit.

Yes, I know that most of those 17 point blah blah million voters lead busy lives. So do most of the voting population. I know they only have time to grab a bit of broadcast news, watch a debate or two, skim a newspaper, check what Facebook thinks. But this only makes their arrogant certainty look more dumb and more irresponsible: what the hell makes them believe that they are properly informed and what the flaming holy heck makes them assume that all expertise, common sense, honest resistance and challenge is not informed but based purely on some bizarre unpatriotic bias? How the fuck would they even know? Jumped-up cretins. Brexit: it boils the blood.

 

[Sorry: perhaps I should have warned about the fury before ranting but a sudden need for catharsis beat me to it.]

People can make-believe of anything

People can make-believe of anything: an idea; a time/place; a person; the worth of Brexit. It might be founded on sheer strength of feeling or on the perception that a logical position is providing a complete picture. Checks on reasoning are subsumed into the comfort of confirmation bias. It becomes a feedback-loop of superiority and victimhood, working as a shield against all opposition.

The greater the investment in a position, the greater the requirement for its justification and, the more one justifies an investment, the more one becomes consumed by the need to. This is an ideological dependency developing a religious-like zeal for its own protection. Seeing is believing where believing is seeing: these are now the same thing. Chicken and egg. It doesn’t lead to truths, except by virtue of coincidental overlap – luck – or by lessons learned through the observation of its example – judgement.

And because the cold, hard truths of Brexit are self-evident, either you admit your error, to yourself, at the very least, or you double down and brazen it out, in the hope that denial will buy time and yet save your face. Thus, through fear or cynicism, you set yourself to the mission of converting and recruiting others because, well, safety and righteous correctness in evangelical numbers, right?

Dear Brexits

Dear Brexits,

I am not talking our country down. You voted to leave. That decision is actively bringing our country down. I am merely observing, reporting and commenting on the myriad dismal consequences of your “will”.

No Brexit is better than a bad Brexit and there is no Brexit that is good.

If this was not sufficiently evident, to you, before the referendum, whether because you were tricked or just did not bother to inform yourself, it bloody well should be plenty evident, by now. It is not my fault that you either cannot see or will not admit this.

I love our country and you have endangered her. It is a poor patriotism that would seek to demand my silence.

Regards

Records show

Cowardice is a ladder
for the lionised,
records show.

Told you so has legs
and hearts and spines
of proper lions, though.

We gather our senses;
commit them to memory,
in collectible volumes.