Impetus

Have meme, will trope.
Money for old rope.
Slippery slope.

Prime Ministerial Material

Prime Ministerial Material –
What’s that, when it’s at home?

You know: as in the one where
someone shows the qualities
of leadership and vision that’s
sufficiently proficient unto
governing the State.

Our politics is vying for the lack
of it and yet it’s all the rage,
among necrotic lip-sync media
and no, mate, actually, it’s not a
secret, got a bit too clever quips

Well, anyway, Westminster and
his wife are framing anxious for
the People not to recognise the
answer any more.

And what is it?
You may well ask!
A blast from out the olde past
by order and degree – a leader
lording arbitrarily
over you and you and me?

Or heretofore a dream of one,
agreed, is really of the We?

Well, then, yes, please!
That would be great!
When can you start?
Say, May, the eighth?

The Kingdom’s crying out
for one whose lens portends
the socio-economic sense of
open hearts and wiser heads…

Advertisement

cash cow

A cash cow
is a how
integrity
at BBC
bows down
before renown
to please
alacrity
of predators,
mendacity
of boorish bores,
tenacity
of pompous clowns;
is why
capaciously expounds
and ostentatiously rewards.

Celebrity

Sometimes a celebrity
has talent
extending even into genius
integrity
and power unsurpassed
of beauty
grace
or class
that charismatic
je ne sais quite what
and wealth amassed
and trophies
of respect
for noble duty
or ability
of skill
or craft
but just as often
not.

Sunday Service

This morning I watched the most dreadfully facile newspaper review on ‘the Andrew Marr Show’. Yes, I know it’s not that good on a good day but it serves. If only to prove that even on Sundays, there’s neither test nor rest for the wicked.

Alistair Campbell and Christiane Amanpour bleating diabolical for the crony cause with scaremonger blah, blah – warmonger blah, blah. Putin: hybrid, deniability, classic neo-totalitarian, blah blah come-to-Jesus moment (Good lord! Really, Christiane?). Bully (Andrew’s joining in, now). Takeaway: Putin evil; West good. Period. Not a courtship dance through a mirror darkly, then? On to things Death Cult actual. How seamlessly they do that.. Moving on to Skunk: evil. Oh, but have you tried mainstream news analysis, I asked the television…

I even stomached that Lib Dem turncoat, Danny Alexander (oh, BBC, why do you bother..?) and I listened to William Hague do the classic (neo) pot-and-kettle act and thought about how his word cloud would be mainly defence and anything of which stable is a root. Makes a change from national interest, I supposed. But don’t worry: after all the reckless and, some might say, needless provocations that his school of thought has supplied to the world, he still expects to deliver diplomatic solutions. Phew, eh?

Andrew asks him about EVEL. (Ah, don’t you just love a homonym?) Oh, bless him! William just wants unity – by English discretion (the Devil’s in the details). What’s that, William? Chaos? For organised evil, vote Tory?

Step away. And breathe..

I turned over to ‘Murnaghan’ on Sky News and saw that appalling, shouty Kippy woman, Louise Bours was on (Another homonym! Now that’s just spoiling me). Oh, no you don’t, I thought and, resisting the temptation to let her let me wind myself up I turned back to BBC’s ‘The Big Questions’. Topic: Does Satan Exist? Oh, Silly, he’s on a campaigning holiday somewhere. Parliament’s in recess until Monday.

Gods help us.

About the stupidity

Stupidity: ‘Behaviour that shows a lack of good sense or judgement’ – OED

‘Stupidity is a talent for misconception’ ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Today, as I began to absorb the day’s ‘agenda setting’ diet (though only Sky News actually admits this – even boasts about it) from the smörgås board of global and domestic affairs and ingested some of the polarised views on social media, I lurched, in my head, from explosive reactionary to numbing despondency, back and forth, back and forth, my mind on the whole but my thoughts on shuffle. My sense of doom and gloom at the utter scale of political stupidity was overwhelming. I don’t know why today, particularly because the standard of news, debate and analysis was no worse than yesterday’s or the day’s before. Nor is this the first time it’s happened. It’s just that usually I recognise stupidity overwhelm quite quickly and either channel it or tell myself I need to step away. Today I felt that I couldn’t do either. I felt like a coiled spring, frozen. I told Twitter and Jill Segger (@quakerpen), a writer whose own wonderful writings always portray her soul’s beauty, told me: ‘Write about the stupidity. Write about how it affects you. Just write!’ (How I have missed the assistance of a brief!)

On the stupidity of our political climate:

Cause and effect has lost its place in socio-economic terms, straying into the realms of subjective philosophical selective relativism. Symptoms are now mis-identified as causes; bugs are perceived as features; stereotypes are taken as read. This makes for superficial political solutions that not only insult wide demographics and disingenuously create others but then openly scapegoat them for seeming populist but reckless purpose. This divides and demeans everyone. This is serving only the most insidiously toxic agenda of neoconservative expedience. This is a progress not worth having that relies on such indecent destruction of Humanity and its social fabrics. It is short-sighted, regressive, unnecessary and decidedly wicked. This is not progress at all. It is certainly not ‘recovery’.

Pick a topic of political, socio-economic issue. Any topic you like: Education, Health and Social Care, Welfare, Law and Order, Energy, Sovereignty, Liberty, Environment, Conflict and Terrorism, Democracy, Art, Religion, etc, etc and tell me: how is it not connected to all the others? What meaningful solutions can be offered that work by isolating it? How does looking only across its surface provide a deeper understanding? How does selecting out one tiny aspect of it and nominating that as the main cause, even the very root of an ill, inform appropriate policy? How does focussing intently on one aspect of a larger dilemma justify a blanket policy of punishment or reward?

How do I feel about the stupidity? I feel that it will slowly and surely reduce us all to husks and dust and that, although many will tediously look back at these years and wonder what happened, as though it were a sudden, unpreventable, unpredictable catastrophic event, it will still be all our own collective fault if we let the prevailing groupthink continue. Because we did not appreciate the interconnectedness of things. Because we couldn’t apply with integrity what we already knew, let alone what we newly learned. Because we had so little regard for the beauty and majesty of Life. Because we didn’t respect paradox or appreciate unity. Because we thought simplicity and complexity and the macro and micro where either/ors that couldn’t be reconciled when, in fact, it is imperative that they are married.

How do I feel about the stupidity? That this, too, shall pass. Eventually. So I feel despair, rage, doubt, bemusement, intolerance, contempt, pity, incredulity, bored, exhausted, alert, pumped-up, apprehensive, impatient, compassion, suspicious, empathy, enthusiastic, ambivalent, hopeful, vulnerable, bossy, sheepish, impotent, frightened, brave, capable, powerful. And more. Pick any sensation and, a bit like an electron, I’m there! And also probably not, for nothing lasts but nothing is lost.

On Centre Ground

On centre ground
the middling sound
with fiddling tricks
pretends a joint
from point to round;
by means of wend
betwixt two ends
it bends to fix
a state of bounds.

Conspicuous

Well, you can prance pragmatic;
Wax emphatic all you like –
That value gap in what you say
And what you mean
Conspicuous
Do as you do
Not as you say
Say as you’ll do
Do as you say –
You couldn’t tell it straight
Without the day becomes the night.
You think your slick-trick rhetoric
Can cancel out experience
But, by your acts we know you
And they show you always
Find the play that screws us over, anyway.
We feel the actual facts:
Your blurb is manifestly shite.

Age of outrage

This is the age
Of outrage
From the futile
And puerile
In frothing fever waged
To the overdue
And justified
By restless righteous gauge

This is the age
Of outrage
From perceived hurt
Vicarious or not occurred
In the keenly sensitive
To the chilled bones
Of those who choose
Live and let live

This is the age
Of outrage
From confused followers
And blind swallowers
Of empty words
To the shocked
And taking stock
Of witnesses
To the absurd

This is the age
Of outrage
Based on any excuse
From valid to screw loose
Invigorated
For profiteering prophets
And the common sage
On a synthesised
And desiccated stage.

God Rest Ye Merry, Government

God rest ye merry, Government
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Price is everything
And you are getting paid
To save the few of no value
While all the rest be played
O tidings of contempt and rage
Now being waged
O tidings of contempt and rage

From gods of craven worship
The blasted Con men came
And unto certain sycophants
Gave entrance to the same:
How in the land of Buccaneers
All’s done in Profit’s Name
O siding with self-int’rest and might
Hubris with bite
O siding with self-int’rest and might

And when they viewed the mayhem
Whence their dear saviour streamed
They found their way in danger
Of running out of steam
The population keeling o’er
And ripping at all seams
O sliding on serfdom to peers
War and small beer
O sliding on serfdom to peers

Now to themselves bring conflict
All those who rule our space
By their cruel ideology
Society’s disgrace
The wickedness of idiots
Must surely be displaced
O hidings of Justice, Old Boys
(Comfort and joy)
O hidings of Justice, Old Boys