Fore-foreword: after the horrific attack on David Amess, I decided not to immediately publish this post. It seemed like a time to reflect on what I was writing, and whether the level of anger I feel towards our government is something that it's acceptable to post online. I have a very, very small readership, most of whom I know personally, so I hardly think I'll be inciting acts of violence. But on the other hand, I am contributing to a wider malaise of rage and intolerance, and maybe I shouldn't be. But what is it that I'm intolerant of? Not race, or gender, or sexuality, or religion, or age, or ethnicity, or nationality. I am intolerant of hypocrisy, of a cavalier attitude to facts, of lying, of greed, of cruelty, of lack of empathy. And honestly, I don't want to become tolerant of those things. I don't want to sit back and stop caring. So I stay angry.
Foreword: I found a draft of a post I started writing in November 2020. At the time it all got a bit rabid and then petered out and I never quite finished it. Nearly a year later, and not much seems to have changed within my opinions. So to maintain my eco-credentials, I'm just going to recycle it with a few updates that take account of the passage of time. For the sake of historical accuracy, I'm going to make those edits obvious.
I'll start today with an an observation and a warning.
My observation is that it's quite apparent that in the dark and troubling times* we're living in, people are looking for positivity wherever they can find it, even if that's in random whimsical blogposts by some woman they once met outside the school gates. In the past, when looking at the statistics from my blog posts, I consistently had a higher readership for my political rants and introspective anxiety-bleats than anything else I wrote. If I ever produced anything light and fluffy, it was generally met with a bit of a "meh" response. Now, Last year, however, my ten days of positivity each garnered twice as many page views as my grumbles about the shit-weasels governing the country. So, perhaps I should try and stick to some more positive posts - give the people what they want eh?
And now for the warning:
This post is going to be absolutely rammed full of expletives. I shall curse, swear and profane profusely. If you think this is an impoverished use of language that reveals a lack of imagination and creativity, or if you're just plain offended, tough. Piss off and read about kittens instead.
Back on track...
I cannot write positively just for the sake of it. I'm not positive all the time, and even writing 10 days worth of good cheer was seriously difficult. There were a couple of days I dreaded having to stick to my self-induced schedule.
I've had enough. I've fucking had it. I'm pissed off. I hate everything about the way the world is. I hate our lying, conniving, self-serving, contemptible shits of politicians. I despise every fucking Brexit-supporting moron who thought "taking back control" was such a fucking good idea they chose to condemn us to becoming a pariah floating in the North Sea. There was never any positive outcome to Brexit. Never. Every sodding thing I wrote about before the referendum was right. I'm not saying I'm some kind of genius. Far from it. I'm pointing out it was blindingly fucking obvious that leaving the EU was the most half-arsed, blinkered, navel-gazing, dim-witted thing we could possibly do, and that it absolutely didn't take a genius to spot that. And if the fact that it was a stupid idea didn't put you off, the fact that the campaign to leave was led by the biggest bunch of lying, power-crazed, wealth-obsessed shit-gibbons this country has ever seen should have been a bit of a clue.
But never mind Brexit, eh? Not while we've got over 500 100 people a day dying of a pandemic (again), while the Brexit-cock-wombles' friends are lining their pockets and failing to answer questions before a Select Committee. How many billions have we spaffed** up the wall on contracts for nothing, or PR campaigns, or "consultants"? How many more people have to die while our government refuses to learn any lessons from the first 50,000 160,000 dead? What the fuck is wrong with these people? Is anyone actually able to stomach listening to Johnson's bullshit waffling at his press conferences everywhere he goes. Waving his arms around, randomly clenching his fist, burbling pointless, frequently military, analogies. Why the fuck did anyone vote for this scum? THIS IS YOUR FAULT.
I'm just so fucking angry with everything. I'm trapped, and fed up, and powerless and it's all just so bloody exhausting. We have a government of incompetent, ill-informed, immoral lickspittles, who kowtow to a stupid, narcissistic, man-baby whose expensive education has left him with nothing more than a veneer of pseudo-intelligence and the mistaken conviction that he is entitled to rule. A man who is incapable of listening, learning, understanding, empathising or indeed leading. A man who escapes on holiday to his billionaire-friends' homes as often as possible, apparently oblivious to the fact that his presence or absence has absolutely no impact on the efficiency or effectiveness of the governance of the country. A man who has no strategy, forethought, policy or direction beyond feathering his own nest and being patted on the back. A man who will say or do absolutely anything for a cheap laugh or a round of applause, but who will renege on every promise he's ever made, personally or professionally.
And this personality cult that's masquerading as a political party has an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. A majority that they're busy trying to make unassailable by changing voting laws, banning protests and limiting freedoms. A majority that is baked-in to our antiquated FPTP voting system. A majority that is still, gobsmackingly, approved of by some 40% of the voting public.
Where the hell do we go from here? Where are the decent Tories who will stop this nonsense? Are there any? Because it's only Tories who can currently do anything about this fiasco of a corrupt, incompetent government.
And then it's time for a revolution, and the creation of a mature democracy fit for the 21st century. Who's with me?
* A year on, and a question for the reader - are times more or less dark and troubling now, or is it much the same?
** For those who are not followers of the Parliamentary sketch-writer John Crace, he habitually refers to Johnson as "spaffer" after his obscene complaint that money spent pursuing historic cases of child sex abuse was being "spaffed up the wall". He later attempted to claim he was not aware that the term was synonymous with ejaculation. He is an utter, irredeemable shit.
