Tag Archives: Brexit

on time

paramedics wait up
patients in car parks for hours
our chronic decline

~

n.b. All very well spending £ billions of the public‘s taxed money on an aircraft carrier which broke on sea trials, PPE that was useless and never used, bureaucracy to leave the EU, (our biggest trading partner), but nothing invested in hospitals for those very taxpayers.

Meanwhile, tax dodging (avoidance and evasion) of the highest order persists by those actually in the highest executive positions of power.

Tax the richest harder. No such thing as trickle down economics, as the rich get richer and the gap widens between the excess of haves and the poverty of have nots.

The UK is a shambolic mess. How not to run a country.

Enough is enough.

~

CLP 28/01/2023

on Ukraine

consider profits
manufacturers' heaven
economic boom

~

n.b. Does the UK government truly want to support the Ukrainian people, or does it see ‘leading the West’ as an instant way to boost the post-covid, post-Brexit economy?

The promised £1 billion of support goes not to Kyiv, but to arms factories in UK. Ukraine gets the weapons, fights the fight, continues to bury its children, (as do Russia’s mothers).

Is this why there is no talk of talks from the besieged of Downing Street?

Russia must be stopped, but who seeks an end to the slaughter? Does this proxy war have to be fought until the last Ukrainian?

Or must this war become a direct confrontation, risking mutual mass destruction, for it to be halted?

The Cuban missile crisis and the Berlin airlift took that risk. Just arming Ukraine prolongs the agony, puts off the inevitable moment, when Russian soldiers stand face-to-face with NATO soldiers, either in Ukraine, or at its border.

When will someone stand up to the bully? Why is the child being repeatedly told, stand up for yourself, we’ll hold your coat? Martyrs of Hungary and Czechoslovakia know how this turns out.

Is Russia’s alleged poor weaponry, still too great a match for suit-wearing, vote-needy politicians? Politicians who see money in war and hope for votes from money?

Day 141, the start of week 21. Ker-ching! Can you hear the cash register?

CLP 16/07/2022

on the beach

down to the seaside
ice lollies, buckets and spades?
nowt but a dumb flag

~

CLP 26/06/2022

on time

we would jump on board
be in Paris in three hours
just catch memories

~

n.b. Time was when the passing Eurostar was a symbol of freedom, opportunity and hope. Now it is simply a relic of days when Europe was a place we shared with our Continental cousins, a symbol of loss.

CLP 30/1/2021

Dream #2

chairs edge round

tracking the high Sun’s arc

across the piazza

blue pierced by medieval tower

the cafê name

Italian

~

CLP 29/05/2021

The Worm and the Louse

Worm said that Louse had behaved in a way that Worm considered to be ‘mad and totally unethical’ and warned that Worm was prepared to give evidence under oath to an inquiry.

“It is sad to see the Louse and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity that this ship of fools deserves.” Worm wrote.

Such a damning intervention by the Worm who was Louse’s key ally and source of ideological inspiration will deeply alarm the Louse and his lice. Worm is due to give his evidence to the Gammons next month.

~

n.b. Adapted from the top story in The Guardian newspaper of Saturday, 24th April, 2021; “Mad and totally unethical” Cummings hits out at Boris Johnson.”

NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Four prompt; word change animals featured in news article, or words to that effect.

It was supposed to be a fun prompt, but there is absolutely nothing amusing about having The Great Clown running anything more complicated than a train set – if that.

~

CLP 24/04/2021

L3 (Day 74): On the Shelf

I go to the supermarket to buy essential shopping, not to have Brexit thrust in my face.

I saw an article last week that had the headline, “Congrats America, You’re Not The Dumbest Country In The World”. The article led off with a photograph of Alexander Johnson, Her Majesty’s Prime Minister.

~

CLP 21/03/2021

L3 (Day 62): In The Kitchen

Courgettes are scarce at the moment and it looks like I have competition.

~

CLP 09/03/2021

C3 (Day 42): Lent

Who was it that had

my copy of The Football

Grounds of Great Britain?

~

n.b. I cannot imagine I ever let anyone borrow that from me, but no sign of my copy of the classic text by Simon Inglis and I would never have knowingly given it away. The Football Grounds of Europe is still with me, so maybe this is telling me something about my future?

~

CLP 17/02/2021

L3 (Day 27) Norwich

Chilly sunbeams caught the trees with such intensity that the bark shone. In Chapelfield Gardens this mighty specimen’s complex skeleton is revealed.

Although the temperature was barely above freezing, the first crocuses were pushing though to join dangling snow drops and daffodil shoots. What will trigger the opening of the daffodils? Will it be warmth or light that they respond to? There has been the rain to ensure the earth is soft and will separate at their insistence. We wait for the fanfare of silent yellow trumpets to confirm our progress.

Magnolia buds, sticky to touch are fattening, their pinched tips speared with pink.

All the trees are beginning to show some suggestion of colour now as leaves start to form. The townhouses have just a few more weeks to enjoy unscreened sunsets.

There is little traffic today, except that squeezed into the hours at the start and end of the commercial day. I head out to complete a couple of minor errands. The biggest danger is pedestrians stepping into the street without looking for cyclists as they considerately make space for each other.

When I cut through the perimeter of Eaton Park I notice the car park is full and the footpaths busy. In the line of trees running by Southside Avenue starlings are agitating to fly before the onset of evening. Their squabbling is a terrific noise.

I note that infection rates and related deaths are beginning to fall across the United Kingdom. We must hold our discipline and see this through. On the Isle of Man, once a stronghold for Vikings between Ireland and Britain, the pubs are open and a normal life has resumed as there are no known cases in its population of 82,000.

The other local difficulty has taken a worrying turn as Loyalist extremists in Northern Ireland have begun a campaign of intimidation against the local government workers who have the job of processing paperwork on goods moving between the six counties and Britain as a result of Johnson’s farcical Brexit deal.

~

CLP 01/02/2021