All The News This Week and Next
The other day, Poland was subjected to a visit "to the region" from whelk-brained US Vice President Kamala Harris, confirming that Ukraine is indeed doomed. Speaking from nearby (much safer) Poland, Harris demonstrated the unique grasp of global politics that has made her famous. Quote: "We all watched the television coverage of just yesterday. That's on top of everything else that we know and don't know yet. Based on what we've just been able to see and because we've seen it or not doesn't mean it hasn't happened. But just limited to what we have seen."
RIP Ukraine. that's it, game over. When they send the single least-talented politician in the western hemisphere all the way to a Polish press conference to deliver that kind of precision analysis, it's time to rent out your slum apartment in Ukraine to the nearest drug-dealer, buy a dinghy and head for Calais.
WAR STORIES
In case anyone in Ukraine is still fantasising that Britain will lift a finger to help them fight Russia, our very own Churchill-impersonator-in Chief has assured all battle-hungry UK soldiers that if they fancied nipping out to Ukraine to join the war, they'd be court-martialled on return. Which makes for a slightly peculiar contrast to the greeting complete strangers get on the beaches of Kent. Returning British soldiers- go to court and be prosecuted. Illegal immigrants - food, money and a free home.
In fairness, at least the Prime Minister's approach is consistent : unless you're an illegal border-crasher, Johnson doesn't give a toss about you, whoever you are. He is clearly suffering from depression, as his front-page selfie count has crashed to a mere three a week. There is, however, a rhythym to the news cycle that propels Johnsonian BS towards the weekend. Weekends of course, are where dirt gets buried while all the guys are watching sport and the gals are busy doing hard stuff.
KILL US ALL
No one seems to have told Ukraine Premier Zelensky however. Never short of a quote to rally his people to his cause, the actor-tirned freedom fighter declared on Saturday "Let them come -the Russians will have to kill us all to take Kyiv!" Which is all very well for him to say, surrounded as he is by armed guards, armoured vehicles and a helicopter or two with their engines running ready for a fast exit when the end is nigh.If I was Zelensky I might ask for a show of hands before committing to a policy of death for everyone.
I'm willing to bet a case or two of Smirnoff that more than a few of the poor bastards cowering in the shelters don't partucularly want to die for Ukraine and would tather have a surrender / cease-fire instead. As evidence for this, I offer the vast number of Ukrainians who have already voted with their feet and scattered themselves elsewhere in europe. I'd describe fleeing the region as a pretty unequivocal expression of one's wish to live trumping the patriotic desire to die for one's country.
WITH OPEN POCKETS
It's not all doom and gloom for the fleeing, either. The great news is, according to the British government of unlimited cash (borrowed from the bank of you and me) that decent, upstanding British families can now trouser a monthly bonus of £350 by hosting Ukrainian refugees in their households.
Before you could say "State Propaganda" the BBC had released a stomach-churning promotional collage of clapped-out luvvies pushing this wheeze. It was a truly hideous, amateurish production worthy of a twelve-year-old directing her Tik Tok porn debut: anonymous nonentiities, ugly comedians and LGBTQsquiggle hashtag@ 21gun KFC&bar types gurning for the camera while baying "WITH OPEN ARMS!" like the final scene in a zombie apocalypse movie.
Then again, almost eveything looks like the final scene in a zombie apocalypse movie nowadays. Live footage from Kyiv, Prime Ministerr's Question Time, the masked pensioners queing at my local Coop (Scottish masking says no surrender) -it's the end of days wherever you look, eyes rolling madly, trembling fingers outstretched, curious moaning noises that might once have been human speech...
The weekend couldn't come quickly enough for the Labour Party, which had ended the week by getting it's cultural Marxist knickers in a fine old twist, by loudly putting a woman in charge of women's issues to talk about women, who then found herself unable to speak a coherent sentence when asked "what is a woman?" One of these days someone ought to ask what is a Labour Party?
SINGIN THE BLUES
Elsewhere in the soap-opera WotMinisteramIThisWeek?, ex-Home-Secretary and ex-chancellor-turned Health Secretary Sajid Javid has been roaming the corridors howling like a lost mongrel. Woe is he, since it dawned on him that there's no point in being in charge of Health now they've taken his pandemic away. Maybe he should pivot yet again and become Minister for Sport. In that post, he could get creative win friends by heading off the imminent catastrophe threatening that great institution known as Chelski Football Club.
In a glittering example of the perils of international virtue-signalling, the "authorities" have turfed the billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich out of the Chelski hot-seat and are pretending they've got all his money locked up tight in a government piggy bank (which is bollocks) -with the consequence that the club will most certainly collapse and go bankrupt in less time than takes to launch a super-yacht. How can Sajid Javid save the day?
I'd suggest a raffle. Get Sheikh Mohammed and a dozen other arab billionaires in a room, along with a few hedge-fund managers and Rishi Sunak's father-in-law. Serve soft drinks and Bombay Mix. Sell the raffle tickets at £500 million each. Holly Willoughby could draw the winning ticket live on breakfast TV and Marcus Rashford could coach the oil-sheikhs in "taking the knee" so they don't get caught off-guard when the world cup kicks off in Qatar this summer. Everyone wins (except Abramovich) and Sajid Javid will have a front seat in the grandstand to see England knocked out in the semi-finals after a penalty shoot-out.
It’s a funny old world.
ReplyDeleteJohnson, having decided, post-Afghanistan, to virtue-signal about Russia, now finds himself in the position of having to beg Saudi Arabia for an increased supply of oil. Yep, that same Saudi Arabia which cheerfully announced that it had executed more than eighty people at the weekend. I’m sure that Saudi oil will come really cheap now, won’t it….?
Meanwhile Michael Gove informs us that English local Councils will receive £10,000 for each Ukrainian refugee they take in.
Expensive business, this ‘virtue-signalling’ lark. Still, Johnson and Gove aren’t worried. After all, it’s not their money they’re spending; it’s ours. And they can bask in the rosy moral glow of spending it on other people, not on their own citizens. Who can of course cope on their own with skyrocketing gas, electricity, and petrol prices and an NHS that appears, to many people in pain and sickness, to have lapsed into inactivity .
Meanwhile, as Covid and Lockdown parties somehow vanish into the ether, the Left amuses itself by tying itself in knots over the hugely important question of men in frocks. As multi-millionaires Starmer and Rowling, both of whom self-identify as 'Socialists', slug it out toe-to-toe over whether women have penises.
The UK’s National Debt now stands at £2,223 billion.
I imagine there's a parallel universe where all this really IS funny. And I suppose spectating on the actual collapse of a civilisation isn't somethng everybody gets to do, so perhaps we should just enjoy the show.
DeleteHow richly appropriate to our times, then, that Ukraine's current President, and neophyte oligarch, Zelensky sprang to fame in a TV sitcom in which he played a fictional Ukrainian President.
ReplyDeleteYes, it turns out that you actually COULD make it up. Tragedy imitates (very low-grade) art. Mass slaughter results from the popularity of a comedy show on the box. How depressingly symbolic of the brainless era we live in.
I feel as though I'm living in an real life TV sitcom where an extremely poor third nay fourth rate thespian is acting as a British president surrounded by an imported cast of hindi actor's and actresses who's aim is to wipe out the entire history of a nation...
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