TheFatefulNextStep
BeatingTheCall
Termism SucksLongTermDown ShortTermToASecond’s SplitDownToABillionthNow TimeOut
“Time out” could be what the Brits will face by the time their current, curious Monty Python reprise season, drags its way to trick or ‘treat Halloween night’ on October 31st.
I was wondering late this past weekend how many other people saw the English Conservative Party campaign to choose a new Prime Minister to be deeply weird: and for me, like reliving some of my 1950’s childhood.
As part of my slightly post-colonial pre-sixties teen period, a saintly godmother gave me annual subscriptions to such classic British/English comics, like Film Fun, “Roy of the Rover’s” Tiger comics, Beano, Dandy, Knockout and such like.
These were supplemented by a diet of ‘good, children’s books’; supplied by the same much beloved godmother. She was always anxious that I should grow up with some ‘memory’, she said, of a foreign [to me as a child] place, where I had been born; and from which I had been “brutally removed, by my [relatively] ignorant parents to some unpleasant place in Afrika… Far from civility:” she added, when I asked once, while staying briefly with her in Keresley: near Coventry.
So these “good children’s books ran the gamut of Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton and the rest: from Big Ears & Noddy; to Famous Five, Secret Seven, Billy Bunter’ schooldays at Greyfriers school, Richmal Crompton’s Just William and other works that reflected either school or daily life in England…
These past weeks; as a confused world watched these wannabe’s clamoring around microphones howling siren like: ‘pick me’ pleas, at some ancient town criers event… in Bedlam.
Then it all wound down to the two finalists for ‘Head BOY’ selected from amongst the legion of shiny young “Lower sixth chaps”.
Technically, one woman started, realized she already had the required A Levels and was out. We the befuddled public were left with, what some claim, is the “AmiableRotter” character, from those old comic stories…The so-called BoJo … And a second fellow with an ungainly fifties style, short back n sides haircut, above curiously fanatical enraged eyes.
This wannabe, a person called Jeremy Hunt, is playing: ‘the confidently polished, “RoyOfTheRover’s”, clean- cut, Mr.‘NiceGuy’. And is a relatively unknown player, apparently…
As a bizarre sideshow, taking absurdity to the ridiculous, some TV commentators were heard, expressing embarrassment, about inappropriately, mistakenly, mispronouncing Jeremy’s surname. [He shares his personal name with the present leader of the main Opposition party: a fellow called Jeremy Corbyn.]. I love it when a meme comes together: Hee hee.
To cap the whole Monty Python replay script: There was even a sprightly, young, geeky type Kleva… “That Gove chappie from the lower fourth, who got dammed close to the finish line; and had to be disposed of, in some dastardly way: still unplumbed.” Wow… Who could have written such a marvel: that reprised the Goon Show and Monty Python in one deluxe Reality Show…. And still continues in our next…
And so we were left with:
Aggressive, self-promoting, hugely impatient and filled with mock urgency: Master: “CrispNKleen versus the Indolent games playing: “AmiableIdleUpperClassDammedIntelligentLout”: the aforementioned -BoJo.
It is a story that even, the now apparently despised Enid Blyton, could not have scripted more elegantly… Albeit: I am hanging on for some Agatha Christie.
I did find the entire exercise almost “brotesque” [sic] in its comic possibilities: was it not so epically serious. And I wondered if I was being silly.
Then at one of the later stages of what I saw as the whole comedy, I heard a young millennial level mommy being interviewed by SkyTV, on a park bench, where she was sitting with her toddler. She asserted that they [the cacophonous contenders as some called them] were like a clutch of public schoolboys all striving noisily for the head boy post: before the Easter break… Snap… And more than squared too, I suspect.
Puzzlingly in most other country’s Public schools are State schools while in England for odd reasons Private schools are called Public. No wonder George Orwell could disingenuously invent NewSpeak.
Nonetheless: I was affirmed; and I reveled in the absurdity of the whole drawn-out Brexit farce. It is obvious that sensible people want to see it vanquished and, to call upon another wonderful regular old comic strip meme: can see an end game to this. Visualize the successful PM contender tied like the ancient heroine to a railway line: and the bridge is down. The train puffs into view. October 31st. Who can save the day?
No more delay…. Cancel that NO…Inevitable?
Or will they all go?
A break perhaps for a general election: and a ‘slowdown at dawn’ with the remainers and the leavers, allegedly Britain’s “new tribes” [London economist 23 June 2019] breaking ranks with the past: to build a new multiparty State. Who dreams of that? Or….
Better a stultified Oligopolistic system: two deeply divided parties dominant in a stagnant political pond… looking with great care: to the interests of their demanding mortgages.
Again, this is the stuff of high drama and of huge concern to many parts of the populace. And to date there has been little to cheer those hoping to find some form of plan; as to what shall be the game to be played on November 1st, this year… Saying the word plan often is not the same as saying what the purpose, strategy and key objectives of the plan should be.
Most certainly a planning mindset is something absent: as one of the more ‘bottom of the alphabet’ young sprogs, pointed out. He who dared challenge the “It will be alright on the night” philosophy during an acrimonious, pandemonium laced mass debate.
He was soon culled.
If there is a plan it is a deadly secret. Evidence of planning other than hints that the civil service has contingency actions prepared is so far not noted from anyone at all… And Cinderella is close to Time Out without a pumpkin.
So far, everything has been about what happens in the next Tweet… Decisions taken one-way one minute: then another way a few minutes later… Pure, reactive behavior… Playing reactively: and by instinct.
The truth is that the pace of change is on accelerating curve dealing with unknown unknowns: and then pretending afterwards that they were known all along. Little evidence of the “Deep thought” called for by the BBC the weekend of the climax.
And as if to give scary emphasis to the pace at which the real world is evolving. While the Brits play around with their ‘long term we’re all dead’ fantasy destiny; Facebook’s Mr. Zuckerberg set a cat amongst the clustered pigeons. He announced that he intended to introduce a new, competitive digital global currency called Libre….
While it may turnout to be bluster it is potentially an intervention that could change everything: Altogether… And in slightly more time than the billionth of a second before the train arrives.
Have fun
Loves Ya awl
!NiK