Thank goodness for the Labour Party in Britain, eh? As we brace ourselves for a sledge-hammer attack on the NHS (you do know that over 98% of junior doctors have voted to strike in December because of Tory changes to their work pattern and payment?) and David Cameron is sounding the bugle for British forces to get in on the bombing strikes in Syria, we at least have the consoling thought that the Labour Party exists. Different party, different principles, different priorities.
For example? Well, let’s just take Defence. Jeremy Corbyn the Labour leader has said that he’d like to see the Trident programme, costing hundreds of billions of pounds, abandoned. It costs a massive amount, it doesn’t do anything to counter the kind of terrorism we saw in Paris, and actually using it would be the equivalent of putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.
The Labour leader has also said that he doesn’t like the idea of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy against potential terrorists – that force should be kept to an absolute minimum, compatible with state security.
It’s those kind of sentiments that set the Labour party in direct opposition (literally) to the Tories. But hold! What’s this? The Labour Parliamentary Party – their MPs – are shouting from the rooftops that Corbyn needs his head examined. Abandon Trident and leave Britain vulnerable to attack? Refuse to contemplate pressing the nuclear button if you were Prime Minister? Lacking the cojones to take on the terrorists at their own game and shoot the dogs down in the street? What sort of nonsense approach is that? Grow a pair, Jeremy. Or so help us, we’ll have you out on your ear after local elections next May. Never mind your bloody (or unbloody, it appears) principles; we want to get back into power. Your talk of working towards a nuclear-free world, of using minimum force to deal with these ISIS dogs, is going to lose us the election in five years time!
Mmm. Did I say the Labour Party is a clear alternative to the Tories? Maybe exclude the Labour MPs and their friends in the British media from that. More peas in a pod than an Opposition, really.
Ah, the Honours list beckons, what will 2016 hold in store, a few more barren fields or perhaps another Baroness for Malahide? It would appear that some Tories remain preoccupied with nights and garters of a different hue. Gaby Hinsliff does not skirt around issues in The Guardian.
“But there’s something more profoundly disturbing about these tales of young Tories creeping around gathering dirt to use against each other. It’s partly that ideas, outrageous or otherwise, barely seem to have come into it. And if you strip politics of ideas, you’re left with the dregs: dreary factionalism, careerism and self-obsession. They weren’t knifing each other over ways to change the world, but over getting seats, or jobs with MPs, or proximity to power of any kind. Less House of Cards more The Apprentice…Imagine the sort of people who would take one look at a backstabbing, bullying world of battling for control over others and walk away. And now imagine the sort for whom it would be love at first sight; the sort who will rise like poisoned cream to the top, and curdle there.”
It almost makes the Assembly sound functional.
The press treatment of Corbyn is a disgrace to journalism in the UK.
The man says he’s in favour of minimal force, not a blanket shoot to kill policy, cue press outrage.
The man says he’s against nuking people, cue press outrage.
The man says he’d prefer to see people brought before court’s for their crimes, cue press outrage.
Print journalism in Britain and Ireland appears extremely skewed in terms of political reporting. Even to the point where espousing basic democratic principles like entitlement to a fair trial & abiding by the outcome of those trials, makes one an apologist for rape or terrorism in the eyes of the print media.
You nailed it, Cal. Object and you’re obviously pro-terrorist/rapist etc…
something like here then,
Agree with you Cal.
When it comes to Journalism here in Ireland or Britain, its obvious there’s more than one Ruth Dudley Edwards’ on both sides of the Irish sea.
Jude.Jeremy .a.great.man.just.like.you.
You’re.Not.So.Bad. Yourself. Jim.
That you should be so lucky, Esteemed Blogmeister, to have a choice of government in Norneverland, almost.
Down here in the Free Southern Stateen we have no such choice. At least not in the forseeable suture (sic). If one accepts that the real political power south of the Black Pig’s Dyke resides in the monopoly media.
Up to recently there was a duopoly of sorts in the media: on one hand you had the DOBlin media (Sindo and various wireless stations under the thumb of Denis O’Brien –the O stands for Oligarch) while on the other hand, you had The Unionist Times and its broadcasting wing, RTE.
But now it is indubitably a monopoly, where both hands form a seamed and of course, a heavier hand. In the surgical sense, suture means the catgut (with the emphasis on the first syllable) used to stitch together two bodily surfaces. Resulting in a seam.
If it seems like a seam, if it screams like a seam, if it schemes like a seam, then it IS a seam. Not least if it IS on a per diem basis, media-style.
To explain by illustration: there is IS, and then there is ISIS, and next there is ISIL, and now the latest is Da’ish.
But of course, to complicate matters even more, there is ISIS and then there is ISIS.
It is the second, under-the-radar and in plain sight ISIS which controls the communications industry of the Cahillphate in the Free Southern Stateen.
Hence the emphasis on the cat in catgut here. For this other ISIS is a cult, dedicated to ISIS , the be-uddered Goddess in the pantheistic pantheon of Ancient Egypt. ISIS, in this instance, translates as throne and indeed, the headgear of ISIS was a throne.
The contemporary cult of ISIS who control the comm. ind. and therefore the stateen south of the Black Sow’s Dyke and who are recognizable by the de rigeur dungarees of the Dworkin Class, can be called The Sistern of ISIS.
This is to distinguish them from the Fellowship of ISIS which had its HQ in Huntington Castle, in Clonegal. It rhymes with Monegal and Donegal, and is located in County Carlow. Perkie is certain that the Sistern and the Fellowship are in no way related, because the foundress of the latter, had a robust sense of humour.
One knows this because, thirty or so years ago Perky’s inner nosey parker was given a guided tour of Huntington Castle by the gentle and ethereal Dame Olivia Roberson, the foundress, one dark and wintry night.
Nobody could remotely accuse the members of the Sistern of a sense of humour. They would prefer to be accused of being HIV positive ( Je suis Charlotte Sheen !).
A couple of examples from the past week will illustrate what the Sistern of ISIS are about on Liffeyside .
First there was the barnstorming of the Abbey Theatre. There was no outcry, due in no little part to this invasion being given the thumbs up by both F. O’Toole, an honorary member of this Sistern, despite his surname, and by the Embassy of Vulgaria, whose ambassadress is known simply, as La Sofia de Sofa.
A tongue in the cheek standing invitation as a refuge should asylum ever be required has been given by the Demagogic Republic of Vulgaria. This is the nearest the Sistern of ISIS has ever come to comedy; an offer which is unlikely (very) to be sought , any time soon or even, in the near future itself
One of the biggest beads on the rosary of those melodramatic space invaders of the theatre of operations known as the Abbey, is : to bring more emotion than intellect, more heart than head into the dramatic canon of the Nat-ional Theate. Thus, we can all look forward to more productions such as ‘The Angina Monologues’ and no lack of, erm Period Dramas, possibly even on a bi-monthly basis, for starters.
The other example appeared in the august pages of ‘The Unionist Times’ last Monday when there was a penetratingly titivating portrait of the distinguished poetess, Maire Mhac an tSaoi-Cruise O Brien, under the revealing title: ‘I was very formidable’.
Who modestly used the phrase ‘that is why they are so good’ in relation to her own multi-garlanded banfhiliocht / poetra in leprechaun which was greeted without demur by that distinguished English language supremacist and award-winning interviewerette of TUT , Kathy Sheridan.
Which neatly brings up the question of the most formidable weapon of the Sistern of ISIS in its disarming armoury: language.
Take this line – at random – from the above portrait, which was thought sufficiently important to merit a title, all to itself. It was uttered in the context of the banfhile /poetess having reached the age of 40 without having achieved her ultimate ambish: to get hitched, married, spliced, entwined: in short, yoked to a bloke.
The age of 40 being the same age at which she (gasp) followed her superior (in the FSS Department of (gulp) Foreign Affairs all the way to Cong. Oops, all the way to the Congo. The one-syllabled Cong was, of course, the stamping ground of The Quiet Man; the two-syllabled Congo was the s.g. of The Unquiet Man, one, C. Cruise O’Brien.
The Unquiet Man meets the Playgirleen of the Sunday World, be gob.
(To be translated into the leprechaun under the working title: ‘Bualadh bas don Baluba’.)
This, incidentally, was a visit officially unapproved by the Department of (gulp) Foreign Affairs.No word though from the paper of record on who paid for this flight of, erm, fancy.
-My sister had the men trotting after her. I didn’t. I think I was very formidable.
And then, as an eye-lashing afterthought: ‘As I always say: it’s hard to marry off intelligent girls !’.
Am imeachta / Time to go:
Perkie’s inner a la carte artist must trot off now to catch up on two of his favourite books and two of his favourite fillums: The Formidable Duckling and The Formidable American. Then, motion picture time: The Good, the Bad, and the Formidable followed by (sigh) Coyote Formidable.
PS
An example of Dame Olivia Roberson’s sense of humour: when one asked her during one’s tour of Huntington Castle why she had chosen to call her pet spaniel ‘Carpet’ she pointed to the floor and said nothing.
One looked at the carpet to see where its edges had been relentlessly nibbled away.
Huntington Castle in Clonegal, County Carlow is not unlike Stormont Castle for the following reason: whereas the former was occupied at different times by Cromwell (in 1650, hence the name of the village: Cluain na nGall / Meadow of the Foreigners) and later by the IRA in 1923, Stormont is currently occupied by the contemporary Cromwellians (sic) and the, erm IRA (alleged).
It was also one of the first castles in Ireland to have its own electricity, due to the water turbine on the grounds. Ironically, the night Le Perque was there, the gothic edifice was lit by gas lamps.
A literary lady, Dame Olivia was a prize-winning novelist and as a girl she was dandled on the knees of such quillty fellows as W.B. Yeats and George Russell aka AE who were regular guests in the castle. Her father designed and sculpted the famous headstone of Yeats, the one which urged the passing horseman to pass on, nothing to see here,then.
The piece de resistance of the guided tour was the query if one would like to see the dungeon which was the inner sanctum of the Fellowship of Isis. Would one what? ‘Lead on, Lady’.
The lady of the lamp led one down the shadowy spiral stone staircase and into the clubbable cubbyhole of the Fellowship. A smorgasbord of religions beside that of ISIS were represented. As well as the well of St. Brigid which was the centrepiece one other piece of devout furniture among the icons, statues and shrines of the dungeon caught the attention.
-This is the Confession Box from Bunclody Parish Church which the parish priest was kind enough to let me have as it had outlived its purpose.
One was then invited to take a drink from the key-cold well water with the aid of the metal goblet which was chained to the floor by its side. And to make a wish.
Which one did and which did come true. Alas, one confesses one cannot now remember what that wish was. Or else, isn’t telling.
One knows that one wouldn’t wish to drink fromj the Sistern of ISIS
Oh, we would know all about the British “Shoot to Kill” policy here in Ireland, wouldn’t we? My mothers childhood friend Frankie Rowntree, who was only 11-12 years old when he was shot dead by a British soldier. The bullet struck his head. And no, before the likes of Neill asks or thinks, Frankie was not in the IRA or in anyway associated with Republicanism nor was his family (but like so many others his older brother certainly was after Frankie was murdered and I could not blame him one iota, I would’ve did the same if it was my kid brother). Frankie was a child looking forward to begin the “Big School” as my mother and father remembers. My mother still remembers the bandages around Frankies head when he was in the coffin at his wake.
When it comes to nuclear weapons I believe they should be disbanded by all countries but I can see the argument made by some people in support of them. Its pretty much: “If we don’t have em, then them’uns will use theirs against us”. And you know, that’s not exactly untrue. When it comes to Britain, I honestly don’t see why the brits would need a nuclear arsenal, they have plenty of allies who are nuclear powers who would come to their aid if in need, so why not scrap trident, save hundreds of billions in the process and it would spare someone’s conscience of having to kill millions of people.
As we all know the media are in the pockets of the elite of society. The media fools a terrible lot of people about what goes on in the World, twisting peoples words, telling half truths and downright lies. Its a long way off yet but expect the media to come out all guns blazing against Corybn when the next general election comes along….