Post by joethree56 on Jul 8, 2012 19:39:20 GMT -5
We have another banking scandal, the ongoing phone hacking inquiry, the upcoming Olympics and Wimbledon. So what is the big issue here in Britain? You guessed it, it is the weather. We are a soggy rain battered little island at the moment and everyone is asking where the summer is. We are of course used to our summers being punctuated by showers and the ocassional thunderstorm. In fact at parish pump levels the brave almost heroic attempts at outdoor celebration almost always carry the fine print caveat at the bottom of the notice. ‘If wet events will be indoor in the marquee, village hall, local school’ or on some memorable occasions ‘the pub’. This year though is different as various upper crust events have been affected. Wealth fests like Badminton horse trials and some of the more upmarket agricultural shows have fallen victim to rain that has dumped half a years worth of H2O in two months. So our infamous weather has conspired to unite hippy rock concertgoers and the well heeled in a muddy collective contemplation of why both groups tend to find the foreign travel brochures so seductive. We did though take quiet satisfaction from observing that even Mrs. Queen and hubby were not immune from the British summer and that the old couple showed true solidarity with us by braving it.
The banking scandal is about a fraud perpetrated by the banks themselves. The nuts and bolts of this are complex, the verdict in the pub is not and goes as follows. Bankers are rich wankers and are screwing real people as usual. The should be -Shot, jailed, made to eat their own? (delicacy dictates I don’t specify the list of ?). No one I have heard discriminates between bankers, politicians, Rupert Murdoch and his spawn or that shadowy group known as Them. All are equal candidates for the contempt and punishments mentioned above. There seems to be a complete disenchantment between the populace and its government/institutions. This brings me naturally to the Olympics. First of all, the great commonsense of the British public viewed this vanity project as expensive folly. They were ignored and in an attempt to save face the costs were fudged and mudged, and funds never intended for this project were hijacked at the direct cost to more community centred initiatives. A change of government changed nothing (same shit, different shovel as they say). This new government though is much more banker and corporation friendly and needs to satisfy its sponsors by hammering the whole economy into the soil in pursuit of an economic philosophy that was discredited in 1936!
We are though expected almost cajolled to celebrate this Olympic circus which is so edged round by sponsorship trade marks as to become way beyond anything Monty Python could dream up by turning out on the streets to celebrate the passing of the Olympic flame through their community (free hand outs of Coca Cola and union flags courtesy of Samsung). Apparently it passed through our local town in such a deluge of rain that the only triumph was that the torch (made by a Brit firm specialising in camping stoves) remained lit.
So we come full circle on this particular rant.
The banking scandal is about a fraud perpetrated by the banks themselves. The nuts and bolts of this are complex, the verdict in the pub is not and goes as follows. Bankers are rich wankers and are screwing real people as usual. The should be -Shot, jailed, made to eat their own? (delicacy dictates I don’t specify the list of ?). No one I have heard discriminates between bankers, politicians, Rupert Murdoch and his spawn or that shadowy group known as Them. All are equal candidates for the contempt and punishments mentioned above. There seems to be a complete disenchantment between the populace and its government/institutions. This brings me naturally to the Olympics. First of all, the great commonsense of the British public viewed this vanity project as expensive folly. They were ignored and in an attempt to save face the costs were fudged and mudged, and funds never intended for this project were hijacked at the direct cost to more community centred initiatives. A change of government changed nothing (same shit, different shovel as they say). This new government though is much more banker and corporation friendly and needs to satisfy its sponsors by hammering the whole economy into the soil in pursuit of an economic philosophy that was discredited in 1936!
We are though expected almost cajolled to celebrate this Olympic circus which is so edged round by sponsorship trade marks as to become way beyond anything Monty Python could dream up by turning out on the streets to celebrate the passing of the Olympic flame through their community (free hand outs of Coca Cola and union flags courtesy of Samsung). Apparently it passed through our local town in such a deluge of rain that the only triumph was that the torch (made by a Brit firm specialising in camping stoves) remained lit.
So we come full circle on this particular rant.
