Insult and injury

Via huffingtonpost.co.uk

Great fun can be had by hurling deeply offensive insults and aiming blood curdling threats of physical violence at real and imagined opponents in the strange reality television world of politics and football.

Sadly, the instant gratification of describing David Cameron as a duplicitous, venal, dishonest weasel is ultimately futile because David Cameron knows he is a duplicitous, venal, dishonest weasel and basically doesn`t care what people think of him. Similarly, howling that Grant Shapps is a lying crook or that Iain Duncan Smith is a psychopath or that George Osborne is a bit simple is as pointless as describing Eric Pickles as fat or Michael Gove as being incredibly ugly. The fact is that they are just being themselves, it`s what they do and no amount of bile and invective will suddenly make them discover a heart or a soul or, indeed, any sense of shame.

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As good as a rest

Barometric pressure

Change, be it geologically imperceptible or earth shatteringly violent, shares the inevitability of both death and taxation. Time moves on, things alter, stuff happens; deal with it. When he wasn`t corrupting the youth of ancient Athens, wise old Socrates said: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” He might have been a lovely little thinker but it`s obvious on so many levels that Socrates did not own and did not use a computer.

He is risen

theway.co.uk

In these days of dissenters, heretics and false prophets, it is important to make clear that David Cameron did not compare himself to Jesus Christ and did not claim to be the Messiah; he`s just a very naughty boy.

The Prime Minister might well be moving in mysterious ways but to erroneously attribute him with divinity merely diminishes the true gospel according to Dave. If we are to adhere to the First Council of Nicaea which established Easter as the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon following the March equinox and, let`s face it, why would we not schedule our financial, academic and industrial calendars around a moveable feast set in stone close to the Thracian Bosporus in 325 AD, then Cameron`s Easter message to Christian leaders at a Number 10 gathering is as timely as it is mischievous.

Through the looking glass

Duck Soup

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn`t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn`t be. And what it wouldn`t be, it would. You see?”
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make any sense whatsoever of what is going on in the world and being blessed or cursed to live in these interesting times would perplex even the absurdity tolerance of Alice in Wonderland. All logic and common sense has disappeared and irony is reflected away into vapour from the shattered fragments of the political mirror. Hypocrisy has been promoted from being desirable to being essential on the curriculum vitae of those that aspire to govern.

Careless in the community

Telegraph.co.uk

In imagined nostalgia, there was a time when a community was defined by its pub, church, post office and school and life in merry old England revolved from cradle to grave with reassuring certainty. In present reality, however, dark forces are at work hatching dastardly plots intended to subvert our culture by infiltrating communities with hard line, fundamentalist extremists hell-bent on imposing warped dogma and alien ideology.

The pub is now a Tesco Express and the church is falling down but remains a lucrative long-term real estate investment opportunity. The post office is long gone and has been replaced with a food bank next to a loan shark. The school is now an Academy named after an unfamiliar sponsor and the community is now defined by hedge funds rather than hedgerows.