Tragedy

Via ITN.com

It is conceivable that during the early hours of last Wednesday morning returning from a game of football between France and England in Paris the previous evening, Prime Minister Theresa May on final approach to RAF Northolt might have glanced out of the window and witnessed flames lighting up the night sky above West London. Later, as her motorcade sped along the A40, perhaps her thoughts on England`s woeful defensive performance against 10 men were disturbed by the smell of acrid smoke. Then on the Westway, the burning cladding blowing across the carriageway might just have distracted her mind from what she needs to bribe the Democratic Unionist Party with in order to prolong her stay in Downing Street. We may never know at precisely what point, if indeed at all, she considered the game was well and truly up.

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Saint Theresa

Via homedefence.uk.com

There might just be a logical if difficult to grasp reason for the political instability we now face and it might just transpire that this reverse but credible logic will result in Theresa May being judged by history as being the greatest ever British Prime Minister.

Under the harsh spotlight of electoral catastrophe, it is easy to dismiss Mrs May as being an inept, shallow, duplicitous, vainglorious, cowardly, patronising, ignorant, bungling, one-dimensional, deceitful, arrogant, pusillanimous, condescending candidate for an entire Theresa thesaurus devoted to her long time as Home Secretary and her short time as Prime Minister. This, however, would be something of an over-reaction.

Look deeper, and perhaps there is an agenda of courage, patriotism and honour to be found.

Morning has broken…it`s time

With the result of the General Election now a foregone conclusion and with a guaranteed landslide heading towards President Theresa May, the BBC can at last stop searching the streets to interview former Labour voters who will now enthusiastically cast their ballot for Mrs May because the alternative in the sickening shape of Jeremy Corbyn who is simply unelectable.

The small group of newspaper owners can relax in their off-shore havens safe in the knowledge that their editors and hacks have informed the electorate that Jeremy Corbyn is a murdering terrorist who stamps on kittens for pleasure and will sell our children in order to fund a communist invasion from planet Mars.

Having made the sensible decision to announce the only proper result of the election before the polls have opened, mainstream media and sections of social media have spared the population the tiresome and quite unnecessary chore of actually going out to vote. Even a cursory glance at the published manifestos of the political parties would make it impossible for anyone other than a complete idiot not to vote Tory.

Air sick

As the English language continues to gloriously expand and evolve, it has yet to create an adequate word or phrase to capture the true essence of what it means to be a spectator of political campaigning.

The German “schadenfreude” or the related “joie mauvaise” from the French describing an evil joy might explain taking pleasure at the misfortunes of others but does not quite capture the feeling of toe-curling discomfiture watching politicians dig holes armed with only sound bites and spurious facts and figures. Even the Spanish “verguenza ajena” which relates to the sublime if guilty delight of seeing total strangers making fools of themselves during episodes of vicarious embarrassment cannot fully encompass the feeling of wanting to look away even though continuing to look through fingers thrown across disbelieving eyes. The invented “freudenschade”, which cleverly flips the German original to mean expressing sorrow at the success or good fortune of other people, does not cut the linguistic mustard. The advantage of a snap election means that the inevitable gaffs, faux pas, howling examples of hysterical hypocrisy and moments of undiluted unmitigated madness are condensed into a few, brief weeks of something that has no satisfactory descriptor known within the English language.

What`s in a name?

Moses parts the waters via Reuters

We have reached the stage in the great scheme of things when anything unpleasant is deniable and anything requiring responsibility can be dismissed as the fault of others or due to circumstances beyond the control of those in control.

So when Chelsea player Victor Moses took a dive worthy of Tom Daley but completely unworthy of an FA Cup Final, referee Anthony Taylor was blameless in brandishing a second yellow card for such blatant cheating. Similarly, given the new offside ruling on players interfering with play, the referee was correct to allow Arsenal`s first goal from Alexis Sanchez even though Aaron Ramsey juggled the ball like a pub team goalkeeper in a howling gale before proving that he was not interfering with play by whispering that fact into the Chelsea goalkeeper`s ear. In a blame game, everyone is innocent.

When the computer system handling the bookings for the world`s favourite airline decides to go pop and emit a little cloud of blue smoke, it is reasonable in these days of machine error to allow the CEO to say nothing for three days and then emerge to state categorically that the IT glitch was over after a few minutes and that the living dead wandering the cavernous purgatory of Heathrow Terminal 5 would be compensated with a free bottle of water.