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Wednesday 11 January 2017

Make 'em laff. Make 'em...
oh, why bother?

 
Wine suppliers, imagining I drink myself silly every evening,  bombard me with email spam. A headline in my inbox shrieks: "A breathtaking wine!" Well no, I'd rather not. Pickled-onion vinegar's better with chips.
Arf!

Steve Bell, The Guardian's cartoonist, is dismantling our new prime minister. Dressed as Harlequin, her face slathered with white paint and made to look 110, she stumbles down descending stages of madness. Today she asks: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall who is the most socially concerned of all?" Says the mirror, "Larry the Downing Street cat is the most concerned of all."
Arf, arf!

Nor does Labour's Jeremy Corbyn escape. Asked about the big Brexit issue, immigration, he says (to the despair of his supporters): "Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle. But I don't want to be misinterpreted, nor do we rule it out." As Jim Crace, the newspaper's political sketch-writer sardonically observes: "There was little danger of anyone misinterpreting that because to do so would have involved the possibility of someone interpreting it correctly."
Arf, arf, arf!

Donald Trump? Might he be Meryl Streep in drag? The one where she wins all the Oscars. But the screenwriters need to work on that surname (the one beginning with T), it's too obviously risible.
Arf...ooh-er!

7 comments:

  1. A nation gets the politicians it deserves, they say. The last one we had of whom we could be proud was, in my opinion, Clem Attlee, who had one hell of a job getting us on our feet again after WW II and proceeded quietly about it with firmness and grace.

    The last person to be considered for a nation's leader is someone who wants the job. Alan Johnson is, I think, the choice, from all political party's. He absolutely refuses to think of it.

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  2. Avus: There's plenty of others. Me, for instance.

    This isn't the first time you've used this bit of received wisdom. I think it deserves re-examination. In what way do I deserve the most right-wing Tory government ever, post-war? And isn't this observation rather hard on the US given that the majority of individuals who voted, didn't vote for Trump.

    As to Atlee, consider the iron will of the electorate which always abideth. After one term Atlee was voted out.

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  3. I love the third one...

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  4. MikeM: Last night we went to Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land. As with all Pinter' stuff it proceeds via extremely well-chosen dialogue. The Corbyn/Crace exchange could have stepped straight out of P's mind; the precision (as opposed to the meaning) is unnervingly exact.

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  5. Yes, great precision.

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  6. I have an allergy to politicians. At the moment, I'm doing my best to ignore them, though I am entertained by the chasm between friends in pussyhats and friends with inaugural invites. Hanging with the arts crowd, I find the hats wildly outnumber the invites.

    And I find social media wearing at the moment. Bad manners everywhere. I'm appalled by my friends who are so frenetic and angry that they post (or froth) every few minutes. An exhausting, soft avalanche...

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  7. Marly: "friends in pussyhats and friends with inaugural invites". What a shocking dilemma. I don't see you as the Vicar Of Bray and yet you seem unperturbed.

    Less unperturbed by the egregious Larkin, given what you conceive to be his insulting attitude towards girls in specs. When it's finished (and that may be months away) I'll send you a free copy of my fifth novel, Rictangular Lenses, which may act as balm. The central character, a feisty woman from the Midlands, decides to wear glasses aggressively as a means of getting ahead in the world. The plan at the moment is for her to succeed. But, as you well know, novels "gang oft agley" and she may fail. Thus I'll annul the offer.

    ReplyDelete