Don’t Eat The Daisies

The world at large has been slightly more peanuts than ever this week. We’ve had a pair of faux-celebrity ex-royal quarterwits desperate for publicity try to recreate the demise of Diana (but – possibly sadly – without the road-tunnel concrete-pillar encouraged sudden reduction in vehicular velocity and bodily integrity).

The most insane and dangerous country on the planet – the U.S.A. – J.M.H.O. but I kid you not – stood on its hind legs in… dunt dunt der… Hiroshima – and promised to “protect” Japan with a “nuclear umbrella”. The Japanish were pictured smiling and shaking hands, like fat, juicy sheep celebrating a deal with a slavering wolf-pack. Do proper sheep shake hands? Probably, when we’re not looking.

Sewage treatment companies in England that averaged something on the order of eight hundred and fifty documented dumps of raw sewage into England’s rivers and via beach outflows EACH DAY in the past year alone – and who have already been paid to the extent that they gave £1,500,000,000 in dividends to their private shareholders – promised to begin to update the Victorian sewer system that they were tasked with tending, and explained that they’d only have to impose “modest” price increases in order to do so. Honestly, who could have imagined that Keynesian Economics would result in such a load of old ballcocks. Exactly how many times ought we to pay a corporation to do what it says in the initial contract?

Big brave Police Occifers in Australia Tasered a ninety-five year old woman with dementia who was waddling towards them slowly with a steak knife in one hand in an OAP Home and using her Zimmer-frame. Aforementioned “Massive Threat” is now drifting in and out of end-of-life consciousness while the Fuzz are wondering where their cobber credibility went. The family are muttering about compensation. I would be quietly planning some very personal and physical action to be undertaken when those who deserve it least expect it.

“President” Zelawarforbillionsky (he reminds me of that Sandie Shaw song, the one that won Eurovision in ’67… something about puppets and string…) is still sampling every jet, yacht, five star+ hotel and limousine on the planet while real people die in their hundreds of thousands so that Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard (all “Inc”) can buy up Ukraine’s fertile farm land at knock-down war-time prices – while weapons manufacturers, co-incidentally owned by Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard, whodathunkit, flog their life-enhancing bombs, bullets and missiles as though they don’t care if there’s a tomorrow. It’s win-win for The Money Men no matter who “loses”.

I ask you – would those companies be buying up so much land if there were even the slightest possibility that this “war” would change anything material about the way the (their!) world works? If such purchases were in any way at risk whether Zelawarforbillionski or Putin “won”? The only real change will be in the size of the cemeteries.

Doubtless the cemeteries are owned by a subsidiary too.

There’s more, much more, but you – and I – really don’t need it.

Have I mentioned the word ‘boing’ once so far? No, but you must admit, the news is all terribly confusin’ for anyone clinging to even a last vestige of a distant memory of sanity.

You’ve got to laugh, intcha? Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha. To remain functional we contract our lives down to concerns about the domestic minutiae, and that’s just what Money wants us to do.

I can do minutiae with the best of them.

In a wild and brutal all-out retaliatory strike-for-sanity I recently moved the Cardinal onto our semi-favourite 48s (moorings restricted to forty-eight hours), there to light the fuse on an ASDA delivery and to bung a couple of duvet covers, a load of towels, and two dozen of my favourite rubberised medical supports into the machines at the Laundry Room.

Job(s) done, we’re not there anymore. In fact, I’m not entirely sure where we are. I don’t know that I care.

We were immediately “spotted” on the 48s by the Canal Rozzers of course; my electrons all spin backwards methinks, and I couldn’t get away with a small eggy fart released outdoors on a grass-fed pig farm on a (meteorologically) windy day down-wind of a Jerusalem Artichoke processing plant run by ICI. Odd, isn’t it, in such a – ahem – “free world”, that all of the regulation and “authority” is vested in corporations and rich folk via their corporations, we peasants regulate and have a say over nowt but our own farts.

All animals are equal but some most animals just aren’t happy with that.

Messrs ASDA weren’t early. In fact they didn’t turn up during the agreed delivery slot. They didn’t even turn up in the hour afterwards, by which time I’d gone back home and inside the Cardinal. Waiting outdoors is all well and good but if the weather’s clement then my Peopleing Gland can take a battering, and I need to lie down afterwards for a week or two, gibbering gently.

When they eventually did show up a very kind gentleman collared them for me and then walked up the towpath to fetch me. Much apprecibode.

Fresh veggies and fine “Posh People’s” comestibodes for five or six days, sufficient then unto semi-interesting cupboard meals for a week thereafter – and all for only twice what it would have cost me just a year ago.

As another quick aside and homage to insanity the “Issa” brothers advertise themselves as (American-style, not real) “billionaires” five times over, and co-own ASDA along with a small firm called, I believe, ‘Walmart’ – while ASDA as a corporate body has debts of some four and a half American “billions” (sterling, not dollars, not that there’s much difference these days and none at all if you use Paypal)… and are unilaterally imposing as of this week a 5% pay cut on some 7,000 ASDA employees in a “take it or be fired” arrangement (perfectly legal in the post-Thatcher employment law era in England). Apparently ASDA could be bought by anyone with some £680,000,000 in loose change burning a hole in their sporran, but that purchase would include the “debt” and the 7,000 especially disgruntled employees.

…and they say that it is I who is insane, not the world.

If you’ve syphoned £5,000,000,000 out of a company leaving it £4,500,000,000 in debt can you really describe yourself as a 5x thousand-millionaire?

Boing.

Bugger, I said ‘boing’.

Two pairs of swans locally have produced cygnets and are parading up and down the canal as though they’ve done something clever, filthy beasts. No, literally – if you’ve ever seen a patch that has been home to swans overnight you’ll know how dirty they are, and how happy to sleep in it all. They may look majestic but at heart they’re warthogs.

There was a low sun and a nice bit o’mist on this morning’s perambulations, although I overslept and consequently rubbed acres with far too many people (three). The dogs were nice.

I’ve rinsed off Messrs Solar Panels and am sat sitting sipping my first litre of coffee (Southern Indian roast) wi’ a spot of sunshine and the twittery conversations of the birds in the hedgerow. Most of the sparrows are muttering about ‘Doris, do you think that’s Southern Indian coffee I can smell? Who knew that they grew the stuff, eh? Damned colonial impositions.’ while the chiffchaffs, siskins, yellowhammers, bullfinches, nuthatches, treecreepers, lesser redpolls, tawny owls, sparrowhawks, jays, cuckoos, mistle thrushes, blackcaps, goldcrests, pied flycatchers and Lancashire merkin-vultures are speculating on my sanity ‘He’s a bit wild-eyed, do you think he’s safe to be around?’.

It looks as though there’s to be plenty of solar ergs today, I might well fire up the Remoska and make myself some bread – I have lazy mixes, praise be to the 5X thousand-millionaires (“billionaires”) of ASDA and their uber-late delivery. Onion bread.

That should guarantee my indigestion, even if the “news” doesn’t.

Boing.

Chin-chin, chaps, &etc.

Ian H., and Cardinal W.