What is it with Hillary and Northern Ireland?
She just can’t keep away – even when she’s in charge of her country’s foreign relations and the happenings in a small part of a relatively friendly European state must be of minor significance – both personally and politically.
The pro-Independence Convergència i Unió (CiU) party fared badly at the Catalan election yesterday. Losing twelve seats it failed to win an absolute majority in the Catalan parliament. Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, eager to keep the whole of Spain intact, toasted this ole result with the claim that “this was a slap in the face for Catalan independence”.
Rajoy’s dancing in the end zone might be short lived. Almost two thirds of the seats went to parties that back a referendum on independence. The CiU could join forces with minority parties to form a coalition that keeps the momentum for change on the agenda. Continue reading “Catalunya Rising”
I’m popping orf to Olde Englande on the morrow for a gathering of the clan. So naturally my thoughts turned again to Justin Wellby, who has received his first hospital pass even before he starts his new job. It seems a bit odd really, although that may be because I am not privy to the inner workings of Lambeth United.
After everything she’s been through, you’d think she was unshockable, but no….., not in Australia!
I was amazed when England and Wales plc decided to elect Police Commissioners, politicising the management of local forces. Shades of obese, cigar-smoking, red-neck businessmen manipulating the evidence in Hollywood crime stories. Then, sure enough, enter England’s own obese moron himself, John Prescott, 74, touting for the office in ‘Umberside, Yarkshire! Two Jags, two shags, two-faced Prezza himself! Famous for illiteracy, incomprehensible declarations of principle, violent attention to opponents, no-flunkery (just before he became Lord John, ‘to please his wife’) and £500 million down the tubes when he failed to reorganise the Fire Service. The perfect candidate to oversee law and order, dontchya think? We’ll know tomorrow if he makes it. Unbelievable.
And yes, his side-kick, appropriately, is the execrable Bliar.
I’m not hogging the home page deliberately. It’s the absence of other porcine posters that causes my glut, but I have to mention that the Oxford American Dictionary has plumped for ‘gif’ as the word of the year. Which only goes to prove that I no longer live in the real world. ‘Gif’, my Backside! Something to do with techie life, I hear. I can relate to one of the runners-up, ‘Eurogeddon’ though, that end-of-the-world state caused by eurocratic megalomania.
Another invention from the Great American Election debates – ‘Romnesia’ – struck me as deserving of a place in posterity, to denote that endearing quality displayed by all successful politicians.
Do you have any contenders?
On paper the new head honcho at Lambeth Palace has nothing going for him: Eton and Cambridge, a number-crunching career in big biz, severe francophilia and by all accounts a thoroughly nice bloke. Hardly the qualities one expects of the Anglican Anachronism. He’s even talking about rethinking his own opinions on touchy topics! P-lease! To top it all, he’s only been in the first team at Durham for a year; hardly the practice ground for the Lords* work. But not being on the supernatural xmas card list, I don’t have a vote and can’t possibly comment – so this is Justin jest.
*select your own apostrophe, depending on your interpretation of my point.
My name is Fookes, Guy Fookes, the spook. 
Yes, Doubl’-O-K, so spell it right!
Licensed to kill, I am, and look!
I’m all tooled up and fit to fight.
You’ll want to know who runs my show.
A British ‘M’? A Euro-cell?
The Mossad? CIA? Er, no.
Thing is, I actually don’t know. Continue reading “‘A modern GF’ – a November pome”
Boadicea's Chariot 
You must be logged in to post a comment.