Boadicea's Chariot

A knighthood for Tony Blair?

How absolutely stupid, devoid of all reason and contemptuous of millions of normal working people. Blair is a criminal – he should be in prison doing hard labour, for life.

I thought Lizzie was better than this, but sadly I’m wrong.

Scrap the monarchy, resume their spoils and demolish the whole corrupt system of privilege for the ultra rich, entitled wankers.

Ugh!

I had intended to write this sooner, but real life proved to be less than amenable.

Merkel is gone. The person who was the global face of Germany for 16 years is out of power and out of the Bundestag. The most noticeable thing is that there is nothing of note. Life carries on and her legacy, to use that awful term, has evaporated within days. That seems to be the norm; now more than ever. A prime minister like Cameron, a president like Obama, a Kanzler like Merkel can hold office for years, dominate discussion and public focus and then disappear as if they had never existed at all. If a legacy does exist, more often than not it’s toxic. Tony Blair left the UK worse for the wear, far worse. Turnbull left little of value, but planted a toxic crop that still hunts the Liberal Party. He’s not so much “the Ghost” as he is “the Fart”. Macron is creating a climate so toxic that even if he is forced out of power in April, the French state has become so heavy-handed and brutal that already strained relations between the people and the government will take years to heal if the French state makes few major mistakes.

So Merkel is gone. Her party is in tatters, rudderless, leaderless and in desperate need to find itself. Is it a centre-right, Christian Democratic party, the legacy of Adenauer? Is it a centrist party a la Merkel, reliant on Bavaria’s CSU to hold the line? After all, the only reason why it didn’t collapse entirely is that Bavaria, albeit by a reduced margin, once again supported the CSU. Without it, the theoretic centre-right would have been reduced to a rump opposition in the way that they were in Western Australia or the Northern Territories.

Germany has a new government. It is a complicated piece of political machinery. The Social Democrats stand at the centre of a three-party coalition that includes the Greens and the Free Democrats. The old party of labour, the party of activists and student union demagogues and the party of the polite middle class now need to hold together for four years. Is it possible? Quite probably so. The SPD haven’t led a government since 2005 and this is their chance to prove that they are still capable of that. For the Greens, it’s their first taste of power since 2005. For the FDP, it’s their first time in power since 2013 and their first time in a coalition with a party other than the CDU/CSU since Helmut Schmidt, some 40 years ago. It’s not that one can expect much from them, but being in power is its own aphrodisiac and it’s doubtful any of the three are keen to risk losing it (and electoral credibility).

Tomorrow at 10:00 am (midnight today GMT and Zulu) the first Ashes Test will begin at The Gabba in Brissy, just down the track from Boadicea and me. Weather permitting. We’re in one of our rainy years (La Niña), so getting rained off is quite a possibility. Fingers crossed – “she’ll be right!”

As you all will probably remember, I lost interest in Aussie cricket after Sandpapergate. Players, Management and all the hangers-on. I have followed a few games recently – WCT20 was, I have to admit, quite fun – but not to any depth. But time has passed and it is the Ashes after all, so I guess I’ll be watching every ball, as usual.

I did, for a while. Every time I came to the Chariot I had to login, which hadn’t been the case previously. I found a sort of work around which did the trick for me. Then some while later I found I didn’t need to bother, ‘cos everything was back how it used to was.

Being me, I’m running Edge on Windows 11, on a PC that doesn’t meet Microsoft’s ridiculous minimum requirements, thanks to an unofficial, official registry hack released by . . . Microsoft. Go figure!

Boadicea still runs the Chrome browser on Win 10 on both her machines – she’s had no problems whatsoever. My mobile runs the WordPress App on Android – no worries there, either.

Now that things have been corrected – in Edge or Windows or WordPress – you shouldn’t have any more trouble, but to be on the safe side you can follow the instructions below, if you like.

Well why not Scilly

Hong Kong was always going to be China’s acid test. Thatcher, Britain’s last conviction PM, was never keen on returning it to China. She never trusted Beijing to abide by its commitments further than to interpret the Anglo-Chinese Joint Declaration whichever way suited it best. Originally inclined to hold onto the colony, she relented only because the Chinese were prepared and able to starve and dehydrate Hong Kong into submission.

Hong Kongers knew what they could expect. Some, such as Carrie Lam and Jackie Chan, sold their souls to the Party. Both have done well out of it. Carrie Lam, for all her uselessness and incompetence, was appointed Chief Executive of the territory. Jackie Chan is the CCP’s poster boy. He is the model that Beijing wants all Hong Kongers to emulate. Speak Cantonese if you wish, be a Hong Konger if you must, but never forget that Xi Dada is your lord and master and that you must bow to Beijing’s whims without complaint or question.

Of course, much of Hong Kong’s business elite have taken this position. So, frankly, has the greater portion of Hong Kong-based criminal syndicates. When there were protests, frequently heated, a singular, obvious fact was pointed out by many advocates of a liberal Hong Kong. The vast majority of thugs and troublemakers could not speak or understand Cantonese. They were Mandarin-speaking. That is, they were brought in from the Mainland to do the Triads’ and Chief Executive’s dirty work for them. The odds of someone recognising a Hong Konger would be too great.

Just thought I’d follow up on Sheona’s question about being able to write original posts.

Not much to really say. I’ve been extremely busy, balancing three jobs and a busy study schedule. Managed to slip out of California for a week to visit Texas. Will fly back to California tomorrow. Would prefer to be in Europe, but Boris managed to destroy that for me and I’m working on getting to Sweden.

It’s a funny old world, innit?

• Ash Barty. Just as Sam Stosur starts getting to be just a bit past it, along comes young Ash. What a girl! Will she take out Wimbledon? I’ll keep my fingers (and toes) crossed.
• Nick Kyrgios and Venus Williams, did you watch their last match? Tennis at its very best, with Nick clearly in awe of playing with such a goddess of the sport. Shame he’s now had to withdraw after injuring himself.
• Covid – we’ve kept our infections and deaths down pretty well, but our vaccine roll-out has been pathetically slow compared with many other countries. Logistics, all is logistics – our pollies hadn’t even heard of the word until a couple of minutes ago!
• China. Has reverted to the 1800s, has gone utterly doolally, has a lot to answer for, and is stupefyingly dangerous. Handle with great care until they recover.

That’ll do for now. 😎