I woke up on Friday morning seriously expecting the worst of news. That somehow, despite all reasonable predictions, the country had managed to fuck itself over once again. I still remember the day after the Brexit vote, reading the news in the small cottage where we were holidaying up in the hills above Coniston in the Lake District, wondering if it wouldn’t be better if we just never came back down the steep stone track again.
Sanity, this time, has prevailed, and the sorry bunch of chancers, incompetents and conmen who have blighted the UK’s economic social and moral landscape for the last fourteen years have been kicked unceremoniously into the long grass. Sadly, characters like Lord Scarecrow Jacob Rees-Mogg will be unaffected by their fall from grace. A little humiliation in the local sports hall, then off to have a little cry in their beds stuffed with money, It was all a game to them, a chance to extort power and money from the little people. We were ruled by vampires, and too weak from blood loss to do much about it.
In the end, I guess we have to thank that ridiculous ham left out in the rain Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson for the slow slide back into reason. If this was the sort of person the Tories thought was suitable for power, what did that say about them as a party, as a government, as human beings? From Johnson, found guilty of contempt and ejected by the same people who made him leader, it was a short and very bumpy run to BDSM-bot Liz Truss and finally, lastly and leastly, personality vacuum and nightmare gnome Rishi Sunak. Calling a snap election was the smartest thing he ever did. Pull the ripcord, jump out of the plane before it goes into the side of the mountain. He’s already quit the Tory leadership. I give it six months before he gives up his constituency and fucks off back to America. Sooner if the new team revoke non-dom status for creatures like his parasite wife.
To today, then. Rainy with the occasional shots of sunshine. That’s probably a good metaphor for the coming months. There’s a broken country to heal which takes time and yes, money. Let’s hope we start taxing those who can more than afford it and start taking better care of the vulnerable. Which, let’s face it, after the last near-decade and a half of battering, is most of us. I dunno about you, but I feel bruised and banged up.
I hope for change. I’ll settle for better. For now, at least, hope is back on the agenda, and that’s a feeling I really, really miss.
Sorry, rant over. Let’s have some links.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
Continue reading The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 23
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 