In which the pond offers a frivolous late posting with inspired thoughts for a UK economic recovery ...

 

 

The pond understands that the UK's economy is in trouble, and exports aren't what they might be, and what with the cricket, there doesn't seem much to export anywhere ...

But this chimes in with a question the pond is sometimes asked. After the pond has given up its semi-professional herpetological studies for the day, how does the pond relax?

Simple, with a form of export that the British should make more of ... scribblers celebrating the idiocy of Britain.

Who wouldn't pay for a rich serve of marinating Marina Hyde?

...Anyway, on to Operation Red Meat, the attempt to pacify mutinous backbenchers with two minutes’ hate. For more than 10 years, Conservative governments wishing to kneecap the BBC have fallen back on one question they always believe is rhetorical: why does this or that presenter get paid more than the prime minister? Weirdly, no one’s tried that line yet this time. Can’t think why. But we know how these things work, so it won’t be long before secretary of state for culture wars Nadine Dorries is out there demanding to know why Zoe Ball or whoever gets paid more than Boris Johnson.
I guess the minor points of difference are that Zoe’s very good at her job, people like her and she doesn’t hold her listeners in total contempt. But given how deeply most politicians struggle with the very basic showbiz concept of “talent”, let’s put it another way: did Zoe’s indecision lead to the deaths of thousands of people, cause the entire economy to be shut down way longer than it needed to be and preside over a multibillion-pound culture of cronyism? Did Zoe’s producer break lockdown rules to drive a 60-mile round trip to test their eyesight? Is Zoe a career liar, whose pathological mendacity is now tearing at the entire fabric of trust in politics, and even the very notion of government by consent, in ways that will last for all of us long past her departure from her current role?
In a word: NO. To all of those. Indeed, maybe those political brains who never tire of telling us what moral bankruptcy is “priced in” with Boris Johnson should try to understand that an absence of moral bankruptcy is also priced into the salaries of many of Britain’s best-loved broadcasters. If they still can’t wrap their heads around these market rates, they should at least rest assured it’s the same in other countries – even the most ruthlessly commercial. Donald Trump earned $427m for his years hosting The Apprentice, and a mere $1.6m for his years in the White House, hosting what is starting to look like the penultimate season of the United States of America.

There's a lot more, but just reading it produces a calming sensation ... better than any known moisturiser ...

And the Graudian should really feature John Crace every time he writes on the Australian front page ...

...Things fall apart. Rigby picked up the pace. Should Sue Gray interview Cummings? Should Cummings give testimony under oath? Would he resign if he was found to have misled parliament? How ashamed was he at having to apologise to the Queen? What did he think of the ministerial code? Presumably not very much, given he hadn’t sacked Priti Patel when she was found to have broken it. Big Dog sighed sadly. How was it that everyone found it ludicrous that he could go into the garden, see trestle tables laden with food and booze and 40 people getting a bit pissed and imagine he was at a work seminar? Who hadn’t done that?
Things fall apart. “Will you still be prime minister beyond the end of this year?” asked Rigby. Johnson stared into eternity. He thought of how Dominic Raab had admitted the party had actually been a party to Sky’s Kay Burley earlier that morning. And had then gone out of his way to distance himself from it by saying he definitely hadn’t been invited and wouldn’t have gone anyway. Thanks for nothing, Dom.
Things fall apart. Big Dog thought of how junior defence minister James Heappey had been laughed out of the Commons by all parties during an urgent question on bringing in the navy to control migrants in the Channel. The halfwit had been stupid enough to confess he hadn’t a clue what the plan was. Operation Red Meat was dead on arrival. He thought of how that snake Rishi Sunak had yet again refused to offer him any support. Next year? He’d be lucky to make it through to the end of the week at this rate.

Talk about a state of euphoria. Is it any wonder that the pond has become addicted to the Sky News (the proper one) and their breakfast team, as they pop up on YouTube with the news of the latest debacle or the sight of a rabbiting Raab...

Truly the pond hasn't been engaged with British politics since university days when it got free copies of the New Statesman, (ah Beatrice, Beatrice) though frankly it was the 'this week in Britain' section that the pond savoured ... and a friend used to donate old Punch magazines, purely for the wretched cartoons ... and the chance to stumble across that wizened prune Muggers mumbling away in the form of Malcolm Muggeridge ...

But now British politics is back, and its products should be exported worldwide, and make Britain great again ...

Of course that chant of "things fall apart" is an easy rhetorical trick, but also a right and just one, reminding the pond of the Yeats' poem ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough Boris beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards PMQ to die of a thousand cuts?

Yes, the pond these days even stays awake so it can see Starmer deliver his six, and Boris writhe in ways that only Boris knows how ...

And then another poem came to mind, this one by Lord Tennyson, in full here ...

     Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

     Full merrily;
  Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
  For all things must die.
     All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
     O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
     O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing Boris bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.

What else? Well the pond always suggests leavening the day's reading with a little gobbet of pure pleasure ...

 

Then you discover someone else experiences sheer nausea at the first note of a U2 song ... 

And a little importing of satire might also help the US economy ...

Then you're fully prepared to go out and have a fight with the neighbours, a most important suburban ritual ...

Throw in a Rowson Graudian cartoon, and soon you'll be wondering why you bother with the reptiles at all ...

 

 

 

es, there's a huge market for British exports, and that talk of the id drew the pond back to old sci shows, as in Forbidden Planet's wiki here ...

...Adams tries to persuade Altaira to leave; Ostrow sneaks away to use the Krell intellect enhancer; he is fatally injured, but before dying tells Adams that the Krell machine can create whatever one wants by thought alone, but that the Krell had forgotten this could include "monsters from the Id".

 

Surely it's time for a re-make, British style, and don't forget the monstrous Id making off with hapless women ... Marina Hyde excluded, because she's a national treasure well worth the exporting ...