There have been a lot of reports in various media recently which give warning of the risk that Britain is either sidling or hurtling into becoming an excessively authoritarian regime, which seems to be the precursor to it developing into a fully fledged police state.
With the recent loss of most of the nation’s personal data revealing the dizzying heights of incompetence which this government has achieved as it lurches from one crisis to another and the startlingly low level of even basic ability to manage anything without breaking it, there needs to be a reassessment of where people should look for salvation from their woes, mostly inflicted on them by this government of “none of the talents”.
Nobody with any sense will ever look to their government to protect them and keep them safe from harm, whether it is this collection of sad no-hopers or any other glossily brilliant bunch of shysters with a convincing patter.
Articles detailing the mendacious fecklessness of the ‘Brown Parliament’ are two a penny, but it is the comments which result from them in the national media which are interesting. A massive series of outraged responses follow, with posters patting each other on the back and coalescing into allegiances and factions or having tiffs over definitions of terms and who should ultimately be blamed for the current state of affairs. Amongst this hubbub there is the occasional suggestion of what should be done: how we should subvert or stop this juggernaut which is going to gradually crush us, bleed us dry of freedom and squeeze all resistance from us.
The problem is that all of this is wheezing and wind. It will achieve nothing practical or useful. It might make those who post comments feel that they are part of the operation of resistance and change, part of the democratic process, if you like, but this is an illusion. Unfortunately, it is ‘full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.’
If anything, it is slightly worse than useless, since it demonstrates to the government the impotence of those who are aware of New Labour’s slow march to making Britain a satellite corporatocracy of America, a test-bed for the re-introduction of an island slave economy. In doing so, it also gives succour to the government which sees how its own deceits can be exposed with impunity in an arena where words are assumed to have the same weight as actions.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dr Dreadful
I left Britain for America six years ago. Nothing much has changed, I see.
Frankly, you could have written this article about pretty much any government, of any hue, any time in the last hundred years. There are always some for whom the country - to borrow an oft-used phrase on Blogcritics these days - is going to hell in a handbasket.
And when all's said and done - so what? There'll be an election in a couple of years. You know what to do.
2 - STM
Whatever anyone thinks about its failings (and I'll be the first to point out from the relative safety of the Antipodes that they are many:), it is still a great place.
And a place where personal freedoms are still rated very highly (they invented the concept).
That's why migrants from eastern Europe head to Britain, rather than France, Germany et al.
The proof of the the pudding is always in the eating.
3 - Dr Dreadful
Wrong, Stan.
The proof of the pudding is in the brandy!
;-)
4 - STM
In the staggering, then Doc??
And do you poms get double the whammy if you have brandy sauce/custard?
5 - Dr Dreadful
Yes, if our livers haven't puréed from all the sherry, beer, mulled wine and Scotch by then.
Personally I've never found Christmas pud very attractive. After ploughing through all that turkey, stuffing, potatoes, brussels sprouts, gravy, cranberry jelly and bread sauce, the last thing I feel like doing is cram a lump of sweetened suet where there's no room left to cram.
And then after that, they expect you to eat Christmas cake. Oy vey.
6 - STM
The yanks go big at thanksgiving, but don't seem to indulge in the kind of madness that we do at Chrissie.
Maybe they';re still recovering from thanksgiving.
I always have little chipolata sausages with the turkey. Yum.
Lately, however, we've taken to having cold seafood and cold meats (turkey too), simply because it's a struggle eating a hot lunch when it's 40C outside and the swimming pool or the beach beckons loudly and compellingly.
After all the tucker crammed into the stomach, though, all you can do is float.
Hopefull with global warming, we'll get snow here one Chrissie:)
7 - Dr Dreadful
Ooh, I forgot about the chipolatas. Wonderful, especially with mashed spuds and gravy. Tragedy is, no-one makes 'em the way my old Dad did.
Strangely enough, my wife absolutely loves Christmas pudding - although she's never tried eating it as the sequel to a full-blown turkey dinner!
8 - STM
You've gotta boil them first and bake 'em with the turkey doc.
9 - STM
BTW, while I respect the writer's right to his opinions and the right to express them however he may like, it's my view that much of what is written in this piece is, ah, bollocks ...
Perhaps it just didn't fit my world view. Britain as a test bed for American corporate imperialist tendencies? Slave state? Puh-leeze.
Geez, I bet the poms would love that piece of world-shattering analysis.
10 - John K Stevens
@Dr Dreadful
The fact that any of this applies to almost all governments over such a long time makes it more sad. Although, yes, it depends on perspective, there is a perception that voting in and out, one for another, makes very little difference. The two main parties in Britain tend to imitate each other to the point of being effectively duplicates of each other.
@STM
Yes, it is still a great place and freedom is highly regarded, which is not to say that it does not need protecting. It is lost incrementally by almost invisible degrees. It may, of course, be that immigrants find it easier to gain access to Britain, rather than find it politically more attractive. We are told almost continuously that our borders leak like seives and no proper data are kept on immigration.
Neither of the above posters currently lives in the UK and it may be their memories are tinged with nostalgia.
Thanks for the food fest, which makes it feel almost like a party. Bung up some recipes if you feel like it.
@STM
Of course you are entitled to your opinions and it is that freedom which makes both Britain and Australia places worth bothering about.
As you live in Australia, I expect you have read this piece which seems a very similar viewpoint of Australia until the recent election changed all that.
Thanks to everyone for their input.
11 - Dr Dreadful
John, you're welcome.
My main beef is that articles like this, wherever they come from, make it seem as if there's some sort of huge crisis that nothing short of a popular revolution will fix.
There's a lot to be said for stability, and that a change of government in Britain usually amounts to some democratic fine-tuning and nothing more. The bottom line is that the British political/administrative/legal system, developed over more than a thousand years, generally works pretty damn well and it's not in anyone's interests to bugger about with it. Elections, while they may not change much, do act as a check on mismanagement: governments know that if they go too far, they run the danger of being tossed out on their ears.
It's when they don't heed the warnings that Thatcher-style major overhauls tend to ensue. I don't know how old you are or if you remember first-hand the shambles that was the 'old' Labour administration of the late 1970s, but the present situation in Britain isn't even close to being that dire.
12 - Dr Dreadful
And John - STM is the silver surfer. He wrote that piece!
:-)
13 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I dunno', guys.
I read this piece and could hear the tunes from that movie A Clockwork Orange ringing in my head, along with the ruffians and hoodlums a'rapin' and a'sluggin'.
But who knew that the United Kingdom would be infested with Arab thirty years back?
14 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Sorry for not posting any Christmas recipes for you, John. We don't do that round these ways, and greasy potato pancakes or jelly doughnuts (standard Hanukkah fare) would probably be of little interest to you.
15 - John K Stevens
@ Dr Dreadful
Thanks for the subsequent comments, the first of which is reasonable and the second of which is hilarious. I hope to continue making similar faux pas as time goes on.
The point of writing anything must be to exercise your own ideas and try to provoke others into doing the same. Like an election and new government, the changes it makes may be miniscule, but it is fun at the time.
@ Ruvy in Jerusalem
I'm not so sure, as my tastes in food are pretty eclectic and my wife makes a mean challah.
16 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
John,
If your wife bakes a pretty mean challah (so does mine), maybe you'll go in for the latkes and sufganyót. All I'll say about it all is that the last time I enjoyed latkes was in 2003, during Hanukkah, and the next morning I had a heart attack. Now it wasn't the fault of the latkes, mind you. That blockage had been building up for years. The latkes were the applesauce on top of the cake, so to speak. But still, those greasy potato pancakes seem, shall we say, unattractive, these days.
For my own view of Hanukkah, you can read the first article I ever had published here two years ago. It's called Hanukkah - Judaism's Most Important Holiday. Enjoy....
17 - moonraven
The GOOD things have passed into the common domain:
1. The best challah I have ever eaten is made by a little bakery up in the mountains of the State of Puebla, in a town called Huauchinango, here in Mexico. It is not called challah, but it is the Real Deal.
Until then, the best was made by an old friend, Hal Marienthal, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
2. The best latkes, however, are made by ME. And they are NOT greasy (the key is making sure you get the moisture out of the shredded potatoes and the oil hot enough so that they don't absorb it).
My Mexican nephew has also invented a spudless latke--made from mushrooms (you also have to bleed the moisture out of them before frying).
Don't say I never gave you anything....
18 - moonraven
Now. if you want to get serious, we can talk about my different kinds of borscht....
19 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Thank you, Marthe,
I'll see what I can do about getting some good mushrooms and type up a recipe for my wife or kids (the younger one has golden hands) to make for the holiday. And I'll make sure to give you credit for them if they like them. If they don't, then it will be just one of my dumb ideas. :o))
Shavua Tov,
Reuven
P.S. This Sabbath my wife was too stressed out to bake challah, so we bought the store stuff. It wasn't bad, for store bought. It tasted like cardboard. We've all become terribly spoiled, I'm afraid....
20 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I love a good borsht, Marthe. But I'm the only one in the house who does. My wife was not raised on Eastern European cooking like I was and she cannot abide the stuff. As a result, borsht has always gotten negative coloring in our home.
Look at it this way. I sold her on moving here to Israel. That was a big one. I can afford to lose a few skirmishes on the borsht front...
21 - John K Stevens
My wife is looking for a good bagel recipe, she tells me. Apparently, she has lost the one she used to favour and the others are turning out hit and miss, so any suggestions welcome.
I can manage a few breads when needed, which I mainly make up as I go along, but she has a repertoire of about 200, so no pressure there.
22 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
John,
Is your wife a professional baker?
Bagel are serious business requiring the proper mixing of the dough, time to shape the bagel, either by hand or machine, time to retard the dough (preferably in a walk-in cooler), cooking in water with malt, as well as baking in an oven on burlap slats so that they can be properly flipped, along with spices available in a convenient manner, so you can have more than just plain bagel with a shmear.
You're talking about professional equipment there as well as a serious oven placed high enough that it doesn't give you a bad back from bending over....
23 - John K Stevens
Hello Ruvy
My flippancy will be my undoing one day.
No, she is not a professional baker, but she does have a particular skill with bread, along with being a darned good cook in general and the number of different breads she has baked is true.
Everything she bakes is done at home and she has made bagels quite a number of times, but is not satisfied with the way they currently turn out. Everything you mention, she has either employed or worked round, apart from the high oven, but this is not a production process, so it is not a problem.
You say the bought challah tasted like cardboard. I wanted to try something I remembered fondly from childhood and asked my wife to get some Bird's instant custard powder, remembering it as rich and creamy, densely flavoured with vanilla. It turns out is is like eating a semi-slimy glutinous concoction of un-flavoured cornflour, which you are occasionally tempted to chew with your teeth.
As you said, once you get spoilt, it is hard to go back to the bad old days.
24 - STM
"Bird's instant custard powder, remembering it as rich and creamy, densely flavoured with vanilla"
That's how I remember it too. How could we be so wrong?
Cadbury's was a disappointment too last time I was in the Old Dart (although I did pick up a couple of bars of Bourneville at a supermarket in Porto a few months back and it went down a treat).
The Cadburys we have in Oz looks exactly the same, the wrapping's near-identical, but the flavour is ever-so-slightly different and possibly not quite as sweet, although the texture of the chocolate is the same. The dark chocolater is certainly less sweet.
In my mind, I always thought the Cadburys I had when I lived in England as a kid was better, but it's too different. Perhaps they've changed the recipe.
I believe the recipe in Oz hasn't changed in 100 years, so maybe that's it. Yanks: Can't say I'm a mad fan of Hersheys either, although those little choc/peanut butter things aren't bad at all.
Discuss, yanks and poms.
25 - Clavos
John,
Perhaps you should consider changing your title to:
Gordon Brown's Britain: Random Acts of Salivation??
That way, evreyone would be on topic...:>)
Just kidding, gents.
Carry on; couldn't resist the setup for the pun...