Send in the Clowns, Marie...

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Over the last couple of posts, I've pretty much nailed my colours to the mast - when do I ever do otherwise? - regarding the parlous, precarious and downright perilous nature of UK society today: as usual, colourfully. If anyone's offended by my language, tough; it reflects my righteous anger at those who assume themselves to be my betters by dint of being wealthier. I said in closing yesterday that our government, whatever the backgrounds and self-assumed rank of the individuals within its numbers, has a collective and institutional duty of fealty to its voters and constituents: they are our paid servants, not our masters. I stand by that. It is taxpayers' money that pays the not inconsiderable salaries and expenses of MPs and ministers, in an implied contract of employment [in law, an implied contract of employment is as binding as a written one], working for us, as a society - as their employers - not the other way round.

It was especially galling to hear that Stephen Barclay, our alleged Health Secretary, had met with the Royal College of Nursing regarding their proposed - historically the first in its one-hundredth & six-year history - strike over pay and conditions, and had effectively bullied and stonewalled the RCN, simply refusing even to discuss the issue of pay: the central issue of the dispute. That the government then refused to offer up a representative - not even a scapegoat - to discuss the issue on BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour, is simply indicative of how fundamentally afraid of real-world debate these feeble-minded and spineless excuses for people are.

On the other hand, we are told that the PM intends to further beat up on Johnny Foreigner and send unworthy Albanians packing, with a whole raft of probably outsourced and certainly exorbitantly expensive measures, including paying for staff to be newly located in Albania itself. No debate, no discussion: just offering up the usual hardline foreign policy bullshit, as if that was all was either at issue or indeed cared about by the rest of us. BTW, Rish-i, we could do with a few more skilled and qualified incomers to fill the job-vacancies-void Brexit created. All we get is bread & circuses, without the bread. I won't mention Juvenal again, I promise. Oops, by allusion, I just did: cake-ism, too; my, oh my...

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