Two bits of news from Britain..the first is that airline passengers are going to be forbidden to carry luggage. Secondly a PPS resigned. That is Parliamentary Private Secretary, the first rung of the ladder of Government. An elected Member of Parliament must become one before holding any Cabinet post.
The first story is a continuation of one I mentioned when I first wrote to OPED..we need terror to frighten the children ..how else we gonna account for spending their future on the wars that are piling up around the globe and on which we seem to be on the side of the baddies.
I bet anything..I don't have a lot so its fairly safe.. that the present arrests of Muslims will in a month be another embarrassing gaffe..or is the case of crying wolf that I feared. I always worried that I would scoff at their silly scare stories..tanks at Heathrow..I mean tanks..how you going to shoot an airliner down with a tank? ..once too often and a plane would go down..and people would blame me!!
My friend said..there are bad guys out there so they will be right this time. I agree..but..remember WMD so clearly. A true story? We'll see!
The resignation of the PPS was no surprise..they'll all be bailing out unless Tony goes soon. He is a shadow of the man..he looks gaunt and rightly so. I always thought there would be a picture in an attic somewhere disintegrating.
I briefly became British again following Blair's election victory. Finally, after 18 years of the hated Conservatives..the nasty Tories, a People's government. OK, he did not dump the Royal Family on election night, but he had to be a little respectable, we did not want all the investors to leave the country, until we had total control of the State.
We all remembered Harold Wilson the former Labour PM, complaining that the speculators had sabotaged his Labour government. Slowly, slowly, catch the monkey. There he was, with Oasis, peopling about. He was educated in Edinburgh.. he played guitar.. he was..he was just like me!
The first real worry was when Ecclestone, the rich Labour Supporter was allowed to advertise tobacco products on racing cars, after donating to the party. No other sport could do this. Even then, was it not just a blip, an oversight? People's health was surely not up for sale? The Tories would have made capital out of this, but they had entered a period of shambles.
Their leader, John Major, had been trounced by Blair at the election. He seemed a decent, if ineffectual old bod with his sensible air and thick rimmed glasses. Then the admission from his wife, that she felt like checking to make sure he had not tucked his pants over his shirt, led to the Steve Bell cartoon. Bell had him wearing his underpants over his trousers. It was perfect and he wallowed in opposition misery, ridiculed and was soon replaced.
Now, we know that he was, in fact, not quite the dull grey guy he seemed. As Prime Minister he had initiated "Back to Basics", which was a doomed attempt to seem Victorian and to win the support of the large easily-offended-stop-philandering brigade. It quickly became "Back to My Place", as his colleagues were caught in a series of hysterical farces, which brightened us up in Tory Britain in the '90s. Ministers in football tops, with models without any tops... it was lightness in the gloom.
It would have been even funnier had we known, that all along, Major had a terrible secret himself .The pants, so much part of his character, had been wrapped round, not his trousers, but the bed post of another cabinet minister, Edwina Curry. The mind did struggle with the concept. But that is politics, always surprising.
After Major, their next leader was William Haig. We remembered him as a tiny sixteen year old, with a page boy hair cut at a Tory Conference, when Thatch held the broomstick. He squeaked a speech that they all loved about... I can't remember ...hanging...or immigration... or hanging immigrants? ...But what was a sixteen year old doing at a conference?
Shouldn't he have been drinking cider or fumbling inexpertly, (with someone, if possible)? Everyone knows you turn into a Tory after having rebelled as a teenager. You don't go through your teens as one. Now, he was leader, and fumbling a lovely looking (for a Tory) someone, called Ffiona, a Wwelsh name, I think.
We know about this because he let slip that he and Ffiona were shacking up, unwed, to appear "with it." They "openly" booked a room at the conference....30 years after it was pass� for everyone else. Anyway, he was now bald but still tiny, still squeaky. He was just like a certain cartoon character that fought Bugs Bunny... ..he had turned into Elmer Ffudd.
Next .... "Bugs" Blair makes minced carrot out of Elmer Ffudd
'Hamish ' is an antiwar writer socialist- scientist and musician living in Scotland.
