At the time of writing, we are perhaps a mere forty-eight hours after the results of the UK’s General Election came in. And already, it seems like an entire Amazonian forest of trees, and a fairly literal Black Sea of ink have already been spilled in attempting to make sense of what has happened.
The ‘draft’ iteration released some weeks ago has already inspired considerable debate [and/or jeering]; and it is interesting to note that the finalized version put out yesterday appears to ‘double down’ on some of the things which rendered the previous List such a lightning-rod for commentariat controversy.
Earlier this week, somebody asked Judith Collins what she thought of Gareth Morgan. Ever the diplomat, her curt response was that if she wound up having to deal with him … she’d “probably take up drugs”. No word, as yet, on whether she’d also find this necessary working with Winston.
The ongoing travails of our nation’s convenience store and dairy operators have grown to such a scale that even those perennial champions of Ostrich Economics in our Government are unable to ignore them.
I will be genuinely surprised [and inestimably pleased] if any of our political class dare – as part of what’s set to become this year’s election debates – to name the specter whose rapacious possessionary antics have fed so perniciously into the mental health crisis of today.
Well, the dust has already started to clear; and the inevitable, inordinate triumphalism appears to have begun in earnest. No sooner had news of Macron’s 65-35 victory over ‘the dreaded’ Le Pen become public, than the caterwauling chorus of ‘usual suspects’ had come out of the woodwork to proclaim this some combination of the Midway and the D-Day in the ongoing fight of once-dominant neoliberal globalism back against the newly resurgent ‘spectre’ of more economically left nationalism.
But was it really?
The people engaging in window-washing are, for the most part, unemployed and to a certain extent possibly unemployable. They may be subsisting on a benefit [which, let’s remember, even the Minister of Social Development herself implicitly stated one couldn’t survive on without engaging in criminal behavior]; and one has to wonder – if prevented from attempting to earn a bit of extra cash window-washing, where else might they go in order to try and make ends meet.
The world now waits and watches with amply baited breath to see what Putin and Russia will say or do in response. Not for the first time, the hopes for continued (broad) peace in our time rest upon burly Russian shoulders and pragmatic Slavic restraint.
I’m therefore going to break ranks somewhat with many of the other voices on the liberal left and respectfully suggest that maybe Winston IS on to something here, and that there is, in fact, a case to be made for getting rid of the present section 59.
Late last week, the abysmal healthcare ‘reform’ proposal of Paul Ryan’s which Trump had inexplicably chosen to support … failed fairly unequivocally. How badly did it flounder? It didn’t even make it to First Reading, on grounds that even other Republicans could not bring themselves to vote for it.