Never mind the dodgy Russians, Britain is rotten to its very core
THE television interview conducted by Russia Today with Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov seemed to be progressing smoothly. The men accused of being hitmen of the Russian state with Novichok in their rucksacks could plausibly have been sightseers on a weekend break to Salisbury who had been neglectful in checking out the UK weather.
Then they mentioned Old Sarum, the ancient rotten borough near Stonehenge that encapsulated the electoral corruption of 18th century England. This is when their story began to unravel: they did have murder on their minds after all, but it was Jacob Rees-mogg they were targeting. This was all part of a fell antibrexit plot.
Indeed I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were a couple of dodgy types outside Mr Rees-mogg’s London home the other day wearing Moscow Dynamo tops underneath their coats and telling the children their dad was a durak. Why, their story had more holes in it than Tony Blair’s dodgy dossier that took us back to war in Iraq.
Those bloody Russians: interfering in other people’s elections; violating the sovereignty of foreign countries; telling the world their economy is robust when we all know that it has the turnover of a pop-up launderette in Possilpark. We’re dealing with a rogue state here whose first instinct is to lie, dissemble and delude its own people.
You’d never catch the British Government behaving in such a cavalier and disdainful manner on matters affecting its citizens and those of other lands. And if you did, well ... we’ve got the Official Secrets Act, the 30-year rule and assorted lifetime immunities from prosecution offered to members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces and the constabulary. And if that little arsenal of plausible deniability doesn’t work then there’s good old national security, that loosely-applied injunction of uncertain provenance deployed by persons unknown to cover acts real or imagined that Brigadier Nigel Winstanleycuthbertson of the Old Etonian Foot and Mouth deems to be a bit rum.
There are some on the scrofulous wing of the liberal-left who would have you believe that assorted Westminster governments all have it in for people they don’t like and that they have a secret agenda that suits only themselves and their associates. A commonly-cited grievance is that the system of Universal Credit unfairly targets vulnerable and poor people. Worse; it was only brought in as a means of reducing a deficit caused in the main by the profligacy and financial incontinence of the banking elite.
This is the paranoid ravings of an unhinged rent-a-mob; nothing could be further from the truth. Benefit fraud has long been a scourge of British society. It undermines fiscal discipline and a solid, British sense of paying your own way and living within your means. If the department of Work and Pensions were simply to ignore late-coming and absenteeism in its appointments regime then it would breed a sense of complacency when these people do manage to get themselves a haircut and a proper job. People randomly talk about DWP sanctions being responsible for suicides but if that were really the case then why haven’t there been more? And have you seen the towns and neighbourhoods some of these people live in? Perhaps if people learned to cut the grass a bit more and put rubbish in the bins they wouldn’t feel so gloomy about life.
Likewise, the usual suspects always moan about the steep rise in the numbers of foodbanks as if this was something shaming. Why do these people always accentuate the negative side of things? If people would only look at the bigger picture they’d see that foodbanks are a dashed good thing.
They bring out the best in people and encourage ideas of friendship and neighbourly goodness. They are one of the indigenous Scottish industries that have produced a record of unbroken growth in a harsh economic climate. Indeed if the Scottish Tories could lay down their flutes and banjos for a minute they could announce plans to privatise foodbanks in their next party manifesto. And if those wicked Europeans leave us high and dry without a good Brexit deal you won’t find too many complaining about foodbanks then, by jingo.
The UK Government is also accused of supplying lethal arms to dodgy regimes and deploying the security services to assist the Americans in torturing foreign nationals and propping up murderous dictators – it’s a Saddam disgrace. Amin how are you supposed to respond to such fantasies?
The UK arms industry is something that helps drive our economy and creates hundreds of millionaires. This trickles down to help the luxury yacht and marquee car sector and benefits entire communities in the Highlands who are all training to be grouse-beaters and ghillies. Each sale of a missile, bomb or grenade comes with a stiff warning penned by Theresa May herself that warns the end user to be very careful and telling them that if they use it to wage genocide on unruly indigenous peoples then she’ll be very cross indeed and refuse to sit beside them at the next Commonwealth Heads of State beano. And Prince Andrew might have to consider postponing his next visit.
As for the 1984-85 Miners Strike people are simply sick and fed up hearing about all those accusations of police brutality on the picket lines. I know you can clearly see bussed-in officers of the Metropolitan Police assaulting unarmed civilians but what the cameras don’t pick up is the body odour of the pickets and their head-lice or the poisoned sugar-cubes they were using to maim innocent police horses. Do they really expect to be believed when they accuse a democraticallyelected Prime Minister of deliberately sabotaging an entire industry and paying billions of pounds in compensation just so Margaret Thatcher could undermine the Trade Union movement? They’ll be claiming next that consecutive Labour and Conservative administrations deliberately concealed the true extent of North Sea oil and gas receipts to sabotage the movement for Scottish independence.
Meanwhile, there can only be contempt for that grotesque caricature of a documentary on Channel Four last week about how the British Army killed 10 innocent civilians on the Ballymurphy housing estate in Belfast in 1971. Well I’m afraid the Government can’t be expected to comment on matters of National Security affecting people who have signed the Official Secrets Act. Come back to us in 2112.
Those bloody Russians: interfering in other people’s elections; violating the sovereignty of foreign countries