The Parrot is tiring overhead. He lacks the staying power of the swift and a Bird of Paradise needs a foothold on the Earth. But now he’s heard the UK Prime Minister announce the Tory manifesto for the UK’s immediate future, having first “got Brexit done.”
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The stanza was written a day after we had heard from some pollsters that the Tories had increased their lead, with just three weeks to go before the General Election. And this was the day on which Mr Toad was about to launch the Tory manifesto. And there was a lot of rain falling, as well as lies being broadcast.
The Parrot saw the danger to the UK of all this flooding, remembering Noah, but the Toad had no thought of danger, or of the UK. He was still thinking strange Gollum thoughts.
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The other night, in Sheffield, there was a BBC Question-Time session, in which the audience was able to question four UK political leaders in turn, only one of whom is a worthy leader, the one not eligible to be the Prime Minister. Nicola Sturgeon’s presence there was puzzling but useful as a reminder of true worth.
But it seems that Corbyn did ok and the Toad was a toad, as always.
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I live in the West of England, near the Severn Estuary, where the river begins to narrow. Here above, is a picture of it, taken by Nicola Knoop. I am close enough now to see it a few times most days, and to be aware of it, all the time.
The river is grand, very restless and not a little sinister.
Recently, I wrote a poem about it. Click here for the link.
The last few lines of the poem make reference to, and play on, a line by Edmund Spenser, a poet who lived (and wrote) in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. TS Eliot quotes the line in his great poem The Wasteland : “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.”
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As our General Election continues, and in the light of much of its content, we might ask this question : what is the difference between an election and an auction ?
Answer 1 : at an auction, cheats need to be more careful than at an election, as we punters get a better chance to examine properly the goods on offer.
Answer 2 : at an auction, the best items cost most, at an election, the worst.
Answer 3 : a wrong decision at an auction is a waste of money, at this election a wrong decision will be a waste of life.
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The UK General Election presently in progress begs the question whether there is any difference in quality of democratic process between a Referendum and an Election.
Both seem to involve a lot of lying at high volume, a lot of propaganda ditto, and various other forms of manipulation and trickery – whatever their perpetrators can get away with, in fact.
And all for the sake of a decision made by “A Sovereign People Properly Informed.”
In the meantime, the parrot escapes the cage and a troubled nation’s great flood of lies and ascends far up for a bird’s eye view of us all.
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As the election continues, and Mr Toad hops around this broken country, lying to people for his personal advantage, here’s further word on democracy and the use of language.
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The Parrot is awash in a flood of untruth and unrule, as the UK’s general election gets under way. The result when it comes would appear to be a matter of pure random chance, or skill, or criminality, in the underhand use of social media to manipulate people, no more truthworthy than a drawing of lots.
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