In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • The Parrot Catches Election Fever

    The stanza above refers, of course, to the sudden large majority in the House of Commons for Mr Johnson’s preference for a General Election dated December 14th, 2019.

    I, for one, failed to understand this sudden end to the parliamentary containment of the Toad, this letting go of the impasse, this apparent agreement to engage in the disagreement of an election. It brought the demagogues and shadowy enforcers back into play.

    Was it a real decision, requiring energy, or just a failure to make a decision, requiring only weakness, or inertia ? Where had the Second Referendum gone ? Where was the challenge to Johnson’s multiple deceits, felonies, abuses of power  ? Who was getting what out of this ? For whose good ? 

    Or was it just exhaustion, a surrender to chaos and destruction ? I feared the latter – I hoped I was wrong. I asked the parrot. He hadn’t a clue. Too busy. He was awash in the flood.

    And writing this stanza, I was thinking, among other things, of the very recent implosion of the “People’s Vote” campaign. Well done, everybody. Much easier to fight each other than take right action.

    And, inevitably, I was thinking of some famous lines from Yeats’ “Second Coming” : “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

     
     
     
     

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  • Dr Doombeetle Tutors the Toad

    We’ve already met Dr Doombeetle in these stanzas, of course. He is Dominic Cummings, who first came to general notice as advisor to Mr  Michael Gove at the Dept of Education (Mr Gove has previously appeared in these    stanzas too, to be precise the 7th one – see “Jetsam Gove” in “Parrot Speaks of the Brexit Agon (2)” ).

    One or another of the pair came up with the term “The Blob” as a genial  description of the nation’s teaching profession. Mr Cummings does like taking people on and screwing them.

    Next, he seems to have played a very leading role in the “Leave Campaign” and came up with that clever and wickedly misleading “Take Back Control”  slogan.

    And now, towards the end of 2019, from deep within his t-shirt, he seems to be running Mr Toad.

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  • The Parrot Reports on the Launch of a Toad

    What’s that I see up there in the sky ? Is it a bird ? Is it a plane ? oh no ! It’s a high-flying, high-lying Hoodlum Toad !

    Just as I was uploading this, it was being reported that the Toad was going to press for a December General Election. 

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  • The Parrot Considers the Right Wing Press

    The right wing press were chorusing their criticism of Parliament for doing its duty in examining the work of our dodgy Executive and holding it to account. According to the press, MP’s were betraying “the will of the People” by not rubber-stamping what Mr Toad has come up with – however misinformed that same People had been in the first, second and third place – by the right wing press and Mr Toad between them. The press had attacked the UK judiciary only recently, in much the same vein.

    But wasn’t Brexit supposed to restore our “sovereignty?” – ie our Parliament and our judiciary, and so on – the very components of sovereignty they are currently attacking ?

    It was turning out that Brexit’s real but hidden purpose was to provide the Lie and a Hoodlum Toad with absolute power.

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  • The Parrot Examines the Use of Words

    The previous Saturday had been billed as yet another “crunch” Brexit day, and I had been ready to face the worst. But, as things turned out, the Toad was left frustrated on that occasion. Today, however, another crunch had come. Anxiety had returned.

    Was Brexit truly a set of developments that might still happen, probably still would happen ? Yes, certainly it was. But was Brexit really what Brexit supporters thought it was ? A solution to something real ? Or was it just a symbol of discontent, a symptom of ill-health in the body politic ? A kind of ritual sacrifice ? Surely that. And the more we talked and did Brexit, the worse the ill-health became. It seemed fitting that on this crunch day, Brexit was led by a lying toad whom no-one in his or her right senses would employ at any level, down to the lowest. Instead we had allowed him to steal into the role of “Prime Minister.”

     

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  • The Parrot Lectures to Himself

    This was written on Sunday 20th. Saturday’s huge demonstration in London was still being digested. But would it have any impact ? The right wing propaganda rags had gone beserk in their Sunday issues, more concerned with Parliament’s defiance of the Toad than anything the march might imply.

    Courage had been shown in the House, in the face of more attempts at sculduggery on the part of our Mr Toad and Dr Doombeetle. And for a moment the fog cleared in the mind of this observer and I saw that Brexit has always been a delusion, a cause and conflict of no validity, nor end, a nothingness with no resolution, just a funny word to put a nation’s poison in.

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  • The Parrot’s Third Lecture

    The stanza was written on Saturday 19th October, yet another of those “crunch days.” Another enormous march took place in London, in support of a “Final say ” referendum. On the same day, Prime Minister Johnson had been expected to present his Brexit “agreement” to parliament, giving it virtually no opportunity to peruse the detail. In the event, parliament prevented him from doing so by passing a bill on the same day, requiring him to request an extension.

    It seemed finally to be a matter almost simple, but utterly central : did we want to be governed by the lie, illusion, regression, severence – or by our recognition of things as they are, the fact and plain reality – and, following that recognition, offer an intelligent and honourable response to those things, seeking connection ?

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  • The Parrot Keeps Lecturing as the Rain Pours in

    “The Parrot Keeps Lecturing…” was written a day after the previous one, as news was coming in that  – despite the DUP’s dissent – our Mr Toad had gone ahead and agreed a deal with the EU, for a “harder” Brexit than that envisaged by Theresa May in her earlier lengthy attempt. Her “deal” was of course rejected 3 times by parliament.

    This toadie one was even more against the nation’s interests and prospects than hers. Yet in the terms of the madness we were living through, the fact that he had won the EU’s agreement to it, represented some sort of “victory” for him. Not for us.

    There is a pun on Mr Toad’s desire to leave the EU on Halloween. “Trick or Treat.”

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