In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • The Parrot in the Ring of Chaos

    This stanza was written just one day after the event it describes – the Labour Conference vote on campaigning for Remain. That event seemed significant for at least a few hours.

    But the following day’s judgement by the Supreme Court was so much more significant and – still finishing this stanza – I felt that it was already out of date and I’d been left behind. Tumultuous events were piling up on each other. How to keep up – emotionally, intellectually, in any way at all ?

    The conference was in many ways disastrous for Labour and revealed (yet again) the Corbyn inner circle as mean-spirited, spiteful, inept, and largely taken up with in-Party feuds, whatever the effect that might have on the Party’s electoral chances. Despite all the talk and posturing, maybe Corbyn would always be more comfortable in Opposition, indignant without responsibility, being nasty to family members…

    The last lines here offer a direct reproduction of some of the words used during the announcement of Labour’s chaotic “decision” to make itself electorally irrelevant (or so it seemed then – but had things now changed ?). See the short video at the head of the article : https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-brexit-labour-remain-rejected-conference-brighton-a9117431.html

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  • The Parrot Reflects on Whether Jez has Worth

    This stanza was written on September 22nd, near the beginning of this year’s Labour Party Conference. We had heard a bit more by now about the party leadership’s attempt at short notice to dispense with Tom Watson’s services as Deputy Leader of the Party. The judgement seemed to be that Corbyn must have been in on the plot, even though he had of course denied it. Jez prefers to be out of the room when the knives come out.

    Another opinion being mooted was that people at the top of Her Majesty’s Opposition were taking time out from concerns such as Party policy, Brexit, and the nation’s good in this time of crisis, to consider Corbyn’s future successor – and to do whatever they could, by whatever means, to ensure that Tom Watson would not be involved in choosing that person. Extraordinary and unpleasant priorities and goings-on. Extraordinary and inept timing.

    We had also heard from Corbyn himself, talking to Andrew Marr, of his determination to please his old mates Len and co., while continuing to defy many of his Shadow cabinet and huge numbers of his (fast vanishing) supporters, by continuing to stay on the fence with regard to Brexit, and to keep “Leave” as an option. “Having your cake and eating it,” in other words. And Labour would win the election after all and Prime Minister Corbyn would then head off to the EU and make a great new deal with them. Easy as pie.

    Take joy in the cakes, delight in the pies, that come in profusion, singing sweet songs, from Corbyn’s cuckoo kitchen.

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  • The Parrot is Witness to an Attempted Stabbing

    “The Stabbing” in the title above is of course a reference to Jon Lansman’s (mostly unsuccessful) attempt to render the Labour Party’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson null and void. Jon Lansman founded the “Momentum” organisation. He is on the Labour Party Executive Committee and a Corbyn supporter.

    He made his move without warning and as a sort of ambush, no doubt carefully planned with others of the coterie, in full view of the nation’s cameras, just before that Party’s annual conference, a conference especially important with a General Election likely in the very near future, and the UK in turmoil. Extraordinary timing.

    It shows dramatically that the needs and yearnings of a nation are beyond the ken and care of the likes of old Jon. Et Tu, old Jon ? Et tu, old Jez ? Old days, old ways, old dark and dim and narrow passage-ways.

    I have much respect for Tom Watson, not necessarily or primarily for his position on the so-called political spectrum, but for his human qualities and priorities. If Labour still has something of value to give to this country, Tom Watson points the way to it far more convincingly that the present leadership does. That leadership is not at all remarkable for how “radical” it is ; but for how puerile, lumpen, ineffective and plain nasty it is.

    Radical change is our only hope. But change originating from a place of high talent, high intelligence and wide appeal. We need a better way of living, and a better politics, with leadership that is fresh, vigorous, wise and capable of inspiring the best from a people. These characteristics are no less lacking in Corbyn and his slack and rancid clique than in Johnson and his hoodlums.

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  • The Toad Speak of Truth as a Cage

    Further thoughts on the felon’s need to lie, to keep something hidden, or maybe just to replace boring old reality with the comfort and excitement of one’s own creation.

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  • Mr Toad Makes a Furtive Connection

    The reference here, of course, is to the announced intention of Mr Johnsons’s government to increase the number of the country’s jails, already very high and yet short staffed, so that even more people can be imprisoned and people jailed for certain crimes can serve their full sentences. This despite finding after finding that jail is both an expensive, damaging, and ineffective form of punishment.

    And in the meantime, the nation’s leadership leads the way in matters of deceit and fraud and general loutishness.

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  • The Toad Falls Foul of the Law

    The UK’s Supreme Court has just finished hearing the Government’s appeal against the Scottish High Court’s finding that Johnson misled the Queen as to his reasons for closing down the Parliament. It was not a matter of creating more time to prepare the Queen’s Speech. Instead it was to stop parliamentary scrutiny of his Brexit activities. Now we are again waiting to hear whether or not politics and the nation’s executive, and above all Mr Johnson, are above the law.

    But what we can be sure of is that, in the past, Mr Johnson, our present Prime Minister, had been sacked twice for lying. No employer in his/her senses would employ a person with that record. Yet somehow or other, a lying toad has become a nation’s leader. And he has chosen a “cabinet” composed of toadstools. And the court kept hearing this week that the toad just keeps lying. Whereas the law of perjury operates in a law-court, it seems not to operate in Parliament or in the public street or in the TV studio.

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  • The Parrot Takes Stock of the Flotsam Hulk

    When this was written, Mr Johnson had just come back from a meeting with some EU representatives, who had the unenviable task of being adult to his juvenile. Before going, he gave a jolly (though pernicious) description of himself as the “Incredible Hulk,” a character from the world of comics. And then off he greenly flew to terrorise the EU, but seems to have been terrorised himself, instead, absenting himself from a press conference that had been arranged. It was all hollow theatrics. The use of the word Flotsam in the title comes from a phrase I coined much earlier in this long series of stanzas – “Flotsam Johnson and Jetsam Gove.” At that time, the pair of them had just floated into view, thrown up by the raging tide. Now, these dreadful months later, they were riding yet higher.

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  • The Parrot, the Lie and an Aging Queen

    Here is a second reference to the picture above, which shows Mr Johnson, the lying toad now leading and representing this country, bowing humbly and treacherously to the UK Head of State and symbol of the UK Constitution, another of our representatives across the world. The picture becomes more and more potent a symbol of the dire nature our nation’s state of health.

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