The Judge RANTS!
Date: 21/07/15
"The Hard-Working Family Strivers' Flag Is Deepest White..."
It could hardly come as a surprise to anyone capable of paying attention to the world for longer than it takes for a man with no legs to be sanctioned by the DWP for not turning up for an interview on the eighteenth floor of an office block with no lifts that no fewer than eighty per cent of Labour's MPs abstained rather than vote against the Giddy 'Un's Budget proposals the Conservative Party's latest social and economic cleansing measures last night.
I can't really be bothered going into why it should be a cause of little astonishment; the evidence is abundant and growing.
That not voting at all at the end of the debate - even to the point of turning up pointedly not to - could ever be seen as a viable action in its own terms, let alone anything which could justifiably called a tactic, speaks not merely volumes but entire libraries about the Labour Party's serial loss of principle and purpose.
Can one seriously imagine darling little Gideon sitting back on his gilded throne, mopping his fevered brow and murmuring, "I don't know how I'm going to survive a whole five years of Labour's principled abstentions!"? Because if you can, then a pitch for a BBC Three 'comedy' series is yours for the making.
And here in my own fair land, where Steven Nathan Kinnock - scion and fitting heir to the legacy of his vacuous poseur of a father - can vote for (or, as it may be, not vote against) increasing the child poverty level of his new hereditary dukedom in Aberavon from its current unambitiously low level of 31 per cent; here, as I say, what will the reaction be to yet another Labour betrayal of its so-called 'core vote'? To be sure, nothing much more than an outbreak of synchronised tutting, to be followed by enough of The Ovine Tendency remaining inside their pens to vote The Young Master back to rule over de plantation for ebber moah.
If there is a sour note in the foregoing paragraph, it is engendered slightly more by disappointment than by outright sneering contempt (although I'm willing to give that a go too, should the need arise), but what emotions are appropriate when witnessing a populace which - when given a viable alternative to the Austeria-Hungrian Empire embodied by all the Unionist parties (*) - decided instead that, if they couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour (as their families had done since at least 1749, or so they will tell you) then they would rather vote in their thousands for the golf-club-lounge wing of British Neo-Fascism? "Can't vote Plaid, butt; they're Nashies, see? All Nashies are Faaaaashists, in' they? 'Sides, that Farage boy talks a lot of sense about how everythin's the fault of the foreigners, ennit?"
And so, regrettably, these people end up getting what they deserve and - to paraphrase Mencken - getting it good and hard. The trouble is that - when the sewage farm of apathy and lack of imagination subsequently hits the windmill of foreseeable yet ignored consequences - everyone, including their own families and neighbours, gets splashed with the shit.
The other trouble is that, notwithstanding their connivance in their own continued abjection, they will continue to insist on whining about it. And then do exactly the same thing again, in dumb obedience to the notion attributed to Einstein that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result each time. If that is the case, then Fair Gwalia - and especially those Golden Valleys storied in legend, fable and Max Boyce songs - must be the most bat-shit nation in the long history of what passes for Civilisation, because this is how we've been doing it for decades.
I see little chance of this changing in the near future: there will be no seismic shift in our politics which would cause the devoutly-wished consummation of the final de-balling of Labour such as we have recently so thrillingly witnessed in Scotland. The native population has managed to bludgeon itself into apathy through its own stupidity, and the incomer population of pushy pieds noirs, downsizing Good Life fantasists and the cream of English urban low-life could hardly be said to have gone native upon their arrival (even if they were remotely aware - or even cared - that they weren't in Kent/Kenilworth/Knowsley any more).
Even decades ago, though, there were those in Wales who saw through the cowardly, nepotistic, incompetent and incestuous cliques of the Labour Party. One such was the poet Harri Webb, who proved amongst other things that it is perfectly possible to be both a Nationalist and a Socialist (yes, yes, "National Socialist! Haw, haw, haw!". Thank you sir, modom; you'll find the Kinnock Suite down the far end of that long, dark corridor there, last door on the left...or, more probably, the right).
Many years ago, Webb penned this verse (set to a tune which should be well-known to Labour Party members, even if the lyrics of the original contain far too many unfamiliar concepts for them nowadays) and - at the risk of breaching a copyright or two - I append it here for the amusement and entertainment of anyone who is waiting to see whether the hench-droids of the infintely kickable Iain Duncan Smith will see them turned out of house and home (†):
"The people's flag's red-white-and-blue
And several other colours too.
See lining every tainted fold
A tarnished fringe of Saxon gold.
"So raise the venal banner high,
For Sale, For Sale is all our cry,
And 'neath its shade we'll try like hell
To sell our native land as well."
"Corruption's black and envy's green
Upon the leprous fold are seen,
And guiding through the shades of night
The Yellow Streak shines broad and bright.
"So hoist the harlot emblem high
Above the fragrance of our sty,
Sustaining us in all our frauds
Until we reach the House of Lords."
"Come clown and cretin, thug and sot,
Let's all hang on to what we've got.
Use every ruse, however vile,
Till each has made his little pile.
So raise the stinking standard high!
We stumble onward soon to die
A shambling shower of senile wrecks
The Dragon's breath hot on our necks."
Harri Webb
* Albeit via a party which has suffered too long under the philosophical and ideological influence of retired schoolteachers and country solicitors.
