Marmite

Saturday arrived with mixed emotions. What I mean is, I had mixed emotions about this particular Saturday, and not ‘Saturday was smiling one minute and throwing its toys around the next’. Then again, it was a funny old day.

Last week, I was up and down to London more times than a pogo-stick warrior on a sugar high. I went from a debate about should we abolish our monarchy (‘Mexit’), to whether we should back or bin net zero (‘Nexit’), and a reassessment of all things Brexit (‘Brexit’) almost ten years after the Glorious Revolution ... I mean 'Referendum'. (Or do I?) The following highlights aren’t what I’d anticipated I’d blog about. Just goes to show that a week of politics makes strange unintended consequences (I cannot so much mix as mash my clichés).

Premature perhaps. We’ve only just had Easter, when Christ rose from the dead. Alleluia or Bah Humbug, depending on your inclination.

I could have said, ‘Tommy Robinson has won this one’, but that might have been too much for those who a) accidentally stumble on my right-so-far pearls of wisdom and are gibbering wrecks for the rest of the day or b) are compelled by their inner demons to keep revisiting my blogspot, akin to a junkie taking another shot of heroin. Here, I could have said, ‘akin to Thunberg sailing back to Israel for another bout of starvation, torture and humiliation’.

R.I.P Charlie Kirk. Up until two days ago, I’d never heard of him. I can’t even remember when I registered he’d been shot, whether it was via Twitter, BBC online news, or a WhatsApp from a friend. Whenever and wherever the breaking news, the ensuing articles, photographs, videos and comments snowballed into an avalanche very quickly indeed.

Why did I vote Reform? Well, I promise you it wasn’t to deliberately entice more ridiculousness from the left-leaning ‘maledicts’, who never fail to inspire juicy blog material, but it has turned out to be a fruitful unintended consequence. 

To all the Trump-toasting tariff-trashers out there, like Stewart and Campbell (sounds like a re-run of the battle of Culloden) and their dumbbell devotees, here’s a simple home truth. No one knows what’s going to happen as a result of Trump’s Tariffs (TTs), because it all depends on how other nations respond. Retaliatory tariffs will have a very different outcome from a plethora of trade agreements, both including and excluding the USA. Nations also have the option of playing around with their exchange rates, interest rates and taxes. Or nuking New Jersey.

I should really have gone out with Hubby the night before his birthday, but it clashed with a Free Speech Union event, so he had to just had to play second fiddle. He sulked, but it was worth it.

‘Trump’ can mean to outdo or outflank the opposition. It stands to reason that, to achieve this, an element of surprise is required. I think it’s fair to say that so far, on the question of relations with the EU and Russia (including Ukraine, to whichever evil empire it might succumb) Trump has trumped with a series of surprises.

The Free Speech Union is on the ascendency. They recently crowned Two-tier Keir ‘Free Speech Zero’ of the year, even though he’s only been in power (that is, he’s abused his power) for less than six months. The announcement on LinkedIn was favourably received, apart from one or two gripers accusing the FSU and its rapidly growing membership of being free-speech absolutists, as if that were unquestionably a bad thing, or not speaking out about every single perceived free-speech injustice anywhere in the world.

Well, whaddya know. Before the ink has dried on my blog about Elon Musk , X restricts one of my posts for “Hateful Conduct”. But which post? There’s no shortage of candidates. Surprisingly, the post X did restrict wasn’t one of my worst; it was a response to a short exchange about the term ‘cis’. 

In one respect, Musk isn’t a very good businessman. He’s haemorrhaging members from X (formally Twitter), including The Guardian , Clifton Suspension Bridge and Elton John. Hmmm. Maybe Musk knows what he’s doing after all. Who wants to be associated with a sealed echo chamber, a brainless entity, and an irrelevant has-been?

To its advocates, socialism aims to improve the lot of the less fortunate. To its critics, socialism is the politics of envy that, in reality, worsens the prospects of the less fortunate; its processes and outcomes include nepotism, control-freakery, deceit, bullying and unkindness. Exhibit A: Starmer Stalin. Exhibit B: history.

I didn’t say that. Others are saying it: those quick to condemn and slow to join the dots. Usual suspects. Colonialism has had its day. No one in their right mind, which rules out the EU, wants to colonise nations to plunder their resources, goodwill and foist their values on an indigenous peoples who want to make up their own minds and manage their own affairs thank you very much. Von der Liar take note.

Apt title – a story by a woman about women for women chosen as the title of a blog by a woman about women (born as, that is; no other kind exists).  I’ve been pretty brutal in previous blogs about some of my fellow women: a venerable rouge’s gallery of wannabees, neverbees, shouldnabees and wokerbees. Think (because they tend not to) Vennels, Markle, Rayner, Abbott, Rose, Maitlis, Van der Liar, Ardern, Dick, Sturgeon, Hale, Miller, May, Gay, plus one or two you’ve never heard of, and I wish I hadn’t either.

Kevin Keeghan got into trouble recently, for admitting that he didn’t like women commentating on men’s football; he explained why, and his reasons were valid, if debatable. For that he was denounced as sexist or misogynistic or some such. Well guess what. With very few exceptions, e.g. Sue Barker, I don’t like women commentating on most sports, even ladies’ sports. They’re shrill, tense, intense and false. I know that other girlies share this view. Kev has a point. Let him say what he thinks. Hang the thought-police, not Kev.

Apparently, (code for ‘I read it in the Daily Mail ’) Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is suing someone I’ve never heard of called Brian Molko, lead ‘singer’ (I use that term advisedly) with a band I’m equally clueless about called Placebo. His crime was referring in a public forum to Meloni as a “piece of s**t, fascist and racist”. He spoke in Italian so it probably sounded sexy. According to the Mail , under Italy's criminal code anyone who 'publicly defames the Republic' including the government, parliament, the courts and the army, could face a fine of up to €5,000 (£4,300). Sounds to me like a slam dunk and I’m rooting for her. Given that Meloni leads a party with neo-fascist roots and is considered to be an heir to Benito Mussolini, taking her side is rather dangerous, n’est-ce pas? Or should that be, non è questo? Hey. I frequently blog my admiration for Boris Johnson, profess the hots for Jacob Rees-Mogg, have a picture of Suella Braverman on my wall, am return...

It can’t have escaped your notice that there’s no such thing as an accident or bad luck any more. Someone else is always to blame. Everyone is responsible except the ‘victim’. They just want the right to be compensated, even by themselves through their own taxes. Daft, eh? 

I’ve gone on record saying that, post Boris, I have no one to vote for. Sunak is a lying, back-stabbing, out-of-touch, closet rejoiner, and while some of the alternative right-of-centre parties look good at first blush, some of their off-the-cuff pronouncements raise my eyebrows, and some of their supporters raise my hackles. So I have been politically homeless, but that might be about to change.

I love the English language. It’s versatile, poetic, adaptable, complex, intriguing. And difficult. By comparison, the German language is easy. It’s rule-driven; there are lots of rules and they are applied and obeyed consistently. Well, it is German. Once you get used to the fact that in certain circumstances some verbs go at the very end of the sentence, and other verbs separate and only the first part goes at the end of a sentence, it’s a doddle. Mark Twain would disagree. He hated German and even made some money out of his loathing. As with many other languages, all German nouns are designated male, female or neuter. I would have made a joke about the wokerati looking to banish such non-inclusive language, but Cambridge University has stolen my thunder by already teaching non-gendered German. Hello! It’s not Cambridge’s language to bastardise. In any event, I thought the woke* were only too ready to shout ‘cultural appropriation’ at the drop of a hat. Well, Cambridge has dropped a ...