Regular readers may have noticed that I haven't written much in terms of my thoughts on current political things for the last few weeks. This is mostly because in being occupied with other areas of life, I've not been keeping up with it and this means generally I'm a tad confused on what's just happened. Its a bit like a soap opera where if you miss one episode you have no idea what's happening for at least the next few weeks till the next storyline takes place. At least, I assume that happens in soap operas. I tend to avoid all of them as they mostly appear to be visual vehicles for conveying fictional misery about areas of life you may otherwise feasibly avoid and retain happiness. I'm not necessarily even talking about the storylines, just the terrible acting. By avoiding Hollyoaks I can completely ignore the my bitterness at knowing people out there - whose performance range goes the lengths of 'slightly stupid and confused' to all the expressions and emotions of 'really stupid and more confused' - are on telly and I'm not. So here is a quick summary of what I can gather and my ill-informed thoughts about such things:
- Ireland is getting a bail out from the EU and possibly then another from the UK. I'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of the Irish situation, so I won't. I tried to learn a bit when I was there a few weeks back but it appeared to be like the UK's but worse and people kept talking about a dead tiger or something and I got all confused. I assume a bail out will help, but at the same time its bad for a few major reasons. One is pride. It must be pretty embarrassing for a country to need a bail out from the EU and even more damaging to moral for Ireland if they take money from the Brits, a country they've fought Independence from for hundreds of years. I can't help but feel George Osbourne is rubbing his overly rich, probably sweaty hands together hoping that this puts Eire back in the UK's pockets. No one should ever be in debt to Osbourne. I can only imagine that borrowing off him comes with small print that says if its not returned with 400% interest within a certain time limit, he'll kidnap your children. He has that air of super villain about him that even were a neighbour to borrow a spade or coffee or something irrelevant, that he'd see it as confirmation that he could now call you up at 2am requesting you to kill his enemy in cold blood or face the consequences.
The other reasons, slightly repeating what I've just said, is that the conditions of a loan are that you pay it back. Borrowing now, is just going to render Ireland into worse debt later no? And all the money borrowed will be going to the banks and not the people who need it, who will again borrow from the banks, who will then crash again and this time be in double the debt as they owe the EU. It feels like somewhat of a downward spiral as far as I can see. I'm also selfishly sad because the Euro has risen as a result of this bail out, and I'm off to France in two weeks so it'll cost me more for a croissant than I want. Bah.
Good luck Ireland. Hope the general election goes through and you get rid of the idiots in charge. If not, I'm there in January and will happily kick someone for you if you give me whisky.
- Ed Milliband today has promised he is going to make a 'profound change to Labour'. That'd be nice wouldn't it? I mean, not even the 'profound change bit' more just that he is going to do anything ever. It does concern me that he keeps putting it off. If you've ever seen the epic play 'The Iceman Cometh' by Eugene O'Neill, Milliband's constant non-realising promises are not dissimilar to the continuing pipes dreams of 'tomorrow I'll do it' chants of the play's no hopers. So far he's agreed with things the coalition are doing that he shouldn't be agreeing with and not really doing much about anything else. And saying he'll be starting with a 'blank piece of paper' doesn't sound impressive. If he wrote on paper that was already covered in notes and scribbles, he'd never see what he was doing. I always start with blank paper. Idiot.
I'll admit, this blog got waylaid by being half written before I left the house and now me writing the word 'idiot' and this sentence since returning. I was going to make silly remarks about how 'housing reforms' sound like it should be the work of an architect but I've forgotten anything else I was going to say about it, so my political commentary ends here. Instead I will wrap things up by saying that I have discovered the ideal way to induce nightmares, should that be your thing. If you ever sit just before bed and think 'what I want now is the sort of uneasy rest that makes me wake up in a cold panic', then may I prescribe to you the combination of late night viewings of awesome zombie TV show 'The Walking Dead' (which I might add closely followed me reading the graphic novels all day) and the vast consumption of blue cheese. If you don't experience something similar to my subconscious panic of watching Sian Evans ruin my carefully constructed zombie proof base at TVC centre by insisting she needed fresh air for 'her skin' and opening up the door to 600 zombies, then your brain is stronger than mine.
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