scans and x-rays and tests and readjusting to medication changes, on top of the expensive, time-intensive household disasters that tend to break out at this, the most inconvenient time of the year.
Typically I’ve got a dead washing machine, both sons coming home this week and no guarantee of a new machine being delivered in time for Christmas. Bah.
Presents have yet to be bought and wrapped, the house decorated and lights repaired, cats avoided, cake iced, bedding organised, cards sent and general bonhomie maintained and as I tire very easily these days, it’s a matter of priorities.
The blog has to lose for a little while, a decision made much easier for me by the sheer unutterable dismalness of the general political, economic and ecological outlook: it really is difficult to wiite amusingly about the pecadilloes of politicians when the future survival of humanity is quite probably in doubt.
Easiier to retreat into Hohoho-ism and deck myself in tinsel and turkey and jiollity, put my head in the sand and make my own reality for a while – and why the hell not? I don’t think i’m alone in feeling at the back of my mind (“It’s beh-i-i-ind you…”) that this may be the last decent Christnas we’ll all have for a while, so what the hell, why not make it a good one?
But at least if I’m being deliberately oblivious to what’s happening in the world outside my immediate environs it hurts no-one. When the people in charge start denying the truth staring them and us in the face, we all suffer.
That’s exactly what’s happening with the Brown government, who are sharing a joint denial of reality in the face of all the evidence by trumpeting New Labour policy and achievements in friendly national papers, in the hope that if they shout lies loudly and for long enough that failure will transmogrify into glorious success by sheer willpower alone.
This was amply evidenced last week by UK Justice Minister Jack Straw’s delusional Guardian article championing Labour’s contrbutiion to liberty. Straw was quickly and comprehensively taken apart, his lies exposed in detail and at length by Guardian commenters – he realy did take a metaphorical kicking, with over 400 negative comments.
You’d think after that humiliation that a politically astute PM would think twice abouit putting up another guy to be knocked down, wouldn’t you?
But no. Now here’s former Blair/Brown advisor David Clark, donning his red-rose tinted spectacles to come to the aid of the party, again in the Guardian:
Labour can win if it has the desire to make a fight of it
Ignore the hysteria and hyperbole – the government’s main problem is a collapse of morale .
What? It’s a morale problem? Oh, my, lord. he can’t seriously believe that, not after everything. that’s happened, – can he?
It’s real bang your head on a table stuff. Clark demonstrates beyond a doubt that New Labour really do not see that they have done anything wrong in their entire ten years of power. As they did with Straw’s lies, commenters take Clark’s article apart line by line, but it’s obvious from the lack of response that Labour ministers either don’t read the comments to what they’ve allegedly written – which rather negates the point of posting an article in a semi-open forum – or they do read them, but they just don’t care.
There’s a phrase, pioneered by Hazel Blears and beloved of New Labour ministers, when confronted with inconvenient facts by a Paxman or a Humphries – “I don’t accept that.”
Peter Hain used it at least three times this morning while denying he had any responsibility for failed pension funds, despite being confronted with many court decisons against the government, and it totally derailed ( as it was meant to do) any chance of getting any sense at all out of the process,
Interviewers, however skilled and tenacious, bang their heads in vain against the brick wall of “I don’t accept that” – it immediately cuts off debate by denying that there is even a debate to be had.
“I don’t accept that” isn’t “That’s untrue” or “I think you may be mistaken” or “That’s open to interpretation”. “I don’t accept that” doesn’t question the veracity of an argument, assertion or fact: it simply denies that it exists.
Faced with a complete, flat denial that any other position than the one they have taken can exist, that any other facts than the ones they promote can exist, that any other reality than theirs can exist, what is anyone to do make a dent in the facade of this incompetent and corrupt government, short of wreaking physical violence?
But tis the season to be jolly tralalala, and I have a cake to decorate and mice pies to bake. I shall be posting at least once a day between now and the new year, but don’t expect much in the way of astute analysis from me. I am making my own reality too, at least for a while, and there will be snow and robins and chestnuts roasting an open fire on the blog between now and the New Year, and if you’re lucky maybe a few festive comedy sex toys or cute pictures of kittens in santa hats.