I’m certain that during his many years of incarceration by
the evil white South African regime, Nelson Mandela would never have considered
that his death and funeral would be turned into a massively over-exposed media
event used for the purposes of political expediency, saturated in hypocrisy and
populated by narcissistic ‘celebs’.
Dealing with the first accusation, the current South African
regime appears to be using the memorial and funeral as nothing more than a
platform for campaigning for the forthcoming elections. The event is being so
heavily propagandized that I have genuine concerns that Mandela’s body may be
stuffed and mounted and dragged out onto the campaign trail.
Of course political expediency is not only restricted to the
current South African regime, a regime where the accusations of sleaze and
corruption must have felt like cold daggers to the heart of Mandela when he was
alive, but also to the attending international politicians. Putting aside the
childish and inappropriate ‘selfie’ taken by Danish Premier Schmidt, of
herself, British Prime Minister Cameron, and American President Obama, we seem
to have been subjected to a never ending parade of neo-liberal, right wing
politico’s spewing out platitude after maudlin platitude about a man, who
several years ago, many of them would have gladly seen swing from a gibbet. If
it came to light that somewhere in the Cameron household, there was a grubby
white tee shirt now being used to wash windows, with ‘Hang Mandela’ on it, I
for one, would not be in the slightest bit surprised. I suppose one of the
sadness’s of Margaret Thatcher’s demise is that we missed the spectacle of her
being wheeled out in front of the cameras and made to spout banalities about a
man she obviously considered a criminal and a terrorist, and if she had been
given the chance at the time, she would have gleefully pulled the hangman’s
trapdoor lever herself.
Obama’s speech, although mildly inspirational, was just
words that, given current USA policy regarding drones, must have felt like
dripping acid to the friends and relatives of the innocent men, women and
children blown to smithereens by drones.
On the subject of
innocent men, women and children being killed by a much more powerful state,
you have to have a reluctant regard for Israeli Premier Netanyahu for not
attending the memorial. Supposedly it was for reasons of cost, but more likely
it was because of Mandela’s support for the Palestinian cause, so you have to
have a degree of respect for Netanyahu for staying true to his convictions when
many other politicians have adopted the self serving approach of ‘ I thought
Mandela was great, oh, and don’t forget. Vote for me’.
The media coverage has been wildly over blown. I mean, by
all means celebrate the death of a man who overcame brutality, persecution,
inequality and freed a nation, but for crying out loud as I write this, BBC
Radio 5Live is just entering its sixth hour of broadcasting the funeral, ( god
help us when David Beckham pops his clogs), although I do appreciate that the
court case involving TV cook Nigella Lawson and her geriatric husband is
currently in adjournment, so time has been freed up on the schedules, and I
don’t think they’re any wars currently going on in the middle east that could be considered more important than the dysfunctional marriage of a drug taking TV cook and her abusive ex-husband. And was it
necessary to cover the funeral on BBC Radio 4 as well, although Radio 4
coverage was ended in favour of the Archers Omnibus (a tale of everyday country
folk). Radio 4 obviously came to their senses and realised that their core
audience is full of smug middle class professionals from the Home Counties who
would probably be much more interested in David and Ruth’s difficult calving or
Linda Snell’s final rehearsal preparations for the Xmas pantomime, rather than
the death of that Mandela chappie who worked for the parcel company ANC.
The right wing print media coverage has been laughable as
they laud a man they pilloried as a terrorist thirty years ago. If hypocrisy
was a flammable substance the instances of reports about newsstands bursting
into flames would be in the millions. After all, in the eyes of the right wing
press, Mandela was the worst example of mankind. He was a socialist.
The final disappointing aspect has been the appearance of
the ‘celebs’. Not their attendance, if they were friends with Mandela then they
have every right to attend, but the profile their attendance is given, as if
the attendance of Naomi Campbell is far more important than the attendance of a
road sweeper from Soweto. ‘Celebs’, to me, are no more than performing chimps.
They should be given due respect for their performances unless their actions
dictate otherwise. To see someone like bonio,bongo,Paul Hewson basking in the reflected glory of a man like Mandela does stick in one’s craw.
I’m not sure what Mandela’s tax arrangements were but I‘ll bet you a blood
diamond the subject of tax arrangements probably never came up much in his
discussions with Mr Hewson.
Mandela was a great man and to see his death hijacked for
the purposes of political expediency, hypocrisy and image burnishing is a sad
indictment of the society we have allowed to be created.
The NFU.
The NFU (National Farmers Union) have sent a letter to every
Member of Parliament, complaining about the proposed policy of reducing the
Common Agricultural Policy Subsidy by 15% and using the money for environmental
projects. Farmers consider themselves the guardians of the countryside and
providers of cheap food, but this is nothing more than spin and b££ls*it. The
only thing farmers and estate owners are guardians of, is their own bank
balance and will gladly slaughter anything that gets in the way of achieving
that objective.
The badger slaughter is an obvious example. Farmers are
happy to demonise an iconic countryside animal, loved by the British people,
and oversee and actively participate in the slaughter and eradication of
badgers because adopting the proper and effective method of eradicating Bovine
Tuberculosis means they would have to clean up their dirty farming practises,
which of course will cost them! money,
when they would rather the British Taxpayer pay for it.
Another example of species destruction for the purposes of
rapacious capitalism is the holocaust currently being inflicted upon raptors
across the United Kingdom by gamekeepers and shooting estates, a holocaust that
is being encouraged and facilitated by the current Tory government, who gladly
bow to shooting lobby groups and relatives alike, if it means the Tory coffers will
be swelled with donations.
The ex- wildlife minister Benyon was an arch practitioner of raptor
persecution demonstrated by his attempt to introduce a policy that legalised the
blasting of buzzards nests with shot guns, with the chicks still in the nest,
and his refusal to ban carbofuran, which is a poison illegally used by game
keepers to kill raptors who prey on game birds. Add into the mix, the
plummeting general bird population that is being
killed off with pesticides and you realise that farmers attempting to portray
themselves as guardians of the countryside amounts to nothing more than a pile of
steaming s**t.
The claim that farmers provide cheap food is also bogus.
Supermarkets provide cheap food, not farmers. If farmers could get away with
selling a carrot for a fiver, believe me, they would. The reason milk, potatoes
etc are cheap is down to the demands of supermarkets and the competition they
face between other retailers, which forces them to keep their prices low. If
local farmers tried to sell potatoes to a supermarket at an inflated price,
within a month that supermarket would be selling potatoes provided by another
farmer, probably farming in another country. An example of capitalism not even
farmer Joe can circumvent.
The fact that farmers are annoyed that the possibility that
the free money they receive from taxpayers, the majority of which are from that
community despised by the farming community, ‘townies’, may be reduced,
demonstrates how detached they are from reality and how cosseted a lifestyle
they live. I’m sure the mining industry, ship building industry, steel industry
and car industries would have loved to have received subsidies in order to keep
them afloat but unfortunately those industries were populated by people from
the wrong class so it was considered acceptable to destroy lives and
communities for the purposes of political expediency. That’s free market
economics the fascists will cry.Yet
when it comes to the middle class farming community, free market economics
apparently don’t apply. If your business is not viable, don’t worry, here’s
some free ‘townie’ money (benefits) for you.,go on, spoil yourself, go and buy
a new 4x4 or lay down some more concrete, so you can build another barn and ram
some cattle inside it. I’m sure it won’t propagate any communicative diseases
that will result in healthy cattle being slaughtered but if it does, don’t
worry, you can claim the costs back from the tax payer and while you’re doing
that why don’t you shed a few crocodile tears and blame badgers or squirrels.
Then you get to kill them. Win,win
The NFU is nothing more than a self serving, out of touch
lobby group who like to portray the majority of the UK population (townies) as
ignoramuses who ‘don’t understand the countryside’ (I think that’s code for
incest and bestiality), yet are happy to take the free money in the form of subsidies
(benefits, living a life on benefits Mr Farmer?), while constantly trying to
deny the population a say in the tax payer funded policies implemented in the
countryside.
The NFU mantra to townies is “give us your money, but keep
your nose out of our business”.
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