A visit from Saint Boris

A visit from Saint Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore

bastardised by the Shark Fisherman of Wales

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Boris soon would be there;

Wilfred was nestled all snug in his bed;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in his head;

And Carrie Symonds in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With an obese 56 year old driver so slow like a dick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Boz

Slower than beagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Sunak! now Hancock! now Raab and Gove!

On, Patel! on, Sharma! on, Barnard Castle!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and fat Johnson too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Bozo came with a bound.

He was dressed all in semi-sexual fox fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a meddler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, he'd been on the sherry!

His fat saggy mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a crack pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a huge round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; spaffed with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his hose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a Scots' thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

"significant return to normality" by Christmas

I don't think that there will be a significant return to normality by Christmas. You couldn't get a more abnormal time of year. Non Christians running around like headless chickens buying presents to jump start the economy. 

I think Boris Johnson may be gone by Christmas. He has lost whatever appeal and jollity he may have had to the Upper & Brexit Classes. His alleged brush with death has made him a more serious fellow and whereas before, his schoolboy jokes would be greeted by guffaws of laughter from the school benches behind, you can now hear Matron's pin drop as he makes another verbal gaffe. Is his pater Stanley still in Greece or has he returned to the UK like migrant refugees through Bulgaria?

 The UK has not been normal for a very long time. The 1970s were as close to normal as you could get and the abomination of today is an insult to those who left their chopper bikes on the ground and dashed in to the corner shop for a curly-wurly. From Thatcher to Major, from Blair to Brown, from Cameron to Johnson via May, the chopper has rusted and the curly-wurly is stale. 

During pandemic lock down people have had the opportunity to evaluate if there is any point to their pointless existences. Getting the whip out on a population still scared shit less by the great toilet roll stampede of April 2020, maybe isn't such a good idea. Get out there folks and stuff your half price pizza through your 3 ply mask. Get out there and mingle, 2 metres away, 1 metre away or if your football team gets promoted mingle as close to the next person's backside as you possibly can.

Lets's twerk for Britain and let's get this goddam shit show back on the road. Wagon's Roll!!    

De-sensitising the Welsh

Dwi di benderfynu na un o fy rholiau i ar y cyfryngau cymdeithasol ydy mynd i di-sensiteiddio y Cymry. Mae'n dangos pa mor 'touchy' i ni achos does 'na ddim gair Cymraeg am di-sensitise. Dwi'n un o rain sydd yn gegrwth pan dwi'n gweld pile on gan twitter Cymraeg yn erbyn rhywun sydd wedi bod mor ffôl ag edrych y ffordd anghywir arnom ni. 

Mae'r rhestr o dramgwyddau yn rhi hir i restri fan hyn. Os i chi yn un o rheina sydd rhaid ymateb i bob 'sleight' fyddwch yn gwybod yn iawn am bwy dwi'n sôn. O Rod Liddle yn sôn am y tywydd a'r Guardian yn deud pethau am gaws bythynnod a hiliaeth honedig yn Ogledd Cymru. Mae 'na wedi bod gymaint o dramgwyddau bach dwi'n anghofio nhw gyd rŵan. Y tro diwethaf i mi ymuno mewn pile on oedd yn erbyn y comedïwr Omjid Djalili pan wnaeth o sylw am arwyddion Cymraeg yn Sir Gaerfyrddin ag dim ond achos o ni yn meddwl ddylse comediwr wybod yn well. Cheap laughs di rheina yn de?

Mae o yn seicolegol dealladwy pam rydym yn ymateb fel hyn. Rydym yn lleiafrif yn ein gwlad ein hunan (honedig) rheina sydd yn siarad Cymraeg. Mae'r iaith dan fygythiad enfawr ac wedi bod ers canrif a mwy. Dydy gôr ymateb i bob sylwad am yr iaith ddim yn mynd i achub yr iaith. Mae o yn anfon ni yn fwy amddiffynnol amdano fo, mwy ofnus a mwy cecrus. 

Os ydych wedi byw rhywle arall yn y Deyrnas Gyfyngedig neu tramor mi gewch chi bersbectif gwahanol ar Gymru fach ond os ydych wedi byw a bod ar hyd y blynyddoedd yn eich milltir scwar heb ddylanwadau allanol mi all y byd edrych yn lle ymosodol a fygythiol iawn. 

Ydy'r Cymry yn gallu gwneud hwyl ar ben ei hunain? Ydych chi'n meddwl basa fo'n beth iach i wneud, er lles iechyd ein henaid fel cenedl? Neu ydych chi'n meddwl taw annibyniaeth ydy popeth ag mi gawn chwerthin ar ein hunain unwaith ein bod ni'n faterol dlotach? Atebion ar gerdyn post os gwelwch yn dda ac anfonwch i Sïon Corn yn Gastell Coch.

Mae fyny i chi wrth gwrs beth rydych yn gwneud ond fel mae dyn yn heneiddio mae o yn sylwi pa mor ffôl ag emosiynol mae o wedi bod yn gôr ymateb i bethau bach ddi bwys.

Cesspit Britain

I begin this blog post with a quote from the previous one.

"When I have been a tourist in other lands, I am the tightest, meanest bastard on God's earth, looking for the cheapest deals and the cheapest food. My bum bag is welded to my torso and if you want to know where the local population of moths have gone, they have congregated around my wallet. I cannot be the only one. The people carrier loaded up at home. Everything you could possibly carry on your wagon as you head off to Bermo or Borth like the Beverly Hillbillies. How can I blame you?"

Today the Spoons have gone back and the judgmental liberal "I'm better than you brigade" of whom I am a fully paid up member have been battering social media with posts about cesspit Britain going back to its pre-lockdown hellhole of the pubs being open. 

I come at this from a slightly different angle to the rest who are angry with Tim Martin for laying off his workforce and telling them to go and work in Tescos. I come at it as somebody who believes the alcohol culture is destroying us as a civilisation.

I am going to try and unpick this as an amateur sociologist and even more amateur psychologist. When you have been unemployed for sixteen years, you can't afford to be professional anything.  

Referring to the above quote, I have frequented Wetherspoons pre lockdown, between Christmas and New Year and this for the food. The food is cheap and you can have as many refills of tea and coffee as you like. I wouldn't go in there to drink alcohol. I went to three different spoons in this period, Cambridge, King's Lynn and Norwich. A breakfast in the first two and a ham, egg and chips in the latter. On my unemployed man's budget I can't afford to eat in more salubrious places nor can many of the drinkers afford to drink in real ale establishments or free houses. It is easy to judge and pour scorn on the Primark pogrom but who is to say that those who were queuing at 6.00am this morning were not queuing for company.

As a society we have been traduced, reduced and atomised by what we have in our purses and wallets. The comfortable and complacent can afford to stretch back their arms and yawn and throw acerbic comments about on social media.
I am a lower middle class snob. I will admit it and when the ire is upon me I will turn my fury at anything I feel is eulogising the lowest common denominator. 

What separates us in cesspit Britain is our level of education. The gammony racist, prejudiced drinkers in the Spoons have not had the benefit of our liberal artistic education. They have been brutalised. Often leaving school at a young age to try and make their way in avenues of little opportunity. Certainly not the boulevards of Paris.  

If Black Lives Matter and the Save our Statues protestors were able to sit down and have civil discourse rather than using the police as whipping posts for their chagrin and anger perhaps some progress would be made. The people protesting on both sides are not your Jacob Rees Moggs's.

There is a huge class divide in the United Kingdom and it will become larger and more evident post lockdown as we observe the disparate parties retreating to their respective corners while Stanley Johnson flaunts his position to fly off to Greece. 

We have been pitted against eachother. If you are a liberal arty farty, loony lefty, green lives matter kind of person think for a moment how a gammony, brexit right winger might have come to their political views and narrow outlook on life. They haven't had the wider opportunity to engage and debate with the wider world because the world in which they live has become narrower and narrower. The so called 'white flight' from London to Essex.

It suits yer Jacob Rees-Moggs and yer Nigel Farage's that the common 'white' man is anti refugee and prejudiced against others from the same social class as them because their pile of gold accumulated at Westminster and the European Parliament is safe. They had a kick arse education and like many of their class are using it to ferment discord amongst the lower classes.

Racism is a class issue. You don't get many upper class racists. At least not openly. Exit David Starkey. There are probably Cecil Rhodes types who believe in white superiority but they wouldn't be out in their football lads alliance colours pissing on memorial stones. 

If yer common and garden, brexity gammony, right wing spoons drinker could turn his ire against the Russian oligarchs who have bought up large swathes of West London or the Saudian Arabian princes with penthouse suites in Mayfair and Park Lane then maybe their prejudice would be directed in a more fruitful direction but to hate on others of the same social class as you but of a different colour is about as useful as queuing up at Wetherspoons at 6.00am. Oh I'm sorry, I forgot that you were lonely. 

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2020/08/cesspit-britain-part-two.html

WALES IS OPEN

The scenes at Offa's Dyke today as Mark Drakeford lifts the lockdown and the tourists flock over the border after being denied their ice cream in Llandudno and their bag of crack in Rhyl for 3 whole months.

We all thought this was going to be a proper pandemic when all this kicked off. A third bubonic plague, not this half arsed affair that has confused the fuck out of the world and his wife. 

You can meet outside whilst clapping for the NHS with one hand behind your back. You can shag in your emotional support bubble as long as its a member of your family. You can now travel up to 10 miles in Wales if your emotional support sheep is that far away. Confused tae fuck bruv! 

Everybody UK wide had been so good until Dominic Cummings brought his tombola table out to the Downing Street rose garden and proceeded to put the national glass eye to sleep and then everybody thought "Fuck it, I'm off down to Dundle Door or Bournemouth and Southend with my fam and the estate and we iz gonna shit in our takeaway boxes" 

In Wales, people with pokers up their arse were posting pictures of Bournemouth next to Barry Island. "Look at us, aren't we good? Aren't we better than them. Look at us observing lockdown". You fools, you wait till the Bank Holidays in August. If the rumble in Ogmore is anything to go by there are fun times ahead in Gwalia.

What chance does a nation of 3 and a half million people have in proclaiming its independence buffered up against 65 million straining at the leash to sample the delights of Aberaeron, Gower, Sir Benfro,Y Wyddfa and Hay on Wye. It's only the locals who go to Barry Island and Porthcawl mun!

Personally I think tourism and its effect on the Welsh economy is over-hyped. What has its effect on the Welsh Language been over the last 100 years? 

When I have been a tourist in other lands, I am the tightest, meanest bastard on God's earth, looking for the cheapest deals and the cheapest food. My bum bag is welded to my torso and if you want to know where the local population of moths have gone, they have congregated around my wallet. I cannot be the only one. The people carrier loaded up at home. Everything you could possibly carry on your wagon as you head off to Bermo or Borth like the Beverly Hillbillies. How can I blame you?

Come the Senedd elections in May 2021 (if we haven't been wiped out by a second wave of a proper pandemic) and the Nationalist vote has been split between Gwlad, WNP and Plaid Cymru thus enabling the disablers, the Abolish the Assembly Party, political pundits will be in agreement, whatever his deficiencies in a post pandemic Wales, they will say that Mark Drakeford "He had a good lockdown"

Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2020/04/pobol-y-pandemic.html

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2020/03/do-not-visit-wales.html

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2016/09/wales-free-wales.html

Progressive 🌈 Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_alliance_(UK)

What if all parties joined together to defeat the Tories?#BlackLivesMatter
Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Workers Party of GB and any I've missed out,
instead of fighting each other, join together for a Progressive 🌈 Alliance.

— David Williams (@davidredbutton) June 15, 2020

Well everybody is at it so why not I or should that be me? Don't worry, I wont be asking you to join anything or to send any money. After I googled progressive rainbow alliance this morning after tweeting about it last night, I saw that my hero Jeremy Corbyn had rejected the idea of an alliance with other parties for the 2017 General election before he got stabbed in the back by his own people. 

The idea has been around awhile. A coalition of political parties to take on the Conservatives with a chance of winning. I've written about it on here before. I must feel strongly about the idea and prospect because I've written about it here as well.

Corbyn has gone, along with a swathe of the membership to the Workers' Party GB. I have a problem with the descriptors Great Britain & United Kingdom. They do not describe these islands upon which we live.

What I am asking you to do in this blog post is to cut up your tribal membership card  and commit to a Progressive Alliance because you know, the shrewd political commentator that you are, that there is no future to the Tory/Labour hegemony in British Politics. 

Nationalism both Scottish and Welsh, whilst it has its obvious appeal, a lifting of the Westminster yoke of oppression, has the danger of repeating the failures of centralised government on a micro level. 

We are all citizens of the world and we were all affected by the murder of George Floyd in America. It is time for radical, progressive, socialist, green, black lives matter politics to challenge the Conservatism of Boris Johnson and the Labour of Blairism which will creep back under Starmer unless we are alert.    

Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2016/12/snake-oil-salesman.html

Gese East Anglia

"A shield of three golden crowns, placed two above one, on a blue background has been used as a symbol of East Anglia for centuries. The coat of arms was ascribed by medieval heralds to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the Wuffingas dynasty which ruled it. The arms are effectively identical to the coat of arms of Sweden."

Dipping my toe in the Eastern waters I am and wondering if there was to be a movement called 'Gese East Anglia' that lobbied and marched and made speeches with the express intention of declaring Independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. I am wondering what the reaction would be?

Would Gese(Yes in Old English)Norwich expect Gese Ipswich to dance to their tune? After all they are at different ends of the region which hopes to become an Independent country. How would the good burghers of Cambridge feel about this? What about Peterborough? 

"The East Angles spoke Old English. Their language is historically important, as they were among the first Germanic settlers to arrive in Britain during the 5th century: according to Kortmann and Schneider, East Anglia "can seriously claim to be the first place in the world where English was spoken."

Giving Wikipedia a break, how about this article  from the Eastern Daily Press. Light and Jolly. An Independence movement that doesn't take itself too seriously. How refreshing.

"It used to be a small independent monarchy known as the Kingdom of the East Angles comprising the North Folk and the South Folk."

People are generally fed up of the Westminster Bubble and the calls for Independence from the United Kingdom appear to be getting louder and louder in the shark fisherman's home country ironically as we get closer to the lifting of the lockdown and who has the keys to that kingdom but Mark Drakeford, arch devolutionist of Cardiff West via Carmarthen. He is against Independence but for a stronger voice for Wales. Is he devo max or devo light?  


Does Wales have any more right than East Anglia to call for its Independence? It is like its Eastern counterpart one land mass but perhaps like Norwich & Ipswich aluded to earlier the people of north and south Wales are different. They have come under different influences. A common language unites some. These are the ones who mostly want Independence and they want it badly. There are not many Welsh Speakers who specifically do not want Independence for Wales but First Minister Mark Drakeford is one of them. Although historically not Socialist in their running of Wales affairs you could say that Welsh Labour were closer to an Independent mindset than their true blue Conservative counterparts. Their leader, Paul Davies, another Welsh speaker definitely doesn't want Independence for Wales. 

Unfortunately for the Welsh Independence movement, party politics and tribal loyalties have historically been the order of the day and that is why Yes Cymru although heavily supported by Plaid Cymru was greeted with such enthusiasm as an umbrella body to co-ordinate a united under one banner push for Independence. They have not been without their teething troubles with internal politics and re-grouping.

I write as a Corbynite who has had his own Damascene moment all be it slower than Paul the Apostle. Moving from hard line Plaid to a Socialist who wants fair play for East Anglia as much as he wants it for the citizens of Wales.

I realised very recently that individual human life was more important to me than an Independent Wales. The mental health of somebody in South East London is more important to me than whether Wales can pull up the drawbridge to Westminster. It would be a different matter if it was the Welsh Language but I see no evidence that Welsh as a living language is guaranteed to be in a stronger position post Independence. 

I wish them well but as I age and mature like an old smelly cheese I feel distant, removed and aloof from an 'in yer face movement' who appear focused on Independence at any cost.  

All lives matter?

All lives matter?

You mean the people in Care Homes?

The G.I Joes who died on the beaches of Normandy

The guys who never came back from Vietnam

and the folks they sprayed with Agent Orange?

The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The body bags brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The native American Indians?

You mean General Custer’s life mattered.

The homeless?

Do their lives matter?

Well, why aren’t you doing a God damn thing about it

instead of hiding behind your bible?  

You mean that your dog ‘Poochie’. His life matters more than humans,

I know, I know. I’ve seen you post that so many times on Facebook.

You’re the one who hangs little bags from trees.

If all lives mattered then your ancestors would not have thrown

people into slavery to feed their greed and to make money.

Conservative & Republican lives matter.

The lives of the N.R.A matter but not the innocent victims of school shootings.

White lives matter when their lives and livelihoods are being threatened by looters.

Have you not heard of “Property is Theft?”

You bet your sweet, white privileged ass

all lives don’t matter.