englandandwales

If you've been following my you tube channel you will know that I have been on my travels this past week to Stratford upon Avon, to Warwick, to Leamington Spa to Hay on Wye to Caerphilly and then on to Bath. 

A random collection of places to visit in a hire car. I have itchy feet since returning from Japan so after Ireland and the North of Ireland 2024 has been a year of travels and jaunts.

Coming back in to Wales on the Prince of Wales Bridge I booed at the sign. Criss crossing the border from Hereford to Brecon I didn't see the sign that said Wales just one that said Radnorshire. I'm sure you would have numerous examples along the border where it's not clear where England ends and Wales begins.

What's the big deal daddyo? 

The big deal is that English/British Royalty have done a number on Wales since the investiture at Caernarfon Castle in 1969 and before that with Lloyd George being the Liberal (Democrat) Prime Minister of Great Britain. He has two statues, one out on a limb on the Maes in Caernarfon and the other under the trees in Museum Place, Cardiff, where many walk passed not knowing he's there. They are isolated. They give the vibe that "I once was a thunderous orator" but now they have put me in these remote places. 

The 'Royal Welsh' show continues this patronage where the Welsh peasantry and from beyond know that after paying a King's ransom to enter the showground that they are the 'little people' and that they are there because of the Royals.

Cymru has ostensibly been pushed back to the West and North West where Plaid Cymru holds the four parliamentary seats. Imagine if they had tried to build Caerphilly Castle in Carmarthen or Aberystwyth? These would now be Labour or Reform UK strongholds.

What Wales and England have in common is how rough the towns have become! Leamington Spa and Warwick can now compete with Caerphilly. 

Gentrified, Regency, posh as hell Bath is being held together by tourists and the well to do. I am not sartorially elegant and I have never pretended to be believing that fashion like theatre and golf are the pastimes of those who have too much time and money on their hands. Even I in my rags felt well dressed compared to some of the citizens of englandandwales towns that had just fallen out of bed.

Caerwrangon/Worcester was a disappointment. The town was evidently run for the benefit of car drivers. In Warwick, Leamington Spa and Worcester I had to ask ordinary citizens who were pleasant and helpful where the town libraries were because they no longer appear on the little signposts. The three were housed in  buildings that had other uses, one for the Council, one for a museum and tea rooms and the other a University.  

Libraries used to be refuges for the old boys reading newspapers. Now I am an old boy myself there is nowhere left to go. There are no third spaces where you can just be without arousing suspicion. You cannot be alone in a park or a library. There must be something iffy about you. You can sit there but you will have to pay for an overpriced latte. Your wifi isn't working? Well f**k you, it's free! 

There was a big statue of Queen Victoria outside the town hall in Leamington Spa

The front is inscribed: 'Victoria Queen Empress 1837-1901 She wrought her people lasting good'

The ordinary people of englandandwales have been in thrall to the German dynasty forever and a day and to their Norman forbears before that. The visible austerity of British towns will be blamed by Reform UK voters on immigrants from countries that Queen Empress Victoria colonised in the name of Great Britain. 

How did she wrought her people lasting good? workhouses and lunatic asylums?

How is Royal Patronage doing anything for the people of englandandwales? 

Prisoner Cell Block Keir Starmer

"On his way to Washington for the Nato summit, Starmer also warned there would be no immediate fixes to the small boats crisis of asylum seekers crossing the Channel, suggesting he expected numbers to rise over the summer months. He said the government would not put any number on when they expected the crossings to begin to fall."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/10/starmer-prisons-crisis-early-release-scheme

Reform UK voters will be stewing in juices of their own making upon reading that. It is why they didn't vote Tory, why they didn't vote Labour. Their over riding concern is illegal migrants. "There's too many of em, there are not enough jobs for em. Why have they got to house em round here?" 

From multiple victim crossbow killer to human remains in suitcases, QC Keir Starmer has picked a good week to let people out of prison early. Shoplifters, the mentally ill, the drug addicted will all be turfed out on to the chewing gum stained streets of Britain and we won't know who they are. They could have done anything and we just don't know. The curtain twitchers, the CCTV addicts, the doorbell cam enthusiasts will be sat in their hallways with whatever can legally pass for ammunition because these are law abiding citizens. They are just very scared and frightened citizens because our governments have been letting em in! You know, the other, foreigners, them.

The culture of fear, paranoia and distrust that pervades every social interaction on the UK mainland is the limbic system of every cavedave and cavekaren going back to the age of the dinosaurs. It is dinosaurs that we have in government who actually believe that prison is a deterrent to committing crime. If it was why are there so many prisoners, so many prisons and so much overcrowding? Because in this country we want to punish everything? If we could we would punish the way you think.We would do that! We've got Xy Brexy twitter for that! Elon Musk will break you long before we will!  

Blame the Victorians! They are responsible for our sewerage system and they are responsible for our human sewerage system namely prisons. They were built to dehumanise people who couldn't toe the line. Debtors! The poor, workhouses. Those who could not or would not subscribe to the Industrial Revolution Capitalist meat mincer. Years of bird would break you in the Pentonville system.

Britain is broken and Reform UK want to fix it! Why not have cell sharing? A Tommy Robinson patriot with an illegal immigrant. No, we've had that before with devastating consequences. Mr Timpson probably means very well but in the favourite word of Nigel Farage #Cobblers. Cutting keys and putting soles on old shoes is soul destroying but it is lauded as rehabilition. "It keeps them on the straight and narrow"

Life is so shit in Britain after 14 years of Tory government and even before that! Fat cats get fatter and the poor, destitute and homeless get thinner and then die.

At least in prison you get fed and a TV! I wonder how many of the prisoners being let out of prison early actually want to be let out. It is damned difficult living in the outside world once you have been inside and for many it is impossible. It is not just the human being who is being jailed it is their demons and their demons are likely to get worse with 23 hours of lock up in their cell.

Prison dehumanises people! It appears from the news stories this week that living in Britain is enough to dehumanise people. Inside bars, outside bars? What really is the difference?

In a society with too many straight and too many narrow the revolving doors of prison highlight a human problem. We can blame the institution of prison and the moral fibre of prisoners but what about blaming the Ministry of Justice? what about the solicitors and barristers and the bewigged judges? These guys depend on crime to pay their salaries.

Prison is a seriously fucked up answer to a seriously fucked up question and that seriously fucked up question with all its caveats is

"WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST OBEY THE LAW?"

       Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2020/01/brew-to-blog.html

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2019/08/punishment-rehabilitation.html

loitering with intent

#poetry #newpoemshort #spokenword

Putin's Puppet?

 

Andrew Aloysius Parker, the actor to Putin's puppet? Instead of being the butler and chauffer to Lady Penelope Creighton Ward this Reform campaigner of the same surname has caused his former leader's poll ratings to fall slightly especially since the culture warrior and populist Rishi Sunak went on television and deliberately spelt out the words of Farage's bad faith actor.

Who are the actors and who are the puppets in the run up to the General Election of 2024? an especially long episode of 'Thundercunts". Which former children's TV presenter has been briefing Sir Ed Davey? Why haven't they been able to stop Sir Keir Starmer sounding like Zippy from Rainbow?   

Everything has been dumbed down to a milkshake and a soundbite for us thick Brits. A nation of immigrants stirred to hatred and vitriol of modern day immigrants by class war bad faith actors Reform and Conservatives. On the day that the King has had yet another photograph taken in all his medals to tie in with Armed Forces Day, just so that we don't forget what he looks like. All these 'actors' are desperate to remain relevant. They may go to ground for months or years on end but their PR machine cranks into action when they feel that the time is right. It is all about the timing.

It's difficult not to write cynically but for those of us who have seen the puppets and actors come and go over the years it is a challenge to get enthused about anything politically now because of the obvious and glaring failure of humanity in its treatment of Palestine at the bloodied hands of Israel. But what about October 7th? Oh do fuck off!

The only showman saying anything about Palestine is George Galloway but he has the Union Jack as a thumbnail to videos of his Workers Party GB. The disconnect is real. A socialist but socially conservative. Bewailng Balfour but still championing the cause of a discredited amalgamation of nations.

And what of the Nationalists? The non British nationalist parties of Farage and Galloway. The SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Their causes have been greatly diminished by global events. Fighting for your own sovereignty and independence when there is such bloodshed in the Middle East could be construed as tasteless. Would your Independent nation even survive on a burning planet and this is where the Greens come in. There will be victories for the 'smaller' parties and for worthy causes but the first past the post system turns results into a school sports day and its about who crosses the finishing line first so the percentage vote counts for nothing in terms of elected representatives to parliament.

We are being led to the polling station like aristocracy being led to the guillotine next Thursday. We go reluctantly.     

The land of the floating shite

Well I am back from the 'land of the rising sun' to 'the land of the floating shite'. The culture shock is real. Those who love me have been following my adventures through the medium of You Tube Shorts.

Those who hate me have been waiting for me to write this blog post. The voyeurs, the observers, those who watch me on social media but can't quite work out what my angle is. This one's for you.

I can actually now say that I've flown around the world. My carbon footprint  conscience is relatively clear because I hadn't flown at all since 2005. Almost twenty years of not contributing to climate change but I had the chance and I thought, "I will be too old one day".

So we went via countries that are not in Russian airspace, across Europe first and then across some of the Tajikistan sounding countries. We flew across the Gobi Desert at night and there was ice on the outside of the window. Pyonyang appeared on the flying map and I thought to myself "Aye aye, are we going to get an audience with the 'one' before Putin does. The plane veered off across South Korea and landed in Tokyo.

Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 was literally 'Bedlam'. Haneda Airport was like a Japanese Garden of Tranquility.  When I say we I mean British Airways and I. I had booked through Japan Airlines but BA were the carriers for this trip and they brought me back yesterday via Alaska, Greenland and Scotland. Tokyo in the morning and West Wales at midnight.  Who knew that there was a town called Wales on the wrong side of the Bering Strait?

   

I will annoy all my precious readers, viewers and subscribers if I just compare and contrast Britain and Japan but the most obvious one is the public transportation system. Britain's couldn't become like Japan's in a thousand years even if they started now. Sunak ditched the HS2. Japan has got the bullet train or the Shinkansen to give it its correct name.  If it's late, the managers have to issue a public apology. Being a British train avoidant  I wasn't sure whether it was such a good idea booking a JR Pass as most recent You Tube videos were saying that it wasn't worth the money. Well I can tell you, in  my case, it was. I covered a lot of the Japanese mainland, north and south due to this futuristic and incredible piece of engineering technology.

On the Piccadilly line away from Heathrow Airport yesterday I could not help notice the tired, aging upholstery, the noisy journey and the unintelligible travel announcements. The escalator to the Piccadilly Line is in a far corner of some foreign field that is forever Heathrow Terminal 5.

All foreign visitors and tourists are ushered towards the Elizabeth Line because it is more expensive to travel on it.

There is no litter in Japan, no graffiti, no busking and no begging. There is plenty in Britain.

Japan is a polite, respectful society. Britain is not. Japanese crowds are not scary. British crowds are scary.

One might make the observation that British society is more relaxed and 

more real wheras Japanese society presents a face to the world but in terms of productivity it is a world that works. The gadgets, the cars, the convenience stores, the food, the gardens, the onsens, all this carried out in the shadow and history of two nuclear explosions, one on Nagasaki and one on Hiroshima. I had no intention to go to either and if I was Japanese I wouldn't be happy seeing so many of 'the gaijin' coming in to their country with a low yen against the dollar. If Japan wasn't in thrall to the United States because of the Second World War it would be a power as strong as Russia.

I would like to go back, again before I am too old, but my one piece of advice would be, leave Tokyo till last and do the rest of the country first. Tokyo is not Japan as London is not England. Learn the language. I only had the basics and it did limit interactions and it is just Imperial arrogance to expect people to speak English. For my liking, there was too much English in the announcements on the trains in Tokyo. Make the Gaijin sweat. Make them learn your language. Don't pander to theirs. This is a lesson we need to learn in Wales.  

 

  

Slavery by any other name

 

National Service and Apprenticeships are 'slavery' by any other name. Both require uniforms. The green khaki of the soldier and the blue denim of the boilermaker. Don't be daft ya big apath, this isn't the 1950s. Oh but it is in the minds of many older voters who feel that they have been cast on the mouldering dump that is the disunited kingdom by the divisive and inflammatory rhetoric of Reform UK and the Conservative Party.

Today we have Sir Keir Starmer behaving like God. Giving the whip back to Diane Abbott and then not allowing her to stand in the upcoming General Erection. The omnipotent Starmer who is being heavily worked by Peter Mandelson has really changed the Labour Party from a party that tried to be Socialist under Jeremy Corbyn to an establishme
nt tool of Israel. The man will be like Scrooge on his death bed with the ghosts of Corbyn and Abbott and the A.N other he's about to shaft any day soon.     

Finally we come to the sweaty orange overlord whose court appearance on re-imbursing his lawyer the hush money that he allegedly paid porn star Stormy Daniels BEFORE he became President of the United Snakes of America in 2016. Whatever the outcome, this creature from the populist swamp could become President again. 

All the bollocks mentioned above gets played out while Israel, the bastard son of the United Snakes and shit stain Britain commit war crimes on a daily basis in Gaza and Rafah. 

The fact that we are expected to vote for all these mother f*****g cock s****rs is a testament to how great Western Democracy is.

   

A United Wales/Cymru Unedig

 

I'm just back from a fact finding mission to the Emerald Isle hence the new banner photograph at the top of the blog. I was mistaken for the fattest Leprechaun this side of the River Shannon on a number of occasions. Short, fat but definitely not hairy. 

I returned to Wales enthused politically and am more convinced than ever after seeing things with my own eyes that Wales has to be united before it can become independent. An independent nation free of the British State. 

Ireland is offering us a template to follow. There is now no border where you have to show your passport as you leave Northern Ireland and enter into the Republic. On two occasions I didn't know which side of the old border I was in. It was a smooth transition and so it must also come to pass in Wales.

No longer must we be forced to show our identification papers in Machynlleth market on a Wednesday. Who cares whether we are Gog, Hwntw or mwynder Maldwyn. We must start to think as one nation, one identity. We mustn't squabble over the ancestral links of Dolly Parton whether they be Tenby, Conwy or Rhondda.

It must be good enough to say that she is of the Welsh. Like they have the Kennedy Center in Belfast perhaps we can hope for a Parton Center in Pontypridd or Porthaethwy.

The inevitability of a united Ireland could also be for us here in Wales if only we worked on being united instead of assuming that we were. Marching for Independence has done very little in reality. It gives the impression, to me at least, that we are also flag shaggers, Welsh banners instead of the Union Jacks of British patriots. The banners of ancient princes have little bearing on today's Wales.

Both countries, Ireland & Wales need to leave their histories in the past. The murals on the walls are the tattoos on our hearts. 

The British State has proved to us all recently that it is as rancid, putrid, sordid and squalid as it ever was with its unflinching support for the genocidal state of Israel.

But what about October 7th? What about it?

Our shit into the rivers and into the seas should be collectivised and nationalised. We need to bring our shit back into public ownership so we can all have free access to it. Why should the select few in Devon have access to the Cryptosporidium parasites while the rest of the Disunited Kingdom can only look on in envy. This is just another example of top down government favouring the select few in Tory voting seats. Where is our bacteria and where is our profuse watery diarrhoea? If nausea and vomiting, stomach pains, dehydration and weight loss are good enough for Southerners why can't we up North enjoy the spoils of Water privatisation?

Britain is on its arse and it isn't worth saving. It's in the knackers yard ready for yet another rebrand in preparation for even newer Labour under Sir Keir Starmer. He's rolled up his sleeves in preparation to fist us all. This is what Socialist collectivisation should be about. That we all get fisted by a Knight of the Realm in a systematic and fair way and that fisting should last five years until he hands over to another even more brand new Labour personage for another five years fisting before the Tories get in again.

That's how British politics works or rather doesn't work and that is why Ireland must be United and Wales must surely follow.