3484 days ago
In 1997 the war criminal Tony Blair won a landslide victory at a General Election. As a right thinking voter do you remember how you protested?
I remember going out and celebrating with champagne with my lefty colleagues at the Evening Standard. Heck it appeared to be on expenses and that is Democracy. But perhaps you went and protested outside Tony Blair’s Islington townhouse. Did you daub obscenities on a war memorial? Did you push a policeman in N1? Did you make a placard saying “no gratuitous overspending in my name – I will stop you filthy commies!” Do you remember those riots when we refused to accept the democratic will of the people?
Er, thought not. We had jobs to go to and just carried on accepting that we had lost. A bit of a contrast with the reaction of the left in 2015 don’t you think?
4159 days ago
As I took the ten hour bus journey to Athens overnight I discovered that my one firm meeting of the next three weeks had hit a snag – the man has gone AWOL. Such is Greece. And so I arrived in Athens at 5 AM with nothing to do. How about a bit of riot porn ? I decided to take a bus to Syntagma Square to check out the action.
And so me and an old man tried to get on the bus. No-one else wanted to. We both asked (he in Greek me in English) if we could pay. The bust driver said “no” we had to buy a ticket at the ticket booth. But it is closed we both pointed out. “So stay here” said the bus driver. And then he closed the doors and drove off in his 100% empty bus. The grateful taxpayer (something most folk here still regard as a voluntary activity) can pay his wage, pay for the petrol, and wear and tear on the bus as it has absolutely no passengers.
Under my breath I muttered “and that is why your country is fucked.” I got a taxi instead. Sadly there are no riots this morning and so I have wandered around past the shops which are all either empty or having a summer 50% off sale. No riot porn to relay to you but I may well shoot some poverty porn later as I am not feeling terribly sympathetic to poor Hellas right now. Its problems are not, as I have pointed out before, not entirely unself-inflicted.
