• Home
  • Topics
  • Posts by Date
  • What This Is
  • About Us
  • Mailing List

World of the News

~ For the universal in today's top stories

Monthly Archives: September 2015

#61 Bearded Lady Of The Left

September 21, 2015

Miss Havisham is walking up the aisle. Strange, but no more out of the blue than Red Jed’s victory in the Labour leadership contest.

On 12 September 2015 Jeremy Bernard Corbyn was elected leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition with nearly 60 per cent of first-preference votes – more than Tony Blair’s majority when he was elected party leader in 1994.

‘Jez We Can’, came the jubilant supporters’ chant, echoing Barack Obama’s slogan when he first campaigned for the US presidency in 2008.

Some hope.

History has turned him down a hundred times before. In frequent defeat – repeat, repeat – Corbyn was always dignified: no storming out of meeting rooms into what turns out to be the broom cupboard; nothing but quiet determination to maintain a principled position in defence of organised labour…….

……..in support of a workers’ movement that just isn’t there.

Even if he makes it to the altar, our bearded bride* is barren now; scarred by three long decades without issue.

Thirty years ago, miners dusted with coal and brushed into the pedal bin for human waste; 20 years ago, Irish Republicans canned into processed peace, then popping out as tinpot parliamentarians.

And so it came and went; all strength now spent.

Insides scraped clean and empty during the long march of Labour halted, the-leftist-lady-not-for-turning, is turning hollow victory into lifeless defeat.

*Corbyn was already the Fisherman back when hipsters were smooth as Kojak.

#60 Migration Watch (4): What A Carry On

September 15, 2015

And what are reporters for?
Without the need to know of far-flung dominions
To formulate opinion, acting in unison with decisive effect.

Goodbye to all that. But haven’t you said there’s more for journalism to do?
Something about a drowned boy and a moment of integrity
Constructing what we have in common.
Doubtless you didn’t mean for it to draw a virtuous circle of patrons and their profugees (refugees deemed worthy protégés by Western benefactors);
Minus the mucky migrants not much mourned.

Nothing more to be said, then. Even ‘fail better’ was said better the first time.
In the end there is only blind determination to keep on looking;
Seeing as we are the sum of how it doesn’t add up.

O what a carry on – migrants for carrion, is this all you can do?
O what a carry on – migrants for carrion, this is what I do.

#59 Migration Watch (3): Three-Way Street

September 6, 2015

1. East to West

Swaddled in tin foil, stranded on the seawall straddling Italy and France, refugees from 1970s glamrock, obviously. Or perhaps Gregor Samsa’s younger siblings: insects already; further metamorphosis forbidden.

Salt-blasted and skin peeling after days at sea in an open boat, the girl’s face is patterned like a leaf.

Three proud women on the beach at Kos, pointedly not looking at the photographer. Mother suckling her baby, then grandma in the middle; at her side the younger daughter with film star’s pout. All told, three pairs of lips pressed firmly together in a silent snub – thumbing the eye of the camera.

The logo painted on the side of the refrigerated lorry shows slices of ‘Hyza: honest chicken’  (pretty in pink), twirled round to resemble a rose. By any other name….. Butthe cooling system had died, and putrid liquid was seen dripping from the back of thevehicle. Next morning, the ‘coffins’ sent in to contain human remains were more like sealable sinks.

2. Wessies to Essies

A warm welcome they made of it: the German townspeople of Oer-Erkenschwick setting a precedent, greeting their coach load of migrants with cheery sunflowers;  among them burly bloke in hi-vis vest – Westphalian version of white man van, standing firm against what’s expected of his xenophobic type (supposedly)

3. West to East And Back Again

Zahera Tariq and her four children had exited England via London City, the upmarket airport designed for business travellers. But they were brought back in through thebreeze blocks of down-at-heel Luton, where Burger King counts as fine dining. Alleged to have been migrating to IS before she was stopped and detained in Turkey prior to repatriation, Mrs Tariq may not have noticed the difference. Appearing at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court charged with child abduction, piety was her paramount concern: she refused to stand when Judge Susan Green entered the courtroom, saying her religion required her to sit. Speaking of child abduction, the four smaller Tariqs have been taken into foster care, even though the husband and father was the one to blow the whistle on where they were going. read more

…

Archives

  • July 2017 (3)
  • June 2017 (7)
  • May 2017 (11)
  • April 2017 (9)
  • March 2017 (3)
  • February 2017 (3)
  • January 2017 (3)
  • December 2016 (1)
  • November 2016 (4)
  • October 2016 (5)
  • September 2016 (6)
  • August 2016 (11)
  • July 2016 (6)
  • June 2016 (6)
  • May 2016 (2)
  • April 2016 (2)
  • March 2016 (4)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (2)
  • December 2015 (2)
  • November 2015 (3)
  • October 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (3)
  • August 2015 (2)
  • July 2015 (1)
  • June 2015 (2)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (3)
  • February 2015 (2)
  • January 2015 (2)
  • December 2014 (2)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (3)
  • September 2014 (4)
  • August 2014 (4)
  • July 2014 (5)
  • June 2014 (4)
  • May 2014 (4)
  • April 2014 (7)
  • March 2014 (6)
  • February 2014 (7)
  • January 2014 (6)
  • December 2013 (19)
  • November 2013 (9)
  • October 2013 (7)
  • September 2013 (5)
  • August 2013 (8)
  • July 2013 (8)
  • June 2013 (7)
  • May 2013 (7)
  • April 2013 (2)
  • March 2013 (9)
  • February 2013 (7)
  • January 2013 (9)
  • December 2012 (8)
  • November 2012 (3)
  • October 2012 (6)
  • September 2012 (15)
  • August 2012 (9)
  • July 2012 (2)
  • June 2012 (3)
  • May 2012 (4)

Tags

Afghanistan Authority BBC Boxing Celebrity China Crime Disease Energy Europe Football France Immigration India Iraq Islam Journalism Labour Party Leveson London murder Northern Ireland Obama Poetry Police Policing Pope Protest Race rape refugees Religion Royalty Russia Sex South Africa South Korea suicide Syria Terrorism Trump UK Ukraine USA War

Categories

  • News
  • News of the World
  • What This Is
  • World of the News

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.