Kakistocracy XV:Dumb Flag Scum

"Repeat After Me Fuck Queen and Country. Repeat After Me Death Sentence Heritage. Repeat After Me Death Camp Palace. Useless Generation. Dumb Flag Scum" - Repeat, Manic Street Preachers.

Repeat, from the Manic Street Preachers debut album Generation Terrorists in 1992, was, in retrospect and taking its lyrics into account, unlikely to be the song that would one day raise the band to stadium status. It's not really a surprise it was kept as an album track and a b-side to Love's Sweet Exile. But its anti-nationalist sentiment, cowards with no original ideas in their heads, hiding behind the royal family, the country, the flag, or some Keep Calm and Carry On merchandise seems more pertinent now, nearly thirty years later, than it did then - and it felt pertinent then.

Obviously, the Manic Street Preachers tarnished that lyric, slightly, by going to perform in front of (admittedly cool - they've got a dragon on them, how could they not be?) massive Welsh flags as well as going on to write songs that now sound too boring even for Radio 2 but that's not the point really. The British government are proving to be little more than "dumb flag scum" themselves right now.

Everyone knows why these 'flag shaggers' are competing to get Union Jacks in sight on their Zoom calls and competing to see who's got the biggest (a sort of willy measuring contest you could imagine Boris Johnson and chums partook of in Eton for real). It's to look patriotic, it's to try and provoke people like me into calling them 'flag-shaggers' (guilty as charged), and it's so they can then respond to say we're doing Britain down. Which, if the polls are to be believed, is something of a vote winning strategy.

You would think that if the government are so desperate to be seen as patriotic then as well as, or perhaps instead of, putting Union Jack flags everywhere, they'd have done more to stop 126,862 people dying in a pandemic (still the fifth highest figure in the world). You might also wonder, if they're so proud of the union represented on that Union Jack, why they aren't doing more to keep it together and you'd equally be well within your rights to ask yourself that if they're so patriotic and love Britain and its people so much then how come they're infringing on the rights of those people and trying to prevent them from exercising their democratic right to protest.

What does the Union Jack actually mean to Boris Johnson and his government really? Other than a tool that can be used to divide and conquer. When the flag comes out and especially when it's being waved by those on the right, there's often a war element behind the jingoism but, dear me, the Conservative Party do get quite confused when it comes to war. One Tory council candidate in Eastbourne, a certain Stephen Halbhuber, in response to the protest/riot in Bristol recently, tweeted "just bomb Bristol" - a city of nearly half a million UK citizens.

Epic bantz aside, this whole flag business is, of course, just another example of distraction, an attempt to spread a culture war that can never be won and never be lost. Can only rage on, forever finding new fronts.. All so we don't hold the government accountable for their massive failings regarding the pandemic and many other things.

When Johnson claims, Gordon Gekko from Wall Street style, that "the reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed" he is, of course, as ever, lying. The vaccine success is because people wanted to help others as much as they wanted to help themselves. The genuinely greedy people, the true capitalists if you like, as we have witnessed throughout the pandemic, really don't care about other people. Not even if they live or die.

Even if Johnson did really believe, like Gekko, that "greed in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, and for knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind" why isn't he paying the nurses more when they ask for it. Surely he should appreciate, and reward, their "greed"?

Politics, here and elsewhere, has been murky and corrupt for a long time but I don't recall a time it was ever so debased as under Boris Johnson. It's not accidental. It's a deliberate debasement of public standards and what is truly shocking is how so few people even seem to care. Politicians have always been caught lying, having affairs, and lining the pockets of themselves and friends. If the deceit was of an egregious enough level they'd eventually either stand down or be brought down.

With Johnson and his enablers, every debasement of public life is rewarded rather than punished. I fear that as a country we will pay a heavy price for indulging the man. The Committee on Standards of Public Life, popularly known as the Nolan principles after the judge Baron Nolan who made a major contribution to them, was drawn up in 1994 by a non-departmental public body during the tenure of John Major. A Tory PM who was at least ashamed and saddened by the sleaze in his party.

Or at least he was until it was discovered he'd been boffing his colleague Edwina Currie behind his wife's back. Which he got stick for, rather than praise. Compare that to how the revelations about Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri have played out. To the best of my knowledge, Major didn't bung £25,000 of public money Currie's way as Johnson did with Arcuri.

The Nolan principles suggests that public figures should uphold seven different virtues and when you read through the list you see that Boris Johnson doesn't hold to a single one of them. Selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership are all words you would resolutely not associate with Johnson unless you were trying to define exactly what qualities he lacked.

Amnesty International have flagged up "serious concerns" about Britain's "headlong rush into abandoning human rights", police discrimination against Black and Asian communities, our arms trade with Saudi Arabia, Johnson's refusal to order an inquiry into the lethal mishandling of the pandemic, and governmental attempts to strip away citizen's legal rights to challenge government decisions - no matter how poor they are.

 

 

Against this backdrop we have been presented with the findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the Sewell Report, which has divisively claimed there is no such thing as structural, or institutional, racism in the United Kingdom. It's widely believed that these would always be the findings and, indeed, the man who gave his name to the report, Tony Sewell, has worked for Boris Johnson since 2012.

When the Tories aren't setting elephant traps like the Sewell report for their opponents to fall into or marking their own homework and, surprise surprise, always coming top off the class they're being nasty about the people they're supposed to be representing. John Fuller, a Tory council leader in Norfolk and friend of Boris Johnson, has suggested self-isolation payments of £500 to those with Covid who otherwise may not be able to afford to quarantine would be an "incentive" for people not just to catch the disease but to spread it.

 

The evening that comment came to light I watched Newsnight. The show's presenter, Kirsty Wark, and fellow guest Liverpool mayor Steve Rotherham were aghast - as was I - that somebody in a position of power could say, or think, such a thing but these things are not accidental and Fuller knows that. He smiled it off and the idea that the British people are so feckless they'd catch, and spread, deadly diseases for half a thousand quid was soon forgotten.

 

Wave the flag for Britain but constantly belittle and demonise actual British people. These patriot games are very confusing. My suspicion is that John Fuller is judging all of the UK by his own Tory, money obsessed, mind set and my fear is that it is a winning strategy. The sub-Johnsonian nudge and wink grinning as stories about corruption and lack of accountability play out makes it very clear they know they're being dishonest, they know we know they're being dishonest, and they simply don't fucking care because they'll win anyway. 

 

As my mate Shep has long said, in towns like Basingstoke you could pin a blue rosette to a dogshit and it'll win an election. A one party state is not a healthy democracy and the threat of moving ever closer towards being one is a very clear and present danger at the moment. While this occupies my mind a lot of the time I am fortunate in that I have other interests, and really good friends, to stop me getting too down about the takeover of Britain by a mob of lying bullies.

I've been walking, as ever, in Brenchley Gardens, Peckham Rye Park and Common (where I enjoyed a 99 ice cream with Flake on the hottest March day since 1968 - or in my life), and the Horniman Gardens and I spent a boozy, rather too boozy, but lovely afternoon with Ian, Vicki, and Mike in Waterloo Millennium Garden. 

Which I walked to and stumbled back from. I've chatted, also, to Michelle, Adam, Mum and Dad, and had a Zoom call with Darren and, briefly, Cheryl. I've seen other friends too when I've logged on for Sharon's Kahoot quiz (Mike won) and one set by Sanda (the spoils, that time, going to Tony)

I've attended an online exhibition about use of the colour blue in art and I've "been to" Skeptics in the Pub - Online for a talk about film and video classification as well as watching (and, of course, writing about) the films Mindhorn, The Third Man, Crock of Gold:A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan and the television shows Pandemic 2020 and Football's Darkest Secret.

I've even just finished reading Renegade:The Lives & Tales of Mark E. Smith and, of course, I've written about that too. In the book, Smith talks of his hatred for Tony Blair and admits, proudly, to having voted Conservative in the past. There's always an element of wind up with Smith but I don't think that's the full story. 

I'd love to know what he makes of this current batch of flag-shaggers. Even former Tories like him would, surely, see through the likes of Johnson, Patel, Rees-Mogg, and Oliver Dowden. I can't imagine he'd be impressed but I am utterly bewildered by how many people, despite being unimpressed, would still go out and vote for them. While the odds of sexual congress with flags causing a new pandemic, however unethical and unejoyable the act may sound, seem very low we should be in no doubt whatsoever that this government, and this government unchecked specifically, will lead us into further disaster. If I was the sort to fly a Union Jack it'd remain at half-mast until they are long gone.