
Big Brother Cameron has got his eye on us all. He's concerned for our health. He's specially concerned for those of us who are overweight. If we don't do something about it and get our bellies down to normal size he's going to cut our free treatment for the illnesses that go with the condition of being too fat and also the benefits we get for being unable to work because of it. He says it isn't a shortage of jobs that render people unemployed but their poor health most of which is their own fault. So there! Its all down to shirkers again. We're a nation of overweight shirkers, stuffing ourselves on the fat of the land - truffles, pate de foie gras, Beaujolais and pheasant - just to avoid work. And even worse, we put the economy in jeopardy by stretching the fabulously free - never forget that, although it isn't even true - National Health Service, the eighth wonder of the world, to breaking point with our selfish and unnecessary demands for its services.
Anyway. This has all got to stop. It's for our own good. To prove the point the PM was shown in his running shorts, avoiding collisions as he galloped along some busy street, and sweated it off. The fat that is, and gruesome thoughts of the upcoming election.
The economy is thriving the PM insists, and you've probably noticed the improvements yourself. The general air of happiness and fulfillment that embraces the nation. For the UK is number one in Europe in the provision of appallingy underpaid and mind-numbing jobs for all those who are fit and healthy enough and prepared to survive the crippling boredom that goes with them. Many find they cant take it anymore though, and just give up. You can either take to over-eating eating on cheap and lousy diets as a source of consolation for the humiliation and depression that goes with being superfluous to the capitalist work force and out of work or at best "precarious". Or, being unable to survive it's pointless nihilistic demands that go under the heading of employment, embark on the road to strange and creeping illnesses and slow unacknowledged self-destruction. This is the state of the nation. This is the state of the planet. Take a look!
That any thoughtful person would wish to perpetuate the senseless unnecessary miseries of existence that pertain under what capitalism calls life today is mind boggling. There are no advantages left in its perpetuation at all. Except for a very few. That billions of us have to undergo a repetitive daily agony of life, a negation of life, merely to sustain capitalism and its few beneficiaries - who aren't necessarily the happy-go-lucky darlings we imagine them to be with their truffles, pate de foie gras, fine wines and armed guards to protect them and their stolen riches - never ceases to astound. For how much longer will this drag on?
If binge-eating, drug taking, no money, drinking and what passes for sex, or just plain isolation and loneliness, don't finish you off, then there's always the international religious fanatics who might, or our glorious world wide unscrupulous leaders like Obama, Putin, Merkel and the rest, who are fully prepared and willing and able to do the job instead. They're only waiting for the right moment. They're only waiting for their next essential holocaust to start.
I watched Sky News for ten minutes this morning. Incredible pictures were shown of all the destruction in Libya after the bombings by Egypt added to the destruction and chaos already well-established there.
The initial mayhem in Libya years ago, followed the seemingly successful intervention by Britain and France to secure the oil supply there and get rid of Ghadafi, who was suddenly deemed unacceptable to them after years of loyal service though he had always plagued them with difficulties and been a trouble maker with his "revolutionary" ideas. (A bit like Saddam caused trouble for the US though he was always there friend up to a point.) In Libya all appeared well at first. Smiling faces of the triumphant Sarkozy and Cameron smiled complacently at us. But as so often happens these days triumph quickly turned to tragedy. For since the departure of the great dictator Libya has reached a state of significant barbarism and is out of control because of general economic collapse, inter-tribal fighting and ISIS is now on the scene there too.
Somebody on the news said that the West can see today that it was a mistake to get rid of Ghadafi because everything was tightly controlled and all right for Libya when he was boss man. Now it's all inter-tribal fighting and the insidious trouble stirring of the ubiquitous Islamic Caliphate who are becoming prominent. A tv commentator used the example of what happened to Libya after Ghadafi's demise to defend the necessity to keep that other political arch-murderer and trouble-maker, Assad of Syria, in place and in charge, because things would be even more horrific without him then they are with him. This is the logic of decaying capitalism where nothing can ever really be put right anymore.
So Egypt felt compelled to bomb IS in Libya because IS in Egypt had beheaded a group of Christians there and posted the video on the web. Not that the Egyptian state loves Christians particularly, especially impoverished ones, but then neither does it need additional religious strife at the moment, and has its international reputation to defend as a putative Arab democracy facing hard times and there's also it's developing tourist trade to consider. Beheadings are bad for both. Relatives of those foully picked on and murdered were shown crying and looking pathetic, impoverished, defeated and hopeless. Is it a consolation to them that Libya was consequently bombed and more innocent people, in addition to the IS members being targeted, were blown up in a revenge attack? Possibly not!
So people who can afford it are leaving Libya in their hundreds and heading for Italy. This is all illegal. Consequently the usual pimps and hucksters are involved in extorting money from the distressed for the privilege of traveling in over-crowded leaking crafts across a tempestuous Mediterranean sea.
We were told by the newscaster that Libya is now a failed state. This wasn't such a shock. For aren't Iraq and Syria failed states too? And aren't various other countries in the Middle East, not to mention countries in Africa infested so easily by Boko Haram militants, being driven to failure too?
This heart warming news bulletin then moved on to discuss the troubles Italy has in accommodating the hordes of African refugees seeking asylum on its shores; the question of whether Greece might not finally be forced to leave the EU despite Merkel's best efforts to accommodate it's impossible demands to be treated as if rich and successful in capitalism's own terms; film of Greek citizens celebrating their new government's left wing triumph over an over-demanding capitalist EU, and an interview with a woman who said she felt sure now that soon everything would be alright again for Greece.
But she's wrong isn't she? Nothing is ever again going to be alright for anybody till we get rid of capitalism. The failed states won't recover. Big trouble is knocking on Europe's door in the form of increasing illegal migrants it can't and doesn't want to accommodate - refugees in fact - fleeing not just crazed religious extremism, but gang warfare, collapsed economies, starvation, persecution and unemployment - in short all the ills of a decaying economic system on its last legs - while Europe itself struggles with its own problematical economies and its unemployed. How long before it becomes apparent that Europe itself is failing? That Russia is failing too (hasn't the Ukraine already gone?) And how long before the mighty giant the United States itself starts to feel the pinch with an economically drained Europe in one direction and the inexhaustible warehouse of trouble called Mexico to the south?
Of course, there's always the hard working workers of the Far East. Can they keep capitalism going? Would they even want to? And there's always the chance of another world war.
What a life!