Those interested in politics, the UK and general shenanigans will know that Boris —A.K.A. Bojo/A.K.A. Mr. Johnson, the outgoing UK Prime Minister — was recently ousted by his own fellow Conservative party Members of Parliament (MPs).
He’s become rather unpopular among his fellow Conservative MPs for a number of reasons, all too boring to even comment on, let alone regurgitate here. Not everyone hates him though. As you can from the clipping above from The Week sent to me by one of my dear Aunties (who also happens to be an excellent author ) a Cossack community in Ukraine love him. They have made Mr. Johnson an honorary Cossack and called him Boris “Chuprina”, which apparently means “Long-lock-of-hair”. Let me tell you something right now. These Cossacks are crazy (with apologies to the creators of Asterix, wink, wink. If you know, you know, blah, blah, blah **).
Anyway, following the coup, there was the usual a scramble among Conservative Members of Parliament to throw their support behind a number of candidates for the Premiership. The original gang of wannabe Prime Ministers has now been whittled down to two, and the UK will have a new leader in September some time (I think).
The nauseating spectacle of politicians attempting to garner support from their fellow politicians — and the voters in general — really is hard to stomach, no matter what tribe they belong to.
So what rubbish am I banging on about this time? Well, this isn’t the best of segues, but what I’m trying to get across is that politicians will promise the world. And who can blame them? These days, people seem to think that politicians, or the State, can save them from all sorts of dangers, while also bringing us all a step closer to Utopia. We expect politicians to stop economic downturns, eliminate poverty, keep the bad guys at bay, stop us from being ill, even to control the weather.
The thing is though, is that all of these things are way beyond any politician’s ability to control. The best they can do is paper over the cracks. Most of the time though, they take a crack and turn it into a huge gaping hole. And then pat themselves on the back for doing so. Because, well, at least they were DOING SOMETHING. Right?
The secret vigilante group I write about in The Dojang and Redemptio are also out to “help” or “save” people from whatever perils face them, but they can only do so much. Put it this way, there's a lot of bad guys out there. But at least the vigilantes, unlike politicians are (mostly) honest, and openly recognise their limitations.
And that’s OK. We can’t be wrapped up in cotton wool all the time. We have to understand that this world is a dangerous, unfair and cruel place. And there is nothing that we can do to fundamentally change that.
It is beyond our power as mere mortals to do so, no matter how hard we try to set ourselves up as gods.
** Asterix and Obelix, the heroes of the Asterix comic books, always used to comment about the mental state of the Romans. “These Romans are crazy” was a regular observation of theirs.
Shout out!
Shout out to all the voluntary football (soccer) coaches across the world, who sacrifice their spare time to train and mentor kids. My youngest son has recently started playing for a local team and the joy it brings him is wonderful to watch.
Progress update:
The Man Who Wore Hats (working title) remains at 56,883 words.
The first draft of The Gaff (my latest novella) is complete at 18,702 words. I am now editing it.
Take it easy. And thanks for reading.