castrato politics (3/7/24)

aside

bellwether… the leading sheep in a flock, a leader, setters of trends… the ‘bell’ is obvious, it’s a bell, ding-dong, and in this sense hung around the neck of the ‘wether’, or male sheep, or more accurately, a castrated male sheep…. the word is being used a lot right now here since a general election has been called for the 4^th of July… wow, to think, by the end of the week it could be all change… “bellwether” has been bandied around with reference to particular constituency seats whose outcome is regarded as a crucial indicator to the election’s outcome, the mystical art of guesstomology, or, pin the tail on the donkey, or in this case, the castrated sheep… yes, election time, or should I say, electioneering time, meaning all manner of bollocks being spewed forth from the mouths of motley politicians, pollsters and pundits blatantly littering the headlines with even more bonkers than ‘normal’, one particular Tory (Conservative) ‘banger’ being to reintroduce a form of national service, something that was attempted and subsequently failed after the second world war, the ‘plan’ being that all and every 18 year old would have a ‘choice’, inverted commas, a ‘choice’ of either spending the year in the one of the armed forces, or, 26 days volunteering with some civilian service or other… when you drill down into this, and you don’t need to very far, you’ll find it riddled with more holes than gorgonzola or an abandoned fishing net you’d find washed up on any beach, and should they get their way, to introduce it in 2025… next year!.. no infrastructure, no resources, no funding, no support, no clue… armed forces spokespeople, amongst others, hang their collective heads in despair… yes folks, electioneering’s been in full swing for weeks now since the surprisingly early call for an election by a government on its worn-out knees, ‘silly season’, further utterly unworkable policy pronouncements have been and continue to be tossed into the increasingly bitter and twisted fray by all and sundry in an attempt to woo voters to their increasingly frail causes… bellwethers?… more like bell-ends…... all that aside, I still think the singular for sheep should be shoop……

beside

somebody mentioned that it was July
I looked at the sky,
it seems they were right...

seaside

my pen has just suffered memory loss, or, has it just run out of ink?...

© 2024 robert greig