I came back at this increasingly grim time for western civilisation to pass on some good news. Everyone's favourite Canadian (everyone!), Margaret Atwood is writing another novel in the Oryx & Crake/Year of the Flood sequence. Yippie! Maybe we'll find out if the Crakers do follow their adoption of abstract thought with the violence that Crake predicted.
If we are 'living in the last days' the apocolypse is looking like a wet flood rather than Crake's rather dryer one. As I type this the nations of Thailand, Burma and Cambodia are experiencing catastrophic flooding and within the last few days lives have been lost in Ireland and Ghana and of course Pakistan and India are still counting their losses from only weeks ago. Flash-flooding has to my knowledge occurred in both Italy and the south west of the UK in the last few days. Cheddar Gorge! How terrifying seeing water flowing down there. I can't swim neither. All mammals can, so you lot should be alright but I'm more like some kind of lizard.
Margaret Atwood also mentioned liking 'Darkness at Noon' as well. How nice is that? Quite pally too with Ursula Leguin by the sound of it. That's so pleasing. I was thinking of her tonight watching the St Paul's anti-capitalist protesters. There was that story where the earth's dispossesssed leave their homes and join together to form a vast leaderless nomad army marching from continent to continent in all their civilisation-embarrassing shabbiness. If Churchy and Boris boot 'em out that's what they should think about doing. You can keep moving around and around but unless you can be bothered to machine-gun the lot of them,they'll always be there.
The lady (um....sorry nameless lady) speaking for the protesters on the news said something along the lines of that they were seeking to explore ways to live without capitalism and organise a new society from the bottom. Funnily enough, late on in my Marxist days I'd developed this theory that the socialist society would not replace capitalism in a big dramatic red flash but would develop in it's litter and gradually replace it as the system controlling transactions between the world's human beings. That's all it is by the way. It isn't a thing in itself after all, it's a notion. Anyway, as a post-communist sell-out businessman criminal, I now hold pretty much the same opinion, albeit with the Thatcherite rationalisation that choice and competition are good things even in terms of civilisation-defining economic systems; if one really believes competition raises efficiency then the capitalist system (no such thing-ed) is only made more efficient by the existence of a planned collective model alongside it. No? Don't worry the water will wash it all away.
DD said a good one. Remember how Liam Fox approved the use of close-on shouting by the military as a form of interregation (especially pointless and cruel on someone who might speak little english)? Well that's how he should have been questioned about his little friend who's dodgy dealings cost Doc Fox his job. Andrew Landsley too, the fucker. Selling off our health services to US providers, that's his game. He's surrounded by them like Fox and his defence chums. The NHS is fucking history and the Liberals have just watched it happen. Never fear! Chris Huhne's going to make it easier for us to switch our utility bills between the providers he knows full well are effectively running a cartel! Yes!
Look... (Tony Blair-style palm-inward hand motion) it seems likely that all of us decadant western types are all seeing our living standards drop a bit as those of millions of people in China and India etc rise. The planet can't possibly sustain us all having a slap-up meal every day so this is all possibly for some greater good. Possibly not....but all the same. It just seems like the rich are really taking the piss round here and people have a right to be angry about that especially when they've done the right thing - worked hard and lived honestly. Not like me.
er.....maybe more later. Sorry I don't post more. So many reasons. Anyway the next thing I'm going to write will be about Kanishka for somewhere else. Perhaps I'll post it here too.
