'This S(c)eptic Isle', Notional Pride 21 [trans_late]

All Images: North East Leicester, October 2022

[Reconfigured Translation]:

There is absolutely no finesse in UK self-parody these days (see the so-called Brexit celebration and criticism of this £120 million dead elephant). The entire audience was horrified by the select culture of visitors who were somehow forced not to enjoy what was being shown. Total, you say? Are you saying that public money is horrible? Are you saying something completely different than what was being promised? Even though you've been programming for years, no one knows what you're really talking about? Do you say that those who came should accuse no one but themselves of their error? Meanwhile... I'm crying, the metaphor is slowly creeping into the British consciousness, taking it by the lapels, shaking it like a doll, and banging its head on its nose, shouting: "I'M A CONSTANT TRANSLATION - OK? MAN."

If you were one of the 67 million UK citizens who missed this summer's event (the officially extinct Brexit Festival), the woolly bird had a reason to celebrate 'Creating in the UK', and it's running everywhere. The country has been dry since the spring with a series of events hilariously revealed this week in a very alarming article in the house magazine. Any association with what we once feared as right was actively avoided by various authorities, and in many cases heroically undermined. The national drive did not succeed.

 

Many successful events seem to have run the gamut from wild and poorly executed, to wild and poorly attended. The Brexiteers met before the resignation began. The highlights are too numerous to be fully covered here, but special mention must be made of the dream (and certainly not the waking) content - which comes from some of the hardest working artists.

There was a trend to pay for what the manager called his 'expanded target' of 66 million visitors. The cost is 238,000. The whole thing came to 120 million of public money, which - surprisingly, the government minister still has. How many nurses can he can pay? In Hollywood, you lose your job if you give the green light to this big drop. To put this in an alternative way, each visitor can be given one of many events in the £100 cash chest, for example, being crushed by children, or dropping an inflatable moon over their head. That is, more than four times the cost of the platinum box was spent.

The 'renewal' of Britain again - this content was predicted to be returned around the corner.

'This S(c)eptic Isle': Notional Pride 9 (2021 - Over & Out)

 

All Images: West Leicester, December 2021

[Translation:]

Cancel Vibe.  It came in eighth place and continued into the Brexit era: It celebrates opposition to the status quo, which began 60 years of becoming a member of the European Economic Community.

It's a clock or a party and an alarm; If 60% of Brexit is unknown, in Brexit and 42% since the end of the year, and 42% of Brexit is negative for Brexit.  This dog not the last word (rare in Europe). "Unfortunately" means a lot to many people.

It has always been the case that support for Brexit (and its surroundings) comes from all political sources; People have very different goals and prejudices. I'm a talking veteran.

Some, in Brexit, hope it will provide jobs to heaters, including more money for the NHS and more well-paid jobs, as the slope originally resigned. Some see the long-term benefits of restoring Britain's economic and social policy in different (sometimes conflicting) ways. In other words, in the economic program ikke var relateret til sovereignty principle:

The latter worked well for Brexit because it succeeded and, despite the results, in the British context there are strong views on debt among theatre goers in Brexit.

She wanted Hopec to be chaired on this register as a whole. 74% of Magtaverne's bankruptcy has been reduced to 53%, but it has not yet been established. Brexit data is best known for Brexit. However, Fiach is very incomplete, and difficult to interpret in the context of many other things: including Covid restrictions, energy shocks, and supply chain disruption affecting him. The model broker's European reform led to the results of the Covid-landne proposals by scoring at 16% in the same trade in Great Britain. . Separate data from the trademark in services, between April 2019 and April 2021, aims to export services to the EU only over time.

If you work with the first person, you are released from the free person, and the deltager deltager is not the result of creative work example. Biggest blow to services so far: Dr. F.L. Torso's manic ability to negotiate significant long-term Equivalence with UK Expectation is settling for financial activity activities, making it more commonplace.

Full economic Brexit work is underway. The mango grinder screens and grinder screen plugs should be fastened with the screws and bolts between the marked and standard screws. Latest date on UK side plate and write for European standard.

Some Industrial groups, such as the Chemical Industry, have issued an efifv warning the purpose of which is merely to display a union jack. Join our commenting forum.

R.I.P, Jeremy Hardy

Jeremy Hardy, 1961 - 2019

In bullshit times like these, we really can't afford to be losing such comforting voices of sanity as the comedian, Jeremy Hardy's.  Tragically, that's exactly what was recently announced - with his passing, at the age of 57, as the result of cancer.

That age is a bit of a wake up call for those of us of a similar vintage - I'll confess.  Far more poignant is the loss of a sharp wit, keen intelligence, and above all - compassionate voice, in an era when knuckle-dragging idiocy, routine brutality, and political cynicism are so much in vogue.  As Hardy's fellow comedians (and others) have paid tribute to him, words like, 'humility', 'generosity', self-effacement, and  'commitment' (both to his craft - and to the causes he espoused), have abounded.  Most importantly (and doubly so - for a performer so easily pigeon-holed as a 'Left Wing Comedian'), Hardy was properly funny.  There were numerous occasions, especially in recent years - when I'd splutter with spontaneous glee, as he went off on yet another off-the-cuff, but erudite, exposition of social injustice or human folly.

Hardy himself, claimed to be less a political extremist, and more a Left-leaning liberal in an era when everyone else had moved so alarmingly to the Right.  In such a context any engaged but essentially wooly, middle-class 'luvvie' (as he would knowingly characterise himself), might resemble a raving Trot.  It was of course, a delicious irony that he ultimately found his most faithful audience as a stalwart of that bastion of hard-line Marxist orthodoxy -
BBC Radio 4.  Perhaps that's really why his death feels so much like losing one of 'our' own.  For, cosy, complacent, and even stuffy, as that channel can often seem - it also remains an intellectual refuge for anyone who values humanitarianism, literacy, informed discussion, reasoned debate, unashamed specialist expertise, and a well-honed sentence or two.  I struggle to think of anyone with income and living conditions as modest as my own, as any kind of 'elite'.  Nevertheless, if a taste for any of the values detailed above must label me as part of some despised metropolitan, liberal, self-interest group - bring it on. Either way, Jeremy Hardy seemed to fit right into that kind of milieu, from the start.

In his case, that facility with language, both written and spoken, came from Stand-Up - a form of comedy to which he remained dedicated throughout his career.  I witnessed him in action, some time back in the late 90s, and also within the last couple of years - when it was gratifying to witness that his powers appeared undimmed over the intervening years.  He was still the same amiable, if bemused cove, in whose ramblings were buried the keenest political barbs and (perhaps more importantly) empathetic reflections on the human condition.  Even as I write this, I realise that a similarly rambling, laconic and tangential manner of speech, and an habitual apology for being older than I really am - are both traits I share with Jeremy.  Of course, I haven't been clever enough to parley that all into a long and successful comedy career, or indeed, to also walk the walk in some troubled region, like Palestine - as he also did.

We'll always have cherished memories of Jeremy Hardy on venerable Radio 4 panel shows, gloriously massacring 'One Song To The Tune Of Another' or confounding fellow performers and audience members alike - with yet another increasingly bonkers political 'analysis'.  But it's tragic to think there'll be no more of that inspired lunacy - and he'll be greatly missed.

Addendum:

On the day Jeremy Hardy's death was announced, I also scraped a copy of the pernicious pro-Brexshit propaganda rag, 'Wetherspoonnews'  off my doormat.  The fact that thrusting such a misleading and cynically manipulative abomination through an innocent citizen's letterbox is now deemed acceptable, is perhaps indicative of what Jeremy Hardy meant about everyone else moving so depressingly to the Right.  It is, of course, the populist impulse to present ever-hardening political extremism as 'The Voice Of The People', which has got us to the point where we now teeter - and may indeed soon deliver us to an even worse place.

Lessons from history and self-fulfilling prophesies are habitually ignored, but what feels alarmingly new - is the conflation of commercial advertising with a more political variety of misinformation.  What form of cynical hubris, makes the owner of some resolutely lowest-common-denominator piss-hole chain, feel suitably qualified to herd the sheep in this manner?. You'd think poisoning livers and clogging arteries would be profitable enough, without messing with our minds too.  Bar room philosophy is one thing, but 'Spoons-fed prejudice and bigotry feel like something else, altogether.  Actually, I'm tempted to wonder if this might not be life exacting some bizarre revenge, by imitating the pub-based Art of another thoughtful comedian, Al Murray.  'This S(c)eptic Isle', indeed.

My initial reaction was of course to lob the offending article into the recycling - where it belongs (I no longer have cat-litter trays to line, sadly).  However, as ever - Art stayed my hand.  Such material naturally contains the seeds of its own satire, and the creative activity it may stimulate is ultimately more satisfying than despair or blank annoyance.  Famously, 'they' hate being laughed at - and so, it goes on the ever-growing pile of stuff ripe for re-writing or detournment.