It hasn't been easy coming up with anything this week, cats and kittens: not that there's nothing much to bring up the hackles and summon up a stream of metal-melting bile going on in the world - quite the reverse, in fact. What's been difficult is that I found myself so infuriated the other day, that it was impossible to maintain my usual unbiased, cool and measured, almost forensic approach to analysing proceedings upon our disgraceful whirling shitball of a world. Nor was I able to couch my views in the distant, irony-shrouded way I often do, so peeved did I find myself; there comes a time when exposing the fallacies and grotesque cuntery of the Great and the Good in a rather laboured and elaborate burlesque simply isn't enough.
I apologise unreservedly then, for the lack of any particular "hook" or "guiding conceit" in the following - especially to those readers (and there are many, I'm sure) who share my own delicacy of feeling and deep-rooted gentility.
It was that Vince Cable what done it: what a despicable, turncoat wankspanner he truly is. Him and his dead, stocking-mask face were on Channel Four News on Friday, talking about the current dispute over the salaries and bonuses being awarded to Barclays' Bank executives; when I found myself hammering on the floor with my fists and screaming hoarsely at the television "Don't make me angry, Mr Cable - you wouldn't like me when I'm pulling your spine out and raping you with it", it became apparent that a line had been crossed somewhere.
It was the point-blank refusal of this glistening cadaver to say anything that really burned me up; despite - one might think - the official Cameronian doctrine of being "tough on the fat-cat culture" (or at least saying he's going to be) a discussion of this nature might at least call for some thunderously empty rhetoric, would you not? But no; Cable wouldn't even dignify the matter with an imposingly meaningless soundbite. He claimed to have "very strong views" on the subject of barrow-loads of cash being flung at banking types like shit at a chimps' tea party, but he kept them very much to himself. All he could do was repeat that it was "the responsibility of the shareholders" to ensure that pay for these people should be commensurate with performance and be at least nominally less obscene than the spectacle of John Merrick licking out Gail Tilsley off of Coronation Street - an attitude that suggested that the very last thing a Business Secretary should do is meddle with, interfere in, or have any dealings whatever with, business.
It's easy to see why, of course: after the Coalition folds in on itself (or the Lib-Dem contingent are actually eaten alive by their Tory overlords - whichever comes first) this amoral corpse is doubtless aware that he's unlikely to win any kind of election ever again; not even one of those "who gets a funnel-web spider enema?" ones on that awful Celebrity Jungle shambles. That being so, he's got to be pretty careful not to rock the boat for the coporate pirates; a cushy directorship is about the only hope he's got of avoiding the dole or having to wrestle tramps for the last half-bottle of lighter fluid - we've all got to make some kind of a living, right? Quite so, but it was a sickening display nonetheless - particularly in the light of the Establisment's attitude towards the possibility of a strike by petrol tanker drivers the other week.
Self-righteous bellowing was much the order of the day then, as I recall: people were being "tough" and "strong" all over the shop; they pulled out all the old clichés about strikers being "irresponsible", "politically-motivated", and - my personal favourite - "holding the country to ransom" - and, in short, mirrored the consensus views of a nation brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, Margaret Thatcher, and years of repeats of "Carry On At Your Convenience". Only a cad, bounder, or Communist, it seems, would even dream of striking - or supporting a striker, if the Cable-like reticence on the subject apparent in the big wet eyes of Ed Milliband and his acolytes is anything to go by. Matters of pay, conditions, or health and safety should be resolved by Management or Think Tanks: such concerns are above and beyond the understanding or the remit of Union leaders (or - heaven forfend - of Union members) who should stick to organising the Works' Outings or the Darts League, and sorting out the whip-round for a "Get Well" card now and then. The trouble with Unions, conventional thinking tells us, is that they're greedy and shiftless.
Whatever happens, their revolting cupidity should never be appeased: they should tighten their belts, achieve a Zen-like indifference to shabby material concerns, and be grateful to be working at all in these harsh times. They certainly shouldn't be looking for anything resembling a hand-out or a free ride - and they certainlyshouldn't inconvenience a bunch of fat-assed car-dependent come-holes who may well drop dead if they had to walk a couple of hundred yards without the snug, smug, protection of their 4x4 chromed cocks. The old Christian Work Ethic, in other words: remember your Duty to others around you - especially the ones at the top. There's no talk of "incentivising" the average worker - yet it's the primary concern when it comes to the bankers. Reducing their pay or bonuses is an idea bordering on heresy in some quarters: if some Spam-faced posho isn't offered the combined GNP of every Central African country each year, we're told, they simply won't want to know; they'll bugger off to America or some other Land of Opportunity - and then we'll have to deal with a society and an economy bereft of the kind of fiscal visionaries whose sound decisions and rigid moral code led to the bailouts, credit crunches, and double dips that have made Great Britain what it is today. Now that's holding the country to ransom, I'd say. The only difference is that banking chiefs don't strike - and here's why:
(i) They're gentlemen - even the lady ones.
(ii) Strikes call for picturesqueness: there's something affecting about people in donkey jackets, workboots, and pinched, desperate faces when lit up by a brazier. People in thousand guinea suits forming a picket line and waiting for Nigel to get back from Cafe Nero with the pastries would look fucking idiotic.
(iii) They secretly know that if they did strike, the rest of us would know how truly worthless they are. Crops would grow and be harvested regardless, coal and metal ore would be mined and processed as usual; doctors would cure people, and painters and decorators would gloss skirting boards up and down the land unhindered. The only difference if the Bankers weren't at the switch is that there would be nobody at the end of the day to say that all of the activity described above was rendered worthless because some avaricious shithouse in Sri Lanka was having a bad day on the Markets and had to sell off a couple of sweatshops - or something like that, anyway.
So there you have it: some are entitled to "incentives"; some are not. I'm sorry I couldn't dress it up for you any fancier than that, but I'm really not in the mood.
