This week’s Podcast from retired travel writer, blogger and commentator Jakethewriter talking of the scales falling from his eyes.
It will probably all come out in the wash
Could I have become a cynic in my old age? Or could it be that I have a very long memory? Someone once said, it’s not when politician’s lips are moving that they are lying, it’s when they are breathing. I can remember when I believed the politicians and the British media when they told me that the murderous Jomo Kenyatta and his Kikuyu tribesmen ate babies. Then he became Kenya’s first Prime Minister and then it’s President. The politicians described him as Kenya’s Founding Father and World Statesman. I will only mention Nelson Mandela in passing.
My parents both came from the North East and lived through the Depression. My mother was from a mining village in County Durham. They were both tribal Socialists, they could see no wrong in anything that was uttered by a Labour Politician. I used to joke that if a monkey put up for parliament and wore a Labour rosette they would vote for him. Unless it stood in Hartlepool, where I’m told they hang monkeys.
I had a very different upbringing in the Home Counties, educated in a Grammar School and then a bursary to a Public School, all thanks to my parents, which I did by questioning their politics. I have voted Tory in every election since I was old enough.
I listened to David Cameron, who I had voted for and quite liked, a man who just six months ago said that if he didn’t get the substantial reforms that he wanted. He would personally lead the Leave Campaign to leave the European Union. Instead he’s now trying to bully and frighten the people of Great Britain into staying in a rotting, unreformed, anti-democratic super state. What he should have been doing was saying ‘Sorry folks, I did my best but they wouldn’t listen. It’s time to go.
That would have assured him of leaving an honourable legacy. Instead he is coming out with such unbelievable rubbish with his ‘Project Fear’ while he tries to scare us into following him into the corrupt cesspit that is Brussels. Thus condemning our country into decades of rule by arrogant, unaccountable foreign politicians and judges. This ex-Tory says “Not ruddy likely.
You see I once believed the media and the politicians when they told me about those Greek Murderers from EOKA, General Georgios Grivas and his sidekick Archbishop Makarios III in Cyprus. Then with the declaration of Cyprus as an Independent State: Grivas received a hero’s welcome as the liberator of Cyprus and was subsequently decorated with the highest honours by the Greek Parliament and Makarios went from Pious Archbishop to villainous ENOSIS leader and after being deported into exile returned to become president of a new, independent Greek-Turkish Cyprus, retaining British military and naval bases and being feted by both our government and our Queen.
I believed the media and our politicians when they told me about that dreadful man Ian Smith and his racist policies in Rhodesia with his UDI, and the saviour Robert Gabriel Mugabe KCB who changed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe. We all know what history will tell us about that.
I wasn’t quite so gullible when the media and our politicians told me of the atrocities of Northern Ireland. Dependent on whether my loyalties were Green or Orange one could make your mind up whether Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams were worse or better than Ian Paisley and Johnny Mad Dog Adair. Being Green had a different meaning then.
Then it was First Minister Paisley, Peacemaker Gerry Adams and the Minister for Education, Mr Martin McGuiness; Gerry Adams is on the Presidential Christmas Card list.
You see I can remember my Grandfather telling me about the atrocities of the Black and Tans and when “The Troubles” were at their height so I told my children to wait and see, it will be “World Statesman” McGuiness and even “President “Adams before we know where we are, I can now say “I told you so”.
Can you remember when those murdering scum “The Taliban” were called the “Tribal Elders” when they were killing Russians. I wonder if it will be in my lifetime that a world statesman called Saif al-Adel who was designated by Al Qaeda to replace Osama Bin Laden after his untimely demise, will be sitting around a table at the United Nations with that other man of peace Gerry Adams.
It does go around in the other direction too of course. Should we remember Blair kow-towing to General Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi or President Bashar al-Assad having an audience with the Queen and a later meeting with Prince Charles. Before telling Blair that there were no Palestinian terrorists in Syria, only a few “press officers”. One would have thought that an arch-fraud like Blair would have been able to spot a fellow Liar.
“To err is human, but it takes a politician to really screw things up.” Someone succinctly put it; Cameron has painted himself into a corner and is now trying to walk out over the paint, dragging the rest of us by the hair with him. I must say that his ever increasing scare stories sound nothing more to me than his desperation and I cannot believe that I once thought better of him.
Thanks for listening; I’ll speak to you next week.