Clearing out Fail Farm

The biggest news on the lips of the nation: Dale Farm "travellers" have been evicted! The last time an eviction was this big in the news, Big Brother was still popular and relevant (A far cry from our modern times). Yes, the travelling folk who meticulous set up full-time homes that weren't going anywhere (It's good to know I can randomly ascribe myself qualities I don't possess if they're in my heritage at some stage. On that basis, I'm a God-fearing war-mongerer, and probably addicted to opiates too. My relatives were surely alive in 19th century Britain), have been evicted from their illegally occupied land. This is just a warm-up for Britain's police force, as we plan to evict Israel from their slightly illegally occupied territories too. Consider it a pre-season friendly for the force, get to work together again, competitive fixture with no risk of failure. It couldn't go wrong. The residents soon staged a mass walk-out in protest at being made to, uh, walk out, in a bizarre twist. They've been there 10 years and sort of walked out after the police stormed the place going "If you wanted us out, you only had to ask! Tsk. We don't want to make trouble. You silly people.".

Sticking with surprising evictions having an inevitable conclusion, Libya's ex-leader Gaddafi is now dead. France said "It's an end to 40 years of tyranny" conveniently forgetting to add "Which we just stood by and watched for decades because Gaddafi was a politically expedient leader, despite his close ties with terrorism.". Britain's PM, Cameron said "I think today is a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi's victims" carefully not adding "Which we as a nation forgot when Tony Blair was the first major world leader to endorse him, and hung out with him, signing neato oil deals.". Of course, like all good tyrants (To take Alain Juppe's use of "Tyranny") we, that is to say, Britain and France, supplied him with weapons deals for decades. What Cameron meant to say was "This is a day for conveniently forgetting our roles in the rise and maintenance of Gaddafi, and instead remembering that we helped bring him down! Can we help the National Transitional Council, perhaps by selling you arms or buying oil?". Of course, this death was inevitable, like the sun coming up, or Britain exporting arms to people who eventually use them on their own citizens. There would have been no sense of conclusion without it, and there's nothing worse than an unfinished civil war. Of course, we're totally helping out nations under tyranny. So we're solving North Korea, right guys? No? Well, Zimbabwe? No? We must be too busy with Iran then? No? But only because we're stopping off and sorting out Syria first, right? No? Huh. I guess we're nothing better than despicable hypocrites who make politically expedient moves and claim we did it because it was "right", whilst letting the world do what is pretty obviously wrong right in front of our faces. Brilliant.

Side note: I don't want to suggest I'm bad at picking a fantasy team, but when I picked my fantasy dictator team, I went for experienced, old hands who would rake in the points, and then Mubarak goes and retires, ruining my strike force, and from nowhere, Gaddafi's out for the rest of the season with a niggling death wound he picked up in a pre-season friendly against his own citizens. Not to mention the surprise move by Ben Ali. I'm pinning my hopes on Bashar al-Assad (Captain) and Ahmadinejad (Vice-captain).

In other news, people in America and Britain have gathered in order to protest.. uh, stuff. In general. Some of the stuff they're complaining about includes fiscally irresponsible behaviour by banks, which were let off the hook from both regulation and having to be responsible for their own failures. Also complaining about the corporate influence in modern politics (For £50,000, you can spend the night with David Cameron, and talk to him. It's easy to make the lewd comparisons to him being a high-class prostitute, obviously, but I'm better than that. I'm sure campaign donations to large political leaders in America is equally shady, possibly even more so thanks to corporations being people, and political donations being free speech, bizarrely), which seems reasonable enough to me. "We'll give you, the man who is supposed to be impartially deciding the rules of the nation, loads of money in exchange for time spent telling you what we would simply love it if you did. We may do this fairly frequently if it gets results." has the ring of untrustworthiness to it. Far be it from me to suggest giving politicians thousands of pounds would influence their decision-making, I'm merely saying it MIGHT. Protests thus far have been met in New York with the tiniest smidge of police brutality, and widespread condemnation at the fact that these people "Look funny" and "Don't have a cohesive message", despite the fact that the majority of Americans agree with the general thrust of the message which is "The American Dream is dead, and American Politics killed it". "Work hard, do your bit, and one day you could have YOUR retirement plan generously donated to global banks because of their shortcomings!" seems to be the gist of their social security system just now.


There's been a Greek general strike. Obvious jokes at the ready: "How did anyone notice?" and "What did they do differently?" and "Didn't that start around 440 BC with the release of Histories by Herodotus?". This is in protest at the aggressive austerity measures enforced in the face of their somewhat laid-back lifestyle (Retirement age of 61, the minor issue of not really paying the taxes they owe, etc). I sincerely doubt the strikes will cause Greece to go "Fine, let's go bankrupt! THAT'S a good idea! Jeez. For the country that invented democracy, we're not very good at it.". The Greek finance minister must be spending his days alternately hiding beneath his desk and telling his secretary to clear his appointments, and weeping in a therapist's office, saying "It all started when I was a boy, and I bought toys with money I didn't really have, on credit! You're right!".

That's enough news. We're done here.