Not the Hootsmon Headlines, the Herald ones

         Just how many headbangers and nutters were hurt though?

Vote Britain.

I thought this needed another airing, thanks to the events of yesterday. Alan Bisset compresses the next two years of  British media headlines into five minutes and twenty-six seconds.

The Triumph of capital.

Remind you of anyone?

A nice traditional Christmas

"The Duke of Cambridge broke with tradition by spending Christmas at his wife’s family home in Bucklebury, Berkshire. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended a service in nearby Englefield church with their children George and Charlotte."

Did he? Good for him.

Breaking with tradition that is. 

Perhaps he will stop taking his traditional money from the taxes raised from millions of people who can't afford it.

Nah.

Merry Christmas parasite. Think about wee George. Think about bairns his age who are cold, wet and hungry.

Right now.

I know your father has a flunky to put toothpaste on his brush. Do you?

So long Canadian

For Sue, wherever you are now. It was PG Tips and Jaffa Cakes, but that was close enough.

2016 really will go down as an annus horribilis won't it?

Fallon fails

October 2016

National Poetry Day is on us, as is the end of the Tory conference. I'm reminded how British arrogance and intransigence worked out last time, one hundred years ago.

I

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

II

That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When, young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our winged horse;

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near to my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

III

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute they change;

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,

And a horse plashes within it;

The long-legged moor-hens dive,

And hens to moor-cocks call;

Minute by minute they live:

The stone's in the midst of it all.

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

IV

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part

To murmer name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse--

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.