THE BRITISH THREAD II

Have you never experienced the astonishment of how often you are astonished. Each astonishing happening seems to me to distract people's attention from how often astonishing events occur.

It's deceptive of course. Astonishing events are probably lower in frequency than they have ever been in history but television, and media generally, by bringing the remote and unusual into the individual living space, has distorted perceptions to such an extent that millions of people whose daily lives are totally devoid of anything astonishing are astonished at an alarmingly increasing rate.

I was astonished myself just now, not enough to go to the bottom of the stairs mind you, that Kirsty Walk was so expert on the housing of families who had failed to pay their rent, events on the borders of Turkey and Syria and the wider implications thereof, the Spanish bailout and Catalan independence, the tax fiddling of BBC employees and the west coast high speed rail link. In 50 minutes.

Tomorrow night it will be something/s completely different. All astonishing.

I'll tell you what's astonishing me. How could the Tories and their mandarins make such a big cock-up of the rail franchises process? For something so important as the future running of the railways?

The words "farce" and "fiasco" are being freely used to describe this, but I think it's a crime.
MoD procurement apparently can't properly account for £34 billion overspend, and now this.

These people are well paid, and get huge bonuses.

They're Tories, they think they're born to rule. Hubris my old mate.

They are too izzy. They do stuff at posh schools that the rest of us have no idea about.

Boris's speech today. Eagerly anticipated by many, though not I daresay by PM Cameron.

What an interesting situation. The whole Tory party gagging to be shagged by the Mayor. And he's not even an MP.

Sorry if that was a bit indelicate.

The idea of Johnson becoming PM is enough to loosen the joints of the loins and have the knees smiting one against the other.

In the London mayoral campaign, the Ken Livingston support had a slogan "Don't Vote For A Joke".

It availed them nothing, as we know, he got in, and has made a Tory success of it. He has no real rival, as far as I know.

So he COULD do it again.

It doesn't matter Mac. We have had the best the world has to offer.

Even the IMF has just announced that they got it all wrong.

They're are fucked. Thank your lucky stars you are not 12.

True dat.

Or I could be Greek. Or French.

Cook was feeling one degree under yesterday, so I went out to the supermarket (among my other tasks) and bought us a roasted chicken and some salad for our tea.

If there is any better food than roast chicken, I've yet to taste it.

You must have been very hungry Mac.

Brilliant news about Gary McKinnon. It was a long time coming, and all this time he could have been working for MI5, what a waste.

Who's he? I've never heard of him. Has he won the lottery jackpot?

Try watching the news today.

Poland 0 England 0
Not a bad result

It was the ideal opportunity to bring on a sub.

I like that.

It's an old gag, but I'm not likely to have the chance to use it again for a while.

I went out today and bought myself a pair of sheepskin slippers.

Toasty.



I see that nice Mr Mitchell is stepping down. The long arm of the law, eh?

His real offence Mac, and you should take note, is to get himself disgraced without the help of females or the lure of quantities of money. We all understand those sort of things to a greater or lesser extent.

That is real disgrace. Purified.

If Rebecca causes any falls from mountain peaks there are few of us who could repress saying, or at least thinking "there but for the Grace of God etc".