QotM

[realthog]

I feel almost embarrassed to be posting this, seeing as how I've barely been on LJ these past few days (been working my bal . . . er, working hammer and tongs on Bogus Science), but it was irrestistable. Here's Britain's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith speaking on Sky News today about the latest crime to rock the British political Establishment:

I don't think in a democracy where people are able to speak up that anybody should chuck custard at anybody in the street. It's not appropriate.

Hats off to environmentalist Leila Deen, who apparently targeted Business Minister Lord Mandelson with green custard.

Green custard, green slime. Hard to tell 'em apart, really. I'm going to have to change my icon . . .

Comments

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

It's custard! What's not to like?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Peter Mandelson, just for starters.

(Er. Didn't mean the "starters" pun.)

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

yes you will!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I just can't get the custard to stay still for the photograph . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Frankly, given Lord Mandelson's celebrated confusion of guacamole and mushy peas (okay, okay, I know John Prescott made that up), I thought green custard was reasonably apposite.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Guacamole? Somewhere in the Middle East, isn't it?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Now you're confusing Mandelson and Blair.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Now you're confusing Mandelson and Blair."

Easy enough to do, I'm sure you'll agree.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose so.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this, re Britain's police preparing for a "Summer of Rage"?

[ High-ranking British police officers have expressed concern that the country may be facing an outburst of street protests. Superintendent David Hartshorn, head of the Metropolitan police's public order branch, and one of the highest ranking police officers in the country, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, spoke of the possibility of riots like those that rocked the country in the 1980s, erupting later this year as people who lose their jobs, homes or savings become "footsoldiers" in a wave of violent mass protests. ]

[ The police are concerned that “viable targets” are the banks and the headquarters of multinational companies and finance houses, all seen by the public at large as mainly responsible for the present crisis.

The tops of the police also learn from what happens in other countries. The eruption of massive youth protests in Greece in December has not been lost on these people. They realise that what was behind the movement in Greece were the social conditions that have been created over decades, of extreme flexibilisation, casualisation of labour, low wages for the youth, and a general feeling of being in a dead end – the same conditions that afflict the youth in this country.

They have noted the sharp turn in events in a country like Iceland, which only one year ago was being described by the same Guardian newspaper as the best place to live in the world. Here the financial crisis has led to mass mobilisations and violent clashes on the streets. They have noted the big protests in France, the strikes in Italy, the recent huge demonstration in Ireland and the growing wave of worker militancy there. And most recently of course we have had the Lindsey dispute and a spate of similar strikes, strikes which have revealed a very high level of militancy of the British workers.

What happened at Lindsey has sent a clear signal to workers in other industries: militancy pays! In some cases what we are seeing is not a passive, defeatist attitude of workers faced with redundancy. On the contrary we are seeing workers balloting for strike action, as is the case on the railways, in the post office, in car plants such as BMW at Cowley. Even the Prison Officers are preparing for strike action! ]

This was written by a Marxist, of course. The full piece was linked to here.

This could make green custard appear a welcome option.

Love, c.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are mass protests all over Europe this summer. And to be honest, if only the violence could be kept out of them, it's very healthy that this should be so: ordinary working people see that they've been shafted by a system of government and do something, however futile that might prove, to register their dissent. It has ever surprised me in this country over the past decade the extent to which people have just sat back and wearily tolerated, as if inevitable, the loss of their freedoms and erosion of their welfare. Rioting is far from an ideal way to fight back against this sort of crap -- and against the arrogance, incompetence and intrusiveness of oppressive governments like the Bush Administration -- but it's at least something to remind supposedly democratic legislators that they're elected to be servants, not masters.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

[ "It has ever surprised me in this country over the past decade the extent to which people have just sat back and wearily tolerated, as if inevitable, the loss of their freedoms and erosion of their welfare." ]

Not so surprising when they've bombarded 24/7 with hate radio and television telling them they are the good guys and only the bad guys who are not them are affected and SHOULD BE. When they hear the same from the bully pulpits churchwing of the massive rightwing propaganda machine. When they have been narcotized with supersize everything. When they live in state of constant roiling anxiety that they will lose the jobs that pay for the supersize lifestyle and the credit cards they financed it on via the propaganda wing of the creditcard companies television and billboard bombardment. When the propaganda machine feeds them bread&circuses of teh stupid and violent 24/7, between the bouts of hate. Etc.

I always said that television is the most destructive drug ever devised. Now we see it come home to roost. Long ago it seemed to me the national culture of this nation was bankrupt, stripped down to teh stupid and the cruel. And now that's what we have: teh stupid, the cruel and the corrupt.

It's raining and dreary, and I hurt like a mofo, and so I'm kinda negative this A.M. Hopefully I'll be more hopeful again by this afternoon.

Love, C.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

It was actually quite funny. He got out of his car, she walked up to him and said a few words, then she threw this big paper cup of green stuff in his face. Then he went inside and an aide told her to `move away,' or something like that, so she just wandered off. All very low-key and English, nothing like the Prescott egg-incident.
He did make a guacamole gag later.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"He did make a guacamole gag later."

He's Mandelson. He makes lots of guacamoles gag.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

"I don't care if you're the director's only wife"?

[elfie-harly.livejournal.com]

Environmentalism, was it? Then I feel somewhat cheated: I'd assumed Ms Deen did it purely because it was Peter Mandelson...