Evening street scene

It had rained on and off for most of the day and there was a cool nip in the air. As afternoon turned into the shadows of evening, a few late stragglers from work hurriedly made their way home, leaving the wet streets for those brave and hardy enough to venture out for a night on the town.

Lights in the surrounding buildings were flicking on one by one, spilling out into the street like orange and yellow paint from an artist's dripping brush. They spoke of a cosy air of warmth inside, of people settling down for the evening after their day's labours, preparing to drift into a state of contented lethargy prior to sleep.

Night descended and the rain returned. The earlier home-bound workers were now replaced by party-goers, pub punters and the clubbing fraternity. For some the evening was just beginning, for others it was winding down. The rain grew stronger and a fresh wind began to blow through the darkened streets.

The Great British Summer

WELL, folks, here we are again, it's the height of summer and, surprise surprise, the weather here in Britain is SHIT... yet again. Overcast skies, rain, wind, even cold at times. Now and again the sun timidly manages to peek through a break in the cloud cover and send its heart-warming rays and heat down to us just to remind us that, yes, it is actually summer even though it's more like winter! But it's not long before the clouds gang up on it again and literally close ranks against it, forcing it to retreat.

BUT that's British summers for you. It ever was so and i suppose it ever will be. However, we now have a new factor to contend with. Global warming! And it seems that the more global warming we have, the colder it gets here in Blighty. God help us if global warming continues unchecked, because it seems we're set to cool down and eventually freeze up the hotter the world gets! Makes a lot of sense that, doesn't it?

NOW imagine if instead of global warming we had global cooling. On the analogy of global warming causing a countrywide cooling here, the corollary would be that global cooling would trigger a heatwave! Far-fetched? Well, maybe, and maybe not. But one thing's for sure... the worse that global warming gets, the worse our weather gets and specifically the cooler it gets, thus producing, as i have already said, SHIT summers.

THE bottom line is that the british weather never has made any sense and now it is making even less sense than it's made in the last few million years. For those who yearn for the sun, they must do as many thousands of other Brits have done before them... high-tail it to Southern Europe and join all the other ex-pats who already live there and are enjoying life in the sun. Cos, global warming or not, the weather isn't going to get any better here and, by the looks of it, is set to get a lot worse... ohhhh, Perfidious Albion!

Bankers Rule, ok?

BELOW is a picture of some typical bankers. Well, pig bankers at least, but you get the analogy. So what would you do if you got your hands on them? Throttle them? Hang them up by their toes? Lock them up in some deep dark dungeon and throw the key away. Have them flogged in a public square until they repented of their sins and converted to being decent human beings? Sentence them to 20 years' community service? They certainly deserve any one of these punishments. BUT of course in the real world most of them get off scott-free, keep their ill-gotten gains, continue with their opulent lifestyles and the trappings of wealth and hang on for better times round the corner when they can get into some other scam to cream off the wealth of the country and fleece the proverbial man-in-the-street.

BANKERS and financiers at all levels indulged in an orgy of unseemly and reckless profiteering from shady and questionable deals, not just the upper echelons. Lots and lots of them had their snouts in the trough of easy pickings, though now they have run for cover and exhibit wide-eyed innocence for those who are gullible enough to believe in them ever again.

THEIR deep-seated greed and avarice and overweening ambition to enrich themselves beyond all measure have brought the world to its economic knees, causing untold misery and hardship to millions of people all over the planet. And, make no mistake about it, unless the banking ethos were to be radically transformed and the bankers and their like were to be reined in, they would do it all over again, perhaps not in the same way, but certainly in some other equally morally questionable and financially unethical manner. Because the truth of the matter is that they just can't help themselves.

I wonder if there is anything in the fact that 'banker' and 'wanker' are such a perfect rhyme? Could they really be more wanker than banker or does it just seem that way? Or am I just being unkind to them? Perhaps they really have a heart of gold and it was all just a horrible mistake that tooks us all by surprise, including the bankers and all the other money-men. Perhaps they are really misunderstood as a species and deep down inside have a heart of gold just bursting with fellow feeling. Perhaps too they're worth all the billions of pounds we've given them to keep them afloat and in business even though they won't lend us a penny of it now to keep us in business! It's a funny old world, isn't it?

BELOW is another image of a banker, this time in recognisable human form but still up to his old tricks, as he prepares to give us the slip and run off with the takings. We never had that sort of trouble with the old bed mattress, did we? It may not have paid us interest but at least our hard-earned money was sure to be there the next day when we looked under it.

Armageddon

WELL here we are, it’s the year of our Lord 2009 and humanity is under attack on all sides from a host of evils and threats (spoilt for choice in fact), and richly deserves it too. I suppose I should really be writing this piece at the end or beginning of a year but there’s so much that is downright nasty going on at the moment that I could not resist taking stock of the situation now, be it ever so general and simplistic.

SO let's see how we've fared so far: If you've not been blown away by a terrorist bomb, flooded out due to global warming, swindled by dishonest politicians, cleaned out by greedy bankers, laid low by swine flu or whatever other disease may be doing the rounds, you can count yourself lucky. The down side is that terrorism still flourishes, global warming is set to intensify, dishonest politicians are not in short supply, greedy bankers are a way of life in today's capitalist economies, swine flu has not yet run its course and anyway other deadly maladies are queuing up to have a shot at us.

DESPITE all this, I hear you say that the title of this post, 'Armageddon', is perhaps a bit over the top. Well, it might be, but have you given serious thought to the possibility of all-out nuclear war, global flooding due to rising sea levels from the melting of the ice caps, a head-on strike on the Earth from some large cosmic body, and even a series of worldwide biblical plagues that decimate the human race and threaten it with extinction? 'Armageddon' may come from the hand of Man, Nature or God. Or maybe all three are one and the same anyway? But whichever it is, the result would be cataclysmic and long-lasting if not permanent. 

WITH all these calamities potentially in store for us, we might well wish to follow the example of the Epicureans who advocated that "we eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". Yes, you've recognised it, it's the familiar "carpe diem" ("seize the day") in a different guise, which is currently on everyone's lips, both Latin scholars and the unschooled. Pardon me though, because I thought that was what everyone's doing anyway: grabbing as much of the cake as they can eat and making off with as much of the goodies as they can carry and to hell with everything! Still, it always sounds better in Latin, doesn't it?

BETTER still, let's put all this doomwatch malarkey and eleventh-hour end-of-world talk to one side and get on with the business of buggering up the planet good and proper. Amen to that and pass the tranquillisers!