I am even more shocked to realise that half of the last year of the first decade of the 21st Century has gone and not much has happened, unless you include the entire country finding out what I already suspected about our elected representatives, Michael Jackson dying and a black man becoming the head of the most powerful country in the world. It's weird, yet good to hear the words "President Obama".
In the week that the former Liverpool hero Michael Owen signs for Manchester United, I appear to have done his soon-to-be striking partner, Mr. Rooney, a great disservice in one of my early posts on this blog. I had read somewhere that he had a fondness for the Orcs, but it appears that he favours my team, the mercurial Celtic FC. I apologise profusely. However, I do not apologise for implying that Christiano Ronaldo was/is a cheating rat. He is, and I claim my £5. Good riddance to him.
Living in Nedsville, like I do, I wonder why anyone would want to stage a parade and service to celebrate the first Armed Forces Day in this city. Thankfully, our Lord Provost, Mr. Robert Winter and the so-called Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, are not the best public speakers in Glasgow, never mind in the world, so I was not too disappointed to have their speeches drowned out by Strathclyde's finest in their whirlybird. However, I WAS disappointed that I could not go along and pay my respects to the men and women of our Armed Forces without having to put up with the scum that drags its knuckles along our filthy and pot-holed streets. On one side, you had a contingent of Plastic Paddies shouting some shite about Ireland and the IRA and, on the other, the fat, ugly, tattooed bastards who have hijacked the Union flag (itself not a symbol to be proud of) and who now wish to tarnish the Saltire, too (well, it is blue!). Perhaps an end to separate schools on religious grounds would help integration? Well, those with even an ounce of intelligence already know the difference between right and wrong. If you're going to be a Ned, you'd not be going to school, anyway, no matter what denomination it was, or wasn't. Education is an answer, one answer, but a bullet through the head would be a better solution.
How many so-called Irish republicans in that, or any other similar mob, have ever lived in Ireland or are Irish by birth or by parentage, or have even gone there on their holidays? Not many, I would suspect. How many of them realise or even care that there are still people today who come to the UK to serve in our Armed Forces? Not many, I would suspect. How many of those who can claim a direct link with Ireland come from the "North" or the "South"? I couldn't begin to guess, but those who come from the 6 counties are actually part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Their ancestors, like mine, would have come from the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland. OK, so the "South" is now, and has been for a long time, a separate country, and a republic, and so has no legal ties with the UK. Perhaps the "Famine Song" (more later) should have a wee change of lyrics: "If Ireland is so great, why don't you fuck off and live there?".
Over on the other side of the street, those who refer to their opponents as the "manky mob" or as "Celtic supporters" stand with their beer bellies hanging over their shellsuit bottoms, waving a flag that is far from revered throughout the world by people of all races and religions, flaunt their "we arra peepil" tattoos, their Hun strips and their Orange Lodge polo shirts and, no doubt, swap stories of the night they tried to destroy Manchester. Meanwhile, in the middle, there are some polis and a few dugs. How many on that side of the divide realise or care that service personnel who have given, and still give, their lives for this country are not just White Anglo-Saxon Protestants? How many of them know that Protestants in Ireland who were not in the Established Church (i.e. Anglican) were discriminated against in the same way as Catholics in the time of Good Queen Bess and her successors? None, I'd wager. What does all this have to do with showing respect for, and pride in, men and women who would lay down their lives so that others may live in peace? What would Jesus do?
Donald Finlay QC doesn't understand why the "Famine Song" is racist. I suppose it's less politically-incorrect than a gollywog on a marmalade jar, but the reason some legal person decided it was racist was simply that Scotland's Shame have no sense of humour, and probably think irony is the name for the crime committed when someone batters someone else with an iron. How many of those neanderthals know that the Irish potato famine didn't just affect Catholics in what is now the "South", but affected Catholics and Protestants in all areas where the crop was grown? Only the in-bred oiks of the aristocracy who owned the land were unaffected. OK, that's not true. They were mildly inconvenienced when their slaves went in search of a new life elsewhere. It's about time the scum on both sides were eradicated, or sent to some godforsaken island somewhere (er, Ireland?) so that our streets, and our football grounds, can be made clean for all to enjoy.
Finally, you have to laugh at a Labour minister telling the assembled throng to be proud of our Forces. This man is the member of a party that took this country into an illegal and immoral war on a lie, and took us into another one at the behest of an idiot and his dangerous friends; a party that has sent those men and women into battle without the proper equipment or backup; a party that has closed military hospitals and seems happy enough to allow sick and injured veterans to sleep on the streets because they can't get a job or the benefits and housing they are entitled to. Sadly, Britain wasn't a land fit for heroes when men came back from what is now Iraq 90 years ago, and it still isn't.
OK, rant over, for now. It's July and what is the abiding image from this last 6 months? Well, it's got to be this:
Build a little duck house in your soul.
