People I will not torture, in spite of really wanting to (along with the things I won’t allow myself to do to them – probably)
“Kicking Against the Pricks” says it all really.
I suspect that it’s not often that Nick Cave, The Bad Seeds, and The Acts of The Apostles, come together to share a single phrase, but it is helpful in that it offers so many interpretations.
There are many in public life that I simply cannot imagine having any Damascene moment without it being forced upon them. So, this list is underpinned by the sort of experiences that I imagine might prompt some sense of self-revelation for those involved, as well as levelling the balance and bringing (admittedly spiteful) joy to many!
“People I will not torture in spite of really wanting to” is the third list of things that form part of my Duck-It list.
The whole Duck-It list idea is given in another of my blogs named “Get One Over on The Grim Reaper”.
By their very nature, this list represents things that are all virgin activities because they have never been done by anyone, let alone by me. However, for the first time, they are things where I have mixed feelings about even wishing to avoid them for the rest of my days.
So, without further ado, let’s get stuck in, but before I start, I must apologise for the UK-centric nature of my targets here. They are my targets after all, and I’m sure that the ingenuity of my international followers will be up to the task of any transpositions required.
Predictably, my first targets here are politicians.
Firstly, all those of the “I’m all right Jack” variety
The idea of visiting perpetual torment upon those who climb the greasy pole, who then go on to maltreat those less fortunate than themselves, consigning them to a life of suffering, squalor, hardship and poverty, is so attractive.
As the Festive Season approaches…
I am drawn to the Scrooge story – not that I have huge amounts of time for Dickens, but I fondly remember Alastair Sim’s definitive rendition of the role in the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol.
These gruesome greasy-pole-climbing, Cratchet-crushers deserve the bleakest of days that the Ghost of Christmas Future can bring them. Maybe this coming Yuletide will deliver the goods? Perhaps they could face a Christmas with no food on the table and nothing in their usually overstuffed stockings. Maybe the Pandemic will combine with BREXIT to ease the strain on their normally groaning tables?
So, what do they deserve?
Well, to my mind, nothing is too good for these folk.
I fondly remember a Sci-Fi short story I read many years ago where the main character managed to con the high-tech Devil into extending his life forever. However, the Devil predictably had the last laugh. The story ended with the guy almost drowning, then almost dying from poisoning, then a heart attack, then smoke inhalation, then burning, and so on.
The story cut to the Devil’s technician splicing together pieces of tape featuring random people’s endings having removed the final few crucial seconds from each piece. A kind of not drowning but wavering. Not exactly eternal peace, ever. I could do that!
The whole of the present Government – Give them new Estates
Strip them of their wealth and income and create purpose-built multi-storey, housing estates (thrown up, on the cheap by their ex-cronies) and consign them to live under the policies that they impose on others. Initially provide them each with a minimum wage job that falls through within a couple of months; a Universal Credit application form; contact details for their local Citizens’ Advice Bureau, a local Food Bank and The Samaritans; a scratchy credit history; fewer bedrooms than they really need; some really dodgy external cladding on the building so that they can have something extra to worry about at night; and the added bonus of mould in their flats to go with a broken lift (elevator).
Any “Friends, Relatives, Allies or Fellow Travellers” that support them in any way, would be required to move in to the same estate, under the same conditions, as an act of class solidarity.
The Opposition parties – Political Asylum
Consign them to a mental institution where they had to share one common space, twenty-four hours a day and suffer the interminable pointless rancour that they exhibit for each other. Any that showed signs of reason should be put into straight- jackets and isolated for a week before being put before a parole board where their possible release back into the community could be considered.
For Boris Johnson and his closest cronies in particular
His own reality programme “I’m a dirtbag, let me out of here” © All rights reserved
This would involve incarcerating them all in a room with a perpetual film show depicting their greatest moments. They would be “encouraged” to watch communal showings (in full public view) of their most ridiculous pronouncements and the predictable outcomes; their most outrageous lies and the resulting failures; their most pathetic interviews; their most ridiculous cover-ups and tragedies that ensued; their most corrupt decisions and the resulting hardships; all in the hope of later being able to privately justify their positions to the public, thereby scoring enough points to eventually leave the room at the expense of their colleagues.
It would require a rolling pageant of their lies, deceits, evil doings, blustering buffoonery, general inadequacy, examples of their inability to hold any detail in their feeble minds, a list of the costs of their follies, cover-ups, and broken promises; in short, the highlights of their appalling careers!
Their individual reactions to this and attempts to justify their personal positions would be live telecast on a dedicated channel for the consideration and delectation of the general public. Once they had all been broadcast, their excuses and attempts to blame their colleagues would be shared with the others in the room so that the public could see how politics really works.
The public could then vote, weekly, on who they wanted to leave the room and who they wanted to stay to suffer more torment and humiliation.
Now, I know that this runs contrary to my earlier Duck-It list on things I would not watch but, bugger me, if this one ever came to pass, I’d be there in the front row.
Well, that’s probably it for politicians for the moment, so who else can I put on the wrack?
I’ve decided to exclude “straightforward” criminals, vile and evil though many of them are, mainly because it is too difficult to imagine appropriate responses to some of the things they do.
However, I cannot let the spineless ones escape scot-free.
Let’s hear it for the principals of the major religions!
Those that see and hear of outrages being carried out in their name but choose not to call them out, not even to notice, by adopting the Arsene Wenger approach of never, ever, noticing any misdemeanour by one of his players. Or by deflection – the kind of “Nothing to see here, look over there” approach.
They may hide behind religious fundamentals, bluster, faux naivety, plausible deniability, or whatever device springs to mind, but in essence they are as corrupt and as guilty as those that they protect.
Maybe they could have their own community to live in where they could preach and pretend to each other without ever listening to a word anyone else says – or is that where some of them live already?
and, while we are at it,
How about those Press, TV and Radio correspondents and pundits who always toe the line?
They used to be journalists, but too many have sunk into the abyss of frightened government apologists.
These propagandist wet blankets, too scared to say Boo! to a goose-stepping government spokesperson, deserve special attention. There are too many to name, but they know who they are. They trot out half-truths as though they are facts, they cede editorial control to someone else, so they cannot be blamed for fudging the issue, they allow or even encourage deliberate distortions to be published or broadcast under their names. These are the very foundations of a corrupt state.
So, what to do with the buggers?
I’d be inclined to treat them all to a winter week outside in a Victorian cold frame, draped in a wet blanket, with their feet of clay firmly rooted in bullshit, mulched with shredded truth and a tissue of lies, in the forlorn hope that some of them might develop to grow a backbone.
Last but by no means least,
The Royal Family
As far as I’m concerned, this bunch demonstrated their worth to The Nation when the Queen rolled over after being comprehensively lied to and played by Johnson and his corrupt cronies over the BREXIT shambles. Up until that point, I was just about prepared to accept that there could be some value in a constitutional monarchy, but this shower of Wet Windsors have since gone from strength to strength demonstrating that they live in a fantasy world.
When it comes to driving on public roads when completely incapable; of hanging out with very dodgy people at “just an ordinary shooting party”; of not telling the nation that they were COVID-positive for fear of worrying us all; of scuttling up to a second home (Birkhall of all places) when the rest of us are being told to stay put; they really take the good old Bath Oliver.
I suggest that we take a kind view of them in view of their years of opulent self-interest and consign them to the dustbin of self-sufficiency. Let them keep the wealth that they have wrenched from the nation, and indeed the world, but give them not a penny more. No more tax breaks, no more skirting around the law, no more royal lists, no more grace and favour nonsense. They have enormous wealth, and they need to learn to live within their means rather than ours.
To summarise:
- Almost any politicians
- I’m Alright Jack
- The whole of the present government
- The Opposition Parties
- Johnson and his Corrupt Cronies
- Major Religious Leaders – personified by two of the three wise monkeys
- Mizaru, who sees no evil, covering his eyes;
- Kikazaru, who hears no evil, covering his ears;
Iwazaru, who speaks no evil, would make a pleasant change though
3. Those spineless members of The Fourth Estate who walk the walk and talk the talk as set by their Masters’ Voice.
4. Financing the whole Royal Shebang!
MESSAGE FROM THE GOVERNMENT:
Here Comes our Umpteenth Partial Lockdown
So, remember
Mickey take and more 