As miserable weather continues with more miserable weather, the crop from the garden is poor this year. Polytunnel is miles behind last year and even the potatoes outside have been poor. If we had to survive on what we grow we would have had to put in a lot more effort than we did this year. Growing organically, it is hard to keep ahead of weeds, pests and fungi but at least we get to see the animals and insects thrive. Or do we. There have been a lot less butterflies, hoverfly’s, bees, wasps and generally most insects this year, even though I know they are somewhere as out bird and bat population here seem to be fine. The empty snail shell around the Thrush anvil is proof to that. However, we are a small hotspot in an area of farmlands and gardens that poison everything and anything in sight, and the residues wash down to us, killing plants and wildlife in no small quantities. These poisons are readily available in all supermarkets and garden shops and it’s time to ban them all. Oh, and whilst we are at banning stuff, can we also ban plastic grass. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to cover acres of gardens in a plastic carpet which degrades and ends up as micro particles in the rivers and oceans should be taken out and tarred and feathered. I bet it was someone linked to the oil industry, ‘what other shit can we make from the oil, oh I know, plastic grass!’
So instead of intensive gardening I have been working in the studio, trying to bring on a painting I started about seven years ago, part of the Sixth Extinction Series, a painting which involves a lot of animals and a few figures, including a child. We used our grandchild for the figure and there is an old saying, never work with children or animals, for good reason. Trying to pose a cute granddaughter and not make it look cute chocolate box is almost impossible, but the weight of the rest of the painting which includes a hanging scene should temper the cute bit. Now if the animals and Gaia (metaphor only, no teleological link) decided to hang a few humans for destroying the planet then you would think there would be quite a list of possibilities to step up to the scaffold (or in this case to be lifted up off the ground by a snake). The list is endless and getting longer by the day, but I finally decided on one of the most evil men I could think of but you will have to guess whom until the painting is finished. I will give you a clue, he has probably financed more global warming and ecological collapse denial and obfuscation groups and think tanks than any other man on the planet, and yet most people have never heard of him. And no, he isn’t, as far as I know, building a spaceship.
So, apparently the Olympics are going on, more bread and circuses to distract the gullible whilst the world burns. I was so uninterested I did some synchronised strimming over the weekend to tidy up the meadow. I feel sorry for the athletes as a severe lack of crowds and the risks of catching the virus are high and it seems to have affected the performances of some, and, like the football did, brought out the racist hoards to mock and abuse black athletes. I have watched Simone Biles’s floor routine in slow motion, and it is incredible, she seems to defy gravity and the laws of physics at the end. No wonder a bout of the ‘twisty’s’ is so hard on her. Without total focus and spacial awareness, it would have been downright dangerous for her to attempt it. She’ll get another chance.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, our politicians and journalists are carrying on as normal. The politicians ramp up the fraud, corruption and downright theft and the media cover up the lies by omission, disinformation and untruths to keep their cosy positions and access all areas. It stinks. Using burner phones is all the rage apparently so as to hand contracts to their pals whilst being untraceable and hands off. There are no depths to which this government will stoop as they know they will get away with it and the press pack will move on by the next morning, the public will shrug their shoulders and the next deal can be lined up by Friday. New laws are being rushed through Parliament to give protesters ten years in the jug for protesting, fourteen years in prison for journalists who embarrass the State and actually do their fecking job, bringing out the truth. Holding power to account. We have a bill on the statute book which allows police to secretly abduct, torture, rape and murder political dissidents. This isn’t Belarus we are talking about, or even America, this in Britain in 2021. We have Assange being held as a political prisoner in Belmarsh for bringing war crimes to light. This week Craig Murray was sent down for eight months for reporting a trial. A trial where the alleged perpetrator was found not guilty. The State will brook no dissent. You have been warned. Protesters who protested against the crime bill have just been jailed for three years for protesting the Bill. We have slide very far down the slippery slope.
Last year we had ‘eat out to die out’ but it seems this year, as Brexit hits home, we will have ‘eat nowt as the shops and restaurants are empty!’ The Chimps got their Brexit ‘Done’, but they can’t have the tea party as there is absolutely f—k all to put on the table. The big lie of glorious Britain is being cruelly exposed, and it will be interesting to see how the experiment progresses as the shops and supply chains start to crumble and the food is rotting in the fields because we don’t have any lorry drivers. Will people wake up? Most will be whinging about the weather and wondering if they can party or top up their tan, whilst the nurses and health staff are once again fighting to deal with trauma in ICU’s, as the Tories utterly fail once again to deal with this crisis. 257 deaths in the last 48 hours. Hundreds of thousand with long covid. What will it take for the British to reach a tipping point and realise they are being shafted by his bunch of Eton inbreeds? Whilst the Zombie Apocalypse rages, the world burns and the supply chains dissolve, our glorious leader is suggesting hi-viz chain gangs for prisoners and teaching Latin in all schools. I can imagine a chain gang of artists and intellectuals, dissidents of all types, led by Craig Murray, digging for chicken nuggets in the wastelands of Chipping Norton, singing old negro slave songs and asking for a break, ‘wiping off here bass, wiping off!’ Or in Latin, ‘accipies confractus’ (apologies for my Latin, it’s a bit rusty, just like my pitchfork).
Meanwhile Farage has declared war on the RNLA for saving migrants in the channel. Apparently, it would be better for them to drown than for the RNLI to be a’ taxi service by taking them to shore.’ Known locally as the C-nt in Kent, Farage seems to have endless time to get out to sea in a boat and fetishize sinking dinghies and their desperate occupants like some old twat watching a snuff movie. Who pays for all this propaganda and hate? He seems to be doing very well out of it all, although the fishermen and farmers he spent a decade ’defending’ seem to have been dropped in the doo-doo. Never mentions them now. Brexit is so yesterday.
Sir Rodney Woodentop has said he is about to relaunch his leadership campaign in the autumn, for the umpteenth time, and is desperately scrambling around for ideas, whilst inviting rich Corporate funders to come up with some cash to help him think. Having squandered the £27 Million Corbyn left as funds, and purged any real socialist and non-Zionist Jews from the Party, he has to resort to the begging bowl. To oil the corporate wheels, he is to model his version of Nu Nu Labour on Nu Labour and rehabilitate Blair’s ideas as a starting point. So, expect more wars, tough on the causes of crime, cutting the workshy of their benefits and PFI to finance the Green New Deal which he has downgraded from the 2019 manifesto commitment of £250 billion to £30 billion. That should just about cover the cost of a new app once the corruption team have used their burner phones to give it to their mates. Don’t think the PLP are any less corrupt than the Tories. Other than a few very quiet socialist cowards you could swap the lot with the Tories and not notice much difference. We get the government we deserve. Spaffer mocks the miners claiming she who can’t be named did it to stop using coal because of climate change. No mention of then importing coal from Columbia and elsewhere using child slave labour. He is taking the piss out of the Red Wall and they will suck it up because ‘Boris is a bit of a lad, and his hair, chortle.’ The English are dumber than paint.
Meanwhile, the forests across the Arctic, Siberia, Turkey, Greece, Canada and the US are burning brightly. In Athens last night a close friend of Yannis Varoufakis died in his room, of smoke inhalation. Whole villages have burnt to the ground in Turkey. Eight separate teams of scientists are reporting the Gulf Stream is near to collapse, with catastrophic results for huge swathes of ocean and landmass ecosystems. Our PM’s big idea this week is to ‘wash your plates before putting them in the dishwasher!’ Yup, that’s going to stop the Gulf Stream from imploding.
Cop26 is approaching. The great and good will gather in Glasgow to decide humanity’s next steps. Nothing will happen. They will argue and pose, strut about what type of fire extinguisher is the most cost effective as the house is burning down. The Oligarchs and their influential Think Tanks and media puppets will heave out loads of copy saying, ‘it’s too late now, we can’t stop it, we need to adapt,’ The Doomster message is all they have left because the argument of the deniers is lost. Because they still think things can carry on as normal. Their ‘normal. Neoliberal Consumer Capitalism. They can neither conceive nor permit any other version of civilisation that does not revolve around greed, free taking and consuming (burning) of the commons, and free reign to destroy any eco-system on the planet for profit. They will mumble about carbon offsetting and other ridiculous ‘cures’ which is like a family head cooking a big dinner for himself (this is a very male problem btw) and telling the rest of the family they can share a carrot. Ignoring the fact that two of these carbon offset forests burned to the ground last week these ideas are just perpetuating more of the same. These people are psychopaths. We can see the tsunami coming, the warning bells have been ringing for decades, but they aren’t listening. We are tying our hands behind our backs for a rich elite to carry on plundering the planet. Extinction Rebellion will wave a few flags outside and maybe block an underpass or a public square, and The Greens (middle class liberals in wellies) will mutter about losing their lattes or a particular mammal or butterfly they like, but the plunder will carry on regardless. If you look at the earth from the space station, there are no border lines drawn on the landscape, there is just this beautiful blue planet awash with a myriad of species. Yet our governments cannot agree a plan for those species. The more you know, the more you understand what is happening, the greater the rage. Are we really not going to fight these bastards and fight for a life worthy of what we could call a morally just civilisation? Do we condemn entire species to a grim future and risk everything because of lethargy and ignorance? Because we lacked vision? Because we couldn’t be bothered? The left is fractured, atomised, almost imperceptible in the States, even the ‘Squad’ are limp liberals and Imperialists. I am convinced the only way through this battle is ecological based socialism. No ‘free market’ is going to coagulate around a ‘Manhattan type’ project to buckle down and tackle the upcoming storm. It will take coordinated multi-State co-operation to do so. A war footing no less.
Keep washing your hands.
Mollie Collins
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