You Cannot Talk to Pork

It is impossible not to talk about the Orange Idiot this week, and I make no apologies for calling him that, a man who is the ‘leader’ of one of the great countries in the world, who behaves like a spoiled child. He started the week in Washington, rambling on for nearly two hours about all the great things he has done during his first year in power. Many of the things he claims and the figures that tumble from his mouth are simply untrue, while he continues to rail on about fake news by his critics. Then he crossed the Atlantic to grace us with his presence to attend the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Again, he rambled on for over an hour with the usual false claims while criticising NATO and a number of European leaders, including our own Prime Minister. In the history of this Forum, only two people have received a standing ovation: Nelson Mandela and Volodymyr Zelenski. That was until this week, when the audience enjoyed the privilege of hearing the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney deliver one of the most statesmanlike speeches delivered in years by a world leader. I did not hear the seventeen minute speech live, but I later read the text. In essence, he said that the middle countries of the world, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and many European countries and other friendly countries in the world should work together to provide safe and secure partnerships as an alternative to America and Russia. He has already taken successful measures in Canada to counter Trump’s threats. He never once mentioned Trump or the US in his speech, but his thoughts on both were crystal clear. During the speech, he said a brilliant one liner when he said “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”. Another memorable social media comment said “Canada is what everybody thought America was”.   

This week, the Main Contractor celebrated her birthday. It seems hard to believe that she has now enjoyed twenty five years of retirement having having spent forty years, working in mainly two schools with five year olds in their first year in education. Both schools were in areas that are now considered to be deprived areas. I am telling you all this Rubbish as, on one day this week she was shouting in an animated way at our television. The item in the news that provoked this violent reaction was that 25% of children starting school, and that represents about one in six of the school population, are not toilet trained or cannot use a knife and fork. Even worse, was that some so called experts were trying to justify why this happens and that measures were being put in place to resolve the problem by 2028. Dot then informed me that in all those forty years of work, she had only one child who was not toilet trained, and that was because the mother had learning difficulties. Back in the 1950s at the start of her school career parents were poorer but hard working, many in manual jobs with little security, and had little access to helpful information. What information there was, on many occasions passed from mother to daughter. The next question is why have we reached this point where teachers are having a proportion of there time dealing with these problems. Is it the breakdown of families, wth so many single mothers, the need to work in order to pay bills or, in some cases just plain laziness? I bet most of those five year olds are experts at watching videos and playing games on a mobile phone in order to allow their parents to skip their parenting obligations. 

Sadly, at the end of the week, we were back to Trump again when he sank to his lowest level yet when he said that “We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked them anything of them  (referring to NATO). They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines”.  The only time NATO has invoked Article 5 was when America asked for help to fight their war. Over 450 brave soldiers from the UK alone lost their lives on the front line, with many more with life changing injuries. Nearly every NATO country sent help and suffered loses including Denmark, which lost more per capita of the population than anyone. In the face of widespread condemnation, the White House have tried to justify his indefensible remarks while Trump himself has probably gone off to cheat at golf again. To me, that says it all. You just cannot talk to pork.  

Just a Thought:

As you get older, three things happen. The first thing is your memory goes, but I cannot remember the other two.

A politician, a liar and a crooked man enter a bar. Does he look like anyone you know?

Brian