“We must be like a cane of bamboo, Charlie. When times are hard and the wind blows, we must be flexible and bend, so that when times are good we can be strong and upright.”
We hapless proles, we have no choice.
We’re used to bending.
Down here in life’s lower echelons, we learn pretty quickly that if we refuse to bend we’re either chopped down in our prime or snap, crackle and pop our way to an early demise.
Left to our own devices, we’d very possibly prosper, but inevitably and regrettably we have leaders.
They demand we bend this way and that. If we could look them in the eye, our backs would be straight and our visions clear, but that doesn’t happen.
Instead, we’re forced to accept them, whether they were our choice or not. In return we expect that these supposedly superior souls will display, at the very least, the same intelligence, sensitivity and vigour that we possess ourselves.
Right now I’m busted up inside, because I’m just back from London, where I felt a deep dark gaping hole where leadership should be.
It’s a messy farce.
A majority of the major players are at worst only mildly incompetent, at best gifted and inspired, yet somehow, day after week after month after year, they fail to show any flexibility.
They stick to what they believe is best for their vested interests, refusing to follow their leader, who in turn offers only one game plan; one tactic; one way of making things work.
Then again, I suppose it’s my choice to be a Chelsea fan.
What’s that?
You thought I was on about the House of Commons?
Both my football club and my native country are in a disastrous mess, drifting aimlessly from minor victory to catastrophic defeat, with dissent their life blood.
There’s not one decent leader in either of these entities I love.
Maurizio Sarri appears a natural Chelsea manager. He’s mad as a hatter, enjoys a nose pick while talking on TV, wears his glasses high on his forehead and has such a serious nicotine habit he has to puff furiously on inhalers during games.
Hip managers cite him as an inspiration, but he’s never won anything, while ‘Sarriball’ seems to be just high pressing possession-based football.
Like the Prime Ministerial Maybot herself, Sarri appears completely intransigent, saying only and always the same thing. When we go down 4-0 to Bournemouth and 6-0 to City, it’s because “…the players lack motivation.”
Er, sorry, but you’re paid squillions a week to deal with that.
For decades Chelsea as a club reflected life: major victories were few and far between, times to be relished, memories to be nurtured for lean years of abject mediocrity.
Then Roman Abramovich and his tainted roubles won us everything in sight, but now, with the Russian far away from Theresa May’s hostile environment, Chelsea are back, in all our unreliable infuriating glory.
Meanwhile, just up the river, the House of Commons mirrors the diversity of opinion among the people of the UK like never before.
It’s the job of parliament to save us from the mob. If the people had their way there’d be capital punishment, stocks and dunking chairs. Usually MPs are more measured and pragmatic than their constituents.
Justice requires such temper.
However, right now the pebble dash stances of MPs fairly and faithfully represent the UK’s myriad factions and fractions, from Far Left to Extreme Right, Jingoist to Euro-Federal, with a few ideas you never imagined possible - and didn’t really want to - inbetween.
Matched only by the failure-filled intransigence of Maurizio Sarri, two weeks ago Theresa May appeared to bend a little, throwing bones to sweeten her backbench barkers.
Wise, as The Conservative and Unionist Party are notorious for stabbing their leaders in the back, but she was just playing for time.
Chelsea players also know how to get their manager sacked.
There’s a long tradition of player power at the club. Just lose a few games in miserable fashion, drop down to 6th, then whinge off to Marina Granovskaia’s office to complain about the gaffer.
I've got my Chelsea back.
Now I’d like a sane UK government too, please.
Okay, sorry, I’m being ridiculous, but we do need a leader to rise out of this catastrophe.
Both the UK and the EU have been crying out for strong opposition to this feeble minority government, reliant on the devil and the DUP.
Tragically Corbyn has proved pathetically ineffective, while Tory dauphin Boris Johnson recently outed himself as an ignorant hypocrite.
Having earned €58,000 in 25 minutes by spouting pat loads of empowerment rhetoric at an event in Dublin, Johnson returned to England to dismiss the Peace Process in one simple tweet:
“We must extricate this country from the humiliation of the backstop.”
Humiliation?
I'll tell you what’s humiliating: being an Englishman who lives in and loves Ireland, who has to watch your ilk degrade the Irish nation by threatening The Good Friday Agreement, while also underestimating the intelligence of the British, by repeatedly lying about the need for neither a border nor a deal.
I think I'll ditch Brexit and stick to Chelsea.
At least when we score goals, I can celebrate.
Tory goals are merely own goals for us proles.
©Charlie Adley
14.02.2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment