I wish I could claim that politics is terrible in a specific country.
It isn’t.
The world’s eyes are trained on American politics. I’m not going to spend a lot of words on it, but if you work as a P.R. for any organisation and- before the welcome party is even over – you’re already pulling overtime deciding how to dress up a Sieg Heil salute for the media, you might want to open Indeed and update your CV, because it’s going to be a long four years.
But I live in England, and politics has been ridiculous for a while, here, too. I used to live in Italy during Berlusconi’s prime, and guess what? It was terrible, there, too. And somehow it has managed not to improve after he died, either.
God, I just turned 36 and – in politics years – I feel like I’m aeons old. I spent 20 years under Berlusconi’s shadow alone. You get a lighter punishment for killing someone.
My point is that watching the electorate choosing a leader feels like watching a post apocalyptic soap opera. Not a good one, either, with clever writing, plot twists, and tridimensional characters. No. We get the villain (the politicians who will inevitably get elected) telling the hero (the electorate) to slathe their body in honey. Then the hero gets swarmed, stung and bitten by wasps and flies, like in the third canto of Dante’s Inferno. Every episode for twenty seasons. And the hero still hasn’t connected the dots.
After twenty seasons of the villain telling the hero to cover themselves in honey, the hero finally understands why they’re always tormented by insects: it’s because women have a right to abortion! And the villains gets elected once again.
Sometimes, the villain will openly post pictures of them with the CEO of Asbestos inc., and tell everybody that they will start shoving asbestos into teddybears.
“But they mean well,” the hero will coo.
After a lifetime of this, I’m starting to see democracy akin to placing a group of toddlers next to an infinity pool filled with fuel, shoving a box full of matches in their pudgy hands, and then congratulating ourselves because this is clearly the best system we can come up with.
But the truth is that I’m just being unfair and jaded. This could work.
This could work, but.
We’ve all had to deal with people. We’ve all heard comments so ignorant that left us speechless. Comments that are followed by an awkward silence broken solely by the sound of your bollocks cascading to the ground.
There’s a reason why, election after election, we’re getting closer and closer to totalitarianism. We can still save ourselves, but if you think that doing nothing and hoping that a collective consciousness will be suddenly ignited by mainstream media, then I have some flying pigs to sell you.
There’s a famous, very old book called The Betrothed by Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni. In it, a guy called Renzo needs to see a lawyer because of reasons, and decides to bring him some chickens as a gift (it’s set in the 17th century.) So he grabs a couple of chickens by their feet, and goes. As he walks, the chickens – now finding themselves dangling upside down and facing each other – start pecking at each other.
We’re like Renzo’s chickens.
Instead of focusing on the hand carring us as an offering to a rich somebody and start a class war, we’re too busy pecking at each other in an endless culture war.
The problem isn’t just that we are gullible; it’s that we actively choose not to learn. The educational systems, which were once designed to foster critical thinking and debate, have become little more than factories churning out passive consumers rather than informed citizens. The irony is that in an age of unprecedented access to information, we seem more ignorant than ever. We are so overwhelmed with data that we can no longer discern fact from fiction, truth from spin. Worse still, the tools designed to help us learn — social media, news outlets, online forums — have become instruments of manipulation, drowning out any meaningful discussion with a cacophony of misinformation.
And so, the cycle continues. The electorate votes, the politicians continue to lie, and the machinery of totalitarianism grows ever more efficient. One right at the time, freedom is shaved off. It doesn’t come in the form of a dramatic coup or an overt military dictatorship (not yet, at least,) it comes in subtler way.
Like a predator that doesn’t shove you in a van to spirit you away, but undermine your confidence with venomous narcissism, controls who you can see, keeps you financially dependent… until fear of upsetting the captor becomes the only reality we know.
No one’s stopping you from speaking out, they’re just making it so inconvenient that you stop doing it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The electorate can still save itself, but only if it wakes up and takes responsibility for its own education. The real work begins now — outside the classrooms, away from the politicians, and in the places where actual knowledge resides: in books, in conversations, in critical thinking. It’s time for a revolution of the mind, one that demands self-education, asks uncomfortable questions, and, above all, refuses to be spoon-fed lies.
There are books, there are podcasts, there are actual experts out there, and, no, they don’t appear on your social media feed between influencers doing the Macarena.
Surround yourself with good people.
Organising is the next step. Once the electorate begins to understand the depth of the problem, it must come together to challenge the system. The power lies not in individual protests or isolated cries of dissent, but in collective action, in the shared will to demand real change. No more blind obedience. No more accepting the status quo. The future of democracy depends on the ability of the people to recognise the wolf in sheep’s clothing and to say, “Enough.”
If we don’t act, we’ll find ourselves in a society where questioning anything is considered subversive, and the only “truth” is what’s been handed down from on high. If you want democracy to survive, you need to read, you need to ask questions, and most importantly, you need to start holding politicians accountable.
Or soon, we won’t be in the driver’s seat anymore.
Or rather, we’ll still be.
Like a toddler holding a steering wheel while the car’s being driven by a drunk uncle who’s just trying to get to the pub.
Becks couldn’t tell what annoyed her more: being the human who finally made first contact with a race of superior aliens or having to work despite this.
She could remember her abduction, a combination of a spaceship that underwhelmingly looked like a cyan FIAT 126 crossing her path and a violent impact. As she lay on the road that would lead her to the corner shop, her mind had time to register the embarrassment of being splayed on the tarmac in a hoodie, tracksuit pants and flip-flops. Then the cyan 126 hovered above her and – under its chassis – a passage shaped like a doorframe opened, a rectangle of blinding white light breaking up the dark colouring of the car’s underbelly. And when – stereotypically – she was tractor-beamed across its threshold, she found herself standing upright in a very posh office, way bigger than logic would expect from the interior of such a small vehicle. Mahogany wooden floor, walls and a desk of the same material. The only accent of colour, strongly contrasting the room, came from two bright yellow upholstered wingback chairs.
The room was very well lit, despite a lack of windows, by a series of chandelier-shaped lamps hanging on the walls.
She took a step forward and twisted her ankle, “Fuck…” she muttered, as she looked down: she was now wearing a pastel pink power suit and black heeled shoes.
She couldn’t walk on heels and she hated it.
“Ms. Rebecca Stafford?” A voice that sounded like five different children with a Scandinavian accent talking in chorus made her jump out of her skin.
She looked towards the voice.
On one of the chairs – empty just a moment ago – sat the most singular being Becks had ever seen. Clad in a blue suit with pineapple prints all over and a yellow shirt, there was a scrawny… man? His face looked gray / greenish and gills were intermittently opening behind his ears. On his face there was a pair of those joke glasses, the one with a fake nose, eyebrows, and ‘stache incorporated, and the lenses were covered by some cardbox with very badly drawn eyes upon it. The top of the head was covered by a bald cap.
The hands were hidden by blue latex gloves, of which several fingers were obviously empty. Around the midriff of the suit, something kept flopping under the clothes.
Becks stared at the figure with ping pong ball-shaped eyes and a slackened jaw until he repeated: “Rebecca Stafford?”
“Y…Yeah…”
“Rebecca! I am Bobby! I just want to say congratulations! You’ve been selected for a very exciting business opportunity!”
“Okay, sorry… No offence but…”
As she stammered some excuse to turn down whatever scam this creature was trying to pull on her, Becks slowly moved toward the door of white light she came from, keeping her eyes on a sprig of hair of the fake eyebrows that was stuck to the slimy skin just under the bald cap, but – as she turned to leave – she was confronted by the black mahogany wall.The door was gone, and they were boxed into the room.
“Hey… where is the, uhm…?”
“Rebecca.”
“Hm?”
“Why don’t you come here?”
Becks approached very slowly, both out of fear and because of her shoes.
“Here,” the four or five different voices of the creature named Bobby said, kindly, as one of the mostly empty gloves pushed a tall glass of water towards her.
Rebecca looked suspicious. As if in answer to that, the strange man said “I mean… why would I spike your drink? I’ve already abducted you.”
Becks shrugged at this and accepted the glass. “Thanks?” she said, confused, but kindly.
“Rebecca, you’ve been selected to represent your species in what is probably the biggest court case in your history. I think. Well, either way, it’ll look good on your CV.”
“My species?”
“Gonna explain something to you real quick. Rebecca, do you know what sea-monkeys are?”
Becks was blank for a few second. From when the weird flying 126 had hit her to now had only passed, what? A couple of minutes? And in that short period of time, the amount of absurd stuff she had to process was so enormous, that – after a few beats – her brain just decided not to process it. To stage a strike. So, she suddenly calmed down and decided against logic that what was definitely a non-human in a bad disguise asking her about sea-monkeys, of all things, was just another Thursday.
“Yeah, those weird prawns that come to life when you add water to them, aren’t they?”
Bobby was delighted, “Excellent!” he clapped his mostly-empty gloves, then pushed the joke-glasses up to his face.
“Well, brine shrimps, to be pedantic,” he carried on. “But still. See, you’re my client’s sea-monkeys,” he blurted out, letting a nervous laugh ending the sentence.
Becks looked at Bobby.
Bobby looked at Becks.
Bobby coughed to break the silence. It didn’t work.
“May I call you Becca?” He tried.
“No, I prefer Becks.”
“I see. Well, Becks, would you like to take a seat and a sip of that water?”
Becks nodded, plopped on the yellow armchair and took a gulp from the glass without moving her eyes from the indefinite spot she was staring at without blinking.
“Is there anything you’d like to say about what I just told you, Becks?”
“Well…”
“Yeeees?”
“When you say you, do you mean I am your client’s sea monkey, or all of humanity?”
“All of humanity. I did say Sea monkeys, plural.”
“That’s true, sorry.”
“Not a problem.”
“Ok, soooo… all of humanity is one individual’s pet?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Right.”
“I’m glad you took it so well,” Bobby beamed, ignoring the fact that Becks’ eyes had never moved from the spot on the wall they were staring at nor blinked.
“BLOODY WHAAAAATT??” Becks snarled, suddenly.
“Well, I thought you guys would have understood, by now, that you haven’t originated on planet Earth?”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about? Planet Earth has the perfect conditions for our species!”
“Does it?”
“Duh!”
“Well, think about it: the planet has temperatures that range between minus eighty something and plus fifty something degrees Celsius, and you guys are only happy between seventeen and twenty-five-ish. Not to mention that seventy percent of the planet surface is covered in water that you cannot inhabit nor drink.”
“Yes, b- but…”
“BUT!” Bobby interrupted Becks’ stammer, “it’s good that you think that Earth is a suitable habitat for your species.” He concluded with a smile that threatened to dislodge the fake nose, which was promptly pushed back on the fish-like face.
“Snack?” one glove pushed a bowl of fish flake food towards Becks. When she shook her head, Bobby shrugged, scooped some of the food and fed it to the inside of his shirt collar. His midriff flopped squishably.
“Are you a bunch of fish in a suit?”
“A school of fish.”
Becks raised a warning eyebrow, so Bobby answered the question with a sigh: “We find that species are more comfortable dealing with representatives that look like them.”
Becks looked at the pulsating gills on Bobby’s neck. “I see,” she said.
“Hang on,” she carried on, her eyes narrowing with suspicion, “why is it good that I think Earth to be a suitable habitat for us? What is this biggestcourtcaseofourhistory you mentioned?”
“Oh well, it’s just that the UG has sued my client for animal cruelty…” Bobby trailed off.
“The UG?”
“The United Galaxies.”
“Right. And we are the animal who’s been mistreated.”
“Yes, we mean no offence by that.”
“None taken. So…?”
“So, my client has sent me here because we’d like you to officially agree that humanity has been taken care of in the best way possible and that my client doesn’t need to make any further arrangements moving forward.”
“Well… Society is a bit fucked up at the minute, and the planet is dying… so.”
“I’m confident we can get to an agreement.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, I do hate this part,” Bobby said, grabbing a heavy tome from next to his upholstered chair and dropping it open on the relevant section, on the sleek wood of the desk, “but as per interstellar law, we’re bound to conduct a good faith negotiation with a qualified member of the species…”
“I… I am the qualified…? And… and this is the good faith…?”
“Exactly! But you see, during the negotiation, the parties have no duty of care towards each other, and my client, unfortunately, does own the oxygen present in your atmosphere…” the fishes making up Bobby’s body made a sound like they were sucking air through their teeth, as if they were sorry to say that.
“Your client owns the oxygen? And… what? They’re just gonna take it?”
“Between you and I, you’re much better off just making a deal with my client.”
“But… how is this a negotiation? We’re going to die! Our planet is frying, our resources are running out! The ones in power aren’t giving us healthcare but are building space hotels…”
“Yeah, but that’s symptomatic of your society…”
“Society must be changed, then!”
“Also, we have to do this within today.”
“WHAT??”
“If an agreement isn’t achieved by end of business hours today, the case is dismissed.”
“Listen, I can’t do this… I do traffic tickets, why pick me?”
“We’d love a signed agreement immediately.”
“Oh God… You didn’t pick me because I am a good lawyer. I bet that you could pick anybody, as long as they’re technically qualified…”
“There were a lot of moving parts that our team had to consider…”
“You’re taking advantage of a loophole!” Becks stood up in the excitement, a finger pointing at Bobby.
“And it’s only good business to do so.”
An awkward silence suddenly exploded inside the room. Becks let herself fall back into the chair. She kicked the heeled shoes off her feet.
“You know…sometimes… You feel like you’re rubbish at your job. But – you know – then you tell yourself: ohno, you’rejustdepressed, therehastobesomeoneworseoutthere. I also have PMT today, this is really not the right time for me to realise this.”
“May I offer you a chocolate hash brownie? Is it too early for your species to do drugs?”
Becks looked at the clock above Bobby’s head. It said 9.29 am.
“It’s late enough,” she muttered. Bobby brought her a hash brownie.
As she chewed, Bobby tried to console her: “Oh come on, I’m sure it is just a coincidence you’ve been chosen. Maybe this is not your field, but I’m sure you’re good in what you do.”
Becks smiled a sad smile: “Well… I win sometimes…”
“You see?”
“Mainly when the cop doesn’t bother to show up… gotta love a no show!”
“See? Celebrate your victories!” Bobby cheered, pawing another fistful of fish food down his collar, as Becks finished her hash brownie.
For the next forty minutes or so, Bobby compiled the agreement that was to be signed by Becks, involving her in the process, though she only contributed to the conversation with groans.
Suddenly, her pupils grew very large, like a cat’s when focusing on a prey.
“Let me see that,” she said, grabbing the book Bobby had dropped on the desk.
“Hey, just a minute…” Bobby tried to protest.
Becks ignored him, instead making noises with her mouth as she hovered her finger above the page looking for something, until: “Here it is!! Whendisputingthesuitabilityofahabitat, thedefendingparty – that’s your client, he has been sued by the UG – willhavetherighttoahearingin the jurisdiction of said habitat. That’s Earth. You’re the representative, but your client has to actually be here to get a deal signed.”
“Well, I represent them…” Bobby said, but the squishy noise grew louder from inside his suit.
“And we must come to an agreement before the end of business today, you said. Earlier, you also said that you were sent here by your client. I take it they’re not local?”
“Well, they’re not in the galaxy, at the minute… some important business had to be taken care of…”
“And how long would it take them to come here to sign the agreement?”
“In Earth’s days?”
“In Earth’s days?”
“Please.”
A massive sigh escaped Bobby’s gills and after a long pause, his voices croacked: “About six thousands years.”
“A no show!!!” Becks jumped from the chair, both fists held up high in celebration.
Bobby shouted his frustration at losing the case, tentacles erupting from his collar, sleeves and from under his jacket.
Becks recoiled in horror.
Then he recomposed himself, “Sorry, that was very unprofessional of me. Congratulations on a successful negotiation. You’ll have to email the UG with the changes that you’d like for my client to apply to your planet. I’ll give you their email address.”
*
A few months later, Becks received the following email from the UG:
“Dear Rebecca Stafford,
We’ve reviewed the changes you’ve requested to your own natural habitat.
They were the following:
1) TV programs are not to invite as guests populist politicians. Alternatively, do not invite populist politicians equipped with mouths.
2) Both religious and secular authorities can wear funny costumes only during Carnival or on Halloween, exactly like everybody else.
3) All racists must become the ethnicity they hate. For white people hating black people, this will not extend to their penises.
4) Any person believing in a deep state can use the term “they” to indicate the hypothetical, evil, secret masters who control everything only the same amount of times they use the same term to refer to a non-binary person. If they run out of uses for the term “they,” the believers in the deep state will have to refer to the evil masterminds as “magic meanies.”
5) Whoever kneels to accept a knighthood from a royal figure anywhere in the world, won’t be allowed to stand up again.
6) Every singer, poet, and writer will be allowed to use the word “love” up to ninety-nine times. At the 100th use of the word, they’ll be punished by execution.
7) All of those who will try to convert other people to any religion using the phrase “It’s impossible that the perfect beauty of the universe was just random and not the creation of a divine mind” will be instantly infested with the taenia solium, colloquially known as the pork tapeworm, so that they can observe the perfect beauty created by the divine mind of their god from up close.
8) Every time a person will try to convince a person who isn’t their partner and didn’t ask for advice to have children, a kid from foster care will be immediately dispatched to their living room for them to parent for life. This will be repeated for every unsolicited sentence such as “Who will look after you when you’re old?” or “You will love kids when you’ll have yours.”
9) Every person who listens to music or watches videos loudly in public will get a pair of headphones welded to their ears.
10) For intellectual honesty, every video or program about UFO, ghosts, or miraculous apparitions, will have to feature a laughter track.
11) Every worker working for a business that they don’t own and votes right wing must have their wishes immediately granted: halved salary, sixty weekly hours, unpaid overtime, and two white hot pins in their nipples.
12) Deflect the orbit of the asteroid Apophis on Prince Andrew.
13) Every cliché, spoken or written, will cost £13 per letter.
14) All national anthems must be played with the anus.
15) Every man who puts his hands on a colleague, even “as a joke,” and even on “innocent” places such as arms, back, shoulders, or hips, will become fluorescent yellow for a week.
16) When someone is delivering a homily, a lecture, or any moral-ish sermon, a number of how many times they’ve masturbated in their life will flash above their heads. This is to maintain the right perspective.
These possible changes are pending reviews and the process will take between six and nine Earth’s decades.
You will be notified with the outcome as soon as one is reached.
Yes, yes…I know l we don’t know each other. In fact, I don’t even know what you look like. Not really sure which shape you are.
But this is exactly why I love you: you see, if I knew you, I would probably not love you. If you knew me, surely you wouldn’t love me.
You know what they say: “I’d like to know you better.”
NO! It’s always worse.
NOT knowing each other is better. Because a person you don’t know cannot disappont you.
And I will never disappoint you.
Because, as long as you don’t know me, you can always fantasise that I’m different. While if you got to know me, you’ll discover I’m the same. The same as the others, or worse, the same as you. Soul mate and soul twin.
While if we keep on not dating, we’ll never get together. And if we never get together, we’ll never break up.
It’s everybody’s story: you meet a person, and fall in love. Then you get to know them better, and you’d love to piss on their shoes.
You see why it’s different between us? Because I don’t know your shitty taste, you bullshit ideals… I don’t even know your name.
That’s why it can work between us. The secret of eternal love is this: remain strangers.
Eva Brown stayed at Hitler’s side because she thought until the very end he still painted watercolours. Even when, at the end, he suggested that they both committed suicide, she didn’t suspect anything, she must have thought “it’s typical of artists to have this kind of romantic ideas.”
Love is blind, so you and I will never see each other, I promise.
Ours will be an eternal long-distance relationship. Isn’t that romantic? We’ll go to Venice, Paris… I’ll go to Venice and you’ll go to Paris, it’ll be wonderful.
Sex with me will be amazing, because with me it’ll be sex with a stranger. But to let it be as such, we’ll never do anything, it’ll be platonic sex. We’ll never talk. It’ll be perfect.
Whoever you are, whatever you’ll do… I don’t know. Nor I want to know. As you can see, I’m not even jealous. It’s simply that you’re special to me. I finally feel good with you, because tonight you can shag whoever you want, or being ran over by a car.
I mean, don’t get the wrong end of the stick, if you’d die, I’d be sorry.
But also not.
I mean, I’d be sorry for you.. but to me… relatively. With all respect, but I don’t know you.
You see why it works? Because with you I’m not anxious, I’m not scared about losing you… who the fuck are you?
Thanks for being you. Because if you weren’t… meh.
1% of the world population is richer than the remaining 99% put together.
I don’t know if we can wrap our heads around that, it’s a gigantic disproportion.
ONE percent of the world population is richer than the remaining NINETY-NINE percent.
It’s obviously the biggest disparity in human history.
But it’s only fair.
It’s fair that things are this way.
I mean: if all of us get together, we’re more than the majority. We’re more than 50%, more than 70%, we’re even more than 90%… we are 99%, meaning basically everybody.
Now, if all of us, everybody, united, can’t be richer than a measly 1%, we should just…
…be ashamed and admit that maybe we’re the dildos.
We’re dildos, let’s admit it! Let’s look in the mirror and say it: we’re the dildos!
Rich people are rich because they’re better than us.
I feel like I lost you. Feel the social envy how it chaps your ass, eh?
But it’s true, that’s clearly the case: rich people are rich because they’re better than us!
“But, Gab… I mean: are you on the rich people’s side?”
Of course, I am! I am not a fascist like you guys: I always side with minorities!
And today rich people are the minority more minority there is.
Do you know how many rich people are there, in the world? But rich for real, those that even after you tax them, they’re still rich?
2,275 people.
THAT’S IT!
2,275 people.
At any given moment, there are more people having sex than rich people.
There are more people with diarrhea than rich people.
There are more people having sex with diarrhoea than rich people.
And not only rich people are very few, but they’re getting fewer and fewer.
If you check the Forbes ranking of the richest people in the word, every year that list gets thinner, thinner, thinner…
Do you know what that means? That rich people are facing extinction.
And so we must save them.
As we did with pandas, today we must do with rich people.
It’s our generation’s mission!
We need to create a safe zone, a habitat ideal for rich people: no tax zone, I imagine, then – I don’t know – some Jacuzzis, a few supercars… then, what do rich people eat? Ehrmm… Champagne, lobsters… caviar… anyway, let’s create this protected area, and once we have it, we put all rich people there. And once all the rich are there, they need to do only one thing:
SHAG!!
Shag a lot! Because rich people need to reproduce, need to have more kids! They need to have kids like poor people back in the days: 12, 15, 18 children. Rich women are super-rare, they’ll get uterine prolapse for how many rich kids they’ll have to drop!
It’s a sacrifice, but the world needs rich children, because we need arms that swipe those credit cards. We need rich people, otherwise who is going to pay our salary? The poor? The poor?
Enough with helping the poor, please! Enough! Enough!
We’ve been helping poor people for years now, and what did we obtain? That help after help now we’re poor as well.
Us poor people are really bloody annoying! We’re really bloody annoying, still asking, complaining… but what? WHAT!? We’re the majority! 99%! We conquered the world! What more do we want?
I’ve seen all of the porn that’s online. Tell me a porn video and I’ve seen it at least twice. I’ve finished PornHub: in the end they get married. Oh, sorry, I’ve should have said “spoiler alert.” In the end they get married and he cums on her face, what a classic.
And now that I’ve watched all porn, I can give my informed opinion on the genre.
Professional porn is the minority, and it seems to have a huge problem with incest: the plot is always a dad fucking a daughter, a mum shagging the son, two siblings having sex, two siblings having sex with the supervision of a parent… they now put “step” in front, as a legal loophole, but isn’t it easier to just have a role play in which the two parties shagging aren’t related? Call me vanilla.
Then there’s amateur porn. The majority. I think more than 70% of online porn is amateur porn.
And amateur porn is shit.
I mean, it really cast a veil of embarrassment over me. It’s like when I see Labour during the electoral campaign:
“No! No! It’s not done like that! No, no, no no!! You’re going to hurt yourself, no! No!”
I don’t like amateur porn because it’s people who shag badly: these men arrive behind these women, it’s not like they’re mounting them, they climb over them, they almost vault over them… and then they start emitting these noises – Hhhhaaaaanf, haaaaanf! – emphysemic, and the women -Eeeek! Eeek! – squeak like an old metal gate. Why women in amateur porn squeak? Give them some WD-40! Eeeeek! Eeeek!
Then you see them, with these positions without any sense, and I get anxious for them, because that guy -sure- now he’s there shagging, but he’s going to spend the night in A&E, because that hip will not hold up. It just will not.
So, I get anxious, I move my eyes from the bodies and I focus on the furniture.
Which is worse!! Much worse!
Where the hell are people fucking? I noticed the housing emergency in Britan by watching British amateur porn. We shag in horrid houses! Squalid interns, with poor lighting… bedsheets from Argos, I recognise them because I have the same ones.
But, above all, there are loads of people in the UK who shag at grandma’s. Why? The fuck happened to gran?
I’m not joking, couples in their 30s/40s, you see them shagging in these rooms ’70s style, all brown, Brianzolo style… ITV on in the background.
That’s it, when on the background of a British amateur porn, I hear Ben Shephard presenting Tipping Point, my erection proper lyophilizes… Sands through fingers.
TUC secretary Paul Nowak said that energy suppliers have been allowed to laugh all the way to the bank, while a lot of families struggled to pay the bills.
This came after British Gas has reported a half-year profit of almost £1bn (£969m,) which mark an increase of 900% from last year.
EDF and Scottish Power had fared just as splendidly.
This came after having paid a sky-rocketing bill after the other, because “There’s an energy crisis.”
I’m not arguing energy is a tricky subject, but when you see energy suppliers growing their profit exponentially, there’s a dissonance here.
Surely there’s a regulator who supervises this kind of things, isn’t there?
There is. And here comes the gut-punch: the profit boom was largely thanks to a tweak to the regulator Ofgem’s energy price cap that allowed the supplier to recoup some of the costs of supplying its 10 million customers during the energy crisis, including the ones hit the hardest.
It doesn’t matter the incredible amount of profit energy suppliers are already making, it doesn’t matter many families had to choose between food or heating, it doesn’t matter that the country was already in the grip of recession and ever soaring-inflation, it doesn’t matter that British gas literally broke into the houses of vulnerable customers to fit pre-payment meters, it doesn’t matter that Chris O’Shea – Centrica’s Chief Executive (Centrica being British Gas parent company) – had accepted a £4.5m pay packet after the British Gas break ins have emerged; Ofgems still made the tweak to help the suppliers.
How all this can happen?
I have a theory.
When you’re having anal sex with a partner, there are three phases.
In the first, the partner is on their knees with tense arms, waiting to be buggered by you. Penetration hasn’t happened yet, but your knob is exercising a constant pressure on their arsehole, which in this phase is still reticent.
This goes on for a bit.
I see you know what I’m talking about. Good.
At some point, their arsehole opens up like a buttercup in the spring. Your member starts to open a passage. Your partner then turns toward you, with an expression of surprise painted on their face, like a cockroach stomped on by Mother Theresa.
Eventually, they shift their weight on their elbows and start moaning. And this is very exciting. For you. For them a bit less, because in this phase their arsehole burns like an onion ring.
Then suddenly, the third phase: they collapse, put their cheek on the pillow, arch their back, and offer you their ass completely open and already pitted. There’s no pain anymore, just pleasure and they shout “Oh yeah, yeah, please, yes! Oh God, yeeeeehss!”
Britain, with energy suppliers, is in this third phase.
“Aaaah yes, cum on my back! But mind the hair!”
900% of profit during a crisis.
Unbelievable.
But believable.
The reasons are three, like the phases of anal sex. Coincidence?
Having been told for months that because of Covid/Brexit/Ukraine invasion/your mother in law come visiting, energy suppliers had no choice but to drive prices up. One could argue that they could have been contented with a miserable, I don’t know, 400% profit, but it doesn’t change what this is: the constant pressure.
A political class definitely not concerned about how their electorate is going to reach the end of the month and the demagogy of some journalists. The abuse opens, there’s no more resistance.
The public’s attitude. I mean, not us: the others. Ready to love whoever profits from them. It’s the last phase: the submission orgasm.
Now, who tells you the right story, is doing journalism. Who tells you the story that energy prices can’t be brought down and the culprits are whichever scarecrows they have elected this day, is doing propaganda.
And if you don’t know the difference between journalism and propaganda, don’t worry: neither does Murdoch, yet he did great.
Some call this kind of propaganda disguised like journalism “intellectual prostitution.” But I disagree: there are lines sex workers won’t cross.
Have you ever heard a story in which the banks are the good guys? No? Neither has anybody else.
As much as you want to criticise the immigrants, the “woke” (whatever that means,) the gays, or Professor Plum in the dining room with a candlestick; the banks are the reason you were unemployed in 2008 and your mortgage/rent went up recently.
Even the Monopoly guy would find the proposition of a bank taking the moral ground laughable.
So, when we’re told that Nigel Farage was refused by a bank due to his moral compass, the sheer level of the man’s twattery should really sink in.
Being told that you’re an arsehole by a bank is a bit like being told you should’ve put a bit more effort in your outfit by He-Man.
After paying his million-pound mortgage, Coutts decided to forget about Nigel with the same rapidity he decided to forget about the daily £65 million pound he had promised the NHS in case of Brexit.
This is when the real problem emerged for Nigel: the fact that the bank wasn’t willing to bend the rules for him. And all that simply because the man has the same ideology of the people who were tried at Nuremberg.
“I don’t like being called racist just because I’ve spent decades fighting foreigners, especially in documents that would have been private if I hadn’t made them public myself,” was his sound logic.
The true horror is that – now – all this gives Farage a righteous attitude; like a true Robin Hood, Nigel tells us he’s fighting the bank not just for him, but the common man.
All the common men who work in a warehouse, shop at Iceland, and have paid multi-million pound mortgages.
You have to know some of those, mind you. There’s no way the biggest Brexit promoter is disconnected from reality.
We’re now ready for a plot-twist most Hollywood studios can only dream of: in a tear-jerking effort to let the little guy win, the Tory government rallied up around Farage.
A career in politics made by pushing xenophobe self-interests no matter the cost to the electorate, only worried in posh bank accounts. And then there’s Farage.
Nothing can be more different, surely. Polar opposites.
Never mind that banks have been quietly closing accounts without giving their customers an explanation for decades, and that crimson marker will make impossible for said customers to find another bank, like bells around the ankles of a leprosy victim.
The important thing is that Farage, Braverman and Sunak banded together, almost like they’re cut from the same cloth after all.
For the good of all us peasants.
Because the elite isn’t self-serving in the least.
Cantankerous Cockerel 