London Is Burning

(Arthur phoned this one in several days ago, and it got misplaced 'till now. Damned messy office, don't cha know? sorry Arthur.)

To those who have not been following the news, London and other parts of England have had outbreaks of looting, rioting and arson that have been unexpected and inconvenient for the new conservative government, who have been busy working to cut social services, rent support, police department budgets and other key parts of the British social safety net. I personally think that Prime Minister David Cameron is a colossal dickwad, while others think he is too eloquent to ever be tossed out of office. Sort of a young Reagan it would seem. I still think Cameron is very likely to lose his post over the Murdock/News of the World scandal, but we'll have to wait and see. Oh, and David Cameron used to belong to a college club that regularly trashed restaurants, thinking it was wonderful fun to do so, since they could sort of pay for it and not get prosecuted. Critics are starting to remind the public of these "inconvenient facts". It might have seemed funny two weeks ago, it is not sounding that way now.

And here, in the middle of this mess, appears an article by of all people Russell Brand, an actor whose public persona is that of a deranged twit. The one word in the article you might not recognize is "trainers", a British term for running shoes. I didn't know Brand could write, I didn't know he could think, I didn't know he had strong opinions. I was wrong. Brand's essay is far, far more intelligent than other pundits' comments on the situation, one of whom wrote a piece titled "The whites have become black". Amazingly, that is what has passed for intelligent commentary during the last week.

Arthur