Not from me of course... but from
Anna Raccoon who has excelled herself with three recent posts on her excellent site. The
first is about who is deemed worthy of public displays of grief when they die, it's a very thought-provoking piece and one that set me nodding in agreement. I remember the aftermath of Diana, Princess of Wales's death and the wailing and emotion that spewed forth for no logical reason. Here's an extract from Anna Raccoon's piece:
'Why would the country ‘expect’ that one tragic death should be marked in this way rather than any other tragic death? Who selected Sian O’Callaghan as the poster girl of ‘tragic deaths’? Why not Joanna Yeates or any other murder victim? Did she not die ‘tragically’?
...
Another two corpses passed by unnoticed. Two corpses that were equally described as having died ‘tragically’ by the same paper. At RAF Lyneham, the bodies of Major Matthew Collins and Lance Sergeant Mark Burgan were making their way home, untroubled by ‘S’ shaped balloons, or the ‘under-12 football team’ wearing black armbands, children lighting candles, or thousands of strangers sending lanterns into the lush night sky.
Their family will mourn them, their regiment will mourn them, and their friends will mourn them.
They were, in their way, as iconic as Princess Diana, they represented all of us.
They, of course, didn’t die making their way home un-chaperoned at 3am from a ‘girl’s night out’. Their death didn’t command front page news.
‘Hundreds of people’ may line their route just ten miles away, but ‘thousands’ will not brave the cold night air to express their love for someone they did not know.
They hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, on patrol, on behalf of us all.
Nothing for the media to see, move along there……'
Wonderful writing from one of Britain's top bloggers.
The second piece was
this piece that is beautifully written and I won't spoil it by saying any more than that.
The
third piece examines what the vandals attached to Saturday's march achieved, here's an extract from a must read piece:
'Britain owes £876bn in total – all that Osborne and co are promising to do is not borrow any more than that – in four years time! In the meantime they have made no attempt to actually pay off that £876 billion, no one is even talking about it – the argument is totally about how much we should increase it by.
...
They smashed up the premises of a charitable organisation whose 450 employees relieved the rich of £56 million and returned it to its holding company which promptly redistributed £37.6m to 1518 different charities. In Milibandland this is obviously a despicable way of carrying on. If Fortnum and Mason’s have any business savvy whatsoever, they will not promptly relocate to somewhere like Monaco, where they can continue to relieve the rich of their millions and despatch their hampers by mail order without feeling any ethical need to support Britain’s helpless or disadvantaged.
They smashed up the offices of Singapore based HSBC, the one High Street Bank which neither asked for, nor needed, bailing out by the government, and which is shortly to make a decision as to whether to pull out of Britain altogether.
...
The BBC, 100% owned by the British public, was cringingly supportive of this nonsense, Newsnight produced this gem:
‘UK Uncut is a new kid on the block. They only got together after the Chancellor’s Budget cuts last year but they’ve already got quite a following. They are a social media success story and more than 1,000 of them will be out tomorrow. They think that’s more than enough to close down shops and banks.’
Right, so you close down all the banks and shops, you chase all the entrepreneurs out of your God forsaken communist haven, no more tax relief for anyone left, who is going to pay for all those helpless vulnerable poor then?'
I wish I could write like Anna Raccoon!
