horsemouth dun voted (living with john fahey)

it is the anniversary not just of the deaths of clyde barrow and bonnie parker but also of the defenstration of prague that kicked off the 30 years war in europe.

meanwhile horsemouth voted for possibly the last time in a european election. it’s PR and it’s over ‘the seaside towns’, and how long the MEPs will actually sit in office (so how much of an effect they will have good or bad) is moot. we won’t know the results until sunday

it is off course getting messy in the uk, but it is getting messy in europe also - a generational shift is taking place between the europhiles and the eurosceptics. macron has arrived too late to play batman to angela merkel's robin. there’s a shift right-ward. there will be flag waving by the eurosceptic right who will do well in these elections - but actually, like the UK, it is not clear that the real levers of power in europe are in the european parliament anyway.

it is a vote with real consequences but horsemouth is happy to have it as a proxy second referendum - he just wants to get a sense of the actual distribution of forces. the brexit party will win big he thinks - even getting seats down into london and the south east.

the collapse of the nostalgically rebranded ‘british steel’ is a case in point - bought from tata (who’d milked the subsidies and bailouts and worker’s pension plans) by the venture capitalists of greybull for one pound, possibly unsaveable under european competition rules, possibly unsaveable under WTO competition rules, hoist on brexit uncertainties and carbon credits and in any event dirty old industry with 60 year old blast furnaces, its raw materials coming from abroad.

the real issue (for horsemouth)  is the vampire squid subsidy farming capitalism of greybull and the like, the chronic short-termism of government. whatever is worth money of it will be saved out of the wreck, whatever subsidies that can be given will be farmed and then eventually it will go tits up yet again (to be rescued yet again and relaunched at yet a lower level). who will emerge as ‘the saviour of british steel’? - probably farage. go on - it’s just perfect.




'Some day they’ll go down together 
 And they’ll bury them side by side 
 To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief 
 But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.' 
 Bonnie Parker, “The Story of Suicide: The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”