Shit

Another radio saloon visit down, thanks Laurice for chauffeuring me. Nurse, dieticians and consultant all seem happy with things. At the beginning of the zap session Varian suddenly stopped, it had to be rebooted. It feels as if my life is somehow being rebooted as well.

Maroilles. It’s a French cheese Laurice and Mark kindly brought back from France. They asked monsieur fromagier for the smelliest cheese to tickle my denuded taste buds and he obliged. Maroilles smells of shit, when I opened it everyone else immediately left the room. I added it to my potato, tomato and mushroom dish and it was OK. One of the difficulties with loss of taste is that I can still smell (my sense of smell might be even heightened), so before food goes into my mouth I smell it, then anticipate the taste only to be disappointed as there is no taste. The smell of shit lowers taste expectations somewhat so lessens the disappointment.

Thank you those who’ve voted so far for my new domain name. Does this mean I’m close to being branded, am I blindly succumbing to the ideology of free market capitalism, will I become a klepto? Martin is keen to lead me through the process of company creation, will be interesting. I asked both nurses and consultant how they thought my skin was doing and all thought it looked good so far, there’s still the possibility that my skin will seriously deteriorate but so far my unction seems OK.

So on the subject of corporate power George Monbiot kicked off a new  series today in the Grauniad called ‘Taming Corporate Power’. Since I’ve begun this blog I’ve become more aware of how much these monolithic, oppressive and singularly undemocratic fuckers now dominate so much of our world. The current government tries to stifle any political debate that might be offered via charities, trade unions, the BBC and so on but does nothing to curtail the lobbying and increasing influence of corporations. Is it this that you write about David, the ‘masters’ we don’t see? Their tentacles now slime and slither their way into so many areas. It so depresses to read such stuff as Price Waterhouse Cooper supplying ‘researchers’ to Labour shadow ministers. This is the company who’s head of tax, Kevin Nicholson, was an HMRC tax inspector in the 90’s and was very recently ‘grilled’ by MPs about ‘patterns of aggressive tax avoidance’ and devising ‘controversial tax deals’ for Luxembourg. The likes of these are advising Labour people. Writing this makes the likes of me very sad, the meaning of Labour has been stripped, maybe Lackey instead?  Here’s one way to change things by not allowing top officials in such as HMRC and ministers to work in sectors they were supposed to regulate.

Well what a to do, I’m with the gargoyle, him and the M4 and me with my cancer, bloody immigrants.

Thanks Mike giving me the Sun and the Mail in the coffee bar. But then I read an article by Robin Aitken who set up a food bank and extols his philanthropy: “We should celebrate the fact that we have food banks”. I became a little irate at this. This is incredible thinking and shows absolutely no awareness of the shame that should be poured on a country and people that whilst some are incredibly rich and privileged there are others who are relying on food banks to live because they are so poor, and that they are so poor because the rich are thieving ever more. I expect the twat will get an OBE in the new year.

A cartoon by Kliban, one of my favourite cartoonists.

Manifesto 38:

• encouragement of more satire, especially in mainstream media, it’s so good for the soul to have our favourites have their pomposity punctured for our amusement.

Keep on keeping on, love Duncan.