I'm trying out the quantum posting method tonight. This is popping up while I'm not here, assuming it works.. I am, or will be, or have been, or something, drinking and carousing at Smoky-Drinky while Blogger does a Blue Peter and gives you one I prepared earlier. I am posting while not here. The Doctor would be proud.
Tonight is Guy Fawkes' Night, or used to be. Now it's mid-firework night. They've been popping and hissing for weeks and they'll continue for weeks more. Tonight is just the high point. There won't be many bonfires, hardly anyone remembers their real pre-Christian meaning anyway and fewer care.
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
In my youth we burned effigies of Guy Fawkes as a treasonous scoundrel and we chanted that rhyme. Now his image adorns the faces of protestors and we do not consider him treasonous. If he had succeeded, who knows? Maybe the treasonous scoundrels would not now be in Parliament.
Old Holborn has done, or will do, his annual walk today, depending on whether you're reading this or I'm writing it. This year will be different. There are many wearing OH's mask today but they include many whose views are the opposite of his own. The symbol is corrupted, its meaning now lost and diluted with the thin blood of the pseudorebels. OH's intention was close to that of V, the one who wore the particular mask, but the protestors wearing it now want more, not less, government control over their lives. Like a hippie flower with a swastika in the middle, the symbol has been rendered worthless.
Do we need a new one? I don't think we need a symbol at all any more. We don't need a rallying flag and we don't need organisation. We don't need no steenkin' badges.Symbols identify us. Leave symbols to the crusties and the thugs of authority.
We don't need a hero. We just need to learn to say 'No'.
3 comments:
" I don't think we need a symbol at all any more."
Nor do I BUT can we ever clean up the Union Flag?????????????
There do seem to be a lot of people protesting for even more taxation, regulation and pointless government jobs.
Kind of reminds me of the Arab protesters who all want the immoral sectarian dictatorships replaced with rigteous Islamic dictatorships.
I'm starting to think this whole libertarianism thing is going straight over most people's heads. Shame really, I think they'd quite like it if they gave it a go.
I think I will have my National Insurance number tattooed on my forehead.
Or a simply scanned barcode.
"Be seeing you"
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