Birthday treats?

Today has been my birthday. Thanks to Facebook, a number of people I know sent me messages. That was nice, even if it made me wonder if I had sent them greetings when Facebook told me it was their birthday. Some, I know I hadn't. Some, I think I had.

I would like to say I had a great day. I didn't. One of the penalties of getting older is that things you used to rely on no longer work as well as they did. Sadly, that extends beyond my body to my house, my garden... and so, it seems, my country.

Some people used to look at Britain and think "it's a bit of a quirky place, but they have some things that work well". Some even used to copy what Britain did. No more. Britain has descended into the kind of farce that used to be popular in theatres in London. One in particular was called the Whitehall Farces, run by an actor called Brian Rix in the 1950s and 60s. One of the jokes was that it could be said that sometimes the government offices just down the same street from the Whitehall Theatre resembled a farce. That was acceptable because no real harm ever happened, or if it did, it could soon be sorted out or covered up. As long as everyone could go home with a smile on their face, then the world was OK.

Now the farce has crept down the street to Downing St and the Houses of Parliament. Britain no longer has a functioning government and Parliament can't agree on anything. Why? Lots of reasons - money, traditional media under the control of a few rightwingers, new media under the control of - well, no-one quite knows.

An example is that of a sloppy journalist who used to hang out in bars in Brussels, dreaming up false stories about the European Union - straight bananas, anyone? No-one took him seriously. He was a harmless buffoon who would lose his trousers in the manner of Brian Rix. He would get fired every so often and then re-appear somewhere else. What is that sloppy journalist, renowned across the land for his lies, doing now? It seems incredible to write that he is now Prime Minister. Even more incredible is that he is now threatening everyone with treason and excommunication if they don't toe his imaginary line. Imaginary, because it is made of threads of unicorn hairs.

And then there is the former City trader who couldn't get elected as a Conservative MP, so created his own anti-European party and got elected as a Member of the European Parliament. Incredibly, he has been an MEP for 20 years, sucking up the freebies and the salary and the perks, whilst doing nothing of value and ridiculing the very institution he is a paid member of. He taunted the Tories into holding a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU - and then, to his own amazement, actually saw a slim majority say they wanted out. He is now copying the Donald Trump playbook by whipping up his audiences with threats of mob rule.

So, where do we go from here? We already seem to be in interminable damnation.

So you ask, did I have a good day?