I Drank The Bad Water
The interviewee was looking deathly pale now that he had been threatened with dismissal and eventually demoted. I sat and shrank in my chair like a salted snail. I did not want to be there, watching such grim proceedings unfold like a car wreck. A few hours of silence occurred during the following few seconds. I fiddled with my pen, waiting to resume formalising the pain for the minutes.
Then the spell was broken and the clock began to tick again. The interview concluded shortly and I repaired to a long forgotten water cooler; one that nobody has touched or even mentioned for the last six months.
“How bad can it be?” I thought.
Well...the water left a foul taste in the mouth and I felt ill for an hour afterwards. What the hell? It is only water after all. It cannot go mouldy, it does not go off, bits of it do not turn green, fall down behind the bin and start cultivating fungi. Perhaps it was psychology, a reverse placebo.
But I have been feeling unusual since then anyway. The news is making me queasy and I do not know why; I reel back from newspapers like they are wired up to the mains. For instance, I cannot write the words “European Constitution” without getting a headache. The French rejected it, the Dutch rejected it...and a whole new world of hand-wringing has unfolded.
Surely, though...they are founder members of the union and do not object in principle to the European ideal, so is this merely a question of rewording the damn thing? The document is a foul mess of bad and dry gibberish and consequentially should not be used as a guiding light for Europe. Without clarity there is no point to the document. After all...what the hell are they trying to achieve with this thing? This has been constructed by committee using the one tool they have: compromise. It needs a visionary, but the European union has throughout its life always been built by an infinity of blind, jabbering monkeys at computers with no understanding that a large part of the union is in fact the ideal of the union. It is not an administrator’s wet dream of paperwork skyscrapers. And to highlight this we need a clear and direct constitution that everyone can read and understand and think “shit, we can get along here, it’s not all about grey buildings and squabbling.”
Ah, but the Dutch people have not been complaining about the treaty itself; it is the issues that continue to dog the EU such as the Euro and each country’s individual contribution to the European budget. And the French are rumoured to have been more concerned with rejecting their president than Europe itself.
Right...there’s the headache coming on. Time after time I think that the European Union should work but for the fact that the systems and processes are ineffectual, bloated, based on ego and rhetoric and old-fashioned. Reconstructing these processes from the ground up is vital...again, we need a visionary, a leader, a goddamn genius. Is there anybody out there who can do this? I do not want to think about it; no matter how charismatic the leader, their nationality would count against them in the 24 other states.
The biggest problem is that like everybody else in Europe I am concerned about our government getting it right in our own country first. If the citizens of each country feel screwed over on a national level, why the hell would we trust a superpower of all these nations? Wouldn’t we just feel screwed over 25 times instead of just once?
Most people do not believe in lofty ideals and the future in general. Practical concerns come much, much higher up the list. And whilst this is so, how the hell can Europe move forward?
Jesus, this is all bad bellowing at something I cannot comprehend. But there is nothing else but loud static in the news this week...the tabloids are leering at Big Brother, the broadsheets are scrabbling for new angles on druggy musician du jour Pete Doherty and everyone is still obsessed with the BBC weather forecasts.
The football has finished, parliament is in recess after the election and John Prescott has not been involved in rotten shenannigans for days now. There is one thing skipping around the news pages, though...some kind of rock concert that is coming up that involves some rich white rockers getting fearfully cross about poverty in countries far, far away from them. The old arguments are pouring in...including the one in which we are not helping by providing aid because our western values do not work in Africa. We should just let the sick children die, presumably. The corruption angle has come up again, which is something vital that needs addressing directly...but how? Send in the bombers again? Regime change? These problems are more complicated than pop song lyrics.
Maybe Gatorade, or whatever the hell the event is called this time, will Help and be a Good thing. The popular point to make is that if just one child is saved it will have been worth it. To which it must be said, if only one child is saved then how fucking incompetent are we?
Still...Bob Geldoff is a force for good and it would be stupid to tell him to shut the hell up. Well, unless he starts swearing again, the filthy bugger.
Oh, god...I have just opened the Guardian to find Gilbert and George staring out at me. Suddenly drinking toxic water does not seem such a bad thing after all.
Then the spell was broken and the clock began to tick again. The interview concluded shortly and I repaired to a long forgotten water cooler; one that nobody has touched or even mentioned for the last six months.
“How bad can it be?” I thought.
Well...the water left a foul taste in the mouth and I felt ill for an hour afterwards. What the hell? It is only water after all. It cannot go mouldy, it does not go off, bits of it do not turn green, fall down behind the bin and start cultivating fungi. Perhaps it was psychology, a reverse placebo.
But I have been feeling unusual since then anyway. The news is making me queasy and I do not know why; I reel back from newspapers like they are wired up to the mains. For instance, I cannot write the words “European Constitution” without getting a headache. The French rejected it, the Dutch rejected it...and a whole new world of hand-wringing has unfolded.
Surely, though...they are founder members of the union and do not object in principle to the European ideal, so is this merely a question of rewording the damn thing? The document is a foul mess of bad and dry gibberish and consequentially should not be used as a guiding light for Europe. Without clarity there is no point to the document. After all...what the hell are they trying to achieve with this thing? This has been constructed by committee using the one tool they have: compromise. It needs a visionary, but the European union has throughout its life always been built by an infinity of blind, jabbering monkeys at computers with no understanding that a large part of the union is in fact the ideal of the union. It is not an administrator’s wet dream of paperwork skyscrapers. And to highlight this we need a clear and direct constitution that everyone can read and understand and think “shit, we can get along here, it’s not all about grey buildings and squabbling.”
Ah, but the Dutch people have not been complaining about the treaty itself; it is the issues that continue to dog the EU such as the Euro and each country’s individual contribution to the European budget. And the French are rumoured to have been more concerned with rejecting their president than Europe itself.
Right...there’s the headache coming on. Time after time I think that the European Union should work but for the fact that the systems and processes are ineffectual, bloated, based on ego and rhetoric and old-fashioned. Reconstructing these processes from the ground up is vital...again, we need a visionary, a leader, a goddamn genius. Is there anybody out there who can do this? I do not want to think about it; no matter how charismatic the leader, their nationality would count against them in the 24 other states.
The biggest problem is that like everybody else in Europe I am concerned about our government getting it right in our own country first. If the citizens of each country feel screwed over on a national level, why the hell would we trust a superpower of all these nations? Wouldn’t we just feel screwed over 25 times instead of just once?
Most people do not believe in lofty ideals and the future in general. Practical concerns come much, much higher up the list. And whilst this is so, how the hell can Europe move forward?
Jesus, this is all bad bellowing at something I cannot comprehend. But there is nothing else but loud static in the news this week...the tabloids are leering at Big Brother, the broadsheets are scrabbling for new angles on druggy musician du jour Pete Doherty and everyone is still obsessed with the BBC weather forecasts.
The football has finished, parliament is in recess after the election and John Prescott has not been involved in rotten shenannigans for days now. There is one thing skipping around the news pages, though...some kind of rock concert that is coming up that involves some rich white rockers getting fearfully cross about poverty in countries far, far away from them. The old arguments are pouring in...including the one in which we are not helping by providing aid because our western values do not work in Africa. We should just let the sick children die, presumably. The corruption angle has come up again, which is something vital that needs addressing directly...but how? Send in the bombers again? Regime change? These problems are more complicated than pop song lyrics.
Maybe Gatorade, or whatever the hell the event is called this time, will Help and be a Good thing. The popular point to make is that if just one child is saved it will have been worth it. To which it must be said, if only one child is saved then how fucking incompetent are we?
Still...Bob Geldoff is a force for good and it would be stupid to tell him to shut the hell up. Well, unless he starts swearing again, the filthy bugger.
Oh, god...I have just opened the Guardian to find Gilbert and George staring out at me. Suddenly drinking toxic water does not seem such a bad thing after all.
posted by Jamie at 3:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home