insists the whole country needs identity cards. Posh, technologically advanced ID cards with something called biometrics in them. A public debate is beginning to generate about whether this is necessary but I've become more interested in the debate about what information should be on the card. I know it's a burning issue because I've heard people talk about it. Every day after work I go for a run around a beautiful little park near to my home. It's a good park with swings and slides for the children, trees, a green area for football, plenty of shade for lying around. Crowcroft Park is also a popular park, always busy, children rushing and shrieking, chasing their friends, old folk sitting on benches watching the day go by, couples strolling and holding hands, families promenading. Time slows down in such parks, nothing is hurried, even runners like me.
And lo today's park topic is ID cards and I swear it's on everyone's lips. I pass a 2 year old who's just vomited a pool of alphabet spaghetti in which float the words 'Al Qaeda' that is then licked up by a stray dog. Nearby observers nod at the child's luck and whisper about renditions, Guantanamo, and orange rompers though that bit was lost on me. I'm later told the baby was beneath the dappled canopy of the park's largest oak and so could not be seen anyway by the NSA satellite that covers these parts. And besides US Intelligence still hasn't sorted out the glitches in their baby sick programme, though they do have a secret deal with Heinz whereby over a period alphabeti will be incrementally reduced until there's only one huge letter in every can. Apparently it's the only certain method of avoiding that baby pooh/encryption locus.
Nearby, two elderly women, blue rinses catching the sun sit like angels with bright heads and talk loudly with that public frankness you only hear from people who are either really old or really young.
One says "Those baby bio cards, I wonder if they'll let us keep mementoes in them? I saved a bit of my Jenny's umbilical cord, she were a lovely baby our Jenny. Of course it shrivelled up and then there was the time Henry tried smoking it, well his eyes were going and it were dark. He said to me Elsie, what's the matter with this tobacco? It smells like pork! I thought they could fit it in a piece of glass, like those catholic relics, in the middle of the card. And everytime someone official asks for it it'll be a talking point as well."
Even the local bored teenagers who as I passed were carving prime numbers on the legs of a tiny scoutmaster had an opinion. Though typical of that age it was mainly expressed in grunt, a language familiar only to themselves. I was struck though by the khaki shorts with hoops that made their poor victim look like he'd been eaten by a couple of trumpets and that from 6 miles up might also resemble the binary configuration for FUCK YOU!
There's bound to be arrests.
7 comments:
Like your sense of humour. :)
and the 'Fuck you' at the end just sorta ties it all together...
Anoop, icylyrics, the 'fuck you' about ses it all for most of us who refuse to be drawn into this mad paranoia pumped out at us by Western Governments. There's a Scottish character called Corporal Fraser in an old British situation comedy about the Home Guard during the second world war, called Dad's Army. His catchphrase is 'We're all doomed!' Which he said with great regularity. Well I for one refuse to be doomed, and besides the warmonger's Blair and Bush are a greater threat to this planet than anything Al Quada could do. They have bigger armies for a start. I want to live in a world where the Blair's and Bushes of this world are doomed. So there!
I want to live in a world where the Al Qaida is doomed Dan. I don't like what they're about and have been about lonnnng before they became known.
Gyal,
I don't think Al Qaeda is a democratic or even paticularly pleasant organisation. I don't believe in bombs that kill ordinary people queuing for work, or who are at work atop a tower block in New York. But I reserve my greatest anger for those that spawned the Al Qaeda's of this world, the real butchers who with the stroke of a pen, or tap of a keyboard condemn another million children to die of starvation whilst surrounded by wealth and abundance they are forbidden to touch. The extremism of Al Qaeda is borne out of a greater extremism that dwarfs the puny imaginations of Al Qaeda. Capitalism terrorises the whole world on a minute by minute, day by day, week by week basis. Al Qaeda would give their all for just a tiny fraction of such power. Al Qaeda are a symptom not the cause of all that is wrong in this unequal world.
Well, I'm glad you're still talking to me though we differ in opinions.
A lot of the al qaida people are filthy rich, and professionals, and hate the west. They've corrupted Islam and want control to spread their version. Most of all, they want financial power.
They spawned themselves through their own hate.
Gyal,
Like you I don't want live in a world of hate. I like people and want the best for them, all of them. How that is achieved is a political question. What cheers me is the tremendous generosity and kindness of the ordinary folk that I see on a daily basis. My faith in the decency of the majority is re-affirmed everyday.
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