Culpability Brown

A letter from a friend

Reflecting over the past few months and years, it’s hard to resist the idea that New Labour’s Government actually parodied that of the joint kings in The Gondoliers. Brown was effectively “running” the UK’s domestic affairs, and Blair the stuff elsewhere. Blair has kindly left the stage, leaving Brown to out-grin his predecessor. Meanwhile the Pound excels all previous records for ignominy, to the point, perhaps, of achieving Labour’s unvoiced ambition to achieve, finally, parity with the Dollar. It is a remarkable achievement.

The symptoms of decay are everywhere. Local Government “Directors” pulling in Q200 000 per year! It is utterly unbelievable. Oswald Spengler wrote of the Decline of the West. We are witnessing its Suicide Perhaps we’ll soon see Traditional Dancers, all kilt and bagpipe, entertaining plane loads of Oriental tourists arriving at Turnhouse. If the grass isn’t growing through the tarmac by then. Perhaps the dancers can be recruited from Los Discreditados among the banking fraternity, or at least the more obvious ones.

I can’t help but wonder if future historians, attempting to make sense of the Blair-Brown era, will not, with some justice, stigmatise him as Culpability Brown.

Your aye, angrily and impotently,

Hugh