I have spent the last 12 hours glued to the television, trying to snatch hope out of thin air, trying to convince myself that a Tory prime-minister is not an absolute disaster.*
While I’m trying to make myself feel better about the political events, I ended up having a rather anti-utopian fantasy. Two years from now, corporal punishment has been brought back as an alternative to a prison sentence. I have been involved with a radical liberal political campaign,** which has seen me taking part in a demonstration that has turned into a clash with the police. I’m arrested for throwing rocks at the PM’s car, and become one of the first people to be given a public flogging, to send the message to the others.
I haven’t got as far as figuring out how the flogging will be administered, but I think a permanent whipping platform will be erected in Trafalgar Square, with big screens to make the proceedings visible. I think a metal frame will be used, with two cuffs in its top bar, stretching me upwards. I’m not sure whether, for decency’s sake, it’ll be a back-whipping with a single-tail, or whether the government will opt for the birch or the cane on the posterior.
I’m not sure I like this fantasy very much, but it’s a very persistent image.
* I haven’t lived through last Tory government, having come to the UK at a time when Labour was well established in power. But my first English home, the North-East of England, was still bleeding from Thatcher’s thousand cuts all through my years there. Having seen the consequences of their rule, I don’t love the Tories.
** I know, I know. It’s a fantasy, right?
It’s a pretty hot fantasy! good luck with that government, though.
Hope to meet you in Florida in a few weeks.
And the people’s hero Nick Clegg allowed all this? Sorry, couldn’t help myself
More seriously, with such a yawning deficit there HAVE to be cuts or there will be a Greece-style credit crisis. Whatever else the Nasty Party did in office, they brought the budget into balance after the crisis of the 70’s. When 75% of the non-English economy is accounted for by the public sector, and total government debt exceeds 65% of GDP, you know there’s a problem. Even New Labour realised that the time had come to pay up.
Ok back on topic again: If the Nasty Party DID bring back corporal punishment, the closet spankos in Cabinet – *cough* Theresa May – would probably do what American local governments do in financial terms: use ordinances to penalise all of the people who Aren’t Like Us. So what non-criminal acts would become a spankable/floggable offence?
Sorry to impugn Theresa May’s reputation, I was referring to Philippa Stroud.
Not even the idea of public whippings of girls in Trafalgar Square quite compensates for the utter shock this afternoon, having returned from a trip to the Middle East for the past few days, of switching on the radio to hear the phrase: “The Prime Minister, David Cameron…”
I’d watched the news unfold from my hotel, of course, but somehow being overseas, it didn’t feel real – so I nearly crashed the car.
LOL! But you’re not the only one who hasn’t fully woken up to reality yet. Apparently the policemen guarding No. 10 had to use a copy of The Sun to identify the various Cabinet members who were trying to get into the building for their first meeting. (Cleggy of course got through since everyone knows him now.)
Apparently the new home secretary was on page 3…
Squick!
Ihave always wished that a ‘flogging post’, be set up in every village, town, and city in the world, where a man can bring a naughty women, and expose her bare bottom, to a painfull flogging on her bare bottom. I can dream that this will become a realtiy.