Friday 4 October 2013

trial by template



there's a funny squiggly little shape somebody once drew on a map which some people call "britain",

some people love it, some people hate it,

but millions of people who live in the funny squiggly little shape don't even believe it exists, and believe instead that they live in different-shaped funny squiggly little things with differently-spelt funny squiggly little names,

and then again, many others believe they don't live in a funny squiggly-shaped little thing at all, nor do they have any emotional feelings for it, because it's an abstract and arbitrary political construct which only has real significance for those people who believe it exists because they believe they rule it and for those other people who believe it exists but don't themselves believe they rule it because they give money to the people they do believe rule it;

ed, dave, nick and nige believe it exists because they believe they rule it and will get money from other people who don't themselves believe they rule it,

but obviously if those other people didn't believe ed ruled it and ed didn't believe he would get money from them, then ed wouldn't believe he ruled it and wouldn't have to believe it existed,

and so ed wouldn't have to defend his dad's name when other people who believe it does exist accuse his dad of hating it because ed would simply submit that he could not believe his dad to have hated something which he himself didn't actually believe to exist,

and which in any case, being a good marxist, ed's dad knew never fucking well existed in the first place,

although naturally i mention this last point notwithstanding the remote theoretical possibility that he may have had, on occasion, good, just and reasonable cause,

to cuss it off really rotten like.


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