Thursday 20 October 2011

The Man With The Golden Gun

Caesar is dead, the earth will shake.

Hearing that Colonel Gaddafi has been killed must be as akin to hearing Julius Caesar has died, well it's as good as any analogy I can think of. As long as I've been aware of foreign politics there has been a Gaddafi. For there no longer to be a Gaddafi seems very strange. Just like Caesar his name will live on in history not always for the right reasons. What has amazed me in all this is how quickly Gaddafi went from flavour of the month to public enemy number one. He has always been a dodgy, unstable character but also and entertaining, colourful one and both the UK and USA government courted him with some zeal up to a few years ago. Who can forget Gaddafi and Blair in that tent. The reason of course was oil, isn't it always, and moral objections were firmly put aside for financial concerns. Out of all the dictators Gaddafi was the one we as a country 'liked'. Now like Saddam he has gone but at least he didn't suffer the ignominy of being captured only to be hung in the middle of the night and his body disposed of. He died as he lived, doing just what he wanted and sod everyone else.

The evictions at Dale farm carry on apace but thankfully Gaddafi knocked the continuous coverage temporarily off the news. Once the last of the rent-a-crown protestors had been removed the majority of the actual travellers decided to go quietly and began to leave. There are a few hardcore who will have to be dragged out but on the whole they have been peaceful. Which goes to show the people causing the most trouble were those that really had nothing to do with it, as usual. Less than thirty arrests and no injuries of police, baliffs or security, now that is what I call a result. Of course this sort of event bring it's own special comedy moments, my two favourites were a traveller woman who spat fire at the television cameras and shouted 'you brought riot police, you said you wouldn't use riot police against women and children'. She was utterly outraged that police had entered the camp en mass and with force.This single sentence seemed to be the height of her contribution to the cause after which she stalked off in high dudgeon. She obviously ignored the fact that it was the rent-a-crowd that had necessitated the riot police and if she and her children had agreed to go quietly non of this would be happening. I love people like that, they can never see when they are in the wrong and will argue black is white despite all evidence to the contrary. The second was a protester who stood like a solider in front of a line of police with his arm raise ready to strike with what looked like an old chair leg. The police were threatening to taser him and he kept yelling 'come on then' right up until the moment they did and he went down like a sack of spuds, classic. Did he really think they wouldn't? He can't say he wasn't warned.

Last day in work this week as I'm off to the hospital tomorrow. It was a good day and I coped better than I thought it being my third day in. If this continuous I'll be asking to go back up to six hours in a couple of weeks. Hopefully whatever happens at the hospital won't scupper this plan.

When I got home it was straight off to Milton Keynes to get Andrew the money for his trip next week. The Bulgarian currency is quite boring and has picture of famous Bulgarians on the notes but I had no idea who they were and frankly cannot be bothered to look them up. Andrew said he might so I'll wait and see what he finds out. A quick stop off at Boots to pick up Andrew's meds for his throat and then home again. I was starving in MK and would have like a burger but thought better of it and decided to do a quick pasta for tea instead.

There may not be a blog tomorrow, it depends on how long I am at the hospital.

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