You Won’t Like Him When He’s Angry

It’s moments like this when I have to shake my head.

Some beancounting asshole figures nothing bad’s gonna happen and blammo. Lives ruined, $billions lost and the environment damaged because of the lowest bidder and being too cheap to do some preventative maintenance.

I don’t fear engineers, I fear the accountants (but hey, I’m biased here.)

Let’s not forget these are the people who lost the colonies (one version) because some bureaucrat went on holiday without mailing the orders to some general who therefore failed to meet up with Burgoyne who therefore failed to stop the advance of the Franch nascent American army though he did provide GBS with a lot of good jokes for The Devil’s Disciple.

And I’m startled TV heads are still calling it BP instead of British Petroleum. Where is our sense of xenophobia, people? I’m sure if it were MP we’d have been calling it Mexican Petroleum all along.

@Benedick: From my Other Former Colony redoubt, I can confirm that the drinks are weak, the weather during the monsoon season gawdawful, and WTF with all of this tea in perfectly good coffee growing land? Xrist on a stick, I could be getting daily espresso enemas if the fracking Germans had only partially colonized the place as they did with Central America.

ADD and postscript: and wtf part deux with the vaunted civil service sector? There are more goddamn government agents, district secretaries (not to be confused with the district secretariat, a wholly owned subsidiary of the GA who does not, I repeat does not report to the Governor who actually has the least amount of constitutional power) than people to govern. But the military dudes wear these funny little white leather things up over their boots and ankles (we’d call them “gaitors”) that really distract from the fact that they’ve spent the last three decades putting peoples’ heads on pikes.

and…I learned yesterday from a barrister that the Limey PM isn’t even officially the Prime Minister, he’s the “Lord Minister of the Treasury” or some such rot. Now, where’s my fags?

@Nabisco: To be blunt about it, tea is what white people drink. Foreigners and – you know – drink coffee. For example, the Franch drink coffee. Need I say more?

The point of colonial government is to employ as many half-wit chinless-wonders who went to the right schools as possible. And to ship them out of the mother-country to places where they can do less damage.

I think you mean spats. And yes, their purpose is to distract from atrocities. So that as the soldiers march past on their way to burn down a village, for example, bystanders will be too blinded by their general air of smartness to wonder what they’re doing. A tried and true method that stood us in good stead in India. When circumstances make it necessary to up the smartness quotient the soldiers change into kilts.

I think you’ll find that after a long day spent oppressing the native population there’s nothing quite so refreshing as a nice cup of tea.

@Benedick: I think you’ll find that after a long day spent oppressing the native population there’s nothing quite so refreshing as a nice cup of tea.

Charlie Wilson aka Good Time Charlie had an accomplice during his Freedom Fighter Escapades in Afghanistan and Pakistan who flew in a rage with his Paki…stani overlords when for the fifth day in a row they insisted on breaking for high tea at 4 o’clock. Blustered something about “this is why the Limeys got their asses kicked in the New World” and the delightful General Zia never again broke for tea with Americans in the room.

The NYT has a good piece today on the general cravenness and incompetence of the Minerals Management Service, the folks who allowed this clusterfuck to occur. I say we send them all to the Gulf with hip waders and a Dixie Cup to scoop up oily water.

@Nabisco: Actually, I think it’s one of the reasons Limeys did so well as rapers and pillagers. They always insisted that everyone live as if they were at home in Chipping Sodbury. One changes for dinner, one leaves cards on the mems as they return from the hills to let them know you’ve survived the malarial plagues of summer, one has one’s dishes crated by the Army & Navy stores to be dragged by ox-cart thousands of miles to one’s station, one maintains a stiff upper lip at all times. The system was insane but remarkably effective for many years because they made very few concessions. English travel writing is, in my opinion, set apart by this attitude: “One went to this extraordinary place and met all these rum fellas who do all sorts of amusing tricks. Of course none of it’s what we’d call nice but some of the blighters can seem almost human. They’re like children really. Then one came home and had a jolly nice cup of tea and told mummy all about it and she said they all sound like silly sausages. Which about sums it up nicely.”

At their best the English have a wonderful ability to shame other people into submission because they’re not sure which fork to use.

@Benedick: “And to ship them out of the mother-country to places where they can do less damage.”

Well, to the people that matter.

@Marcel Parcells: Exactly!

@Nabisco: White bush-helmets with plumes in them, too? Have a stingah on the verandah for me, would you old boy?

Duane Johnson is SMOKIN’ HOT.

ADD: You all saw that coming, right?

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: Right.

@Benedick: Litotes and understatement, the passive-voice, the third person, “one” as a pronoun, god I love the englanders.

@Dodgerblue: You mean the MMS that was literally fucking and doing blow with the oil industry repos?

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: He’s not too manly for you? I guess he’s waxed, so that’s a plus in your book… ;-)

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: He’s strangely likable. Also, Walking Tall is kind of a fun movie.

@SanFranLefty:

I little, but I have ways of dealing with that. Mr. ‘Catt is kinda butchy too.

@Prommie: I’m sure I’ve noted this before but my very best fave moment in the history of High Limey understatement was when the actor Ernest Thesiger (one of the stately homos of England) was asked in his later years, to describe what it was like to fight at the battle of Mons, one of the first engagements of WWI, which he did as a young man.

His summation? My dear, the people! And the noise!

@Benedick: One would think he would feel no need to exagerate so.

@Nabisco: But the military dudes wear these funny little white leather things up over their boots and ankles (we’d call them “gaitors”) that really distract from the fact that they’ve spent the last three decades putting peoples’ heads on pikes.

We wore canvas “leggings” in boot camp over our bell-bottom dungarees and spit-shined, high-top Chukka boots. And itchy wool socks. In Orlando. In the summer. I figured it was just another way to keep us sleep deprived because we had to try to keep them spotless, which is really hard when they’re rubbing against the polish on your boots all day.

After lights out, you could find us in the head scrubbing those fuckers with toothbrushes, polishing our boots, all sorts of ridiculous shit when we were dead dog tired.