What kind of a world do we currently reside in?
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (right) with the then British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson last year.
Putin tells the world, what we already know, that he has a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the world as we know it. And that is not to mention the arsenal the US has, what Britain has, what France has, what China has, what India has, what North Korea has and what Iran aspires to. Anyone of them, under a deranged leader, could press a button and end civilisation. It is just as well that Putin, despite his claims on Ukraine’s Donbas region, is not deranged. Compared to what we have seen from some other leaders he is a model of sobriety.
But he is, of course, getting on and while some leaders (for want of a better description) appear to mellow and indeed grow in wisdom in old age, we have no guarantee that Putin will not disintegrate into a deranged button-pressing demagogue bent not so much on world domination but rather world destruction. Armageddon is on the horizon. Of course there is nothing new in that. For centuries we have the prophets of doom predicting the end of the world. These were nice, harmless, well-intentioned, if deluded, characters with their homemade signage warning of the end of humanity.
Nice, deluded people are no threat to humanity but when we look around us and see the type of people who have manoeuvred their way into positions of great power or inherited such positions, it makes one think what is the point and should we worry ourselves if Putin, not the most likely button pusher, might wake up some morning in his grandiose dacha and say to hell with it, the time has come to bring it all to an end.
Think of the Donald for instance who appears to be not half the megalomaniac his many off-the-cuff utterances show him to be, but still very unpredictable. Look at Epstein. What manner of man curries favour with the so-called elites in society by providing young girls or even boys, for all we know, to satisfy their crass and lewd porno whims.
Epstein, we are told, committed suicide while in jail. If he did commit suicide or if he was silenced because of what he knew and might tell is of no great consequence now. Something of the truth is emerging and one has to question if Epstein was the real villain or was it those in society he facilitated.
Just think of the former Prince of the English royal family, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and indeed his former wife, the wonderful Fergie, brand ambassador, charity worker and the writer of children’s books and sponger off the rich. What a pair of prats!
At least Fergie showed a willingness to work, even if she overpriced her value, but what can one say of her former husband who never worked a day in his life, took what the blighted British taxpayer handed over to him and gallivanted around the world looking for depraved sex with girls and women provided by Epstein. He then told porkies when he was found out and exposed by Virginia Giuffre who also went on to commit suicide because of the pressure arising from her involvement with Epstein and the Prince.
Then, there is that other gobshite (and here I heartily apologise firstly to you Mr Editor and to any reader offended by such crude language but I can think of no other word that so aptly and appropriately describes him) Lord Peter Mandelson. This Labour peer of the realm has been around at the top of British society and politics for most of his adult lifetime and has gratuitously inveigled himself into a variety to highly paid roles as a barometer of all that is good in the higher echelons of British politics. He was a close buddy of Epstein and, like the rest of the fawning beggars, had his hand out to Epstein ready to accept any funding or exotic, not to mention erotic, holiday that might come his way.
As you know, he even had himself appointed as British Ambassador to the US so that he could bend the ear of President Trump to the British way of doing things - this despite his known connections to Epstein. He built a nest of lies in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ear in order to get the job and I’ll leave it to yourselves to decide which of the two is the bigger idiot - Sir Keir Starmer for being gullible enough to be taken in by those lies or Lord Mandelson, who quite clearly built a reputation on deceit. There is clearly a duplicity about Mandelson which one would hope does not apply to the Prime Minister.
Mandelson has done the sensible thing by resigning from the House of Lords. He got out before he was thrown out. Even in that privileged den of inequity there are limits to what a person can get away with though, I suspect, there are quite a number of incumbents there who would not withstand the glare of scrutiny that Epstein brought on Mandelson.
Readers will notice the number of times the capitalised word “Lord” has appeared in this short discourse. It does suggest to me at any rate that there is something rotten in the state of Britain. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an Anglophobe any more than I am a Holocaust denier or an Irish Jew hater. But the House of Lords must surely be the most ludicrous and preposterous Upper House of any parliament anywhere in the world.
We’ve had our own problems with deviant people in positions of trust in this country but not to the same extent, I would hope, as in political circles in Britain. Our problem has been largely with priests and religious in the Catholic Church… tho’ not, it should be said, exclusive to the Catholic Church. It has been difficult for the Church (the boys at the top, not the general public) to root out the paedophiles who brought disgrace to the institution and, let’s be honest, there were quite a few debauched priests and nuns who let down the genuine servants of the Church. Those genuine servants are still paying a high price as they watch the Catholic edifice crumble and die before their eyes.
Our Upper House, Seanad Éireann, is hardly the most democratic of institutions. It is the preserve of an elite, elected by an elite (educated!) section of Irish society. About one thousand elite Irish citizens elect 49 members of the Seanad and our esteemed Taoiseach has the gift of nominating a further 11 members. Usually, the Taoiseach of the day might nominate some individuals who have contributed to or may have something to contribute to Irish society but our esteemed Taoiseach has appointed 11 political lackeys, grooming them as possible future Dáil material.
It was a backward step by our esteemed Taoiseach but political expediency dictated his choices and political expediency is not a valid criteria for election to the Seanad. Some time ago the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny led the way in seeking to abolish the Seanad but, when it went to a referendum, the people decided, unwisely in my view, to hold on to the Upper House. There is nothing to suggest that the Seanad compares to the Upper House across the water but it is legitimate to question whether it could stand up to the rigorous scrutiny that the Lords has been subjected to because of Epstein.
(Lord, naturally, Chesterfield)
