Richard Drax – Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax – the MP for South Dorset since 2010, seen here enjoying an ice cream with another ‘Greedy Bastard’ Jacob Rees Mogg.

You may think I am being gratuitously offensive using the term ‘Greedy Bastards’ so let Graham Scambler explain in his opening piece on Jacob Rees Mogg.

“I’d best open this likely ‘series’ with a word about the technical term ‘greedy bastards’. These comprise that subset of exceptionally wealthy accumulators of capital intent on further accumulation via donating, sponsoring, lobbying and otherwise cajoling favourable policymaking by the state’s power elite. The adjective ‘greed’ captures their all-consuming focus on personal wealth and influence through capital accumulation, and the term ‘bastards’ reflects a willingness to privilege this project over any kind of compassionate concern for others. These greedy bastards are comfortable with class-exploitation and state-oppression; they can live with the austerity-induced misery and suicides of those deemed and dismissed as lesser mortals.”

It matters not if they love their mum or support the local village church fete. This is not about a personality characteristic. It is about surfing social structures they are completely unwilling to change. Moreover they act in way to shore it up.

Right, now that is out of the way let’s get on with it.

On 13th December several newspapers reported that he was asked to make reparations to the people of Jamaica and Barbados for the damages done by slavery on the Drax family plantations between 1640 and 1836. He inherited Drax Hall in St George Barbados in 2017. The Daily Mail, as Mail Online, also ran the story with a picture of the plantation showing an old corrugated iron roof storage shed rather than the grand house that is Drax Hall. The picture, I suggest, was deliberately used to play down the fabulous wealth Drax actually inherited from his family’s long standing activities. Anyone seeing the sheds might think what the fuss on reparations is all about, and surely first impressions looking at the picture suggests the wealth gained over the years must have dissipated by now. It firmly establishes in the minds of Mail readers that this is history and therefore cannot be connected to the present. I would suggest this is a common tactic used to distant and exonerate all current wealthy beneficiaries of British colonialism. It is a very necessary tactic otherwise you stain the reputation not only of Mercantile Capitalists and their current wealthy beneficiaries, but also of Aristocracy and Monarchy. 

There is a picture, however, of Charborough House, Drax’s UK home,  further down the Mail Online piece. This picture is distanced from the first in the article, and I would think deliberately so to indicate the distances between the colonial slave owning past in the Caribbean and the post colonial aristocratic present in the United Kingdom. The Mail also chose to picture the emancipatory festival of 1834 in Barbados. It depicts smiling and dancing well dressed ex-slaves while a white man, who might be a plantation owner, smiles paternalistically upon the scene. The choice of this scene rather than the actual horrors of slavery is again telling. The message the Mail is subliminally getting across is this: “Yes slavery was horrible, but we ended it, the slaves danced, its history…so that’s that”.

The Mail quotes Drax who defends his position by saying:

“I am keenly aware of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the role my very distant ancestor played in it is deeply, deeply regrettable. But no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago. This is a part of the nation’s history, from which we must all learn.” Nothing to see here, move on. 

Note the use of the words ‘very distant ancestor’ (singular) rather than ‘my family’, again I suggest is used to morally distance himself. This is the use of language to create what Davies and Harré call a ‘subject position’ of ‘innocent’ (“not me guv”). I also wonder, what lesson has been learned apart from the obvious that slavery is an inhumane abomination unless you believe in inequality, the superiority of an ethnic group or the prioritisation of wealth/progress. 

His response and the Mail’s piece illustrate the stock response one expects from those whose ‘class habitus’ is one of defence of the status quo and capital accumulation through historical colonialism, dispossession and genocide. A class habitus (Bourdieu) is a discrete mind set which predisposes us to think and act in predictable ways. Drax’s class habitus not only pushes him to the ‘not responsible defence’ (no one said he is) but also involves his negative attitudes towards Black Lives Matter. Instead of focusing on the substance of the points made by BLM he decided to attack two protesters whom he called rioters:

“The desecration of the Cenotaph by rioters two weeks ago, on the actual D-Day anniversary, was beyond ironic.” He is vociferous on immigration, too. Voting to increase curbs in 2013, he said: “I believe, as do many of my constituents, that this country is full.”

Drax is a fully paid up member of the ‘Greedy Bastard’ club. Graham Scambler’s “Greedy Bastards Hypothesis’ is a call to sociologists and others to examine in detail that fraction of the 0.01%  – Capital Monopolists and their apologists and allies in the political power elites. Dax is both a Capital Monopolist and as a Member of Parliament firmly part of the political power elite working to further his own and his class interest. 

The GBH contends that health inequalities for example are the unintended consequences of the strategic actions of the GB’s. Scambler contends that there is a class-command dynamic of structural relations that individuals such as Drax use to further their own and their family interests. Drax is both Greedy – because he privileges capital and wealth accumulation over just about everything else, hence instant dismissal of the benefits he accrues from historical slavery – and a Bastard because he displays a ‘callous indifference to those struggling to cope’. 

To substantiate those claims it is necessary to examine his family background, education, career and wealth and perhaps voting record.

From his own website we get this portrait of the man: An ex soldier, ‘serving’ across the world. Then studying land management at the Royal Agricultural College and then a 17 year career in journalism. All very Tory, all very petit bourgeois middle class. It then says he ‘took over the family business in 2006’ and then mentions his charitable/voluntary work as an Honorary Watchkeeper at Portland’s Coastwatch station which is run by volunteers. His altruistic credentials further served by stating “Keen to educate children about the countryside, Richard continues to invite schoolchildren to his farm every year”. 

That’s nice of him. A bit of ‘noblesse oblige’ – a helping hand to the lower orders. 

“He will continue to serve, without fear or favour.” Unless of course you are a skiver not a striver or a riotous supporter of BLM. 

To be fair, no one is going to do anything other than paint a favourable picture on one’s own website. In advertising terms this is called a ‘puff piece’ and he is no different in this from every social media wannabe influencer and the rest of us on our own social media sites. And yet I think it is deeply misleading, as it plays into the idea of being merely middle class, just like the voters he wants to support him rather than the wealthy greedy bastard he actually is.

Drax was born in 1958. The family name Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax is the quadruple-barrelled surname of the descendants of Admiral The Honourable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1880–1967), who was the younger son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany by his wife Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor, née Burton, later Ernle-Erle-Drax (1855–1916). The surname of Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was assumed in lieu of Plunkett, his name from birth, by royal licence on 4 October 1916. Ernle is pronounced earnly. He was privately educated at Harrow and later graduated from Sandhurst. 

At this point, I suggest the adoption of the simplified name to merely Drax has a role in disguising his heritage in order perhaps to seem more ‘ordinary middle class.’ Whether this was the intention, who knows but it serves that purpose in any case. 

According to wikipedia: He lives in the ancestral seat, Charlborough House in Dorset and has the lordship of the manor of Longburton. He just happens to be the largest landowner in the county owning approximately 13,870 acres. In addition he owns two other properties, the 2,200 acre Ellerton Abbey in Swaledale and the 520 acre Copperthwaite grouse moor.  According to the Guardian, he has opaque estate finances, with at least 6 trusts and other disconnected financial entities. He owns 125 Dorset properties personally or through family trusts and could be worth as much as £150 million. He also owns a £4.5 million holiday villa at Sandbanks which is rented out at £6,734 per week. For those who do not know of Sandbanks, it is a particularly expensive piece of real estate on the Dorset coast.

He is the eldest son of Henry Walter Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1928–2017)JP DL and The Hon. Pamela Weeks (1931–2019) and a grandson of Admiral The Hon. Sir Reginald Drax, younger son of the 17th Lord Dunsany thereby being in remainder to the ancient Barony of Dunsany (cr. 1462): the second oldest title in the Peerage of Ireland. His great-uncle was the writer and playwright the 18th Lord Dunsany, and his maternal grandfather was General the Lord Weeks. His first wife (divorced 1997) was Zara Legge-Bourke, younger sister of the royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, relations of the Earl of Dartmouth. Drax married his second wife; Eliza, daughter of Commander James Dugdale RN (related to David Cameron). Drax since married Norwegian-born Elsebet Bødtker and has four children in total. At least six of his ancestors, including John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle-Drax and the 17th Lord Dunsany, were Members of Parliament for Dorset and Gloucestershire between the 1680s and 1880s. A cousin is the 19th and present Lord Dunsany

Not so middle class after all. 

During the 2010 United Kingdom general election campaign, the Daily Mirror reported that Drax’s family had earned their fortune through slavery. Drax’s response questioned his responsibility for “something that happened 300 or 400 years ago”, stating “it’s not what I stand for”, and cited the desperation of his opponents- “all they can do is pick at bits of my family history”. In 2013, the BBC noted that his ancestor John Erle-Drax, who had an estate in Barbados, was recorded in a database created by University College London as having received £4,293 12s 6d in compensation for 189 slaves when slavery was abolished . No wonder the chap in the picture watching the dancing ex slaves was smiling! 

Historian David Olusoga has stated that: “From the very early stages of the family’s involvement in slavery and the sugar trade, the Drax dynasty were able to generate extraordinary wealth through the cultivation of sugar grown by enslaved Africans.” Today’s plantation workers earn about £24 a day, about half the average wage in Barbados. 

Drax and his ilk are clearly surfing the waves of past and current privilege. 

As for his voting record,

On social issues he has voted against equal gay rights and almost always voted against laws to promote equality and human rights. 

On Welfare and benefits Consistently voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the “bedroom tax”). Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices. Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability. Almost always voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent on such support. Consistently voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits. Generally voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed. 

On tax and Employment: Generally voted for increasing the rate of VAT which of course makes zero difference to him. Generally voted for higher taxes on alcohol which could be seen as being public health minded but again this makes no difference to the wealthy who can afford fine wines, craft ales and rare malt whiskies at any price. Almost always voted against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000. Generally voted against a banker’s bonus tax, voted a mixture of for and against higher taxes on banks. Consistently voted against an annual tax on the value of expensive homes, almost always voted for reducing capital gains tax. Almost always voted for more restrictive regulation of trade union activity.

On housing: consistently voting for phasing out secure tenancies for life while of course enjoying a secure tenancy for himself while also being a landlord. Consistently voted for charging market rents to high earners renting a council home. 

His voting record on other issues display all of the traits of a socially conservative, neoliberal with a bent towards centralising power at Westminster. Drax is wholly part of the modern neoliberal conservative party who massively benefits from colonialism and current property portfolios which of course he has done very little to ‘earn’ in any sense someone from the working class would understand the word. His enormous wealth provides a buffer against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune while doing little to alter the social and economic structures of those at the bottom.

 

I found this story back in 2017. Still makes me chuckle:

Bugger.

And there was I thinking that the military was a bastion of middle class, middle England values, whose members would no more indulge in the seven deadly sins than Marks and Spencer would sell strap-ons* and hugely girthed dildos next to the children’s toys. The Army, Navy and Air Force were renowned for taking on wayward individuals whose career paths would otherwise have included a little light pilfering of the church collection box, assault as a matter of beer fuelled ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ ritual or becoming a Health and Safety Executive statistic in the shipyards and factories. The Armed Forces would then turn them into highly trained and disciplined targets for every dispossessed colonial with a bullet, bomb and bitterness. Officers, of course, being drawn from the ‘respectable’ middle classes, already know the score and how to keep their little peccadillos from being dragged out of the shadows, blinking into the harsh light of justice. Officers are the moral backbone of the military, whose first principle is of course ‘don’t get caught’.

Our fabled military is a supposed home to a solid conservatism, one which would no more recognise impropriety in the ranks than Whitehall remembers Imperialism.

And yet…turns out someone, and eight of his shipmates on a nuclear submarine, likes a toot of Colombia’s finest marching powder, while two of his superior officers breached the ‘no touch rule’ designed to prevent intimate relations on board. There was panic in the rest of the fleet as the then Defence Secretary, Micheal ‘Fiddler’ Fallon, wanted all submarine crews to be drugs tested. Is he mad? That’s like lifting manhole covers in London hoping to see sweet scented, pink ribbon wrapped, bouquets of roses instead of a fleet of fetid, faecal flecked fatbergs clogging the arteries of the city.

Who does he think joins up and why they do so? The Royal Navy in particular was built on Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. Hearts of Oak joined up to serve King/Queen and Country, to go to other countries and shag their women, bomb the natives and shout loudly for more beer. They went to sea to avoid having to do the shitty zero hours, low paid, dead end bullshit jobs back home. Alcohol is the lifeblood that makes it tick over. Pusser’s Rum was the oil lubricating the penile pistons in whorehouses from Devonport to Sembawang. Adultery is, and always was, an option especially now that Wrens also are part of the ship’s crew.

The Navy is not the Church of England at sea.

So, there is of course a stonking great big elephant in the room here. It is drunk and wearing a big red sash called hypocrisy while waving its engorged phallus at anything remotely looking like a lady elephant while not caring where the phallus ends up or who is perturbed by its presence.

Fallon himself, it later turned out, was no one to throw stones at other people’s drug and alcohol fuelled whorehouses, and was in no position to lecture anyone about financial and other improprieties.

According to The Daily Telegraph Fallon claimed for mortgage repayments on his Westminster flat in their entirety. The rule was however, that MPs were only allowed to claim for interest charges. Between 2002 and 2004, Fallon regularly claimed £1,255 per month in capital repayments and interest, rather than the £700–£800 for the interest component alone. After his ‘error’ was noticed by staff at the Commons Fees Office in September 2004, he asked: “Why has no one brought this to my attention before?” 

This is the question many a jack tar asks when stood at the Captain’s table after being caught balls deep in the Ambassador’s wife after a rum sodden run ashore in Gibraltar, after it was pointed out that dipping one’s thumb into someone else’s Plummy Jam Jar is just not cricket.

It got worse for Fallon.

In late October 2017 it was reported that he had had repeatedly and inappropriately touched journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer‘s knee during a dinner in 2002. Hartley-Brewer recalled that after Fallon kept putting his hand on her knee, she “calmly and politely explained to him, that if he did it again, I would punch him in the face”. Fallon resigned two days later believing his “previous conduct” towards women had “fallen below” what is acceptable. At least it was just a knee being touched rather than retrieving the ping pong ball from a ‘performer’ in some of the darker smokier and less morally reputable bars in Bangkok.

It was subsequently reported Fallon had been forced to resign in part due to an allegation of inappropriate and lewd comments towards fellow Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom. Inappropriate and Lewd – a Tory MP, who’d have thought it? He was also accused of making comments of a sexual nature about other MPs on the committee and members of the public. I can only surmise that he must have been on the lash in Union Street in Guzz or the Reeperbahn in Hamburg to have picked up such habits.

So, if you ever find yourself in a huge metal tube, cut off from the outside world for very long periods of time with the coming apocalyse in nuclear form as company, and you don’t sniff a little, swig a little or shag a little to avoid facing up to the insanity of your situation…I fear for your soul. You may tell moralising conservative types to merrily f*ck off.

*don’t ask your mum.

Dear Donald,

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest fuck up in the history of our nations. That is that the word is out, that the lower orders are revolting. 

Two score years ago, Saint Margaret of Finchley, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Griffiths report to begin the sell off of the communist inspired NHS. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of shareholders in private health firms who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their impoverishment.

But forty years years later, the shareholder still is not free. Forty years later, the life of the venture capitalist is still sadly crippled by the manacles of socialised medicine and the chains of tax burdens. Forty years later, the investor lives on a lonely island of relative poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of un accessed investment opportunities. Forty years later, the billionaire is still languished in the corners of our societies and finds himself a pariah in his own land. The increase in wealth at a rate of 27.5% since April is looked upon with horror rather than with admiration.

In a sense we’ve come to our nations, our people, to cash a check. When the financiers of our systems wrote the magnificent words of the legal frameworks of Tax evasion and avoidance, they were writing a promissory note to which every billionaire was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, millionaires as well as billionaires, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of making money unhampered by the moaning minnies of the lower classes. It is obvious today that socialists, communists and eco warriors have defaulted on this promissory note. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, cultural marxists and trade unions have given the billionaires a bad cheque, a cheque which has come back marked “fuck off you greedy bastards.”

But we refuse to believe that our access to public funds is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of our offshore accounts, tax breaks and public funding.

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of capital accumulation. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of welfare redistribution to the sunlit path of our aggrandisement. Now is the time to lift ourselves from the quicksands of wealth injustice to the solid rock of big returns on investment . Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of us and to tell the plebs to get off their fat burger stuffed arses, to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. 

It would be fatal for us to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of our discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of wealth increases and tax avoidance. Twenty twenty is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that we needed blow off steam, and will now be content, will have a rude awakening if our nations return to ‘high tax and welfare’ business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility until we are granted our rights to do what the fuck we please, as we are the wealth creators. We are the übermensch, we are the ‘master morality’, we are the big beasts of the forest swinging our dicks around unabashed knowing the females will come dribbling and swooning.

But there is something that I must say to bankers, financiers, venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of capital accumulation. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of getting caught doing ‘wrongful’ deeds. Let us seek to satisfy our thirst for wealth by stoking the fires of bitterness and hatred within the working class and ethnic groups, especially the migrants. Let the poofs have their multi coloured rainbows, we have the only colour that counts: gold. We must forever conduct our struggle on the low plane of secrecy and dark money funding of hate groups to divide and rule. We must encourage their protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with physical force, as the good people of Charlottesville showed us. We must stand by. Black lives matter, but bullets matter more.

The marvellous new militancy which has engulfed the working class must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our cross burning destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. Let “They shall not replace us” be shouted from the rooftops, from within billions of Tweets and Facebook posts, and from every dark and smokey bar across the land. 

There are those who are asking the devotees of banker’s rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as banker is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of jokes on the comedy circuits, especially in the BBC. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the 5 star hotels, yachts and private islands unhampered by protest. We cannot be satisfied as long until our basic financial mobility is always from a smaller private offshore fund to a larger one. 

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friend.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the capitalist dream.

I have a dream that one day we capitalists will rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created unequal.”

I have a dream that one day in Mar a Lago, the Maldives, on Super Yachts, the sons of bankers and the sons of venture capitalists will continue to be able to sit down together at the lobster laden table of brotherhood without the stench of poverty and alienation emanating from the discontented in the shitty streets of Manchester and Birmingham. “Let them eat chips”.

I have a dream that one day in London, a city sweltering with the heat of socialist inspired NHS injustice, sweltering with the heat of the communism of minimum wages, I dram that London will continue to be an oasis of tax secrecy and wealth creation for the few.

I have a dream that my four, or six, or whatever the number is….that my  little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, by the sound of their accents,  but by the content of their bank accounts.

I have a dream that one day, up in Liverpool, with its vicious trades unions, with its mayor having his lips dripping with the words of “social justice” and “tax justice” — one day right there in Liverpool wealthy little boys and girls will be able to join hands with other like minded little boys and girls as sisters and brothers in privilege.

Let us sing the old school motto… “The Working Class Can Kiss My Ass….”

Don’t give in Old Boy… 

E pluribus Unem 

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

7th October 2020. 

Dear Dom,

Fuck it.

Boris. 

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington

October 6th 2020

Dear Boris, 

I feel great, just great. I thought you would like to know. I’ve recovered more quickly than anyone, I probably know more than anyone about recovery. Really. The doctors all said how great I am doing and they had never seen anyone recover so quickly as I have. 

So what’s all the fuss about? I’m over 70 and I’m still here, so what’s the beef? You recovered, our friend Jair (‘The Brazilian Nut’ as I like to call him) recovered…we have all recovered and doing fine, just fine. We have to keep upbeat, keep positive and not let the doctor dooms of this world get us down. What do they know anyway? All they got is their ‘science’ ‘research’ and ‘medicine’ but I think you can cut through the bullshit and focus on what’s important. 

No, not pussy. Although, I have to admit Melania is getting a bit older now, and you know what that means, right buddy? Some things get better with age, others just wrinkle and dry. I’d prefer wine to prunes any day, know what I’m saying? When this is over I’m throwing a party at Mar a Lago and grabbing some younger hotter pussy. Join us? Vlad, Jair and Xi and popping over, as are Kanye and Kim (great ass by the way). 

What’s important is that we both can lead the nations of the world to prosperity and purity. We gotta sort out between us how to run the world so that the kooks, the poofs, the Yids and the rag head goatfuckers know they can’t push us around. Vlad’s ok, Xi has his own Empire going nicely and Jair is getting on making Brazil modern, taking it out of the medieval mind swamp and loser country that it has been. I encourage him to send in his own General Custer to cure Brazil of the ‘indigenous monkeys’ that call themselves humans in the forests. What have they given to the world over 3000 years or more? How to eat a coconut? How to make a suit out of guano? Pan Pipes? Mozart would not have written the 1815 Overture if all he had was a stick up his nose. Give me a break. 

Our countries need us, you and me. We are what keeps the whole damn ship afloat. We are destiny’s men. We breath positivity and vitality and a few viruses (which we beat by the way).

I’ve met Rupert and told him I’d make it worth his while if he ran a few stories about Uncle Joe’s wandering hands. Yeah, ok that pussy grabbing comment did not hurt me, so you’re thinking that stories about Joe touching up ass will not hurt him either. Whatever, it’ll get folks talking about the rights and wrongs of titty grabbing rather than hoax climate change and coronary virus deaths. It’ll send the Woke into a deep spiralling frenzy of outrage; they’ll be spitting their organic tofu breakfast cereals over their faux hemp sandals and writing to the cultural marxist New York Times to complain that tits and ass should never be grabbed without written permission and three weeks notice of intent. Yeah, right.

So you might see a few headlines in your country as well as mine about ‘Groping Joe’ and the Epstein parties he ‘went’ to. Everyone likes a story about sleaze and drugs, even if they ain’t true? Old Roops was great about it, really great. He winked and let me know that we can work together, to have a good deal…a really great deal. The best deal. 

I have to go now, the oxygen bottle is running low and I gotta take a long piss in a short time.

Oh, yeah, right, Melania says to ask ‘Is Boris fully ok?’ I’m sure you are buddy.

Donald J Trump

The Greatest US President (Ever).

Over the years, when it comes to fettling with mechanicals, I have learned nothing.

Nothing… except that after the event there are easier ways to give blood rather than by stabbing your thumb with a rusty Stanley knife whose edge has been blunted by repeated overuse cutting old Lino on a concrete floor.

There is a supposed affinity between man and machine which means that there is no maintenance job too small which should be given to the professional garage, and no job is too big that it cannot be tackled with time, tools and a nice cup of tea. An oil change, for example, is simply removing old oil from the sump, replacing the oil filter and refilling the engine. All you need is a rag, a drip tray large enough to hold the old oil and a radio blasting out your favourite songs. Older chaps should have a topless models calendar on the garage wall. Younger more woke chaps can listen to Woman’s Hour on Radio Four before offering to do the ironing. The only real jeopardy in the oil change procedure is to be found in losing the oil drain plug while unscrewing it from beneath the engine, and then watching it as it drops onto the garage floor and bounce towards the darkest recesses of the workshop where mice and hope go to die.

Triumph is a name well known to men. It is a company that has existed since 1902. The Triumph motorcycling company is not to be confused with Triumph the lacy bra maker. Care needs to be taken when googling Triumph in case one gets sent to the wrong company’s web site. An awkward conversation is to be had with one’s partner if by chance they should look over your shoulder and instead of seeing a Bonneville leaning into a corner, or a picture of a piston, they espy you lingering over a picture of a buxom model in flimsy red lace.

The current Triumph motorcycling company was established in 1983 by John Bloor after the original company Triumph Engineering went into receivership. The new company, initially called Bonneville Coventry Ltd, continued Triumph’s lineage of motorcycle production. The ‘Bonneville’ is a superstar among motorcycles, popular around the world.  

Popular I guess right up to the point when maintenance is required. To be fair, many men actually enjoy the sado-masochistic practices when machine and maintenance meet in the battle of the workshop. I have in the past, the long distanced past, deconstructed motorcycles and their engines, assisted only with bravado, ignorance and a handbook written by the company’s PhD in mechanical engineering whose only actual experience with the reality of oil, grease and cursing was at their own birth. They may know a lot about compression ratios and newton-meters but their ability to impart actual useful information, is in inverse proportion with their abilities to say without giggling “slide the shouldered shaft into the bush with the shouldered end innermost, see diagrams 16.12b”.

They write that stuff with a serious face, expecting us to a) understand and b) to follow the instruction. That actual sentence can be found in the Haynes Manual for the Triumph Bonneville page 2.33. I bought the manual at the same time as the Bonneville back in 2001. Not that I thought for a moment that I would actually use it. Its purpose, and position on my bookshelf, is merely to give the impression that I’m a Renaissance man who knows his way around the big end of an engine as well as he does around the big end of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  

Although makers of fine motorcycles, Triumph can also be a bit….stingey? They are not immune to cutting corners or costs in production. This means you get everything you need but not necessarily want on the bike when you wheel it out of the showroom. In my case with my brand new Bonneville way back in 2001, I did not get a rev counter and a centre stand. In both cases…wtf? Triumph must have made the decision that they are not needed only just wanted like the third large Gin and Tonic before dinner. Well, I admit I have done well enough without either for nearly 20 years so perhaps they have a point. Time comes though when maintaining chains and cleaning back wheels really do require the machine to be up on a centre stand. Trust me.

That time has come. I have already put after market exhaust pipes on the Bonny so that it no longer sounds as quiet as a small kitten purring as you tickle its tummy. The factory pipes are for the United States market with much stricter emissions and noise reduction targets. The result is that the factory Bonny makes less noise than a hamster* with a pillow on its face. That might work for Alabama or Montana, but not in Ambleside or Manchester. The bike is British, home of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Motorhead…like…ffs…a quiet Bonny? It is like asking Ozzie Osbourne to sing ‘hush a bye baby’ in front of the Queen after doing a gram of coke and bottle of Jack Daniels.  

So, the pipes are already done. Other modifications have been very minor, but now comes the centre stand.

Can’t be difficult can it? A couple of bolts and a spring?  I watch a youtube video which mentions stretching the spring with a hook to get it in place. No other videos are forthcoming, other than some chaps doing the similar job but with other models of Bonneville. All mention stretching the spring as “the hard bit”. They all suggest the bike is stabilised in case one is daft enough to pull it over upon oneself after trying to stretch the spring. OK. message received and understood. I will try not to kill myself. I look forward to having the bike crush my chest as much as I would look forward to binge watching Love Island with gang of recently jilted teenage girls high on chocolate and self absorption.

So I watched the video in which the monotone Brummie tries to bore me to death with instructions taking 8 minutes when 8 seconds would have done it. It amounts to “download the instructions…and watch out for the bastard spring”. He then waves his phone camera at the underside of his parked bike as if the wonder of his work will magically reveal itself. By the way, there is a reason why there are professional film makers and editors. Editing is a rather underrated skill…until you watch YouTube. 

I download the instructions which on the face of it look clear. I also lay out the centre stand and its assembly. I was right. A couple of bolts, three (?) nuts,  two rubber bushes, a rubber stop for the exhaust and the bastard spring. There are one or two other bits with fancy names such as ‘spacer’, ‘retaining bolt’ and ‘C plate’  that might come in handy at some point.

Both video and written instructions at the outset fail to mention one very very important starting point. It is this:

“Do not attempt this while the bike is at ground level resting on its side stand”.

Consider that the centre stand fits the underside of the bike, which has not a lot of clearance between frame and ground. A hedgehog would be fine going underneath it, a Jack Russell terrier would be testing its luck. A Vietnamese pot bellied pig would be bacon in a clip clop of a bloodied trotter.

So fitting the spring retaining bolt to the underside of the frame requires patience, getting onto one’s front, laying completely flat,  arms extended and fiddling blindly with the hole it is supposed to go into. All I can see is the swing arm of the frame, chain and chain guard and the floor. It is akin to one’s very first virgin fumbling with the bra strap of your first girlfriend in the complete dark with one arm tied behind your back. It can be done, but not without patience and luck. I am proof it can be done because I did it. It took the second cup of tea of the day to regain composure. The first cup of tea should always be taken just before you start any job.

At this point cussing was restricted to the odd ‘bugger’, a ‘you bastard’ and a ‘you have got to be fucking joking’. The instructions merely said “fit the bolt in the hole in frame”. The video had missed this bit completely and droned on about the bastard spring.  What they do not say is that there is no room to turn a standard torque wrench or ring spanner more than about 10 degrees. The handle of the wrench butts up against the tyre and the frame and allows minimal movement. I am not an engineer, clearly, but I guess to get a turn on a nut requires just a bit more than a 10 degree swing by the spanner? I try not to calculate how many 360 degree turns of the nut it would require to get it to 47 NMs. Nor can I, for the life of me, see how a torque wrench can be used in such a confined space.

Defeated by the lack of space to use my wrench I have to make what was my first trip to the local tool shop, MacSalvors at Pool, to purchase a stubby handled ratchet which might work. The proper torque wrench sits forlornly on the bench alongside its bigger cousin used for the rear axle nut.  If you don’t know how tight the pressure of 47 NMs is, think of walnut cracking. A third cup of tea is required upon return to contemplate how I was going to get the nut tightened sufficiently while at full stretch on my front, while trying not to get the oily tube from the chain oiler poking in my eye.

I have of late bought a scissor jack which fits neatly under the bike frame which raises the motorcycle high enough for ease of access. Just the the thing for jobs such as this. Not one mention of using one is made in the instructions. I would re write them as follows:

1. Book a slot with you local bike dealer.
2. Drop off Bike.
3. Go for Beer.
4. Pick up Bike. Happy Days – go and watch football.
5. If you do attempt this yourself, get a scissor jack…don’t try this at ground level. It is a complete bastard…and we designed the damn thing. Seriously, consider steps 1-4.
6. Have a cup of tea.

My scissor jack is beauty. With it, the bike would rise quicker than Jesus on speed. Problem is, the jack was 10 miles away, and did I mention that the intructions made no mention of needing one? Then having looked at the simple black and white line drawings of frames and bolts on the downloaded instructions, I realise something. Firstly they are close ups so that you get a partial view of frame and the fingers of the mythical mechanic doing the job, and then secondly, the perspective. The close up belies the perspective, and it is only upon very careful reflection upon the diagram that you realise that the drawing has been made from the perspective of…you guessed it looking up at a raised bike, something they did not think sufficiently important  to mention.  Instead we get “put bolt in hole”. You get better instructions from a lobotomised cretin explaining how to use the Large Hadron Collider using only crayons and a doughnut.

Next comes the bush greasing and insertion.

Yes, Really. Snigger if you wish at the back, it is your time you are wasting.

That was the easy bit and set up the fourth cup of tea. No Hob Nobs as accompaniment at this stage, though one feels one has earned it after the first fiasco.

Now for the ‘bastard spring’ which has to be stretched to fit into the the hole in frame at one end and the centre stand at the other. Bearing mind it does not want to be stretched. It is a spring after all. But I am ready because the video discussed the bastard spring. I have a hook at the ready. The first end of the spring is easily slipped into its retaining hole in the frame, then the hook is inserted at the other end of the spring and after a few pulls the spring end slips into its allotted hole on the stand. Not too much fuss. Its a bit like tempting a rabbit back into its hole with a carrot. The rabbit runs to the entrance no problem but then needs a boot up its arse to get it inside. Boring Brummie could have saved himself the precious 8 minutes droning on about the spring. Even the bike stayed stable as I pulled at it. The cussing was reserved for the final stretch and warranted a short expletive of “come on you c*nt” as encouragement. Blood was there none.

Now all that is  required after the spring fitting is a bit of fettling and the insertion of the rubber stopper into the exhaust bracket. The instruction said:

“Put Stopper into hole in exhaust bracket” and came complete with a little picture of the black hard rubber stopper, which looks like door stop or a piece on a checkers board, and the shiny steel exhaust bracket and its hole.

I’m feeling like Fred Dibna after setting his final stick of dynamite. Now for the very easy bit to finish off. Another cup of tea before the final push. The only decision at this point is whether to raid the biscuit tin. The tin of swarfega tantalisingly awaits for the ritual cleaning of hands after the job is complete, the tools lie about the bike to give the impression of professionalism, three empty mugs of tea are evidence or work already carried out, and a wipe down of an oily rag will see us through. Brunel, Trevithick, Gresley…move over, I’m joining the ranks of Great British Engineers. After all I grew up in the shadow of a mine stack, lived on Camborne hill walking in Trevithick’s footsteps. I’ve driven a steam engine and sniffed the fumes of coal fuelled industry. I have oil for blood and guts of pig iron. Even my farts are industrial in sulphurous scale and scope.

I pick up the stopper and the exhaust bracket. I can see where one fits into the other. You don’t need a degree in mechanical engineering from ‘Clever Bastard University’ and even a chap in search of a brain cell to complement the only working one he has, can work it out. Placing one up to the other I push.

Nothing.

I might as well be pushing the stopper into a brick wall. The resistance makes itself felt. I try again. And again. The thumbs begin to go red, then white as I exert more pressure. Nothing. Ok, it needs a bit more force than a human thumb can apply. I try a lump hammer, gently at first and then with each failure I am forced into a rethink. I place the exhaust pipe bracket in a vice and try again with the lump hammer. Of course one cannot merely thump at it because of potential damage to the pipe itself. Lump hammers don’t do gently though, they are not designed for gently tapping. I try the putting the pipe on floor but only succeed in bouncing the hammer off the rubber stopper so that the hammer rebounds towards but not into my face and the stopper goes flying across the room. The stopper does not want to going the hole. That’s it. Perhaps I should heat it up to make it more flexible? Can the stopper itself go into the vice and can I reverse engineer bracket to stopper rather than the other way around?

I need cup of tea and a think. This is taking an hour of my time. I am getting perplexed, surely they designed it so that it would fit? In the end I resorted to finding a screw and a flat washer and then screwing the bastard in place. That’s not shown in the drawings or mentioned in the video. It should be.

It is mid afternoon, the sun is beating down and I am hot tired and thirsty as I stand in my red oil stained and greased overalls looking at the bike. The stand is finally in place. Now to test it.

Taking the bike off the side stand, I stand on the left of the bike and grab the frame and pull back to engage the legs of the centre stand evenly upon the ground. Get this wrong and the bike topples over. If this happens towards you, there is a slim chance of stopping it crashing to the floor or crushing your knee caps. If it falls away, then money will be spent putting the damage right.

I pull and hope.

Nothing but a gasp of air, a wheeze, a grunt and a sharp tight pull of calf muscle which threatened to wrench my achilles tendon apart. I try again but the same result. Einstein, it is said, once remarked that stupidity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different result. Well I was stupid just the once, partly because I was knackered and near to tears. The realisation dawned that I had spent nearly £120 and 5 hours to get to this point only to find I did not have the strength to lift a bike onto its centre stand. Was I really going to have to ask Ann for help every time I want the bike on its centre stand? What about when I was out and about, would I have resort to asking strangers to assist the old man in lifting his bike? Oh, the ignominy, the distress, the shame.

Then I remembered that it was all about technique not strength. One needs one’s centre of gravity further back! So with a deft little step a princess ballerina would have been proud to have done, I repositioned myself and with a third pull the bike easily came up and over onto its stand. I could have danced with joy.

Not all things respond to brute force. Bikes are no exception. Just like a marriage, they require tender loving care, a little coaxing, a lot of understanding, patience, money, and regular lubrication to keep them going without undue noise and vibration.

Easy.

*no hamsters were hurt in the writing of this article.

Apologies to Coleridge

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three,

“By thy black beard and quizzical eye,

Now, why hast thou stopped me?”

The ‘Blue Anchor’s’ doors are opened wide, 

And I am wont to cross in,

Two pints of middle, to hear the craic,

To make a merry din.

He stops me with a hairy hand,

‘There was a sail !’, quoth he,

‘I have a tale, and with a jug, 

I’m sure to share with ‘ee’!

Time holds with both its hands,

I stood, in truth, at ease,

And bade ‘ark to the grizzly tale,

With a jug of Spingo, please! 

We chose the blackened hearth to sit,

Two frothy ales at ready,

And thus spake on the ancient tongue

His drink hand keeping steady.

“twas a dark and stormy night,

of course it was!” quoth he,

“for a mariner’s fable such as this,

requires a stormy sea.”

“Old Falmouth town bid farewell,

Its ladies ever sorrow,

At the leaving of the old sea dog

In the shadow of the ‘morrow”.

For truth, it was that maidens fair,

For him, their love heart flickers,

For often times, he’d found safe port

In the harbour of their knickers.

Of maidens, there were not few, 

nor maidens’ virtues spared.

A song he’d sing in reverie to each,

A love he’d long declared.

“Madam, I’ll be oft away, 

To sea born fortune hunt! 

Upon return I’ll seek you out, 

You’ve such a pretty…”

The sail was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Beyond the lighthouse top,

Beneath the sky and white topped clouds

ne’er fair bound breezes stop.

The sun came up upon the left, 

Out of the sea came he! 

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.

Upon the prow, the dolphins splashed

The sea turned black with fish,

Mackerel shimmered in the light,

But better in the dish. 

Bigger ships and smaller minds 

Sail upon the ocean wave 

Delivering the fruit of global graft

The wealth of men to save.

Land locked folk and sea born ship

Upon the oceans sit,

Yet daily and without a thought

It’s where we dump our shit.  

These thoughts were never all that far,

As noise in head would hum, 

But recompense comes in all shapes,

As ‘baccy, maids and rum.

“South and West, the going good, 

The mast saw many noons,

And in the blackest starlight nights 

The mast saw many moons.” 

“The wind was fair, the sea was good,

For cares, I had not a jot,

Yet, upon the flying jib on high

A shadow cast a blot.”

“My crew was of one other man,

Of ego bigger than the sea,

Of all the rules of sailing fair, he thought

“they don’t apply to me”. 

“We passed Azores, and I avowed, 

In suffering I’m sure of that,

And at the first safe anchor’s port,

I’ll rid me of that twat”.

“Sailing single, all alone

Is heaven, I’ll not quibble,

I’d rather have my anus poked 

Than listen to his drivel.”

Just then a pretty Helston maid, into the bar did tread,

And spake with voice so fair, the mariner’s heart stopped dead, 

“Go on ! “ Says I  “go on good sir, to tell your your tale so bold”

”Aye” quoth he, his eyes aflame with mem’ries of conquests old. 

Then misty eye’d, his compass points now forever south, 

When once the magnets quivered, at a pretty red lipped mouth. 

“Oh, aye, we sailed at dawn, 

We sailed at noon and night,

No islands did we see, 

No monsters give us fright.”

“Forsooth on trade winds blew,

A shape appeared to follow,

Our every tack, our every gybe,

Saith he, “s’not a fucking swallow”

“Tiz a bleddy shite hawk man, 

Tiz hungry, tired and scary,

Keep those pasties down below

Of him, we’ll both be wary”. 

“Yet sorrow in my heart I felt,

For the birds long lonely passage,

I coaxed it down and without a frown

I fed it rum and sausage.” 

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 

The shite hawk it did follow,

And every day for food or play,

Came to the mariner’s hollo!

“One night, my crewman full of spunk,

Did think it would be funny,

To feed the unsuspecting bird 

With poisoned toast and honey”

“He laughed and jeered at dead of night

Quothe he, of it, we’ll not dread,

For tonight I have saved us all, 

I killed the gull stone dead!”

Part 2

“Safe in a tropic bay, with sunshine at my back,

At anchor we did softly sway,

With a belly full of pork and rum 

I thought I’d have my say”.

“And to his dumbstruck face said I,

Birds are harbingers of luck,

It does no good to kill them all,

So off, this boat, please fuck”.

“Alone at last, I put the past, 

And in my mind a message:

I’ll find a port, and all for sport 

I’ll kiss a heaving cleavage.”

Forsooth and in sunny Bay

The rum and samba flowed, 

I found a bar, a guiding star, 

And treasure there was stowed”

“Her name was Margarita, 

From heaven she was sent,

She jumped my bones and sucked me dry

Of everything I spent.”

“Day after day, night after night,

No work for me, nor breath nor motion, 

I lay as idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean.”

“She worked her nimble fingers fair, 

She worked her bosoms fairer,

No main main mast of a fighting ship 

Matched mine for being harder”

“Days went by and so the weeks,

And never did I shrink,

Water, water everywhere

But Rum, it was to drink”

 “Yet God in heaven will not be mocked

He knows all and sees

Those who for herring gull care

And those who him displease” 

“I was not that man, it was not me

Who fed the bird the honey,

God did not care, so to me he said,

“Give to me the money”

“God works in mysterious ways, 

His orders to perform, 

He called upon that dark haired maid

To avenge the avian crime”

‘Ah, well a day, what evil comes

Had I from one so young, 

Instead of the cross, An Albatross

About my neck was hung”

“The bird of which I now I do speak, 

Does not the oceans fly

It comes in form of dark betrayal

It comes in form of lie”

Stunned at that soft and dreadful word

At this, the Cornish bar did creak. 

‘Go on’ saith I, ‘I have not yet heard’’

Your tale of woe, so speak!’

But t’was not doing while Spingo glass lay bare

So I ordered another two and then another two to spare. 

“It was a dark and stormy night again,

It always is I swear, 

Early home I came one night 

And saw her buttocks bare”

“Her back to me, her buttocks rose 

Rhythmically and true

Upon the main mast of a man-o-war

Whose cannon roared, I knew”

“Her boat came closer to his ship,

But I nor spake nor stirred, 

Her boat came close atop his ship,

And I her throaty love voice heard.”

“Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,

Which sky and ocean smote, 

Like one that has seven days drowned,

My body lay afloat,

But swift dreams, myself I found 

Within another boat”

“I vowed that day to sail away, 

To lands where no man stands

To watch a maiden dark give quite so readily  

To another bastard’s hands”.

“And yet, and yet, it is the world

That gives as it doth take, 

“I’ll  find another harbour safe, 

my rum soaked thirst to slake”

“My money’s gone and with it pride, 

And yet my shame will pass, 

But if I catch my crewmate at the ebb

I’ll shove a seagull up his arse”

What loud uproar burst in the door,

The Spingo drinkers gather,

In the snug, and in the garden

A wedding party linger,

And hark the the little church bell 

Which biddeth us to prayer.

“Fuck that, my friend, this soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely ’twas that God himself 

Said “fuck you” to me!”

“O sweeter than a marriage feast, 

’Tis sweeter far to me, 

To sit in the Blue Anchor’s bar

With rum and company.”

The mariner’s eyes did glaze, 

A memory it flickers,

There’s a maiden fair in Falmouth town

His mind is in her knickers. 

A fair wind blows and a foul wind too,

Vagaries, chance and its

long established folklore now, 

‘Don’t mix Gold and Tits’.

The mariner, whose eye is bright

Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone: And now I look to the bar

And turn towards the door. 

I walked like one that hath been stunned,

And is of sense forlorn,

A sadder and wiser man,

I rose the morrow morn. 

Dear Dom.

I’m thinking of seeing this letter to my subjects. What do you think?

“Well, I did not see that coming. I don’t think anybody did” as my old housemaster used to say to his mistress giving him a furtive ‘under the table’ hand job in the back bar at the Nanny and Spanker in Windsor. 

I’d just like to take this opportunity to say to you all out there at risk (all of you), the front line NHS staff, the retail workers, postal workers, the delivery drivers, the carers, that I’m very well and quite safe here in St Thomas’s and being very well looked after. This experience has taught me that from now on, I’m going to really prioritise the NHS. 

No, really. 

Those pre election promises about 40 hospitals and more nurses…well, we all knew that was electioneering bullshit didn’t we (and thank you for your votes) ? That promise was worth no more than a tinker’s cuss and as half as short lived, I’ll admit. As you know I’m not usually one for spaffing cash up a brothel wall but having this cough and a bit of difficulty breathing has helped me to focus less on channelling cash to my chums in the City and more perhaps on what the little people like you, and like the nurses who work here tirelessly, need every day. 

I apologise in advance for the likes of Raab and Gove coming on the telly to fill in for me. I know it must be very frustrating for them to try and fill my well heeled boots. Raab’s frightened eyes and glistening smooth face resembles a shaven sow’s arse at times ( I have to face that in Cabinet) and Gove’s ability to ooze smug superiority mixed with hubris with all of the charm of a full fat slug on a bed of lettuce, I know is at times a bit much. But rest assured I’ll be back soon. 

And I promise you this. All of the health care staff, and those providing social care, will get a pay rise commensurate with their efforts and the risks they face daily. I will not let this episode go unrewarded. No longer will we underfund the NHS, or cut student nurse numbers, or shaft the junior doctors, or have one of the lowest ITU beds per capita in Europe. I’ll in future answer emails from the EU to ensure we get the equipment we need. I’ll take the word of epidemiologists and infectious diseases experts seriously next time and much faster. We will provide testing, tracing and ensure containment much faster (if we make it). I will be procuring so much PPE in future to ensure that your old mum can wear a N95 every time your old man eats a vindaloo and takes an unplanned liquid dump in his trousers. 

To pay for this all, I’ll be asking the hedge fund managers, the banks, the billionaire chums of mine to cough up some spare change from their offshore accounts, which by the way I’ll end. I’m thinking of a wealth tax and a land value tax. The Dukes of Westminster and Bedford can kiss my red sorry arse if they think they can hoard more cash than can be stuffed into a fat whore’s gusset.

Rest assured the low paid will have insecure working conditions ended, living wages introduced, increases in pension age halted. I will not introduce Austerity as we did in 2010. The only precarious people left in the UK will be those who like to deliberately poke the anus of a cranky crocodile with the liqourice stick of a sherbet dip.

I must go before the morphine starts wearing off, I must say this is quite nice.  

There are some pretty rainbows in the ward….

Pip pip.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

Disclaimer: this was dictated at the PM’s bedside. The Government cannot be held responsible for promises made under the influence of opiates. (D. Cummings).