Poetry – Cynical Leadership

Posted on by Opher

Cynical Leadership

Inciting, infiltrating and spinning

Deviously

To prey upon the gullible.

Threatening, posturing and jeering

Arrogantly

To enrage the peaceable.

Cajoling, lying and frightening

Blatantly

To scare the fallible.

Any tactic will do

To gain their power.

Illegal, immoral or insane

Turning the future sour.

Opher – 31.8.2020

I was thinking of Trump, Johnson, Cummings and Bolsonaro when I wrote this. I was thinking about the way they manipulate people with simplistic slogans; the way they drum up fear; the way they incite division and tribalism.

We’ve had the obnoxious reign of Trump and we’ve got the disaster of Brexit that will hit us in January 2021. All conjured up with blatant lies and duplicitous statements.

Spin, fake news, conspiracy and outright untruths.

That’s politics.

It stinks.

Leadership!!

Posted on by Opher

Leadership is about explaining, giving direction and inspiring action – not silly photo ops in cockpits or Hi-Vis jackets and then hiding in fridges.

A leader should be clear, decisive and hold up to scrutiny!

How have we ended up with this bumbling idiot who avoids any place where he is likely to be questioned???

Poetry – Is it Dawn?

Posted on by Opher

Is it Dawn?

Is it the dawn or the dusk

That I am seeing?

A birth or a death?

Are we digging graves

Or foundations?

Do we have a day

In which to live?

Or a night in which

To sleep forever?

Opher – 1.5.2019

Looking at mankind, such a recent species, I am undecided about our future. Are we still in the early stages of a long and illustrious time upon this planet? Or are we already in our death throes?

When I look at the mistakes we are making, the damage we are causing, the way we are blunderingly creating the very seeds of our own demise it is hard to image that we have much of a future. We are busy building weapons that could wipe us all out – nuclear, biological and chemical. We are wantonly destroying the very ecosystems we depend on. We are stupidly increasing in numbers beyond any sane sustainable level. We are polluting the environment we depend on with chemicals, radioactive isotopes and all manner of gunge. We are squandering irreplaceable resources. We are misusing antibiotics and not developing antivirals so that we will be vulnerable to a fatal mutation in a virus or bacterium. We are not protecting ourselves against a cataclysmic asteroid.

It is as if we have a death wish.

Yet we have the intelligence to solve the greatest problems and if we were to survive this adolescent period of mindlessness it is possible that we could go on to achieve great things.

The dice has been thrown.

Leadership, racism and woke culture.

Posted on by Opher

When our leadership behaves disgustingly, encouraging racist attitudes with language such as ‘picaninnies, water-melon smiles, letter boxes’, encouraging booing of England players or calling their taking the knee against racism ‘gesture politics’, it is no wonder that the yobs and racists crawl out from under their rocks to cause trouble.

As Gareth Southgate says – ‘It comes from the top!’.

The populist message from this bunch of swaggering Brexiteering Tories is one of division, racism, xenophobia and rampant nationalism.

This is not the Tory Party of old. This bunch of ERG extremists have lurched over to take the ground from the old National Front and British Movement.

Even Anna Soubry, a former Tory Minister, says that this Johnson Party is unrecognisable and is really the Brexit Party now; that they base their approach on Trump and populism. Her Newsnight appearance summed it up.

Johnson and the ERG are a thorough disgrace!

They hypocritically stir up racism and then pretend to condemn it!

But these yobs are really the very people they are appealing to, inciting and empowering.

That you John Peachey and Ben Jennings.

.

Gary Neville’s Truth – Boris Johnson and Gareth Southgate – The standard of leadership.

Posted on by Opher

“The standard of leader in this country has been awful these last two years, but that man (Southgate) is respectful, humble, tells the truth – everything a leader should be.”

Gary Neville’s words at the end of the England v Denmark match should ring in the ears of all those who continue to support our disrespectful, boastful and dishonest prime minister. Johnson’s ears should be positively aflame.

Could Gary Neville have said this on the BBC without sanction? Will he be quoted by the mainstream media? Probably not. His words were, however, pure music for a vast swathe of people who value truth, integrity and honour.

“If England triumph against Italy on Sunday, it will not be because of Brexit or you, Mr Johnson. It will, in part, be because of the beautiful legacy of immigration, and the diversity and inclusiveness you seem to hate so much, Ms Patel.” Well said. Gareth Southgate is the antithesis of Boris Johnson. He has integrity, courage, honesty and determination. All the leadership qualities that Johnson so singularly lacks.

“Respectful, humble, tells the truth; everything a leader should be”