I know it's news to me too but it's been on the telly so it must be true. While I have to say I'm a little disconcerted by the announcement of my premature passing it does of course provide a wonderful opportunity for a wake. Personally I would go for a long procession of mourners all clad in black while the police, in sombre dress stop the traffic, doves are released and the chimes of Ben Ben cease as the flags above Buckingham Palace and government buildings across our fair capital fly at half mast before everyone breaks into song and celebration with music, drinking and dancing girls, there will definitely have to be dancing girls!
Of course that might just be my ego talking and nothing at all will happen but I don't want to hear a thing about it because quite frankly it's my wake so I should be surprised really. In the mean time though let's talk about another example of death, destruction and horror. Zimbabwe.
As I'm sure you all know by now Zimbabwe is the southern African country that is facing economic collapse and held it's disputed election over five weeks ago. In the time we've been awaiting the results there have been much shenanigans on all sides with the western nations pushing rumours of a presidential resignation and the opposition claiming an early victory. The incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, has responded to all this by ordering a recount of the parliamentary vote. On Saturday April 26th the result of this recount was announced and it confirmed the initial result by giving the opposition MDC's a two seat parliamentary majority. This small concession can only be considered as an attempt by Mugabe to give the faintest hint of legitimacy to an election process which so far has been in danger of descending into total farce by the way Mugabe's been behaving. For example on Friday April 25th Zimbabwe's police raided the headquarters of the MDC arresting and beating 200 of the parties senior activists. Mugabe's suspiciously young "war veterans" militia have seized farmland belonging to MDC supporters. The country is awash with stories of the torture of thousands of MDC voters and the number of killings is up around twenty to thirty. This is made even more impressive by the fact that the election results themselves have yet to be released and the killing proper has not yet started.
Britain's Prime Minister has responded with much finger waving a calls for an international arms embargo on Zimbabwe which is something of a mute point because after the mess Britain made in trying to stop the legal arms shipment from China demonstrates that they've got bugger all chance of stopping illegal, smuggled imports. This rather unfortunate comparison does serve to highlight the differences between lawyers and warriors because lawyers will sit around neurousing over every detail and over analyzing every word will warriors will step up to the plate and do what is required of them. So you may disagree with what Mugabe is doing you sadly have to respect the way he's getting it done.
The fact that Mugabe appears to be in full control of the situation in Zimbabwe is disappointing because while it would be untimely and time consuming to examine why the current situation is so bad let's just say that the worst case scenario for the country and region is very bad indeed. Of course if things get much worse we'll send in the Royal Navy to sort it all out because as we all know Britannia Rules the ........
er shit no........
hang on a minute.........
I can definitely see a little bit of a problem with that plan.
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