Letter from Europe

[Gannon]

They are your empire's gladiators...every one has 'em to distract the populace. Bread and Circuses...can't have the governed notice how their governors are misbehaving.

[Barbara Nadel]

They are your empire's gladiators...every one has 'em to distract the populace. Bread and Circuses...can't have the governed notice how their governors are misbehaving.

Absolutely although I think that their power may soon be broken. The politicians will ultimately sacrifice the footballers to save their own skins and the players will just have to 'get by' on maybe $50,000 a week. Who knows? I was asked this morning how much money I think the government should take away from poor and disabled people to help pay off our national debt. I said 'nothing' I also told the questioner [[from the local authority) that if they ever asked me about my race, religion or sexual orientation again, I would scream and run mad. I won't even answer those questions at hospital much less from a load of officials from the council. What business is it of theirs?

[Gannon]

Absolutely although I think that their power may soon be broken. The politicians will ultimately sacrifice the footballers to save their own skins and the players will just have to 'get by' on maybe $50,000 a week. Who knows? I was asked this morning how much money I think the government should take away from poor and disabled people to help pay off our national debt. I said 'nothing' I also told the questioner [[from the local authority) that if they ever asked me about my race, religion or sexual orientation again, I would scream and run mad. I won't even answer those questions at hospital much less from a load of officials from the council. What business is it of theirs?

I'll be 49 in a few months, and when I was in junior high school part of the required reading was George Orwell's 1984, which was way too odd and deep for those distracted by puberty's curiosities. As far as I know, it is no longer taught in the schools.

I didn't learn that he had a pen name until I was well into my twenties...when it became obvious to me that some things need to be flown under the radar of life. Damn shame, though, that those who studied 1984 as if it were an instruction manual for the enforcement of despotism are largely within the power structure of the world now. Same folks studied Machiavelli, and considered themselves the young prince.


Here, if you spouted off like that to an official, it is likely you'd get listed by our euphemistically-named Homeland Security. Of course we know it isn't their business, damn shame THEY don't realize it.

Cheers, anyways, I won't let the buggers get to me!
John