What is going on?

The news is becoming stranger and stranger.

Arguably, it isn’t even news, it’s what news hounds write when they are feeling slightly hysterical because nothing makes sense any more.

It’s not fake news, it’s too trivial for that, but it is some weird, esoteric bit of nonsense culled from a conversation in a bar, overheard on a train, or half-heard on headphones while semi-sleeping. There was one this week about a dog eating a kebab skewer. Another about cannibalism following a plane crash,  lip-reading in the Houses of Parliament.  And then there’s Trump. Truculent toddler? Another one bites the dust? Heads of staff sent rolling down the bowling alley of Congress, never to return.

Now we have the Will we? Won’t we? Do we? Don’t we?  dance of No Deal Brexit.
Stockpile or chance it? 
Invest. Withdraw. Lie down. Die.

It’s a mad world, my masters, populated by thieving  scumbags, knife-wielding hoodlums, men from the ministry. And us, of course.

On Winter Hill, in Lancashire, the coal under the ground has caught alight.
Remember summer? It was dry and hot; many places burned, but at Winter Hill the fires were not extinguished, they just went under the ground.

There’s a metaphor there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is. Only I know that real news will surface, like an underground fire, and the anger that is emerging in Europe will not die down or go out. In Catalonia, in Paris, people are tired of empty promises, of not being listened to, of being ripped off. Underground, the fires are still burning.

We have heard little from our M.E.P.s   regarding Brexit. What have they been doing all this time?  They must carry some of the blame for this, surely?  At least when they lose their jobs there are still places under cover where they can sleep and food banks they can draw from.  Or have I got that wrong?  That would be news.