All Apologies

Maybe Cobain had it right when he wrote “What else should I be? All apologies”, it certainly seems to be apology season at the moment.

As the Queen, His Tonyness, and various members of the aristocracy and social elite attended a ceremony at Westminster Abbey to apologise for commemorate and remember the slave trade of 200 years ago I couldn’t help whether society was focussing on the right thing. The Church of England are considering offering compensation to descendants of slaves because as Rev. Simon Bessant said “we [The CofE] were at the heart of it”. I can’t help wondering what next? Are we going to start handing out money to Australians because we forced their forefathers onto ships and exhiled them to a land filled mostly with cute miniature bears and kangaroos? What about the land in India, Canada, Australia etc that we took from natives in the process of creating an Empire? Surely there must be some kind of compensation for the damage to the Spanish Armada whilst we’re at it?

But it’s not all bad. We’ll get a few grand from the Germans for bombing Coventry Cathedral, and the French owe us a bit for forcing our courts to work in the French language for a hundred years or so, and forcing children to learn to spell words borrowed from French which don’t follow English spelling conventions. Unless one of those claims direct type companies you see advertised during the daytime television get involved, the money will just shuffle around the globe like a giant sliding puzzle and we’ll all stay the same like that village in the Mike and the Mechanics song where ‘nothing ever happens’, and we’ll all sing along like before. Probably best all round if we just have a worldwide ‘sorry’ day then. There could be a badge or ribbon people could pin on their lapels. People could say ‘sorry’ to complete strangers they meet on the street. There could be a special ‘sorry’ song for kids to sing in school and another for Peter Kay to take to No.1 in the charts. People could be encouraged to give to a ‘sorry’ telethon, although to save on costs it couldn’t be hosted by Sir Terry.

Probably best if we give that money to wiping out third world debt and wiping out disguised forms of slavery in the 21st century actually…