Love of politics

Love is in the air. Not the airy fairy, romantic kind, but the strong, muscular manly kind. Yes, my fraternal J-politics watchers, we're talking BROTHERLY LOVE - Yukio and Kunio Hatoyamas'. The PM isn't loving either of the brothers right now as one quit his cabinet and the other is head of the opposition DPJ. Yes, yes, you knew that already, so what's new? Dunno, but blood is thicker than water, Confucius say. Story here.

In other issues of love, the Shanghai Gay Pride week looks to be getting the cold shoulder from local bureaucrats who unsportingly keep closing down venues for the luvees - though they can't stop the Japan Times or Our Man for that matter running gratuitous pictures of lesbians kissing (lifted from here).

And finally, what could be better than a little poetry - this by the British Poet Laureate, whose first poem has caught the zeitgeist of the public falling out of love with their pilfering pols. Here is her poem "Politics" in full (lifted from here lovely!):

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.