Morning Tash Appreciators,

I was watching the American Office this week when a new boss appeared to ruin Michael’s fun:

That’s Idris Elba and he’s best known for his role in The Wire as the gangster-turned-economics-student, Stringer Bell. 

Despite having a superb Tash, Stringer is not a nice guy. It’s not a plot spoiler to say that he’s a murdering drug dealer who is driven only by cash. However, he’s not an entirely dislikable character. 

The same goes for one of Stringer’s enemies: Omar Little. He’s also a murderer but, rather than dealing drugs, he steals them and sells them to other gangsters. Although, on paper, he’s as bad a man as Stringer, in many ways he’s the hero of the show. Why? Because, in his words, “a man needs a code”, and he lives by his. He doesn’t hurt civilians and he takes his grandma to church on Sundays. That being said, if you saw him in the street you wouldn’t necessarily know that he’s a man of high morals:

The real villains of the show don’t physically hurt anyone. On the contrary, they hold themselves out as being the saviours of the poor people of Baltimore. Unfortunately, they are greedy, conniving, duplicitous and altogether rather unpleasant. Here’s one of them:

That’s Senator Clay Davis. Yes, you got it, it’s the politicians who do the real damage. This is another example of Tash being rocked by a baddie. Clay Davis, and the other politicians in the show, don’t have a code in the same way as Omar; they’re out for power rather than just money and so they’re not as predictable as Stringer. Not only this, but they’re meant to represent the people and so the damage they do is far greater.  

The work of David Simon, the creator of The Wire, is known for being true to real life; he researches everything meticulously. I’m not suggesting that the real Senator for Maryland accepts bribes the same way clay Davis does but I bet that Simon had someone in mind when he wrote the character. 

In this country, I don’t think our politicians are any better. They serve their own purposes, no-one else’s. For example, Theresa May is apparently set to announce plans to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

She’s not doing this because she doesn’t agree with the legislation (the right to free speech – which I’m using here – is, I understand, generally thought to be worth having), she just wants the votes that the Tories are losing to the “latent racism party” (aka UKIP). Our Home Secretary cares more about votes than she does the fundamental rights of citizens. I could go on about the rest of our right-honourable representatives, but I won’t for the moment. 

Give me Omar and his code any day. At least if Omar was Home Secretary, we civilians would be safe…

Have a good weekend folks.

Keep going!