A shit (Brit) sandwich

You've got to hand it to the Aussies, they know how to deliver a pithy punch.

In the Sydney Morning Herald this morning,  Nick Miller, the paper's European correspondent in London, described the situation in Britain post the decision to leave the EU as ''a shit sandwich''.

While this might not exactly represent the ideal of impartial reportage, there's no mistaking the meaning. No sugar-coating the shit, which I appreciate, as there's nothing worse than shit dressed up as sugar. Just as savoury food with sugar added makes for a shit sandwich, too. Here I'm thinking particularly of peanut butter.

That said, it's hard to know how to eat a pure shit sandwich. And with some people centrally involved in the democratic process these days, you find yourself wishing there was a little bit of sugar added to their salt, preferably in the fashion of that fatal last after-dinner mint that tipped the scales and sorted the sugar shit quandary decisively.

But short of a fatal sweet mint disguised as a feisty fish, the answer to the shit Brit sandwich situation is far from obvious. Miller concludes with "Hooray for democracy'', which is not altogether helpful. I think even fish would rather live (and die) in a democracy than, say, in North Korea, where there's no mercy for fish at all -- or so I hear.

Of course, this shit is not funny. Indeed the main reason I decided against a career in politics is that it's all about as funny as fish, even less so if you consider fish like Nemo not to mention Dory -- the funniest fish in the sea.

Perhaps the trouble with politics is we tend, time and time again, to go in for fish like this big-mouthed, sharp-toothed brute, over well-meaning, if a tad forgetful and flibbertigibbet fish like Nemo and Dory.

I'm probably making too much of fish.

But things are certainly simpler in the sea, even if that is where we send most of our actual shit -- to get back to our original subject.

Now that I've solved the problems of the world, I think it's time for lunch: fish and shits, anyone?