I confess that I'm mentally and emotionally having a bit of hard time at the moment. I'm trying hard to hold it together, to keep on working, but life has suddenly got very difficult. I simply can't get my mind around the Tory win.
Oh, you might scoff and I can't reasonably explain why I'm feeling so utterly dejected and why I'm finding it hard to find much purpose in life. The passion has gone from my work. Yet I'm not some rabid left winger who hates Tories for ideological reasons. I'm fairly apolitical but I do believe in certain things which are suddenly anathema to the new Tory government. It's like my belief system has been entirely invalidated by the nation. Everywhere I look, I feel like I have dead eyes looking back at me. Dead eyes that see through me. Dead eyes and dead minds which cannot comprehend why a man should feel this low.
If there's one thing that sums up this dejection I'm feeling, that one thing is the appointment of the new employment minister, Priti Patel.
Patel has constantly been on TV over the election campaign. She caught my eye because she was one of those polished performers that the Tories produce so well and Andrew Neil does so well in embarrassing. They have the fixed-distance stare of a trained killer, so certain are they that their policies are right. In a few performances on the Daily Politics, Patel revealed herself to be immensely dim and though I hesitate to call somebody stupid, frankly, yes, she was stupid. She is stupid in the very same way that Katie Hopkins is stupid. They are stupid because they both lack humility. They are incapable of understanding that their belief in their own intelligence limits their intelligence.
There can be no surprise that both of them come from the vacuous world of PR. They are similar in temperament, attitude, and fierceness when it comes to their own twisted morality. I keep finding myself reaching for the term 'Loose Women' but that's what strikes me about both. They have the mid-afternoon ITV rage of the small business owning woman who would sooner slice you open with a razor blade than they would look on you kindly. It's the sense that to compete in a male world, they've had to adopt male attitudes but take them to a new blazing level of cruelty. Oddly, it's an attitude that Thatcher never had. Thatcher's strength was more of an intellectual strength. Love her or hate her, Thatcher occasionally engaged her brain. It was intellect that taught her that to be powerful, you lowered your voice and spoke more slowly. Patel and Hopkins are not thinkers. They are dilettantes who have retained their femininity but you get the sense that when they come out fighting, they do so with fingernails raking the eyes and heels spiked into shins. Their politics are a shriek. They would sooner seek out the extreme than spend time thinking hard about an issue.
Patel is a strong conservative, by which I mean, on the Tebbit wing of the party. She believes in hanging, which says everything you need to know about a person. Think about that deeply and consider what kind of person believes in a practice that was already considered barbaric in the 1950s. Think about how dumb a person needs to be to fail to understand why civilized nations turned their backs on hanging. Think about the psychology of a nation that carries out hangings; about the people who would have to carry out state sanctioned killings. Think about fault lines in the legal system, where mistakes can happen. Think about the simple morality of hanging a person until they're dead.
No issue cuts so deeply to the heart of who we are as a people. No issue is quite so complicated or require such a broad range of expertise to fully understand in terms of the biology, the psychology, the ethics, jurisprudence, government, and even theology. To believe in it shows how little humility they have but, moreover, how little humanity.
That shouldn't surprise anybody who has done a little reading up on Patel. Before she became an MP, she helped tobacco companies communicate with the Tories and then she went to work for an alcohol company. In other words: she was the kind of mercenary gun-for-hire who cares nothing about the harm her work does but is happy to do it so long as it's well paying.
And now she's in charge of the benefits for people who are sick, disabled, low paid and vulnerable.
Just writing that line does nothing to alleviate my pain. I can feel myself slipping into a deeper despair.
Showing posts with label General Election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Election. Show all posts
Monday, 11 May 2015
Saturday, 9 May 2015
The Spine Podcast: Why Tristram Hunt should be the next Labour Leader
Well, this for me is a big decision. I've made a non-election podcast. I'll be making more and not all of them will be about politics. However, I'm still in a political frame of mind and today I wanted to argue why I think Tristram Hunt should be the next Labour leader. I know real Labour folk will disagree but real Labour folk are possibly the reason why they keep failing. Idealism gets in the way of common sense. Anyway, give it a listen and if you enjoy it, have any suggestions, or just want to give me encouragement to do more, please leave a comment or email me at thespineblog@gmail.com. I'm still not sure what I'm doing but I'm having fun doing it. [Apologies for the vulgar 'coke' joke at the beginning. Once written, I couldn't resist leaving it in.]
Friday, 8 May 2015
The Old FE College
'I voted Labour,' said the woman at the bus stop. I was riding past and despite the weeping rain encouraging me to hurry home, I squeezed the brakes a touch so I might catch what she said next. 'I always vote Labour. We all vote Labour but we rarely get Labour.'
'Locally we do,' piped up another.
'Oh, yes, locally... But we never voted for Tories and look what they do.'
Momentum was my enemy. Even with my brakes slowing me down, I was soon beyond earshot. Yet I didn't need to know the rest. I know what 'they do'. Everybody knows what they do. They take away hope.
Hope used to exist in the form of the town's further education college. Nearly all of the locals had passed through its doors at one time or another. It was a much loved building and reassuringly solid, crafted from red brick and the local sandstone artfully arranged in a style of the late nineteenth century. Buildings of the same kind dot the North West, the last reminder of the patronage of industrialists who lived among their workers rather than across the globe. The buildings usually have impressively old dates and reassuringly down-to-earth names inscribed on various slabs. Ours was the kind of old municipal building that was built when people took pride in their town. I'd never studied there but I'd used its library often. It was full of the kind of technical books missing from the local library next door. It also had the only quiet study room in miles.
The college had been there over a century before cuts turned it into a smashed derelict. Developers then arrived and offered to turn it into flats and they assured locals that they'd respect the much loved facade. Protests were started but the council allowed the sale to go through. Then there was an announcement that the much loved facade was providing difficult to respect. It wouldn't fit into designs. There was a request to demolish it but then the protests turned more serious. People amassed outside our much loved college. It was something they cared about.
I can't emphasise that enough. The town has never had that many buildings to help distinguish from any other. We had a beautiful art deco cinema which (handily) succumbed to fire after developers couldn't get permission to demolish it. We have a town hall that stands empty and I have no doubt will eventually go the same way, despite it being the town's chief landmark and one of the venues where the Beatles played before they became famous.
Yet no building felt quite as important as the college. It was the place where many relationships and marriages began, careers were formed, and opportunities taken. It was the place where new mothers went to learn the skills of motherhood. My own mother went there to learn dressmaking, which accounted for all the home made trousers I wore as a child back when 'austerity' wasn't a political catchphrase but a grim reality. Fathers went there to learn skills such as plumbing or plastering. It even had a small sense of academic credibility. You could study for 'O' levels at night in subjects such as French and Maths. After it closed, it was replaced by a local community centre where you can study subjects ranging from 'crystal reading' to 'Zumba' or whatever weird new fitness craze is currently popular. If I weren't so depressed, I'd have written that line better. It would have been funny.
The old college was part of what made this sad little working class town different to all the other sad little working class towns. Then, one morning, not so long ago, the town woke up to discover that the old college had been completely flattened overnight. It's now a bloody big hole in the ground. There were protests but nobody really fights too much about a pile of rubble. I don't know why I care or I choose to write about it on this wet pleading Friday at the barrel end of another five year Tory government. Around here, very few people voted for the government and the government will know it. I guess things will get worse before they get better. And complaining about it does so very little.
Like everything I write on this blog, this post enters the void of internet banalities which all ultimately mean so little. Read this or look at a cat meme. It all means nothing. Is there even any meaning behind a load of red bricks piled up a certain sensible way a hundred or so years ago? The Tories would probably say there isn't. The bricks of the old college have now been sold on to provide the authentic Northern working class look to some town houses in one of the more fashionable middle class zones in Manchester, Liverpool or beyond where the bankers and footballers live.
Those of us who used to cherish having a local college now just have a hole in the ground and, coming soon, some bland jumble of the modish and the mod con.
And I don't really know what I'm trying to say other than it was very grey in town this morning and I got very wet.
'Locally we do,' piped up another.
'Oh, yes, locally... But we never voted for Tories and look what they do.'
Momentum was my enemy. Even with my brakes slowing me down, I was soon beyond earshot. Yet I didn't need to know the rest. I know what 'they do'. Everybody knows what they do. They take away hope.
Hope used to exist in the form of the town's further education college. Nearly all of the locals had passed through its doors at one time or another. It was a much loved building and reassuringly solid, crafted from red brick and the local sandstone artfully arranged in a style of the late nineteenth century. Buildings of the same kind dot the North West, the last reminder of the patronage of industrialists who lived among their workers rather than across the globe. The buildings usually have impressively old dates and reassuringly down-to-earth names inscribed on various slabs. Ours was the kind of old municipal building that was built when people took pride in their town. I'd never studied there but I'd used its library often. It was full of the kind of technical books missing from the local library next door. It also had the only quiet study room in miles.
The college had been there over a century before cuts turned it into a smashed derelict. Developers then arrived and offered to turn it into flats and they assured locals that they'd respect the much loved facade. Protests were started but the council allowed the sale to go through. Then there was an announcement that the much loved facade was providing difficult to respect. It wouldn't fit into designs. There was a request to demolish it but then the protests turned more serious. People amassed outside our much loved college. It was something they cared about.
I can't emphasise that enough. The town has never had that many buildings to help distinguish from any other. We had a beautiful art deco cinema which (handily) succumbed to fire after developers couldn't get permission to demolish it. We have a town hall that stands empty and I have no doubt will eventually go the same way, despite it being the town's chief landmark and one of the venues where the Beatles played before they became famous.
Yet no building felt quite as important as the college. It was the place where many relationships and marriages began, careers were formed, and opportunities taken. It was the place where new mothers went to learn the skills of motherhood. My own mother went there to learn dressmaking, which accounted for all the home made trousers I wore as a child back when 'austerity' wasn't a political catchphrase but a grim reality. Fathers went there to learn skills such as plumbing or plastering. It even had a small sense of academic credibility. You could study for 'O' levels at night in subjects such as French and Maths. After it closed, it was replaced by a local community centre where you can study subjects ranging from 'crystal reading' to 'Zumba' or whatever weird new fitness craze is currently popular. If I weren't so depressed, I'd have written that line better. It would have been funny.
The old college was part of what made this sad little working class town different to all the other sad little working class towns. Then, one morning, not so long ago, the town woke up to discover that the old college had been completely flattened overnight. It's now a bloody big hole in the ground. There were protests but nobody really fights too much about a pile of rubble. I don't know why I care or I choose to write about it on this wet pleading Friday at the barrel end of another five year Tory government. Around here, very few people voted for the government and the government will know it. I guess things will get worse before they get better. And complaining about it does so very little.
Like everything I write on this blog, this post enters the void of internet banalities which all ultimately mean so little. Read this or look at a cat meme. It all means nothing. Is there even any meaning behind a load of red bricks piled up a certain sensible way a hundred or so years ago? The Tories would probably say there isn't. The bricks of the old college have now been sold on to provide the authentic Northern working class look to some town houses in one of the more fashionable middle class zones in Manchester, Liverpool or beyond where the bankers and footballers live.
Those of us who used to cherish having a local college now just have a hole in the ground and, coming soon, some bland jumble of the modish and the mod con.
And I don't really know what I'm trying to say other than it was very grey in town this morning and I got very wet.
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 9
Wrapping things up with (definitely) my last election podcast.
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 8
A last minute change of mind and I have 28 minutes to post this before it's officially polling day.
This one isn't about the election as much as I wanted to write and say something about the role of the media. Not sure it helps. Not sure anybody listens. Yet it helped me to clarify a few thoughts, have a moment of hissing at certain pundits, and filled a rainy afternoon. Enjoy or don't enjoy. I'm weary with the effort of giving a damn. When will I ever learn?
This one isn't about the election as much as I wanted to write and say something about the role of the media. Not sure it helps. Not sure anybody listens. Yet it helped me to clarify a few thoughts, have a moment of hissing at certain pundits, and filled a rainy afternoon. Enjoy or don't enjoy. I'm weary with the effort of giving a damn. When will I ever learn?
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
Monday, 4 May 2015
The Tent
It’s the May Day bank holiday, the first really warm sunny bank holiday of the year, and I was woken, naturally, about 8am by the neighbours screaming at each other in the garden.
‘I can’t hit it! It’s made of rubber!’
It hasn’t stopped all day.
‘You’ve put it upside down, stupid woman!’
They’ve been putting up a tent.
‘It won’t go in!’ screams the Her.
‘Well bloody push it!’ shouts the He.
There have also been grand children complimenting the tableau. The kids have been sceaming at them and they have been screaming at the kids. They’re one of those strange families who never seem to have been anything other than ‘grandparents’, even though they’re relatively young. Give it ten years and they’ll be great grandparents and won’t have been long past sixty years. Another fourteen to sixteen years, they’ll be great great grandparents. If you ever wonder why our species is doomed, you need only look over our garden fence. The planet will be destroyed by copulating lovers of ornamental wind chimes.
The row was expected. In fact, the whole thing is so predicatble that I haven’t the energy to throw my verbal weight into another 1000 anti-spring bank holiday piece so I’ll merely direct you to the one I wrote earlier. Besides, I don’t think I could write a better one. While I'm about it, here's a very old cartoon.
Listening to Mrs and Mrs Homebase arging amid their cherubs and native American dreamcatchers, I began to contemplate the looming election. I fail to wonder why people don’t seem to hate Cameron as much as I do and then I think of the neighbours. I’ve just stormed out the room because DC was standing on another building site in his luminous yellows and hard hat. I think perhaps that people see that as being engaged with the ‘project’. I just see it as another example of how to avoid meeting people. Yesterday he pulled out of the Citizen UK debate, apparently the first PM to do so in living memory.
The sad reality about this is that too few people really care. Mr and Mrs Homebase have their tent to erect. If they vote (and I assume that they do) it’s probably out of some latent sense of duty. Most people are like them and I can never be entirely sure that it’s a bad thing. It’s the same argument as I keep making about ‘hardworking people’. People are motivated by things which are personal to them and rightly so. Without some selfishness in our lives, we would have a bee mentality, working for the hive.
Hell. Is this beginning to sound almost Ayn Randian? Is this proto-Tory thinking at its slackest? Have I just argued myself into believing that I have enlightened neighbours, who express everything you could wish to express about personal liberty each and every time they have a screaming row about tent flaps?
I need to go lie down.
‘I can’t hit it! It’s made of rubber!’
It hasn’t stopped all day.
‘You’ve put it upside down, stupid woman!’
They’ve been putting up a tent.
‘It won’t go in!’ screams the Her.
‘Well bloody push it!’ shouts the He.
There have also been grand children complimenting the tableau. The kids have been sceaming at them and they have been screaming at the kids. They’re one of those strange families who never seem to have been anything other than ‘grandparents’, even though they’re relatively young. Give it ten years and they’ll be great grandparents and won’t have been long past sixty years. Another fourteen to sixteen years, they’ll be great great grandparents. If you ever wonder why our species is doomed, you need only look over our garden fence. The planet will be destroyed by copulating lovers of ornamental wind chimes.
The row was expected. In fact, the whole thing is so predicatble that I haven’t the energy to throw my verbal weight into another 1000 anti-spring bank holiday piece so I’ll merely direct you to the one I wrote earlier. Besides, I don’t think I could write a better one. While I'm about it, here's a very old cartoon.
Listening to Mrs and Mrs Homebase arging amid their cherubs and native American dreamcatchers, I began to contemplate the looming election. I fail to wonder why people don’t seem to hate Cameron as much as I do and then I think of the neighbours. I’ve just stormed out the room because DC was standing on another building site in his luminous yellows and hard hat. I think perhaps that people see that as being engaged with the ‘project’. I just see it as another example of how to avoid meeting people. Yesterday he pulled out of the Citizen UK debate, apparently the first PM to do so in living memory.
The sad reality about this is that too few people really care. Mr and Mrs Homebase have their tent to erect. If they vote (and I assume that they do) it’s probably out of some latent sense of duty. Most people are like them and I can never be entirely sure that it’s a bad thing. It’s the same argument as I keep making about ‘hardworking people’. People are motivated by things which are personal to them and rightly so. Without some selfishness in our lives, we would have a bee mentality, working for the hive.
Hell. Is this beginning to sound almost Ayn Randian? Is this proto-Tory thinking at its slackest? Have I just argued myself into believing that I have enlightened neighbours, who express everything you could wish to express about personal liberty each and every time they have a screaming row about tent flaps?
I need to go lie down.
Sunday, 3 May 2015
Ajockalypse Now
I'm being treated to a day away from my keyboard so I only have about fifteen minutes to unwrap this morning's news before I have to head for the train.
I've just read Boris Johnson talking about Milband in The Sunday Times and I'm not sure which part of the argument I liked the least. We have more baiting of Scotland with the headline phrase 'Ajockalypse Now', which might make a few people smile but I just frowned. It's more of that tactic we've seen at this election of deliberately winding up Scottish voters so they're even more pissed with the established Westminster parties. The more Tories wind up the Scottish, the stronger the SNP's hold is Scotland becomes and the weaker Ed Miliband's position in Westminster. I'm not Scottish, though my grandmother was, but I still find it shabby and insulting. I have no doubt that Boris would be making similar jokes if the election was going to be decided by voters in the north or the south west, or any area other than the great South East who seem to be the only people that really matter in this and every election.
Secondly, Boris came out with this gem. "Ed Miliband fundamentally doesn’t believe in the market. I don’t believe there’s any aspect of capitalism that he seems to relish or approve of."
Ignore what Miliband might or might no believe. Think instead about the thing that Boris seems to hold as an unquestionable truth. His faith in capitalism sounds almost religious. Why should anybody 'believe' in the market as though the market were some omnipotent being? I don't believe in the market but I can see that it exists. I can see also, in certain contexts, that it works extremely well. However, I can also see that the market is often deeply flawed and that's my problem with the current Tories: they seem to believe that society should be entirely aligned to the market.
Working on something else the other day, I came across Simon Mainwaring's book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Renew Capitalism and Build a Better World. From the parts I had chance to read, it was pretty gushing about social media but, from my point of view, quite chilling in the way that social media was going to make people's lives indistinguishable from the patterns of consumerism. I'm probably not doing the book justice but I think the argument went that companies should aim to organically intertwine their business with people's every patterns of life. It was depressing but goes to what I think is the root of this election. It goes back to that phrase the Tories keep using and I find so troublesome: hardworking people.
It implies everything that the Mainwaring book pinpointed: that we are merely fodder for the consumerist meat grinder. Tories celebrate 'hardworking people' though rarely does anybody point out how many of the buggers earn in excess of £30,000 or £40,000 a year for just a couple of hours consultancy work each week. Hardworking or 'on a good thing'? I suppose only you can decide. Yet what do they really mean? That we should be happy because they give us mobile phones, Twitter, and a couple of hours a week to do something other than stick doorhandles on a car?
But that's my 15 minutes and here I have to end it. If you want more, I suggest you watch this excellent exchange between Kenneth Williams and Michael Parkinson, in which the subject of sticking doorhandles on a car in central to the argument (begins about the 7 minute mark). In case you're wondering, I think Parkinson is absolutely right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUyDr97NU4
I've just read Boris Johnson talking about Milband in The Sunday Times and I'm not sure which part of the argument I liked the least. We have more baiting of Scotland with the headline phrase 'Ajockalypse Now', which might make a few people smile but I just frowned. It's more of that tactic we've seen at this election of deliberately winding up Scottish voters so they're even more pissed with the established Westminster parties. The more Tories wind up the Scottish, the stronger the SNP's hold is Scotland becomes and the weaker Ed Miliband's position in Westminster. I'm not Scottish, though my grandmother was, but I still find it shabby and insulting. I have no doubt that Boris would be making similar jokes if the election was going to be decided by voters in the north or the south west, or any area other than the great South East who seem to be the only people that really matter in this and every election.
Secondly, Boris came out with this gem. "Ed Miliband fundamentally doesn’t believe in the market. I don’t believe there’s any aspect of capitalism that he seems to relish or approve of."
Ignore what Miliband might or might no believe. Think instead about the thing that Boris seems to hold as an unquestionable truth. His faith in capitalism sounds almost religious. Why should anybody 'believe' in the market as though the market were some omnipotent being? I don't believe in the market but I can see that it exists. I can see also, in certain contexts, that it works extremely well. However, I can also see that the market is often deeply flawed and that's my problem with the current Tories: they seem to believe that society should be entirely aligned to the market.
Working on something else the other day, I came across Simon Mainwaring's book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Renew Capitalism and Build a Better World. From the parts I had chance to read, it was pretty gushing about social media but, from my point of view, quite chilling in the way that social media was going to make people's lives indistinguishable from the patterns of consumerism. I'm probably not doing the book justice but I think the argument went that companies should aim to organically intertwine their business with people's every patterns of life. It was depressing but goes to what I think is the root of this election. It goes back to that phrase the Tories keep using and I find so troublesome: hardworking people.
It implies everything that the Mainwaring book pinpointed: that we are merely fodder for the consumerist meat grinder. Tories celebrate 'hardworking people' though rarely does anybody point out how many of the buggers earn in excess of £30,000 or £40,000 a year for just a couple of hours consultancy work each week. Hardworking or 'on a good thing'? I suppose only you can decide. Yet what do they really mean? That we should be happy because they give us mobile phones, Twitter, and a couple of hours a week to do something other than stick doorhandles on a car?
But that's my 15 minutes and here I have to end it. If you want more, I suggest you watch this excellent exchange between Kenneth Williams and Michael Parkinson, in which the subject of sticking doorhandles on a car in central to the argument (begins about the 7 minute mark). In case you're wondering, I think Parkinson is absolutely right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkUyDr97NU4
Friday, 1 May 2015
Why I'm So Sick of David Cameron
[Apologies for the following. Call it election fever. Call it spin sickness. Call it: I just needed to get this off my chest. I try so hard to be apolitical but sometimes things become too much.]
I'm so sick of Cameron. I'm really bloody sick of that smirking salivating charlatan. I'm sick of the way he keeps licking his lips like some gecko so greedy that he won't disgorge one worm before eating another. I'm sick of the way he talks about the NHS as though he really understands how pitiful the health service has become under his indifferent care. Does he really understand what it's like being in pain and living appointment to appointment when they're six months apart and often fruitless because the system has lost the previous lot of blood tests for the second time running?
The death of his son was tragic. I cannot begin to understand how painful it was. My heart goes out to both him and his wife because they are human beings and such tragedy deserves our compassion. But, unlike him, I could never use such a personal tragedy to close down debate when debate is essential. The fact he can do that reveals a malign side to his character. There really are worse things that weaponising the NHS. He'll do anything to win because he doesn't believe in anything other than winning.
Does he really believe that people should be severely punished when they don't turn up to a job interview? What happens when the person not attending the job interview is the Prime Minister, who refuses to debate properly with the other party leaders? Who takes his benefits away from him?
Does he really understand what a 'hardworking person' looks like? Most hard working people don't want to be reminded that they're hardworking because that's to remind them that the majority of their life will be spent in servitude to others who see them as minimum wage fodder. People do not live to be hard working. Only people who are rich enough to work for pleasure believe such lies. People work to survive and, beyond that hope, for pleasure and the occasional blue sky.
Does he really think that Eton, Oxford, a brief dalliance with 'the City', and then straight into Tory Party HQ gives him the right to talk about the our work ethic? It's almost as insulting as seeing George Osborne in hard hat and luminous jacket trying to look like he's actually dirtied his hands on something other than used hundred pound notes.
I'm so sick of the pretence and the media spin. I'm sick of the games they play with important things. I'm sick of them wanting we English to resent our families in Scotland and those in Scotland to resent the English. I'm sick of them wanting to divide all of us and make us look on every stranger as though they're somehow the enemy simply because they're poor or disabled or don't share our accent.
I'm sick of being ruled by people whose biographies are filled with holes and lies and not a hint of morality. I'm sick of the media spin, the dirty tricks, the orchestrated campaigns to misinform, mislead and disenchant a public who are politically naive.
I'm also sick of seeing holes in the roads and having holes in my boots because they've weakened the institutions of this country. They claim that they're the party for rich professionals but no party has ever done so much to destroy the professional classes. They want to deprofessionalise teaching, medicine, the law simply so they can hire cheaper workers. It's all about market forces whose basic drive is to kill or be killed.
I'm sick of them talking about austerity as though it's a real thing. There is no austerity. There is just the same old Tory ideological obsession with competition. And this is the key thing to remember. These aren't even Conservatives and I wish true Conservatives would realise that and vote them out. Old One Nation Tories should be ashamed to wear the party blue. They were people you could talk to. They had a rational distrust of ideology and a belief in helping the entire nation. They believed in something greater than these dead-eyed dolts still enchanted by the Thatcherite spell which clear-sighted people now realise was a curse put on all of us.
I'm sick of paying for everything that used to make life fun. Simple things like watching cricket in the afternoon without paying through the nose for a comprehensive sports service you neither want nor need.
I am sick of what this country has become: a nation of thick-necked heavily tattooed testosterone soaked Neanderthals who are the only ones who will succeed because Darwinian forces care nothing for compassion, kindness, politeness, or generosity.
Most of all, I'm sick of feeling ashamed to be British because to be British is to be either selfish, crass, and cruel, or it means to be trod down. I remember the days when it meant so much more than that.
I'm so sick of Cameron. I'm really bloody sick of that smirking salivating charlatan. I'm sick of the way he keeps licking his lips like some gecko so greedy that he won't disgorge one worm before eating another. I'm sick of the way he talks about the NHS as though he really understands how pitiful the health service has become under his indifferent care. Does he really understand what it's like being in pain and living appointment to appointment when they're six months apart and often fruitless because the system has lost the previous lot of blood tests for the second time running?
The death of his son was tragic. I cannot begin to understand how painful it was. My heart goes out to both him and his wife because they are human beings and such tragedy deserves our compassion. But, unlike him, I could never use such a personal tragedy to close down debate when debate is essential. The fact he can do that reveals a malign side to his character. There really are worse things that weaponising the NHS. He'll do anything to win because he doesn't believe in anything other than winning.
Does he really believe that people should be severely punished when they don't turn up to a job interview? What happens when the person not attending the job interview is the Prime Minister, who refuses to debate properly with the other party leaders? Who takes his benefits away from him?
Does he really understand what a 'hardworking person' looks like? Most hard working people don't want to be reminded that they're hardworking because that's to remind them that the majority of their life will be spent in servitude to others who see them as minimum wage fodder. People do not live to be hard working. Only people who are rich enough to work for pleasure believe such lies. People work to survive and, beyond that hope, for pleasure and the occasional blue sky.
Does he really think that Eton, Oxford, a brief dalliance with 'the City', and then straight into Tory Party HQ gives him the right to talk about the our work ethic? It's almost as insulting as seeing George Osborne in hard hat and luminous jacket trying to look like he's actually dirtied his hands on something other than used hundred pound notes.
I'm so sick of the pretence and the media spin. I'm sick of the games they play with important things. I'm sick of them wanting we English to resent our families in Scotland and those in Scotland to resent the English. I'm sick of them wanting to divide all of us and make us look on every stranger as though they're somehow the enemy simply because they're poor or disabled or don't share our accent.
I'm sick of being ruled by people whose biographies are filled with holes and lies and not a hint of morality. I'm sick of the media spin, the dirty tricks, the orchestrated campaigns to misinform, mislead and disenchant a public who are politically naive.
I'm also sick of seeing holes in the roads and having holes in my boots because they've weakened the institutions of this country. They claim that they're the party for rich professionals but no party has ever done so much to destroy the professional classes. They want to deprofessionalise teaching, medicine, the law simply so they can hire cheaper workers. It's all about market forces whose basic drive is to kill or be killed.
I'm sick of them talking about austerity as though it's a real thing. There is no austerity. There is just the same old Tory ideological obsession with competition. And this is the key thing to remember. These aren't even Conservatives and I wish true Conservatives would realise that and vote them out. Old One Nation Tories should be ashamed to wear the party blue. They were people you could talk to. They had a rational distrust of ideology and a belief in helping the entire nation. They believed in something greater than these dead-eyed dolts still enchanted by the Thatcherite spell which clear-sighted people now realise was a curse put on all of us.
I'm sick of paying for everything that used to make life fun. Simple things like watching cricket in the afternoon without paying through the nose for a comprehensive sports service you neither want nor need.
I am sick of what this country has become: a nation of thick-necked heavily tattooed testosterone soaked Neanderthals who are the only ones who will succeed because Darwinian forces care nothing for compassion, kindness, politeness, or generosity.
Most of all, I'm sick of feeling ashamed to be British because to be British is to be either selfish, crass, and cruel, or it means to be trod down. I remember the days when it meant so much more than that.
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
Sunday, 26 April 2015
The Spine Election Podcast - Episode 6
After a long week and a few delays due to my being off on various jaunts, I've finally edited together the latest podcast. I'd like to thank Bella Sassin who lent a real touch of professionalism to this production. Her acting makes me sound like the slow guy who hangs around the village well in eighteenth century novels set in Ireland.
Saturday, 25 April 2015
Why the hell Aston Villa?
The list of things that count as a 'brain fade' is pretty long. Forgetting the dates of battles, wars, victories, births, deaths, exams and appointments are just the beginning. It would be understandable if you forget your mother's noodle recipe or the contents of that brown cardboard box on the top shelf in your shed. You might forget your National Insurance number or ever your car number plate. It's easy to forget the name of films or books, even though you might claim they're a favourite. It's easier still to forget the name of that actor you like who only plays bit parts in films but always does with a certain manly swagger. In that case, you're probably forgetting the name Ed Harris or Scott Glenn. Really, the list of things it's okay to forget is extremely long and varied. But nowhere on it does it include the name of your football team.
I mean nobody, not even the recently lobotomised, forgets the name of their football team. It just doesn't happen. Not even as a verbal slip. You don't suddenly say 'Manchester United' if you mean Liverpool, 'Everton' if you support Leeds. It's not simply a trick of a tired brain. You don't have one thing in mind and accidentally say it, like you might say to somebody, ' pass me the knife' when you meant spoon but you just happened to be holding a knife when you reached for the word. Those things are understandable. Forgetting your football team is about as likely as forgetting your own name. Never is my life have I introduced myself 'Eric' or 'Bruce' or 'Norma'. I'm certain about that. 100% of the time I say that my name is David.
I wouldn't image that David Cameron would ever introduce himself as Eric, Bruce or Norma Cameron either, which makes it so hard to believe that today told an audience in Croydon that his favourite team is West Ham. For years he's been telling us that it's Aston Villa and how he is the nephew of a former Villa chairman who took him to his first match when he was 13.
The significance of the story is bigger than the details. What I love about this gaff is that it's an apparently trivial mistake which might have big consequences. It's the kind of story that will click with large portions of the electorate. It's hard to judge a man based on economic predictions or the well practised spiel of a campaign speech. It's much easier to judge what you think about a man who suddenly forgets which team he supports. Had this happened in any pub across the land, the victim of the 'brain fade' would be ribbed about it for months, years, perhaps even the rest of his life.
So, why did it happen?
It happened, I think, because of the character of the man. It is a small point but I think it reveals so much about Cameron and his convictions or, more precisely, lack of convictions. I've never seen him as a true conviction politician. Thatcher was deeply ideological. Blair less so but still in a large part driven by convictions. Brown was deeply rooted in his convictions that came through his Presbyterian upbringing. Cameron, I think, is almost completely lacking in deep political thought. To put it in slightly wet terms: politics seems to be a convenient point on his life journey. It was easy for him to go from Eton to Oxford and then into the world of Conservative politics. Leadership came just as easily. David Davies was tipped as the next leader and then Cameron gave a speech behind closed doors which turned everything around. And with typical Cameron luck, he rose to the leadership at a time when the Labour Party had exhausted the ideas of one generation and a world economic collapse compounded their problems, meaning that a change in government was always likely to happen. I can't think of any party leader who went quite so quickly from obscurity to Number 10 via the ballot box.
His current 'brain fade' makes me think of Libya and the fall of Gaddafi. As revolutions go, it was a fairly easy one for a Prime Minister to cope with. It was easier still to head to Benghazi and take some of the credit and make some vague promises and we know how that turned out. We should only be lucky as he made that speech that he didn't praise the people of Syria or Liberia or even West Ham.
The gaff happened because I doubt if Cameron is invested in following Aston Villa with the passion of a true football fan. 'Aston Villa' is just the convenient tag that he can scrawl in that blank box whenever he has to answer the 'Favourite football team' question on his regular Q&As with the readers of Heat magazine.
Yet one question remains. Why the hell did he pick Aston Villa?
I can't get over the feeling that it's just a shrewd political calculation. If I were a politician who was particularly prone to taking the popular angle and always wanting to be seen on the side of the majority, who would I claim to support?
According to a recent Guardian article, the biggest three teams in the UK are Liverpool (15.21%), Arsenal (15.03%) and Manchester United (14.6%). However, at least two of those teams are great rivals. To support United or Liverpool would stain your character for supporters of the rival team. You might gain respect in the eyes of one 15% but you'd lost it in the eyes of another 15%. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal all have strong rivalries, as do teams such as Everton, Manchester City, and Leeds.
I suspect that a wily politician would choose a team that's well known but not so successful that it has bred much resentment. Does Aston Villa fit that profile? It has the fifth highest in terms of major honours among English clubs but hasn't won the top division since the 1980-81 season. Is it vanilla enough to be the team that breeds the most apathy in the league? I suspect it might. Choosing Aston Villa means that Cameron is only alienating the supporters of West Brom and Birmingham City in a heavily Labour supporting part of the country. Hostility towards Aston Villa doesn't reach across the country in the same way as you find deep resentments about other major teams. In political terms, it's as neutral a choice as it's possible to find in the top division. The votes he would potentially lose are votes which would probably be Labour in the first place.
Well, that's my theory. I have no way of knowing if it's real or not. I just expect the Tory party's media unit to now go into overdrive to prove that Cameron is a true Aston Villa fan. Expect to see the buttock tattoo before the end of the campaign. In the case of any other politician, I would have written that line thinking it a good joke to end. In Cameron's case, I'm not so sure it's a joke.
I mean nobody, not even the recently lobotomised, forgets the name of their football team. It just doesn't happen. Not even as a verbal slip. You don't suddenly say 'Manchester United' if you mean Liverpool, 'Everton' if you support Leeds. It's not simply a trick of a tired brain. You don't have one thing in mind and accidentally say it, like you might say to somebody, ' pass me the knife' when you meant spoon but you just happened to be holding a knife when you reached for the word. Those things are understandable. Forgetting your football team is about as likely as forgetting your own name. Never is my life have I introduced myself 'Eric' or 'Bruce' or 'Norma'. I'm certain about that. 100% of the time I say that my name is David.
I wouldn't image that David Cameron would ever introduce himself as Eric, Bruce or Norma Cameron either, which makes it so hard to believe that today told an audience in Croydon that his favourite team is West Ham. For years he's been telling us that it's Aston Villa and how he is the nephew of a former Villa chairman who took him to his first match when he was 13.
The significance of the story is bigger than the details. What I love about this gaff is that it's an apparently trivial mistake which might have big consequences. It's the kind of story that will click with large portions of the electorate. It's hard to judge a man based on economic predictions or the well practised spiel of a campaign speech. It's much easier to judge what you think about a man who suddenly forgets which team he supports. Had this happened in any pub across the land, the victim of the 'brain fade' would be ribbed about it for months, years, perhaps even the rest of his life.
So, why did it happen?
It happened, I think, because of the character of the man. It is a small point but I think it reveals so much about Cameron and his convictions or, more precisely, lack of convictions. I've never seen him as a true conviction politician. Thatcher was deeply ideological. Blair less so but still in a large part driven by convictions. Brown was deeply rooted in his convictions that came through his Presbyterian upbringing. Cameron, I think, is almost completely lacking in deep political thought. To put it in slightly wet terms: politics seems to be a convenient point on his life journey. It was easy for him to go from Eton to Oxford and then into the world of Conservative politics. Leadership came just as easily. David Davies was tipped as the next leader and then Cameron gave a speech behind closed doors which turned everything around. And with typical Cameron luck, he rose to the leadership at a time when the Labour Party had exhausted the ideas of one generation and a world economic collapse compounded their problems, meaning that a change in government was always likely to happen. I can't think of any party leader who went quite so quickly from obscurity to Number 10 via the ballot box.
His current 'brain fade' makes me think of Libya and the fall of Gaddafi. As revolutions go, it was a fairly easy one for a Prime Minister to cope with. It was easier still to head to Benghazi and take some of the credit and make some vague promises and we know how that turned out. We should only be lucky as he made that speech that he didn't praise the people of Syria or Liberia or even West Ham.
The gaff happened because I doubt if Cameron is invested in following Aston Villa with the passion of a true football fan. 'Aston Villa' is just the convenient tag that he can scrawl in that blank box whenever he has to answer the 'Favourite football team' question on his regular Q&As with the readers of Heat magazine.
Yet one question remains. Why the hell did he pick Aston Villa?
I can't get over the feeling that it's just a shrewd political calculation. If I were a politician who was particularly prone to taking the popular angle and always wanting to be seen on the side of the majority, who would I claim to support?
According to a recent Guardian article, the biggest three teams in the UK are Liverpool (15.21%), Arsenal (15.03%) and Manchester United (14.6%). However, at least two of those teams are great rivals. To support United or Liverpool would stain your character for supporters of the rival team. You might gain respect in the eyes of one 15% but you'd lost it in the eyes of another 15%. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal all have strong rivalries, as do teams such as Everton, Manchester City, and Leeds.
I suspect that a wily politician would choose a team that's well known but not so successful that it has bred much resentment. Does Aston Villa fit that profile? It has the fifth highest in terms of major honours among English clubs but hasn't won the top division since the 1980-81 season. Is it vanilla enough to be the team that breeds the most apathy in the league? I suspect it might. Choosing Aston Villa means that Cameron is only alienating the supporters of West Brom and Birmingham City in a heavily Labour supporting part of the country. Hostility towards Aston Villa doesn't reach across the country in the same way as you find deep resentments about other major teams. In political terms, it's as neutral a choice as it's possible to find in the top division. The votes he would potentially lose are votes which would probably be Labour in the first place.
Well, that's my theory. I have no way of knowing if it's real or not. I just expect the Tory party's media unit to now go into overdrive to prove that Cameron is a true Aston Villa fan. Expect to see the buttock tattoo before the end of the campaign. In the case of any other politician, I would have written that line thinking it a good joke to end. In Cameron's case, I'm not so sure it's a joke.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Coming down from the Spire
I always rub my boots on the back of my trouser legs before I walk into these places. In poker terms, it's what's known as 'a tell'. I also suppose it's a ridiculous thing to do. People don't really judge you by the shine of your toecaps but my toecaps have no shine and I always feel absolutely ashamed by them. I feel an overwhelming wish to explain and confess my life to these people when I arrive on their doorstep, as though I can somehow justify myself by my writing, my books, my cartoons, or my education. Yet none of that matters. No matter how many degrees you have, books published, or blog posts read, they only judge you by one criteria and, in my case, it's a criteria accurately summarised by the shabby state of my boots.
In the last few years, my boots have trod the carpets in too many hospital receptions. For reasons too complicated to go into, I've spent half a decade accompanying my sister to her various appointments. I could give you a long medical history but books the length of 'War and Peace' are no longer in vogue unless they're about spanking, dwarves, or both. The flash non-fiction version of the story is that my sister has some problem which the NHS are still struggling to identify. We occasionally see consultants privately but that route is a truly horrifying financial strain. So we bounce through the system.
This week, she's felt so ill that she became desperate and desperation usually means expense. She decided to have her blood tested done privately. Nine months ago, a consultant requested that certain tests be done and we had them done on the NHS. They're tricky tests, which require all manner of arcane magic that you normally only see done in vampire movies starring Wesley Snipes. So we had blood samples taken at the local GP's surgery and the local GP's surgery proceeded to lose the blood samples. We only discovered this after waiting six months for the results. Naturally, we had the tests repeated but, three months later, we've still not got the results and nobody has a record of what happened to the samples. Which is why we decided to have them done again but this time privately, meaning the results should be available within a week.
Yet all of that is mere backstory to explain why I was up at seven o'clock this morning and sitting in traffic-locked taxi cab in the heart of Warrington by eight. What I wanted to write about was the experience of 'going private' from the perspective of the guy sitting next to his sick sister who nobody is willing to help. I thought it would be fun to do that because the contrast is so enormous as to be faintly comical, whilst it also says so much about our country and our culture.
Yet this isn't going to be about medical procedures. I rarely go in 'the room'. This is just my perspective on the experience of somebody sitting waiting outside and drawing cartoons whilst trying not to feel too out of place whilst surrounded by people from a different plane of existence. And, believe me, their extra-planar credentials are never in question.
Take, for example, this morning and the woman sitting across from me. She was clearly 'in the money' and her buttocks obviously knew their way around a Caribbean Lilo. Even her shins were wrinkled from the sun. I've never seen wrinkled shins before. I never knew shins could wrinkle. And I mean wrinkle more than anything in this world could wrinkle with the exception, perhaps, of Keith Richard's scrotum. I was thinking of drawing her shins, Robert Crumb style, or at least including them in a future cartoon. They really need immortalising. That woman's shins are the sort of thing that, once witnessed, inform an artist's vision for the rest of his life.
She was with her husband who was of that upper-managerial type that dominates the landscape south of Warrington: red faced, elderly, and in his best weekend golf gear despite it only being a Friday. I've worked for the type. They dress for golf on a Friday but still turn up at the office to remind their employees that, whilst it is still only Friday, the boss is free to play golf.
As I noted all this, a replica of the gent walked in: same clothes, stance, attitude. This one looked like my favourite art critic, Brian Sewell, a scarf wrapped around his neck in a fashion that you rarely see men adopting since Oscar Wilde made it passé at the same time as he invented sodomy around the start of the last century. It's all typical stuff for Tory heartlands and by that I guess I mean the wrinkles, the scarves, and the sodomy. I later spent the thirty five minute ride home talking to the taxi driver about politics. We'd struck lucky and found the only taxi driver in the country who is as big an Andrew Neil fan and This Week as myself and he was happy to talk about the general election. He pointed out all the Tory signs (not even posters but proper on-a-stick-stuck-in-the-herbaceous-border signs) and explained how Warrington South is a marginal being fiercely contested by the sitting MP David Mowat. The Tories are clearly pouring their hedge fund cash into the area. The signs were like triffids peering out of every expensively trimmed garden hedge otherwise shielding the expensive houses from the road.
I suppose it's wrong to say that all these people all the same but there's much that's shared between the residents. They are no doubt good people but representatives of that Britain that is succeeding. They're the people doing well out of the economy and their money is sensibly being put to good use looking after themselves inside the private healthcare system. I don't dislike them. In many respects, they're people like myself: cultured, quiet, believers in politeness and some notion of right and wrong. The gulf between us is perhaps more about outcomes, opportunities and, of course, service.
For example, when I go to our local GP's surgery I usually deal with some nose-breathing servant of Sauron, who can barely restrain her utter distain for me as though I'm a wood elf from a Murkwood slum. In contrast, go privately and you get to meet The Most Beautiful Woman In The World and, if that sounds like an exaggeration, let me assure you that it's not. It happens too often for it not to be a universal truth about private healthcare. Private hospitals have a direct line to God. This morning, the Most Beautiful Woman In The World had an American accent, hipster glasses and a Monroe air. She should have been in movies. Scarlett Johansson has the face of a blistered dingo compared to her.
That is something I sometimes find as shocking as I find it profound. Reflect deeply on Fate and you see that there's so little that separates each of us except for a few twisted threads of DNA and a whole lot of circumstance. How often do you see Hollywood stars interviewed and asked 'what would you be doing if you'd not become a movie star?' 'Oh,' they'll smile, 'I'd be frying chicken in a mall and giving everybody listeria'. Audiences laugh yet behind the laughter is the realisation of a greater truth. It's the tragedy of that person who should be a movie star but is trapped working in reception somewhere. It can whither a man's soul if he contemplates it too long. It was like our taxi driver who was articulate, knowledgeable, and passionate about politics. He was perfectly suited to a life representing the people of Warrington but, instead, he is scraping a living driving around his home town whilst a chartered accountant born in Ruby serves as his local MP.
I suppose, at some point, the whole thing became an act of self-reflection and I began to feel so utterly sob-wrecking depressed as I sat there, staring at my shabby boots and contemplating the parts of this that I hadn't worked out until later. Life is about the fairy tales we're told and the fairy tales we believe, such as the one about 'hard work bringing just rewards'. I've always worked obsessively hard but I now see it as vile malicious bullshit whispered in our hamster ears so we'll keep running in the wheel. It all comes down to a toss of a coin, the turn of a county border, the direction that water once ran off an upland field and decided the course of a river through the heart of a county. Life might be there to direct as we will but it can only be steered so much. Sometimes there are greater forces limiting your options. Sometimes there are simply no options.
So, I as sat there, I listened to the hum of Sky News in the background, periodically broken by the beguiling accent of the TMBWITW in the hipster glasses which I tried hard to ignore because it would mean looking that way and burning my soul on something no mortal eyes should really see. And for a brief moment, I did wonder what life's like in that world or even if that world is real and not imagined.
Is it real if you pay people to be kind, considerate, and display such good manners that they ask if you'd like a cup of coffee whilst you wait? When asked by hipster movie star, I said 'no' because I really appreciated the gesture but I wouldn't put somebody to such trouble. Besides, I might have blurted out something crazy like the entirety of Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty'. Yet had fate been different, I might have been the type of person to click my fingers, wink and say 'Sure thing, gorgeous, because the world is my playground and I can afford the fees!'
But people like us can't afford the fees and therein lies the difference.
I didn't say 'yes'. I just remembered the details. I noticed the way the chairs seemed to have lost their plumpness and had been laid low by overuse by big behinds. They weren't as comfortable nor luxurious as those in Chester's Nuffield and nothing seemed as relaxing. The place was darker with too much noise and too many patients crowded next to the reception, so that those of us waiting could hear too much about other people's ailments. Thankfully, there was free wi-fi available without the need to go ask movie stars for passwords, so I searched the surprisingly responsive web for source images of ugly politicians and I doodled a picture. Then I watched a doctor arrive in his sports car and, in that moment, the whole experience was perfectly summed up.
Doctors in private healthcare don't look like NHS doctors. Doctors in the NHS look like the nerd you knew at school who went into medicine, started to earn a fortune, and likes to remind the world that they were bullied in school but now they hold the power.
Doctors in private healthcare look like the guys who used to deal out the beatings in school. I watched one arrive and he utterly fitted his fitted suits with their ridiculously Apollonian proportions. He also had a 'fuck yeah, life is good' swagger which matched his features, wide and flat like something peeled from a movie poster. He looked like cricketer Graham Hick, a less scarred version of Harrison Ford. Again, you could argue about fate dealing him a bad hand but it's hard to feel quite as despondent when that person is a high wizard of healthcare driving a pornstar sports car and with a complete Mastery of the Elements vibe. I didn't feel so bad that he won't be the next Indiana Jones. I didn't even look to see if the receptionist swooned as he walked past. That would have been too much to bear. Because private healthcare might be there to improve your health, but, deep down, none of this makes you feel good. You might have a good soul but you know what you look like naked and it's not a pretty. Your body goes out where his goes in and in where his goes out. You're at opposite ends of the colour chart. If you were colours by Dulux, you'd be 'Bjork alabaster'. He'd be 'Tom Jones circa 1974'. It's all so utterly demoralising.
It would be easy here to be bitter and surmise that he'd be bad at his job but you could tell the opposite. Watching his manner as he greeted his first patient, I saw the biggest difference of the day. The last NHS consultant my sister saw spoke to her for about five minutes, scribbled something on a sheet, and dismissed her with a cursory word. Six months wait for five minutes of indifference and I was left to deal with all the tears and the hurt. These guys come out and greet you with a warm handshake. They smile and ask you how you're doing.
Try to imagine that. Doctors who ask you how you're doing...
It's a sad measure of our country's decline when you don't expect such things. Sadder still when these things only happen when you pay for them.
In the last few years, my boots have trod the carpets in too many hospital receptions. For reasons too complicated to go into, I've spent half a decade accompanying my sister to her various appointments. I could give you a long medical history but books the length of 'War and Peace' are no longer in vogue unless they're about spanking, dwarves, or both. The flash non-fiction version of the story is that my sister has some problem which the NHS are still struggling to identify. We occasionally see consultants privately but that route is a truly horrifying financial strain. So we bounce through the system.
This week, she's felt so ill that she became desperate and desperation usually means expense. She decided to have her blood tested done privately. Nine months ago, a consultant requested that certain tests be done and we had them done on the NHS. They're tricky tests, which require all manner of arcane magic that you normally only see done in vampire movies starring Wesley Snipes. So we had blood samples taken at the local GP's surgery and the local GP's surgery proceeded to lose the blood samples. We only discovered this after waiting six months for the results. Naturally, we had the tests repeated but, three months later, we've still not got the results and nobody has a record of what happened to the samples. Which is why we decided to have them done again but this time privately, meaning the results should be available within a week.
Yet all of that is mere backstory to explain why I was up at seven o'clock this morning and sitting in traffic-locked taxi cab in the heart of Warrington by eight. What I wanted to write about was the experience of 'going private' from the perspective of the guy sitting next to his sick sister who nobody is willing to help. I thought it would be fun to do that because the contrast is so enormous as to be faintly comical, whilst it also says so much about our country and our culture.
Yet this isn't going to be about medical procedures. I rarely go in 'the room'. This is just my perspective on the experience of somebody sitting waiting outside and drawing cartoons whilst trying not to feel too out of place whilst surrounded by people from a different plane of existence. And, believe me, their extra-planar credentials are never in question.
Take, for example, this morning and the woman sitting across from me. She was clearly 'in the money' and her buttocks obviously knew their way around a Caribbean Lilo. Even her shins were wrinkled from the sun. I've never seen wrinkled shins before. I never knew shins could wrinkle. And I mean wrinkle more than anything in this world could wrinkle with the exception, perhaps, of Keith Richard's scrotum. I was thinking of drawing her shins, Robert Crumb style, or at least including them in a future cartoon. They really need immortalising. That woman's shins are the sort of thing that, once witnessed, inform an artist's vision for the rest of his life.
She was with her husband who was of that upper-managerial type that dominates the landscape south of Warrington: red faced, elderly, and in his best weekend golf gear despite it only being a Friday. I've worked for the type. They dress for golf on a Friday but still turn up at the office to remind their employees that, whilst it is still only Friday, the boss is free to play golf.
As I noted all this, a replica of the gent walked in: same clothes, stance, attitude. This one looked like my favourite art critic, Brian Sewell, a scarf wrapped around his neck in a fashion that you rarely see men adopting since Oscar Wilde made it passé at the same time as he invented sodomy around the start of the last century. It's all typical stuff for Tory heartlands and by that I guess I mean the wrinkles, the scarves, and the sodomy. I later spent the thirty five minute ride home talking to the taxi driver about politics. We'd struck lucky and found the only taxi driver in the country who is as big an Andrew Neil fan and This Week as myself and he was happy to talk about the general election. He pointed out all the Tory signs (not even posters but proper on-a-stick-stuck-in-the-herbaceous-border signs) and explained how Warrington South is a marginal being fiercely contested by the sitting MP David Mowat. The Tories are clearly pouring their hedge fund cash into the area. The signs were like triffids peering out of every expensively trimmed garden hedge otherwise shielding the expensive houses from the road.
I suppose it's wrong to say that all these people all the same but there's much that's shared between the residents. They are no doubt good people but representatives of that Britain that is succeeding. They're the people doing well out of the economy and their money is sensibly being put to good use looking after themselves inside the private healthcare system. I don't dislike them. In many respects, they're people like myself: cultured, quiet, believers in politeness and some notion of right and wrong. The gulf between us is perhaps more about outcomes, opportunities and, of course, service.
For example, when I go to our local GP's surgery I usually deal with some nose-breathing servant of Sauron, who can barely restrain her utter distain for me as though I'm a wood elf from a Murkwood slum. In contrast, go privately and you get to meet The Most Beautiful Woman In The World and, if that sounds like an exaggeration, let me assure you that it's not. It happens too often for it not to be a universal truth about private healthcare. Private hospitals have a direct line to God. This morning, the Most Beautiful Woman In The World had an American accent, hipster glasses and a Monroe air. She should have been in movies. Scarlett Johansson has the face of a blistered dingo compared to her.
That is something I sometimes find as shocking as I find it profound. Reflect deeply on Fate and you see that there's so little that separates each of us except for a few twisted threads of DNA and a whole lot of circumstance. How often do you see Hollywood stars interviewed and asked 'what would you be doing if you'd not become a movie star?' 'Oh,' they'll smile, 'I'd be frying chicken in a mall and giving everybody listeria'. Audiences laugh yet behind the laughter is the realisation of a greater truth. It's the tragedy of that person who should be a movie star but is trapped working in reception somewhere. It can whither a man's soul if he contemplates it too long. It was like our taxi driver who was articulate, knowledgeable, and passionate about politics. He was perfectly suited to a life representing the people of Warrington but, instead, he is scraping a living driving around his home town whilst a chartered accountant born in Ruby serves as his local MP.
I suppose, at some point, the whole thing became an act of self-reflection and I began to feel so utterly sob-wrecking depressed as I sat there, staring at my shabby boots and contemplating the parts of this that I hadn't worked out until later. Life is about the fairy tales we're told and the fairy tales we believe, such as the one about 'hard work bringing just rewards'. I've always worked obsessively hard but I now see it as vile malicious bullshit whispered in our hamster ears so we'll keep running in the wheel. It all comes down to a toss of a coin, the turn of a county border, the direction that water once ran off an upland field and decided the course of a river through the heart of a county. Life might be there to direct as we will but it can only be steered so much. Sometimes there are greater forces limiting your options. Sometimes there are simply no options.
So, I as sat there, I listened to the hum of Sky News in the background, periodically broken by the beguiling accent of the TMBWITW in the hipster glasses which I tried hard to ignore because it would mean looking that way and burning my soul on something no mortal eyes should really see. And for a brief moment, I did wonder what life's like in that world or even if that world is real and not imagined.
Is it real if you pay people to be kind, considerate, and display such good manners that they ask if you'd like a cup of coffee whilst you wait? When asked by hipster movie star, I said 'no' because I really appreciated the gesture but I wouldn't put somebody to such trouble. Besides, I might have blurted out something crazy like the entirety of Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty'. Yet had fate been different, I might have been the type of person to click my fingers, wink and say 'Sure thing, gorgeous, because the world is my playground and I can afford the fees!'
But people like us can't afford the fees and therein lies the difference.
I didn't say 'yes'. I just remembered the details. I noticed the way the chairs seemed to have lost their plumpness and had been laid low by overuse by big behinds. They weren't as comfortable nor luxurious as those in Chester's Nuffield and nothing seemed as relaxing. The place was darker with too much noise and too many patients crowded next to the reception, so that those of us waiting could hear too much about other people's ailments. Thankfully, there was free wi-fi available without the need to go ask movie stars for passwords, so I searched the surprisingly responsive web for source images of ugly politicians and I doodled a picture. Then I watched a doctor arrive in his sports car and, in that moment, the whole experience was perfectly summed up.
Doctors in private healthcare don't look like NHS doctors. Doctors in the NHS look like the nerd you knew at school who went into medicine, started to earn a fortune, and likes to remind the world that they were bullied in school but now they hold the power.
Doctors in private healthcare look like the guys who used to deal out the beatings in school. I watched one arrive and he utterly fitted his fitted suits with their ridiculously Apollonian proportions. He also had a 'fuck yeah, life is good' swagger which matched his features, wide and flat like something peeled from a movie poster. He looked like cricketer Graham Hick, a less scarred version of Harrison Ford. Again, you could argue about fate dealing him a bad hand but it's hard to feel quite as despondent when that person is a high wizard of healthcare driving a pornstar sports car and with a complete Mastery of the Elements vibe. I didn't feel so bad that he won't be the next Indiana Jones. I didn't even look to see if the receptionist swooned as he walked past. That would have been too much to bear. Because private healthcare might be there to improve your health, but, deep down, none of this makes you feel good. You might have a good soul but you know what you look like naked and it's not a pretty. Your body goes out where his goes in and in where his goes out. You're at opposite ends of the colour chart. If you were colours by Dulux, you'd be 'Bjork alabaster'. He'd be 'Tom Jones circa 1974'. It's all so utterly demoralising.
It would be easy here to be bitter and surmise that he'd be bad at his job but you could tell the opposite. Watching his manner as he greeted his first patient, I saw the biggest difference of the day. The last NHS consultant my sister saw spoke to her for about five minutes, scribbled something on a sheet, and dismissed her with a cursory word. Six months wait for five minutes of indifference and I was left to deal with all the tears and the hurt. These guys come out and greet you with a warm handshake. They smile and ask you how you're doing.
Try to imagine that. Doctors who ask you how you're doing...
It's a sad measure of our country's decline when you don't expect such things. Sadder still when these things only happen when you pay for them.
Monday, 20 April 2015
Meet Paul Richardson, My Conservative Candidate for St Helens North
Busy writing a podcast so I wasn't intending on posting to the blog today. Also, I fell asleep drawing last night's cartoon. Must try harder...
The good news is that my voting slip just arrived and I was surprised to see that our Conservative candidate is local.
I know! I'm really lost for words. I was ready to be so cynical about the whole operation...
Of course, when I say local, I mean a 142 mile hop, skip and one ruddy big jump 'local'. I live in the St Helens North constituency and the poor bastard the Tories have put up for election lives in Tring in Hertfordshire. Not a person I've told today hasn't curled over in laughter at the news. You couldn't make this stuff up.
Here's a picture of Paul Richardson standing outside our Town Hall in St Helens. I haven't visited St Helens in a couple of years, which says much about the town and the geography of our constituency. Posing beside one of their flower beds was never going to win me over...
The first thing to say note about the picture is that nobody in these parts wears a jacket like that. It's a beginner's mistake, of course. People need to tell Paul to do more research. Go with something neutral which doesn't reek of privilege and class. When locals see that kind of jacket, what we really see is this:
The second thing to note is the way he stands. If I'm not mistaken, that's the pose of a man about to heel it back to his Audi so he can get back home.
Perhaps I'm being too cynical. I genuinely have no gripe with Paul Richardson. He's probably a good man doing an honorable thing. He's trying to make a difference. Perhaps Paul Richardson actually lives or works inside the constituency. He claims to have 'spent so much of my life here'. Maybe he was born here but lives in Hertfordshire. Perhaps he'd be a fantastic MP who would work hard to improve our region.
Or maybe he's just in it for the experience because the Tories know that hell will go polar before anybody other than Labour (or, maybe in years past, the Lib Dems) could win in these parts.
Yet none of that matters to me. I'm pretty centrist in my political views. Over the course of my life, I've voted a whole variety of ways. My vote is always winnable. All that I ask is that a political party doesn't treat me with utter disdain by dropping some aspiring MP into the region just so he can get a sniff of a real voter. Are there really no Tory candidates who might be more suitable? Maybe one who was... I don't know... Perhaps born in the North? I'm not even asking for a candidate from a local town. Perhaps just one of the surrounding counties? Maybe even Liverpool or Manchester? Seriously, there's no county more certain to raise the local ire than sodding Hertfordshire...
And while I'm mocking the Tories, I should note that Labour aren't above this kind of shameful game. The MP for St Helens South has, until recently, been Shaun Woodward, who I doubt spent a single night under the small terraced house he bought in the town.
All of it shames the system and shows that my election is really over before it began. The parties don't take this constituency seriously. I might as well tear up my ballot form. I'm going back to writing my podcast. Even in a small insignificant way, it's the only way my voice will be heard at this election.
The good news is that my voting slip just arrived and I was surprised to see that our Conservative candidate is local.
I know! I'm really lost for words. I was ready to be so cynical about the whole operation...
Of course, when I say local, I mean a 142 mile hop, skip and one ruddy big jump 'local'. I live in the St Helens North constituency and the poor bastard the Tories have put up for election lives in Tring in Hertfordshire. Not a person I've told today hasn't curled over in laughter at the news. You couldn't make this stuff up.
Here's a picture of Paul Richardson standing outside our Town Hall in St Helens. I haven't visited St Helens in a couple of years, which says much about the town and the geography of our constituency. Posing beside one of their flower beds was never going to win me over...
The first thing to say note about the picture is that nobody in these parts wears a jacket like that. It's a beginner's mistake, of course. People need to tell Paul to do more research. Go with something neutral which doesn't reek of privilege and class. When locals see that kind of jacket, what we really see is this:
The second thing to note is the way he stands. If I'm not mistaken, that's the pose of a man about to heel it back to his Audi so he can get back home.
Perhaps I'm being too cynical. I genuinely have no gripe with Paul Richardson. He's probably a good man doing an honorable thing. He's trying to make a difference. Perhaps Paul Richardson actually lives or works inside the constituency. He claims to have 'spent so much of my life here'. Maybe he was born here but lives in Hertfordshire. Perhaps he'd be a fantastic MP who would work hard to improve our region.
Or maybe he's just in it for the experience because the Tories know that hell will go polar before anybody other than Labour (or, maybe in years past, the Lib Dems) could win in these parts.
Yet none of that matters to me. I'm pretty centrist in my political views. Over the course of my life, I've voted a whole variety of ways. My vote is always winnable. All that I ask is that a political party doesn't treat me with utter disdain by dropping some aspiring MP into the region just so he can get a sniff of a real voter. Are there really no Tory candidates who might be more suitable? Maybe one who was... I don't know... Perhaps born in the North? I'm not even asking for a candidate from a local town. Perhaps just one of the surrounding counties? Maybe even Liverpool or Manchester? Seriously, there's no county more certain to raise the local ire than sodding Hertfordshire...
And while I'm mocking the Tories, I should note that Labour aren't above this kind of shameful game. The MP for St Helens South has, until recently, been Shaun Woodward, who I doubt spent a single night under the small terraced house he bought in the town.
All of it shames the system and shows that my election is really over before it began. The parties don't take this constituency seriously. I might as well tear up my ballot form. I'm going back to writing my podcast. Even in a small insignificant way, it's the only way my voice will be heard at this election.
Friday, 17 April 2015
Friday Notes
Posting my 'daily cartoon' the next day is the worst part of drawing them. Firstly, it's a mark that you're finished with one and that you have to start another. Secondly, you hope for feedback saying it's the best cartoon you've ever drawn when the reality is that it's barely looked at and, even when it is looked at, it's often passed over with a shrug of the shoulders. This feels particularly bad when you do happen to think that it is the best cartoon you've ever drawn...
Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...
I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.
As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.
I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.
Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.
Ed Miliband
Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.
Natalie Bennett
I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.
Leanne Wood
Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.
Nichola Sturgeon
People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.
Nigel 'Nige' Farage
Not so much a one-trick pony as a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.
Last night's was one of those rare cartoons when I thought I'd ticked my personal boxes. Perhaps I'm just pleased because my cross hatching worked out and that the cartoon tried to say something. I don't know if I can judge. The left side could do with more work and I'm not satisfied with colour. It looked good in black and white but colour, for me, distracts. Yet colour is expected so I needed to add some...
I've been providing some cartoons for Tim Marshall's new venture over at The What and the Why. Because the focus is on international affairs, I've been trying to spot cartoons with a world theme. It's not always easy but it's helpful to me because it forces me to draw things and people I wouldn't normally be drawn to satirise or even think about. Today's cartoon was different. A vain president jailing cartoonists would always draw my attention. Apparently Turkey's Erdogan doesn't like to be ridiculed (explanatory BBC news report in the link), which seems like an eminently good reason to ridicule him. My first attempt was probably a stretch too far. I started drawing jowls and, naturally, I thought I'd see how far I could take them. By 11pm last night, I realised I'd probably taken them too far so I tried again.
As I redrew the majority of the cartoon, I watched the challenger's debate from earlier in the evening, followed by hours of analysis. Some of it made sense. Much of it didn't. The parties were engaged in their typical spin operations and sometimes even the strongest will struggles to avoid following their bad logic down the rabbit hole of political bias.
I thought the biggest loser of the evening was (surprisingly) David Cameron. I hadn't expected the Prime Minister's absence to hurt him so bad. Yet listening to him claiming credit for the debate earlier in the day was simply nauseating. He spoke of unblocking the logjam when he'd been the cause of the logjam in the beginning. It made the resulting debate feel like justice in that it was an hour and a half of solid government bashing. No having somebody on the stage to defend their record might well be one of the biggest miscalculations of the election. It was bruising stuff.
Of the participants, my verdict was as follows.
Ed Miliband
Miliband didn't need to do much and just stay clear of trouble. He'd won the evening by simply turning up. What followed was, to use a cricket metaphor, a display of playing every ball with straight bat. He never looked like edging a ball to slip but, then, his opponents were hardly steaming in with their fastest deliveries. He ensured his victory at the end by challenging Cameron to a debate. It was a win-win move. If Cameron refuses, he looks week and undemocratic. If he accepts, Miliband gets to debate with Cameron who seems singularly uninterested into entering into any democratic process. From Cameron's point of view, he can't win either way but I think he stands more of a chance by debating.
Natalie Bennett
I can't explain why I have a soft spot for Bennett. Everything should go against her: that accent, those policies, a few woeful performances in various media spotlights. Yet each time she stands up to speak, I find myself surprised by how much I both like her and how much I agree with her. She was the only person to speak up for people who are too sick to be considered 'hardworking'. That, for me, spoke volumes. I know the Green manifesto is filled with risible nonsense. Andew Neil has done enough this election to prove that. However, Bennett has a knack of speaking about things which the other parties don't address. Not sure any of that makes sense but I'm not sure I can explain why Bennett keeps impressing me.
Leanne Wood
Wood attempted to relive her success of the opening leader's debate and she probably suffered for that. She seemed eager to lay into Farage, no doubt knowing it was the thing that she was praised for the last time they met. Beyond that, she spoke to her audience in Wales and about that I'm not really qualified to comment. She doesn't have that connection to English voters that Sturgeon has oddly seemed to have fashioned.
Nichola Sturgeon
People have constantly praised her performance throughout the campaign's debates but last night was the first time I sat up and thought she was something special. She repeatedly had the best answers on the night, though perhaps too few hard questions were directed her way. I can see why she appeals to so many. She has become the face of the election and has replaced Farage as the fashionable outsider that non-voters would like to vote for if they're in England and will vote for if they're north of the border.
Nigel 'Nige' Farage
Not so much a one-trick pony as a pony who has learned a few good tricks which he performs every time he's trotted out onto the national stage. Last night was more of the same from Nige. His tactic is clear. He wants to lose the studio but win the living room. Turning on the audience was probably a masterstroke. He obviously needed the boos to make his point. He wanted to portray himself as the man who speaks for the common folk who never get their opinions aired on TV. He summed it up with his line about 'I say what many of you are probably thinking'. He effectively acknowledged that ninety percent of the people in the room would dislike him and never vote UKIP. He took that fact and turned it to his advantage, reaching out to his core voters to remind them why UKIP is different to the rest.
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Election Notes
Okay. Today's cartoon finished and posted. Now time to write some words...
Another of the many frustrating parts of the election coverage is the way the media seem to be giving the most attention to the generally slack jawed and indifferent. I suppose it's 'news' that some people have no interest in politics but I'm not sure it's really important news. It's certainly a fact not worth repeating in every single news item.
The always excellent Emily Maitlis spent a good portion of last night's Newsnight wasting her quality heels wandering around some London hotspot asking smirking idlers about the party manifestos. It reminded me of being back in school when the teacher would ask the snot-nosed gibbon at the back of the room if he knew the name of the title character of 'Macbeth'. They would give the same shrug, the same creeping smile, eyes looking to friends for affirmation that their stupidity was admirable. And last night the exercise was similarly pointless and taught us nothing except that David Cameron should stop turning his beady eye towards the north when he starts talking about the shiftless.
There is, of course, a difference between wilful ignorance and ignorance that comes naturally. I believe only one guy had read a manifesto, which doesn't surprise me or, at least, surprised that Maitlis found at least one. I haven't read a manifesto and I don't intend on reading a manifesto. Manifestos aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be brandished like a holy book, waved above the head as though you're holding Dumbledore's grimoire or, as Maitlis correctly explained, finally opened but only when you want to prove that your government has gone back on its pre-election promises.
At this election, the manifestos don't even amount to any of those things. The manifestos are written by parties who don't believe they'll get into government and therefore are promising us the earth because they know that the juicy parts can be knocked out as soon as they enter into coalition negotiations. I imagine the first words out of David Cameron's mouth the morning after the election should he win a majority would be the words 'Shit... What did we promise!?'
Which takes us back to the news.
Today The Guardian are in the nation's most apathetic constituency which, surprisingly not, is up here in the North in Manchester Central. I sometimes wonder whether these reporters are setting out to find the story they've already written. I'm constantly depressed that the media in London talk about 'ordinary' folk being turned off politics. I'm not sure how I'm not myself 'ordinary'. I know a lot of ordinary people who talk about the election. It's just that the media never turn a microphone in their direction.
There can be no real surprise why so much of the nation is turned off politics and it has nothing to do with a person being ordinary or not. It goes to the heart of why Scotland has turned so much in favour of the SNP, which I'm certain should try to get the word 'independence' into their title, if only so that we'd be able to call then SNIP. Supporters of SNIP (for that's what they effectively are and what they effectively want) are clearly a generation tired of rule from Westminster and feel particularly aggrieved when their vote does not dramatically alter the government. Last time, Scotland voted in favour of Labour but got a Tory government delivering austerity. Yet the same is true of much of northern England and Wales. One Nation Toryism really has disappeared and the last government produced a Two Nation Toryism. It's everyone south of Birmingham and then the rest of us.
What you get is a sense that large portions of the country simply don't matter in this election. Where I live, the seat was decided generations ago. I might as well not vote or vote for whoever I like because the result will be the same. I suppose it's liberating knowing that you can vote Green or go Monster Raving Lunatic without any consequences but it's also pretty depressing. It means that there's no real campaigning going on. Nobody visits us and we are left with that familiar feeling that the election is being run by people who really don't care about the people. Tonight, I notice, David Cameron won't be attending the leaders debate. It's what he wanted, of course, and he clearly didn't want to attend the two 'debates' (or pitiful excuses for debates) that have already been held. This is the first time I've thought an election was being run by politicians some of whom are even less enthusiastic than the bloody listless public. In a way, I find my opinions hardening around those attitudes rather than the policies. I want to vote for politicians who show the passion and engagement with the public. Not politicians who slyly creep around the country meeting their loyal activists and sticking security personal in the face of some brave soul who dared put a little spice into the general election sing a slightly risqué song on his ukulele.
Another of the many frustrating parts of the election coverage is the way the media seem to be giving the most attention to the generally slack jawed and indifferent. I suppose it's 'news' that some people have no interest in politics but I'm not sure it's really important news. It's certainly a fact not worth repeating in every single news item.
The always excellent Emily Maitlis spent a good portion of last night's Newsnight wasting her quality heels wandering around some London hotspot asking smirking idlers about the party manifestos. It reminded me of being back in school when the teacher would ask the snot-nosed gibbon at the back of the room if he knew the name of the title character of 'Macbeth'. They would give the same shrug, the same creeping smile, eyes looking to friends for affirmation that their stupidity was admirable. And last night the exercise was similarly pointless and taught us nothing except that David Cameron should stop turning his beady eye towards the north when he starts talking about the shiftless.
There is, of course, a difference between wilful ignorance and ignorance that comes naturally. I believe only one guy had read a manifesto, which doesn't surprise me or, at least, surprised that Maitlis found at least one. I haven't read a manifesto and I don't intend on reading a manifesto. Manifestos aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be brandished like a holy book, waved above the head as though you're holding Dumbledore's grimoire or, as Maitlis correctly explained, finally opened but only when you want to prove that your government has gone back on its pre-election promises.
At this election, the manifestos don't even amount to any of those things. The manifestos are written by parties who don't believe they'll get into government and therefore are promising us the earth because they know that the juicy parts can be knocked out as soon as they enter into coalition negotiations. I imagine the first words out of David Cameron's mouth the morning after the election should he win a majority would be the words 'Shit... What did we promise!?'
Which takes us back to the news.
Today The Guardian are in the nation's most apathetic constituency which, surprisingly not, is up here in the North in Manchester Central. I sometimes wonder whether these reporters are setting out to find the story they've already written. I'm constantly depressed that the media in London talk about 'ordinary' folk being turned off politics. I'm not sure how I'm not myself 'ordinary'. I know a lot of ordinary people who talk about the election. It's just that the media never turn a microphone in their direction.
There can be no real surprise why so much of the nation is turned off politics and it has nothing to do with a person being ordinary or not. It goes to the heart of why Scotland has turned so much in favour of the SNP, which I'm certain should try to get the word 'independence' into their title, if only so that we'd be able to call then SNIP. Supporters of SNIP (for that's what they effectively are and what they effectively want) are clearly a generation tired of rule from Westminster and feel particularly aggrieved when their vote does not dramatically alter the government. Last time, Scotland voted in favour of Labour but got a Tory government delivering austerity. Yet the same is true of much of northern England and Wales. One Nation Toryism really has disappeared and the last government produced a Two Nation Toryism. It's everyone south of Birmingham and then the rest of us.
What you get is a sense that large portions of the country simply don't matter in this election. Where I live, the seat was decided generations ago. I might as well not vote or vote for whoever I like because the result will be the same. I suppose it's liberating knowing that you can vote Green or go Monster Raving Lunatic without any consequences but it's also pretty depressing. It means that there's no real campaigning going on. Nobody visits us and we are left with that familiar feeling that the election is being run by people who really don't care about the people. Tonight, I notice, David Cameron won't be attending the leaders debate. It's what he wanted, of course, and he clearly didn't want to attend the two 'debates' (or pitiful excuses for debates) that have already been held. This is the first time I've thought an election was being run by politicians some of whom are even less enthusiastic than the bloody listless public. In a way, I find my opinions hardening around those attitudes rather than the policies. I want to vote for politicians who show the passion and engagement with the public. Not politicians who slyly creep around the country meeting their loyal activists and sticking security personal in the face of some brave soul who dared put a little spice into the general election sing a slightly risqué song on his ukulele.
Sunday, 12 April 2015
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