A Political Propapagandist's View Of My Childhood

Well. The UK Election is done with.
The Conservatives have slipped up and Labour have got their voters in. Onward and upward.

One thing I have noticed ... one thing that has been puzzling me ... is when, exactly, did the word "socialist" become a term of deep abuse in the UK? It may not be your flavour of politics but to some so-called pundits it seems to have become a politics "beyond the pale". Link it to the term Marxist and apparently we should all be running around in circles and checking under the bed for bugaboos.

The recent Labour Party Manifesto kicked this off, talk of getting rid of student loans, perhaps re-nationalising part of the transport grid.. government energy companies and so forth. This... they have been saying... is Marxism.

Did my conservative father realise he was living in a Marxist state during my 1950s childhood, I wonder? As he duly voted for Churchill, Eden, Macmillan? Under whose Conservative governments we continued to enjoy in the main Labour's free schooling, free healthcare, public transport, government owned utility companies? The post-war consensus?

We obviously did not see that these apparent pillars of Conservative Government were being manipulated by Uncle Joe from behind Winnie's "Iron Curtain".

I wonder ... how did my family escape the gulags? What with all those Ladies Nights down at the Lodge? Surely that was punishable under a Marxist regime?
Perhaps I was too traumatised and mistook the gulags for the leafy suburbs of Kent.

Settling The Bill At The Post Referendum Café

"Service? We'd like to settle up. What are you paying us?

(Pause)

What do you mean we have to pay you? You said there would be lots of spare money and you would feed us wonderfully after we Brexited."

(Pause)

Really? Well I don't think we'll be coming back here in a hurry, then.

(Comments Off...)

What do you mean you are the only café in town now?

Last Orders At The Post Referendum Café

"Service!"

"Hallo. Today for starters we have a choice of....
Dithers with a side order of Confusion; a warm salad of Backstabbers; or a small plate of Cold Regrets.

For Mains we have ... Roulette Aux Crabb; Brexit of Leadsom; Blanquette du Fox au Sri Lankan Hobnobbing; Gove a la Murdoch; Theresa with a side order of Relief aux Chagrin ... or
Corbyn Ostracised and Served in a Vacuum.

And if you wish to choose your dessert now, we can offer you ... Eton Mess, Westminster Mess, UK Mess or Europe Mess (the difference is in the size of the portions)... Oh ... and we do have a very small portion of Hope on a Bed of  Dual Citizenship.

May I take your order now?"

Events In The Post Referendum Café

"Can I get you any more *pork pies, Sir and Madam?"

"No, thank you. We couldn't eat another crumb."

* Pork Pies - rhyming slang for lies. 

   Hence ... "telling porkies".

Bet you can guess how this household feels about the Referendum result. And the absence of any leadership in Parliament. And the self-destructive nature of the Opposition. And whatever is to come now.

But one thing has started already.
As we drove out of Penzance this morning we followed a car with a shattered rear window. It looked as though someone had put a brick through it, frankly. The car's license plate was Lithuanian.


Welcome to The Post Referendum Café.

Last Night I Dream ...

... that I live in a caravan in the woods. A huge old caravan...enormous inside... but rickety and lined with white material. Is it me or someone else who lives here? Not sure now. With her children perhaps? How will they keep warm? Whatever next? I don't know. But I woke up feeling more cheerful. 
Mmmmn... Warning: Woo-woo Alert:
I like Kneehigh Theatre and this morning I picked up a web link from them to Good Chance Calais, a theatre/community centre project in "The Jungle" camp at Calais, which two Kneehigh company members visited recently hoping to help out with the theatre work with Cameron's notorious "bunch of migrants" .... but ending up giving more practical help.

Yeah.. I know it's easy for me to write woolly, liberal stuff but I'm a woolly, liberal kind of old girl. Just you see how many sweaters I can wear at once.

Madame Deficit On Literacy And Language In Cornwall

Bonjours, mes amis... Je suis desolated that I have not been paying attention to you recently. Instead, I have been tending my pretty lambs. After all, hard times are depressing times. Better to dress prettily and dance in the meadows, I think. No. Really. Let us not discuss the price of bread.

But on the subject of financial management.... Cornwall Council have taken a leaf out of the Good Government's book. If you can't pay for something... delegate payment to those beneath you. And so they propose that libraries and the accompanying luxury of books and reading (to be accessed by all) be the privilege and financial responsibility of local and parish councils or "volunteer groups". (After all, my dears, there is nothing to this business of running libraries but the timely application of duster to book and keeping shelves tidy, n'est-ce pas?)

Meanwhile they do intend to place serious emphasis on their campaign to promote the Cornish language. (Why not remove all books in English from the library shelves, I do wonder? And replace them with books in Cornish? This will save space also, I believe.) Mais Non. They intend to encourage their staff to answer the phones in Cornish. Wonderful. A great move towards understanding all round.
However... for my silly self... I do neither speak nor understand Cornish and may have to move to Oxford and encourage council staff to greet me in Latin...

The Old Man Glues His Ear To The Radio... The Corbyn Result

It's all go in the household this morning... baking bread, eating breakfast, washing up... but The Old Man is out of the house like greased lightning ... beetling off to get his paper so that he can rush back to hear The Result. He has to know if Corbyn will be the Labour leader or not.
And we do wonder if he is leader... how long he will survive as such. The knives have been sharpening all along... and they are rasping on the grindstone at hectic speed even now.
Ho-ho-ho. The joy of political discipline and good will.

Result: Jeremy Corbyn wins.
Tom Watson is Deputy Leader.

The Doll Is Still Ranting: Stop Privatisation At The National Gallery

While I am in protesting mood... how about joining me in signing the petition against privatising 400 of the 600 staff at the National Gallery? Some 200 staff members have been on strike on and off over this issue since February 2015 and since August the strike has become indefinite. The petition is due to be handed in to the new Director, Dr Finaldi, and Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey next week on Thursday 3rd Sept 2015. So hurry up and sign now!

Do you want a private security firm to manage the gallery's security and interaction with the public? ("There is no leaflet here for you. Step back and move along please.") The argument is:

• that the NG needs to be more flexible with its opening hours and with "out of hours events" in order to get more money ..er.. "funding". (I suppose it must reckon that it's current employees and systems aren't sufficiently adaptable for such a task.) 
• The NG assures us that there "will be no redundancies". The effected staff will transfer to the new provider and maintain their existing contracts and service conditions. 

Explain the logic of these two ideas side-by-side? How does that work?  Why can't they just say..."We can't afford to employ these people so we will pay someone else to do so."

I dislike the idea of workers being forced to change employer and contracts in order to keep their jobs. And I get fed up with treating information providers as interchangeable units. "Sorry, don't know any more than what's on the leaflet.. I was based over at Imperial War Museum until yesterday."  I am also tired of the idea that an outside firm naturally provides better service than in-house employees. It seems to me that when this idea fails... and it does... outside service providers are all too often NOT held accountable for irresponsible actions or shoddy service - be it in border security, prisons, health care, hospital catering, cleaning or wherever. They get handed another service to run instead.
It is beginning to seem to me that keeping services "public" in "public" institutions is the only way to keep the providers of these services accountable. Privatisation, or should I say "outsourcing", doesn't appear to provide accountability. But who cares about accountability when money is to be made or saved?
Sign the petition!

The Doll's Dander Is Up And She Do Agree: "Save Treloyhan Woods"

I have posted before about the pace of development in St Ives in Cornwall.... yes it may be nostalgia... but I really do think this is now beyond fond memories of the past.
I don't often write a post like this.... but an area close to my teenage-years heart is about to get the natural stuffing knocked out of it.
So I ask you to watch this film and consider contributing to the GoFundMe:Treloyhan Appeal against Cornwall Council's planning approval for 16 houses to be built in the wooded grounds of Treloyhan Manor owned by Methodist Guild Holidays Ltd. These woods form an important "green corridor" for St Ives/Carbis Bay and a stopping place and breeding ground for nationally rare bird species.
The campaign has launched a judicial appeal .... which costs money.

Now What...

Gloom descends on this household for various reasons... not the least of them electoral.
Here, we have just lost a good independent-minded local MP through the collapse of the middle ground... roundly helped by the Lib Dem's original decision to go into "coalition". No amount of bleating on the part of Lib Dem leaders that they mollified Tory ravages by so doing will help. Those voters who were not Lib Dem supporters remain unimpressed and view them as weaklings, or worse... self-important weaklings. And a good portion of party-faithfuls and tactical voters view them as traitors.
About parliamentary Labour's hubris... I have nothing to say except that, judging by this morning's media headlines quoting the views of potential new leaders... they have learned nothing.
And now we have what we have. A frustrated electorate has voted for "who they want"... leaving the middle ground to collapse, the diverging edges defined but with no arena in which to discuss or compromise. It seems to me that the only solution will be electoral reform, proportional representation, whatever, in order to regain some working balance. Meanwhile... our new government will set about unpicking as much as they can of the tattered remnants of  the "State" system before they skid-addle out of Europe.
I honestly fear more unrest in the streets but... as I said.... I am feeling gloomy.

Meanwhile... we have to get to a funeral... at some point.

Election Time: Paper, Paper Everywhere

I have never been so besieged by party political leaflets in all my life. And they are all from one party. The Conservatives.

My, but they are lucky to have such generous donors. For some leaflets do get thrust through the letter box by hand and some do come with the post. At least two a day.
The other morning The Old Man do bolt out the front door as soon as the leaflet got stuffed through the box. But the phantom Tory Litterer have melted into the undergrowth. Which is just as well 'cos The Old Man be growling and spitting like a Rottweiler on guard duty... and there will... one day... be blood.

For myself... I am thinking that I could return to my "jewellery from recycled materials" days, what I did early on in Cornwall by way of creative penny earnings. Actually...that all started up when I lived in London and got tired of the pizza-takeaway menus coming through the door.....

Same thing really, ain't it.

PS. I shall be voting, mind... and I do know who I be voting for.

Happy International Women's Day....

...for I am of that age and generation of women who do remember having to have our consciousness raised.
Well.... I did not have to... as such... but as I recalled things what made me feel gloomy and stuck... I found that attending workshops and reading certain magazines and books do help me move my depression into plain old satisfying stroppiness.
Magazines such as Spare Rib and Women's Review (about which I can find nothing on Google except ebay ads!... and I do still have some issues lying around because I am that kind of girl.)
The workshops invariable involved sitting in circles, celebrating the moon and spelling WOMEN in as many interesting ways as possible...Womin, Wombin, Wymin, Womyn... you name it, bless us, anything to reinvent. Sorry. That's a patronising thing to say (wash my mouth out with soap). It is understandable. It is valuable. Some of this stuff was like water to a woman dying of thirst.
I mean, you try sitting in a student seminar while some idiot male fellow student tells you that you should not be here... being educated... cos there be no point... cos you is only capable of having babies and looking after babies and MEN (what be big babies).
In my case, being a nicely brought up, polite girl, I didn't say anything. Nor did I say anything when a table full of lechers... sorry "lecturers"... do tell me that I am really "quite intelligent". No dear, I smiled on... until I fell down, struck all of a heap. And after some time I did have my consciousness raised and got very, very, angry... as did a lot of other ladies.
One time... in the 1980s, The Old Man do recall, ... he went into a Women's Bookshop to buy me a present and got told that this was not the place for him! He be wounded by this.

A lot of people get angry about discovering who they are... or who they think they are. It happens now... as lost young people find their "identity" and their "anger" and "who is to blame for it all".

Anyway.... for those of you who are women... or would like to be... may I wish us a very happy day... all of our own.

Greenpeace's Coastal Champion Tour Sets Off From Porthleven

The Old Man and I do go to Porthleven on Saturday to see Greenpeace launch (absolutely) their Coastal Champions Tour from Porthleven. Rather grey and brisk weather but people cheered when the boat hit the harbour water and plenty of kids were face-painted.

Local Lib Dem MP Andrew George was there to speak as were Green candidate Tim Andrewes and Labour candidate Cornelius Olivier. No sign of Tory or Ukip candidates... of course... nor of Mebyon Kernow candidate...
(Edit: Rob Simmons -Mebyon Kernow candidate- couldn't make it. See his comment below)
.... Nor of the MP for Camborne & Redruth - George Eustice - our current Fisheries Minister.

Andrew George does get out and about and pushes forward with his own campaigns and issues. You may have seen him ploughing his lonely furrow with his Private Members Bill on Affordable Housing on Michael Cockerell's BBC2 series "Inside the Commons"... being filibustered and harangued in the charming manner of this great institution.
Anyway Saturday was the start of the Greenpeace Tour taking their fishing boat Rising Tide to various ports around the country raising awareness of theirs and NUTFA's campaign to get politicians to sign up to keeping local fishing viable and sustainable.

The Old Man's Hair Stands On End: A Letter From George

Oh but The Old Man is furious today... and has been for several days. You see, we each get a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No. Really. From George himself. It do have a photo of him at the top of the page... freshly coiffed, smoothly skinned, straight off his 5:2 diet... and smiling at us.
This is because we are of a certain age. So he is writing to us about Pensioner Bonds. The Old Man explodes.... Is there a public list of pension age people? Has George used government money to compile the target list? How much does that cost? Huff-puff.
Me? Golly I have not received a letter from a minister before ...  about my taxes... my health.... my education... whatever. It's very flattering isn't it. It's a wonder he do have the time to write to little old me.
Does he think it make me vote for him?

Grey Doll & Criminal Listening: BBC Radio Four, Cuba And More Foreign Bodies

A newsletter from Bitter Lemon Press... specialist publishers of translated crime fiction ....  tells us that those of us in the UK listening to BBC Radio 4 are due for a Cuban crime treat on Saturday afternoons ( 2.30 - 3.30 pm starting 15th November ) with a series of dramatisations of Leonardo Padura's "Havana Quartet".

What's more there is a tie in with a new series of Mark Lawson's excellent "Foreign Bodies". This time he looks at how crime fiction reflects different political systems.... starting with Cuba and Communism. These programmes will air on BBC Radio 4, from Monday 17th November, 1.45 - 2.00 pm. and will run daily in same slot until Friday 21st November. In addition to Cuba the episodes will cover political perspectives from USA, Poland, Australia and Nigeria.

Ooh! I gotta pin my ears back and enjoy this lot.

The Old Man And The Somerset Floods

He be still spitting feathers... OK... some media coverage at last but not exactly in-depth... (That do read like a bad pun in this context!) ...nor accurate... say The Old Man, who do grow up not a million miles away from the Levels or "The Moors". In fact he do grow up on a hill from where you could see for absolutely miles... but given the nature of that landscape... it be a pimple by Cornish standards.
So... where was he?
Aah! ....Nobody reporting on mainstream telly or radio, nor indeed the honchos pronouncing, seems to give due respect to the fact that this is drained wetland... (for may be a thousand years?) not rivers overflowing their banks. Paterson and his "cutting trees to block flows and re-planting..." don't apply to this fen-like place.
The Environment Agency's "Can't put the silt on the (dredged) river banks because that will obstruct run-off from the fields..." makes The Old Man apoplex. The field drainage never relied on "run-off"... cause they be pumped. The clue is in "Pumping Station" like where Paterson did look around on Monday.
I do like to think I am indeed a bit interested in the environment. The sad thing is that....in some angry and popular reactions...the Environment Agency equals "environmentalists". I don't think so. An Agency is an Agency (in this case related to DEFRA) ... not a movement of green-thinkers.

The Rain... The Levels... Paterson...

... it raineth everywhere and everyday....
Not least in The Old Man's childhood home of Somerset.
And The Old Man do spit feathers that national news seem to be ignoring the plight of the flooding on the Levels... as is the government. Today DEFRA Secretary of State Owen Paterson (grouse moor owner, climate change sceptic, the minister who accused the badgers of "moving the goalposts" after the results of the badger cull proved debatable) finally visits the flooded villages and farms. And has outraged the local people ... by not speaking to any of them according to The Guardian.
Nor do we hear anything from neighbouring MPs... not least and not surprisingly Lib Dem David Laws whose constituency borders the flooded areas. It is left to Conservative MP for Bridgwater Ian Liddell-Grainger... not always the voice of liberal views and green issues....to be the lone voice of protest on the part of his constituents. But...  he does not seem to appear to have the ear of his fellow Tory MPs.
What no photo call Mr Cameron? Actually... I am surprised.

Saturday Night Borgen

Ooh... Saturday night treats on the telly last night....

(I do get away from the woes of the world with BBC's Dr Who 50th Anniversary Special ... What better way to dispel gloom than to contemplate the end of just about everything.)

Then The Old Man deigns to re-enter the room and it's time to get away from current depressing political shenanigans.... by settling down to watch the second batch of episodes of the final series of Danish tele-drama "Borgen".....

which be about............ politics.

Madame Deficit Considers Badgers And The Sporting Life

Zut Alors!
Badgers do play football.
Quel jolly animals. How intelligent. How sportif.
It is official that they do... for the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson have said that the little beasts have "moved the goalposts" in the night-shooting exercise that is the West Country Badger cull.

Of course I know also that badgers play football.
My own joli petit potager be proof of this.

Many a morning.... as I do walk through the garden....I find that the wooden logs that mark out the vegetable plots be moved aside and be all over the place. The naughty animals have been having jolly good fun with a midnight "friendly" five-a side game. And.... not only do I find this evidence of "moving the goalposts" but I do find their "ball"..... which be nothing less than one of my precious winter squashes....

Eh bien! You can see the scars left by a set of claws. Plainly some naughty badger have handled the ball. But sadly for them... the "Hand of God" have not intervened in the deadly game in Somerset. The firm that is charged with shooting the little players have had their license to kill extended. Mr Paterson do consider that not enough badgers have been killed to prove the experiment ....which is the badgers fault for rearranging the goal posts and for being badgers.

And what if this extension is not enough? Pouf! Mr Paterson be considering gassing next. He is most certainly determined to get the little blighters, ain't he?
Tiens! Guns and gas. C'est comme la première guerre mondiale une fois de plus, non?

Madame Deficit Contemplates The Desolate North East

Ah mes enfants! The Tory Lords do express themselves again.

I know that ... when organising the rural view... one must know what to conserve and what to discount.
Clearly Lord Howell ... father-in-law of Chancellor George Osborne who recently announced tax breaks for the fracking industry.... is of like mind. For he do declare during a "Lords debate" that fracking should be carried out in the North East of England because it be largely uninhabited and desolate... devoid of natural beauty and the kind of rural environment which occurs further south and must be protected. I think that is what he more or less says... though I may be wrong. Surely I must be?

Alors! One is never sure with Lords such as Freud and Howell. But I think Lord Howell be a little embarassed at his jaw-dropper for he appears to have apologised.
Ah mon pauvre petit... quelle domage.

If you have strong doubts about fracking.... 38 Degrees is running a campaign and is looking for a bit of a pledge.