Election Thoughts

 I’m such a suspicious person that I’m sure they are doing it on purpose.

The betting on the date of the election scandal rolls on. At least 4 people from the Conservative Party and one policeman, who was working as a protection officer have been identified by the betting commission. The police officer has been suspended but ‘no action will be taken’ regarding the MPs until after the enquiry and, conveniently, they say, the betting commission have told them they can't talk about it. 

Now, call me naive but no one can really be that bad at politics during an election campaign, can they? 

 But what if the only way of winning an election was to dupe the voting public into thinking that the other party are going to win every seat so that if you want the current government out then you don’t need to bother to vote? They wouldn’t do that would they? 

Whatever you want to happen there will be some Conservative MPs and this is no time for complacency. These dodgy tactics have arisen because since Nigel Farrage (or Farridge if you are from Essex because he says his name rhymes with garage) there are now two credible parties on the right compared to the four on the left. This balance has spooked them. It used to be one against four.

The Daily Mail are on board with this tactic and have gone with a headline that warns against the disaster of a Starmer super majority. The splash talks about how a wild imbalance threatens the democracy of the country, which they didn’t comment on in 2019. 

However, the reform party are using this as a selling point, explaining that by voting for them people can destroy the conservatives majority. 

I’m expecting the Prime Minister’s next comment to be some kind of Brechtian twist where he suggests that the government dissolves the people and elects some new ones. 

It all feels quite surreal at this stage of the election campaign. 

The Long Suffering Husband and I planning to go to our local election hustings tonight. It’s a safe Conservative seat in a place that voted for Brexit, with a long standing MP who lives in the town and works quite hard and is being challenged by Reform in a way that from the posters might make you think they have support until you look more closely and see how they have been annotated. Labour is the party that is second in the polls, which always surprises me, as there are never any Labour posters. We are looking forward to some lively debate. 

Please don’t tell me that I don’t know how to have a good time. 

Beer Donkeys

 There’s nothing I enjoy more than a scroll through the reels of social media.

I’m not quite sure how our preferred televisual entertainment has been reduced to 30 second clips but there are times when it really suits my brain. In those moments, where I have nothing left; unable to focus on a book, or a whole binge-watch of a series then those clips are a lifesaver.

I come home from a hard day at the chalk face and … Whoops. Showing my age. I mean, I come home from a hard day at the interactive whiteboard and … I do mean that because I haven’t been updated to a new telly-screen … I flop on the sofa, unable to form words, phone in hand and I scroll mindlessly. 

Sometimes you have to stop and appreciate these wondrous times we live in. In days of old, your post-work-flop-experience was governed by whatever was on the BBC. Monday night: cold meat and chips and Panorama. Now, your non-thinking time is personalised, tailored to whatever is going on in your life. 

My daughter got engaged and my little phone seems very excited about it. 

Last night it spammed me with beer donkeys. Who knew? At a wedding you can have Alpacas as groomsmen or donkeys with little crates on their backs wandering around the wedding party, offering ice cold Peroni. You could even have a penguin ring-bearer. 

My daughter didn’t reply when I texted her about beer donkeys, so I expect it’s not on her dream-wedding list. It’s a shame. They did look cute. Maybe I could persuade her to have Prosecco Highland cow babies instead.

Anyway, this blog, is my tired brain’s way of congratulating my lovely daughter and future son-in-law and to warn them that I am here for the odd and random wedding suggestions. (I’m still holding out for an ‘introverts corner’ with books scrabble and maybe a dog)

Betting on going

 I know I’m a big softy but I’m genuinely worried for the Prime Minister. Things have got so bad for him that while watching the debate, the Long Suffering Husband, who loves an underdog, considered voting for him.

“I like him,” he said, with a completely straight face.

It was an appalling TV performance. He looked defeated and depressed but the LSH was being completely serious. 

“I mean, what can he do? It’s all such a mess. I feel sorry for him.”

I might have over-reacted and shouted something about it being a mess of his own creating, which was not only grammatically incoherent but also quite loud for me.

But.

Journalist, Pippa Crerar, broke this story yesterday. 

I can’t help worrying that he is being held by a criminal gang who are forcing to throw the election in particular ways, so that people can make bets on how badly he’ll lose. Obviously, I wouldn’t suggest that he and his colleagues are applying hedge fund principles to an election to make themselves even richer. 

His recent tweets say it all.

True, they haven’t been very good at spending our money but I don’t know how to fund a health service.

I hope that includes insider trading

Unless we have a TV interview 

Weird!

I thought Sambas were musical bands

Because you are going to leave them on when you leave, like a stroppy teenager?

Also weird!

Asking for a friend.

Leaving.

Honestly, though. I really don’t have the energy for an election right now. I suspect that the Prime Minister feels the same. 

Kick a puppy day

 It’s two weeks since I predicted that the current Prime Minister wanted to lose the election so badly he would announce the reinvention of the Bermuda Triangle. 

In those two weeks, I’ve been ill. I had a half term cold that wiped me out, went back to school and lost my voice. The PM launched his campaign where the Titanic was built, stood under an exit sign, planted Conservative councillors to ask questions at a factory visit, got an aide to stand in front of a gurning woman, lied about £2000 - upsetting the civil servants, gave an election broadcast that included the international sign of distress of flying the uk flag upside down, stood in front of another sign that gave him Mickey Mouse ears, was photobombed by the Lib Dems in a small boat he couldn’t stop, left a D-day event early and with all the election debates, it has, frankly, been an awful time. Funny but awful . 

Debates make me angry. Not in the way you might think. I don’t get riled up in the way they hope we will, causing us to pick a side. No. I shout, ‘What are you doing? This isn’t you!’ at the TV. Something happens to politicians during an election campaign and that something is ugly. 

Very little of what politicians do involves shouting at each other. They all (yes, even the Conservatives but maybe not Farrage) took the job because they want to help people. They are all trying to make society work collectively. 

The day to day job involves very little shouting. Often. people from different parties work together, making policies, spending money and sharing ideas to make our lives better. That’s the aim. 

If you can keep that in mind, then watching the weekly shouting matches are fun. Thirty minutes of Prime Minister’s questions (PMQs) every Wednesday between 12 and 12.30 is an awful display of vitriolic testosterone that, taken in context, is enjoyable. Going to watch one live is on my retirement bucket list. Then there is a version on the BBC (which isn’t as good since Dimpledknees retired) that appeals to political nerds. The shouty hour is usually on after most sensible people are asleep and that’s the way it should be.

However, in the run up to an election the broadcasters decide that everyone wants to watch Fiona Bruce talk over people. (I wish she had stuck to antiques or the BBC had stuck with the antique DD). They show Question Time at 8pm, have panellists like Farrage and a poet who identifies as a duck because they know it will be a more entertaining shouting match. Awful. But people watch. 

Each channel hosts its own election debates. ITV got the leader’s debate. Rishi turned up at the last minute, causing Robert Peston to tweet, ‘Phew, he’s arrived!’ He was flustered and lying. Keir looked fed up, sighing and closing his eyes. There were no winners. 

Last night the BBC hosted a mass debate. The seven mass debaters (I do know how that sounds if you read it aloud) were from each party. Want to now vote SNP or the Welsh one that I can’t spell? You can’t. If you weren’t confused before, you are now. The woman who held the big pole at the Queen’s funeral was pure gall; spitting venomous bile throughout the studio that was so bad even she couldn’t stand the smell. Bizarrely, the Prime Minister, her boss, was also a target for her fury. It’s what happens when wild animals are backed into a corner and know they are about to die. None of this is edifying.

It worries me. 

‘See! Politicians are all the same. Can’t trust anyone. I’m not voting.’

That’s a problem.

It’s our society that we are allowing them to run. They work for us. We get to choose them. Vote. Vote for anyone. Really, I mean it. Even if you think your vote makes no difference, it does. You have participated. Between 50% and 80% of people vote in each constituency, so unless you are in the highest turnout area and the usual candidate has more than a 20% lead then your vote could change things. 

Sorry. I shouldn’t bang on at you about this. If you’ve read this far then you will vote because you are interested. 

There is another 4 weeks of this and I don’t think I can cope with anymore. They don’t even appear to get weekends off. So, while I’m sitting in my garden, reading my book, I expect the Prime Minister to keep going with his splendid campaign. The plans for this weekend include going to Waitrose to help the Boy Scouts pack shopping and asking them if Bob-a-blow job is still as popular as it was when he was at Winchester College. Then he’ll go and draw a cock and balls on the cenotaph followed by a spot of lunch at a homeless shelter, where he’ll ask how their sourdough starter is going and demand avocado and caviar. Finally, he’ll remember that it’s kick a puppy day. 

I’m also going to California in August but I’m going to allowed to come back. 

 

The Bermuda Triangle

 It’s been quite a week and I’ve not written a word about any of it. If you were sometime in the future looking back on this blog for source material of how middle-aged nobodies felt about life then you might be fooled into thinking that we are all content. 

Teachers fall, exhausted, into the final half term holiday of the year. Reports, data, plans for shows, concerts and school trips, occupying too much brain space when behaviour management is taking every ounce of energy. A cold will inevitably appear. After the last few years where there has been so little money in school and even less in the services that support schools the announcement made in the rain by a drowning prime minister might have had us jumping for joy.

I suspect that fellow teachers of my age are also too exhausted for jumping. 

Despite the announcement feeling like a metaphorical moment, I sent my daughter a text.

‘I haven’t got the energy for a General Election. Thank goodness I’m not an MP.’

It turns out that many of the Conservative MPs feel similarly. So far, a record breaking 80 conservatives have declared that they won’t be standing. 

I’d like to pretend I’m impartial but I’m not. I want Labour to win. They don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to believe Kier Starmer is the most interesting, beautiful man on the planet, I just need them to win. I need funding for programs like Sure Start, SingUp, manned Health Visitor clinics and for the NHS waiting lists to go down. I want a shift of focus on how they spend what little money they have. I’m realistic enough to know it won’t be perfect and that as soon as they say they would consider raising taxes, at a point where everyone feels as though they have less money and people are more post-pandemically selfish than they’ve ever been, then they will probably lose and that terrifies me. 

I say this as someone who was there, in my living room, in 1987, completing my first election spreadsheet (hand drawn, of course). The Conservative Party had run the NHS into the ground and had some dodgy dealings with a helicopter manufacturer. Neil Kinnock appeared to be a great, charismatic leader and didn’t own a single Michael Foot donkey jacket. The bump from the Falklands war was over and veterans were on the telly showing us their disfigured faces. And although they had won the miner’s strike, many couldn’t forgive the Tories for such heavy handed tactics. Nobody really knew which way it was going to go because there was a fetishist-love for a woman in a suit skirt, weird sleeping habit and a purposely lowered voice. Then on Wobbly Wednesday (or whichever day it was) my parents decided to host a “Goodbye and good riddance Maggie party,” because the polls suggested Labour would most definitely win. 

It seems odd to cite that election as the one where I realised that perfection was the only way the Labour Party would win an election, when in 1992, Neil Kinnock lost an un-losable election by falling over on a beach and in  2015 Ed Miliband ate a bacon sandwich. However, as the evening of 11th June 1987 wore on and began to turn my living room into the commiseration bender of all benders, it became clear that I didn’t understand the world. 

Anyway this election is the Labour party’s to lose by all accounts and that terrifies me. It seems to have put the fear of every one of Rishi Sunak’s gods into him too. So worried that he might win, he took the day off yesterday to come up with a series of policies that would help. Today’s announcement made the Long Suffering Husband swear at the radio, even though his golf-club buddies will no doubt be rubbing their thighs with excitement. We all love to hark back to a mis-remembered past and so those who are old enough to know it existed but not old enough to have done it get very excited by National Service. 

If that doesn't work for him, I have some other suggestions. We could bring back quicksand, killer bees, piranhas, random unattended boxes of matches, tablecloths, pans on the stove, strangers or even, if they're desperate The Bermuda Triangle. 

Or, maybe, we could get Barry Manilow to sing about the Conservative government and they would disappear too.

Well Read

The front page of the Times is full of misunderstanding. This is not that unusual. From the lofty position at the top of the news building, fronted by London Bridge and backed by the Shard, it can be difficult for the editor of the Times to understand everyday reality but rarely is is so starkly illustrated. 

There are often stories about how there are jobs for the unemployed, if only they’d “get on their bikes” and look for them, which is nearly always wrong. Normally, they’d leave insider trading stories alone because you don’t drop your friends in it but if it’s about Essex criminal buying flats in Dubai from prison then the term can be adopted with impunity. 

Do you remember Section 28? It was a piece of homophobic legislation that banned teachers from sympathetically answering confused children’s question. The Times seems to think that in the few dying months the Conservative Party can remain in power they will pass a dictat that is Section 28 for those who are triggered by transgender people. According to the article teachers must not talk about sex until children are 13 but must teach about online dangers, including revenge porn. Now, I wonder how that’s possible.

If all this wasn’t confusing enough, the front page also shows the first portrait of the King. I imagine the initial conversation went something like this.

‘Does your Highness have any wishes to how he is portrayed?’

‘Hmmm. One should appear well-read.’

My face in now well red at the joke that I’m sure many other people have made.

Looking with a naked eye

 Do we ever really see everything? Some things are too small to be seen with the naked eye. Most are too small for my naked eye. Thank goodness for contact lenses.

On the sixth anniversary of my mum's death, after a week of rollercoaster emotions (that I will vehemently deny because 'Really? You should be over this by now.') the sky filled with colours and it was a Eurovision that caused everyone to be united by song. 

One of my grief quirks is that I look to the sky for messages on anniversaries. It makes absolutely no sense and I chastise myself over this thought.

'What on earth are you thinking? Why are you even looking?'

'Well', you never know, do you?'

'You do. You don't believe in an afterlife.'

'I know... but... there was that heart shaped cloud....and the polo.'

'A polo? That's a stretch. Why would you interpret a cloud with a hole in the middle as a polo?'

'Well, Mum loved mints. If she was going to send a message it could be a polo.'

'Look, even if there was an afterlife what makes you think your parents are suddenly wielding such enormous power that they can move clouds?'

'Now you put it like that.'

And then I come back to my senses. Except that on the day before the 6th anniversary I had reached a hyper-state that out performed even the twitchiest of kids I teach and so when I went to bed I crashed and actually slept. In the morning of the anniversary I woke to see that Mum had filled the sky with pinks, purples and greens and I had missed it.

'How could you?' I berated myself, 'She went to all that trouble and you just slept. You don't normally sleep, why did you choose that night?'

'I know. I can't believe it. Northern Lights too and those pictures on Facebook look amazing.'

I wondered about Mum's choice of sky message. They had been to stay at the Ice Hotel (blooming freezing) and been on a snowmobile (I'm never letting your dad drive that fast again) and been very disappointed with the half-hearted Northern Lights display. She would watch the news of Northern Lights being seen in Scotland or off the North Yorkshire coast and complain that she'd been 'all that way and they're so much better in the UK.' They were so disappointing she hadn't even bothered to take photos.  

Anniversary days are never as bad as you think they'll be. The sun shined and I was left alone to read, walk, clean the house and collect cheese for the Eurovision cheese-fest. 

The Eurovision song contest is may favourite political event of the year. If you look carefully, even with a naked eye, you can predict future wars. Countries that are likely to come to blows in the future make fun of each other, or vote for the other, despite it being the worst song in the world and occasionally someone has a punch-up and gets banned. This year’s Eurovision was “United in Song” only if you looked with the naked eye. Any kind of visual aid would have highlighted the divisions. The Irish ballet dancing witch had a runic message tattooed on her face (Ceasefire in the rehearsals), boos were blended out in the audio as Israel performed (although they got loads of public votes). Europapa wasn’t able to perform because of an “incident”.  Ukraine sent a message of peace to Russia and this year they didn’t retaliate with bombing the singer's home city despite the fact they weren't allowed to perform as the EBC aren't on their side in their war. Thank goodness Palestine aren't allowed to compete as they aren't in Europe, unlike Israel, so they were saved from having to pick a side. I might need better glasses to understand all of this, however, mine, do allow me to see just how wonderful it is to have the country known for peace being the runaway winner. 

During the boring bit my son rang from the station and enquired, politely about the possibilty of a lift. It was the quiet time I needed after the excitement. Driving back into Maldon the sky looked lighter towards the estuary.

'Oh, look, it's lighter over there. Maybe there'll be more Northern Lights and I won't have missed them,' I said to my son hopefully.

'That could be them,' he said, 'You do know that you can barely see them with the naked eye? You need a camera to pick up the wavelengths.' (This was a much more detailed and scientific reply, which I am sparing you in case your head also explodes.) 

I laughed.

So, Mum went all the way to Norway to see the Northern Lights, saw them and was so unimpressed she didn't even take a photo and if she had it could have looked like Facebook did this morning? Well, that's quite a sixth anniversary message.

Not Northern Lights