Trouble in Politics – UKIP

Saturday 11th January

While appearing to be riding high, at least in the polls, these are worrying times for UKIP.  With the Lib-Dems now in Government the ‘a plague on both your houses’ element of the electorate have turned to UKIP, but will it be enough?  As the Lib-Dems and the Liberals found before them the argument is quite simple – why would you vote for a party that has no chance of ever forming the Government.  2014 is the make or break year for UKIP; either it carries on growing, hopefully attracting some real talent rather than odd-balls and rabble rousers to its ranks, winning the Euro elections well, doing well in the local elections and showing they can win council seats everywhere and building their support consistently above 20%; or they fail, and flounder around shouting foul but winning nothing.  As the Greens found out, winning local concillors and even having an MP does not of itself bring success.  And apart from Nigel Farage himself they don’t have any real stars.

That isn’t to say they may not upset the big two parties and cause some real chaos.  Our version of democracy does not require a majority of the voters, but simply the candidate gaining the highest number of votes getting elected.  When you had two big parties this was more often than not 50% anyway.  When the Lib-Dems were doing well a few years back many constituencies had close three way fights, and with a few votes going to minor parties many MPs were elected with about a third of the votes cast.  Now with UKIP in the ring it is quite possible that some MPs will get in being voted by only one in four voters.   Which is a recipe for chaos, which may harm the other three parties but which will not necessarily help UKIP that much.  Many suspect that the real reason for UKIP is to push the Tories further to the right, and that may have already happened.   David Cameron’s reckless promise of an EU ‘in or out’ referendum in 2017 is the result of the threat from UKIP.  The danger is that even if he is ‘successful’ and gets some valuable changes the public fired up by UKIP may well vote to leave anyway.

So, would a poor general election result, with maybe no or just a small handful of MPs gained by UKIP be worth it if they could successfully campaign in the EU referendum for us to leave.  If that happened the real chaos would begin….

nigel farage

Trouble in Politics – The Lib Dems

Friday 10th January

Nick Clegg is embarking on a bit of a charm offensive, trying to distance the Lib-Dems and specifically himself from the Tories.   Fat lot of good it will do him.  Even at the last pre-coalition election they lost both votes and seats.  The people who voted for them by and large did so, not because they ever thought that they would see Nick Clegg riding in a ministerial limousine, or even a whisper of an idea that they might form the Government or even be a tiny part of a coalition, but because they were neither Tory or Labour.

The Lib-Dems can argue all they like that if they hadn’t been part of the coalition the Tories would have been even nastier, but the actual perception is that the Lib-Dems have allowed the Tories to be as nasty as they have been.  As Charlie Kennedy, the best leader they ever had, argued at the time – rather than go into coalition the Lib-Dems should have allowed the Tories to run a minority Government on a bill-by-bill basis.  In other words they would have been far more powerful outside the Government than inside it.

The measures that were never in the Tory manifesto such as the restructuring of the NHS would never have happened.  The rushed and botched attempt to bring in Universal Credit would have been slowed down, and maybe amended.  The madness of the Austerity announcements and the sense of doom and gloom in 2010 would have been avoided.  The recovery may have started far earlier, and the Lib-dems may have been perceived as Heroes and not Villains.  But there is no way back for them now.  It may be that they will still have enough MPs after 2015 to help form another Coalition.  And a fat lot of good that will do them too.

Nick Clegg was visited by an angel who showed him what things would be like if he’d never been born, and nothing was worse, and the streets were filled with eternal summer sunshine and the peals of children’s laughter, and Nick Clegg offered to kill himself but the angel said that wasn’t going to help, because the damage has already been done if you think about it, hasn’t it Nick? Hasn’t it? Nick?

S is for Sutherland Brothers ( and Quiver)

Thursday 9th January

One of my all time favourite bands, they emerged in the early seventies and their recording career was over at the end of that decade, but oh what sweet music they made.  The Sutherland Brothers started off as a duo, but formed a band to record their debut eponymous album and the follow up ‘Lifeboat’.  Then they amalgamated with another band who had just lost their songwriter – Quiver, and as the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver released a clutch of brilliant albums until eventually this ‘supergroup’ fell apart and the brothers had one final album under their own name before calling it a day themselves.

They represented that particularly English strand of rock music from the early seventies, epitomized by Gallagher and Lyle and various singer-songwriters, singing in English voices in a fairly acoustic style that sounds as fresh today as it did then.  Brilliant songwriters and wonderful singers I rate them as highly as any of their more famous counterparts.  They had a cult following but never really broke into the mainstream, and they were never really backed by their record companies.  They sprung out of that folk-rock scene of the late sixties and I think were heavily influenced by bands like the Beatles.  I don’t think they ever really wanted fame and fortune, just happy to make music.

Their biggest success incidentally was when Rod Stewart recorded their song ‘Sailing’ and made it a huge hit, and still no-one really bothered to hear the original.  So it goes sometimes.  Mind you Rod must have made a lot of money for them in royalties.

At the time for me they were just one of many, but more and more I am seeking out those hard to find releases on CD.  Time for a re-issue I think, as I am sure there must be many like me who would really appreciate re-mastered originals with maybe just a few live or demo tracks too.

The Trouble with Benefits

Wednesday 8th January

The Chancellor has just put us all in a an even worse mood than the weather was doing by announcing huge cuts on top of the already announced and not yet implemented cuts (oh and also on top of yet more un-detailed cuts he has penciled in for the year after the election).  Talk about permanent austerity; for ever and ever.  And he has also said that 12 billion a year will come from the benefits bill, while assuring us oldies that the state pension will continue to increase year on year.  If you think the sums don’t add up you are quite right.  At present the state pension is over half the benefits bill.  So if the benefits budget is decreasing but pensions are increasing they will become an ever larger proportion of that ever reducing cake.  Which means what exactly?  Well no-one knows.

The trouble with benefits is that they are paid out as required; they are a legal entitlement as long as certain conditions are met.  In other words the Government cannot say that there is a finite sum available because if there are more legally entitled claims they are legally committed to paying up.  The only way the circle can be squared is if each year they reduce the legal entitlement for benefits.  In other words turning the screw yet again on the poor.

The real solution to the ever burgeoning benefits bill is to change the economic pressures forcing people to claim benefits in the first place.  Housing benefit is simply a subsidy to landlords, encouraging the rental market ever higher.  We need to bring in fair rents, or threaten to tax landlords who charge above what is considered a fair rent.  Family credit is a subsidy for employers to pay low wages.  We need to raise and enforce the national minimum wage and reduce employer national insurance on these lower paid wages and raise the tax threshold yet higher to raise the income of the poor so that they don’t need to claim benefits but can actually survive on the wages they are paid.

This government trumpets time and again the number of extra jobs ‘they’ have created, but in fact many are part-time, and people are doing two jobs just to get by.   It is crazy that the Government through benefits should in effect make up peoples wages to a livable level.  Work must be made to pay, but also wages need to be high enough to stop working people ever having to claim benefits.

Definitely on the Mend

Tuesday 7th January

Despite spending quite a large portion of yet another day sleeping I am beginning to feel better.  If anything the coughing has got worse, but I don’t feel so wretched all the time.  I feel I am surfacing like some old grey narwhal from the Antartic depths of winter, spring may still be some way off but I can feel the ice sheets cracking.

I cannot remember ever feeling so poorly before with a cold, but that may be a part of our defence mechanism that we don’t really remember pain for that long.  It wasn’t even so much the physical symptoms as just a general feeling of misery and depression and oldness creeping over one like some dead blanket.

Well, I have decided to take tomorrow off and work on Friday instead.   Hopefully one more day in the warm may shake off the worst of the cold this time.

Hope so, anyway.

Feeling Better ?

Monday 6th January

I started off quite well.  I was determined to feel better, to start the recovery, to begin to shake off this awful cold.  I had slept for about nine hours, and after a shave and shower I felt slightly enervated. I was determined to start feeling better.  And feeling ill is an awful lot about succumbing to being ill, describing yourself as ill, deciding that you are now an ill person.  Whereas if you decide that the cold is just an irritation, a nuisance really, and that apart from a runny nose and a sore throat you are quite well really it can sometimes work.  But only sometimes.  Often the physical symptoms so overwhelm you that no amount of inner positivism, of telling yourself you are okay will suffice.

As the day wore on I got worse, and despite a sleep in the afternoon I woke with a high temperature and a coughing fit that I thought would never stop.

So, I am taking things easy, trying to persuade myself that actually I might be on the mend when actually I feel pretty awful.

Time for another swig of cough mixture.  Again I don’t think it really helps, but the very fact that you are taking medication of some sort does make you feel a little better.

So feeling better?  I was, then I wasn’t, and hopefully I will be again soon.

Sleeping my Life Away

Sunday 5th January

I spent most of Saturday asleep, blissfully asleep.  The cold rages on, the cough is now deep in my chest, my noses runs most of the time and my head feels as is it is wrapped in a thick blanket.  So I have been falling asleep sitting in the chair, nodding off every few minutes until I drag myself up to bed and pull the covers up and over my head.  Oblivion. If I am sleeping my life away, so be it.  I really do not want to be part of the world at present.

On Growing Old

Saturday 4th January

One has a perception of oneself that is slightly removed from reality.  Most of the time you don’t even feel that old.  Okay, you don’t want to break into a run every few minutes, but apart from the odd ache when you’ve been sitting too long in the same position, you don’t feel that different to when you were fifty, or forty or thirty even.

I can still answer most of the general knowledge questions on Mastermind, and even University Challenge which used to appear to be broadcast in a foreign language completely has some questions I can answer.  Eggheads is a doddle, until it comes to more recent popular culture.  At work I am seldom flummoxed, the work is pretty easy, and even when there is a glitch I can sort it out.

But when you are feeling down, or have a cold or are carrying an injury, suddenly the world closes in, and you feel very small and frail and old.  So, what exactly is old?  It is more than anything a perception, brought on or triggered by physical ailments or limited strength.  Funnily enough although I stare at my face every morning when shaving, it is only in photographs that I think I look old, and I am always surprised at my photographic image.  Surely I don’t look like that at all; why, the man in the photo actually looks old – that can’t be me surely.

Then I look at my Mum and Dad, and those faces, so familiar to me, look really old.  Even my children in photo’s look older than I remember them.  It is only the lovely happy smiling faces of the grandchildren that still offer the unblemished hope of youth.

I don’t wish to sound maudlin’ but I may realistically have only twenty good years left.  Though in reality none of us knows.  I find it particularly depressing reading of contemporaries of mine who have died in their early sixties, it suddenly brings you back to earth and you realise your own impregnability is just an illusion.  Like most of life itself.

A Miserable Start to the Year

Friday 3rd January

I am still full of cold.  Only if anything it has deepened.  What was just a nuisance before is now quite painful.  A deep chesty phlegm laden cough that racks your whole upper body and leaves you gasping for air and strength.  And a runny nose that at times is like a tap, just running liquid.  Add to that the feeling that you aren’t really there, that your thinking mind has deserted you and you are simply going through the motions.

While in France out walking with the dogs I fell over too.   One minute I was okay and then stumbling forwards, arms flailing, trying desperately and ultimately hopelessly to stay on my feet.  As I sat there on the wet pavement I felt truly wretched, and it took me a minute or two to get to my feet.  I thought I was uninjured but since then I have had an aching in my ribs, in exactly the same place I cracked them over a year ago.  Now, especially laying in bed it really hurts to turn over.  I sit propped up on four pillows so that I won’t be coughing much and try to sleep.

And the weather is awful.  Cold wet and windy.  Compared to many we may not be suffering that much, and at least our houses are warm and we can afford to heat them, but it is still grim on the journey from tube station to home or work.  So, a lovely start to the New Year.

New Years Resolutions

Thursday 2nd January

Well, writing of course.  I have been so busy for weeks now that I have got no writing done at all.  And this coming weekend look no better; I am working today and tomorrow, late both evenings.  Then down to Walton and back on Sunday.  The house has to be returned to its default position rather than ‘party’ mode which means the inevitable day of moving furniture on Monday.

But this year, 2014, I do intend to self-publish the book on the internet.   I just have to find the time to finish it and to find some help to complete the task.

I have also decided not to be such a slave to this blog.  I do enjoy writing it, but it may not in future appear every single day.  Some days are just so busy I really don’t have the time to write let alone post it.

Music, I intend to curb my habit of buying CDs, limiting myself to just essential stuff.  Apart from that it will be another year of rushing from house to house and trying to keep everyone happy.  The juggler strives to keep all the balls in the air with increasing difficulty.