Christmas and New Year's greetings to my readers and thanks for all your comments during 2014.
The outside of the card is based on a competition for local childrens' art, and it is only on the inside that there is a happy family portrait (note the typical Springer Spaniel straining to be off) contrasting starkly with the recent self publicity and strangely miserable photograph from Blair. Ok, it is easy to be cynical, but the enclosed letter, for me, sends a message of genuine caring and a will to making a difference stemming from continuous hard graft rather than glory seeking. It's a shame we haven't got more MPs with this kind of dedication, regardless of the political agenda of their party (except for UKIP and perhaps one or two others!)
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More seasonal rambling.
Ok, I'm an old fuddy-duddy and of course a grumpy old man, but I find it hard to endure seasonal parties that become disco nightmares making conversation impossible, and displaying aged contemporaries who should know better gyrating and gesticulating like crudely made automatons.
My son who is now gone forty and probably closer in time to my viewpoint than the time when he was a legitimate partaker said to me recently at one such event, "let's get out of here before they start doing the conga".
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What about the new buzz word? - redact, or should I say redact ?
I'm waiting for my first: amazing, robust, redacted, emotional roller coaster post, which will ensure that such a thing can never happen again". If it does happen (the post, or again), "my thoughts will be with the blogger and his (or her) family". Of course I am typing this prior to my broadcast, standing outside the headquarters of ConradWalks.Blogspot.Com in lashing rain and darkness, round about midnight, wearing a fairly expensive suit protected only by a cheap umbrella lent to me by the sound recordist.
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Once again, Merry Christmas everybody.
Your MP sounds like the politician all of ours say they'll be if - IF - only we would elect them. Which we perennially gullible voters do, to our perennial regret.
ReplyDeleteHe has a great outlook and I wish him (and you district) continued success
(Of course, the negative side to that - well, Conrad, SOMEone has to say it and I'm so damned good at it - is your beautiful district will become a mecca for all those people the Blairs of the world serve/shaft/defraud. Your paradise might become a purgatory, or worse. Shame on me for even thinking such a thing.)
Season's Greetings to you Conrad. It has been a delight reading your posts throughout the year. Best wishes for 2015 from us both.
ReplyDeleteYes, my local MP is a Tory and he (or rather his intern) was very helpful with the problems I had DVLA. I wrote him a grateful email and he responded, pleased with what I said. Fair enough.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I thought about the coalition with which he is associated. About how in the name of "cleaning up the mss Labour have left" (ie, saving the British banks. Would the Tories have left them to rot? Nobody ever asks that question) they are gleefully taking the opportunity for an ideological spree aimed at dismantling the state. Going much further than even Mrs Thatcher dared go. Forcing local authorities to fire their lollipop ladies, for goodness sake. How much will that save? Terrified of losing their seats they are now embroiled in matching Ukip step for wretched step, on immigration with the result that Herefordshire fruit farmers this year had no one to pick their strawberreies. Lying about increasing employment when other figures show that revenue from income tax is actually down, proving that these new jobs aren't real jobs since the people involved are so poorly paid they pay no tax. Attacking the BBC because that pleases Murdoch.
Redact is not new. That meaning is about ten years old and is the result of the American security forces' desire to disguise what they're up to which turns out to be waterboarding suspects (one guy was done over eighty times) and yet still not finding enough evidence to take anyone to court. Habeas corpus straight out of the window. Why should we care? Because the UK was complicit in some of this.
Arnside is a place where one may remain distant from politics. So is Hereford. But we're all tied in. So far the coalition hasn't dared to fiddle feloniously with pensions (too many Daily Mail readers) but there's still £59bn of deficit to clear (it looks more impressive when it's written out as £59,000,000,000). Mrs Thatcher said the NHS was safe in her hands and, ironically, it was - comparatively - because she feared the backlash. The Old Etonian nexus, however, is fearless. Once dentistry was all NHS, now the only NHS dental clinic in Hereford is run by Poles and Rumanians, those despised immigrants. I see the future and it fails to work, as one person didn't say about something else entirely.
The Crow - Thanks for commenting within the spirit of the post - i.e. a general appreciation of hard work and intent rather than a political comment.
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Afoot - Thanks Gibson.
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RR - Whilst I appreciate and mostly empathise with your comment it covers ground I was hoping to avoid. I stressed that I was not applauding this guy for his politics, but for his hard work and dedication. OK, some may see his causes and support action as misguided in certain instances, but I was talking about moral values, not politics.
I have received another heavily political reply via email. Well all comments are welcome here except anything disgustingly gratuitous, and when one posts one doesn't always get the response one hopes for as you well know.
I feel like someone who innocently disturbed the butterfly at the other side of the world that led to the chain reaction starting WW3.
Yes, I am aware that redact is not new, but it has recently become overworked along with the other ones i cited.
As per Gibson.
ReplyDeleteHardly in the spirit of Christmas. I apologise, especially for seeming to drive other commenters underground. The problem is that Christmas is supposed to encourage feelings of goodwill (something I clearly failed to do) and there may be those who deserve more goodwill than others.
ReplyDeleteOur local television news covers the West Midlands, once the manufacturing heartland of the UK, and the reporters cringe in front of the cameras when they record another factory closed, another hundred or so jobs lost. So much so that when there's a good employment story (Jaguar Land-Rover, albeit for foreign owners) they find reasons for repeating it night after night, a comical perversion of what constitutes news.
Journalism, which represents the whole of my working life, is a rackety casual business and three times I was "let go" for economic reasons. I sympathise with those out of work, especially where they've developed skills which must now be cast aside for - at best - less rewarding employment. Market forces - a chilly sort of phrase.
I am sorry I rained on everyone's parade. Purdah beckons.