Glad All Over

Thousands of thunderous claps

About a recent graduation day I’ve got little to say. Neither has Sally. Those who know us, know how profoundly proud we are of both our daughters. But this day… oh, on this graduation day… there was such a realisation… oh my… And I’m feeling Glad All Over.

Don’t mention the….

And the Vice-chancellor mentioned the pandemic and used Hashtag Hero Tropes (LOL). But she did avoid mentioning the (historically unprecedented) forthcoming strikes by health professional (and many other hard-working groups of people.) Wasn’t it funny how the government helped settle the lawyers’ strike in October with very little press attention? (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) Wasn’t it funny how MPs received a no-dispute, guaranteed 2.7% increase? Wasn’t it funny how big industries paid bonuses to their shareholders? Wasn’t it funny how PPE contracts were awarded to…. Oh, shut up. What's most important?

Looking the other way

There are people who spend countless hours gnashing teeth because of some royal nonsense (and I’m a royalist, don’t forget) because the newspapers want us to focus our rage on celebrities and not on government decisions (or lack of decisions.) The government (and the majority of the newspapers) want us to focus on Meghan and Harry. So we will forget food banks, child poverty, the rotting fruit and vegetable fields of England and the understaffed, underfunded social care system and understaffed, underfunded NHS. Look the other way, everybody. We’re in this together. But just because it’s my blog, please see below:

• the Brexit bus promise (lest we forget) (LOL)
• UK hospital beds compared to Germany, France, Italy, Spain (2005 – 2019)
• a right-wing newspaper doing my statistical work for me
• UK Food Bank use (just Trussell, not independent) (2009 – 2022)
• MP’s salaries (2010 – 2022)

I’m Glad All Over for my Echo Chamber, but Distinctly Unglad for our (Potentially) Great (Diminishing) Nation.

Graphs: hospital beds, food bank use in UK, MP's salaries over time

Tale of Two Teeth

Happiness is being boosted, lovely food, reading for pleasure....

Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth

So recited Pam Ayres MBE in her famous poem I wish I’d looked after me teeth with her cavalcade of witty rhymes: chewed/food, willin’/fillin’, gobstoppers/choppers, licked/picked, careless/hairless. For someone like me who could be described as a gastronome, an epicurist, a gourmand (look them up – they all amount to the same thing – a greedy gobbler) – I can concur – I wish I’d looked after me teeth. But my cheerful dentist spotted that, during my years of teaching, I’d been using my teeth as tools and, for example, ripping out stuck staplers with my incisors so my jaggedy gnashers were in danger of breaking. She spent an hour doing some wizardry and made them look better (I think.) So, fully boosted, I will continue to enjoy tasty oral pleasures as Autumn approaches Winter. And floss!

Autumn is in full swing and the home made curry dinners (courtesy of Prashad) are here to warm the heart....

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth

Political change for the good of civilisation, skinny Prosecco, home-baked bread, cookies and parmesan biscuits - also good for civilisation!

Watching woods fill up with snow

In the past fortnight there has been “too much weather” – bright blue skies, dull dark skies, gales, rain bursts, floods, mud pools, mud slides and snow. “It must be beautiful this time of year – all that snow!” So, I here offer some images of the woods and meadow near me, blanketed in snow. I have posted before about Robert Frost’s famous poem about stopping by woods on a snowy evening. This year, during Lockdown 3.0, there has been plenty of time to stop and stare (copyright W H Davies) at the lighting effects on the snowy crystals on the bare branches

Photos by Emily

I also love a quiet place

On one walk a miracle occurred: across a pond, above some reeds, a blue streak caught our eyes. We stood still, stared and waited. And there it was – one of my life ambitions fulfilled – a kingfisher in the wild. And, yes, it fished. And flapped. And bobbed its head. And perched. And stood. And streaked down into the pond again and back again to settle on its vantage point. It kingfished. And haunted. The last verb is inspired by Supertramp poet, W H Davies, who I’ve mentioned and quoted before. His poem below about a kingfisher is one I learned in primary school and later used as a teacher with Year 7 classes because it efficiently illustrated the use of archaic vocabulary and syntax, repetition, half rhyme, alliteration, assonance, simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia – and even more sophisticated poetic techniques – all in one lovely-sounding 18-line package.

The Kingfisher

by W H Davies

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,

And left thee all her lovely hues;

And, as her mother’s name was Tears,

So runs it in my blood to choose

For haunts the lonely pools, and keep

In company with trees that weep.

Go you and, with such glorious hues,

Live with proud peacocks in green parks;

On lawns as smooth as shining glass,

Let every feather show its marks;

Get thee on boughs and clap thy wings

Before the windows of proud kings.

Nay, lovely Bird, thou art not vain;

Thou hast no proud, ambitious mind;

I also love a quiet place

That’s green, away from all mankind;

A lonely pool, and let a tree

Sigh with her bosom over me.

What I do is me: for that I came

On the day I saw the kingfisher I also thought of one of my obsessions – one of the most brilliant poets in the English language: a poet who led a fascinating life and wrought poems like a Christ-loving-pagan blacksmith hammering golden swords whilst wrestling with fiery demons in the tattered and billowing cloud of God’s abundant, undulating duvet…. Yes, he’s a hyperbolic wordsmith, that Gerard Manley Hopkins – what a guy! Any road up, he wrote a sonnet about all things expressing their own selves, being themselves, expressing themselves (What I do is me: for that I came) and although the second half of the sonnet gets profoundly religious, he starts with three ordinary sounds: a bell, a string on a musical instrument and a stone dropped down a well; as well as two startling sights: the flaming glimpse of a dragonfly and the fiery lick of a kingfisher.

Kingfisher, Dragonfly, Stone, String, Bell

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same….

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same. Snow falls. Kingfishers fish. Poets distil. What I do is me: for that I came…. We are, as people say, human beings not human doings…. So stopping, standing and staring at snow on the bare branches of trees, or watching a kingfisher haunting a lonely pool, or pausing, breathing and resting – that kind of time-wasting is not time wasted. The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

That Was The Year That Was

What do I know?

As screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote in his 1982 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody Knows Anything

And looking back to January 2020, I could not have predicted that I would live through historic times:

• the stout guarding of George Eliot’s statue in Nuneaton Market Square in case any protestors felt the need to vandalise the author of Mill on the Floss;
• the (final) Brexit deal, heralding months and years of further bureaucratic wrangling (thank goodness the deal is “oven-ready”) but hopefully there is an end to the Tory EuroPsychoDrama which distracts, deflects and divides;
• the clear and democratic defeat of President Trump in a corrosive American election;
• the clamping down by Chinese authorities on civil liberties in Hong Kong;
• the (to date) almost 83,000,000 cases and almost 2,000,000 deaths from a global, deadly pandemic.

What I DO know.

I know I’ve done a lot of local walking, completed a lot of jigsaw puzzles, re-read Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, read a lot of other books (including my book of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet), watched a lot of TV, attended lectures, interviews and Tai Chi classes online, watched theatre online and extracted every ounce of pleasure I could from the family and friends I’ve managed to see with the changing (and sometimes confusing) restrictions, lockdown and tiers. I know one daughter was furloughed for a time (and has worked from her home for much of the time.) I know another daughter continued training to become a nurse (including working on Covid wards and now helping deliver the vaccine.) I know my wife attended French and ballet classes and a book group online and I know she continued to work (safely) at a local Food Bank which, in 2010, delivered 600 bags a year and currently delivers 600 bags a week…. anyone care to speculate what social policies have led to the increase in the demand for food parcels?

Rainbows everywhere

In windows, on hillsides, in the sky…. Rainbows expressed appreciation towards key workers. Compassion, kindness and solidarity triumphed over selfishness after the initial panic of the approaching first lockdown and before the cynicism of the Autumn. The environment bounced back. Birds filled the air. Nature triumphed. In the Spring and Summer children rode bicycles freely on emptier-than-usual roads. Until this year the record for the speed of developing a vaccine was held by the 1960s mumps jab, but the glory (and hard work) of scientists cooperating around the world have produced two safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19 within a year, and a third vaccine is imminent. Hopefully the days are over for those who believe Michael Gove’s soundbite that “people have had enough of experts….” (Particularly those who never heard Gove’s pitiful attempts to wriggle out of saying it in the months following.)

Women-led countries

An analysis by academics at Liverpool and Reading Universities of the initial governmental policy responses to Covid-19 up to 19th May, adjusted for variables (GDP, population density etc), concluded that countries led by women handled the pandemic “systematically and significantly better” than those led by men, particularly ones following a populist agenda (take a bow, Trump, Bolsanaro and BoJo.) So, let’s hear it for Finland’s Sanna Marin, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel. “When women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

So, looking back through the diary of my little life for 2020, what did I comment upon?

January & February 2020

• Confirmation reaches the UK Media that Chinese people are dying of a novel virus, probably originating in a wet market in Wuhan. (As the weeks go by, I convince myself that my 33 days of coughing and high temperature in November and December of 2019 are not connected. I am NOT Patient Zero.) The Republican-controlled Senate acquits President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstructing congress; in February President Trump tells a rally that the now-identified Covid-19 virus will be gone by April.

In my little life I saw Cats, Little Women, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, Jojo Rabbit, EMMA. and Parasite at the cinema. At the theatre I saw King John, A Museum in Baghdad and The Whip at the RSC, the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Ballet Rambert at Bradford Alhambra and I went to a Van Gogh audio-visual display in York. I enjoyed a cheese and wine evening in Leeds with a pal, attended a school reunion in Wakefield and marvelled at the National Space Centre in Leicester. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Sally and I chugged along on a steam train with Prosecco and afternoon tea. (Meanwhile, Covid-19 rolls down the line to Italy….)

March & April 2020

• The World Health Organisation declares that Covid-19 is a pandemic, Italy goes into full lockdown and, after increasing clamour from health experts, the UK government locks down, and the “Clap for Carers” begins on Thursday nights at 8pm. For a fortnight, supermarkets struggle to fill shelves with particular items. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister is diagnosed with Covid-19 and Keir Starmer becomes Labour leader. Captain Tom Moore becomes a hero by doing laps of his garden on a zimmer frame and raising £32m for the NHS. The Queen reassures the nation. President Trump suggests injecting bleach and bringing light inside the body (worth quoting verbatim for the record):

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs…. I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too... So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute - that's pretty powerful."

In my little life I saw Dark Waters, Military Wives and Onward at the cinema and Acosta Danza (Carlos Acosta dance group) at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. They were the final trips to the cinema and theatre until the Autumn because of lockdown or tier restrictions. Final meals out, final family gatherings, the beginnings of Skype and Zoom group calls, the scheduling of WALKING began. Emily returned home to live in our attic in isolation as she worked on a “hot ward” and subsequently recovered from what was almost certainly Covid symptoms. My niece, and then my sister, were diagnosed with (and hospitalised by) Covid-19 in April – thankfully both went on to recover. NT Live, YouTube, quality TV and lectures online filled time and Tai Chi classes switched to online.

May & June 2020

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim of delivering 100,000 Covid tests a day is debunked when he has to admit that what he meant was that the bulk of them had been put in the post. UK government credibility is undermined by advisor Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous version of his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle. George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is unlawfully killed by police in Minneapolis. Marcus Rashford leads a successful campaign for free school meals for disadvantaged children.

In my little life I attended my first Zoom funeral (very impressive) and phrases like “socially distanced” became ubiquitous. The Hay Festival successfully broadcast its talks and performances online. Our future holidays were cancelled. We got a new bed and in May became an “empty nest” again.

July & August 2020

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak launches an Eat Out To Help Out scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as a running mate to stand against Donald Trump later in the year. The awarding of GCSE and A Level results is a fiasco that was predicted and could easily have been avoided and the hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, keeps his job after the first of what seems like a series of gaffes and U-turns that continues through the rest of the year.

In my little life we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a picnic and walk on Penistone Hill. We were able to meet friends in the garden – but only until August 1st. The birth of Great Niece Charlotte added new life to the wider Johnson clan, a welcome miracle in the middle of the year. The RSC started broadcasting the Talking Shakespeare series of interviews. Pre-Covid arrangements and maskless supermarket shopping seemed to be a very distant memory.

September & October 2020

• The “world-beating” (organised by the PM’s private sector chums) Test and Trace system fails as schools and office workers return at the same time to superspread Covid-19 and kickstart the second wave of infections. Jacinda Ardern wins a landslide victory in the New Zealand elections having shown clear leadership in dealing with the pandemic. Having publicly argued with the Mayors of Middlesborough and Manchester about regional lockdown rules, Boris Johnson announces a second national lockdown for November.

In my little life I went to the cinema once: The Perfect Candidate and, gloriously, went to Leeds Playhouse to see some socially distanced theatre: Orpheus in the Record Shop, Krapp’s Last Tape and La Voix Humaine. My 60th birthday came and went without pomp but with good food, a terrific hike and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

November & December 2020

• The second national lockdown makes some, but not enough, impact on the rising cases of Covid-19 but the world celebrates as a German-Turkish couple, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, produce an effective vaccine at Pfizer. Dominic Cummings (and Lee Cain) exit from UK power struggles in 10 Downing Street and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decisively win the US Presidential election with a bigger margin than Trump beat Clinton in 2016. A 90-year old grandmother from Coventry, Margaret Keenan, becomes the first (non-clinical-trial) person in the world to receive a fully-tested and approved Covid vaccine. Second in line for the jab in Warwickshire was 81-year old William Shakespeare….!

In my little life, I squeezed in one cinema trip: Uncle Vanya and was deliriously happy when the US election made sense of my hope in humanity. I started my re-reading of all Shakespeare’s works with Two Gentlemen of Verona and we began having posh takeaways delivered once a week to “celebrate” another week survived. As the year ended we managed to see a good number of friends in outdoor venues and the Christmas spirit endured in spite of the government’s poor communication skills.

So what next?

It would be good to think that 2021 will be the year when lessons learned from the pandemic begin to bear fruit. That....

• the “rat race” is not the only way to live
• home working is possible
• a long daily commute is not conducive to good living
• nature is indispensable
• a cleaner environment is achievable
• community resources are value for money
• the arts bring entertainment, inspiration and solace to millions
• local expertise is invaluable
• experts are worth attending to
• heroes come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and colour
• an equal right for one is an equal right for all
• carers, volunteers and key workers are more important in a crisis than pin-striped hedge-fund managers
• compassion and kindness are free
• the welfare state is as precious as the NHS
• magic money trees are not and have never been real – because where there’s a (political) will, there’s a (financial) way.

New Year. New Decade. Welcome to the future....  

One man in his time plays many parts

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances.

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

September Song

Rossini's in Shipley, Happy Anniversary to Our House, Outdoor dining in Tollerton

September Song

Sally and I went out for a meal, ostensibly to celebrate 25 years living in the house we do, but mainly to try out a new restaurant within walking distance: Rossini’s in Shipley. An Italian family ran a restaurant (D’Atonino’s) in the same building for many decades and the relaunched place has a similar menu but fancy new décor and of course plenty of Covid safety arrangements. It was lovely. And it was good to be out and about in the evening as summer begins to fade. Time to trim the beech hedge, put a fancy new number on our gatepost and get in some final walks before the weather turns too cold….

New (Academic) Year, New Term, New Start

For nigh on 33 years, September was always the beginning of a New Term in my teaching career. Time to check the stapler, Sellotape, hole punch, paper supplies, exercise books…. I can imagine this year’s New Start excitement will be complicated by feelings of uncertainty and nervousness as many pupils will be returning to school for the first time in weeks…. Bear in mind that some pupils (children of key workers) and many teachers have been working throughout the whole period of lockdown/semi-lockdown/are-we-locked-down-or-not…. I know from experience, though, that all teachers, all support staff, all the many adults who contribute to the UK education system and all students (from the age of 4 to 19) will do their very best to make something happen. Children will arrive with something in their brains and hearts and they will leave at the end of each day with more.  (PS I don’t believe anyone needs to “catch up” – they just carry on from where they are – “catching up” is a media-constructed myth that presupposes education is a straightforward one-size-fits-all-linear experience. Spoiler alert – it ain’t.) Here’s to Autumn and the Falling Leaves of Golden-Brown-Wisdom and the Harvest season….. and the season of my Birth Day….

Walk to Gilstead, Steps in Northcliffe woods, Tai Chi in Roberts Park (I hesitate to identify me)

The stick-together families

Cockeyed Optimist
I have been accused on more than one occasion in adult life of wearing rose-tinted glasses. Of being too optimistic, too annoyingly positive; of being too prepared to see another person’s point of view. Of being a glass-half-full kind of sap. A dupe. Too gullible. (I could argue it’s the Libran in me.) Like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, I try to imagine that I will never understand a person “until you consider things from his point of view…. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” It’s very hard to do with some people in some situations but it usually allows me to store negative feelings in a box called There’s nowt so queer as folk and sleep at night, counting my own blessings.

Edgar Guest
The “People’s Poet,” Edgar Guest, was introduced to me by pupils I taught when they selected some of his poems to recite at Music and Poetry performance evenings. He was born in England but lived most of his life in Detroit, USA, and his grand-niece, Judith Guest wrote the novel Ordinary People, that was made into one of my favourite films in 1980. Edgar Guest’s poems are undoubtedly sentimental and unlikely to be studied for examinations, but they capture clichéd truths for cockeyed optimists like me and two poems, in particular, have resurfaced from my subconscious as my loved ones begin emerging from Covid-19 Lockdown.

See it Through by Edgar Guest

When you’re up against a trouble,
    Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
    Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it’s vain to try to dodge it,
    Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
    See it through!

Black may be the clouds about you
    And your future may seem grim,
But don’t let your nerve desert you;
    Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
    Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
    See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
    When with troubles you’re beset,
But remember you are facing
    Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
    Don’t give up, whate’er you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
    See it through!

The Stick-Together Families by Edgar Guest
The stick-together families are happier by far
Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.
The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make
A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.
And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun
Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.

There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise,
And they're very quick to shatter all the little family ties.
Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,
Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.
But it's bitterness they harvest, and it's empty joy they find,
For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.

There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,
That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.
That the strange friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray.
They waste their lives in striving for a joy that's far away,
But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,
Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.

It's the stick-together family that wins the joys of earth,
That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth;
It's the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give;
There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live.
And, O weary, wandering brother, if contentment you would win,
Come you back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin.

Won't You Be My Neighbour?

The significance of the feet washing is explained in the documentary....

Interview to Article to Documentary to Movie

It’s hard to spell neighbour without a letter u but as this post is about an American documentary and movie, I will do so (apart from in the post’s title!) Daughter Emily introduced me first to the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. The documentary was partly prompted by a November 1998 article in Esquire magazine entitled Can You Say...'Hero'? by Tom Junod. Two screenwriters (Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster) then fictionalised the encounters between Tom Junod and his subject and recruited Tom Hanks to play the interviewee and Matthew Rhys to play the interviewer (renamed Lloyd Vogel for the movie.) It’s a bit complicated to explain but both the documentary and the movie are bigger than the sum of their parts, in my opinion, and have profound things to say about both society and education. The subject in question is Mr Rogers. I’d not heard of him or his seminal children’s TV programmes before watching the documentary.

UK equivalents - including some I didn't mention in the text - can you identify them?

UK equivalents?

I think the nearest in the UK we have to Mr Rogers might be people like Floella Benjamin, Carol Chell, Chloe Ashcroft, Johnny Ball or Brian Cant on Play School or Play Away and maybe, for Mr Rodgers’ Neigborhood, The Magic Roundabout for a weird alternative world – or Hector’s House or Mr Benn or…. If you are of a certain age, you’ll get the references…. But if you don’t know the world of Mr Rogers and his Neighborhood, or Daniel Tiger, Lady Aberlin, Mr McFeely, Officer Clemmons, King Friday the Thirteenth and more, then I can recommend you watch the documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) or the movie directed by Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.)

Characters from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood

I like you just the way you are

I can imagine spoofs of Mr Rogers (indeed some feature in the documentary), but somehow the genuine article seems to mean every word when he addresses a vulnerable child with the words:

I hope you know that you made today a very special day by just your being you. There's no one in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.

And when he speaks to a graduation class and

From the time you were very little,

You’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling,

People who have talked you into talking,

Sung you into singing,

Loved you into loving.

So, on this extra special day,

Let’s take some time to

Think of those extra special people.

Some of them might be right here,

Some may be far away,

Some may even be in Heaven.

No matter where they are,

Deep down you know they’ve

Always wanted what was best for you.

They’ve always cared about you beyond measure

And have encouraged you

To be true to the best within you.

Let’s just take a minute of silence to

Think about those people now.

I'm glad I’ve learned about Mr Rogers.

No Excuses Now

 

I hope Tory Voters are right
I hope the new government will turn the UK into a huge post-Brexit success. WHAT DID THE TORY MANIFESTO PROMISE?

• Get Brexit Done
• Take measures to reverse the climate emergency
• Protect and enhance the NHS
• Boost the Education Service
• Improve the national Criminal Justice and Penal systems
• Develop an immigration service appropriate to the 21st Century
• Build enough social housing
• Protect and enhance the lives of all vulnerable people
• Unleash the potential of the UK’s forgotten towns with major investments
• Improve our transport infrastructure
• Protect jobs and human rights
• Be taken seriously on the World Stage.

THAT’S WHAT THEY’VE PROMISED IN THEIR MANIFESTO. That’s (I hope) why TORY VOTERS voted for them because TORY VOTERS BELIEVE THIS WILL HAPPEN. I hope so too. Really hope so. I love the UK. I love its history, its culture, its countryside. I wish we had voted to remain aligned to Europe in the Referendum back in 2016 but we didn’t, so I have always thought that Brexit in some form should happen, despite my reservations about the honesty of the original exercise.

Well, the Tories have had three-and-a-half years to deliver Brexit. They haven’t – and for two of those years because of their own in-fighting – and NOW the country has voted to give the mendacious Boris Johnson a chance to Get Brexit Done. So, I watch with fascinated interest – and hope the Tory Voters are right – and within months the country regains its pride, strength and stability. Time will tell.

Right Left Divide
My final comfort is that (in the graphic below, with one result left to call):

• the Right of Centre Vote Share (Con + Brx) = 45.6%
• the Left of Centre Vote Share (Lab + LD + SNP + GRN) = 50.3%

with the rest made up of Northern Ireland parties and Independent individuals. If only a New Left Alliance could emerge from the ashes of the 2019 election…. a Rebel Alliance?