You know that an election is on its way when the council bulldozer, normally out of action for repairs caused by being unwise enough to start it up, is seen, not alone, but in company with the council road leveller, also usually hors de combat for similar reasons.
Not just seen as in passing the door of the council workshops…but working! Out on what are laughingly called the roads of the canton.
For the last three years the council has doughtily refused to waste public money on improving the roads….there are priorities, we are told. What those priorities might be has remained a closely guarded secret, save for a proposal to replace the current system of prowling traffic wardens with parking meters. Who is to provide these, and the relation of the firm to the sixth cousins once removed of current councillors also remains a mystery, as does the future of the current traffic wardens who must be related to someone to have got the job and so must be absorbed into the bosom of the council staff….probably to empty the meters, unless they introduce meters which only take bank cards as in San Jose, which is asking for trouble.
No! Mea culpa! I forgot…their staff have been repainting all the yellow lines in the town to improve traffic flow which was fine on the day the lines were painted and back to chaos the next day as there is little or no parking available in the centre. I solve the problem by making a small weekly contribution to the well being of the gentleman who looks after the parking lot of one of the supermarkets but most just park and hope that the traffic police don’t turn up with their crane and low loader….
A propos of parking, we have been investigating the process of having a handicapped sticker for the car…a process wrapped in mysteries like a Russian doll. I am convinced that you need a medical examination, from hints on the Ministry of Public Works website, but which institution for the handicapped delivers this remains obscure, given that their websites do not mention it and they do not answer e mails.
Seeing a gentleman sitting in a car with a handicapped sticker the other day I thought I would ask him how he went about getting it.
The process was simple, he informed me. I had to go to the MOGO print shop in town…turn right, then left and right again…and they would give me a photocopy of the sticker which would make life very simple.
The MOGO option sounds tempting….I wonder what the fine for having a false handicapped sticker might be…
Not that it is a great problem as yet…not here…but I notice that in San Jose the authorities are getting nasty with non stickered cars in handicapped parking areas so no doubt it will come here in time.
Still, roadworks are not the only sign of elections to come….the council have instituted rubbish collections for the outlying areas, not just in the town centre. We have received a leaflet detailing how to separate the rubbish into ordinary and recyclable, telling us which areas will be served…apparently on a Monday…but with no indication as to when it will start, so I suppose that we shall have to pin back our ears every Monday in the hope of hearing the dustcart’s loudhailer advertising its presence…
And, come to think of it, how come that the dustcart has emerged from hibernation, like a woolly mammoth emerging from the Siberian permafrost?
It could be because the council were threatened with an appearance before the Constitutional Court…but it might well be down to the elections.
As a friend said
‘We should elect the councils every year…that way we would get three months of action every year instead of every four years.’
Still, I bet the major political parties in the U.K. wish they only had to produce a dustcart to remove the menace of the Brexit Party and Nigel Farage in this week’s elections to the European Parliament…
A million people marched through central London today to call for ‘A People’s Vote’ on the question as neither government nor Parliament are coming up with any sensible conclusions on the future of the U.K.’s relationship with the European Union after a referendum in 2016 produced a majority for the former leaving the latter.
This referendum was called to settle few hashes in the leadership struggles inside the Conservative Party. The government spent public money to urge people to Remain and gave further public money to politicians of their own party to persuade people to vote Leave.
It was, of course, a foregone conclusion that Remain would prevail…how could people vote otherwise? Membership of the E.U. was a given, just as that the sun would rise in the morning. The government was playing an internal party game at the expense of the nation….but they knew how the game would end.
The Conservative leader retired from public life in a hurry to be replaced by the home secretary, who had campaigned for Remain but announced that she would be working to leave the E.U. She called an election, where the Conservatives lost their majority and had to depend on the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party….representatives from Northern Ireland who quickly claimed their pound of flesh in terms of advantages for their policies.
The Labour party was in turmoil. Somehow the membership had overcome the power of the members of parliament and elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, a left winger who called for policies to restore equality in society and who opposed armed intervention abroad. Labour M.P.s mounted coup after coup, but failed to shift him, taking their eye off the Brexit ball completely while they fought for power inside the party.
Not tthat the Conservatives were much better and Leavers and Remainers fought to control the party….leaving the negotiations with the E.U. to a series of ministers who were stabbed in the back by civil servants working to an agenda set by a prime minister determined to keep the U.K. within the sphere of influence of the E.U…..never mind the result of the referendum.
In effect, the country was being led by Humpty Dumpty, who explained the use of language to Alice thus…
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more or less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
So Leave meant Remain….and while the political parties contemplated their navels the E.U. and the U.K. prime minister cooked up the deal worse than death.
It provided for a transistion period in which the U.K. would be subject to E.U. law while being unable to participate in making decision making, would continue to pay into the E.U. budget and would be obliged to accept an agreement on the irish border which, if accepted, would cut off Northern Ireland’s trade from that of the U.K. Only then would talks on trade commence.
Man, according to Talleyrand – forerunner of so many modern politicians as being aptly described as shit in a silk stocking – was given the gift of language to conceal his thoughts. By the reaction to the withdrawal agreement, once it emerged from the undergrowth of Brussels, it appeared that the concealment had not been very effective.
The Democratic Unionists, who kept the Conservative government in power, were distinctly unchuffed. No separation from the mainland was to be contemplated….you could almost hear the sound of a piss and vinegar band playing ‘The Sash‘ in the corridors of power.
In passing I must say that it is a marker of the decline of standards in society that even Orange Lodge members no longer wear suits and a bowler when marching….though they keep the white gloves.
The agreement was presented to the House of Commons…and was rejected. Then the Attorney General was sent to Brussels to wiggle the wording….which, while for some reason describing himself as a codpiece, he did, but the wiggle did not seduce the Northern Ireland M.P.s. The wiggled codpiece was in turn rejected.
Enter the Speaker of the House of Commons.
In my time we have had as Speaker people who were, variously, a blackmailed homosexual, a tailor, a chorus girl and an expenses fiddler. They all upheld the traditions of the House, aided by the traditional costume…though the chorus girl and the expenses fiddler refused to wear the wig.
Currently, ‘as any fule kno’, we have Mr. Speaker Bercow, who more closely resembles an ink monitor at St. Custards than the custodian of parliamentary practice, while his procession through the Palace of Westminster could be characterised as’ a rough beast, its hour come at last’, slouching into the Commons to commence business for the day. I can’t call him shit in a silk stocking as he wears a lounge suit and, I trust, socks.
The Speaker’s role is to regulate the business of the House in accordance with the House’s standing orders, though Mr. Speaker Bercow seems to treat Erskine May, the authoritative guide to parliamentary practice, rather in the manner in which Little Jack Horner treated his Christmas pie…
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said ‘What a good boy am I’.
He is unpredictable, which doesn’t make for sensible proceedings in the House which, since the government controls most of the time available for debate, makes the task of M.P.s who wish to find more acceptable solutions than that of the current agreement even more difficult.
Remember too that most options open to M.P.s are not binding on the government…and the E.U. negotiates with government, not Parliament.
If, that is, that the E.U. negotiates at all. Its pattern, proven down the years, is to issue a diktat which member states must obey.
Some member states.
Fance can run an unacceptable deficit for years…Ireland could not…nor could Portugal.
Ah, but France is special….the force behind the founding of the E.U. was to prevent further wars between France and Germany…they are the powers which count in the E.U.
Let me tell you…there is no chance of war between France and Germany.
Remember those French highways lined with trees?
The trees have been cut down. The German army can no longer march in the shade. Further…the mayor of Paris has banned diesel vehicles from the city, so no tanks driving down the Champs Elysees.
War…forget it. But France still has preferential treatment.
In dealing with the E.U. you must first recognise that it has no obligation to give up any of its advantages. You must resist any urge to engage with it. You form your own plans, refuse to accept its rulings and face it with a fait accompli. Any other way leads to ruin.
That is, if you genuinely want to leave its embrace.
Clearly, the U.K. government was quite happy to accept the caresses of the E.U. and so went along with whatever it required until meeting the roadblock of the refusal of the House of Commons to accept the agreement.
The prime minister blames Parliament for the lack of prgress with Brexit. The people are urged to blame Parliament too…thus the march through London.
Though not holding their views I am happy to see people motivated enough to travel to central London to express their opinion. My problem comes with the general lack of awareness of the realities of a parliamentary system where the government controls debate…..and with the speakers at the end of the rally.
Self seeking shits in silk stockings….Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party, ready to mount a coup of his own. Tom Watson, whose willingness to believe in a fantasist’s allegations of child abuse led to at least one innocent man’s life being ruined.
Jess Phillips…. loud mouthed opportunist and opponent of Corbyn.
Here we have two using the movement to further their own ends.
Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, whose coalition with the Conservatives enabled draconian measures to be applied to the unemployed and the disabled seeking the support that a civilised society should provide.
Anna Soubry…too extreme for even the Conservatives and now member of a so called independent group of M.P.s which has avoided the need to declare their finances by forming themselves as a company, rather than as a political party. A company…in Parliament….it beats cock fighting.
People who sincerely believe that the U.K. should remain in the E.U. should take a look at the company they keep…the company that is using them.
Brexit is too important an issue to be used for personal advancement. Its resolution will form the future of the country.
I left the U.K. over thirty years ago…I cannot claim that I should be entitled to vote for issues that will affect the future of citizens of the country but I am deeply concerned that people are not being enabled to form a judgement based on fact…are being misinformed…are encouraged to demonise those whose opinions differ…are, in effect suborning the British values of tolerance and compromise.
What the blazes am I to do for a newspaper after Brexit and Trump?
Costa Rican ones very between po faced publicity for the party which lost the last election and photographs of the sheets covering victims of murder and traffic accidents – not forgetting the obligatory girl not quite showing her all while striking a pose which would puzzle an Olympic gymnast and the imprisonment of Cuba Dave for promoting sex tourism in Costa Rica contrary to the Human Trafficking Law of 2013.
Personally I do not think that he is singlehandedly responsible for the (mostly) North American men in muscle shirts frequenting what are euphemistically known as ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ in Gringo Gulch in San Jose, but it would be tactless to close these establishments as otherwise well connected Costa Rican gentlemen not wearing muscle shirts would have nowhere to go in the evenings.
I still occasionally read my old local rag from France….well kent faces beam from the group photographs of the class of 1958 about to set off for a day trip into the unknown some fifty kilometres away, or it might feature shifty looking maires inaugurating something built or repaired by their brothers in law. As one of them once said to me….
As long as the name is different they can’t say it’s favouritism…’
I’ve given up on Le Figaro and Liberation….the former is obsessed with finding the right wing candidate capable of defeating Marine Le Pen of the Front National and the latter obsessed with working out how the Socialist Party is ever going to survive having Francois Hollande as President of France.
Most of my French friends are more worried about how France itself will survive the presidency of Francois Hollande…..the only penguin known to advance on thin ice bearing his own flamethrower…
U.S. newspapers? The New York Times has a good cookery section but otherwise the national level spectrum seems to be obsessed with bemoaning the sheer damned cheek of those who voted for Trump when told by those who know that they should not.
There may be exceptions, but I am not well enough acquainted with the sector to have discovered them.
So, back to the U.K. newspapers….
Growing up there were always newspapers in the house …I even had my own copy of ‘The Children’s Newspaper’ delivered to the house alongside my father’s (then) ‘Manchester Guardian’ – for information – and ‘The Daily Mail’ – for the horse racing tips, but which afforded me the pleasure of the strip cartoon ‘Flook’
I had become fond of strip cartoons when visiting my mother’s mother who had stackpiled copies of ‘Chick’s Own’ where ‘big’ words were hyphenated, from the 1920s and issued them to visiting children when the weather was too wet to sit in the garden.
I can still see – and smell – the formal room with the horse hair filled leather sofas, from whose slippery surfaces the comics would slip to the ground and have to be restored to pristine order before adult disapproval was manifested.
I know that ‘The Daily Mirror’ entered my grandmother’s house – probably down to grandfather’s influence – as I remember not only ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ but also the later strip cartoon of ‘The Perishers’ whose annual highlight was the holiday by the seaside where the crabs inhabiting a rock pool had built a whole religion around the appearance of ‘the eyeballs in the sky’ as Boot the dog peered into the depths.
Religious dissidents, or those who attempted to forward a scientific explanation for the eyeballs in the sky, were silenced by the high priest with the threat of ‘a cakehole full of claw’….
As time went by I began to read the newspapers…the ‘Manchester Guardian’ became ‘The Guardian’…’the Daily Worker’ became ‘The Morning Star’…’The Socialist Worker’ made a brief appearance…and I took ‘The Times for the Law Reports.
At that time, though each newspaper had its policy preferences, they did manage to report news. The reaction to such would appear in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ column, whence the generic term for choleric supporters of old fashioned moeurs – ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ – a town popularly supposed to be peopled by half pay colonels of the Indian Army and their memsahibs, sniffing the wind for the least hint of subversion of established morality.
But things have changed.
In return for electoral support, governments have allowed foreign ownership of the national press…and as that foreign ownership has acquired global power, the politicians make their first kow-tow not to the people who were mad enough to elect them but to the press barons upon whose organs (to use the phrase beloved of ‘Private Eye’) they rely to maintain them in power.
Power has shifted from the politicians – the political parties – to the press, whose interest is that of maintaining their proprietors’ power.
News? Properly reported?
Forget it.
The readership is plied with tarts, tits and totty in the manner of a modern Eatanswill in the press aimed at the lower orders – in moral, rather than economic terms – and with flattery, foodery and fart arsery for those who believe themselves to be superior to the masses.
Thus ‘The Guardian’, made independent by ownership by a trust, stood out.
It was never a newspaper of the left despite the years in the 60s where it displayed a conscience; it was always a newspaper of the soi disant enlightened bourgeoisie who kept their hand on their halfpennies while giving lip service to moral causes.
But it was all there was…so it was the first newspaper I turned to for news and opinion.
Until opinion overtook news, just as had happened in the organs of the press barons.
The Brexit campaign brought out ‘The Guardian’s version of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells…but now the disgusted were not the readers but the columnists….those who were busy ‘gentrifying’ the suburbs of London like Kensal Rise where Edwardian terraced houses became desirable residences – once they had been stripped of their character – and where the local shops had been taken over by ‘organic’ butchers and high priced coffee shops.
These columnists were disgusted that it was possible to think of an alternative to membership of the European Union…those who opposed them must be part of the Great Unwashed…the very people whose interests they and their type had ignored for more than a generation: the people whose children had suffered a diminution in educational provision: the people whose trade unions had been broken: the people who could no longer rely on a job which paid well enough to bring up a family in stable conditions.
I live in a small country….nobody bothers much about it on the international scene with the exception of the U.S.A. when it wants a springboard for overthrowing other regimes in Central America, China when it wants non recognition of Taiwan and the exploitative Greens with their carbon exchange scam.
Its government is content to exploit its own people without bothering about those of other countries, doesn’t have an arms industry or even an army, runs an appalling fiscal deficit and bumps along from month to month and hand to mouth.
After life in two European countries trying to pretend that they are still world powers it is quite relaxing.
Had I still been living in the U.K. I would have voted to leave the E.U.: I hadn’t wanted to enter the original free trade area either and nothing since – not even the vestigial aid of European legislation to the protection of workers in the U.K. under Thatcher – has made me change my mind.
Twenty years in France reinforced my views…
The British system in which I had grown up had little in common with that of France.
We might have had a common heritage in the Western Church, but that was about all…
Napoleon had taken his authoritarian regime all over the continent and there its legacy stayed…keep your mouth shut, keep your head down and do as you are told.
Unless you are rich.
And this is the regime which has come to the U.K. with its accession to the pan European regime.
The possession of money – by whatever means – gives immunity not only from the law,but from moral responsibility.
When I consider that we used to think Reginald Maudling and John Poulson as the epitome of corruption the mind boggles: today we have E.U. accounts that can never be signed off…commissioners paying their dentists with E.U. jobs…and the Common Agricultural Policy siphoning money to the big producers to the detriment of the family farms in order to subsidise the agroalimentary industry.
Next time you buy a pot of Danone yogurt seek the taste of corruption within.
The U.K.has, to the shock of its masters, voted to leave the E.U.
This is represented as a disaster.
To me, it seems like an opportunity.
A chance for the U.K. to become a small country.
The imperial dream is long gone: could not the U.K. do without being an obedient satellite of the U.S.A., throwing the children of its young into wars which assist only foreign corporations?
Could not the U.K. revive the values of the post war settlement in order to found a future in which young people do not have to bankrupt themselves while obtaining an inferior education?
Could the U.K.not rediscover its talents without the limitation of an exterior straitjacket of rules and regulations?
And, most of all, could the U.K.not become a force for peace in the world?
The Venomous Bead 