My Mum – again

As I have mentioned in the past, my mother is 93 (born 1929). Currently, her energies are directed at moving herself into residential care. This project, she is undertaking with her usual energy, and to support her in it I and my siblings have been visiting regularly. Mum loves it when I am at her […]

Voting with our hearts

It is quite obvoius to me and presumably to most of us, that the Conservative party has shown a lack of wisdom during this parliament, and it follows that those who voted them in showed poor judgement too. It is so easy to think that we have a two, possibly three party system, a vote […]

Middle Class Politics

I’ve heard it said that we begin our politics on the left, and as we grow older, move towards the right. In my usual manner, being a bit backward or occasionally upside down, I started off right wing and moved leftwards. To explain what I mean about the backward/upside down thing, I have been known […]

Money – the Root of our Problems?

Have you heard the story of the couple who set out in their fancy car, their destination, Joytown? They left home without asking for advice about their route, and without a map. They drove for miles, at each junction choosing the road with the smoothest surface so as to protect their precious vehicle. When night […]

Intoxicated by Power

As a child, I attended many schools because my dad’s job had us on the move in almost every one of my primary school years. As a consequence, the main focus of my young life was to become accepted into new friendship groups, and in this pursuit, I learned behaviours that have taken me many […]

Why would they think this is what we want?

They say a society is judged by the way it treats its elderly… but should it not be measured by the way it treats all its vulnerable people, young and old?   I am probably stating the ‘bleeding obvious’ when I say that many cut backs intended to increase efficiency, do precisely the reverse. The result is that we are […]

I should know better by now

Crikey, I haven’t written here at all this year. It’s not that nothing has happened, more that too many things have prevented me from putting text on screen. Today however I have been moved to write. Something happened that illustrates a) how bad I am at keeping my mouth (fingers) shut, and b) how little […]

The Scottish Problem

Is it me or is anyone else, who thinks themselves British-English, a little hurt by the apparent hatred many Scots seem to feel for us? I’ve always thought of myself as racially tolerant, and actually, perhaps this is the problem, I never thought of the Scots as a race. I thought they were one of […]

I’m wound up – again

Yes. Very. And of course when that happens I pick up my virtual pen and ramble. Today’s grouse is about the fact that the people who lead us don’t seem able to do the decent thing any more. Our council tax is to rise by 1.99%. This, according to the council, is the maximum it […]

On Snow, Education and Duty

You may have noticed that here in the UK we have had unusual quantities of snow this year, reducing the southern counties of England to a stand still. There is much debate about whether the authorities should have been better prepared to get us back on the move again with claims from the Federation of […]