03 June 2017
I read the Liberal Democrat Manifesto for the 2017 General Election: http://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto. More precisely I first read the ‘Easy Read’ variant then skipped through each of the party’s next-Parliament pledges.
One thing I took away from the experience can be summed up by the range of formats available on that page: the Liberal Democrats are a party of inclusiveness, honesty and pragmatism. A bit of a leap maybe but if anyone was to read the Manifesto they’d understand why I feel my personal choices have been vindicated. I saw it when, in government, they moderated the worst excesses of the Conservative party, and I’m seeing it now in opposition.
Labour comes a close second, their Manifesto document alternatives don’t include Braille.
The Conservatives attitude to inclusiveness is ably shown by the single PDF download and oddly-sized inline document viewer.
One final point, none of the three include languages other than English. Maybe I missed something but maybe, just maybe, people that come here from foreign lands are better at integration than native Brits will ever be.
On the eve of the Brexit vote I urged people who’d never done so before to vote, to vote whichever way their consciences told them to. This time around the ones who voted to leave Europe, if not voting Liberal Democrat, can get fu
01 June 2017
Like everything else I write what follows is only my opinion, however anyone reading this should know it’s a fact in my mind.
‘Peppa Pig’ is the best fly-on-the-wall documentary series television has ever produced.
01 June 2017
I often fall into the trap of assuming people know more than they do about the things I’m interested in. I should be paid for it, along with my ignorance I’d make an absolute fortune!
I’ve just recovered from watching the car-crash television interview of Tim Farron, UK Liberal Democrat political party leader. Interviewer Andrew Neil came across as being spectacularly ill-tempered, intolerant and ultimately ill-informed.
Part-way through it devolved into a shouting match, a wholehearted removal of any pretence of mutual respect.
From the brief article accompanying the video clip, this: “In heated exchanges where Andrew Neil told his interviewee not to “heckle” him…”
I haven’t seen his preceding interviews of the other 2 main party leaders, I wasn’t interested. It seems though that modern interview technique mandates that interviewers must show how ‘tough’ they are by constantly interrupting the interviewee then accusing them of not answering the question. Do politicians deserve respect? The reasonable answer fits somewhere within the range from ‘No’ to ‘It depends’, of course it does.
But part-way through Andrew Neil made the same mistake I’ve heard from him before, offering Mr Farron the blunt assertion that “we all already know that.”
Mr Neil might be very surprised indeed how little a lot of people outside his political bubble know about the realities of modern politics, and modern life in general. The failure of British people to engage on anything but a superficial level with politics, and Brexit in particular, ensures people are either spectacularly uninformed or spectacularly ill-informed. What better time than now to give the party leaders a voice?
But no, the terms of the modern interview mean they’ve got to be shouted down and called names before they get the chance, and be judged on those terms.
Tim Farron proved himself to be human this evening.
But we’re not voting for a party leader are we, despite the Conservative party leader’s wish we were. No, we’re voting for a party’s policies and its ability to present a coherent front. A Labour vote is ultimately a wasted vote, it’s a party that’ll fall apart as soon as the temporary, fragile cessation of internal hostilities the election imposes finally breaks.
All of this is why I’ll still be voting Liberal Democrat.
26 May 2017
I’m not sorry if the language in this post offends. I cannot get past a (probably primitive) need to use it. I know it’s wrong and anti-social, and yet releasing the pressure cooker valve of crude and vulgar language will help me come to terms with it. So, here goes.
An acquaintance turned to me today and, totally out of the blue, said this (I’m paraphrasing a little):
“Today’s a special day for them, they commit atrocities on it.”
There was no preamble, nothing I’d said that would indicate how receptive I’d be to the statement.
“Eh?”, I replied, then headed to Google, partially to block out thoughts of axes and sweeping majestically across the Steppe, laying waste to…
It turns out today marks the beginning of Ramadan. So I told him so. “You mean Ramadan.”
Doubling down is usual, and he didn’t disappoint this time. Well actually he did:
“No, no, sometime soon there’s a special day where they commit atrocities, it’s part of their religion.”
“No it isn’t. No it is not,” I had to reply before shutting the conversation off.
Should I have asked him for proof?
Should I have attempted to educate him?
For fuck’s sake, we’re not living in The Dark Ages; we’re not living in a time during which, if we didn’t understand something, it automatically had to be excluded from the community, or maimed, or killed. Or made the subject of a decades-long feud. Or a bleedin’ Crusade! Now we are living in a time of information overload, of that there can be no doubt, but it’s so bloody easy to use Google to check, that even a child could do it. But I guess the twat who so casually opened the conversation with religious intolerance (he’s also a racist) has lost a child’s ability to wonder about things, and would rather remain ignorant.
For some perspective, a headline on my favourite web site:
“24 Coptic Christians killed in Minya, Egypt in what authorities are calling the largest attack on the community since last month”. It’s now at least 28 deaths and, added to the 44 from just last month, adds a teeny tiny sense of perspective.
But for a real sense of perspective, there’s this site:
http://www.iamsyria.org/death-tolls.html
The word ‘stark’ doesn’t even come close to my thoughts on the disparity between this week’s Manchester death toll and what’s going on in Syria and all the other conflict-torn countries.
We really do not know how lucky we are.
24 May 2017
There’s a day set aside every year to commemorate the life and works of the late literary great Douglas Adams. It’s May 25th to be precise. It’s tomorrow!
There’s a web site, so I’m posting a link to the towelday.org FAQ.
FYI, I count The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as one of my all-time favourite novel trilogies (I have all five parts of it!), radio series, TV series, computer games, and yes, even the 2005 movie!
Yes, I do know where my towel is, it’s completely awesome. And yes, I will be carrying it around with me all day.