I haven’t bothered write any blog posts/articles in a while as I have no responsibilities for anyone else these days.  However, it seems that Ms May has now out of the blue offered me the responsibility of voting again. 

Great.  I only dragged my posterior the 15 feet over the road to vote in the boring Referendum the other day and before that I’m sure my posterior was only over there in 2015 and it’s probably been over just the other day for some other reason too.  It’s like these people think I’ve got nothing else better to do than turn out and vote for them.  But never one to shirk responsibility I decided to take the 2017 General Election seriously and keep a diary.

The first sign of something in the offing was Gavin Barwell tweeting away on twitter (which seems to be what we pay him £60,000 odd a year for) about what a great MP he’d been with no explanation.  Then Mrs May appeared on the steps of Downing Street to tell us how the country needed 5 more years of stability and certainty.  Presumably these will be like the previous 7 during which we staggered on with a coalition government for 5 years until the Conservatives scraped a slim majority and then the previous incumbent of the office was unceremoniously dumped for losing his own Referendum. 

Why we need a single party government to leave the EU I don’t know.  We managed the whole of the 1st and 2nd World Wars with coalition governments and no general elections.  Having General Elections in times of crisis isn’t British.  Still, I suppose if the Labour party wont sack Jeremy Corbyn the electorate has to…

The next thing I heard was a person from the Labour party on the PM program on Radio 4 going on about the rigged system.  They failed to explain how the system was rigged but interrupted the interviewer multiple times who interrupted them multiple times to ask how it was rigged exactly. I learned nothing from either of them.  The fact that the current boundaries are rigged in favour of Labour and have been for years thanks to New Labour was not mentioned.

21st of April.

Gavin Barwell called round my flat as I am a key voter in a key marginal but I was out at my brother’s flat.  My brother who is a Tory may have mentioned to Gavin that I was out because no literature has appeared on the mat.  Or perhaps they haven’t had time to print any yet.  This is clearly an election on a very tight budget. 

Over at Inside Croydon Steven Downes is worrying himself about whether the Labour candidates who are not yet selected are going to be Progress or Momentum.  I pointed out that it usually takes the Labour Party at least 5 years to raise the £20,000 needed to fight the short campaign but Mr Downes stated that the financial shortfall would be taken up by all the “£3ers” who joined during the papering the house leadership elections of which we’ve now had two.  Why exactly the leader has to be elected twice these days I don’t know but.... 

Went on the BBC website and even they are already bored.  The top stories are about Trump and Cycling.  According to an old article on the Business Insider website the death of Queen Elizabeth will be the most disruptive event in Britain in the last 70 years so there is, it seems, something more dangerous than Brexit.  Will we have to have a General Election when the Queen dies…? 

In the afternoon I switched on the television to see what the BBC had to say and was confronted by some kind of test card telling me there was no HD digital signal in my area.  How they managed to broadcast the testcard without a signal is a mystery I am still trying to work out.  Will I get a licence fee rebate?  After this I switched over to the non HD BBC where Ms May was asked by a student about tuition fees going up and was treated to the usual patronising piffle about “more people than ever before going to University”.  I agree with Nick.

Apparently Jeremy came to Croydon the afternoon the election was declared…

22nd of April

I googled the BBC website and found it plastered with any other information than anything about the General Election.  The top story was “Britain goes a full day without coal”.  Followed by a video of a car crash (coded reference to Brexit?) followed by “13 books we lie about reading most”.  Then there was something about tax and the general election.  I pootled over to Gavin Barwell’s blog but he hasn’t written anything since the 4th of April.  Too busy micro-blogging for bloggin.  No leaflets yet… 

Eric Pickles announced he is standing down to spend more time eating.

23rd of April

According to the BBC Jeremy Corbyn is offering us 4 new bank holidays.  Actually he’s offering us one regional bank holiday each on our national days but that wouldn’t make good clickbait.  I hate bank holidays.  What could be worse than the state telling you have to take a particular day off to be jolly but only when the shops are closed and at the same time as everybody else?  I mean can you actually imagine anything more likely to cause social division than forcing EVERYBODY to go on holiday together at the same time?  Nobody does that outside of a Carry On film or the execrable film adaptation of Are You Being Served? Which is somehow not as bad as the reboot of Dad’s Army.  In a sane world we’d just have more holiday and not have it muddled up with community.  There’s some stuff about the French Presidential election.  It seems Ms Le Pen who inherited her party off her dad is worried the French don’t have enough social mobility.  Her opponent is somebody hard left and the BBC recons they both want to leave the EU.  Still, there can’t be anything wrong with the EU it is, in the words of someone who banned me from their facebook page for suggesting it might have a few flaws, all the fault of the stupid voters.  I have no idea what any of us are supposed to be voting for … yet.

24th of April

UKIP are on about a burqa ban.  I would have solidarity with muslims by wearing my snorkel parka but it was too hot.  Apparently bee keepers will be exempt.  I expect a BBC series called Muslim Bee Keepers which I presume will be as boring, pointless and inexplicable as Muslim Driving School was.  Mind you you’re hard pressed to find a bee these days according to several of the petitions that come relentlessly to my email. 

Had a pointless discussion with Liam Mullone on Facebook in which he made fun of Jeremy Corbyn’s claim that there is only a finite amount of wealth and I pointed out that there isn’t an infinite amount of wealth so … there probably is a finite amount of wealth.  This ended with me pointing out that there is a finite amount of money in circulation ($60 trillion) and that if there wasn’t a finite amount then you wouldn’t be able to sub-divide it as infinity divided by any integer is infinity. 

Mr Mullone then accused me of reducto ad absurdum arguments like the “world must be flat because people would fall off the edge if it wasn’t”.  So I postulated that current cosmological theories suggest the Universe is not infinite so how can wealth be infinite?  One day it’s all the “left think there’s a magic money tree” and the next it’s all infinite wealth everywhere.  I postulated that there probably is an optimum practical number for the number of subdivisions of any fungible currency system and if you exceed it like the Weimar Republic or Robert Mugabe you end up having to cross zeros off your notes and start again.  If money really was infinite things like quantative easing wouldn’t work.  Someone then said George Osbourne’s QE policies did work.  Hum …

It is like for the past 9 months we have been in the “phoney war” part of Brexit.  Anyway … pastures pastures pastures.  I’m sure I had the reverse argument with Buddy Hell once who also insisted that there the economy had no tangible physical dimensions or something … but if wealth is a real thing it must me finite, mustn’t it?  Or people like the World Bank, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation etc wouldn’t spend all their time trying to measure it?  I mean isn’t that what GDP and all that is about? 

Still, people are so economically illiterate these days that I actually saw Leo Kerse posting about how his stockbroker couldn’t sort out a rights issue for him.  You shouldn’t need a stockbroker to sort that out anyway.  You just buy them from the company direct.  Told him he should ask more fundamental issues like why he was investing in a company so broke it needs a rights issue anyway…

In case you’re wondering the Universe is 93 billion light-years across.

April 25th

Our Mother who art in Downing Street,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Brexit come,
thy will be done,
in UK as it is in Europe.

Give us this day our General Election,
and forgive us our Brexits,
as we forgive the EU who Brexit against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from EU

April 26th

Jeremy said he’s not doing a debate if Theresa isn’t coming.  Theresa said she’s not doing a debate because it isn’t strong and stable leadership.  Bet it’ll be fun in her Cabinet.  Seems neither of them has the guts to tell the voters the truth about Brexit.  Sad really being a good public speaker is one of the best things JC has going for him so I don’t know why he wont do a TV debate … Maybe they’ve all learnt from Trump that actually issues mean nothing and pomposity is everything… but then even he did debates and he had to worry about Ms Clinton throwing ash trays at him...  So little to do.  So little time.  Went to Sainsburys and couldn’t find the hummus.  According to the BBC there is a “hummus crisis” but no one knows what caused it or the solution.  Felt better about being rejected for a job at Bakkavor a few years back.

April 27th

Email from the Labour party inviting me to be photographed next to Sarah Jones.  So glad I have a job that requires working anti-social hours.  Boris is talking rubbish as usual.  About a year ago I heard some window cleaners saying “Yeah but you can trust Borris.”  In what sense?  He is truly the Seth Pecksniff of the 21st century.  Tuition Fees and interest rates on them are going up again.  I agree with Nick.  Tim Farron has a spaniel and hates gays.

April 28th

Ava Alexis postulated a theory that there isn’t a TV show that can’t be improved by having more drag queens.  I wondered if the general election could be improved by a drag queen.  I wonder if Doctor Who couldn’t be improved by the insertion of a drag queen.  They seem to have gone from plots that are over-complicated to stories that are too simple.  Some small robots kill people for not being happy.  Who cares?  I had a flashback to the cringeworthy McCoy era story “The Happiness Patrol”.  Googled it and on the Wikipedia page some wag has written “The scene where the Doctor talks two Happiness Patrol guards out of using their weapons by emphasising the easiness of the kill versus the enormity of ending a life received high praise”.  To which a humourless moderator has appended “[who?][citation needed]” with zero sense of irony.  Maybe I’m just too old for it at 43. 

April 29th/

I pootled over to twitter where I had a Conversation with Baron Daniel Frankenstein Finkelstein in which he assured me (and some Tory doubters) that Mr Barwell was an excellent constituency MP.  Someone had complained that Gavin only had “CCHQ” and “MP” on his CV and had no real world experience.  I explained that previously he used to work for Lord Ashcroft but this was not seen as a negative by anybody.  “He really does care,” said the Baron who to be fair is always up for a chat on social media no matter how rude one is to him.  Well, I suppose if you sit in the House of Lords there’s a lot of time to kill.  I said they all care.  That’s the problem.  I found myself being talked into saying grudgingly that he was better than Andrew Pelling and Geraint Davies but that isn’t setting the bar particularly high.  Eventually I said “well, at least he’s not a crook”.  And then I got thinking about his election expenses.  It’s one thing having to seek relief in the High Court once in 2010.  But to be investigated by the PoPo in 2015 as well for his election expenses suggests he’s either rather careless or … I then wondered what had happened to the investigation into Tory expenses in 2015 and it seems to be still ongoing…

…hum…

April 30th

Someone called Mr Barwell a bad word on twitter and he retweeted them saying that although they had blanked out their address on the letter/flier they’d tweeted they’d left on their identification reference number “by which they could be identified”.  The correspondent who seemed to go under his own name said it was merely his address he didn’t want people to know and had no problem with people knowing his identity.  Should’ve taken his name of the public version of the electoral register.  When I checked back on this thread it had disappeared so I did a search of “Gavin Barwell” and rude words and found several other people who had compared Gavin to ladies private parts.  I particularly enjoyed “Nothing can express how much I hate this chipmonk faced [Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will get me prosecuted under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003]”.

Also found some stuff on Gavin’s achievements as Housing Minister.  For example his suggestion that the housing shortage could be solved by grandparents leaving their wealth directly to their grandchildren...  Social mobility in action.  Gavin claims to have been disinherited by his own parents who have left all their money to their grandchildren rather than him.  Sorry mate that’s just weird.

Gavin tells us that although our children will be better off materially in many ways we have to face it that they will never be able to buy a house and we shall live forever in fear of being disinherited like himself in Shirley or Peter Malone in Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley.  Incidentally I learned the other day that Charlotte suppressed the republication of her sister Anne’s novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”.  Yep lets all rely on older relatives.

Theresa May 1st

Bank holiday.  Going to work.  So glad I don’t have to have the same days off as everyone else because the government tells me to anymore.  The newspapers continue their character assassination of Croydon Labour’s Andrew Fisher who is very dangerous and radical.  What could be less dangerous and radical than getting an MA in politics and then spending six years as a parliamentary researcher I’m not sure … but it seems the answer is Andrew Fisher.  When I was in the Scouts there used to be a canoe called the Andrew Fisher which was named after a child called Andrew Fisher who used to be in the group but who had died unexpectedly young but who almost everyone was too young to remember because we were, after all, children.  His parents gave the Scouts a very good canoe in the hope of assuaging their grief and making everybody happy.  But because it was an expensive canoe and had this history of grief and death attached to it we all had to treat it incredibly reverently to the point that no one seemed to want to use it in case someone would scratch it.  To be fair it did get used but it still had this mystical quality.  Still, better than a brass name plate on a park bench I suppose.  I have the same relationship with Croydon Labour’s Andrew Fisher.  I sometimes wonder if the Labour party’s Andrew Fisher is another reincarnation of the late Andrew Fisher’s ghost who is still haunting me but in new ways that are not canoe related.

Theresa May 2nd

Like the rest of the media I forgot about the general election

Theresa May 3rd

Inside Croydon issued a crowd funding campaign to fund their legal expenses following a threatening letter from Boxpark who objected to their report that Boxpark intended to triple their rents.  I now anticipate an email from Mr Downes stating that this website has “repeated a libel” by mentioning the fact. 

Good old Inside Croydon.  May it long continue to put everyone’s backs up by being wrong and strong.  Sure I invented the Tony Newman = Tony Soprano gag but in the interests of satire I will allow their appropriation of this sliver of material.  Oh and the parties unveiled their tax policies.

Theresa May 4th

Jennifer Brathwaite is appointed to run for Labour in Croydon South.  Despite her having zero chance of overturning Mr Philp’s massive majority Inside Croydon took time out of its heated feud with noisy PPP that is Boxpark to worry about whether Ms Brathwaite is Lack of Progress or Lack of Momentum.

Theresa May 5th

Gavin Barwell appeared on Channel 4 News but refused to talk to anyone else.
https://www.channel4.com/news/elections-debate
I’m getting a lot of correspondence from his minion Sara Bashford at the moment.  I wrote to him a while ago about the unauthorised addition of an air con unit to my exterior wall and now there is a general election on Ms Bashford seems to be very busy looking into this.  Usually I have to wait for her to have a day off for her to get round to it…

Theresa May 6th

Saturday.  The day on which buy to let landlords (you can count the number of live in home owners in this block on the fingers of a mitten) decide to renovate their interiors.  The constant sound of whirring saws or cabinets being banged in … I don’t know how they find the time to do any more home improvements as this has been going on for month now.  It surely should only take a week to a month … but then if it isn’t one flat it’s another.  No idea what they do….  But the kind of stuff you wouldn’t do too often if you actually lived in and owned a property because it is inconvenient.  People come and go but the work carries on relentlessly through the procession of passing renters who eventually move out because they can’t afford the increasing rents perhaps because of the relentless improvement works.  Either that or every renter completely trashes each flat. 

Of course I could complain to the people next door but I have no idea who lives there anymore …although I hear a child screaming inhumanly from time to time.  I thought of reporting them to the social services but I think it’s only when the child goes in and out which may suggest that the child just has behavioural issues or just objects to having to stay with one parent/guardian/foster carer or something…  and I haven’t heard them threatening the child but it screams like it is being tortured.  So it may be me being hyper sensitive.  Or it could be Dolphin Square business but I haven’t heard the child scream in a while so either it has got used to the arrangement now or the DIY torture chamber that they’ve spent every weekend loudly building is working properly at last and shielding me from the noise.  Perhaps all the banging and sawing is just to cover up the screams of people living in Croydon.  It’s amazing how people can make something as simple as living in a building so complicated.

The more expensive my flat becomes the more of a misery it becomes to live in.  I am surrounded by an endless round of people improving their limited living spaces or attempting to justify building in my garden or breaking into my garage.  I must spend about a grand a year fixing break ins to the garage or putting in trespass claims to the Country Court for permanent structures people have cynically placed on my land knowing full well it’s £308 just to put in court papers so guessing I wont… if it’s not one thing it’s another. 

Of course the police can never do anything about this constant aggravation.  They did however find time out in their busy schedule to tell me that I had been driving at 79mph through Old Coulsdon.  Or so a speed check camera I passed reckoned.  I am somewhat dubious about this as my 1000cc car takes about 18 seconds to go 0-60.  More interestingly the letter I received had no return address and it was not clear whether it came from the Council or the Police having, as it did, both their logos on so I did not know who to reply to.  This must be why they call it “Total Policing”.  Anyway, I thought I’d live dangerously and reply to the PoPo.  I mean I could understand if they complained I was doing 40 in a 30 zone or 30 in 20 but 79 through Old Coulsdon? 

How? 

Think there’s something wrong with their camera.  Oddly despite the fact they thought I was exceeding the speed limit by a factor of 260 per cent they didn’t feel that it was in the interests of justice to prosecute so wrote me a letter saying that I was a very naughty boy instead.  Apparently even if one breaks the law by this factor the most one gets is a letter, 3 points on one’s licence and a stiff talking to… hum… something’s wrong … they didn’t have a problem giving ** ****** penalty points (or making him go on a speed awareness course) for going just under 40 in a 30 zone.  One suspects they know their evidence is dodgy… if they bothered to look at it.  Put in an FOI request to discover what they’ve actually got…  Apparently I have been put on a database of naughty boys.  That said whenever I pass those speed awareness cameras they always seem to be frowning so either they are all always miserable or ….  79 mph?  Really?  Now I think back to that night I seem to remember someone overtaking me… maybe that set the camera off… or perhaps I am indeed a very bad boy and have blocked it out.

Some basic research suggests that this is the camera…

http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/driver-caught-times-limit-93mph-won-t-ticket/story-28163023-detail/story.html

Lots of socialists wailing away on Twitter like no one told ‘em what would happen if they voted Corbyn for leader.  The likes of Liam Mullone are in their element…  Labour did very badly in the local elections.

Theresa May 7th

Tax policies.  Labour announced it is halving inheritance tax.  Gavin tells us on his website that the Tories have raised the threshold and created a new additional tax free gift which can only be used when you are passing on your main house to a direct descendant (child or grandchild).  That’s the adopted stuffed and social mobility sorted then.  This story must be very important for he has posted it twice…

“So there's a clear choice at this election: Conservatives who believe you should be able to pass on the family home to your children or grandchildren or Labour who would hit ordinary Croydon families with an inheritance tax bill.” 

Don’t care mate.  No kids.  Can’t afford them.  All this sucking up to the old must come and bite them in the bum one day… the baby boomer generation can’t last forever… According to JoJo Southerland on Facebook we should be allowed to call Tory voters stupid without it being un-politically-correct.  While on Twitter Josie Long is busy telling everyone that “canvassing is fun”.  Erm …  Prince Phillip has retired because he is losing his USP as the most powerful closet racist in the UK.  Someone on Facebook actually said that Prince Phillip didn’t chose to be born into wealth and privilege.  If only Mrs Merton were still alive to ask “So  Prince Phillip, what was it exactly that attracted you to billionaire Princess Elizabeth Windsor?” but for some reason she hasn’t made it to 97.  This made me realise why Republic can never get rid of the Monarchy.  They are attacking the problem from the wrong end of the stick.  Instead of trying to get people to vote them out of being unelected we should encourage everyone to stop having sex with them then they’d quickly die out and Parliament would be back in a George I situation where they’d have to find someone 50th in line to throne to take over…  Oh well Doctor Who improved this week… although this may have been due to David Suchet stealing every scene he’s in rather than the plot which was a bit old hat but, to be fair, very effective.

Theresa May 8th

On the way home from work yesterday found a Labour Party leaflet on my doorstep.  I’m not saying that the Labour Party is short of funds but it had “54” scrawled on the top by hand suggested they’re targeting voters on an individual basis.  For whatever reason the inhabitants of number 54 who I wouldn’t know because it is rented and their faces change more often the Doctor Who would not let the distributer of this flier into the flats.  The leaflet reads “Stop Tory Cuts to Our Schools” and includes a map of schools which Sarah Jones says have suffered Tory cuts.  Opened the front door to find a Back Barwell leaflet on my doormat setting out Gavin’s 5 point plan for Croydon

1)    Make sure Westfield/Hammerson redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre Happens (it’s been taking a while since after all the politicians manacled themselves to the grand plan to knock down a shopping centre and CPO half the town to build a new shopping centre the plans were changed at the last minute to include loads of tower blocks of flats and now nobody Tory or Labour can extricate themselves politically from this bait and switch operation because it makes them all look fools).
2)    More affordable housing.  With the Westfield/Hammerson redevelopment stalled and the Menta Street in the Sky scrapped because people pointed out it looked like something out of Judge Dread this is moving very slowly… but it’s the thought that counts.
3)    Action to tackle the recent increase in knife crime (I presume this means bringing back the SUS laws)
4)    Improve our public services: rail, schools & our hospital. (How many Southern strike days were there last year?)
5)    Increase the living wage.

Number 5 is accompanied by the claim that the National Living Wage is “more generous than Labour’s minimum wage” like the Tories didn’t resist the NMW tooth and claw when it was introduced.  To entice us to vote for a higher minimum Gavin provides a photograph of a stack of old pound coins that are heading out of circulation in November.  A novel approach:  Vote for me, we’ll pay you in things that are not legal tender.

Gavin’s leaflet is very glossy whereas Sarah Jones’s is matt.  Opened up my email to discover a begging email from the Labour Party saying that they will be outspent at this election and asking me to donate anything I can spare.  Even £1.  So I gave them a pound coin that is going out of circulation…

Yet another leaflet from the Tories in the hall this morning.  This one is A3 size and glossy folded to A4 and headed “STRONG AND STABLE LEADERSHIP”.  Apparently my choice is “STRONG AND STABLE LEADERSHIP FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM”  OR  “A COALITION OF CHAOS WITH JEREMY CORBYN”.  The old vote for us because we’re the only ones who can win card.  Choices choices…  Big picture of Theresa May looking like an evil version of Victoria Wood.

Theresa May 9th

Feel a bit of a cold coming on…  Apparently a member of the loony left had the temerity to stand on one of the steps of a war memorial in order to appear in a group photograph…

… someone on twitter said the police should be called.  It’s not a actually a crime…

Theresa May 10th

Attempting to free myself of cold by doing as little thinking as possible...  This seems to be working it.  I decided to finally deliver the Labour leaflet I found abandoned on the doorstep several days ago to number 54 as this is what is scrawled on the top of it.  After all, if I don’t deliver it then technically I have stolen it as this would mean I took it with the intention of the intention of permanently depriving the owner of it.  That said I probably could argue in a court of law that actually I took it our of nosiness rather than an intention to depriving the owner of it and it is just an accident that I forgot to return it.  Except that now I have thought about it … it is not an accident that I have forgotten to return it because I keep thinking about it.  Oh well I suppose I had better post it through 54’s letterbox before I develop a mens rea.  The problem is that this is borderline political activity which I feel I am above.  After all, technically you could argue that it is litter.  However, since it is addressed to an individual rather than to nobody in particular I feel (having read it) that I should deliver it.  Reader, I delivered it … and felt suitably worthy … and congratulated myself for not being Del Strain.  Ah the wonders of open post…

No charges over election expenses in 2015 (if you disregard Thanet)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39865801

Quelle surprise.  I look forward to Gavin overspending “by accident” in 2017…

Theresa May 11th

Still got a cold.  It is the worst kind of cold.  One of those ones where you’re too ill to want to do anything but sleep when you’re not at work but don’t feel like you are ill enough to pull a sicky.

Theresa May 12th

I believe the Labour Manifesto has leaked.  Lots of people online saying all the Labour policies are sensible… Maybe but are they costed?  Funny how it never seems to occur to the left that what people actually want first from a government is economic competence.  Then again are May / were Cameron particularly economically competent.  I found this very good article…

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/07/falling-real-pay-shows-the-british-economy-is-still-struggling

… which asks the all important question of can governments be economically incompetent yet seem economically competent.  Someone brought up the Winter of Discontent.  Funny just as many strikes then as now.  According to Wikipedia inflation peaked 26.9 per cent in the 12 months to August 1975.

I wonder if I could write a macro to simulate Earl Okin’s worthy facebook posts … they’re so predictable…

Theresa May 13th

I have killed my cold with industrial quantities of vitamin C.  Gavin Barwell is recycling most of my old arguments against 20s plenty.  Note to self : stop doing politicians’ work for them.  It seems there has been a cyber attack on NHS.  You know politicians have really cocked up when they say “lessons must be learned”.  It seems the NHS have a lot of computers that still run XP which is not protected by Microsoft patches anymore.  Should have gone for Windows 7 then Microsoft would have automatically upgraded them to Windows 10 illegally and against their will.  Windows 7 was great.  So many innovations … such as arbitrarily preventing users from writing to the top level directory and thereby stuffing loads of freelance programmers and creating hours and hours of extra work in making old code forward compatible.

Theresa May 14th

The Tories laugh at Jeremy Corbyn because they are afraid of him.

“The permanent political class is freaking out because the only thing that can beat out Project Fear, is Project Hope. A Tory-lite Labour opposition was never going to win in 2020, but an energetic and awakened Labour movement can. Even worse, if they do win, there is a very real chance that the domestic and foreign policy of Britain could change in a truly radical way. We could be a few years away from the most progressive government since Clement Attlee’s post-WWII government delivered the NHS, a national education system, nationalised transport and energy, and rolled out the biggest social housing programme in our history. This is an electoral choice that the UK hasn’t had the opportunity to make in decades.”

To be fair … looking at the polls Labour wasn’t actually doing too badly till the Brexit vote after which there is an immediate swing to the Conservatives that just gets bigger and bigger… this is the point at which he lost it.


Pretty much Labour/Corbyn has never recovered from losing the Referendum. 

Brexit. 

First it came for Cameron and I said nothing. 
Then it came for Corbyn and I said nothing. 
When Brexit came for me there was nothing but Theresa May.

My cunning plan to kill my cold with lots of Vitamin C seems to have a flaw in it as I now have a runny nose.  Another mailshot from the Rt Hon Gavin Barwell with lots of people on telling us what a wonderful MP he is.  Having failed to extract a pecuniary donation from me for nothing the party is now trying to get me to buy a limited edition Jeremy Corbyn bag for £25…


Might be worth it for the antique resale value…

David White of the Croydon Labour Party points out that Gavin and his minions shouldn’t be using their parliamentary email addresses during an election campaign but as you can see above … they are…
https://insidecroydon.com/2017/05/14/tory-candidate-barwell-is-caught-breaking-rules-for-a-fifth-time/

Theresa May 15th

Posted some parcels at the post office.  With its red livery, depressed staff in monotonous jobs, wobbly office chairs and queues longer than ever the USSR it remains a monument to nationalised industry that privatisation has made seemingly no difference to.  That said the woman who used to seem to exist solely to take tickets out the ticket queuing machine and hand them individually to each person has been put in charge of the quick serve queue and the ticketing machine has now been abandoned in favour of physical queuing again.  A lady asked me a long series of questions about whether my parcel contained lithium batteries, spray cans or objects likely to be difficult for the post office to transport because these days, I guess, they only transport the easy stuff …and then you have to pick it up yourself from the depot … meaning it would probably have been easier just to buy it from the shop.  Popped in CeX and swear many of their recycled DVDs are more expensive than buying it on Amazon or Ebay new if you disregard the expense of having to drive to Factory Lane. 

Oh well, at least Doctor Who seems to have improved after he went blind which to be fair is a plot line they haven’t done before and might be interesting.  Still lots of running down corridors but they’re higher production value corridors.  In the Vatican next week.  I forsee complaints…

Theresa May 16th

Ian Brady died and the lefties are upset on Facebook because it has pushed Corbyn and the election off the number 1 news spot.

By 11:30 Jeremy Corbyn had been raised to the number 1 spot on the BBC News page again and the lefties had no more to moan about.  Mike Fox has been moaning that he offered his promotional skills to the Labour party but it was all fall on stoney ground because all they wanted him to do was deliver leaflets.  Apparently they are not aspirational and are stuck in the past.

Gavin Barwell is having a go at Jeremy Corbyn for his links to Sinn Fein.  Which of us has an IRA councillor again?
http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/ira-member-croydon-tories-bench/story-21193247-detail/story.html

Apparently the TV debate is now going to be Theresa and Jeremy not talking to each other.

Theresa May 17th

Yes another leaflet from the Tories.  Number 5 …?  The front shows Ms May in her trademark chain necklace promising stability.  I wonder what the whole thing with chains is about?  Is it an S and M thing?  I have a feeling that in private Ms May is a bottom.  I had an email from Jeremy Corbyn inviting me to put a link to the Labour Party manifesto on my Facebook page.  Careful what you wish for, Jeremy.  Gavin continues to be upset by the “Bin Barwell” poster theme from 2015 which seems to be in vogue again…  Not sure who came up with this is but it’s quite a good play on his litter picking obsession.  Talking of litter … The back of the latest Tory leaflet reads like a cigarette warning.  Think Labour can’t win?  Think again … list of surprise votes that shocked people … Trump, Brexit, … Cameron’s 2nd term..

First they laugh at you
Then they laugh at you
Then they call a snap general election for you
Then you lose again

Theresa May 18th

If John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn are not Marxists it might be a good idea to stop standing in front of lecterns emblazoned with soundbites from Das Kapital.

Theresa May has generously promised to remove the triple lock on pensions and force more people to sell their homes for care home fees.  Just when you think its all over…  Mind you with the state of the Labour party at the moment she could probably promise to eat babies and still get re-elected…

Theresa May 19th

Silky tells me I should vote.  It kind of annoys me when people tell me I must vote.  Funny how when a comedian can’t sell tickets it’s the act’s fault but when a politician can’t get anybody to vote for him or her it’s the public’s fault.

Theresa May 20th

Corbyn’s Labour has recovered a bit in the opinion polls.  Perhaps in the era of “alternative facts” and Donald Trump it doesn’t actually matter that his spending commitments are pastures.



 




Jo Cox 21st

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39987325

Today the parties have decided not to campaign in order to pay tribute to the late Jo Cox.  I’m not sure why they picked today when she was murdered on the 16th June and it’s not the anniversary of her murder or anything but the voters probably need some warning of mortality or something …  I’m not sure either why remembering Ms Cox needs to take all day but on balance I’ll allow it.

Theresa May 22nd

Labour have picked up 9 percentage points in the polls but the Tories are still way out in front.  Can Jeremy Corbyn live up to his superman tee-shirts and pull it off?  Theresa May seems to be doing her best to both look nasty and not answer questions
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-interview-question-dodge-didnt-answer-general-election-2017-live-latest-dementia-tax-a7750251.html  I said that Labour’s financial plans were laughable on Facebook and started a 50 comment thread full of distraction techniques.  Apparently one cannot laugh at Labour’s tax plans without also looking at the Conservative tax plans to check if they are nonsense too.  I’m not sure how the Conservative’s budget plans (which actually don’t exist) make Labour’s less funny but the political minded live in a world where A being incredible is affected by B being incredible even if A is not related to B.  I think this is called denying the correlative.  The idea that both tax plans could be funny and/or illogical and their funniness/illogicality is independent of each other seemed nonsensical to him.  I suppose you could argue “since all politicians talk nonsense it’s not really funny anymore when they do” but I’m not sure that’ true.   In the end I closed the debate down by saying that I’m sorry but after reading Labour’s Manifesto laughter was simply an emotion I had and I trust my emotions over Labour Party “facts” any day.  Anyway according to a Panorama with Jeremy Paxman I watched the other day we are now in some post truth landscape where objective truth doesn’t matter any more only, as MT would say, whether or not one looks the ticket.

Ariana Grande 23rd

Someone bombed a gig in Manchester and killed 22 people so the parties have decided not to campaign today (if you disregard the far right ones).

Theresa May 24th

Roger Moore died.  Donald Trump went to see the Pope.

Theresa May 25th

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour increases in popularity and closes the polling gaps.  The conspiracy theorists have arrived
http://evolvepolitics.com/theresa-may-trying-lose-election-something-weird/


Theresa May 26th
Was the campaign suspended?
https://insidecroydon.com/2017/05/25/tories-delivered-election-leaflets-during-campaign-suspension/

Theresa May 27th

Facebook analysis of the issues reaches its usual high levels.  “Apart from being a [ladies private parts] for scoring political points from dead children, up until the Westminster attack there hadn't been a terror attack with multiple fatalities in a decade. Our police and security services do an incredible job foiling terrorists every fucking week. And a lot of the blame for home grown terrorism lies at Labour's feet, not for Iraq but for their policies of multiculturalism and faith schools which encourage sectarianism. Kids should mix so they can form bonds across cultures instead of being brainwashed that their dipshit ideology is the best and everyone else is subhuman”

I thought it was Michael Gove who invented Free Schools and faith schools must go back at least to the 1944 education act if not the Elementary Education Act 1880.  ISIS – it’s all your fault William Forster.

Theresa May 28th

Wasted the morning trying to explain to someone on the hard left that Arthur Scargill was not actually a nice person …

 

I seem to have reached an age where people accuse me of getting all my information off the internet as if it therefore must be wrong and I couldn’t have lived through that time either…

Theresa May 29th

Back to work after 9 days off.  My wisdom tooth hurts.  Somebody in the PoPo decided that we might need to introduce internment which I suspect is PoPo code for “look there’s nothing to do”.  Had some fun winding up Dick Coughlan’s followers who are so far left they’d have probably have Churchill locked up for introducing internment during WWII.  Actually they probably wouldn’t have time for Churchill at all…  I had to explain to them that actually genocide isn’t imprisonment you have to exterminate people… or at least have the intention to wipe out a race… which I don’t think being terrible at policing its self qualifies as…

Theresa May 30th

There was a TV debate while I was at work.  First leaflet not from the Tories.  Gill Hickson tells us the Conservatives all support a hard Brexit.  Labour voted with UKIP on Brexit.  And very little else.

Theresa May 31st

There was another debate that Theresa May didn’t turn up to because she is Queen Bee.  Amber Rudd was sent instead.  Theresa will regret it when the Queen asks Amber to form a government.  Didn’t see any of this I was at work.  I have toothache.  Last weak I had an anal tear.  And the other week I had to do self surgery to remove a skin tag.  None of the politicians have any real solutions to any of these problems.  I have officially lost interest now.  NHS.  Providing Homes.  Cliché cliché cliché.  Ms Hickson tells us she in on some residents associations, committees and the local neighbourhood watch and the usual social busybody stuff.  If I wanted a Miss Marple dressed in yellow I would have asked for one.

Amber Rudd 1st

Switched on the telly to see a “debate” between Peter Stringfellow in a pin striped suit and a female Oxford don in feminist academic uniform.  Both came over as complete twits in what was a thinly disguised free TV ad for their respective institutions.  I think all Oxbridge dons should wear full gowns and mortarboards at all times.  Funny how higher education is sold with endless pictures of gowns and mortarboards…  Never went to my graduation.  All I wanted was the piece of paper declaring me middle class.  What we need is internment.

Amber Rudd 2nd

Apparently my comments on Buddy Hell’s blog are still upsetting him.  Buddy Hell’s view of life is best described by this soundbite:

““Facts”? Is that the new word of power? All you’ve done is post cherry-picked links that suit your opinions. You have a right to your opinions but not the facts.”

Honestly it was bad enough listening to Livingstone, Abbot and Corbyn in the 1980s without being told they never said what they did.

Amber Rudd 3rd

Pinched nerve / RSI.  Stopping typing for a bit

Amber Rudd 4th 5th

Terror!  Still no leaflets from anyone but the Tories and the Lib dems.

Amber Rudd 6th

Wil Hodgeson asked on FB how anyone who claims to support Labour can mock Dianne Abbot. 

Amber Rudd 7th

Stuff writing on the internet.  All pain.  No gain.