I have just finished reading Under the Dome, a novel by Stephen King. Now, I am by no means a Stephen King aficionado: I have read only one other book by him (Christine) although I have seen a few films based on his stories (Christine, Carrie, The Shawshank Redemption, Misery). This is probably because, although many might argue, King is often categorised as a ‘horror’ writer or, at a stretch, a fantasy writer, two genres of which I am not a massive fan. However, ever since UtD was published in 2009, I had been intrigued by the premise (a typical small US town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the country by, in effect, being placed under a vast unbreakable bell-jar: nothing can get in and nothing can get out) and wondered where he would take the story from that starting point. Having now finished the book, I am sorry that it took me quite so long to get around to reading it.
The story seems to work on several levels. Imagine Kafka’s novels Metamorphosis and The Trial but, instead of poor Gregor alone waking up in an alien state or K’s bewilderment in trying to deal with a faceless tyranny, a whole community is turned upside down in a second with the small municipal powerbases, fairly meaningless in normal day-to-day life, suddenly taking on sinister and very significant meaning for some unfortunate members of that community. It creates a microcosm, a petri-dish, if you will, in which we can study: the potential global environmental disaster that we fossil fuel addicts face playing out to its terrifying conclusion; an America where resources are becoming scarce and and what the citizens in control of those dwindling stocks will do to retain that control; a neat riff on the Lord of the Flies story, ripped from its Pacific island setting and plonked down in Maine (where, unsurprisingly, the outcomes are broadly similar); a little fun with fundamentalist Christians and those who have lost their faith; and the idea of ‘worlds-within-worlds’ (if we tread on an ant, what if there is something 'out there' that sees us as mere ants....). It is a long book and it has a massive cast of characters (sometimes a little difficult to keep track of) but it never really sags. King says in the ‘Author’s Note’ that he wanted to write a “pedal-to-the-metal” novel and he has certainly achieved this aim. Becuase the timescale in which events happen is relatively short, it feels pressurised, claustrophobic, sweaty - all the feelings that his characters feel as the tensions and hardships ratchet up across the course of a week. It definitely keeps the pages turning without resorting to every chapter being two pages long (Dan Brown - I’m looking at you!) and I like the fact that a song (James McMurty’s ‘Small Town’) and a key line from it (“It’s a small town and we all support the team”) is referenced several times. This despite the fact that C&W music is not the main force in town: the Christian radio station WCIK (or "Jesus Radio”) and its 24-hour diet of hymns and gospels dominates the town’s airwaves. The fact that the entire operation is automated and on an endless loop is a comment in itself...
I wouldn’t call it a criticism but, for some, the descriptions of some of the deaths and injuries inflicted by various weapons are gleefully gory. That said, King is writing in the horror genre so - hey! - you know what to expect and what you do or do not like. Similarly, with such a big book having been written in a comparatively short time (480 days, apparently), it does mean that there are going to be a few clunky or pulpy lines in there but, overall, I’d still say that, in literary worth, it is head and shoulders above anything else that you might choose to pick up at an airport for holiday reading (although, given its length and that it starts with a plane crash, maybe it wouldn’t be an ideal airport purchase). In a plot that was intriguing, well-paced and thought through, there were plenty of good lines, some that made me laugh and some that brought a tear. That’s all I ask from a good story.
By way of an experiment, about half-way through the book, I watched the first episode of the TV series ‘based on’ UtD. Apart from the fact that the book and the show share a name, a few characters have the same names as characters in the book (although, bizarrely, are not the characters they share their names with) and there is a dome, it is a completely different kettle of fish. Apparently, it is just about to start its third season, so the ‘pressurised’ feel of the book is definitely not something the TV producers have aimed to reproduce.
Wednesday, 20 May 2015
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
The Streets of London
Elaine recently got an invite to a reunion lunch with Boots staff that she used to work with in Croydon twenty-odd years ago. The meal was to happen on a Sunday in central London and originally she had thought about commuting there and back on the same day, something she had done for the first of these reunions around a year ago. However, after a bit of research into hotel and train costs (need to be a little more parsimonious as a pensioner!), we decided to make a weekend of it and both travel down on Saturday morning, stay overnight and return on Sunday evening. We booked a hotel and a table at a restaurant for Saturday night with the intention that we could get around and see a few things on Saturday and Sunday morning, after which Elaine could go to her reunion meal and I could...well, do whatever for a few hours.
Travelling down was great: the 8:35 train from Piccadilly is a good option - not too early, yet early enough to leave most of Saturday available to sightsee/shop/watch the world go by. After dropping off the bags at the hotel, we set off to do touristy stuff. However, such touristy stuff normally happens in central London or the West End. This time, we were heading east and trying out Docklands and the area around the O2.
There is still much building and remodelling going on in Docklands. Certainly, the chill wind of austerity seems to be blowing rather warmer over this part of London. After traveling on the Docklands Light Railway (a first for us) to Canary Wharf and negotiating a building site, we managed to work our way down amongst the offices and shops that fill the area. There is definitely another world going on down in London! We came a cross a large subterranean shopping mall which was populated, in the main, by very upmarket brands. In fact, when I saw a branch of River Island I thought it seemed completely out of place, a retail pony amongst a paddock full of sleek, expensive thoroughbreds. As Elaine noted, the branch of Boots (hey, even bankers need cold remedies and prescriptions dispensed) carried franchises for Chanel and Clarins, something that a Boots of this size would never normally be granted. There was definitely money down here beneath the London streets.
Returning to the street level, we took a river taxi to North Greenwich, site of the O2. “River taxi” makes it sound quaint - a small boat that ambles politely along the Thames perhaps? No, this is a huge catamaran that seats more than 100 passengers and it provides a fabulously different way of looking at the capital. The ticket we had bought also included a ‘flight’ on the Emirates Airline, a cablecar across the Thames. After a nostalgic look round the O2 site (we were last there 15 years ago when it was still the Milennium Dome), we walked across to the the cablecar station. The ride across is fantastic and I would definitely recommend it to all visitors to London. At to top of the ‘flight’, you are 93 meters above the river and the view is wonderful (especially with the great weather that we had that day). Again, it gives a different view of a city that you think you know well. We rounded off the flight with a couple of beers on a converted lighter boat moored on one of the old docks where we watched water skiers practice using a pulley system rather than the traditional speedboat to drag them back and forth along the dock.
That evening, we explored Tower Bridge and environs (wow! I’d forgotten how many overseas visitors London gets - and quite how many are from Italy!) before heading to a pub for a preprandial libation in a very trendy pub. It is a strange fact of getting older. I recall being in a hotel in the Lake District on the day before Diana’s funeral in 1997 and looking around the dining room, realising that we were the youngest couple there by some way. Now, in that pub near to Tower Bridge, we were probably the oldest couple by 15-20 years! Sic transit gloria mundi - hey ho...
The meal that evening was a game of two halves: good cocktails (when they got them right), good food (when they got it right) and great customer service (which we fully tested!). The cocktails: Elaine’s arrived as ordered and was delish. I had ordered a London Gin Martini - basically a classic martini made with London dry gin. What I received was, in fact, just a glass of vermouth. And to make matters worse, not even a dry vermouth! I eventually managed to point this out to the waiter (“You have a martini - this is not what you ordered?” “No - a martini has gin in it, lots of gin”) and my martini, as ordered, duly arrived albeit as I was part-way through the starter. When the mains were brought, mine was fine but Elaine’s consisted of a medium steak (she’d ordered rare) and cold Lyonnaise potatoes. Again, to give them their due, the meal was taken away and replaced with a perfectly cooked version and the manager agreed to comp the wine. When the bill came, however, it featured not only the supposedly free wine but also a completely extraneous pint of lager! Things were not going well. The mistake was pointed out (we were starting to feel bad about calling the waiter over) and the bill revised accordingly. Just as we were getting ready to settle the bill, the second-in-command of the front of house came across with a rather nice bottle of wine, poured two very decent measures and gave them to us with his apologies for the problems we had experienced. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you pull some kind of victory from the jaws of a customer service defeat: quickly correct your mistakes and be genuine in your apologies - it goes a mighty long way. Anyhow, I’d like to think the two very large parties the restaurant was dealing with (it was packed) went some way to explaining the problems we encountered and I would still reccommend the Perkin Reveller to anyone staying in the Tower Bridge area.
On Sunday, not wanting to pay £20 (!!!) for the hotel’s version of a full English, we headed to Dishoom in Covent Garden, an eaterie modelled on a Bombay cafe. There were so many intriguing things on the menu for breakfast and I wanted to try them all. What we had was excellent and, judging by the numbers eating there, it is popular because the food is good and reasonably-priced. We then found that the restaurant where Elaine was attend the reunion was three doors down from Dishoom! So, with time to kill, we wandered around. Went to Covent Garden to see the street performers (only two automatons), check if any of the shops that we used to know are still there (one or two are) and generally waste some time. We also had a look around Seven Dials and the streets that radiate from it (still love that area!). Eventually, I left Elaine at her reunion and I headed to sit in a small square in Neal’s Yard to read whilst soaking up the sun. It felt really relaxing - chilling amongst the crowds, a world rushing by as I remained motionless.
I had promised to take a selfie outside the 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street so, off I set. I believe that, as part of the ongoing social cleansing of London which is removing all traces of the ‘true’ capital, Denmark Street is to be remodelled so it was probably a good time to see it before it goes the same way as the rest of Soho. Having walked up and down the street a couple of times (it’s not that long), I consulted t’internet as to where the 12 Bar is on Denmark Street only to find that, pre-empting the changes, it has moved to Harrow Road, so no selfie. However, I was able to drool all over the fabulous guitars in the windows all along that street! I didn’t dare enter any of the shops - I might not have been able to restrain my guitar-buying fetish (altough the prices were certainly a buzzkill - £22 grand for a ’67 Strat, anyone?)
17:37 train back from Euston - again, a good time as we were back home for half eight and we had had the whole of Sunday to do stuff. In all, a ‘proper’ two days, rather than the day-plus-a-bit that a weekend trip can sometimes yield. We know we can get the train tickets cheaper in future and we could also stay somewhere cheaper in town so we are thinking that, perhaps, trips to London might be a more regular thing and not just saved for when a Boots reunion is called!
Travelling down was great: the 8:35 train from Piccadilly is a good option - not too early, yet early enough to leave most of Saturday available to sightsee/shop/watch the world go by. After dropping off the bags at the hotel, we set off to do touristy stuff. However, such touristy stuff normally happens in central London or the West End. This time, we were heading east and trying out Docklands and the area around the O2.
There is still much building and remodelling going on in Docklands. Certainly, the chill wind of austerity seems to be blowing rather warmer over this part of London. After traveling on the Docklands Light Railway (a first for us) to Canary Wharf and negotiating a building site, we managed to work our way down amongst the offices and shops that fill the area. There is definitely another world going on down in London! We came a cross a large subterranean shopping mall which was populated, in the main, by very upmarket brands. In fact, when I saw a branch of River Island I thought it seemed completely out of place, a retail pony amongst a paddock full of sleek, expensive thoroughbreds. As Elaine noted, the branch of Boots (hey, even bankers need cold remedies and prescriptions dispensed) carried franchises for Chanel and Clarins, something that a Boots of this size would never normally be granted. There was definitely money down here beneath the London streets.
Returning to the street level, we took a river taxi to North Greenwich, site of the O2. “River taxi” makes it sound quaint - a small boat that ambles politely along the Thames perhaps? No, this is a huge catamaran that seats more than 100 passengers and it provides a fabulously different way of looking at the capital. The ticket we had bought also included a ‘flight’ on the Emirates Airline, a cablecar across the Thames. After a nostalgic look round the O2 site (we were last there 15 years ago when it was still the Milennium Dome), we walked across to the the cablecar station. The ride across is fantastic and I would definitely recommend it to all visitors to London. At to top of the ‘flight’, you are 93 meters above the river and the view is wonderful (especially with the great weather that we had that day). Again, it gives a different view of a city that you think you know well. We rounded off the flight with a couple of beers on a converted lighter boat moored on one of the old docks where we watched water skiers practice using a pulley system rather than the traditional speedboat to drag them back and forth along the dock.
That evening, we explored Tower Bridge and environs (wow! I’d forgotten how many overseas visitors London gets - and quite how many are from Italy!) before heading to a pub for a preprandial libation in a very trendy pub. It is a strange fact of getting older. I recall being in a hotel in the Lake District on the day before Diana’s funeral in 1997 and looking around the dining room, realising that we were the youngest couple there by some way. Now, in that pub near to Tower Bridge, we were probably the oldest couple by 15-20 years! Sic transit gloria mundi - hey ho...
The meal that evening was a game of two halves: good cocktails (when they got them right), good food (when they got it right) and great customer service (which we fully tested!). The cocktails: Elaine’s arrived as ordered and was delish. I had ordered a London Gin Martini - basically a classic martini made with London dry gin. What I received was, in fact, just a glass of vermouth. And to make matters worse, not even a dry vermouth! I eventually managed to point this out to the waiter (“You have a martini - this is not what you ordered?” “No - a martini has gin in it, lots of gin”) and my martini, as ordered, duly arrived albeit as I was part-way through the starter. When the mains were brought, mine was fine but Elaine’s consisted of a medium steak (she’d ordered rare) and cold Lyonnaise potatoes. Again, to give them their due, the meal was taken away and replaced with a perfectly cooked version and the manager agreed to comp the wine. When the bill came, however, it featured not only the supposedly free wine but also a completely extraneous pint of lager! Things were not going well. The mistake was pointed out (we were starting to feel bad about calling the waiter over) and the bill revised accordingly. Just as we were getting ready to settle the bill, the second-in-command of the front of house came across with a rather nice bottle of wine, poured two very decent measures and gave them to us with his apologies for the problems we had experienced. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you pull some kind of victory from the jaws of a customer service defeat: quickly correct your mistakes and be genuine in your apologies - it goes a mighty long way. Anyhow, I’d like to think the two very large parties the restaurant was dealing with (it was packed) went some way to explaining the problems we encountered and I would still reccommend the Perkin Reveller to anyone staying in the Tower Bridge area.
On Sunday, not wanting to pay £20 (!!!) for the hotel’s version of a full English, we headed to Dishoom in Covent Garden, an eaterie modelled on a Bombay cafe. There were so many intriguing things on the menu for breakfast and I wanted to try them all. What we had was excellent and, judging by the numbers eating there, it is popular because the food is good and reasonably-priced. We then found that the restaurant where Elaine was attend the reunion was three doors down from Dishoom! So, with time to kill, we wandered around. Went to Covent Garden to see the street performers (only two automatons), check if any of the shops that we used to know are still there (one or two are) and generally waste some time. We also had a look around Seven Dials and the streets that radiate from it (still love that area!). Eventually, I left Elaine at her reunion and I headed to sit in a small square in Neal’s Yard to read whilst soaking up the sun. It felt really relaxing - chilling amongst the crowds, a world rushing by as I remained motionless.
I had promised to take a selfie outside the 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street so, off I set. I believe that, as part of the ongoing social cleansing of London which is removing all traces of the ‘true’ capital, Denmark Street is to be remodelled so it was probably a good time to see it before it goes the same way as the rest of Soho. Having walked up and down the street a couple of times (it’s not that long), I consulted t’internet as to where the 12 Bar is on Denmark Street only to find that, pre-empting the changes, it has moved to Harrow Road, so no selfie. However, I was able to drool all over the fabulous guitars in the windows all along that street! I didn’t dare enter any of the shops - I might not have been able to restrain my guitar-buying fetish (altough the prices were certainly a buzzkill - £22 grand for a ’67 Strat, anyone?)
17:37 train back from Euston - again, a good time as we were back home for half eight and we had had the whole of Sunday to do stuff. In all, a ‘proper’ two days, rather than the day-plus-a-bit that a weekend trip can sometimes yield. We know we can get the train tickets cheaper in future and we could also stay somewhere cheaper in town so we are thinking that, perhaps, trips to London might be a more regular thing and not just saved for when a Boots reunion is called!
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Making Your Mind Up
After a seemingly-endless yet curiously anodyne period of campaigning, the moment to actually vote is almost upon us: tomorrow is the 7th May - Election Day!
You can call me dogmatic, a fool, old-school or whatever, but I see no sense in voting anything other than Labour when I cast my vote tomorrow at Ramsbottom Library. The reasons for this choice are (to my mind) simple enough: in their five years in power, the coalition (main partners, the Tories; sleeping - nay, comatose - partners, the Lib-Dems) have done little but break promise after promise - no top-down reorganisation of the NHS, bringing debt under control by the end of the Parliament, no rise in tuition fees, no rise in VAT and so on - in the course of punishing the poor, the vulnerable and the sick whilst lining the pockets of their mates in the banks and big business. We are constantly told about ‘the economic recovery’, yet the average person in the street has seen no rise in wages over the last five years: any such ‘recovery’ seems to have benefitted the owners of the companies but not the workers who staff those companies. The Tories (let’s call a spade a spade: a shotgun marriage between a vicious, snaling lion released from captivity after 13 years and an amiable, bumbling hamster would never be described as ‘a coalition’!) and their allies in the Street of Shame have spent that five years trying to drive a wedge between those of us who do not share their priviledged existence: blame the immigrants, scapegoat the ‘undeserving’ poor (as opposed to those ‘hardworking families’ - i.e. employed) and, most of all, blame the previous Labour government.
David Cameron has spent a copious amount of time reminding people of the deficit that the coalition inherited when they came to power. He even (supposedly) had a copy to hand on the campaign trail this week of the note left by the outgoing Labour administration to say that there was ‘no money left’. Leaving aside that that the note was the kind of jokey note that is always left for the incoming government and the unlikelihood of Cameron carrying it around with him, I can agree with him that the coalition inherited a deficit. Where we disagree is the reason for that deficit. Cameron and his cronies have, from Day 1, banged on about it being Labour’s fault and , as such, an illustration of ‘typical’ Labour mismanagement of budgeting in office. Leaving aside the fact that, upto 2008, Labour were doing very well, thank you, and fiscal ‘mismanagement’ would have been impossible to claim, a little incident came along in that year that screwed everything up for everyone and, boy, do I mean everyone! The global financial crisis that hit in that year toppled some banks, almost toppled many others, brought the Eurozone to the point of collapse and cost an arm and a leg in this country to avoid us becoming an economic basket case. Sub-prime lending and completely reckless investments, begun by US banks but then replicated in this country were behind the crash. It is true that newly-relaxed banking regulations under Labour did not help at all. However, at the time, the Tories actually urged Gordon Brown to go further in relaxing the rules. I think it would be fair to say, therefore, the banking crisis was facilitated by the naivety of politiciancs of all stripes when it came to trusting the banks. However, only Labour is blamed by the Tories: the spendthrift bankers are never mentioned. And that gravy train just keeps rolling...
My personal ‘red line’ is the coalition’s deceitful treatment of the NHS. “No top-down reorganisation of the NHS” trumpeted Cameron pre-election in 2010. Equally, there was no mention of any NHS reorganisation in the party’s manifesto. However, almost immediately after coming to power, the coalition embarked on the biggest top-down reorganisation of the NHS since its inception in 1948. At a cost of some £3 billion (a conservative estimate), the NHS was transformed from a fairly bureaucratic but understandable structure into an even more bureaucratic structure. Tiers of management were stripped out and replaced by addtional layers of managers! Overnight, people who had worked in the NHS for years suddenly found they had no idea who was responsible for certain services. If it was bad for NHS employees, just think how patients and members of the public felt! And, to cap it all, on the eve of the election, the re-organisations have been largely abandoned as an unworkable and unwanted change. £3 billion wasted in a time of so-called austerity.
There are many other awful decisions by the coalition I could cite (the Bedroom Tax, employing IDS in the cabinet etc.) but I don’t want to waste more time on such obvious targets. So, the Tories and their corpse bride, the Lib-Dems, are out as voting options. UKIP are the neanderthal wing of the Tory party who, seemingly, have noting to offer beyond stopping immigration and getting out of the EU. If these two things don’t happen, then they have absolutely no funds for anything else in their manifesto. One-trick ponies and it’s a poor trick at that. That leaves the Greens (in terms of ‘real’ parties anyway - I realise there will be other chancers on the ballot paper who are looking for the quickest way to dispose of their deposit fee). There are things about the Greens that I like: locally, their candidate, John, is a nice guy and I think he would do a good job for Bury North. Nationally, I have some concerns - manifesto too much of a wish-list? track record in Brighton patchy? - but it would be good to see them get some more seats in Westminster. However, when it comes down to it, Bury North will be a straight contest between Labour and the Conservatives: voting for anyone else will not alter that fact. The incumbent, David Nuttall, has, frankly, done zip for this constituency. He is on the list of top ten Tory MPs most likely to defect to UKIP, opposes same-sex marriage and pay equality between the sexes. I am surprised that in the last few weeks he has managed to find his way back to Bury, suddenly realising that being quite so low-profile is probably doing nothing for his re-election chances. In a desperate last fling of the dice, he brought the Tory battle bus to Ramsbottom last week...and virtually no-one saw it. They visited one section of the newest estate where they had obviously found a concentration of confirmed Tory supporters before departing like thieves in the night. Campaigning only with your core supporters seems to have been a staple of this election and has been the same for all parties. As noted above, ‘anodyne’...
I know Labour at a national level are not perfect but, when we all vote tomorrow, we do need to remember that we are, first and foremost, voting for our local MP, the person who will best represent our interests on the national stage. James, the Labour candidate, is the only representative of the main parties who has consistently campaigned for a 'Fair Deal for Bury’ and seems to have the ‘tools to do the job’. For those reasons, I shall be voting for him tomorrow. If, as a side effect we will then see the back of David Nuttall forever and, hopefully, the Con-LibDem coalition that has proved so ineffective in ensuring “we are all in this together” over the past five years, then, all the better.
Basta! Vote Labour GE2015!
You can call me dogmatic, a fool, old-school or whatever, but I see no sense in voting anything other than Labour when I cast my vote tomorrow at Ramsbottom Library. The reasons for this choice are (to my mind) simple enough: in their five years in power, the coalition (main partners, the Tories; sleeping - nay, comatose - partners, the Lib-Dems) have done little but break promise after promise - no top-down reorganisation of the NHS, bringing debt under control by the end of the Parliament, no rise in tuition fees, no rise in VAT and so on - in the course of punishing the poor, the vulnerable and the sick whilst lining the pockets of their mates in the banks and big business. We are constantly told about ‘the economic recovery’, yet the average person in the street has seen no rise in wages over the last five years: any such ‘recovery’ seems to have benefitted the owners of the companies but not the workers who staff those companies. The Tories (let’s call a spade a spade: a shotgun marriage between a vicious, snaling lion released from captivity after 13 years and an amiable, bumbling hamster would never be described as ‘a coalition’!) and their allies in the Street of Shame have spent that five years trying to drive a wedge between those of us who do not share their priviledged existence: blame the immigrants, scapegoat the ‘undeserving’ poor (as opposed to those ‘hardworking families’ - i.e. employed) and, most of all, blame the previous Labour government.
David Cameron has spent a copious amount of time reminding people of the deficit that the coalition inherited when they came to power. He even (supposedly) had a copy to hand on the campaign trail this week of the note left by the outgoing Labour administration to say that there was ‘no money left’. Leaving aside that that the note was the kind of jokey note that is always left for the incoming government and the unlikelihood of Cameron carrying it around with him, I can agree with him that the coalition inherited a deficit. Where we disagree is the reason for that deficit. Cameron and his cronies have, from Day 1, banged on about it being Labour’s fault and , as such, an illustration of ‘typical’ Labour mismanagement of budgeting in office. Leaving aside the fact that, upto 2008, Labour were doing very well, thank you, and fiscal ‘mismanagement’ would have been impossible to claim, a little incident came along in that year that screwed everything up for everyone and, boy, do I mean everyone! The global financial crisis that hit in that year toppled some banks, almost toppled many others, brought the Eurozone to the point of collapse and cost an arm and a leg in this country to avoid us becoming an economic basket case. Sub-prime lending and completely reckless investments, begun by US banks but then replicated in this country were behind the crash. It is true that newly-relaxed banking regulations under Labour did not help at all. However, at the time, the Tories actually urged Gordon Brown to go further in relaxing the rules. I think it would be fair to say, therefore, the banking crisis was facilitated by the naivety of politiciancs of all stripes when it came to trusting the banks. However, only Labour is blamed by the Tories: the spendthrift bankers are never mentioned. And that gravy train just keeps rolling...
My personal ‘red line’ is the coalition’s deceitful treatment of the NHS. “No top-down reorganisation of the NHS” trumpeted Cameron pre-election in 2010. Equally, there was no mention of any NHS reorganisation in the party’s manifesto. However, almost immediately after coming to power, the coalition embarked on the biggest top-down reorganisation of the NHS since its inception in 1948. At a cost of some £3 billion (a conservative estimate), the NHS was transformed from a fairly bureaucratic but understandable structure into an even more bureaucratic structure. Tiers of management were stripped out and replaced by addtional layers of managers! Overnight, people who had worked in the NHS for years suddenly found they had no idea who was responsible for certain services. If it was bad for NHS employees, just think how patients and members of the public felt! And, to cap it all, on the eve of the election, the re-organisations have been largely abandoned as an unworkable and unwanted change. £3 billion wasted in a time of so-called austerity.
There are many other awful decisions by the coalition I could cite (the Bedroom Tax, employing IDS in the cabinet etc.) but I don’t want to waste more time on such obvious targets. So, the Tories and their corpse bride, the Lib-Dems, are out as voting options. UKIP are the neanderthal wing of the Tory party who, seemingly, have noting to offer beyond stopping immigration and getting out of the EU. If these two things don’t happen, then they have absolutely no funds for anything else in their manifesto. One-trick ponies and it’s a poor trick at that. That leaves the Greens (in terms of ‘real’ parties anyway - I realise there will be other chancers on the ballot paper who are looking for the quickest way to dispose of their deposit fee). There are things about the Greens that I like: locally, their candidate, John, is a nice guy and I think he would do a good job for Bury North. Nationally, I have some concerns - manifesto too much of a wish-list? track record in Brighton patchy? - but it would be good to see them get some more seats in Westminster. However, when it comes down to it, Bury North will be a straight contest between Labour and the Conservatives: voting for anyone else will not alter that fact. The incumbent, David Nuttall, has, frankly, done zip for this constituency. He is on the list of top ten Tory MPs most likely to defect to UKIP, opposes same-sex marriage and pay equality between the sexes. I am surprised that in the last few weeks he has managed to find his way back to Bury, suddenly realising that being quite so low-profile is probably doing nothing for his re-election chances. In a desperate last fling of the dice, he brought the Tory battle bus to Ramsbottom last week...and virtually no-one saw it. They visited one section of the newest estate where they had obviously found a concentration of confirmed Tory supporters before departing like thieves in the night. Campaigning only with your core supporters seems to have been a staple of this election and has been the same for all parties. As noted above, ‘anodyne’...
I know Labour at a national level are not perfect but, when we all vote tomorrow, we do need to remember that we are, first and foremost, voting for our local MP, the person who will best represent our interests on the national stage. James, the Labour candidate, is the only representative of the main parties who has consistently campaigned for a 'Fair Deal for Bury’ and seems to have the ‘tools to do the job’. For those reasons, I shall be voting for him tomorrow. If, as a side effect we will then see the back of David Nuttall forever and, hopefully, the Con-LibDem coalition that has proved so ineffective in ensuring “we are all in this together” over the past five years, then, all the better.
Basta! Vote Labour GE2015!
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