30 March 2012

John Hughes 1936 - 1992

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. I miss him. I am sad that he is not here with us. I am sad that we have not had the benefit of his presence these past twenty years. I am sad for him that he has missed the past twenty years: time with his family would have meant a lot to him; time listening to music, watching plays and movies, reading and writing; time out walking on the moors; time counselling his clients; time managing his house and garden; time he never had. He should now be a mere 76 years old, maybe getting a little frail, but still with the energy and spark to engage, to contend, to contest, to affirm, to support, to love. Much of his life was sad in one way or another: raised fatherless in wartime London; injured in Cyprus during compulsory military service; married far too young having got his teenage girlfriend pregnant; periods of unemployment; more mouths to feed and a wife who knew little financial discipline; long working hours in a hell-hole industrial town; redundancy; divorce; isolation. His health declined, made worse by tobacco and alcohol: he suffered a bout of hepatitis. He had the first of several heart attacks in the mid-1980s, the final heart attack being fatal. I am hugely thankful that he was able to find love with Anne, to remarry and move to Cornwall. Would that much more of his life had been of that ilk.

I write this, not to claim special knowledge, special understanding or a special relationship with him. Each of my siblings (full, half and step) have their own experiences of him. I think that he impacted positivley on the lives of many people with whom he came into contact, especially in Cornwall and Devon. Each will have their own memories of him. I write this as a kind of wayside shrine, twenty years along the road. Not being one for cut flowers, I would perhaps plant a flowering rose in his memory, and maybe a peppermint bush as well.

...

For a while you were, about which I feel grateful. You died, and are now no more: I feel an aching loss. Who you were touched the lives of many, and shaped the lives of some, of whom I am one. Who you were will not be forgotten.

26 March 2012

Spring 2012 UK Budget - the last straw

I have cancelled my e-mails from the LibDems. I shall no longer deliver LibDem leaflets. This (by which I mean how the coalition govermnent has been behaving) is not merely different, it is in many respects the opposiite of what I voted for.

I confess: I voted for wealth redistribution, but from the likes of bankers with their generous salaries and eye-watering bonueses to families struggling to survive on minimum wage incomes or no income at all; not from poor people for whose meagre expenditure a 20% VAT on most goods is punitive; and from pensioners who are now being faced with a reduction in their tax allowance, to the richest peope whose top rate of income tax is being reduced from 50% to 45%, and who typically employ accountants in order to avoid paying tax.

I voted for public spending: on hospitals, nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, research and development, roads, railways, affordable housing.and a cleaner environment; not on futile wars overseas, or on a high prestige sports jamboree in London, or a high profile, high prestige, high cost, high speed railway line to carry rich people from their country homes in the Midlands to their fat-cat jobs in the City of London.

I voted for the proper funding of the National Health Service (NHS), and for a better system of care in the community for people with dementia / mental health issues. Instead, the Coalition government has set up mechanisms for privatising the NHS, and planned to create meaningless competition where there need be none.

I voted for access to higher education unfettered by tution fees. Instead, many universities will be charging tuition fees of GBP 9,000 p.a., so that students will leave university up to GBP 30,000 in debt.

I voted for job creation, so that there would not be another lost generation as there was under Margaret Thatcher. Instead, the unemployment figures in the UK are higher than ever, and youth unemployment has rocketed. Apprenticeships have been replaced by internships.

I voted for green safe energy, accompanied by a promise to block any attempt to return to nuclear power. Instead, EDF have been given the green light to start planning new nuclear power stations even before the reactors at Fukushima have fully cooled.

I voted for clean politics, not the grubby world of "donations for dinner", and the sordid cash for influence being offered by the (now former) Conservative Party Treasurer. Whilst it may not be fair to lay this charge at the feet of the Libdems, it is the LibDems who keep in power those for whom the charge is relevant.

I saw how coalition governments work in other countries, and thought that it would be the same in the UK: only goverment that needs to happen hapepns. I was willing, even excited, to give coalition politics the benefit of the doubt. However, the LibDems have shown themselves to be utterly complicit with the Conservative Party political agenda. How can I, or anyone, distinguish between the two parties in the coalition? The situation resembles that of the pigs at the end of George Orwell's novel 1984, who became indistinguishable from the farmer they overthrew.