I am in a room at the Bradford Leeds Airport Travel Lodge having watched the gut wrenching first episode of Five Daughters, a series of three interconnected dramas based on the killing of five young prostitutes in Suffolk in 2006, all of whom were also dependent on illegal drug use. I had intended to watch the second on the BBC i player and then the final live on the Television. Sometimes I cannot cope with more than one sad, tragic and sickening event, real to the parents, brothers and sisters, friends and the local community where they lived.
At the front of the Travel Lodge it is possible to see and planes taking off or landing at the airport, just across the roadway. yet from my open window at the rear of the building there is occasional sound of traffic on the main road from Leeds to Harrogate, and silence as soon as it is closed as the evening cools and dusk descends across the green farmland across a valley with not a dwelling in view.
I had no idea the location would be so good when I booked up in December to attend the Championship cricket game at the Yorkshire County ground Headingley and worked out that this was the nearest lodge at the amazing cost of £29 for the three nights.
The day went well until Yorkshire won the toss.
I decided not to set the alarm and trust that when I woke for the second time it would be around dawn between 5 and 7 am. It was just before 5 so after making myself comfortable I returned to bed and relaxed for just over half an hour before rising and completing preparations commenced the previous evening. Monday had been a solid working day in which the kitchen was given a great clean after its use for repairing and redecorating the garage and patio area, then the day room floor and surfaces, while the washing and drying was taking place. Late afternoon I called in at Azda for ‘pain au chocolate’ breakfasts and Danish pastries plus another tub of coleslaw, Milano salami and liquorice twists. At filling up the petrol tank at 118 pence a litre, a horrendous price, I called in at Morrison’s with my £5 voucher from using the supermarket petrol station and bought grapes, two melons and coffee, putting the extra on the credit card. After making up the sandwiches for the day and slicing a cucumber for picnic meals over the following three days, I enjoyed a bacon steak in a sesame seed bun. Later I was too look in the mirror and it was not the size of my tum which shocked but the double chin. I have become so different what I had always anticipated.
There was time to play a few rounds of Mahjong before packing the car and making a thermos of coffee.
I set off a little later that intended, just after eight arriving outside the cricket ground just after ten after an eventless journey in partial sunshine. I knew from previous experience it was wise to arrive between 9.30 and 10 to be sure of parking close to the ground and with relief I secured a place within a few metres of the Headingley entrance which remained a building site as the finishing touches were being put on the new Carnegie Pavilion and University teaching complex about six storeys high in a not unpleasant green and with a solar panel multi arched roof. I remain to be convinced of the building design or how it fits into the already makeshift of cricket ground after the Yorkshire members refused to move to a new ground on a Greenfield site outside the city boundaries.
Before the weekend Nicholas Clegg, or should I say David Cameron mark II, was being pressed by the media commentators to say who he would support and not support in the event of the increasingly likely unbalanced House of Commons, unbalanced because the number of seats for the Liberal democrats will not reflect the percentage of the popular vote.
He then said what everyone else had been saying that a continuing Labour Government who came last in the popular vote but held the greatest number of seats was not democratic and as a Liberal Democrat he would not support. This increased speculation that if Gordon Brown made way for someone else he might be able to do a deal but as was also pointed out the Lib Dems have been able to join with the Tories in running several councils to keep Labour out. The big issue was electoral reform and David Cameron Change Man mark I said he did support first past the post, well Turkey’s do not vote for Christmas or Thanks Giving, do they?
This led the politicians and the some media to accuse Change Man mark II of being arrogant and assuming how the public would vote. As soon as one media follows one track the rest follow like bleating sheep, unscrupulous and dishonest and living in their own curious world cut off from everyone else who on the whole is keeping their own Council until they are able to deliver what they hope is a coup de grass.
The continuation of the Lib Dem surge of over 10 percentage points is the problem. If the pollster employed by already politically committed newspapers and media organisations to the two party system of confrontational government and opposition are still admitting the Lib Dem surge than it can be assume it is greater than the figures being shown. Remember the first indication was a Twitter leak of the actual results which where they “corrected,” by increasing the number of don’t knows. All the subsequent polls admit the results are within a 5% margin of error and have between 8 to 10% undecided. This means that if the Lib Dems gained a swing of 10% to them after one broadcast they can pick up another 10% or more with the final broadcast and the last few days when it will be difficult for the Pollsters and media to sustain presenting a false position because of the discredit which will follow when the actual result is shown to be significantly different from what they are showing. No one is now likely to switch to Labour or Tories who was not previously committed and likelihood is that the hard core vote will swing to Cameron Mark II in order to punish the two main parties who they feel are responsible for our economic situation and genuine dissatisfaction with the political state. The media and the pundits got it run in the lead up to the broadcasts and therefore nothing they say since means anything until the final broadcast and people make up their minds over the weekend.
Time is also running out for my review of the Party political manifesto’s with over 150 pages to go of the Tory and Labour works of aspiration.
Starting with the Tory Change society section they mention that Carers provide some £87 billion ongoing free service, a sum twice that is immediately required to deal with the Banker’s debt. As previously mentioned the great new Tory idea is that those who are not already caring for individuals should care in the form of national and other services for everyone else. In my view this will cover for the reduction in public expenditure and which in turn will alter the balance between the public and private sector in the economy without any dramatic increase in commercial activity.
The other associated approach is to ensure that fewer people become dependent on NHS paid for drugs and care by insisting no one smokes, drinks or eats too well. This seems to me to construct the model citizen of the future as someone who will work longer and harder, use the majority of any free time in providing personal care and other good works, and stops drinking, smoking and over eating thus closing more pubs, tobacco manufacturing and junk food restaurants, reducing supermarket profits and staffing levels. It will be OK to spend more money on profit making entertainments though.
On a more serious note there is broad agreement to make doctors earn their money by providing a round the clock service and for doctors and nurses to stop killing those who enter hospital by reducing the amount of secondary infections.
The Conservative’s big idea on education is to encourage people to set up their own schools independently of local authority education departments. This might happen in a few areas where there are lots of stay at home parents whose other partner is earning sufficiently to enable them not to have to earn a living themselves. There is a plan to raise teaching standards which we all agree is a worthwhile objective but without overall increasing education expenditure will inevitably lead to larger class sizes in the short terms in order to pay existing teachers more and to attract new recruits. There is also a plan to convert soldiers into teachers and improve discipline in schools as a consequence. This sounds similar to the Hitler Youth and the Young Communist league programmes no less.
The Manifesto is full of contradictions having emphasised the need to encourage voluntarism, independence and deregulation the Tories want to improve quality against quantity and direct the teaching day into certain areas such as English, Maths Sciences and History, introducing a minimum standard reading test at the age of six. Yet if parents do not embrace the Big Society idea, who else will promote and effectively influence the young if is not primary and secondary teachers?
The Tory Party used to be party for law and order which tended to mean official covering up when things went wrong. Their main aim during the present election campaign is to show that crimes of violence have increased although the national crime figures do not bear this out, so they then resort to quoting individual examples from recent history of knife crime in particular, saying that the carrying of a knife should result in the presumption of a custodial sentence thus further removing the independence of the courts and filling up the increasingly ineffective prisons.
The contradiction is their subsequent statement of wanting to give the police greater discretion in who is charged and who is not and processing criminals more quickly by video linking to custody cells and courts. They are also suggesting that town and city centres have got worse on weekends when in fact no go areas for oldies were first created in the 1980’s, after youngsters brought back their two week annual holidays in Spain of drugs drinks and sex to the cold dark winter nights. The small amount of attention given to crime in all the manifesto’s indicates that this is not one of the key subjects in this election, except conspiracy among Members of Parliament to misuse their expenses while asking everyone else to accept cuts in their living standards.
The manifesto criticises the government’s decision to early release some prisoners because of severe overcrowding which had resulted being unable to focus on rehabilitation with the consequence that an increasing number of people re-offend within a short time of release up to over 90% from 25% in the early 1960’s, in part by filling up the prisons with drug addicts and mentally ill people. It costs over £150000 a year for a young offender to be looked after in a custodial centre and where there is no evidence that doing so prevents them from continuing to offend after they are released.
I can find very little about the creative arts in any of the manifestos but the Conservatives do praise Brighton as a creative and diverse city with 50 festivals year. Brighton is likely to send the first Green Party member to the House of Common this election which is why the traditional parties may not in fact be so keen on the creative arts, in fact.
The Conservatives will introduce a new agenda for Politics in the UK while remaining opposed to any change to the electoral system of first past the post which results in governments holding office with under fifty percent of the total votes cast and in this election under 40% as things stand. They want to take power away from the political elite yet the manifesto is full of a different set of targets and priorities so what is the point of the Tory Party or any other political party if is not to insist that its policies and programmes are put into practice by making even more laws than before? The Conservatives want to restore confidence in politics after is has been tarnished and broken, but who by? They want more transparency yet did not object to information on expenses being censored. I know I am being unfair but contemporary politics is about half truths and misrepresentations. A large number of voters are full of prejudices and bigotry but what happens t any politicians who calls it as it is?
I do like the idea of pubic hearings for the appointment of heads of advisory bodies and I am in favour of restricting their number to technical expertise and bodies which require political impartiality.
The Manifesto does admit that its last government was primarily responsible for dramatically reducing the powers of local government and centralizing power within individual authorities. I supported the idea of a City boss for London and would also support for Greater Manchester and Birmingham but I am less sure of Merseyside, Tyneside and Leeds unless it was in effect a sub regional elected controller but this would reintroduce a new tier of government in these areas. Having lost control of Newcastle the Tory plan suggests an attempt to gain power back, if it works for them in Tyneside as it has in London.
I fully support Tory proposals to cut back on the surveillance, particularly on the powers of local authorities. There is a commitment on having a free vote on repeal of the act banning Fox Hunting
In a section Strengthening the Union, The Manifesto declares that it does not oppose the proposed referendum on giving more powers to the Welsh Assembly. I support measures to also deal with the West Lothian Question. This will involve measures to ensure that only Members of Parliament for England and Wales vote on domestic matters excluding those from Scotland and Ireland.
I am puzzled by the section of the environment which appears to face in opposite directions at the same time. The document recognises the need for a greater emphasis on environmental protection but is not favour of retaining or extending enforcement measures.
The section on National defence and the role of the UK in the world supports the continuation of the Trident Missile system but supports strategic defence review which by implication means cutbacks in other areas which are not involved in combat situations. Labour has the same approach. This I suspect means the focus will be on cutting back on the navy and airforce hierarchy excluding helicopters, and also on some ships and aircraft.
The Manifesto leaves its most controversial subject until the end, Europe. On one hand Party Members remain anti European, and the Party is unable to join with other mainstream Conservatives parties such as those presently running France and Germany and instead allied itself with some curious parties some with fascist views. The basic problem is within the Party, The likely outcome is that disaffected Tories will vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party and Labour the National Front with in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland those of similar positioning will vote for the respective nationalist parties. So there is not much in the Manifesto that appeals although I admire Mr Cameron for the changes he has made and is making in those could well form the next Government although he appears to have mortgaged what he will do because of the Banker’s betrayal and what is in the Manifesto in order to retain its hard core of membership and its main financial backers.
At the front of the Travel Lodge it is possible to see and planes taking off or landing at the airport, just across the roadway. yet from my open window at the rear of the building there is occasional sound of traffic on the main road from Leeds to Harrogate, and silence as soon as it is closed as the evening cools and dusk descends across the green farmland across a valley with not a dwelling in view.
I had no idea the location would be so good when I booked up in December to attend the Championship cricket game at the Yorkshire County ground Headingley and worked out that this was the nearest lodge at the amazing cost of £29 for the three nights.
The day went well until Yorkshire won the toss.
I decided not to set the alarm and trust that when I woke for the second time it would be around dawn between 5 and 7 am. It was just before 5 so after making myself comfortable I returned to bed and relaxed for just over half an hour before rising and completing preparations commenced the previous evening. Monday had been a solid working day in which the kitchen was given a great clean after its use for repairing and redecorating the garage and patio area, then the day room floor and surfaces, while the washing and drying was taking place. Late afternoon I called in at Azda for ‘pain au chocolate’ breakfasts and Danish pastries plus another tub of coleslaw, Milano salami and liquorice twists. At filling up the petrol tank at 118 pence a litre, a horrendous price, I called in at Morrison’s with my £5 voucher from using the supermarket petrol station and bought grapes, two melons and coffee, putting the extra on the credit card. After making up the sandwiches for the day and slicing a cucumber for picnic meals over the following three days, I enjoyed a bacon steak in a sesame seed bun. Later I was too look in the mirror and it was not the size of my tum which shocked but the double chin. I have become so different what I had always anticipated.
There was time to play a few rounds of Mahjong before packing the car and making a thermos of coffee.
I set off a little later that intended, just after eight arriving outside the cricket ground just after ten after an eventless journey in partial sunshine. I knew from previous experience it was wise to arrive between 9.30 and 10 to be sure of parking close to the ground and with relief I secured a place within a few metres of the Headingley entrance which remained a building site as the finishing touches were being put on the new Carnegie Pavilion and University teaching complex about six storeys high in a not unpleasant green and with a solar panel multi arched roof. I remain to be convinced of the building design or how it fits into the already makeshift of cricket ground after the Yorkshire members refused to move to a new ground on a Greenfield site outside the city boundaries.
Before the weekend Nicholas Clegg, or should I say David Cameron mark II, was being pressed by the media commentators to say who he would support and not support in the event of the increasingly likely unbalanced House of Commons, unbalanced because the number of seats for the Liberal democrats will not reflect the percentage of the popular vote.
He then said what everyone else had been saying that a continuing Labour Government who came last in the popular vote but held the greatest number of seats was not democratic and as a Liberal Democrat he would not support. This increased speculation that if Gordon Brown made way for someone else he might be able to do a deal but as was also pointed out the Lib Dems have been able to join with the Tories in running several councils to keep Labour out. The big issue was electoral reform and David Cameron Change Man mark I said he did support first past the post, well Turkey’s do not vote for Christmas or Thanks Giving, do they?
This led the politicians and the some media to accuse Change Man mark II of being arrogant and assuming how the public would vote. As soon as one media follows one track the rest follow like bleating sheep, unscrupulous and dishonest and living in their own curious world cut off from everyone else who on the whole is keeping their own Council until they are able to deliver what they hope is a coup de grass.
The continuation of the Lib Dem surge of over 10 percentage points is the problem. If the pollster employed by already politically committed newspapers and media organisations to the two party system of confrontational government and opposition are still admitting the Lib Dem surge than it can be assume it is greater than the figures being shown. Remember the first indication was a Twitter leak of the actual results which where they “corrected,” by increasing the number of don’t knows. All the subsequent polls admit the results are within a 5% margin of error and have between 8 to 10% undecided. This means that if the Lib Dems gained a swing of 10% to them after one broadcast they can pick up another 10% or more with the final broadcast and the last few days when it will be difficult for the Pollsters and media to sustain presenting a false position because of the discredit which will follow when the actual result is shown to be significantly different from what they are showing. No one is now likely to switch to Labour or Tories who was not previously committed and likelihood is that the hard core vote will swing to Cameron Mark II in order to punish the two main parties who they feel are responsible for our economic situation and genuine dissatisfaction with the political state. The media and the pundits got it run in the lead up to the broadcasts and therefore nothing they say since means anything until the final broadcast and people make up their minds over the weekend.
Time is also running out for my review of the Party political manifesto’s with over 150 pages to go of the Tory and Labour works of aspiration.
Starting with the Tory Change society section they mention that Carers provide some £87 billion ongoing free service, a sum twice that is immediately required to deal with the Banker’s debt. As previously mentioned the great new Tory idea is that those who are not already caring for individuals should care in the form of national and other services for everyone else. In my view this will cover for the reduction in public expenditure and which in turn will alter the balance between the public and private sector in the economy without any dramatic increase in commercial activity.
The other associated approach is to ensure that fewer people become dependent on NHS paid for drugs and care by insisting no one smokes, drinks or eats too well. This seems to me to construct the model citizen of the future as someone who will work longer and harder, use the majority of any free time in providing personal care and other good works, and stops drinking, smoking and over eating thus closing more pubs, tobacco manufacturing and junk food restaurants, reducing supermarket profits and staffing levels. It will be OK to spend more money on profit making entertainments though.
On a more serious note there is broad agreement to make doctors earn their money by providing a round the clock service and for doctors and nurses to stop killing those who enter hospital by reducing the amount of secondary infections.
The Conservative’s big idea on education is to encourage people to set up their own schools independently of local authority education departments. This might happen in a few areas where there are lots of stay at home parents whose other partner is earning sufficiently to enable them not to have to earn a living themselves. There is a plan to raise teaching standards which we all agree is a worthwhile objective but without overall increasing education expenditure will inevitably lead to larger class sizes in the short terms in order to pay existing teachers more and to attract new recruits. There is also a plan to convert soldiers into teachers and improve discipline in schools as a consequence. This sounds similar to the Hitler Youth and the Young Communist league programmes no less.
The Manifesto is full of contradictions having emphasised the need to encourage voluntarism, independence and deregulation the Tories want to improve quality against quantity and direct the teaching day into certain areas such as English, Maths Sciences and History, introducing a minimum standard reading test at the age of six. Yet if parents do not embrace the Big Society idea, who else will promote and effectively influence the young if is not primary and secondary teachers?
The Tory Party used to be party for law and order which tended to mean official covering up when things went wrong. Their main aim during the present election campaign is to show that crimes of violence have increased although the national crime figures do not bear this out, so they then resort to quoting individual examples from recent history of knife crime in particular, saying that the carrying of a knife should result in the presumption of a custodial sentence thus further removing the independence of the courts and filling up the increasingly ineffective prisons.
The contradiction is their subsequent statement of wanting to give the police greater discretion in who is charged and who is not and processing criminals more quickly by video linking to custody cells and courts. They are also suggesting that town and city centres have got worse on weekends when in fact no go areas for oldies were first created in the 1980’s, after youngsters brought back their two week annual holidays in Spain of drugs drinks and sex to the cold dark winter nights. The small amount of attention given to crime in all the manifesto’s indicates that this is not one of the key subjects in this election, except conspiracy among Members of Parliament to misuse their expenses while asking everyone else to accept cuts in their living standards.
The manifesto criticises the government’s decision to early release some prisoners because of severe overcrowding which had resulted being unable to focus on rehabilitation with the consequence that an increasing number of people re-offend within a short time of release up to over 90% from 25% in the early 1960’s, in part by filling up the prisons with drug addicts and mentally ill people. It costs over £150000 a year for a young offender to be looked after in a custodial centre and where there is no evidence that doing so prevents them from continuing to offend after they are released.
I can find very little about the creative arts in any of the manifestos but the Conservatives do praise Brighton as a creative and diverse city with 50 festivals year. Brighton is likely to send the first Green Party member to the House of Common this election which is why the traditional parties may not in fact be so keen on the creative arts, in fact.
The Conservatives will introduce a new agenda for Politics in the UK while remaining opposed to any change to the electoral system of first past the post which results in governments holding office with under fifty percent of the total votes cast and in this election under 40% as things stand. They want to take power away from the political elite yet the manifesto is full of a different set of targets and priorities so what is the point of the Tory Party or any other political party if is not to insist that its policies and programmes are put into practice by making even more laws than before? The Conservatives want to restore confidence in politics after is has been tarnished and broken, but who by? They want more transparency yet did not object to information on expenses being censored. I know I am being unfair but contemporary politics is about half truths and misrepresentations. A large number of voters are full of prejudices and bigotry but what happens t any politicians who calls it as it is?
I do like the idea of pubic hearings for the appointment of heads of advisory bodies and I am in favour of restricting their number to technical expertise and bodies which require political impartiality.
The Manifesto does admit that its last government was primarily responsible for dramatically reducing the powers of local government and centralizing power within individual authorities. I supported the idea of a City boss for London and would also support for Greater Manchester and Birmingham but I am less sure of Merseyside, Tyneside and Leeds unless it was in effect a sub regional elected controller but this would reintroduce a new tier of government in these areas. Having lost control of Newcastle the Tory plan suggests an attempt to gain power back, if it works for them in Tyneside as it has in London.
I fully support Tory proposals to cut back on the surveillance, particularly on the powers of local authorities. There is a commitment on having a free vote on repeal of the act banning Fox Hunting
In a section Strengthening the Union, The Manifesto declares that it does not oppose the proposed referendum on giving more powers to the Welsh Assembly. I support measures to also deal with the West Lothian Question. This will involve measures to ensure that only Members of Parliament for England and Wales vote on domestic matters excluding those from Scotland and Ireland.
I am puzzled by the section of the environment which appears to face in opposite directions at the same time. The document recognises the need for a greater emphasis on environmental protection but is not favour of retaining or extending enforcement measures.
The section on National defence and the role of the UK in the world supports the continuation of the Trident Missile system but supports strategic defence review which by implication means cutbacks in other areas which are not involved in combat situations. Labour has the same approach. This I suspect means the focus will be on cutting back on the navy and airforce hierarchy excluding helicopters, and also on some ships and aircraft.
The Manifesto leaves its most controversial subject until the end, Europe. On one hand Party Members remain anti European, and the Party is unable to join with other mainstream Conservatives parties such as those presently running France and Germany and instead allied itself with some curious parties some with fascist views. The basic problem is within the Party, The likely outcome is that disaffected Tories will vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party and Labour the National Front with in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland those of similar positioning will vote for the respective nationalist parties. So there is not much in the Manifesto that appeals although I admire Mr Cameron for the changes he has made and is making in those could well form the next Government although he appears to have mortgaged what he will do because of the Banker’s betrayal and what is in the Manifesto in order to retain its hard core of membership and its main financial backers.
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