Epiblog for Remembrance Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme valley.  The weather continues to deteriorate. Dark wet days, days of dead leaves, pressed wet against the decking and on my wheelchair ramp.

And what a week it has been. No sooner had I posted this blog last Sunday afternoon, than Debbie decided she had better take Misty out for a walk.  They went up Castle Hill as they often do. Coming back, they came to a stile. Now, Misty is not good at climbing stiles. In many ways, as a doggie, she is deficient. Not for nothing is she known as the “borderline” collie. She’s always clumsy, and I could just imagine her completely demolishing one of those collie dog agility courses. But she tries her best and she’s a resourceful little animal, God bless her.  Usually, when Debbie gets to a stile, she unclips the lead from the harness and then uses it to help Misty over, by lifting her in it until she gets the idea and scrambles up.  As sod’s law would have it, just at the critical point where she was unclipped from the harness, a huge salvo of very noisy fireworks split the sky over Berry Brow, and Misty skedaddled. There she was, gone.

Debbie phoned me on her mobile to tell me she was looking for the dog, who’d run off, and so began the worst nine hours of my life, in recent memory at least.  Eventually, Debbie came back, minus the dog, and after a quick change out of her wet clothes, set off out again in the camper van to see if she could cover a wider area.  This, too, proved fruitless.  By the time she came back, I had already been in touch with the Kirklees MBC dog wardens, the kennels and the police, plus the Freedom of Spirit Trust for Border Collies, and  Dogslost.com

Debbie was already dropping with tiredness and still had to prepare for her Monday classes, but she dumped the camper in the driveway and set off yet again, on foot this time, re-tracing her steps, step for step, stopping off at her mum’s en route to pick up Zak, in the hope that he could help sniff out where Misty had gone to ground.

Debbie finally got back from that particular expedition, having dropped Zak back at his house, but still minus Misty. That was the lowest low point of the evening. I made her a cup of coffee and reluctantly, at getting on for midnight, she started work on preparing for Monday.  Meanwhile, people were still sharing it like mad on Facebook and Dogslost, and some people had even turned up all the way from Almondbury when Deb was still up there at Berry Brow, having seen it online and wanting to join in the search, God bless them.

We resigned ourselves to the fact that she was lost, and her fate was now in the hands of others. I said to Debbie that I would have a snooze now, and that when she finished her prep, she should give me a boot to wake me up and then I would take over the watch by the conservatory door. By 1.40AM, I was already on station, my poncho wrapped round me, and the hot water bottle wedged behind me in the wheelchair. I was nodding and snoozing and then, suddenly, a ghostly white face appeared through the murk outside the door. Misty! She had found her own way home! I lost no time in letting her in, and we both made the most enormous fuss of her. She made a beeline for the food dish and hoovered up the muttnuts, obviously starving. 

Meanwhile the internet had been busy. Over 1000 people had shared the post about Misty being missing on Facebook and Dogslost.com, and of course each of those shares had shared it with their friends, and friends of friends, and so on.  Thus it was that for a couple of days I was fielding calls on my mobile saying that Misty was running around in Bishop’s Court or that she had been seen with a woman on a bus on the way to Huddersfield. It was a bit like Elvis and the chip shop on Mars, but I wasn’t complaining – the dog had come back, and I was happy as a pig in slurry.

As far as the morons who let off the fireworks were concerned, I have been praying that they blow their own hand off. Well, OK, maybe just a finger. Sorry if that makes me a bad Christian, but, hey, tough bupkes; try not being an animal abuser in the first place, you idiots.

In case you wondered, by the way, Matilda’s reaction to the fireworks is one of undisguised fury, as is mine. She hisses and growls and glares, and looks as if she would quite happily rip the throat out of those responsible if given the opportunity. Go, Matilda!

The drama of Misty going missing was compounded by the fact that for most of Monday we were devoid of electricity. This was not because we hadn’t paid the bill; it was planned, because they needed to install some new high level infrastructure or something. Anyway, it meant a day in the dark, and sadly, a day without Ruth Goodman to knit me a sheep while birthing a bedspread.  Eventually the current returned and we were able to begin playing the game of catch-up, that lasted the rest of the week.

The rest of the week, such as it was, passed quickly. On Thursday I was the recipient of a very welcome Lemon Drizzle cake. This was because I had agreed to do some OCR scanning for Bernard’s  granddaughter, in return for which I had mugged her to edit the e-books file of Hampshire Hauntings and Hearsay. I think I got the better end of the bargain, and in addition I got to spend the afternoon in the company of Bernard, who never fails to lift my spirits, even when he is telling me off, declaring that the reason I can’t grow anything is because I live in a wood; and his granddaughter, a very personable young lady. And she brought the aforesaid Lemon Drizzle cake, which she had baked. Never bad.

Other than that, it’s been a shitty week. The brake broke on my wheelchair on Tuesday, so now not only do I have to get onto Clarke’s about the missing side, I now have a broken brake to add into the mix.  Then the boiler decided to go tits up on Tuesday: I called John, the plumber, and he arrived promptly at 9AM on Wednesday.  Fortunately, it turned out that the problems were just to do with nuts that needed tightening. [Insert falsetto/castrato joke of your choice here] Plus of course, work, work and more work.

The news that filters through to the Home valley from the outside world is rarely good news, and frequently disturbing. Before I forget, though, and pass on to other matters, I should record the fact that Dame Helen Ghosh, head of the National Trust, has still not replied to my two page letter of complaint about their disgraceful decision to allow badger culling on their land, and, specifically, the completely undemocratic way in which the decision was taken, by the leadership overruling a vote in favour of a ban by the membership. I’m not surprised, because the National Trust’s stance on this is completely indefensible – on the process involved, let alone the wrongs and wrongs of the cull itself.  I just wanted to mention that she hadn’t bothered to even try and defend her organisation, in case any of my readers were thinking of not joining the National Trust, or not renewing their membership next time it falls due.

No one has yet suggested culling the unemployed, but give it time. At the moment it’s only an unofficial Tory policy. Godfrey Bloom, though, (God bless him with some sense, sometime soon) has gone so far as to suggest that the unemployed, and public sector workers (!) should be denied a vote. As he was technically sacked from being a UKIP MP for thwacking a journalist over the head with a copy of their manifesto, and then referring to female party members as “sluts”, technically, at this point, Mr Bloom is unemployed -  or rather, self-employed, as he is continuing to sit as an independent Euro-MP until he is ousted at the next election.

His justification for his remarks, apart from the fact that he probably is a neo-fascist with thought processes stuck somewhere around the time of Kristallnacht, was that the unemployed have “never done a hand’s turn” in their lives.  Before becoming a Euro MP, Mr Bloom was a financial economist, specialising in investments. Eee, lad, it must’ve been tough for him, getting up for work and picking up his snap tin and his pickaxe, putting on his pit boots, before being chauffeured down to the City for another day at t’coal face.

While UKIP are, at the moment, only stick-on comedy Nazis, we shouldn’t forget, either, that there were plenty of people who smirked behind their hands and thought Hitler was a jumped-up little corporal with a silly moustache and an amusing penchant for torchlight ceremonies. They weren’t smirking later, when they found themselves in Auschwitz.

As far as unemployment goes, as regular readers will know, I have long been suspicious of the official figures on this. Firstly, as even a cursory scrutiny of any government statistics will show you, it all depends on what is captured, and when. Often you find yourself comparing apples with eggs, to the extent that the statistics are actually useless, not that this doesn’t prevent unscrupulous politicians from cherry picking figures out of context, to pump out in hate-filled press releases.(Yes, Iain Duncan Smith, I do mean you.) But in any case, many of the “jobs” being created are jobs in name only, because if anyone does anything at all, even a couple of hours on a zero hours, zero pay, zero rights contract, the Junta gleefully strikes them out of the figures, while continuing to ignore a vast army of people who don’t even feature in any official category because they have never tried to claim what they are actually entitled to.

Even against his background, though, the job losses announced at Portsmouth’s shipyards this week are dire news.  Politicians were quick to speak of getting as many people as possible into alternative employment elsewhere, a gesture, in the current climate, as futile as handing the steward of the Titanic a cocktail shaker and pointing him towards the pile of ice on deck, if I may use a nautical allusion. David Cameron, who is supposed to be in charge of The Blight Brigade, claims that this unemployment is being caused “in the national interest”- appropriately, in Remembrance week, they have laid down their jobs for their country - whereas if you ask Iain Duncan Smith, he will no doubt tell you that the unemployed are shirking, feckless scroungers. It’s all very confusing.

Still, I suppose we shouldn’t expect too much of politicians who, between this lot and the previous lot, managed to cock it up so spectacularly that the Navy wouldn’t have any aircraft carriers for ten years. In the meantime, if an invading fleet does come up the channel, we will have to try and frighten them off by showing them an artist’s impression.

With unemployment comes poverty, and, in some (too many) cases, homelessness. This week, Shelter, the housing charity, has issued a report warning of the potential for over 80,000 children to wake up homeless this Christmas. Although this figure includes families living in one room-temporary accommodation, and doesn’t mean that 80,000 children will spend Christmas on the street (though some of them will, and even one is one too many) it does represent a ten year high and it means that there is a massive impending housing crisis looming unless someone does something about it. What happened to all those “homes fit for heroes” that the troops returning from the Great War were promised?

The Daily Mail, the EDL, UKIP and the BNP would have you believe they are all in the hands of immigrants, and neither the Junta nor, to its shame, the Labour Party, has done anything to correct this misapprehension. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in its report Housing Pathways for New Immigrants, points out that it isn’t as simple as that, and in fact new legal immigrants are often left with no choice but to go for the lowest end of the private rental market, and often in areas where the indigenous local population don’t want to live anyway. This is not to say that immigration isn’t a mess, it is, and its massively exacerbated by our membership of the EU, because it ties our hands – but the myth of the housing market being distorted on a country wide basis by coachloads of immigrants rocking up at Dover Docks and being handed a free plasma TV and the keys to a council house is just that, a myth.

Unfortunately, as myths go, it is a pretty poisonous one, and one which can have tragic consequences.  Also in this week, we had the news of the trial surrounding the death of Bijan Ebrahimi. He was an Iranian, living here legally, on an estate in Brislington, near Bristol, with his cat. He was a keen gardener and, despite a disability linked to back trouble, cultivated flowers in planters outside his flat. When these were damaged by local yobboes in a series of what were, technically, hate crimes, he responded by trying to take pictures of the perpetrators to identify them.  For this he was branded a “pedo”, dragged out into the street by an angry mob, beaten to death, and then his body was set on fire.  One man has pleaded guilty to murder and another denies the charge but has admitted assisting the first. Three police who arrested Mr Ebrahimi after a previous neighbour dispute have been reported to the Police Complaints Commission and suspended for allegedly failing to protect him properly.

What chills me more than anything about the story is the relative lack of coverage. I only stumbled on it by accident.  It raises so many awful questions, chief among these being how did it happen?  Well, actually, we know that, the question maybe should be “why did we allow it to happen?”

We allowed it to happen, I am afraid, because we have become – or are becoming – an intolerant, bigoted, nasty little country where anyone who doesn’t fit in is at best derided and at worst assaulted.  The Blight Brigade has set about, ever since coming to what passed for power in 2010, dividing the country into hard working families and “the rest” – an amorphous mass of scroungers, skivers and ne’er do wells comprising the disabled, the unemployed, benefits seekers and immigrants, specifically Muslims. Never mind that they might have been born here and/or live here quite legitimately under the law, if you’re a bit odd or a bit brown, or worse, both, that’s it! Watch out! Send for the pitchforks and fiery torches.

The pressure to conform is very strong at this time of year, as well, because the Junta always tries to appropriate the armistice day celebrations for its own ends to force people into showing they “support our troops” – and by implication, the idiotic policies that put them where they are today, especially in Afghanistan – in harm’s way, being used as professional targets in a political endgame that has no meaning.

I deeply resent the way in which the “Government” tries to turn remembrance Sunday into "support our troops in their current politically-motivated misadventures or be thought a pariah" day.

When I wear a poppy, I wear one to remember the deaths of people like Harry Fenwick, gassed at Ypres 1917, William Evans, died of wounds 1915, and Jack Ross, whose Hurricane plunged into the Irish sea in 1942. And all the people my dad served with who never came back. Yes, and, indeed, all their counterparts on the other side as well, whose lives were also cut cruelly short.

I wear my poppy because I don't want there to be any more wars. I am not glorifying war, and I get really angry at the attempts of politicians to hijack the elements of remembrance for political ends. While I have the greatest of respect for our armed forces, I do not agree with the tenets and principles of their current mission in Afghanistan and I was against the war on Iraq from the start.

If the government wants to "support" our troops they should make a start by making sure that disabled and injured ex services personnel are properly looked after instead of leaving it to charities and voluntary organisations to pick up the pieces, and resisting the temptation to get involved in foreign adventurism, dressed up as some sort of moral crusade, under false pretences peddled to parliament by liars who should probably now be in jail.

The poppy has itself become a symbol fought over almost as much as the cross of St George. Which is why I was pleased to see this week that a group of young Muslim kids had been selling poppies for remembrance day. The Muslim youth charity AMYA had over 100 sellers out on the streets, and their head was quoted as saying:

The poppy is not about war; it’s about solidarity and showing loyalty to one’s country and standing together for a worthy cause. It’s about communities standing together as one. Lots of Muslims actually served in World War I and World War II and lots have ancestors who served in the army. We therefore hope that our participation is a clear indication of our desire for peace and unity between all nations, peoples and religions."

Hear hear. But you won’t see that on the front page of the Daily Mail. You are more likely to see the depressingly-inaccurate crap of the sort that was once more doing the rounds on Facebook (and probably other social networking sites as well) this week.  The accompanying text says something like [original spellings retained]:

In May 2010 Tohseef Shah spray painted a British War Memorial with “Islam will dominate Osama” he was fined £50 & walked free from court. In November 2010, Emdadur Choudhury burned a Poppy during the 2mins silence. He too was given a fine, £50 and walked free from court. Last week in a Portsmouth Court, 2 men were sentenced to 6 months in prison for painting a Poppy on a mosque. Pass this on if you think its a f*ck*n disgrace !!

It is a disgrace, because it’s disgracefully inaccurate. When I first saw this, I made it my business to look into it further, because I, too, would be enraged if I thought that British justice was being partially applied in the manner suggested. Tohseef Shah pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage and though given a conditional discharge, also had to pay £500 in compensation and £85 costs. Choudhury also had to pay a £15 victim surcharge on top of his fine.  The Portsmouth incident referred to did not produce any criminal convictions , though three people were arrested at the heated demonstrations involving the graffiti-ed poppy being spray-painted on the wall of a Portsmouth mosque, two Muslim demonstrators and one EDL supporter.

It is possible that the original author of the “viral” email conflated the incident, possibly deliberately, to try and stir up hatred, with the conviction of two former EDL supporters in 2011 who were each sentenced to a year in 2011 for spray painting poppies, the cross of St George, and the words “no Surrender”, “EDL” and “NEI”(North-East Infidels, apparently) on a mosque, a boarding house and a local shop in Hartlepool.  Their sentence reflected the fact that the graffiti was more widespread and had involved trespass and deliberate planning, which can be seen in law as conspiracy – one of the perpetrators sent his then girlfriend a text saying that he was going out “muzzy bashing”, and they were going to give the mosque “a makeover”.

Anyway, so we came to remembrance Sunday, and I found myself this week reflecting on the sacrifice of all those who have died in the two major wars and other conflicts of the last century and, indeed, the present one.  It’s often said that they made the supreme sacrifice for our freedom, to preserve our way of life, and I am truly grateful for their bravery – especially during the 1939-1945 war – that means I am free to sit here typing this on a sunny (for once) Sunday lunchtime.  {The First World War is a different matter. It was a trade war, to see who could be top dog in Europe. The participants blundered into it and then botched it for four years of deadlock, almost bleeding each other dry. Then we – the Allies – fouled up the armistice so badly that we created exactly the right conditions, later, in Germany, for someone to come along and start it up all over again).

With freedom, however, comes responsibility, and we shouldn’t think that we’re free to do anything at all, just because people died to protect our country. There are limits to freedoms, and your freedom ends where it impinges unfairly on someone else’s life and happiness. That’s why we have laws, to define where that boundary is.  But the fabric of these laws, and of society, is under pressure like never before. So maybe we should be asking ourselves, as we wear our poppies for whatever reason today, or choose not to, as we see fit, what it is that the people who died would have wanted.

Imagine for a minute that the vast armies of the dead somehow rise up and return to our shores, and see this country as it presently stands today.  Would they be happy at the lack of homes fit for heroes? Would they be happy at the length of the unemployment lines? Would they be happy that 80,000 kids are technically homeless this Christmas? Would they be happy that a man can be dragged out into the street, beaten to death and then set alight by a mob and no-one seems to regard the event as in any way extraordinary or worthy of comment?  Would they be happy that the Navy has no ships with which to defend our islands? Would they be happy with the food banks? Would they be happy at the amount of cruelty to animals, at the badger-shooting, at the proposals to take away votes from certain sections of society? Would they be pleased that the country has turned from neighbourhoods caring for your mates and family into “shop thy neighbour” – that our politicians have stirred divisiveness up to the extent that the far-right are once more on the march? Would they even recognise this as the country that they fought, and died, for?  Or would they shake their heads, turn away, and fade back once more into history?

As Arthur Mee puts it in Who Giveth Us The Victory, published in 1918:

“It is pitiful to think that thousands of these men had better homes in the trenches of Flanders than in the sunless alleys of our Motherland. Do thousands of children come into the world, to gasp for life in a slum; to go to school hungry for a year or two; to pick up a little food, a little slang, and a little arithmetic; to grovel in the earth for forty years or to stand in steaming factories; to wear their bodies out like cattle on the land; to live in little rows of dirty houses,  in little blocks of stuffy rooms, and then to die?”

We have a choice. I haven’t mentioned God much this week, because when it comes to God on our side, I am afraid I am with Bob Dylan – if God’s on our side, then he’ll stop the next war.  People fought and died for this country.  People fought and died for some of the very rights, such as education, and healthcare, and libraries, and decent housing, jobs and a standard of living, now most under threat. All of the things currently being taken away from them.  I just hope to God they don’t have to fight for them all over again. There are still some good people in this country – over 1000 of them shared a poster about a missing dog, and some even put on their coats and went and looked for her, in the freezing cold and dark. That’s the spirit that gives me faith, and that’s the spirit we’ve got to harness, somehow.

In the meantime, the Junta could at least make a start by re-purposing the £50 million it proposes to spend on jingoistic propaganda next year to mark the centenary of the outbreak of a war that decimated whole working-class communities across the land.  I think I hear Harry Fenwick saying “use it to feed the bairns”, and I think I hear William Evans saying “use it to build a school”.

When will we start to listen?

When will we ever learn?