It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The snows came, and they stayed. And stayed. Like an unwelcome guest, the snows stayed and overstayed. It was always on the cards, I suppose. The garden was reduced to a series of frozen hummocks, smoothed and simplified by the drifting flakes; the driveway was covered, and, most annoyingly, the ramp was also covered, with about four inches of fresh snow. This immediately curtailed my movements, especially after it had been crunched up into ruts with the passage of feet backwards and forwards.
While it is possible to propel a manual wheelchair over snow, if you know what you are doing and/or you are Tanni Grey-Thompson, it is also possible to get stuck at the bottom of your wheelchair ramp and die of hypothermia while waiting for your wife to come back from teaching. So I decided on discretion, as the better part of valour, and stayed indoors. As did Debbie, because college was closed for two days – to all apart from those people lucky enough to be taking exams, for whom the health and safety risk of a fractured ankle is presumably judged to be more acceptable than the risk of having to reset in the summer and create additional admin work for the college. Sadly, Debbie doesn’t get paid for those missed classes, but at least she got a rest, some extra kip, a lie-in and some extra time to prep for the rest of the week. The college also issued an appeal (rather hopefully) for staff members to come in and help clear snow and ice from the paths (bring your own shovel) - an appeal which I have to say fell on deaf ears as far as Debbie was concerned, very deaf ears.
The Sainsbury delivery man, when he struggled down the drive bearing the crates of groceries I’d ordered online, had a shovel with him (presumably so he could dig his van out if he got stuck) and he very kindly offered to clear the snow off the ramp. This worked brilliantly for about three days, until the remaining lumps of snow which he’d left all coalesced into a hard icy fringe along one edge, which once more made the passage of my small wheels impossible. Then the postman came the day after that, bearing a very welcome parcel, of which more later, and he very kindly kicked away all of the said lumps of ice and also took away my post to post it for me!
In fact, give me those two, and the bloke from the Pharmacy who battled through the snow-drifts, delivered my meds, saw me struggling across the ice-field with the bin-bag balanced on the tray of my wheelchair, took it off me and dumped it in the wheelybin for me, and I could probably have a half decent stab at re-taking Harfleur for the English Crown. In fact, throw in the coalman, who carried 16 x 25kg bags of Real flame over the hard-packed snowy ice to deliver them to us on Friday, and I’ll push on and besiege Burgundy as well.
Despite the traditional Scottish weather, on Friday, for Burns Night, we celebrated the event this year with the traditional Scottish fare of Tofu with Lime and Coconut (or should that be “Cokernut”) curry sauce. Eventually, the weather outside got around to doing what the weather forecasters had said it would do this weekend, albeit on a slightly different time-scale, and the promised rain arrived and started to eat away at the lying snow. This morning, I woke to hailstones battering against my window, in what I hope is a last vexed flexing death-rattle from the tail of winter’s rattlesnake.
Mind you, our snowy week has been a picnic, compared to the friends in Wales I wrote about last week, who had embarked on having their roof replaced just before the snow arrived. Fortunately, proceedings weren’t materially affected by the weather, and in addition, they earned themselves a hot, freshly-made lemon drizzle cake in return for rescuing one of their neighbours who was stuck on some ice, so all in all they probably had a better week than we did.
As I type this, the snow has all gone, swept away by a combination of last night’s rain and the accompanying rise in temperature, but I am still wearing my leg-warmers - one of two pairs - which arrived in the said parcel brought by the ice-clearing postman, in response to the piece I wrote last week about how to keep the backs of my legs warm and combat the many draughts. The ice-postman cometh, and he bringeth the leg warmers. So, from the knees down at any rate, I now resemble one of the Kids from Fame. If only I could dance as well. Thank you to the kind person who sent them, they are very useful and they fit a treat. Now, about that Ferrari…
The dogs largely took the snow in their stride. Zak managed to lose his (well, really Tiglet’s) “lunker” (a tennis ball thing on a rope that allows you to hurl it even further afield) in the snow one day, down on the cricket field, and then found it again the next. Freddie continued his habit of coming home from walkies early, on his own, whenever he got fed up. Sadly, there’s still no further news of Elvis, either better or worse, so we’re still in limbo, and we assume his health is pretty much the same as when we last heard.
Matilda has been dealing with the weather in her own way, by nesting on my bed next door, on top of a couple of crocheted Maisie-blankets and snuggled next to Mr Hedgehog. The amount of time she decided to spend there has been directly proportional to the amount of time the central heating was on next door. So much so that she now seems to prefer it to the more direct heat of the stove.
So, it was one of those weeks beloved of the media, with headlines about “Br-r—r-r, Britain Freezes in the big chill”, and that perennial favourite, “Met Men Say There’s More To Come”. The enterprising lemurs in a Somerset zoo learned how to lean out of their cage and tweak the thermostat to turn up the heating to compensate for the sub-zero temperatures, and of course there is always some intrepid nutter on the news who snowboards in from Thames Ditton, having harnessed up the family dog as a husky, when everybody else has simply taken one look at the snow, groaned, turned over and pulled the duvet higher. It snows, and the country comes to a virtual standstill. That’s the law.
When temperatures drop consistently below freezing for more than a couple of nights, the council has a duty to implement its emergency plan for the homeless, apparently. For someone with a general interest in the subject, I must admit this was bit of a hazy area for me. And for some councils as well, I gather; while the best councils kick into action at the first opportunity, commandeering community centres, setting up camp beds etc, others are more prone to dragging their feet, apparently.
I was alerted to this situation by an email from one of these “campaigning organisations” onto whose email list I seem to have managed to wangle myself, probably by signing a petition in the past. As a result of my own subsequent email enquiry to Kirklees, I discovered that they had implemented their plan, and that a total of seven people who were officially living rough in Kirklees had been identified and helped by it.
While every little widow’s mite helps, this figure sounds incredibly low to me, and I said as much. I have often thought that the official figures, on which – ultimately – the DCLG bases its policies, are understated. I also suggested, to the Kirklees councillor who emailed me, that the council should consider opening up vacant shops (where the council was the landlord) as daytime drop-in centres for rough sleepers, somewhere where they could get out of the cold for a few hours, have maybe a warm drink or some soup or something, and gain access to people who might have the official capacity to help them further.
My subsequent foray onto the Kirklees web site for details of the local organisations that help the homeless then led me on to the council’s own list of public venues, which was of interest because of my planning for Lockstock. Sadly, many of those listed would probably be unsuitable on religious grounds, since I fully intend that if Lockstock happens, it should feature wine, music, and possibly pigs. But, like two feminists doing the washing up, it is at least a start.
(If you’re worried about someone you’ve noticed sleeping rough in this icy cold weather, by the way, you can make sure they get help by telling Streetlink, the new national helpline and website: http://www.streetlink.org.uk/tell-us-about-a-rough-sleeper)
The prevalence of headlines about the snow made it a good week for politicians to bury bad news. Actually, I may be doing Cameron a disservice there, which is not a sentence you will see me type very often, in that he did originally intend to make his big pronouncement about the EU on another day – one which his advisors then advised him would have caused offence both to France and Germany, and then he had to postpone it again because of the Algerian hostage crisis. And after all that, was it even worth waiting for?
I start from the premise that I am highly suspicious of the “ever closer union” aspect of the EU, and I often get the feeling that it is invasion by any other means, invasion by the back door, in fact. The trouble is that, in order to register my views in any political forum, I have to appear, by saying so, to ally myself with the likes of UKIP and the Euroskeptic Tory MPs, all of whom are very high on my list of people never to get stuck in a lift with. Mainly because their dislike of the EU comes bundled with several other attitudes which are not officially party policy, and are only ever tacitly admitted, but which can be summed up as “once we’ve sorted out Europe, we’ll start on the brown people next”. In that respect, at least the BNP and the EDL are more honest about their aspirations, however nauseating.
Cameron has obviously been looking at the recent election results and has come to the conclusion that, when it comes to Europe, you catch more flies with the vinegar of UKIP than the honey of the Liberal Democrats. While it is always gratifying to see the Liberal Democrats hoist, nay, even shafted, with their own petard, it nevertheless raises to disagreeable possibility that they might seek to ally themselves with Labour at the next election. It doesn’t happen very often in life, but if it did, this would be yet another rare instance of rats rushing to join a sinking ship. Whether or not Cap’n Miliband and his crew have the sense to repel boarders remains to be seen.
The only redeeming feature of Cameron’s blustering, which has absolutely nothing to do with “the national interest” and everything to do with saving his miserable hide from being savaged by his own party, is that there are a lot of ifs and buts in the way. If he succeeds in renegotiation, if this, if that – if indeed, he is still Tory leader at the next election. It’s all going so terrifically well on the economy that the quicksand of George Osborne’s “Plan A” may yet suck him under as well.
With or without him, though, rather depressingly, it seems that the next general election will be fought on a platform of popular xenophobia based on the government-inspired popular (but untrue) white-van-man-taxi-driver ideas that “there are millions of ‘em over here, taking our houses and our jobs.” The race card at one remove, in fact, because when the Junta and UKIP say it, they mean “EU Immigrants” but the silent dog-whistle note that always underscores it says “brown people”.
As I type this, Cameron's poll ratings have already risen on the strength of this empty rhetorical claptrap, as he is obviously tapping into the vague, unfocused anti-EU sentiment in the UK at large, in the same way that Alex Salmond does in Scotland with vague unfocused anti-English sentiment. You don’t have to do anything, or have any policies really, other than vague hints and promises, you just find the patriotic xenophobic vein, the familiar my country-right-or-wrong supernumerary nipple, and leech onto it like a bloated vampire.
The Lib Dems must be feeling pretty pissed off right now, at having been used as a figleaf for all those nasty little Tory policies for two years, only to be told that, when it comes to Europe, their services are no longer required from 2015 onwards. It serves them right, of course, but I really do hope they do something Quixotic, petulant and self-destructive that really damages the Junta before then, just out of spite.
Meanwhile, the Blight continue to pick and choose who they let in and who they deport when it suits them, on a politically-motivated basis. I have nothing against Malala Yousafzai and wish her well in her self-appointed crusade (probably the wrong word) for women’s education in Afghanistan against the medieval nutcases who run the Taleban. I fear it will end badly, but at least we saved her life this time by flying her to Birmingham and throwing a lot of NHS resource at her.
Others are no so lucky, as I have said before, and as pointed out in various press articles this week about Luqman Onikosi, who the Home Office are sending back to die in Nigeria. The journalist Alana Lentin, who knew him personally, wrote a piece about Theresa May's decision to deport this seriously ill Nigerian man after university. The Junta probably don’t like Mr Onikosi’s views very much: he used his experience as an African to highlight everyday racism in the UK, and drew attention, not only to black history, but to the politics of migration and Islamophobia as well.
He had started an organisation, which he still heads, Hear Afrika, to help African youth projects. In 2009, Onikosi was diagnosed with hepatitis B. Two of his brothers, Hanuna and Kolade, had died of the same illness at home in Nigeria. Despite the fact that the chronic liver condition suffered by Onikosi and his brothers, if untreated, leads very quickly to the loss of life, Theresa May has decided to deport him to Nigeria. After graduating from Sussex, Onikosi continued to work, pay taxes and volunteer in the UK.
As Lentin says:
The Home Office disregards this and, following legal appeals and the intervention of Onikosi's MP in July 2012, deems it correct to send Onikosi back to Nigeria where virology specialist, Dr CI Anyanwu, explains there is "no definitive treatment available for the level of his condition he is experiencing".
In austerity Britain, the government has no qualms about universities accepting international students to pay huge fees to keep a virtually unfunded higher education system going. Foreign students are regularly referred to as cash cows by cynical university managers. Yet those same cows are accused of "milking the system" as soon as they overstay, no matter the reason, even when it means life over death.”
And she ends her article by saying:
“Integration, a word beloved of post-9/11 western governments, suddenly becomes an irrelevance when it comes to wrenching from their homes people who have put down roots, created professional links, and benefited the society. Onikosi has lived in the UK for five years. It is the country in which he entered adulthood, as well as political consciousness. He has contributed to this society in ways in which his peers, born into the privilege of citizenship, may do also but do not have to in order to prove their worth.
There is no doubt, barring a miracle, that removing Onikosi to Nigeria will result in this young man losing his life. The UK is quick to preach when it comes to human rights abuses in other countries, but equally quick to moralise when the same victims of global inequality put its own ethics to the test. Are we really willing to cause a third, useless, death in one family?”
And, sadly, yes, it seems we are. I don’t begrudge the compassion shown to Malala Yousafzai, but it’s time we acknowledged the appalling double standard and extended that compassion to some other case where medicine and borders collide. If borders and nationality were no problem in Malala’s case, what is different here?
Today is Septuagesima Sunday, which is easy for you to say, meaning that it is the 9th week before Easter. Next week is Sexuaguesima Sunday, which sounds a lot more fun, but don’t let’s go there. Septuaguesima Sunday marks the start of the preparation for Lent, which in turn is a preparation for Easter, so this is sort of the start of the start of the run-up to Spring, although it doesn’t feel like it today, with the hailstones bouncing off the decking.
The text for today is the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Matthew 20, 1:16.
For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, these last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
The key to the parable being that everyone receives the same generous payment, whether or not they have been labouring for the whole day or not. The idea being that the Kingdom of Heaven is equally available to all, those who have been lifetime adherents of a religion and those who have had a blinding epiphany and suddenly feel the presence of something other than what we commonly call reality. Equally available to all; those who have access to the privileges of a cushioned life and to those who have no such access. In fact, in other pronouncements, Jesus indicates in the Gospel of Mark that:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.
Sadly, though, the same maxim doesn’t apply to this world, where, as we have seen far too often, it is easier for a rich man to do anything and everything, than for a poor man. So it seems the poor and the disadvantaged have got the next world sewn up, alright (though organised religions of various flavours have interpreted that, shamefully, as “so shut up in this world, and be happy with your lot”) but what I would like to know more about is this stuff about the meek inheriting the Earth.
Perhaps what we need at the next election is a coalition. A coalition of the meek. When the meek get stroppy, it’s time for the rich and powerful to watch out. When the going gets tough, the meek get organised. Like Langland’s Piers Ploughman, I have a vision of “a field full of folk”
Then began I to dream a marvellous dream,
That I was in a wilderness wist I not where.
As I looked to the east right into the sun,
I saw a tower on a toft worthily built;
A deep dale beneath a dungeon therein,
With deep ditches and dark and dreadful of sight
A fair field full of folk found I in between,
Of all manner of men the rich and the poor,
Working and wandering as the world asketh.
Some put them to plough and played little enough,
At setting and sowing they sweated right hard
And won that which wasters by gluttony destroy.
Some put them to pride and apparelled themselves so
In a display of clothing they came disguised.
To prayer and penance put themselves many,
All for love of our Lord living hard lives,
In hope for to have heavenly bliss.
Such as anchorites and hermits that kept them in their cells,
And desired not the country around to roam;
Nor with luxurious living their body to please.
Which could easily be a vision of the inequality of our own society, apart from the fact that the Sumptuary Laws have been repealed, that prevented people in Langland’s day from wearing clothes that would identify them as being “above their station”. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a comeback.
The poor, the unemployed, the sick, the asylum seekers, the deportees, the homeless. These shall be my coalition, then, along with the lost, neglected and homeless animals. At one time, you could rely on the Labour Party to stand up for at least some of these categories, but since they became a slightly less Tory corporate arm of the Tory Party, until recently, you couldn’t get a fag paper between them all, and the only reason you can do so now, is that the Tories have differentiated by moving even further into the territory of the nasty. So if we are to have a general election in two years from now (or sooner) where hateful, ill-informed xenophobia is manipulated by David Cameron in a desperate attempt to cling on to power so he can carry on ruining the country while pretending to run it, then this is going to have to be the coalition that stands against him. We can’t rely on anyone else, least of all the Opposition. The labourer is worthy of his hire. Many are called, but few are chosen. I stand with all of them. Me, Jesus, and Bill Langland. It is time for us all to stand up, and be counted. Which is quite ironic, really, in my case.
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