Epiblog for Stir-Up Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  This was the week when we were supposed to be snowed in, paralysed by the weather, Britain grinds to a halt, Met men say there’s more to come as Britain shivers in the big freeze, and so on, accompanied by an “and finally” piece about some hardy fool who hitched up the family Labrador to a dog sled and managed to make it in to the office all the way from Thames Ditton.  The usual stuff, in other words. Only the weather forgot to oblige, at least in the Holme Valley it did. There was snow elsewhere, though I gather even that didn’t lie.  More and more I am beginning to think that the collected weather forecasts of the BBC should be entered for the next Booker Prize for fiction.

The week was, in fact, mainly bright and dry. True, it’s been cold enough first thing for it to have been just a tad skiddy underfoot, with odd shards of ice glinting, and there have been occasional showers of cold hard rain falling like Agincourt arrows, sudden out of leaden skies, but by and large, when it’s been fine, it’s been sunny, and the sky has been that incredible, radiant blue you only see in the illustrations of Maxfield Parrish. The leaves, as well, are at their most brilliant shade of greeny-yellow just before they fall, at the bidding of some unseen signal from the tree, to form the next years layer of mulch and crumb on the surface of the earth.  I don’t normally like this time of year. In fact, let’s be honest, I hate it, but there have been one or two bright days this year which have led me to think that if it stayed like that until February, I might just about cope with winter.

Of course, the long dark nights are the main drawback for those of us who feel light deprived, and it is even worse at this time of year because, from about Halloween onwards, all the way until New Year’s Eve, the long dark nights mean the incessant crumping and popping of fireworks, near and far.  Ever since Misty’s bad experience two weeks ago, she’s been a bit hyper, and this week it came to a head. On Monday night and on Tuesday night alike, Misty got as far as the park with Debbie and then, as soon as the explosions started gong off, she freaked and tried to burrow into the nearest hedge bottom. On both nights, all ideas of a walk abandoned, Debbie had to more or less half-drag, half-carry the dog home.  We wrote it off as a bad do, and resolved that tomorrow would be another day.

First on the agenda on Wednesday was an unexpected visit from the coalman, a day early.  No problems with that, better a day early than a day late in this weather. He also brought some rock salt, which I had ordered in anticipation of the great arctic freeze, and it sat outside in its bag, catching the fine winter sunshine and glinting. Still, I daresay it’ll get used up in the next four months. Matilda took advantage of the coalman’s visit and scuttled in through the porch door, into the garage, for some reason best known unto herself, and had to be enticed back into the kitchen with a sachet of Felix so I could shut the door and keep the heat in.

The next visitor was expected; Gez came round to pick up his copy of Portuguese edition of The Spot on My Bum (A Borbulha No Rabo, I kid you not) and I was just talking to him when the man from NHS supplies arrived to take away my standing aid.  This was something which had been pre-arranged, but nevertheless, it marked a milestone. I have had the standing aid since I came out of hospital and it has always stood as some sort of totem for me getting up on my feet again. However, now that my hamstrings are so shortened that it would take either major surgery or months of physio and or botox to straighten out my legs again, the most I am ever going to manage would be a haka-like crouch in my present condition, and it was just something that got covered with spare laundry and drying washing, and needed to be plugged in and charged. So when I had my last review, I told them this, and we agreed to take it away. So now I have officially, finally, admitted to myself what everyone else had probably guessed anyway, long ago. I will never walk again.

Wednesday also marked the delivery of the Sainsburys order, which included, or should have, a furry squeaky duck toy for Misty, and a solid rugby ball toy (also for Misty). I say “should have”, because in fact what we actually got was two squeaky ducks and one squeaky football (no partridge in a pear tree, however.) It was just as well they sent two by mistake, because within a day she had dismembered one of them, and got the stuffing and the squeaker out. So we put the other one away for special occasions. The ball was a great hit, though.

On Wednesday night, things seemed much quieter on the firework front, and, because Debbie doesn’t teach on Wednesday afternoons, they were able to set off for “walkies” earlier as well, in the hope of a longer walk that would make up for the lack of one on the previous two days.  Sadly this was not to be – they got as far as the quarry beyond the wood, when standard Fireworks up at Crosland Moor started having some sort of firework display. On the 20^th November! Fifteen days after bonfire night and thirteen days after the end of Diwali. What the hell was that all about?

When Debbie got back and told me where the noise had been coming from, I rang Standard Fireworks and complained, but of course they were on voicemail at that time of night, so all I could do was leave a message, quite a long message, in fact. I also rang the police, on their non-emergency 101 number, to check exactly what the legal position was, and it turns out that the bastards letting off the bangs are within their legal rights to terrorise my dog, as the law presently stands. I actually let my frustration get the better of me with this woman, and told her to send a cop car round there and arrest them, before slamming the phone down.

When it comes to fireworks, it seems now that we live in a country where, if you want to have a (peaceful) demonstration against the cruel and unjust policies of the Junta, you have to give six weeks’ notice and the police can turn you down flat, but yobboes can caper about the streets letting off bangers night after night and causing mayhem, and no-one bats an eyelid.

Meanwhile, we have to deal with the fallout. Misty was trembling for a long while and Debbie got her up next to her on to the settee and calmed her down, allowing her to snooze a bit, but when it came to time to go up to bed, the dog wouldn’t settle and kept roaming the house, coming back downstairs again. I think, personally, she was looking for somewhere she considered “safe” to “go to ground”. Debbie was teaching the next day so there was no way she could stay up all night, so I ended up wrapped in an alpaca poncho, clutching a hot water bottle, in my wheelchair next to the stove, while Misty roamed back and forth. Every time she came back into the kitchen, I tried to get her to settle in the armchair, but the slightest noise from outside meant she was up and off again. Eventually, about 3.45AM, she finally settled down to sleep, curled in a tight ball with her nose in her tail, on the settee under the bay window in Colin’s front room. 

It was at about that point in the proceedings that I noticed Matilda’s little face pressed up against the lobby door, meowing to come in. In all the trapping about earlier trying to get Misty up to bed, Matilda must have scuttled out of the lobby door and across into the garage, and now, cold, annoyed and hungry, she made it clear the way only a pissed-off cat can, that she wanted to reclaim her rightful place on the settee next to the stove, which we duly did. We all had about two hours’ fitful sleep and then, finally, just as I had really begun to drop off, my alarm went on my phone, indicating that it was 7.30AM, and I could hear Debbie clomping about upstairs, getting ready to set off for College. Not the best night I have ever had.

Various people have offered all sorts of suggestions for calming Misty down, ranging from the helpful to the downright abusive.  There are various natural remedies we can try, and then there are dog tranquilisers (if we go down that route, I am going to ask Donaldsons for a second lot just for me) and ultimately, there is the nuclear option of asking the Border Collie sanctuary to take her back into “kennels” for four weeks until the worst of the fireworks is over. For suggesting the latter, on Tuesday night, on Facebook, when I got into what T S Eliot would have called “A tedious argument of insidious intent” about fireworks, I was told, by a supporter of an animal sanctuary that I, too, have tried to help, that if I did that, I wasn’t a fit person to have a dog. Go figure.   I can really do without that sort of crap from people to whom I have freely given scarce money in the past.  I was also told (by others) that my “medical problems” meant I was getting bitter and intolerant, (this may well be true. I have a lot to be bitter and intolerant about) which apparently sat ill at ease with my professed stance as a libertarian. I am paraphrasing here, but I was surprised at this assertion. I don’t know where the idea has arisen that I am some sort of laissez-faire, anything goes, after-you-Claude type of woolly hippy. I believe in an equal balance of rights and responsibilities.  You have, currently, under the law, it seems, a right to let off fireworks. That should be balanced by an equal responsibility to ensure that you do not cause undue terror and stress to pets.

Personally, I think the law should be that fireworks may only be let off for one week a year (the week containing bonfire night) and then only at public displays, which should be curtailed by 8pm. Organisers should only be granted permission to have a display if they can be shown to have taken reasonable steps (adverts, leaflets, whatever) to make the surrounding area aware of their intentions at least four weeks before the event, to give pet owners time to make alternative arrangements.  And I will be starting an e-petition to that effect on the government petitions web site.

Consequently, Thursday did not find me at my best, which was awkward, because it was a day when I had lots to do. I made a pot of industrial-strength coffee and sucked it down eagerly, then tried to prop my eyes open for long enough to get through my to-do list.  I was rather surprised when I received a call from NHS supplies asking if they could come and service my stand-aid. I pointed them in the direction of their own storeroom, and they went away happy. You can see how people go into hospital and end up with the wrong leg being amputated, though.

Also on Thursday, Misty’s new brass dog tag arrived in the post, to replace the plastic one we bought her on Arran, which she had somehow managed to snap off and lose, leaving only the metal ring hanging on her collar. Since it’s technically illegal for her not to have a tag with her address on it while she is out in a public place, and in her case anyway, given her penchant for legging it mid-walkies at the sound of a distant bang, all additional methods of identification are to be embraced and gratefully accepted, I lost no time in attaching dog to tag and vice versa.

Thursday night was a much better night, I have to say. The idiots with the fireworks seemed to have died the death (hooray) and Deb had finished teaching for the week. I cooked a risotto and we all settled down to a relatively early night, after the chaos of Wednesday.  As I lay in bed that night, knowing that we were all shut in, safe and warm, I silently thanked all that was good for delivering us thus far.  It felt like we had been adrift at sea and had suddenly, fortuitously, been rescued, given a change of clothes, a warm towel, and a mug of hot soup. Sleep blissfully overcame me.

Friday was a day spent doing the jacket illustration for Mac and The Lost Tribe (for me) and catching up on her GCSE marking (for Debbie) using the insanely subjective AQA marking scheme. Apparently one of the early drafts she had to read during the week from one of her candidates contained the sentence that “meeting people can lead to consequences” which is, undeniably, true.  Strangely enough, the Daily Mail, a newspaper normally stuffed with unpleasant lies and untruths, published an article this week that reported on a survey result that 70 per cent of teachers had admitted to having pulled an “all-nighter” in preparing for the next day’s class. While it is heartening to see the Daily Mail publishing something that is true, for once, it does come under the heading of history, rather than news, at least in our house it does.

By Friday, the squeaky ball was no longer squeaky, and (possibly more unexpectedly) the boiler in Colin’s side of the house seemed to have packed up. While this was not necessarily a financial disaster, as it was under guarantee, it was nevertheless irritating, as organising the plumber would be yet another thing on a burgeoning to-do list for the weekend.

Saturday dawned yet another bright day. If this kept up, Maxfield Parrish would be round for his royalties! I sat on the edge of my bed and took in the blue sky and the gold of the leaves and suddenly two pure white contrails crossed the sky. After I‘d made us all some breakfast and yet another steaming pot of coffee, I called John the plumber and he said that, as it happened, he was en route to another job in our area, so he would call by.  This was fortunate, and our good fortune continued, because it turned out that the boiler just needed re-pressurising. Debbie thought she had already done this, but this particular boiler requires you to turn two knobs simultaneously while re-pressurising (no jokes, please) and this, Debbie did not know. She does now.  John refused to take any payment for his visit, as he was here for less than five minutes, so I offered him a free copy of Catheter Come Home, instead, which he refused, saying “I’m not a great reader”. This, of course, made Debbie’s day and she was smirking for hours afterwards.

During the afternoon, Freddie snoozed and I worked, while Debbie took Zak and Misty for a walk round Honley, 11.7 miles or thereabouts.  I was looking forward to another quiet evening at home, but alas it was not to be, because some stupid bastard up in Newsome or Berry Brow was setting off fireworks at 7.30, 9pm, 9.45pm and 10.30pm, and every time they did it, Misty barrelled through the bifold doors and disappeared next door into Colin’s and had to be cajoled back.  The last time she did it, she upset her bowl of Muttnuts all over the kitchen floor. Great. Meanwhile, I seethed and wished for a horrific firework-related accident to be visited upon those responsible.  Sorry about that, but I have just about had it with mudheads this week. Losing a couple of fingers and having to pick their noses with their toenails in future might just stir the primordial sludge between their ears and make them think about their actions for once.  But I doubt it.

The wider world has once again hardly impinged on my consciousness this week. Possibly because some of the time I would have spent looking at news sites in what is laughingly described as my spare time was actually spent playing with the Facebook autobot.  What this is is a little application that reads all of the posts you have ever posted on Facebook at lightning speed and then generates randomised automatic posts on demand based on what you might have said. My favourite two from the week were “what a waste of dog-farts” and “happy as a pig in archives”, both of which probably deserve a wider currency. It’s when the auto-bot starts to make more sense than the real person that you need to worry, and I think with those two phrases we are indeed getting very close to the boundary with artificial intelligence.

Such inklings as there were from the outside world, percolating through, indicated that the world was as mad as it ever was. Sir Bernard Ingham, God bless him (preferably with a plague of boils) has apparently issued an oracular pronouncement this week to the effect that northerners who don’t support the Tories are “demented”. Sir Bernard Ingham is known in our house as “Sir Bernard Ingham, click”.  The “click” suffix is because that is the sound that happens immediately after Jonathan Dumbledore has intoned “Sir Bernard Ingham” on “Any Questions”. It is the sound of a radio being turned off.

Apparently some Morris Dancers in Bacup, Lancashire, have been threatened with being shut down by some sort of health and safety issue, but I don’t really know the ins and outs. It’s probably another made up story by the Mail or the Daily Tegrelaff, but if it’s really true then the monkeys with the typewriters have finally come up with the manual of European law and it should all be repealed tomorrow. Or preferably yesterday. The inner geek in me always thinks that Bacup should be twinned with Restormel, but hey, that’s just me.

And lo! In a shitnastic week, while all this other ordure was occurring, I finally got a reply from the National Trust about badger culling. Not that Dame Helen Ghosh had the time (or the balls) to write back to me in person. She got some factotum called Kate to do it on her behalf.  Kate Factotum says that the National Trust didn’t vote to overturn their members’ decision to ban badger culling after all. I must have been imagining it then. It turns out that the National Trust is in favour of vaccination and has been trialling it on the Killerton Estate in Devon. So how does that explain the shenanigans over voting, with the executive overruling the membership? Clearly more research is needed. By me, I mean. I will have to get to the bottom of it, when I have time. In the meantime, I am just recording that at least they replied, though given their track record on stag hunting on Exmoor, I doubt it will end well, either for them, or sadly, for the badgers.

In another totally random occurrence, Hull, my home town, was declared the UK City of Culture for 2017. I have mixed feelings about such civic junketing, because there have been cities of culture beforehand where, two post codes away from the civic hall where the bigwigs were junketing, there were streets full of potholes and un-emptied bins. But I think Hull deserves the benefit of the doubt, having had the shit kicked out of it by successive governments since the Cod War. The Cod War was followed by the cod peace, which is not nearly so much fun as it sounds, because it involved the dismantling and scrapping of the trawler fleet. Since then, Hull has become the butt of innumerable  “crap towns” joke books, with various comedic authors kicking the town when it was down and focusing on the easy targets, the economic depression, the bad concrete, the fact that anyone famous from Hull has done it by escaping, from Ian Carmichael to John Alderton to Maureen Lipman to Amy Johnson to Andrew Marvell, and that the most famous literatum of Hull, Philip Larkin, was actually from Coventry.

Well, do you know what? I think that Hull being named a city of culture is the Crowle Street Kids striking back.  When I was a pupil of Crowle Street School there was always a feeling that, if you tried hard enough, if you were a striver, you could escape that quadrant of barracks-like terraces and discover a greater world, outside.  I did that.  We moved to Brough, I passed the 11 plus, I went to Hessle High, then University.  And on to “culture”. The other Crowle Street Kids followed, in their own way.  We were those kids in national health specs, hand-me-down coats and sannies from Boyes’s, playing on the bomb sites under the Corporation street lights. And do you know what? We’re coming back. Yep, the Crowle Street Kids strike back. And every southern ponce who has dissed Hull in the last few years is going to have to eat his words. We’re the Crowle Sreet Kids, and we claim our city of culture, and if you don’t like it, well, tough shit.

Meanwhile, further evidence emerged, if further evidence were needed, that the entre ruling class is on drugs. A request lodged by the Huffington Post under the Freedom of Information Act resulted in the revelation that illegal drugs web sites had been the subject of 484 page views from within the Parliamentary system this year.

A House of Commons official confirmed: "The information covers all sites accessed via all ‘non-public’ computers on the Parliamentary Estate and all users including Members of either House, their staff and staff working for the House Administrations."

Clearly, this system is used by several classes of people, and no doubt the culprits would claim that it was purely for research purposes, allegedly, M’Lud, but the hypothesis that the government spend most of their time off their face stroke out of their tree on mind-bending drugs goes a long way towards being the most convincing [explanation for many of the more bizarre actions of the Blight Brigade.  It is the only possible explanation for the case of Miriam Harley Miller, of whom I wrote last week. In four days, on November 28^th, she will be technically an illegal alien, and liable to have her removal papers served on her at any time.

This is the link to the petition started by Andrew hall. They are hoping to get to 10,000 signatures before the due date.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/allow-mariam-harley-miller-to-stay-in-the-uk.html

Sadly, it seems Miriam Harley Miller is not the only case of this nature. Pensioner and Vietnam veteran Marx Hirsch currently resides under threat of deportation after 47 years in the UK, because he unwittingly broke one of the residency conditions by moving to Ireland for five years. His wife is currently battling cancer.

Miaou Guo and Massimo Ciabattini were taking their vows at Camden register office when UK Border Police stopped the wedding for half an hour until they had satisfied themselves that it wasn’t just a sham marriage for immigration purposes. The bride and groom should have invited them on honeymoon to watch them consummate it, it’s the only language these people understand.

Isa Muazu is currently on hunger strike in the Harmondsworth Detention Centre after refusing to eat for over 90 days in his attempt to stave off being deported back to Nigeria, where he fears for his life at the hands of Boko Haram. Despite the fact that he is reported to be “near death” and “fading away”, the Home Office says he is “fit to fly”. They must have been taking lessons from ATOS. Perhaps he would have fared better if he had been a whiter shade of pale.

Anybody with half a brain can see that immigration is in a complete mess, and will remain so whilever we are in the EU. Why the UK Borders Agency is consistently making so many shocking and unjust decisions is, however, something known only to them and to their dealers.

As Thom Brooks of the LSE has written:

Immigration policy seems driven not so much by commitment to some vision, but instead policy management through tinkering and tampering.

Any hope of a greater degree of coherence swiftly recedes and vanishes, however, when you look at the announcement by Immigration Minister Mark Harper that the “random” immigration checks on people who appear to be committing the crime of being brown in a public place, viz and to whit, the London Underground, will continue. It is then you realise just how far down the road to being a racist police state we have travelled.

Anyway, somehow we’ve staggered through to Sunday, a murky and cold day but nevertheless, “Stir Up Sunday” has arrived, the last Sunday before Advent, and the day when traditionally you are supposed to mix your Christmas pudding. 

The term “Stir Up Sunday” comes from the opening words of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, now used on the last Sunday before Advent): 

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Or, for those of you that prefer your music played on the original musicians:

Excita, quaesumus, Domine, tuorum fidelium voluntates: ut divini operis fructum propensius exsequentes, pietatis tuae remedia maiora percipiant: Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

In the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and later, this collect is listed for “The Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Trinity", with a rubric specifying that this collect “shall always be used upon the Sunday next before Advent". This reinforced the significance of this day as forming part of the preparation for the season of Advent. The rubric is necessary because the last Sunday before Advent does not always fall on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity: Trinity Sunday is a moveable feast and the Advent season is fixed, so the number of weeks in between varies from year to year. So, now you know. And to those of you who, like me, thought a Rubric was a multi-coloured plastic cube, it has probably come as a shock to discover this. 

The idea was that the words of the Collect jogged your mind and you hastened home to your kitchen and began work immediately on constructing a Christmas Duff. Or you instructed your servants to!

The rest of the recommended prayer book texts for the day include Psalm 49, which includes: 

They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

which is something our supposed Lords and Masters should perhaps bear in mind, and John 15: 1-11, which includes verse 5 

 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 

Which sort of brings us back to the point where we came in, with the trees outside my window, and their root and branch process of regeneration. Next week it will be Advent, and surely at some point winter will descend upon us in all its fury. It’s probably forecast for next week, for all I know, I haven’t had time to check the weather forecast. If it is for snow and ice, I will have to find out my Hawaiian shirt and my sunglasses and dust off the barbecue.

Meanwhile, yes, it’s Stir Up Sunday.  Soon it will be Christmas, and another year gone. On 10^th December, it will be three years since I came out of hospital. Where has the time gone, and what have I done with it?

I think I need to stir my own stumps, before it’s too late. I’d like to see a lot more stirring gong on, actually. A whole lot of stirring going on. I’d like to see the Home Office and the UKBA stirred up, and shaken too, if possible. But if I am going to stir up other people, first I need to stir myself.  I can’t do it when I’m gone, so I guess, however many people on Facebook it upsets, I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Gregory Thaumaturgis

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Busy in a way even I had forgotten it could be, but more of that later.  I haven’t really noticed the weather though, so I can’t really tell you what it’s been like. Dull, cold, wet, occasional pale sunshine, pretty much about par for November, I guess, with dead leaves everywhere.  While it’s good of the Almighty to provide us with free mulch (or at least the ingredients) for the garden, the task of gathering them all up and putting them in a bin bag is a cold and boring chore.  There are some manual jobs that are actually quite meditative – you sort of get “in the zone” and your mind drifts away. Sadly, gathering leaves isn’t one of them – not for me, at least.

Nor is there much news to report on the animal front. Matilda has been spending increasing amounts of time in the kitchen with us, and now sleeps overnight on the settee next to the stove, as you might expect from a cat. If not actually sleeping on the settee, she can usually be found inhabiting a ratty old threadbare fleece that I deliberately leave on the foot of my bed for her to sleep on/burrow down into when it’s cold.  She’s no fan of the cold weather. I think that, like me, she would prefer it to be warm and sunny all the year round.  She’s also still not entirely mastered the idea of the cat flap unless it is held open with a chock of wood, which Debbie puts in place specifically for that purpose.  Having the cat flap permanently wedged open doesn’t exactly help in the temperature stakes, either.  

One day during the week, I forget exactly which one, Misty must’ve gone through into Colin’s side of the house and stuck her head out of the cat flap (or at least her snout, her whole head won’t fit) dislodging the chock of wood and closing the flap, effectively shutting Matilda out in the garden, since her lack of basic feline intelligence prevented her from getting back through it in the normal way. Thus it was that, when I went out down my ramp some time afterwards, to take out the recycling, I was accosted by a very stroppy cat who gave me an angry mouthful of yowling then scuttled past me and back into the warmth of the kitchen.

Misty remains oblivious of the chaos she causes, by and large, though she is still majorly troubled by yet more idiots letting off yet more fireworks.  She was obviously more traumatised by the experience two weeks ago than we thought.  She’s taken to going and hiding behind the settee at the slightest sound of a pop or explosion in the dark outside.  Occasionally, she even pokes the bifold doors open with her nose and skedaddles next door on to the settee where Matilda sometimes sleeps, under Colin’s front bay window. (Pausing briefly en route to hoover up any remaining cat food).

Every time she does this, of course, it lets all of the heat out of the kitchen, so in an attempt to stop her doing this, Debbie put three or four rubber bands around the two doorknobs to hold the doors closed. Needless to say, Misty proved to be too strong for this arrangement and the end result was that the doorknob came flying off and rolled under the settee. Well it’s been a while in this blog since we had a doorknob fall off, so it’s nice to be able to rehearse the meme once again. The old order changeth, and giveth way to the new. Or, as Bob Dylan sang:

“Yes, I received your letter
About the day that the doorknob broke
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?”

Because I don’t like to think of Misty feeling stressed about the fireworks, I sent off for, and received during the week, two phials of “pet relaxant” spray, containing Valerian and other natural ingredients, that works by mimicking the neurological processes associated with feelings of well-being and safety in the animal’s brain.  I gleefully sprayed it around the place. I have to say it worked, but not quite how I intended. I fell asleep in my wheelchair for 45 minutes. Matilda came in, sniffed the carpet at the spot where I’d sprayed some of the stuff, squeaked in pleasure and rolled over on it, and waved all her legs in different directions at once, asking for a tumjack furfle.  Misty looked on with a rather pitying expression.  So there we are. We may not have ended up any calmer, but I did get 45 minutes extra sleep, and the cat is now on drugs.

Debbie’s week of teaching ground on at a glacial pace, but at least with the arrival of her new watch from Ebay she now knows what time it is again. She was admiring it and saying that she thought it was a Swiss Army watch. I told her that she was probably confusing it with a penknife, and in any case it was more likely to be a Swiss Navy watch.

“I didn’t know that they did them. Or that they even had a Navy.”

“Oh, yes. It’s based in several ports, along the Swiss coastline.”

The latter half of the week, for me, was dominated by the lead-up to BBC Children In Need, and Gez Walsh’s idea of producing a kids’ poetry book within a single day, with the help of the students of Elland Church of England Junior School.  It was a laudable aim, and, although I have my own misgivings about Children in Need for all sorts of reasons, which I have gone into at length before, I could not help being impressed by his enthusiasm, the school’s enthusiasm, and even the printer’s enthusiasm.  So, I supposed, I had better heave myself wearily into the saddle of Rocinante once more, and try and fulfil my small part in the battle.

The day itself went well, and the objective was achieved, and next week, the kids at the school will have a book to sell to raise funds.  This was despite some fairly major obstacles working against us, such as Gez being stuck in traffic when he should have been being interviewed by BBC Radio Leeds, and me needing to give them his mobile number so they could contact him, then promptly dropping my phone, which contained it, and watching it skid under the bed out of reach. Fortunately there was a long piece of the old IKEA kitchen unit propped up next door which I was able to use to fish it out, in a sort of bizarre game-show-type beat-the-clock challenge, just in time to phone them and give them the number.

Other than Children in Need, my own contact with the media this week has been exclusively one way, growing more irritated than ever at the BBC’s news priorities. They have chosen not to report the continued protests of the group Anonymous, against the austerity agenda, including not reporting a protest which was actually taking place outside the BBC TV centre while the Graham Norton show was on air.  It seems that the BBC, along with the Labour Party, has decided to take a compliant and unquestioning stance when it comes to the Junta’s propaganda. Thus we have it being reported this week that unemployment is down, without any mention of the fact that there are currently 1.46 million people in part-time jobs.  If you actually factor that into the mix, suddenly the “recovery” doesn’t look so cheery.

We may not be able to say so for long, however. In addition to the “Gagging Law” (which seeks to restrict the amount of lobbying which can be carried out against the Junta’s policies by campaigning organisations and charities) the Blight Brigade are also enacting the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which grants power to police, local authorities, and even private security firms to criminalize any nuisance deemed to have a “detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality.”  Since what constitutes a “locality” remains at present undefined, you could end up being barred from the entire country, just for being a nuisance to the government.

While, in one sense, it shows that organisations such as 38 Degrees and the Occupy movement have got under the Junta’s skin to the extent that they are now being specifically targeted by this type of legislation, it does have worrying implications for everyone’s civil liberties, and the right to peaceful political process in the UK. Especially the way it is being sneaked through Parliament in a back door, hole-and-corner way, with hardly any public attention being shown it by the BBC, for instance.  There is a mass of anti-libertarian legislation now on the statute book, much of it enacted since 2001 under the pretext of controlling “terror”. The police already have the power to control marches and demonstrations, and have shown that they are not above “pre-emptive arrests” of people who might cause trouble at high profile national events such as the Royal Wedding, the Olympics, and state visits by heads of foreign powers with a penchant for invading helpless neighbours and an appalling human rights record (yes, China, I am talking about you.) When you start to add in the powers proposed in the two pieces of legislation mentioned above, the outlook does start to become distinctly Orwellian.

Almost as Orwellian, in fact, as the Tories’ decision to try and block internet access to the archives of all their speeches prior to 2010, as these are chock-full of potentially embarrassing statements such as “there will be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS” and “we have no plans to increase VAT to 20 per cent”. How dumb do they think we are?
When it comes to the “recovery” (and wherever it’s taking place, it doesn’t seem to involve people buying books, sadly) there is a fairly sound theory that whatever is happening is happening not because of George Osborne’s actions, but because he’s stopped actively doing what caused the economy to plunge nose-first into recession and reverse the growth he inherited in the first quarter of 2010. Not that this will stop him trying to claim the credit for it, of course.  I am no economist, but Jonathan Portes, former treasury advisor, has written a very convincing piece in his blog which makes the point that the time for austerity was after a recovery had taken hold, not before, and what Osborne has done actually postponed a recovery rather than hastening it.

Inflation is 2.2 per cent, apparently, and the Bank of England are already talking about raising interest rates, a decision I personally find baffling. If I was trying to raise some frail, tender, green shoots, a stiff dose of Paraquat would be the last thing I would have thought they needed. But the issue that possibly made me the most angry this week is the failure of anyone in the media to ask a simple question of the energy companies.  The justification advanced from the energy companies is that part of the price rise is to cover the cost of various green levies imposed by this and past governments. And my question, which no one seems to have asked, let alone answered, is “why is there an automatic presumption that the costs of any green levy should be automatically passed on – either in whole or in part – to consumers?” And for a bonus point, “why can’t the energy companies just take it out of their profits?”

Another gross injustice this week has been largely unreported – almost completely unreported, in fact, by any mainstream media that I have seen. I myself only stumbled on it by accident.

Miriam Harley Miller, an Australian living in the UK, has had her visa revoked and has been given 28 days to leave the country, with no explanation or right of appeal. As I looked into the matter further, it became clear to me that there was only one possible explanation for this bizarre decision, which stands out as a landmark of lunacy in a landscape of inexplicable decisions on immigration and deportation, under this government and the previous one.  I have come to the conclusion that this unjust and stupid action by the agents of the Junta, was politically motivated.  As she herself wrote on her Facebook page, she had been posting lots of articles and links to blogs about immigration:

You see, as an Australian living in the UK, I am an immigrant. In recent times, I have seen how there has been an increasing political campaign by a particular party which very much scapegoats immigrants for what is going on n this country. Sadly, the other parties, afraid of losing votes, have followed suit.

I have been in this country for 9 years. In the whole of that time I have worked for the NHS, in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health sector, helping young people of this country through sometimes quite severe mental health problems… I have also contributed in taxes that whole time. I have never been unemployed, I don't have children and I don't have a disability. In other words, I have paid my taxes but have never required, thankfully, to draw on benefits for anything. Ever. I am considered as "highly skilled". Without going into my CV, suffice to say, I have two Masters degrees and various lesser qualifications. I own my own property. I do not have a criminal record.

Ironically, I am no longer entitled to health care. The very same health care that I have contributed to in terms of work and taxes.  In fact, as of Friday, I have no rights in the UK whatsoever, despite owning properties and my years of contribution here.
I wanted to tell you all this because I want you to know, as UK citizens, what the REALITY of the immigration situation is. So when you read in the papers or hear in the media that the government has reduced the number of immigrants in this country, think of me and say to yourself "now I know how they do it!"

It is a long extract, but I think it’s an important one. I’ve said for many years that immigration is a mess, and will continue to be a mess, as long as we are part of the EU and thus have no, or little control over our own borders. Unfortunately, the only other people saying this are goose-stepping closet fascists such as UKIP, because neither of the two major parties has the political courage to grasp the nettle and say that we want our borders back. Then, and only then, can we have a sensible discussion, uncluttered by white van man anecdotes about plasma TVs and free council houses, about who can and can’t come here to live and work.  Don’t be kidded into thinking this is also what UKIP wants, though, they simply want to see fewer brown faces in the high street.  Anyway, if, like me, you think that the Junta should not be allowed to target people for deportation because they might disagree with their immigration policy, there is a petition you can sign to allow Miriam Harley Miller to stay in the UK.

By a strange coincidence – of the sort that often happens in serendipity-inspired web surfing – I discovered this week, online, the entire text of Clement Attlee’s speech to the Labour Party conference at Scarborough in 1951, launching their manifesto for that coming election.  The entire speech is worthy of commendation, not only for the fact that it’s the sort of thing that politicians just don’t do any more, and also that it is full of interesting historical nuggets for anyone interested in the development of the Labour movement. But the section that stuck our for me, that leapt out of the screen, was the part where Attlee delivers his summing up, his rallying call. It’s another long extract, but bear with me and indulge an old fogey:

The crucial question of this Election, on which every elector must make up his or her mind, is this: What kind of society do you want? We know the kind of society we want. We want a society of free men and women - free from poverty, free from fear, able to develop to the full their faculties in co-operation with their fellows, everyone giving and having the opportunity to give service to the community, everyone regarding his own private interest in the light of the interest of others, and of the community; a society bound together by rights and obligations, rights bringing obligations, obligations fulfilled bringing rights; a society free from gross inequalities and yet not regimented nor uniform.

Our opponents, on the other hand, regard the economic process primarily as the giving an opportunity to the individual to advance his own interests; community interests, national interests, are regarded as a hypothetical by-product. Their motto is: ‘The world is my oyster; each one for himself.’ The result of that policy can be seen by all. There was the army of the poor; there were the slums; there was beautiful Britain defiled for gain; there were derelict

areas. The fruits of our policy can be seen in the new fine generation that is growing up, in the new houses - because we have done a great work in housing. You hear only of the people who are not satisfied. The people who are snug in a Council house do not write to you about it. The fact is that a very remarkable job has been done under great difficulties. You see our new towns, you see our smiling countryside. I am proud of our achievement. There is an immense amount more to do. Remember that we are a great crusading body, armed with a fervent spirit for the reign of righteousness on earth. Let us go forward in this fight in the spirit of William Blake:

I will not cease from mental strife,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

Ed Miliband, please note, read, learn, mark and inwardly digest.

And so we came to Sunday, two weeks after Misty was scared stiff by the fireworks and ran off, and idiots are still causing bangs outside as I write, so much so that Deb had to curtail her walk at teatime and bring Misty back because the poor dog was rooted to the spot, petrified, in Beaumont Park.  Fortunately, this time, Misty was on the lead.  Otherwise she would have been off again, over the hills and far away. I cannot begin to express my hatred and contempt for people who frighten my dog with fireworks, but I hope they can feel the fierce heat of my malevolent intentions towards them, burning the back of their stupid necks.

Today is the feast of St Gregory Thaumaturgus, who is one of many saints whose feast day is celebrated on November 17^th but who stood out a mile from the others because of his extremely silly name.  He is the patron saint against earthquakes and floods, and desperate, lost, or impossible causes, which I have to say I thought was St Jude’s bag, but I guess St Gregory helps out when they are busy. 

He lived from 213 to 270AD, and the latinized Greek epithet “Thaumaturgus”  appended to his name means “wonder worker”.  He is also known as Gregory of Neocaesarea or Gregory the Wonder Worker, which sounds a bit like a rather twee Marvel Comics super-hero.  He wasn’t always a thaumaturge (great word, that) and nor was he always a Christian. In fact, he wasn’t always even Gregory, because his birth name was Theodore and he was born a pagan. In later years, apparently to attract the people to the festivals in honour of the martyrs, Gregory organized profane amusements intended to appeal to pagans, who were more used to religious ceremonies that combined solemnity with pleasure and merrymaking.

About 233, he and his brother, Athenodorus, accompanied his sister, who was joining her husband in Caesarea, Palestine, while they continued on to Beirut to continue their law studies. They met Origen and instead of going to Beirut, entered his school at Caesarea, studied theology, were converted to Christianity by Origen, and became his disciples. Gregory returned to Neocaesarea about 238AD, intending to practise law, but was elected bishop instead, by the seventeen Christians of the city. It soon became apparent that he was gifted with remarkable powers. He preached eloquently, made so many converts he was able to build a church, and soon was so renowned for his miracles that he was surnamed Thaumaturgus (the wonderworker). 

As with many of the early saints, little is known about him with any certainty, sources conflict, and some of the writings traditionally attributed to him were undoubtedly really done by other hands. Situation normal, in other words.  Among his many miracles were stopping a flood in its tracks and moving a mountain. He is also supposed to have had the first recorded vision of the apparition of the Virgin Mary. By the time he died, allegedly there were only 17 unbelievers left in Neocaesarea!

Origen, St Gregory’s teacher, is in many ways much more interesting. He had some fairly wacky theological ideas (well, wacky for the time, these days no-one would bat an eyelid) believing in concepts such as the pre-existence of souls as a way of explaining the unfairness of the world, which has led to some people describing him as a Christian advocate of reincarnation. He also believed in the final reconciliation of all beings, the indivisibility of God and the idea of the logos, and the subordination of the Son of God to God the Father, all of which meant that he ended up being declared anathema for a thousand years or so, and never made it to sainthood himself, despite being so holy that, by one account, he is said to have deliberately castrated himself. Ouch.

As I’ve often observed, in the febrile atmosphere and the melting pot of the early ears of the Mediterranean church, the categorisation of saints, and the qualifications for sainthood, were obviously a lot more lax than they are today.  Who knows whether St Gregory really stemmed a flood or moved a mountain, or whether some smaller, nore natural, less supernatural, incident was embroidered in the telling until it became a miracle despite itself.  Or maybe St Gregory did have sufficient willpower to produce an improbable change in what those around him perceived as reality, who knows. Personally, I can’t really draw any lessons for myself from the life of St Gregory Thaumaturgus, other than, I suppose, that there’s always hope, even in a seemingly impossible situation.

Such as the aftermath of the Philippines typhoon, for instance. Inevitably, whenever something like this happens, people say things like “where was God in all this?” and, having just read about St Gregory Thaumaturgis, you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a pity he wasn’t around, to stop the Tsunami in its tracks.  Strangely, the Collect for today includes the reference to Luke 21 9:19 where Jesus is exhorting his followers to stay strong in the difficult times and including these verses:

But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by. Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

I’ve said before – many times now – that any attempt to attribute human ideas of fairness and justice to what you might call God in such natural disasters is futile. Who can know the mind of God? If there is a God who is capable of taking upon himself the sins of the world and who exists forever outside of time for all eternity, how the hell can we hope, through a glass darkly, to even have an inkling of what its thought processes and decisions must be like?  But that is no consolation particularly to the victims squatting in the ruins, with no food or water, at risk of disease, having just lost their homes, their livelihoods and probably some or all of their families. In fact, such a God would seem (although may not be) a cold, impersonal, unfeeling entity who took no heed of the welfare of the world he had allegedly created.

Philip Yancey, author of Where is God When It Hurts and The Question That Never Goes Away, wrote in the latter book, about the school shootings at Sandy Hook, Connecticut:

At Christmas time we sing O Little Town of Bethlehem, which includes this phrase: “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Though evil and death still reign on this soiled and violent planet, the event commemorated around the world shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings represents our best, true hope. Jesus entered this world in desperate, calamitous times in order to show a way to the other side. The last book in the Bible spells out what that will look like: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. . . . I am making everything new!”

And that, I am afraid, is all we have. That, and the indomitable nature of the human spirit, and the kindness of strangers. The same urge to help that led complete strangers to leave their warm firesides two weeks ago tonight and go looking for Misty, missing on Castle Hill, is the urge that has led people to up sticks and fly planeloads of aid out to the disaster area, or to pick up the phone and donate, in these times of austerity at home. And in every victim fed and comforted, in every orphaned child saved and wrapped in a blanket, in the soup kitchens, the field hospitals, and the temporary shelters, and the years of patient rebuilding ahead, that is where, if anywhere, God is in this disaster. Why the typhoon happened may not be a mystery – several scientists have already pointed a finger at global warming, but why Big G allowed it to happen is, and remains a complete mystery to me.  And that’s the choice we have at times like this. We either think “sod it, it’s all bollocks”, or we close ranks, carry on, and try and help wherever we are able.

As for us, back here in the relatively safe, relatively comfortable UK, facing our first potential “snow event” of the year, in the run up to Christmas, well we have a choice as well, like I said above.  We can either let things go on the way they are, or we can make such a racket that they even hear us inside the cocooned bubble of politics, before it’s too late, and making a racket becomes illegal.  Our greatest enemy is complacency. As a far better essayist than me once said, in a passage I have often quoted, at the end of Homage to Catalonia:

And then England--southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don't worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen-all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. In the meantime, darkness has fallen completely while I have been writing this, and even if I wanted to go and put the leaves that have fallen off the trees today into a bin-bag, there isn’t enough light to see by, so I think instead I will put some soup on. It’s a soup sort of evening.  And I thank God, or what passes for it, that I can have my soup in a bowl by the fire, rather than out of a mug under the railway arches. The stove is ticking away, the dog is curled up in her chair with her nose in her tail, the cat is curled up on, or in, my ratty old fleece on the bed next door, and tomorrow is another day.  If it does snow, at least College will be closed and Debbie will be able legitimately to catch up with some sleep.  It’s an ill wind that blows absolutely everybody no good, if I got that right.  The winter evening settles down, said T S Eliot, to which I add, with smells of soup in passageways.  There is not one problem in the world that cannot be solved by the regular and judicious application of a bowl of soup. Hard times, come again no more.

 

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?