Yeah, occasionally I bang on about politics.

A few thoughts.

I can’t vote in France, not even for my own local Maire, thanks to the B word that we don’t seem to be able to say out loud without someone telling us “we lost” and “get over it”. We’re still not sure what everyone else apparently won, but hey ho.

Look how well it’s going over here with the old far right looking highly likely to gain a majority. Some lovely populist promises such as reducing the retirement age from 64 to 60. Imagine!!! A retirement age of 64 for Christ’s sake, mine is 71, and might even be later than that. No clue how any of this is being funded by the way, but hey, what’s plunging the country into debt if you can get your anti immigrant sentiment past the post.

I will find a protest and I will march with other left, and centrist people, just like I marched against Brexit, mark my words. Tofu eating wokerati reporting for duty.

And yet, it seems that the UK have perhaps realised, that populists promise the moon on a stick but in the end deliver absolutely nothing. Where are the 40 new hospitals, HS2 North, the swathes of new housing, additional policing and more nurses you were promised everyone?

Instead there’s sewage in the sea and rivers, a swathe of new oil and gas licenses, people pulling out their own teeth and the elderly left on hospital trolleys for the best part of 18 hours before finding a bed. The latter I have first hand experience of with my Mum.

Meanwhile some people, like say Michelle Mone, are ever richer. Billions wasted and funnelled into people with glaring conflicts of interest that could have contributed to making the country better and safer for all of you.

I hasten you to think long and hard now if you are remotely wavering on voting for Reform.

When was your life made directly more difficult by an immigrant? An actual example please.

I would hasten that every problem that you face in your daily life, directly stems from government policy.

And when was your life made better?

Your consultant, your bus driver, your kid’s schoolteacher? All the hard working people that you don’t ever see and will never meet that work in the food industry or engineering or any number of other industries.

It’s smoke and mirrors. Blame welfare. Yes the reason you can’t afford a house is because of the disabled claiming benefits. Listen to yourselves. Might I remind you that you’re only a hand full of missed mortgage payments, an accident, or a cancer diagnosis away from needing some state assistance yourselves.

There’s a reason the Scandinavian countries are consistently voted to have the highest standard of living. Yes their taxes are higher, but their working culture has a work life balance deeply ingrained. Things like childcare and maternity leave are heavily subsidised or free. People are looked after. They live happier, healthier, longer lives because of it.

Maybe a little less focus on judging a country’s success by GDP growth, I’d rather it be judged by how they treat society’s most vulnerable.

We have been shafted for the last 14 years, and yet some of you still chose to blame a faceless inhuman group of “immigrants”. They are people, human, families, children. Fleeing war and persecution for the most point, or just wanting a brighter future. If you were in their position, wouldn’t you do the same? I watched a video this morning where Owen Jones interviewed a man in Lis Truss’s constituency that was actually advocating for shooting the migrant boats at sea. Maybe watch a couple of excellent Netflix Documentaries about the rise of the far right in Nazi Germany. If you can’t see the parallels my friends, I don’t know what to tell you.

Also, and this is bugbear of mine, people are not legally obliged to settle in the first “safe country” they arrive into. Nowhere in the Refugee convention is this a thing. This would mean that everyone would likely end up in Greece or the close environs. This is fair because why exactly? The UK already takes far less proportionally compared to other European nations.

Lastly, women.

To not vote as a woman, is an absolute crime in my opinion. I think of the moments that came before. The ones that chained themselves to railings, the ones that threw themselves in front of racehorses, or who starved themselves and were forcibly fed in Holloway prison, so we can now exercise our constitutional rights.

To quote the mighty Emmeline Pankhurst.

“Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs”

Look what they won for us.

So, no it isn’t a foregone conclusion, no politicians aren’t all the same, so what if it’s raining, or the football is on. I don’t care if you go to the polling station in your PJs as long as you go.

“Deeds not words”.

Peace out.

TTFN x