"You may say that I am a dreamer/But I am not the only one" John Lennon: "Imagine"

"So come brothers and sisters/For the struggle carries on" Billy Bragg: "The Internationale"


Elizannie has a reading room at 'Clarice's Book Page' http://www.villiersroad.blogspot.com/

Thursday 24 July 2014

A Tale of a Tub [ or in this case a shower]





Elizannie and Other Half love camping, albeit  in slightly luxurious form [note slightly]  in a very small caravan. Sans lavatory and hot water but off the ground and including a foam mattress. And of course including lights that work even without electric input for reading purposes.

This week has seen us staying on a really de luxe camp site that boasted not only an electrical hook up but also a toilet block with showers and somewhere to wash dirty dishes. No need to crack out the paper cups and plates unless one is very lazy [yes you guessed it..] And the internet signal was really good too! So really not away from civilisation but plenty of opportunity for people watching as this was a really big camp-site. Close to a major tourist city too so all sorts of campers from many different campers provided plenty of scope for the 'where's that number plate from?' game.

So first morning trip to the showers was looking good as another really hot day was dawning and off I trotted complete with clothes, towel and shower gel all at the first attempt. Well done me! All downhill from there.

Beautifully clean showers. Undressed and straight into shower. Pressed the button, nothing. Peep head outside, no-one else in block other than in shower cubicles so catch up towel and venture out to see if there is something else needs pushing, pulling or depressing. Forget there was a step up into shower so fall down and out, luckily retain balance but towel slips, luckily again no-one in sight still. Call out in slightly wobbly voice to the occupied showers asking how to make showers 'go'. Reply is just to push the button but number one shower [mine] is not working..... Scramble in the buff into next shower.

Happily this one does work. Just drying myself when a little voice is heard calling in broker English 'please, how do these showers work?' Feeling smug now call out to explain about shower number one not working! Still not dressed when I hear another, deeper voice shouting 'male attendant on cleaning duties'. Decide to be a good citizen and poke my head out to report number one shower not working. At this point I should emphasise that I shower without glasses and hearing aids. Thus it was an easy mistake to think from the rear that the large lady walking past was a man. Feel obliged to stay in shower cubicle for a bit longer.

Eventually return to the little caravan clean and refreshed for a welcome cuppa to reflect on the morning's adventures. And to think about the original A Tale of A Tub, that wonderful first work and satire on religion by Jonathan Swift. Funny how even when I am camping I cannot completely leave behind English Lit, Politics and Religion isn't it?! 

Although to be honest a tub is a far better symbol for pulpit than a shower cubicle, there are similarities. There was the sharing of information and helping each others ; someone saved from a fall; differences between one and other [ethnicity, gender, ability] disappearing; and the unity of purpose - all needed cleansing although not in a spiritual sense perhaps! And underneath the towels with their fancy slogans and designs, all of us basically the same. As we all left the building we probably didn't think of each other again, rather like so many who leave their places of worship on their Holy Day and don't think again about their promises until the next day of worship. 

Oh dear - all this from a simple visit to the shower block on a camping trip but a microcosm of life, after all.

Monday 14 July 2014

A Personal Request for Help for those with Hearing Loss




Taken from the website of Action on Hearing Loss :
North Staffordshire CCG are considering no longer providing hearing aids to adults with mild to moderate age-related hearing loss. If the cuts go ahead here, other services across the country could follow suit, meaning that millions of people who struggle to hear could be denied NHS hearing aids.


Those of you who know me will realise how much I appreciate the tremendous difference my hearing aids have made. I probably still cannot hear as well as many of you can, but would hate to be without my hearing aids. But I would hate even more for other people not to have this benefit also. Please sign and if possible share the petition organised by Action on Hearing Loss and let our voices be HEARD.

To sign the petition and/or get further information please click on this link


Thank you for listening....

.... and remember this could just be the start of the cuts in NHS services - what next?

Friday 11 July 2014

Family History, Funerals and Facebook

Melbourne Argus 31st October 1950


Bless her, I hear you say, Elizannie has really lost it now. Not only does she provide a scintillating [not] blog title but then she gives us a boring picture to boot. Well all I can say - to quote Miranda's 'chum'* "bear with...."

Yesterday was a sad day for my family as a beloved older cousin was laid to rest. She was 88 years old and for all but the last few days of her life had been as bright as a button, had a fantastic sense of humour, great common sense and possessed a wonderful kindness and generosity of spirit. No wonder she will be missed by so many. But in the aftermath of the funeral - which had been arranged by her, she wanted us all to have a drink and something to eat 'on her' it has to be said that it was good to catch up with some members of the family who hadn't seen each other for years. We have a large extended family and there were a few games of 'Do you know who I am, then?' Edna would have loved that, as she was also the keeper of many of the family records. And following in her footsteps there are a few of us who are trying to write the family history too and last year many of us got together with old photos and stories to try and collate the facts.

Over the past few years we have not only collected and collated the facts when we could meet up, but we have used the often abused social media to keep in touch. Facebook has been great and whereas 50 years ago we all lived close enough to keep up the family gossip face to face we now can do so easily with facebook!!

This morning, with torrential rain outside providing an ideal excuse not to clean the windows or anything silly like that, I decided to have another go at finding a few errant ancestors via the internet. And I struck lucky and that elusive 2x great grandfather who emigrated to Australia in 1873 suddenly came to life [well actually I found his obituary!] via the Australian newspaper archives. And a question which had always bothered me, had he and his second wife produced any Australian half-cousins for me and the rest of the family was finally answered.

But here is the really exciting thing and something which maybe my longstanding readers may find interesting. I may have mentioned that my political journalist father was sometime the London editor of an Australian newspaper, back in the 1950s. So, seeing the name of that newspaper pop up during my archive search, I thought, why not? Let's type in his name and see what comes up. And yes, loads of articles did. He obviously had a weekly column where he told the Aussies what was going on in Westminster, sometimes throwing in a bit of gossip as well.

I haven't kept very many of my father's newspaper articles. Well you don't do you, when every day of one's young life a newspaper plops through the letter box and one's father has at least one byline, and that often to the headline. Although it gave me a big thrill a few years ago when the shop 'Past Times' was selling a pack of various newspaper replicas from the 1960s and one of them was the old Daily Herald with my father's byline on one of the articles! And going back a few years more, one of my cousins opened one of those Reader's Digest pictorial History Books and there was a picture of my father lecturing on Pacifism in the late 1930s. However I have been printing out some of these articles found today. And some of the political comments, written in the 1950s sadly make me realise that times haven't changed that much. His comments about wages and income tax are very interesting. And maybe others will now understand my dislike and disgust with Winston Churchill. These are two articles posted on here as photographs with 'translations' below.

Forgive me if I am being a bit self-indulgent today. I am dedicating this to Edna and all my lovely, huge family xxx


Melbourne Argus 19th December 1950


Text for the photos:

Attlee will introduce more socialism
SPARKS will fly in the political spheres of Britain tomorrow. By then the world will know from the King's Speech what legislation the Labor Government intends for the next Parliamentary session. The Opposition leaders and newspapers here are kidding themselves that the Government is going to coo as gently as a dove because of its small majority in the Commons. Don't believe that tale if you've been told it. The Government's new legislation will be challenging and belligerent. It will contain two proposals at least which will rouse fierce passions.
One will be a radical sugar nationalisation project - and the other will be a bill to make permanent the economic and industrial controls made necessary as temporary measures in wartime Britain.
And there will be another bill dealing with leaseholds that will bring all the backwoodsmen on one of their rare - and angry - visits to the House of Peers.
I sniff an electoral battle in the air.
February will see the struggle at the polls, I think.
When an election does come; cost of living will be a big issue.
Though it has been kept in check here better than in most countries in the world - and certainly better than in Australia - it is surely going up.
Fear of further price increases is making Christmas shoppers buy early this year.
Prudent husbands are buying their wives a something-to-wear present weeks ahead of the usual time.
Some shops have already sold more coats than during the whole of the winter season. 
Handbags and shoes are more popular than ever, and in both cases rising costs are likely with the increased leather shortage.
Handbags are already costing between £9 and £40. 
Everybody's feeling the draught, including higher income groups.
19/6 in the £
JUDGED by the income tax standards, the British millionaire is now almost non-
existent.
Last year there were only 86 people in the United Kingdom with over £6,000 income after tax.
In 1939 there were 6,560.
Tax at the highest rate ontop-level incomes in this country is 19/6 in the £.
Stiff, yes; but it doesn't begin at 19/6; it only reaches that at the supertax stage of £2,500 a year.
Lack of income has driven an Anglican parson out of his job.
He is the Rev. Austin Lee, talkative 45-year-old vicar of St. Stephen's, Hounslow, Middlesex.
He is offering his services as a cook for luncheon and dinner parties. To those ready to take him on he will also be prepared to bring a former Cambridge undergraduate as a waiter.



Oratory takes a  tumble
IF Australians still think of Winston Spencer Churchill as The Voice of England, they ought to shed their illusions. I sat in the House of Commons last week and saw Britain's wartime Premier descend, in the course of a few sentences, from the high level of a statesman to the abusive personal slanging level of the parish pump.
It was the most astonishing,  most impudent, and most insulting Parliamentary performance I have seen.
All the more so because Churchill's taunts and gibes were neither spontaneous nor unconsidered.
They were part of a meticulously prepared script from which Churchill spoke in a critical foreign affairs debate.
Coming at the end of a speech in which he had generally supported the Government on its Korean policy and had paid tribute to Mr. Attlee's mission to Washington, Mr.Churchill's charge that unless
the Government dropppd the act to nationalise steel he would "doubt their loyalty to the people of this country" was not only irrelevant-it was a studied reflection on the integrity of the men of whom Churchill has said he could have asked for no better Ministerial allies during the war.
What is the mystery behind all this? Why did Churchill deliberately destroy the non partisan atmosphere in which the debate on foreign affairs had proceeded up to that moment?
The answer is not easy to give, for it is many-sided. But one thing I can say with certainty: The hold of Churchill on the Tory Party is not as tight as it might be and to fasten his grip he must not make too many speeches even on foreign policy, which can be interpreted as support for the government.
Another reason it that, however grave the international situation, Mr. Churchill - and Tories generally-always have one eye cocked on the next general election.




*TV comedy starring Miranda Hart. Her chum is always uttering 'bear with' when answering her mobile in the middle of a conversation with A.N.Other. How rude.

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Don't worry, it WILL happen ........



I didn't make a mistake in this blog title. I meant to say that - because I am convinced that too often when activists/politicians/union leaders put out a warning about something that can and will happen the general public/silent majority appears to take no notice. These members of the electorate need to wake up and protest/vote against all those 'somethings' . However, too often instead of protests, choruses of "Don't worry, 'that' will never happen" can be heard around the country, followed in a few months time by additional choruses of "Well I never thought 'they' really meant to do it". The so called silent majority have struck again. Silent because whilst they may be complaining at home/in the pub/in the bus queue they are not complaining where it matters: in the ballot box/the MPs inboxes/on the streets in peaceful demos and rallies.

And whatever it was 'they' weren't really going to do, we can be assured that it will probably never be reversed by the next Government because key infastructure/assets/knowledge bases will have been sold off/lost/destroyed. And the 'silent majority' will be blaming everyone but themselves, of course.

What is firing my bad tempered rant of today? Listening to the news bulletins today talking about the teachers' strike called for tomorrow. You know, those lazy people who work like stink so that the upcoming generations will be educated to a level that will provide adequate knowledge and prosperity to support us all in our old age. Those lazy people whose pay and pension prospects are so awful and whose retirement age is being hiked so that they will be on their feet controlling ungrateful pupils at an age when they - the teachers - should be at home resting. Those lazy people who work far more hours than the general public realise: running after school clubs and activities, marking homework, setting up lesson plans, school trips and more. Who are looked upon too often as baby sitters and pillioried if they take a day off in industrial action ["I have to get someone to look after my children so that I can go to work. This is so unfair."] Yet if the school does not allow a parent to take a child away on a foreign holiday during term time, these same parents are often heard to complain about parents rights and how much more expensive holidays are in school holiday weeks. When teachers' have to take their holidays, right?

Oh and of course today's couple of rants from Dastardly Dave used tomorrow's strike action and an opportunity to announce 
Tough new laws to restrict strikes in essential services will be promised in next year’s Conservative general election manifesto
these essential services will include council workers, health workers, firefighters and civil servants who - coincidentally - will be joining the teachers in their industrial action tomorrow.

And as Dave so kindly pointed out:

I think the time has come for looking at setting thresholds in strike ballots... The [NUT] strike ballot took place in 2012, based on a 27 per cent turnout

hmm, some local, EU and General elections haven't achieved a turn out of much more than that. A comment on that please Dave?

Trade unions look after their members in so many ways. One true blue friend attacked my union loyalty with the comment 'Unions have never achieved anything'. Without going into the full lecture [and I could!] I muttered about the 10 hour day, 40 hour week, paid holidays, sick pay and all the parliamentary causes they have supported..... I was still muttering as she slammed the door on her way out.

We all know our NHS is under attack. Please don't let that become something about which the silent majority says 'Well of course I never thought they meant to dismantle it.' Join any protest you can around your locality. Likewise protest against the so-called Bedroom Tax and any other Austerity measures which always seem to hit the poorer members of society disproportionately.

If you can't physically support the strikers tomorrow, please think about them. Tweet or facebook your support. Ask your MP to support public sector workers. Think how you would feel if your retirement age and pension was attacked. If you are one of those public sector workers, my solidarity goes with you in your struggles. I can't be with you tomorrow as we have a funeral of an elderly family member to attend. A socialist all her life who defended all like those on strike and rejoiced to see the birth of the NHS. I hope her family don't witness its demise. My great grandparents, grandparents and parents were all trade unionists. Our children and grandchildren have joined Other Half and I on protest marches. We will keep on marching - join us all!


Photograph above shows Anti-austerity protest marches on Parliament in London