Answering the comments that the 'Defeated' in the General Election are not taking it well! And the Vilification of Ed Miliband

I have been mulling this over since I have heard it said/read it in the media. That people like me, the so called 'defeated' in the electorate stakes are bad losers and 'won't let it lie'. After any election there will always be 'post mortems' whatever the results. And people like me who are very involved in politics will also make comments in the media, on meeting friends in the street, on their status pages in social media groups just as we have been making comments and canvassing our views during the election campaign expressing our discontent at the result. 

The Opinion Polls got it wrong, surprising/shocking so many. Although I did hear a representative of pollsters explaining that  [1] They got it right at the exit polls [2] They hadn't really got the pre-poll figures wrong, they just hadn't allocated the votes around the constituencies correctly. So that all good then.


There is no excuse for anyone, either in a private or public capacity, to make scurrilous personal comments about how people voted or the personalities of voters or the politicians. Personally I feel that a lot of people have been mistaken in their reasons for voting how they did - but then I would say that wouldn't I and I am sure no-one is surprised at my feelings!


I don't actually give much credence to most of the media's outpourings except to note its bias - this from the daughter of a political journalist who worked in the press gallery of the House of Commons in the days when there was a lot more honour in journalism. I am also very upset about the loss to the country of many very good politicians across all parties. There have been some ridiculous conspiracy theories floated but then that has happened at many times, including large sporting events and moon landings so we needn't even discuss those.


The vilification of Ed Miliband by the media is disgusting, I did not vote for him as party leader, but my union backed him and when he was elected as party leader I supported him and honestly don't feel he made a bad job of it. No need for anyone to take me up on this - I am not going to change my mind so don't waste your typing fingers energy! We are very lucky in the Labour Party that we have so many excellent politicians in the party very well qualified to take on the leadership of our fantastic party. We are bloodied but not bowed to quote the poet.

As for the worries many of us have about the NHS and for which we are being rather mocked at the moment: Yes many of us feel that it is under threat for its existence under a Conservative government. The reasons for this we have laid out during the campaign. Although I know the NHS has problems they can be fixed. I have lived in a country where if one did not have enough money for life saving drugs you wouldn't survive. My ex-husband is proof of this, not improving from a life threatening illness until money was thrown at the drugs issue. I really, really hope I am wrong and the NHS in five years time is even better than it is now. 

If I say that I honestly feel that this is not the government for the old, the poor, the sick or the vulnerable please accept that is how I feel. Like the delivery man who knocked at my door with a parcel on Friday morning, and seeing my Labour placard in my front garden told me that he had been crying all night as the results rolled in. I know others may disagree with the hundreds of thousands like us but we all have the right to our own opinions as long as we express them honestly and decently. Just as those who are happy with the result and say so! But for now I am making my activism plans for the election in 2020 and all the elections inbetween!

A letter to my Godson on his joy at the Conservative election win in May 2015

My Godson sent me a message to say how glad he is that the Conservatives have won the General Election and maybe Labour would have done better with a more liked front man. Godson knows me so well that he surely would not have been surprised when he received my answer as shown below.


"Firstly I hope you and your lovely family keep well and that none of you need to use the health and welfare services which will surely now slowly disappear. Secondly, I hate the fact that the 'cult of celebrity' may be deemed responsible for Labour losing the election. As a Labour Party member, I didn't vote for Ed in the leadership election, but when he became our leader I naturally supported him. I actually think that there was huge media slur campaign against him, but that is btw. We vote for the principles of a party not whether someone can eat a bacon sandwich neatly. [Ask Youngest Daughter about Ed because she worked with him in Westminster when she was there] A party is a conglomerate [ especially the Labour Party] where even the very 'ordinary' member votes on policy through their local meetings.


You and I will never agree about politics and that is not a problem. But it is the Socialist ideals that I have always believed in that have - strangely enough! - never let me down throughout my life. The 'free' National Health Service that saved my life on a couple of occasions and that of more than one of my children. [Remember we lived abroad for a time where it was only by throwing more and more money at the problem that Other Half's life was saved when he nearly died' If the money had not been there, neither would the life saving meds]; 'Free' universal education gave my children university degrees and got them good jobs - they have 'paid back' the money the State spent on their education through the tax system ever since then, of course. Having never claimed on the Benefits system for unemployment benefit as luckily there have never been employment problems in our family [a lot of the reason for that of course was the help given by the Trade Union movement over the years.More on that later], I must admit I have been a bit profligate on having children so have been a bit of a drain on the Family Allowance system. After all in 1971 when I had Eldest Daughter I was 'rewarded' by the promise of 7/6d [371/2p] Family Allowance that I would get for the Eldest Son when he eventually arrived in 1975. And the suceeding children. And all that bounty was more than repaid in the tax system. Now I receive my State Pension [I know. I just don't look old enough!] and that and some of the other benefits I get [bus pass, free prescriptions, winter fuel allowance] are often begrudged by the younger generations. Conveniently ignoring the fact that I have been 'paying in' and promised these all my working life.


Back to the wonderful Trade Union movement, who just over 100 years ago were amongst the founding fathers of the Labour movement. When I had a severe problem with the failure of my work pension, their financial backing of a very long campaign ensured our success and thousands of us would have lost up to 50% of our pensions - paid for over a 50 year working life - without them.


So we will agree to differ but you know how stubborn I am and I will never turn my back on those who have helped me and so many others. And although Hugh Gaitskell said it in a completely different context about the Labour Party in 1960, I will 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party that [I] love' - but as you also know, this will only in a pacifist way.


I honestly believe that the election results were a disaster for the old, sick, poor and vulnerable. The rich will be OK. I care about the first group. The second will look after themselves as usual. I am typing this sitting on the settee, wrapped up in a blanket with a viral infection. It has done me a favour to get this enthused to write as it is helping me 'sweat it out'! Writing is also my therapy. I have a feeling a lot of this will appear as a blog later on today. Don't take it personally! Or rather do and don't vote Conservative next time!"

Six days in life and politics

Throughout May 1831 the coal miners and others who worked for William Crawshay took to the streets of Merthyr Tydfil, calling for reform, protesting against the lowering of their  wages  and general unemployment. Gradually the protest spread to nearby industrial towns and villages and by the end of May the whole area was in rebellion, and for the first time in the world the red flag of revolution was flown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merthyr_Rising

On a personal note, I had ancestors living in Merthyr at this time and probably working for Crawshay or one of the iron masters. My g.g.g.grandfather John Abrahams died there in 1849 of cholera, a typical illness of the poor working people.

Sunday: Other Half and I take the 200 mile trip to our other home on the other side of the country, having posted by postal vote over a week before in the consituency of our main home.

Monday: Fifty year relationship disappears in less than fifty minutes. Ah well.

http://hippydaysarehereagain.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/on-being-dumped-after-50-years.html

Tuesday: Start to empty out the second home of 23 years. Not discussing yet how I feel. Massive support from family and friends.

Wednesday:  Afterwork, Eldest Son arrives, loads car up and brings me home.  Four and a half hours drive each way. Arrive home to get to bed about 3am and he is off to work again about 7.30am.  BTW I have bronchitis. My bed has never felt so welcoming.

Thursday:  Youngest daughter texts to say once more her new house purchase has been delayed and the mortgage offer may not be renewed. Trying to sort this out, whilst feeling like crap from bronchial problems and drop mobile 'phone down loo. Watch it disappear around ubend with all contacts and photos on it. [Eventually buy another on ebay, heart in mouth, but cannot keep in touch with my kids who do not have landlines, without a mobile] 

One of my author friends describes my writings as:  '[Her] humour and spirit are indomitable'. Well that will do for me..

Have been looking forward to watching the election results although I had thought I would do it whilst over looking the South Wales coast, as in previous elections. Never the less set to to make my vegan fruit case which will be nourishing through the night as well as healthy and delicious. Halfway through cooking find all my vegan margarine is in the refrigerator over 220 miles away and have to settle for a vegetarian cake instead. Not - by any means - the end of the world.

As the election results begin to roll in realise this is not going to be a country where it is wise to be old, ill, poor or vulnerable. Dose in front of the TV, eventually fall asleep when reassured that at least the constituency in which I have voted is not going to fall to UKIP as predicted and the returning Tory MP is one of the better ones although of course I voted for my old mate of 40+ years who was standing for Labour.

Friday: Wake up to even worse results than I had feared but at least FARAGE WAS NOT ELECTED.
Bronchitis even worse and decide to take it to the doctor's whilst we still have an NHS.

Three party leaders resigning. A historic time. Nigel Farage blusters, Nick Clegg made probably the best speech I have ever heard him make, Ed Miliband made a  grand speech, very dignified. Some lovely people who have been good comrades in the Labour Party over the years are now wondering how soon they can start campaigning for their re-entry into the House of Commons in 2020. We activists are ready to go, although I think I will need antibiotics first!

Well, I am not going to give in on any front.  Watch this space!

Don't buy the Daily Fail, read Ed Miliband's reply here!

Ed & Ralph Miliband in 1989 as published alongside Geoffrey Levy's article

Below is Ed Miliband's reply, published in today's Daily Mail, to the scurrilous article by Geoffrey Levy which the Mail published last Saturday [28th September]

Ed Miliband: My Dad Was A Man Who Loved Britain

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, writes in Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Mail:

"It was June 1944 and the Allies were landing in Normandy. A 20-year old man, who had arrived in Britain as a refugee just four years earlier, was part of that fight. He was my father. Fighting the Nazis and fighting for his adopted country.
On Saturday, the Daily Mail chose to publish an article about him under the banner headline “The Man Who Hated Britain.”

It’s part of our job description as politicians to be criticised and attacked by newspapers, including the Daily Mail. It comes with the territory. The British people have great wisdom to sort the fair from the unfair. And I have other ways of answering back.

But my Dad is a different matter. He died in 1994. I loved him and he loved Britain. And there is no credible argument in the article or evidence from his life which can remotely justify the lurid headline and its accompanying claim that it would “disturb everyone who loves this country”.

Saturday’s article referred to a single diary entry by my father, written as a 17 year old, describing the suspicion he found of the Continent and the French when he arrived here. To ignore his service and work in Britain and build an entire case about him hating our country on an adolescent diary entry is, of course, absurd.

In fact, his story will make you understand why he loved Britain. Britain saved him from the Nazis. He arrived here as a 16 year-old boy - a Jew - having walked 100 kilometres with his Dad from Brussels to Ostend to catch one of the last boats out before the German soldiers arrived.

It was a boat to Britain. He arrived, separated from his mother and sister, knowing no English but found a single room to share with my grandfather. He was determined to better himself and survive. He worked as a removal man, passed exams at Acton Technical College and was accepted to university. Then he joined the Royal Navy.

He did so because he was determined to be part of the fight against the Nazis and to help his family hidden in Belgium. He was fighting for Britain.

When I was growing up, he didn’t talk much about the Holocaust years because it was a deep trauma for both sides of my family. But he did talk about his naval service.

The Daily Mail’s article on Saturday used just a few words to brush over the years my father spent fighting for his adopted country in the Second World War. But it played a bigger part in his life than that.

It was hard for him as a newcomer in the Navy. Life could be rough. But when we were growing up, he talked about how he had grown to have deep respect for the people he served with. He loved how the Navy brought together people from all classes and all backgrounds.

My father would often talk about the time he spent on the ships where his job was to pick up and translate German radio messages. He remembered the banter at meal times and recounted moments like his discharge from the Navy when his commanding officer’s parting words were: “Don’t vote Labour, Miliband.”

After the war, he went back to university. Later, he would meet my Mum, become a university teacher and raise a family. My father’s strongly left wing views are well known, as is the fact that I have pursued a different path and I have a different vision.

He was a man with a great sense of humour so the idea of me being part of some “sinister” Marxist plot would have amused him and disappointed him in equal measure and for the same reason - he would have known it was ludicrously untrue. I want to make capitalism work for working people, not destroy it.

But whatever else is said about my Dad’s political views, Britain was a source of hope and comfort for him, not hatred. Having been born in Belgium he didn’t start from a belief in the inferiority of other countries, but he loved Britain for the security it offered his family and the gentle decency of our nation.

When we went on holiday abroad, the part he would look forward to the most was coming home. When he taught in America, he hated being away from our family and from Britain. When he thought of how many Jews had been killed, including members of our family, he felt very lucky that his boat from Belgium had come here.

Like most refugees, the security of our country was really important to him. And like some refugees, he owed his life to it. So my Dad loved Britain, he served Britain, and he taught both David and me to do the same.

Britain has always benefitted from a free press. Those freedoms should be treasured. They are vital for our democracy. Journalists need to hold politicians like me to account - none of us should be given an easy ride - and I look forward to a robust 19 months between now and the General Election.

But what appeared in the Daily Mail on Saturday was of a different order all together. I know they say ‘you can’t libel the dead’ but you can smear them.

Fierce debate about politics does not justify character assassination of my father, questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life for our country in the Second World War, or publishing a picture of his gravestone with a tasteless pun about him being a ‘grave socialist’.

The Daily Mail sometimes claims it stands for the best of British values of decency. But something has really gone wrong when it attacks the family of a politician - any politician - in this way. It would be true of an attack on the father of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, or mine.

There was a time when politicians stayed silent if this kind of thing happened, in the hope that it wouldn’t happen again. And fear that if they spoke out, it would make things worse. I will not do that. The stakes are too high for our country for politics to be conducted in this way. We owe it to Britain to have a debate which reflects the values of how we want the country run."

I am declaring a personal interest, I suppose, as my late father was a friend of the late Ralph Miliband. However as my Socialist politics are more to the left of my father's socialist politics & Ed Miliband's are to the right of his father's socialist politics there is a sort of ironic cross over! I never met Ralph or his sons.

Is the Government writing Comedy Scripts?

Other Half and I like a bit of comedy. Life can be gloomy enough without watching on TV/listening on the radio to dark dramas, especially the type where someone ends up tied up with blood streaming from various bits of the body whilst others are screaming and running about with guns. Yes give us a good comedy show, the more silly, satirical or anarchic the better.

So last night promised to be a good night, the Now Show [satirical] on Radio 4 followed by later on ITV Benidorm [silly] and on BBC2 Twenty Twelve [satirical and slightly anarchic?]

Of course I laughed at the Now Show, always do - as 'Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis dissect the week's news with comical precision' [as the website puts it] But last night it was obvious that the script had almost written itself. Or rather the Government had written a lot of the best lines. From the budget induced 'pasty crisis' to the more serious petrol 'shortages' situation.

Benidorm was reassuringly silly and Twenty Twelve had us laughing until we cried. But the worrying point about the latter programme - which is a spoof documentary about the 'organisers' [and that in itself is a loose term] of the forthcoming Olympics] was how easily statements to the press and others by both these 'Officials' and 'Government advisers' sounded impressive but actually said nothing. Have you listened to real news bulletins and interviews lately and thought the same thing?

Which brings me back to the fiasco which has been the result of Government statements this week. We have a women in hospital with 40% burns through decanting petrol in her kitchen which then exploded. Whether she did this as a result of David Cameron & Francis Maude's advice is obviously unknown. And although the poor woman was obviously unwise to have done what she did, she is paying for it in the most dreadful way. The Government were more than unwise, they deliberately unleashed a wave of panic buying to demonise the union and the tanker drivers. And what Francis Maude suggested was - if not actually illegal [when we lived in Germany this would have been illegal btw] it was really foolhardy to put it lightly.

And as for the pasty and sausage roll farrago, no leading politician looks good on that one. I don't care whether any of them eats cooked pies or not - but I do care that once again the poorer sections of society are being disproportionately affected whilst the better off sections have probably never been into a Greggs..... David Cameron's recollections of when he last had a pasty and advertising which make it was were as cringe making as watching Ed Milliband and Ed Balls stopping off at Greggs for a quick snack.

Then came an important story in the Daily Telegraph which suggested that David Cameron's pasty story may in fact be untrue. What other secrets are we about to discover? Well the same article reveals:

Nick Clegg has also eaten a pasty “in the last few months at Paddington station”, according to his spokesman. Sources close to Baroness Warsi said she “loves pasties” and often eats them when on trips round the country.

This is enough to make me strike pasties from my shopping lists, although I do really like them and Other Half particularly enjoys the veggie ones we buy in Glastonbury. But as we are not politicians I don't suppose you want to know that.

Quick where's the TV listings guide magazine. Are there any comedy programmes on tonight?



The photograph is from the Twenty Twelve website