John

Breaking up with John in 1999 was a pivotal point in my life, of course I didn’t see it as such, it defined me and more than anything me face the person I was to become.

The arguments had been there for years, the emotional drama’s the ‘cheating’ the lies and also love, and a deep concern. John had problems, haven’t we all, and amongst the memories I have is the first day we met, and the day parted and in-between listening to Geoffrey Howe resign, the holiday cottage in Wales (bad asthma attack included) miles away from anywhere on Halloween. I remember having to drive him to hospital even though I had not passed my driving test, I remember lots of things.

I remember coming back from London, by surprise, to find my Flat turned into a Chinese Laundry as John was busily washing all my clothes and ironing them for my return, I remember the trip back from the Airport when I first flew back from New York.

Over time I remember less of the hurt and the pain and more of the good times.

I remember a blazing row when I stormed out of my own flat, slamming the door as I flounced down the street, I remember an argument in a pub that led him withdrawing into his shell when we got back, having to talk to him as I would a child – a broken hurt man, that somehow I was responsible for. I remember tearing the heart from his soul when I told I had met ‘someone else’.

Within a week of meeting him I had handed him £1,700 because he had got behind on his mortgage, and the debts were rising, then it was £300 here, £600 there. Giving money to John was like giving drink to an alcoholic. I will say this for John that he worked damned hard to get out of the financial hole he was in taking on part-time work above his normal job. He would make an effort and then it would all be gone again, another crisis.

Leaving John made me grow up, and for a long time I was still in love with him, in a sense I still am. I remember a couple of times when I was in Sheffield pushing notes underneath his door, but the stench of sadness seeped from his house, and that hurt. It hurt that someone I cared for was not enjoying life, it hurt because someone was hurting.

I had consigned John to a passing reference, until recently when he got my address from the internet, from one of the photographs I had posted of a train.

To cut a long story short he is dying, and his wish was to give me the money back he had borrowed.

I have snippets from his life, his has found someone who he is married to, they went to New York for their honeymoon, I am really happy for him. The money he borrowed is welcome, I can foresee uses for it, mainly to put away ‘for a rainy day’ but still I feel sordid about it.

I left for London in 1999 and to an extent I thought I had left John with the history books, and like Renton from Trainspotting I have seen that life changes, and that my life has changed. I am no longer the person I was, I have become someone new, someone that the person who headed to South London 14 years ago would hardly recognise, I am doing things now that would not have seen possible all those years ago, and yet this boy from Sheffield is sat here, wondering what I should do.

Should I try and make some meaningful contact with him, accept the money and finally bolt the door on that part of my life. The former is what I want to do, though thankfully doesn’t seem to want to do (and I totally understand why) and yet the latter means my heart grows a little harder.

John and I had been together for about seven years when we split up and I find it impossible, even if I wanted to, to eradicate those years. The emotional assault of the sudden contact has left me reeling, like a sudden blow to the chest.

The next few weeks are going to be difficult for me, and my partner. Of course I have tell ‘H’ why I am suddenly vacant and distracted, why I need more space, and why I am become more ;tetchy. I wonder whilst I am doing this I can make him see that though this is hurting me, and probably him indirectly, it was a necessary part in the process of us coming together?

As Piaf sang in “Je ne regrett rein”

No, nothing of nothing
No! I don’t feel sorry about anything
Not the good things people have done to me

Not the bad things, it’s all the same to me.
No, nothing of nothing
No! I don’t feel sorry about anything
It’s paid for, removed, forgotten,

I’m happy of the past
With my memories
I lit up the fire
My troubles, my pleasures
I don’t need them anymore

Broomed away my love stories
And all their tremble
Broomed away for always
I start again from zero

Non ! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le mal, tout ça m’est bien égal !
Non ! Je ne regrette rien

Because my life, my joys
Today, they begin with you.

The ‘Right’ Answers

During training on how to deal with people whoa are confused, either through drugs or alcohol misuse, I was trained to speak clearly and simply, no complicated sentences or instructions.  Speak directly to the person, command focus be unambiguous.

Europe is in a panic. We have a crisis of the financial system unprecedented scales, as one Euro Zone country fails and is rescued so another one teeters.  The solutions are stark and often contradictory.  There are a cacophony of solutions, yet it is the ‘Right’ that is providing the calm collected voice, the simple solution we crave.  It is immigration that needs to be tackled, we need to leave the EU, we need to ‘Keep [insert national tag] jobs for [insert same nation-state].

The solutions are simple.

The rise of right is directly related to our national insecurity to believe we can survive.  We need answers that are simple even if they are unrealistic, we need a group, or groups, to blame for our predicament, we need answers – the simpler the better. In a very real sense the extreme right parties are the manifestation of our own insecurity and primeval fears that need to be comforted by knowing there is a solution, and we need not fear. The ‘Right’ panders to our need that we are not to blame for the crisis by overspending, a lack of investment, by not engendering co-operation between the workers and capital.

Of course if we stopped immigration we have more jobs, but if you to look at the facts prescribing immigration actually harm our economy, we fail to attract the skills that we need to survive and prosper.  Germany is benefiting form the current crisis by ‘importing’ relatively cheap Greek expertise in the computing fields, in fact certain sectors are booming.  If we sent home foreign nationals from the labour force, could we fill the gaps we have created, I think we would struggle.

What happens to our trade?  Why would anyone want to trade with us when they could argue, using the same logic, that national goods and services should be used in preference to imported goods.

Where do you stop?  Sending home non-national Europeans (my partner is German so I have a vested interest, though would be really happy to move to Germany) would also mean their families, so presumably there would be a lot of people born in the UK that would be parentless, a drain on the Welfare State. Others countries could, legitimately, send their ‘foreigners’ back home to the UK. Of  course sending Prince Phillip back to Greece might, how can we put this, be awkward.  Thankfully the Queen is only a quarter German.

If the arguments seem familiar, and I have not covered them in depth, then they are, I am looking at Germany, Spain, Italy, in to 1930’s  and I am looking at Greece’s ‘Golden Dawn’, UKIP, and any other ‘right of right’ party that is emerging and gaining a foothold.  Let us not forget that the 1930’s saw Moseley Black Shirts marching in London, and anyone who can say it will never happen here is forgetting their history.

Drawing more lessons history it was voter apathy that allowed the National Socialist Party in Weimer Germany to control the country for ten years, ten years that blighted not only Germany but the rest of the world.  We need strong leaders with equally strong democratic safeguards.  Feeble Governments allow for dissension, confusion and ultimately the rise of the ‘right’. If the vote ‘splits’ between the established parties and UKIP in the UK then we will be playing a dangerous democratic game.  Ever since Eastleigh buy-election on 28 February 2013 we have seen the Conservative and Labour Party swing to the right to shore up their support.

The solutions offered by the ‘right’ are deceptively simple, they are deceptively simple because they do not address the cause, but only the symptom.

The solutions to complex problems tend to be complex; I believe the solution to the EU crisis is not isolationism but deeper integration, that closer cooperation not segregation, that the answer is inclusion is the answer, not exclusion. The policies of UKIP are not conviction politics they are opportunistic.

God Save the Queen

It is a couple of weeks since the death of Margaret Thatcher and her ‘Ceremonial Funeral’ amongst the mourners was the Queen, a few months her junior.  Apart from a ‘bout of the trots’ a few weeks previous the Queen seems in rude health, the punishing schedule of being Monarch keeping the Queen fit, but I would be surprised if the thought that ‘one day that will be me’ did not cross her mind.  I hope to God that she remains Queen for another 60 years, but that is highly unlikely.

One day the coffin will be placed underneath the dome, and it will be King Charles, or whatever he styles himself as, leading the mourners.  It will be a sad day.  I am fifty and the Queen had been on the throne 10 years at my birth, it will be the end of chapter in British life.

Whilst I am socialist I am also a monarchist, because I believe the monarchy has been good for socialism.  Over the first 50 years of her reign we have had unprecedented social change, with the introduction of the Welfare State (slightly before her reign to be honest) to the decimation of the manufacturing base to rise of a dominant financial sector.  We have seen the United Kingdom move from being a superpower to a ‘medium sized’ European power.

We moved from being an Empire (at her Coronation it consciously decided not to include the title ‘Empress’ in Queen Elizabeth’s titles), to a ‘Commonwealth’ of sovereign nations, with a few keep the Queen as ‘Head of State’.

Whatever the changes we have an unchanging ‘Head of State’ – we have this woman who has charted the rapids of British post-war history with a aplomb and gaining experience.  Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving British Prime Minister, had on a fraction of the Queen’s experience, she had seen half a dozen Prime Ministers ‘come and go’ and buried perhaps the greatest wartime leader this country had knowm.

This woman has beguiled the country into a sense of continuity, the unchanging nature of the British psyche and purpose in the world.  Growing up in the 60’and 70’s I believed we were the greatest country on the face of the planet, and this was confirmed because we had the same Queen who had reviewed over 300 Warships at the Spithead Review in 1953.  She was the Bodicea of the modern age. Even when we were humiliated in the Icelandic Cod War in 1973 I still believed in our superiority. As I watched Governments come, and watch them go, it was always the Queen who was that – outliving the politicians that ‘advised her’.

When she finally takes that last procession to Westminster Abbey we will begin to realise the bewitchment we have been under, the spell that she cast over her people, the respect that a nation has, perhaps the last vestiges of respect I will have for this country, being interred.

They buried Thatcher to much pomp and controversy, but her passing has made no difference to me.  Her funeral was just another funeral, but the death of the Queen will be time of uncertainty and change, the realisation we now in live in the new order.

Until that time, which I hope will be a long time, I will toast the proclamation on her coronation day.

Vivat Regina, Vivat Regina Elizabetha

Long live the Queen, Long Live Queen Elizabeth

Margaret Thatcher, I know thee not.

Giles Fraser took my breath away in an article on 17 April 2013, the day they buried Thatcher.

I like reading Giles Fraser’s articles, they are clever and more than anything else thought provoking.  Most of the time I agree with him, occasionally I will disagree with him, though I would not tell him so simply because he would ‘hang me out to dry’ and I am a wimp.

The first gasp was the Giles voted Conservative, for Margaret Thatcher, his politics are very much left of centre and I thought he had gone mad, or had been deceiving us. The explanation given was amusing and understandable; the United Kingdom needed a dose of Thatcherism to kick-start the revolution.

I was prepared for almost anything from this columnist who was writing from a left-wing perspective on one of the most right-wing leaders.  I was not prepared for this, referencing Canon Mark Oakley

He illustrated the point with reference to the funerals of Hapsburg royalty.

As the funeral procession approached the closed doors of the Imperial chapel in Vienna, a voice from inside would ask, “who is it?”. The grand chamberlain would read out a long list of grand titles. The voice from the church then replied: “We know him not.” The chamberlain would try again, with a shortened version, and received the same reply. Finally, the chamberlain knocks on the door. Again comes the question, “who is it?”, and this time, eschewing all pomp and ceremony, he answers: “A sinner in need of God’s mercy.” “Him we know; enter,” comes the reply.

Having read this several time its still gives me the tingles, from a Christian perspective Thatcher’s achievements and crimes don’t mean anything, the pomp and circumstance, the deference is now meaningless.  There is just ‘a sinner in need of God’s mercy’

Even if we do not believe in God the truth is all finery and high esteem (or not) is now meaningless, it is just a corpse.

Ten days have gone since her death was announced, I have had time to get angry, rehearse my complaints, remember with bitterness her time in office, and I am almost ready to move on.  She is dead, no more.  That is not the complete truth, because I was brought up in the harsh realities of Thatcher’s Britain and it is really not that easy.

At best I can use my thoughts about Thatcher to compare with Attlee, and the blog I wrote about him as rekindled an socialism of hope and progress.

Death is the great democracy, we all will face it and when we do our importance will not be mentioned.

Clement Attlee didn’t need a ‘Ceremonial Funeral’ – why I am wearing Red on Wednesday

I will be in bed on the day of Maggie Thatcher’s funeral (I will be on Nights), but when I am awake I will be joining the ‘Wear Red’ protest, I am not sure if I would have gone to London to protest at her funeral – I read an article of a Mum who had applied to the Police to protest by turning her back on the procession, she had to because she couldn’t afford to be late for work and had to work to support her kids – but I will not let the funeral of Maggie go without protest. On Facebook we are protesting by changing our profile picture to that of Clement Attlee. I particularly like this protest as it contrasts the ground breaking Attlee administration that created the National Health Service, the Welfare State and Workers Rights, and is pertinent to what this Government is destroying, and what Thatcher sought to destroy.

I am sure this will not be my final piece on Thatcher, but it is for her funeral.

The funeral contrasts sharply with Winston Churchill’s funeral of 1965 when the nation was truly grief-stricken and said goodbye to a national leader, and head of the National Government during the war – don’t get me wrong he was far from perfect, but he died with the respect of a grateful nation, I feel confident that no-one even thought of protesting his funeral. I am afraid Maggie’s funeral will be a lot more tense, for the wrong reasons. Contrast this again with Clement Attlee, who reconstructed a war ravaged country, who’s administration built 1 million new home, employed 25,000 new teachers, and introduced Child Benefit, Sickness Pay, Invalidity and Maternity Benefits amongst a radical agenda to rival anything that Thatcher did. All this from a man who, when he was Prime Minister, went on holiday in Caravan in Devon.

In retirement he co-founded the Homosexual Law Reform Society, and remember that was well before the Wolfenden Report. I am actually inspired that this man was a social and political reformer of gargantuan proportions, flawed yes, but a leader, a reformer and by all accounts humble, not for him the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of a State funeral.

Attlee’s funeral, as befitting a humble man with a vision, consisted of 150 mourners in the Church of the Templars in London. The times records the event as such:

ALL the trappings of power were absent last week at the funeral of Earl Attlee, Britain’s Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951: no honour guards or artillery caissons, no press or television, no crush of spectator

A Prime Minister who served in Government during the war and totally revolutionised British society in six years, taking it from a scene that Hogarth would have been at home in, to a country that that could be proud of its achievements, there is no other honour that could be given this man, if he wanted one, than he was radical and improved the health and welfare beyond comprehension. What greater accolade is there than the appreciate of a grateful nation?

On the other hand the funeral Margaret Thatcher has a ‘State Funeral’ in all but name, and that funeral she continues to tear apart the nation in controversy over her legacy, over the cost and her politics. The funeral, and apparently she never wanted the fuss, is a monument to the ego of the radical right of the Conservative Party, the Party that de-selected her as Prime Minister. Her record will be her eulogy. Yes she did some good, but the evil schisms she manipulated are still tender today, and have been reopened for the salt of a £10 Million funeral to be poured into.

As an openly gay man growing up in the Pit Villages of South Yorkshire I cannot mourn for this woman. I cannot mourn for the devastation she wrought not for the rampant homophobia she encouraged. Matthew Todd in his piece ‘Margaret Thatcher was no poster girl for gay rights’ reminds us:

The 1987 election saw Tory ad campaigns trying to portray Labour as actively trying to pervert children. One billboard showed a line of young men wearing badges such as “Gay pride” and “Gay sports day” with a slogan, “This is Labour’s camp. Do you want to live in it?”.

After winning the 1987 election Thatcher knew she was on to a winner. She denounced local education authorities for teaching children that “they have an inalienable right to be gay” and brought in the hated clause, then section, 28, which outlawed the promotion of homosexuality as “a pretend family relationship”

The last comment drove someone to scrawl over a Tory Poster ‘Lesbian Mums aren’t pretending’

The recent vote on Equal Marriages shows that the Tory are still stubbornly anti-gay, even Cameron couldn’t vote for a Bill he introduced.

On 17 April 2013 I am wearing Red in memory of the woman who tried to tear up the social reforms that helped the weakest, I am wearing Red to honour the Miners, the Miners who were fighting for their lives, who were refused State help in funeral expenses, I am wearing Red for the Steelworkers who lost their jobs and are now sweeping floors, I am wearing Red for the members of the military that dies in the Falklands War that could have been avoided – I am wearing Red in solidarity with the lives ruined by Section 28.

More than anything else on 17 April 2013 I am wearing red. I am wearing red to honour the achievements of a great leader who was humble, led this country, and created social and political reforms that made me proud to be British

Ding Dong the Beeb’s impartiality is dead

I do not agree with a lot of the tweets that are flying about Margaret Thatcher The Guardian published an article about Thatcher being a remarkable woman, but an awful Politician, which kind of give me a framework to begin to understand this week.  Unfortunately the two are merging.

The BBC’s decision to play five seconds of the ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ – a song from a 1939 musical starring gay icon Judy Garland – is made in the light that the song has gained a cult status as a protest against the legacy of Thatcherism.  I appreciate the sentiment of the song as a protest, as a child I was taught the slogan ‘Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher’ it was part of growing up.  She was called a lot of things during her time as Prime Minister due to the misery she inflicted. Whilst I do not wish her personal ill (nor her family)I do appreciate the sentiment.

There are better songs to be honest ‘Ghost Town’ by ‘The Specials’ could almost be the anthem of Sheffield:

This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves? Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry

But the mood has been ‘ Ding Dong The Witch is Dead’ is the chosen song of protest, and whilst I do see the reasoning behind it I can see why celebrating the death of anyone is macabre, it shows the hatred in our hearts, and more than a lack of compassion, and even though compassion is something that Thatcher lacked for the North, but still my calmer voices says the song is wrong.

The decision has been made not play the song, even though it is in the ‘Top Ten’ – instead of impartiality and playing it as ‘another record’ it has made a political decision to censor a record because of pressure from the Conservatives who feel it is disrespectful  - which it is probably is.

Any decision we make, or do not make, is political. The decision, whether right or nor, was a political decision by the BBC and its impartiality has been seriously called into question.  .

George Orwell said

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

The record may be wrong, but the decision not to play is also wrong

I can say a lot about Thatcher, but she was about ‘freedom of choice and speech’ and the power of the market place, and this record being in the Top Ten is a result of market forces, and the Government cannot predict or control the market. I see a deep irony in that a woman who was for deregulation and that we cannot stomach today the results of the outcome, after all we had to stomach the ravages of Thatcherism.

Glenda Jackson speaks for me

“When I made my maiden speech a little over two decades ago, Margaret Thatcher had been elevated to the other place but Thatcherism was still wreaking, as it had wreaked for the previous decade – the most heinous, social, economic and spiritual damage upon this country, upon my constituency and my constituents.

“Our local hospitals were running on empty.

“Patients were staying on trolleys and in corridors.

“I tremble to think what the death rate for pensioners would have been this winter if that version of Thatcherism had been fully up and running this year.

“Our schools, parents, teachers, governors, even pupils, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising in order to be able to provide basic materials, such as paper and pencils.

“The plaster on our classroom walls was kept in place by pupils artwork and miles and miles of sellotape. Our school libraries were dominated by empty shelves, very few books, and those books that were there were being held together by ubiquitious sellotape and offcuts from teachers’ wallpaper used to bind those volumes so that they could at least hang together.

“But by far the most dramatic and heinous demonstration of Thatcherism was certainly not only in London, but across the whole country in metropolitan areas, where every single shop doorway, every single night, became the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom for the homeless.

“They grew in their thousands. And many of those homeless people had been thrown out onto the streets from the closure of the long-term mental hospitals.

“We were told it was going to be called Care in the Community. What in effect it was was no care at all in the community.

“I was interested to hear about Baroness Thatcher’s willingness to invite those who have nowhere to go for Christmas. It’s a pity she did not start building more and more social houses after she entered into the right to buy, so perhaps there would have been fewer homeless people than there were.

“As a friend of mine said, during her era London became a city Hogarth would have recognise. And indeed he would.

“But the basis to Thatcherism – and this is where I come to the spiritual part of what I regard as the desperate, desperately wrong track that Thatcherism took this country into – was that everything I had been taught to regard as a vice – and I still regard them as vices – under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees. They were the way forward.

“What concerns me is that I’m beginning to see possibly the re-emergence of that total traducing of what I regard as being the basis of the spiritual nature of this country, where we do care about society, where we do believe in communities, where we do not leave people to walk by on the other side.

“That is not happening now. And if we go back to the heyday of that era I think we will see replicated again the extraordinary human damage that we as a nation have suffered from”