The election, the result of which will probably coincide with the publication of this month’s magazine, will undoubtedly go down as the most rancorous, ill mannered, ill received event in the history of British politics.
The Tory strategy has been pathetic given that they have without a doubt rescued the economy from the depths of despair and they should be canvassing from a position of strength which they seem loathe to do.
The socialists have striven to prove that they can manage Great Britain plc when the record during their last term in office proved the opposite – and indeed the mess they left after their previous four administrations adds credence to the fact. The Lib Dems are not sure whether they are Martha or Arthur and have quite blatantly prostituted themselves to whichever party may want them. The Greens are quite pathetic, living in cloud cuckoo land and as one wit remarked: “If their leader had two brain cells less we would have to be watering her twice a day.”
The SNP have wrestled from the Tories the mantle of “the nasty party” and are worming their way into becoming an enormous threat to the stability of this once United Kingdom. Messrs Sturgeon and Salmond are quite despicable and make no disguise of the fact that they hate the English. Finally, at least UKIP have a leader who is actually saying what he believes in, but of course you can when you have nothing to lose.
I hope the polls are proved to be wrong and the don’t knows finally come to their senses by realising that promises made by any party can only be achieved with the support of a strong economy. In my opinion the only party able to achieve this is the Tories. From a selfish farming point of view we would without doubt be better off as an industry if the Labour Party crashed the economy and the pound plummeted so that we could start exporting again. The country is awash with cheap imported meat and potatoes with lamb and beef prices not quite in free fall but certainly weakening day by day and potato prices literally on the floor.
Every cloud has a silver lining though and with the fat cats and even some slimmer ones in the city earning quite ridiculous amounts of money, their spare cash would at least ensure that the land we nurture remains at a very high value enabling us to earn pretty close to 0% on our capital investment.
My biggest disappointment with this election has been the way the NHS has been used as a political football. What this must be doing to the morale of the doctors and nurses and everybody else who works at the coal face, I dread to think. Having had personal experience of the quality of work and care these people put in, I am unable to praise and thank them enough.
The NHS does not necessarily need more money. It needs less interference, less performance driven targets, less pen pushers, less profit taking from the numerous staffing agencies who are no better than blood suckers, but more appreciation from the British people of how lucky they are to be able to use the service free of charge. Despite the NHS being the third largest employer in the world, it is not in a secure place and will not last forever in its present form.
Enough of politics – every body must be sick to death of it and definitely fed up with yours sincerely moaning about it. The saga of the French doors finally came to a conclusion. You may remember the national firm of con artists starting with an opening gambit of over £7,000 for this unit and spending three hours of precious drinking time very generously reducing it to just over £3,000.
We called up a local firm of window and door fitters who, having been given the dimensions over the ‘phone, called by with a plan of the required unit together with a quote for £1,556. The whole process took fifteen minutes. I feel I must record that I have reached the zenith of my negotiating powers.
Looking out of the kitchen window I see the ewe tegs are skipping about but will be happy to get their wool off – we desparately need some rain but at least for a change I am on top of the grass having thrown caution to the wind with the number of sheep I am grazing this year.
P.S. Snooker went particularly well last night given that one founder member was away on holiday and instead of discussing the price of wheat all night, we were able to concentrate and I nearly got four balls down on the trot!
