Thread: how climbing a tree in 1978 led to me buying a campervan in 2023.

I have been spending a lot of time at my Dad’s house these past few weeks; he is 94, his health is declining and it’s got to the point where he can’t be in the house on his own anymore, so I’ve been staying there overnight, in my childhood bedroom. He wants to die at home, so we’ve been doing everything we can to keep him out of hospital or residential care, using private carers and home helps over the past couple of years, an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon

I don’t blame the people of Hartlepool for apparently being about to elect a Tory MP in a move that is apparently at odds with their interests. If you’ve ever been there, the place is a dump; years of decline & depopulation that Lab failed to address when in power #Hartlepool compounded, enormously by 11 years of crushing austerity and now Brexit. So why do poor people apparently vote against their interests? Because they are lied to on an industrial scale by newspapers & the BBC, which has been captured & subverted by the Tory Party. Because they

Cycling through central Cambridge on my way to work this morning, via Castle St, Bridge St, St John’s St, Trinity Street, St Mary’s St, Sidney St. I counted at least 14 empty shop units. Don Pasquale restaurant in Market Square, been there 30+ years: closed, boarded up. More will follow as Lockdown 2 denies shops & restaurants their most lucrative months’ trading, pushing them into bankruptcy. The Tories under Johnson killed the High Street. “Surely it was Covid19?” I hear you ask. “No one could have seen this coming; it’s unprecedented”. When this is

FWIW I don’t hate Jeremy Corbyn, and I think most people who support him support him for the right reasons. I supported most of his domestic agenda, and I admired his courage and principle in saying he would not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, but he didn’t explain his position very well, as with so many issues, and he came across in interviews as thin-skinned, tetchy and defensive. His major failings were on Brexit, because we all knew that he was a lifelong opponent of the EU and his less than half-hearted support of Remain in the

Corbyn wasn’t committed to remaining in the EU in the referendum in 2016 “I’d give it 7 out of 10”. He suggested invoking Article 50 the day after the result. He was invisible in the Brexit debate 2016-19, and he blocked cross-party attempts to force a second referendum & made an election inevitable. It was obvious what would happen once Johnson got his election, but Corbyn thought that he could play King Canute by touring the country shouting at the party faithful. Brexit was the biggest issue of the day, of a generation, and Labour, a party of social

#LeadershipDebate points missed (or deliberately avoided by Johnson): we don’t know all the facts about this case yet, and we won’t know for some time - the inquest could take up to 2 years. We don’t know why Khan killed, or what, if anything could have been done differently 1/ to prevent it. Let’s have an enquiry, not a witch hunt. Secondly, there is no justification AT ALL for cutting the early release tariff from a half to a third of sentences for all sentences over 4 years that carry a maximum life sentence; that‘s just trying to look tough 2/