New website - please say hello!

I hope you like my new website!

http://www.eclecticblue.org.uk

Monty Python - a show too far.

It was in 1973 that I went to the Bristol Hippodrome to see 'Monty Python's first farewell tour.'

It was a good show, one of the most surreal events I have ever attended.

This tour was after the TV series but before the movies.  It was a show of classics, done pretty well word for word, culminating in an encore of the Dead Parrot Sketch.  As everything with Python, very clever, funny in parts but nothing side-splitting, unlike what you get with Billy Connolly.

41 years on (gulp!) and their final show ever is on 'Gold', live from the monstrous 02 arena in London.  And I don't think it is very good or very funny.

It depends, almost wholly, on Eric Idle who was not my favourite Python.  He's the hungriest, the best stage performer, the one who gives it energy.  Palin still plays the cheesy characters to great effect, but Cleese looks and sounds tired, and Jones just doesn't do enough.

The sketches, contrary to popular myth, were not always classics.  Some barely worked, some didn't work at all.  Time loves a hero.

At least they are honest: they are doing it for the money.  Of course they are.  Coldplay don't play cavernous football grounds for musical reasons so why should the Pythons pretend they are regurgitating 40 year old sketches and songs for artistic reasons?

I'd have been disappointed if I had laid out money to see this show. It's tired, it's dated but worst of all, most of it isn't funny which the biggest criticism of all.

I wish there was a hell for the perpetrators of MH17 to go to

You can see the bodies from flight MH17 if you want to.  They're on the internet in all the usual places.  Some of the bodies look recognisable to me, not that I recognise them, but someone might.

I am not one of those people who trawled the internet to see a video of Ken Bigley being beheaded in Iraq, nor am I especially keen on seeing adulterers being stoned to death in primitive, backward countries and I don't want to see the innocent victims of mass murder with their privacy, in death, grossly violated.

Curiosity has got the better of me before, but I have quickly remembered that it was voyeurism of the lowest order.

There were children who died in the Ukraine and the books they were reading and the fluffy toys they were cuddling were there for all to see.  You can't tell me that there wasn't someone, a family member, a friend, who might recognise the identity of the child thanks to to the clues?

I found the charred remains of the Boeing 777 upsetting enough, not to mention the aircraft parts scattered for miles around.  And then stories of innocent Ukrainians having bodies crashing through their ceilings.

Generally, the media has been on the right side of good taste, although predictably The Sun brought back echoes of Hillsborough yesterday with reports that the bodies were being pick-pocketed, that there was looting of the crime scene.  I don't know if this is true - I never know if anything, other than its desperate right wing bias, is true in The Sun - but I wouldn't be surprised.  That ordinary people were able to walk through the wreckage and parts of the plane were guarded by as few as one guard and others guarded by no one at all suggests this most pernicious of newspapers may have been onto something. 

The disaster remains shocking, perhaps even more so in the passage of time when we come to see the victims as real people and not numbers.

I do not believe in capital punishment, even for the perpetrators of this evil, wicked act, but sometimes I wish there was a hell for them to go to.

In the meantime, we must wait for the civilised wheels of justice to start turning.

MH17

The mass murder, for that's what it was, of the innocent passengers of flight MH17 stands right up there, or maybe right down there, with the events of 9/11.

For me, the only difference was right at the beginning when news of the disaster broke.  We have seen passenger jets brought down before but we were not familiar with the concept of terrorists flying hijacked aeroplanes into buildings.  

As ever, it is the human stories that emerge which we all find so upsetting.  

Scientists on their way to a conference, students heading for study abroad, ordinary people peacefully going about their own business.

Nothing on earth can justify this act of wanton destruction, this evil act of terrorism.  It had to be a random attack - it is extremely unlikely the perpetrators aimed for this particular aircraft - but that doesn't change a thing.

Watching stories unfold on TV, I was struck by the fields where the plane landed, bodies marked by little flags throughout the fields.  Locals talking about bodies falling to the grounds from 35,000 feet, probably dead already and certainly not conscious, but people who boarded a plane to go somewhere and never made it.

Politicians are talking tough now, as they always do at times like these, and demand to know answers as to how this happened.

But surely we need more than politicians talking: we need action.

The United Nations seems to be weaker than ever when it needs to be stronger.  All over the world, countries squabble over territory, over religion, and the bloodshed continues.  And the horrors of Ukraine suddenly come home to Keynsham, near Bristol, inflicting untold misery on those who have absolutely nothing to do with it.

If Russian 'separatist groups' are to blame, as seems likely, what is Putin's involvement, his knowledge?  For how much longer can we keep him at the top table, regardless of the potential damage to our economic interests?

Like most of you, the more I found out about flight MH17, the more numb I feel about it, and the less hopeful I feel about the future.  

We have learned in many parts of the world that you cannot bomb your way to peace.

Another elderly male virgin takes aim at assisted dying

My life is often full of things that drive me mad.

Motorists who don't indicate, politicians who tell lies (this is a permanent fixture, sadly) and tattoos.  

Yesterday, what drove me to distraction was a man of the cloth.

Not any old man of the cloth, mind you, but the Archbishop of Westminster.

Now I don't want to start the day by bashing the bishop (stop guffawing at the back), but this one, a catholic chap, made my blood boil.

Chris Evans hosts the most popular radio show in Europe, the BBC Radio Two breakfast show. Something like 10 million folk tune in every morning to hear his show and I am often one of them.

He is not perfect, and occasionally steps close to the line of advertising his enormous wealth with references to his expensive selection of cars, his pub and generally his lifestyle.  But generally these are irritations and are probably confined just to me.

But there is one part of the show that offends me: the god slot.

The BBC has form with religious propaganda.  Radio Four broadcasts hours of piety, Radio Two has various god slots, local radio is even worse.  There is even a religious department at the BBC -  a series of non jobs basically.

Anyway, yesterday's spokesman, and it's usually a man because that's how religion works, was a big hitter; an Archbishop.

Vincent Nichols is your standard catholic bishop, an elderly white male virgin, who wears frocks.

Yesterday, he decided to take on what he decided to take on 'the killing clinics of Holland and Switzerland' in what was a full frontal attack on the very idea of assisted dying.

His threadbare arguments were, as you might expect, dressed up in the flowery language of religious superstition, with the usual references to 'the sanctity of life', but oddly little about the quality of it.

And then he made a poor argument even poorer by then going on to  publicise his forthcoming trip to Lourdes.

You do not need me to go into the 'healing waters' of Lourdes except to say that you are probably far more likely to get even more ill splashing it all over, what with all those other sick people doing the same.

Millions go there every year, said our Vince, although he failed to mention how many disabled people had miraculously regrown limbs as a result of their visits.

It was hard not to feel contempt for god's important vicar on earth for attacking people's personal decisions to end their own life whilst praising a bizarre catholic gathering based upon the Virgin Mary being seen on 18 occasions by a simple woman called 'Bernadette' Soubirous.   No one else saw this woman who had a child without procreating but 'faith' demands believing in things that would seem to anyone else to be more than slightly unbelievable.  (See also Joseph Smith and the Church of Latter Day Saints.)

People are, of course, entitled to their 'faith', no matter how absurd it seems to the rest of us who visit churches for weddings and funerals but not much else.  I would be among the first to respect their rights.

But the men of the cloth cannot leave it at that.  They want to interfere with everyone else's lives as well.

If Vince develops some horrible disease in old age - and of course I hope he doesn't - then I would defend his choice to suffer miserably, possibly in pain, incontinence and confusion if that was how he chose to spend his final days.

For for those of us who do not spend our lives worshipping a celestial dictator, then the Godwhackers should mind their own business.  Let us have a choice, not your choice.

Only a religious fanatic would describe the places people choose to die as 'killing clinics' which I regard as hate language from yet another religion of piece.

A letter to my 11 year old self

Nicky Campbell's 'Your Call' on BBC Radio Five Live is an essential part of my day.

It's a phone in, but it's an intelligent, funny, irritating but sometimes very moving phone in.

Today the subject was this: if you were to write a letter to your 11 year old self, what would it say?

Here goes then.

Dear Rick,

The first thing is to be stronger in what you call yourself.  You always wanted to call yourself Rick, or Ricky, but everyone else wanted to call you Rich or Richard.  You hated Richard, with a passion, but you gave in, especially when one of your teachers said he was going to call you Richard whatever you wanted to call yourself.

You were starting senior school when you were 11 but already you knew something wasn't quite right.  None of the subjects made any sense.  The sciences, maths and all the practical subjects were a blur.  You struggled badly in everything except English and even then you didn't know a verb from an adjective and you still don't.

You would sit in a class not having the faintest idea of what the teacher was on about.  Almost nothing made sense.  Why didn't you go an see your housemaster and tell him?  Admittedly, this was not a time when children who had problems with learning or concentrating (both in my case) were regarded as anything other than thick.  But you didn't.  You struggled on and that's pretty well how things stayed through the rest of your life.

You should have made more of an effort to be closer to your father even though you hardly ever saw him.  The year before your 11th birthday, he had upped sticks and moved to Canada, studying for a degree in commerce.  Before then, he had been in the merchant navy and you rarely saw him apart from when he was on shore leave.  And even then, he was usually out and about seeing relatives and friends when he was in England.  He wrote you letters but you hardly ever replied.  He sent you money orders but sometimes you didn't even acknowledge him.  You cut him out of your life, albeit sub-consciously (how could an 11 year old do otherwise?), and it affected the rest of your life.  Luckily, as the years went by, you became closer but you won't get those years back again.

The head teacher in your senior school saw cricketing ability in you and tried to get you to concentrate on it.  But already you were showing signs of what was to happen later in life: the pressure got to you and you rejected the opportunity.   Later on, you realised when playing cricket that he was right.  The potential he saw probably really did exist but it was all too late.

You should have realised what your mother had gone through.  She came to England from Holland in the 1950s to marry your father.  She knew no one in England and once she moved to Bristol it was basically her against the world.  My dad was at sea so she was effectively a lone parent.  She always worked, never claimed a penny in benefits, and raised her son the best way she could, in a foreign land, in a foreign language.  No doubts that we were poor, with one electric heater we carried round the house when we wanted to go to another room and the cupboards were bare, food being bought as and when we needed it, always the cheapest off cuts of meat (when we could afford meat) and a loaf of bread a week.  But I never felt poor, even when I went to friends' houses and marvelled at the warmth and the glittering array of modern electrical goods like a fridge and a washing machine (or an old boiler).  Mum washed stuff by hand or if she had a good week she  might use the local launderette.  And I don't think I ever said thank you.  Like most kids, I took it all for granted.  Looking back, we had next to nothing, but it never felt like that.

And you should have written more.  You should have known that writing was what you really wanted to do and gone for it.  Although there was no one to guide you, at home or at school, you knew where your gifts, such as they were, lay.  Whilst you might not have been a technically perfect writer - some things never change - you could string words together.

You couldn't help the life into which you were born, the job you stumbled into, the despair and emptiness of mental illness that blighted your life so much, but it wasn't all someone else's fault.  There were times as a young boy you spent a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself. You probably knew you could do better, but you didn't.  That was, at least in part, your fault.

So Rick, work hard, follow your dream and see where it takes you. Learn what it is you are good at and stick with it.  Don't do what I did which was nothing special, actually.

Yours Sincerely

Rick

Esther McVey and the Hate Mail

The Daily Hate Mail has done it again tonight.

Esther McVey, a Tory MP, has been promoted to the Cabinet by Cameron in order to give the impression that his government is representative of the whole nation.  Mostly white, male and privately educated.  Plus Esther McVey, a Tory MP who apparently used to be on telly and has been promoted from minister in the DWP to minister in the DWP.  What?  She keeps the same job but now sits in the Cabinet. Promotion Tory style.

The Mail manages a different slant on the story.  McVey flashed a thigh, presumably on the way to somewhere, probably unintentionally, but that was good enough for the self-abusers at Dacre's rag.

Now pardon me, but when Cameron sacked Gove on the grounds of political expediency - the public have worked out for themselves the terrible destruction he has wrought on the education system and they hate him as much as most teachers do - no one was making references to his thighs.

'Gorgeous pouting Mike axed by Dave' is not a headline I expect to see tomorrow and certainly no references to his thighs or any other part of his anatomy.

And what's worse about this is the Mail is read predominantly by women.  Yes, that's right: this toe rag right wing piece of sexist filth, with its odious on-line voyeurism, appeals to women.  And they buy it in huge numbers.

Now I don't know McVey from her telly programmes.   For all I know, she was a very good presenter.

Whether her thighs are attractive, I don't really care.  I am guessing they are not the reason she is in politics. But knowing Cameron's superficial and patronising attitudes to women, who knows?

What is very unattractive about McVey is her politics.  She has been Iain Duncan Smith's deputy, his lackey even, whilst he has brought in the bedroom tax, which has plunged the poor into debt, the Universal Credit which so far has cost hundreds of millions of pounds but has been an unmitigated disaster and the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) where the terminally ill have died before their payments have even been processed.

She's a politician, not some Page Three model.  If she accidentally flashes a thigh, it shouldn't be national news.  But if she works in a government department that is wrecking people's lives, then it should be.  For some odd reason, the Mail hasn't mentioned that bit yet.

Small earthquake in Cameron's cabinet - not many dead

'David Cameron's night of the long knives' is the headline I expect to see in tomorrow's papers.  But is this what his Cabinet reshuffle is all about?

I have long argued that Cameron and Osborne are not strategists.  Osborne, the most political Chancellor since, well Gordon Brown, although nowhere near as clever or moody!

Everything they do reeks of politics.  Osborne cannot make a budget announcement without including an elephant trap for the opposition.  It's what he does.

Today's reshuffle shows Cameron the tactician for what he is.

For four years, he has been criticised for not having enough women in his Cabinet but with 10 months left to the General Election he decides to promote some women.   On the face of it, I would support that - except that I can barely bring myself to support the Tories on anything - but if the likes of Esther McVey and Nicky Morgan are that good, why weren't they promoted before?

The all male, all white government front bench plainly doesn't look like Britain and it seems to me that the PM has just noticed and made what some might call token changes.  I am not saying they are token changes because I have no idea of the abilities of the women who have joined the Cabinet.  The men plainly aren't up to much so maybe Cameron has concluded they couldn't do any worse.

Owen Patterson, the Environment Secretary who doesn't believe in climate change (I am not making this up), gets the sack, Michael Gove, the most loathed Education Secretary ever (and for good reasons) gets moved aside and William Hague is leaving to spend more time with his dray horses (I may have made up the last bit).

Window-dressing, shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic - call it what you will - this has nothing but the whiff of political opportunism and raw tactics about it.

The one change Cameron should have made would have been to have sacked Iain Duncan Smith.  Duncan Smith has cost the taxpayer a large fortune with the disastrous roll out of the Universal Credit and the new PIP benefit and caused misery to tens of thousands of sick and disabled people, not to mention terminally ill people some of whom died before their special rules payments were administered.

But the man is a flag-bearer for the right of the Tory Party, the even more right than the usual Tory right, which is saying something. He's unsackable, as well as being useless, and there the true weakness of Cameron is ruthlessly exposed of being a man of no substance and not much style but plenty of tactics.

Cheryl Cole marries Mr Hunk. Who cares?

Good grief - the nation's sweetheart has got married!

No, not Vera Lynn: Cheryl Cole!

Now I don't know a lot about Ms Cole.  I know she was in the all girl pop group Girls Aloud who made one truly great song, The Promise, and had a much longer and more lucrative career than their minimal talents deserved.

And I know she was a judge on the X Factor which is a TV karaoke  show and probably had less talent than most of the contestants.

I know that she is called Cole because she married England's one truly world class player of the last decade.

I cannot pretend to know the details of how their marriage failed.  I know I could by a simple 'google', as we computer experts call it, but I can't be bothered.

And I know she is very beautiful because the Daily Mail and Sun say so.  It must be true.

So in essence, she's famous for being someone who can't sing, but looks good and judges the talent of others.  Good.  I'm glad we made that clear.

But now she has married, apparently to a playboy hunk (at least we know his occupation).  And the media is fascinated.

I am not saying that the news should be solely the doom and gloom of the endless middle east wars, or perhaps the genocide in Syria, but who the hell is interested in Cheryl Bleeding Hunk (I am guessing she has taken his surname)?

I suppose compared to Katy Price, our Cheryl is multi-talented, but then many thousands of young girls - how sad is that? - turned up at  the Mall at Cribbs Causeway for the woman formerly known as Jordan sign a book that she had not even written?  Is this really the best role model we have, a woman with massive plastic breasts and no discernible talent?

At least Cheryl has a nice smile as well as an impenetrable Geordie accent.  The nation has fallen for her.

We seem to be obsessed with the culture of celebrity, even when most of those who are called celebrities have no right to be called celebrities!

I shouldn't pick her out.  We have always worshipped people who can't really do anything and some have turned out to be Jimmy Savile.

Perhaps we need some kind of escapism from our miserable little lives and the fairy tale celebrity existence takes us away from it for a short while.

Or maybe we just need to get out more and recognise real talent?

Kill an Argie and win a Metro and other thoughts on Germany's win

Quite apart from the fact that Germany were head and shoulders above anyone else in this World Cup, what has been particularly rewarding is that the acceptance and recognition by so many English people has not been grudging.

As recently as 1996, the anti German feeling ran high in this country, not exactly assisted by tabloid headlines such as 'Achtung! Surrender!  For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over.'  (And yes, the editor of that tabloid, the Mirror, at that time was Piers Morgan, the man who at this World Cup predicted that Brazil would stroll it.)

I do not believe that the red top media is solely responsible for bigotry approaching racism, but they don't help.

Several generations have grown up since World War 2 and it does seem, at last, that most people have finally understood that Hitler's Germany is as different from Angela Merkel's as it could possibly be.

So much of the stereotypical attitude to Germans stems from the myth of their arrogance and superiority, even to the extent of German holidaymakers taking all the sun beds.  (This is actually true, by the way, but my experience is that the Brits are every bit as bad!)  But my experience is that the Germans, as a people, are no more arrogant than anyone else.  Some of my best friends are Germans and many speak far better English than we do!

Almost unheard of, many of us were rooting for Germany because they play such great football and they are so dignified.  Having said that, my main emotion watching this great German side is sheer jealousy!

I suspect that some people may have 'supported' Germany because Argentina invaded the Falklands back in 1982, generating headlines such as 'Kill an Argie and win a Metro!' (which was actually a Private Eye spoof but it wasn't that far out).  Because the nation was in a terrible economic mess and ruled by a military dictator, the disgraceful invasion of the islands does not mean that all Argentines are bad people.  Yes, many of them supported the invasion and many more believe that the Falklands belong to them, but is that a good reason for hating them?  (History suggests the Argentine invasion was down to the sheer incompetence of Margaret Thatcher's government, but that's another story!)

I cannot hate the average German for World War Two any more than I can hate Argentina for the invasion of the Falklands.

In any event, football is a far better way of sorting out differences than going to war.

The trouble is that England are so bad these days that we don't get far enough in tournaments to even play these top international teams.

My golf game unravels again!

My loyal reader will know that I am utterly obsessed with golf, a game I discovered just over two years ago.

I had played occasionally in my life with zero success but there was rarely a thought that I might actually take it up.

But now I have and what a great and horrible obsession it is.

Great when I walk up to the ball with a fair idea of where I am going to hit it but horrible when I don't.  And at the moment, I don't.

A few weeks ago, I had an attack of the shanks.  I will not bore you with the technical details but it meant that almost every shot I made flew off at right angles.  A lengthy trawl through You Tube convinced me what I was doing wrong.  I went back to the course and lost my shanks.

But next I was hitting the ball to the left.  Not massively, but enough to really irritate me.  Every single drive and chip went slightly, or sometimes more than slightly, to the left.

Our local driving range has an old codgers walk-up session on a Thursday where you get 100 balls and one of the professionals give you tips.  He gave me some, pointing out my grip was all wrong and he re-arranged my fingers and hands and - bingo! - I was hitting the ball long and straight!

Problem solved, I went to my golf club and prepared for a record-breaking round.  And guess what?  I was worse than ever. Not only could I not hit the ball straight, there were times I could not hit the thing at all.  I had no idea what I was doing wrong but it must have been something simple and stupid. But could I correct it?  Could I heck!

I have not played at all this weekend, which represents a world record for me.  I have totally lost my confidence and when you lose your confidence in golf you have nothing.

There is only one thing for it: I am going to see my PGA coach for more lessons.  He was the man who built something out of nothing and the man upon whom I am relying to put it all back together again.

The frustration for me is not knowing why things go wrong.  The harder I tried last week, the worse I got.  The more I tried to relax, the more I tensed up.

I'll report back again this week to see if I am cured but with golf I suspect you have never really cracked it and when you think you have that's where it comes to bite you very painfully right where it hurts.

Assisted Dying

Here's a thing: the former Archbishop of Canterbury now agrees with the idea of assisted dying.

He used to be against it, but he has changed his mind.  The old boy, George Carey, asks whether he had "been putting doctrine before compassion, dogma before human dignity?"

The obvious answers to both questions are a matter of stating the bleeding obvious: he's a 'faith leader', of course he has.  That's his job.

I have had countless pets throughout my life, starting with a labrador called Kim.  Even though I was quite young, I had worked out that something was terribly wrong with her and it was no surprise when my mum told me she had gone to sleep and would not wake up.  Phew, that's a relief.  Shame she wouldn't wake up again but hey, she was asleep and that's a lot better than being awake and incontinent, seemingly in awful pain and very unhappy.  It was only in later life that mum told me she had been put to sleep with a lethal injection.  Given her illness, it was the only humane thing to do.

The same with the cats of my life who became horribly ill and their time had come.  Older, wiser; why make them suffer when release was in sight?

It did not, and does not, occur to me that my beloved pet animals might be going to 'a better place'.  I just saw it as the end of their lives, not the 'natural' ending which would be undignified, painful and unnecessary.

As you get older, you go to more funerals and sooner or later one of them will be your own.  It is not a pleasant prospect because I would prefer to live forever in rude health and to not grow old.  That the latter is happening already at a rapid rate of knots suggests the former might be highly unlikely too.

A close relative died horribly, stricken with Parkinsons (what was god thinking about when he invented that one?) and later, I suspect, with a form of dementia.

I watched this healthy, gentle and active man being relieved of nearly all his faculties and his independence, all in the name of keeping him alive.

I am not sure whether he was even aware, in his latter days, that he had to be assisted, by means of a complex and expensive lifting device, to use the toilet, assuming he made it on time.  So far as I could tell, he was pretty well unable to communicate with staff in his care home to tell them he might wish to use the loo.  In any event, he required enormous nappies to catch the waste.

So we keep alive those who, through horrible, debilitating, incurable diseases; have little idea that they are alive in the first place.

You wouldn't treat a dog like that.

George Carey, for whom I have absolutely no respect at all, has finally recognised that he was wrong opposing assisted dying but I don't particularly care what he has to say on the matter.  He represents a failing institution - religion - which has less influence on the lives of the people of this fair island than ever before.

And he's a voice on his own since his successor, another elderly frock-wearing man (perish the thought that the Archbishop might be a woman: now that would be a step too far) with ideas and beliefs from an ancient book, probably a work of fiction, with no basis on fact.

In this day and age, why should we take lessons from the god squad on anything?  Science, which is always the subject of testing by evidence, has long taken over from religion, which is never the subject of testing by evidence.  Religion is faith without evidence.

I do not want to end up in some care home, unable to think for myself, unable to eat other than through tubes, unable to go to the toilet without being put in a harness and then having my arse wiped by someone else. I would rather be put to sleep, like my pets.

If religious people object to assisted dying, then in a free country that's their choose.  If they wish to go through what some of my family have gone through, with all the stress and misery it caused them, whilst they still knew what was going on and then their families when they didn't, then it's up to them.  I'd say they were incredibly selfish people, but that's only my opinion.

We keep banging on about the importance of religious freedom but I would argue that the freedom of the secularist is as important, if not more so.

I cannot tell you, beyond reasonable doubt, that there is no afterlife, that you will not survive your own death and end up in 'heaven'.  But by the same token, I cannot prove there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden. I would say both are equally unlikely.

Assisted dying should not be the decision of the state or by religionists.  But by the same token, it should be legal.

I find it highly offensive that a good number of people who have religious superstition try to tell the rest of us how to live our lives and indeed how to end them.

Show me proof that your god exists and I might take you more seriously but he probably doesn't and that probability is around 99.0%, more than that if you look at it scientifically.

It's for another blog and another day to debate whether we really do live in a free country - I say no! - but there is one thing I am sure about.

Assisted dying should be a matter of individual choice, not a policy laid down by governments or religionists. 

Some may say that George Carey's late conversion is a good thing but I am not so sure about that.  He was wrong before and he's right now, apparently.

To me, he's still the same old religious bigot he used to be and whilst on the face of it his support for changing the law might be a good thing, I think it's irrelevant.

Let us die when we want (if possible) and don't let the God Squad stand in our way.

What's good enough for our pets (even though they don't really know it) it's good enough for me.

Amen.

Suicide isn't painless

As my loyal reader will know, mental illness, its causes, effects and consequences, is a subject I discuss and visit more often than is good for me.

I don't hold to the adage that you don't know what it's like to be mentally ill until you are because it engulfs not just the sufferers but also those close to them.

It is often the hopelessness that does for you.  The feeling, belief even, that you are hopeless, you're no good at anything, there's nothing worth living for. I've often felt the first two but rarely the latter.  I know a good few people who did feel there was nothing to live for and so took their own lives.

More people than I realised too.  Not just one or two, but five or six that come to mind straight away.

Of course, I shall not name names or even given the first clue as to who they were, but I remember them as if they were still alive, looking like they did the last time I saw them.

One was regarded as 'mad' by people in that 'he's mad, he is' way in which some people are affectionately regarded.  I knew he was depressed from time to time, although we never talked about it (you didn't when I was a lot younger: it wasn't the done thing) and I knew he rarely, if ever, sought help.  He just lived with it.

We drifted apart and lost contact for a few years.  And then I heard that he had taken his own life.

I had gone to the football with him, attended his wedding, been drunk with him; just been his friend.

And there were two brothers I knew who both killed themselves years apart. The older brother completely lost his way when his younger brother died, over a ten year period, and spiralled chaotically and tragically to an early grave.  There was no one to help him, we didn't believe, I am guessing, there was anything we could do to help.  He was 'off the rails' but never thought he might end it all.

And there were others, some older, some younger; all genuinely nice people but with far bigger demons than mine.

Courtesy of Mr Google, I now find that some 6000 people killed themselves in 2011 - and that was just in this country.  Go to Bristol Rovers and that's their average crowd and when you see them standing together that's a lot of people.  6000.

Of course, you must be desperate when you don't want to live anymore.  The worst I did was to self-harm and walk in driving rain for miles and miles, not knowing where I was going but knowing that there was, just about, something worth living for.  And there was hope, however tenuous, however distant.

But if you have no hope, nothing to look forward to, apart from things that may make you unhappier still, then what?

In the modern age, mental health is still not taken seriously.   Politicians talk a good game but if you're ill, you're at the bottom of the queue and sometimes with no services available there's no queue at all.   Thanks for calling by, take a tablet - NEXT!

How can you ever forget losing someone who has taken their own life?  How can you not ask whether there was anything else you could, and should, have done?

And above all, how can we live in a so-called civilised society that doesn't take mental health seriously and sits by whilst annually 6000 desperate people end it all?

The day after the J10 strike

On the face of it, the public sector strikes yesterday were very well supported.  Although most government buildings remained open to the public, by ministerial diktat, many were unable to offer any kind of service apart from 'come back tomorrow.'  So well done to everyone involved.

But what's next?

It strikes me that yesterday's strike was the culmination of a campaign rather than the beginning of one.  It will have taken a great deal of organisation and planning to coordinate different unions who were all striking over the same sort of issues but not exactly the same issues.  In general, I felt the unions did a good job of presenting a united front.

My old union, the PCS, has now commenced an overtime ban which will last for the rest of the month.  In reality, that's nothing more than a holding strategy whilst the Executive decides how to move forward.  In itself, with the huge cuts in departmental spending, an overtime ban will have a negligible effect in some areas but none at all in others.

 

They have a few options but all of them have their limitations.  Here are some of them:

1. Call another one day strike along with the other unions.  This will not take place until at least September so momentum, such as there is, will be lost
2. Hold a Civil Service-wide one day strike which will surely have less effect than yesterday's multi-union strike and will be a step backwards for the union.
3. Call for selective action in different departments to hurt government revenue, fund it by a levy of members (PCS is skint and wouldn't be able to pay members much by way of strike pay)
4. Ballot members for all out indefinite unpaid strike action

There may be other options, different types of strike action, but to my mind these are the main options open to the union.

The only honest option is the fourth one and it's the least palatable one for the union and members.

The first three options are more likely because whilst union members may take a hit in their already declining wages they have the advantage of being short, sharp and a reminder that the dispute is not settled.  And how could it be if the government will not negotiate?

All out action is the nuclear option.  If successful, it would have enormous consequences for the country.  It would cause chaos across all government departments and chaos to the wider public.  But it is fraught with risks.

The ultra left who run PCS know this too.  And they know that they also have to deal with very high levels of non-membership in many areas of departments.  Almost all the organising would need to be done by lay officials, in their own time and probably at their own expense.  And in a branch like my old one, which couldn't even tell members about all member meetings, this would require a dramatic improvement to their game.

We don't know if all out strike action would succeed either.  Cameron, with Clegg's useful idiots standing alongside, with a favourable media (to him) might even gain strength from a fight with Civil Servants if the unions were unable to demonstrate the value of the services they provide for such low returns.  Even now, large sections of the public regard Civil Servants as bean-counting tea-drinking bureaucrats, not benefit fraud investigators, immigration staff and coast guards.

Those of us who have been there and done that in previous years know that, whatever happened, the union could not deliver, never mind sustain, all out strike action because if the PCS leadership thought they could, they'd have balloted before now.

Yesterday's strike made a point but now it's yesterday's news.  At the end of the month, union members will lose a day's pay and many will reflect on whether it was worth it, especially if the union has not come up with a way of building on it.

I feel the unions would do better to direct their resources to campaign far more effectively and publicly about the work their members do, essentially to continue the campaign peacefully and without the threat, as the media see it, of more strikes.

That probably won't work either because we have a government no one voted for carrying out policies that no one voted for and they do not negotiate full stop.

I understand why the unions called the strike, although there was a great deal of far left politics involved in the decisions of some unions, but in calling it just before the holiday season means everything could go quiet now and by the autumn it will all be over.

The lesson is always have an exit strategy.  I'm not sure PCS and the other unions have one.

Well done the public sector strikers, but that will probably be it now.

Unusually, the BBC is actually reporting on the public sector strikes today.  I say unusually because in recent times, the BBC has turned a blind eye to anyone who dares oppose the government's austerity policies and the savage cuts to wages, pensions and jobs they are bringing about.

Listening to Radio Five Live, it's obvious that the editors are striving for 'balance' so union members are always 'making demands' and ordinary listeners are being asked loaded questions to those affected by the strike.  ("How do you feel about the fact you've had to take a day off work to look after your child because the teachers are on strike?")

But I suppose any publicity is good publicity.

Nicky Campbell asked the best question this morning, inviting Francis Maude, the Cabinet Officer Minister, how austerity was affecting him.  Maude blustered about how the new government in 2010 had agreed to freeze MPs' wages when they were first elected so, and I am putting words into his mouth here, he will have to struggle by on a mere £66,396 every year, as well as having all his travel, meals and housing allowances paid on top.  The poor lad. 

Of course, Maude didn't add that he actually 'earns' almost £100,000 a year for being in the Cabinet and he is also a multimillionaire.   Austerity must be biting deep in the Maude household!

It isn't just this government which has shafted public sector workers.  In my lifetime, this was started by the Wilson/Callaghan Labour government in the 1970s, particularly by the Thatcher regime of the 1980s and continued by Blair and co from the late 1990s.  This government is just nastier still.

I've left the Civil Service after 39 years and I am glad I did.

My wages have been falling in real and actual terms for many years because of the massively increased pension contributions and because the overtime I used to use to top up my below national average salary stopped.

Colleagues have seen pay progression ended whilst jobs are slashed all round.  Work harder for less.

I definitely support those who are on strike today but I don't support the so called strategy.  We have been here before, we are here every year.

My old union, the PCS, is an abysmally run outfit, with huge pockets of non membership and an inefficient expensive system of operating through thousands of branches.  It is also run from top to bottom by the ultra left basket cases of the Socialist Party (AKA Militant tendency) and the other 57 varieties of Trotskyism.

Policy is formulated by an archaic conference in which the membership barely participate and decisions are top down, leadership led.

I have no doubt the current strike will have a lot of support but I don't see a strategy here beyond another one day strike next month, then another until the members get fed up and the union gives up.

The question really is what else could the unions do?

The genuine answer in terms of strike action is not a lot.

PCS was the only Civil Service union involved today, the others saw little merit in a strike for a strike's sake.

A strike is surely the last resort in any dispute and the question I had before today was, what's next?  Another one day strike, a two days strike, an all out indefinite unpaid strike, selective action?

There's no plan beyond a one day strike.

Public sector workers are in an impossible position because the Tories will not negotiate on pay, on pensions nor on job cuts. And since 2010, they have ploughed on with their vicious attack on us and ignored the strikes and campaigns the unions have run.

It's like this: I support everyone who lost a day's pay today but I suspect it will amount to nothing more than tokenism.  You've made your point but Cameron and co will carry on as if nothing has happened.  It's the summer soon. The timing of this strike is appalling.

The only hope is that the Tories will lose the 2015 election.  I don't see a Labour government as being one that can throw lots of money at public sector workers but they must stand on a platform of fairness.

If you can afford to take a financial hit with more strikes, then lucky you.  I suspect most people have nothing left to give, financially or emotionally, and this will be the last hoorah of strikes against austerity.

The ultra left in PCS believe it is better to have fought and lost than never to have lost at all.  As a campaign slogan, it's not exactly inspiring, but slogans are all they have offered us for years.

A little perspective

Today was all about golf.

My first engagement was at the Bristol Golf Centre in Hambrook.  This is a remarkable place.  There are numerous professionals, a state of the art driving range, a well-stocked (have you ever heard of an advertised poorly stocked?) shop and no course, unless you count an albeit excellent Crazy Golf course next door.  I digress.

On Thursdays, the Centre holds a 'roll-up' session for old codgers, £6 for a basket of balls, a bit of tuition from one of the pros followed by a coffee (and some cake which one of my fellow old codgers bakes and brings along - today it was lemon drizzle cake).

Soon I was hitting the ball all over the place which was not where I wanted it to go, which was in a straight line.  "It's your grip!" said the pro.

He tweaked my wrists as if they were made of Plasticine and formed them into a very awkward position.  "You'll get used to it in 10 minutes," he added.  Hmm, not so sure.

But, hey presto, I was hitting the ball beautifully with all five of the clubs I had brought with me.  At last, I had cracked it.

After a quick mingle with the old boys - some of them have been coming along for 15 years - I made my way to the car park.

As I neared my car, two very nice ladies approached me, pointing out this young lad, probably mid teens, in the back seat of theirs.  He plainly had learning difficulties, Downs it looked like, and he didn't seem to want to get out of the car.  The lady asked if I could show him my clubs.  Of course I could.

I found myself talking to him as I would have talked to anyone else I know, dipping into my limited collection of cliches ('top man', 'good lad' and so on).  And he took my driver and started moving out of the car.  

He seemed very impressed with the club (he wouldn't have been if he's seen me swinging it about in the driving range!) and smiled the loveliest smile ever.

The two ladies were full of smiles too and one of them, possibly his mum, said, "Thank you - you're an angel!"

I was slightly taken aback by this.  I'd really enjoyed this chance meeting, I hadn't really thought about what I was doing; I just did it.  And I found myself wiping a tear from my eye, which I didn't expect at all.  Grit, I reckon.

After lunch, I decided that having finally cracked the game, I'd put my new grip to the test and boy does pride come before a fall!  From a driving range where I barely hooked or sliced a ball for an hour, I was now back in the novice stage.  

The Thornbury Par 3, disaster: my shank was back, I couldn't get the ball in the air. I was devastated.

After three holes, I gave up the ghost.  A nine on the 90 yard third convinced me that things were not going to get better.

I obtained 50 balls from the clubhouse and it was like I had never played the game.  Shank after hook after shank after topping the ball and finally missing it altogether.

Having tried and failed to sort my game out on the range, I foolishly tried to start my game again but it was a massive blunder. I felt even worse and after two holes decided to call it a day.

I walked back to my car, slumped shoulders and totally hacked off. I was seriously crestfallen, wallowing in a pool of self-pity.  I felt like just driving off somewhere and being miserable.

As I drove home, I thought of my day.  The driving range was fun, well the morning one was, the afternoon driving range wasn't so much fun and my rounds (I started and stopped twice) were shocking.  But there was one good bit.

Maybe my day wasn't wasted after all.

I don't know where the boy was going but I suspect it was the crazy golf.  I am sure he would have enjoyed it and I hope that now him and the ladies who were with him are happy.

It gave me a little perspective too.

I have endured bloody awful depression and anxiety in my life, gruesome, ugly, totally destructive, flattening mental illness that sapped my will to live.  Whilst of course I knew there were many people out there with much worse lives than mine but the black dog overwhelms you.

I am not particularly ill at the moment.  My anxieties have eased and my depression is suppressed by the techniques I have learned and the drugs I take.

So there was absolutely no excuse for what was my pathetic self-pity at the falling apart of my golf swing.

I can get my golf swing back with a few lessons and by even more practice.  It's not a big deal and I need to get over myself.

I can't get over being described as an angel though.  I've been called a lot of things in my life but never that!

Home Office Missing Files

It has been fascinating to watch the unfolding events over the 114 missing official files linked to investigations of a 1980s paedophile ring at Westminster.

Yesterday, I watched the Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill explain to the Home Affairs Select Committee that most of these files had "probably been destroyed".

Well, really?  Are we supposed to believe that?  In a word, yes.

A few short weeks ago, I finished a lifetime of public service in the Civil Service.

When I joined, all documents were stored in large filing cabinets in the offices where the work was carried out. Particularly sensitive documents were placed in locked cabinets.  If something went missing, staff downed tools and searched for the document until it turned up.

The 1980s represented an enormous shock to public services when the new Thatcher government cut back ruthlessly on spending.  

As the cuts began to bite, departments needed to find new ways of spending less money and one of the ideas was to store documents in remote locations, effectively large warehouses miles away.   Files and documents would be bagged up and sent away and if they were needed again at a later day, staff locally could request them. 

It was not unusual for documents to simply disappear.  I am sure they were not routinely destroyed but the number that could not be found was alarming.  And many of them would be required for such things as fraudulent benefit claims, what the law enforcement agencies might refer to as evidence.  A lost claim form in the DWP might be a false statement and if it was lost the implications for a criminal investigation could be very serious.

The next step with these remote storage facilities was to privatise them and so mean they were run for profit and local government offices now had to pay to have their own documents to be transported back to them.

But the view from the top was that you could not always keep everything.  Some documents and files were not necessarily sensitive and even if they were, the argument went, after a few years they would lose that sensitivity.

So documents, forms, files and the like began to be destroyed after a few years.  Destroyed by government diktat on the grounds of efficiencies, or cuts as they should properly known.

I know for a fact that many, if not all, departments had similar policies with old records and documents and Mark Sedwill's comments at the Home Office suggest I am right.

Now we have an horrific situation where a paedophile ring may have existed and there were documents that suggested who was involved and when and that these documents no longer exist.  You can imagine the implications for prosecuting authorities and you can also imagine some seriously unpleasant people blowing sighs of relief.

I do not sense a conspiracy here - the cock up theory seems more likely - but it shows once again that the endless drive for more efficiencies (cuts) and the need to do everything on the cheap have implications that go way beyond what they were intended to do. 

Where I worked, staff were always warning of the dangers of destroying evidence but no one listened.

It would be terrible if it turned out that there are people out there who have suffered terrible abuse who may never get justice because the evidence has been shredded in order to save a few bob.

Let the worst team lose

As an Englishman, I am well past the stage of who to support in the World Cup.

Unlike in club football where I 'support' a variety of teams, international football provides me with one.  

Despite my Dutch heritage, I never want them to win and my Scandinavian roots rarely if ever come into play in a major tournament.

So now I am working out who I most want to lose.

Tonight we have a tricky one: Brazil or Germany.   Who do I least want to win?

This Brazil is not a classic Brazil side.  They are good defensively and they are functional elsewhere on the park (see how I am getting the hang of this football lingo?) but no one watches Brazil to see them defend.  But not many people are exactly enthralled by Fred who is, in football parlance, crap.

Neymar is injured and out of the tournament.  He is adored in Brazil but I don't rate him in the Messi category.

Germany, their opponents in the semi-finals, are most people's idea of the team they love to hate.  But the stereotypical dour, efficient German machine is long gone.  They play a brand of football we in England would die for (even though I prefer the classic Spanish tiki-taka) and it's terrifically exciting when it comes off.  Superb physical conditioning combined with great skill and mental toughness.  Don't you just hate them?  Well, only a bit and certainly not because of the war.

I am supposed to hate Argentina because of the Falklands War but that would be as silly as me hating England because of Thatcher (although come to think of it).  So I have a strange ambivalence about them.  I love Messi and I want him to prove to the world that he is among the greatest players who ever lived.  And he doesn't cheat.  Unlike some.

And some includes Arjen Robben.  A wonderfully talented footballer but a hideous diving cheat and I can't separate the two.  van Persie I like but less than I might because he plays for Manchester United.  But I do like Dirk Kuyt because a) he played for Liverpool and b) he comes from Katwijk where I went on holiday in 1984.

There have been other countries I have wanted to see fail.

Chile because of General Pinochet and specifically because he was Thatcher's friend.  Switzerland because so many British tax exiles live there, although it could be regarded as a bonus since Phil Collins lives there too.  The USA because of George Bush and Iraq.

Oh I could find all manner of reasons to dislike the other countries too.  How could you support Italy after Berlusconi?

So, who do I want to win the World Cup?

Well, it's who I don't want to win it really and at the top of the list comes Brazil closely followed by the Netherlands and Germany, the latter two on the additional flimsy grounds that they are light years better than us.

It's Argentina for me then.  Not a victory for the Malvinas, General Galtieri, Eva Peron or even Ossie Ardiles.

No, for that little man, the number 10 who doesn't dive, doesn't roll about after the most mild of fouls and plays better than any man currently alive.

Faded seaside glamour

So to Weston Super Mare for a day by the seaside.

There's an 'early bird' car park in the town and if you get there before 9.30 am you get to park all day for £2.10. This saved us a fair bit of cash before we squandered our savings on the unhealthiest breakfast we could find: Egg and Sausage McMuffins in McDonalds.

And this was where our strange day began.

I cannot deny that I am carrying a few pounds overweight at the moment.  Nothing drastic but with the odd exception, rabbit food is the norm.  But many of our fellow customers were more than a few pounds overweight and some looked as if they might actually live there.

A lot of money has been spent on the seafront and it's a great improvement.   Much of the traffic has been re-routed and it's more designed now for walking than driving.

The ruins of the Tropicana lie in the distance behind the ugly Sea Life Centre (or whatever it's called this year) that juts out into the sea.  We didn't go that far and instead visited the Sand Sculpting exhibition which is surprisingly interesting and not a little inspiring.  It's not cheap to get in but the exhibits are astonishing in their beauty and detail.  Well worth a visit, I thought.  But I have reservations about the rest of the place.

I kept thinking, does anyone actually work down here?  Not everyone can work in the dozens of 'amusement' arcades or chip shops, but there was a steady stream, more like the rapids in places, of people shuffling around going nowhere in particular.

I would guess that many were holidaymakers because some of the accents were Brummie and others were Welsh, but the overwhelming majority I heard were undoubtedly local.

But the town is tired and it's jaded,  Whilst money has been spent on the front, the streets behind tell a different story.  Weston, away from the town, is a bit of Clifton and a lot of Bradley Stoke but beyond the pier it's poor.

The shops are Greggs and McDonalds and there are bookmaker shops everywhere.  Even when the sun is shining, the streets are dull and drab and everywhere you look people are shuffling around with no particular place to go.

And it's hard to ignore the fact that a lot of people are not looking after themselves very well.  You hear the warnings of obesity and unhealthy living and you look around where you live and think that someone is exaggerating.  But there was no exaggeration about today.  And everyone, even the pensioners on their scooters, have tattoos.  Tattoos - today's Philosan.

I don't see too many people smoking these days but almost everyone was in Weston.  

And just when you thought it was grim enough, there were the druggies hanging around on the corners and in the parks, often wafer thin with rotting teeth (no one tells you that bit when you start injecting).  No one seems to notice them because, sadly, they blended in, they are part of the scenery.

I used to visit Weston around 30 years ago.  No one would call it glamorous or upmarket, but then neither am I, but it was functional and sometimes it was even vibrant but today I saw another seaside town on the decline.

I know that a lot of seaside towns are losing their younger people who are moving to the bigger cities for work and better opportunities and it could be that Weston is suffering from the same problem.

It's facilities are largely from another age and, more worryingly, so were so many of its visitors.  There was not a lot of smiling going on.  This was not a happy place.

But what is there to do for the young?  Working in the shops or maybe in the amusement arcades seems about the sum of it.

I suspect the traditional British seaside town is now in terminal decline.

It was nice to visit but I wasn't sorry to leave.

The pier is now fully modernised following the big fire and they even charge you for the privilege of walking on it.  But it's a one-trick pony and an expensive one at that.

I had a nice day but Weston is a joyless town, locked into the past, and clearly run by people who have no vision for the present and on the basis of what I saw today no hope for the future.

Clock watching

I can't remember the exact joke but it goes something like this.

You go to school and spend much of the day looking at the clock. Your life revolves around the clock, what you do and when you do it.

And you go to work by the time on the clock.  When the clock strikes 12.00, you have your lunch and then you wait until the clock ticks up to the time when you can go home when you will set the clock for the following morning.

And after you work for the employer for, say, 39 years, as I did, what do they buy you?  A fucking clock.

Except that the last bit wasn't true.  In fact, my work colleagues did a nice collection and bought me some vouchers for me to spend as I chose.

But it certainly happened to a lot of people. 

39 years is a lot of your life to give to any employer, in my case the Government, so not a particularly nice employer.  Labour governments treated us badly, Tory governments treated us far worse, so when the chance to be part of a voluntary exit scheme, I was halfway through the door before you could say Jack Robinson (maybe Jason Robinson would be more appropriate these days).

So anyway, I left back in May to kind wishes from friends and colleagues and a lovely letter from my boss which meant an awful lot.

You are not valued in much of the public sector so it is not surprising when your leaving is accompanied by little by way of a fanfare, but it it slightly disappointing when your leaving is accompanied by nothing from the top of the shop or anywhere near it.

I did not expect a personal letter of thanks from Iain Duncan Smith, congratulating me on my results and walking the extra mile for far less than the national average wage, but perhaps a stock letter with my name written in biro might have been appropriate?

But there was nothing.  Above my boss locally, nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I am glad I have left.  I do not regret getting out when I did.  I was burnt out, I had nothing left to give.  A few months off work is something quite excellent. 

And I am not whingeing, feeling sorry for myself that those nasty people at the top don't give a shit about anything I did over 39 years because I know that we are just numbers.   When they needed to cut staff, I became a number George Osborne could brag about in the House of Commons, talking about 'efficiencies' and 'cutting out waste'.

A letter did arrive last week and I stupidly thought that maybe here was a stencilled letter from a middle manager thanking me and wishing me good luck but it turned out to be my P45!

I was privileged to work with some truly wonderful people and I hope I keep in contact with them as the next stage of my life unfolds.

But the government proves once again that they know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

That this government is by far the worst I have ever worked for - worse even than Thatcher's - they've all been unpleasant employers, just some less worse than others.

One thing though is that I am no longer clock watching.  Apart from when it's time to open the wine.

A good walk spoiled

I played golf today. 

Now I realise that if you have been foolish enough to be my 'friend' on Facebook, or to follow my fun-packed life on twitter, this is not exactly a startling revelation.

Golf is what I do these days for pleasure and exercise.

I am not one who can enjoy pointless exercise like going to a gym and jogging on a moving pavement or poncing about on the cross-dresser (I think that's what it's called). I can see that many, though not all, gym members are probably in better shape than I am but my god they look miserable. Caked in sweat, bright red and looking thoroughly pissed off.  And they pay for the privilege.

And runners/joggers: what's that all about?  Yes, yes, I know all this running can make you really fit and really thin and you might live a little longer but have you ever seen a happy jogger?

Wheezing along the road, with flailing arms and wearing outfits that make them look more than slightly ridiculous.  Some of them look thin to the point of being gaunt and ill-looking.  It can't be good for you, can it, all this exercise?

You could probably say, with some justification, that my golfing exploits represent a lot of good walks spoiled and I'd probably agree with you. 

I have played literally hundreds of rounds now, the vast majority on a smashing Par 3 course of around 2500 yards, and I have long since hit the wall.

I still make the same bloody awful mistakes as I did when I first started playing the game two years ago and I still don't really know what's going to happen when I hit the ball or where the ball is going to go.

Sometimes, I will approach the ball and I just know it's going to be a good shot and others I will know it won't be.  And there are times when I look like I have never picked up a club.  There were some instances like that today.

But it's exercise and lots of it.

My Par 3 gets me walking between three and four miles and the bigger courses double that.

I play mainly on my own but sometimes with friends.  When I am alone, I walk like the clappers between holes and shots and I feel like it's doing me good. 

I find it cathartic too on the mental side. If I am playing well - and that is a very big 'if' - then I feel in a better place.  If I am playing badly, provided my mental state is all right, I try to play better.

And I play a lot, maybe five times a week, sometimes more than that.

I have a coach called Sam Hughes who is based at Saltford Golf Club.  He has taken me from an incompetent novice to someone who can, occasionally, hit the ball in the right direction.

There was so much to learn like the grip, the stance, the positioning of the ball - oh Christ there was so much and then there was the small matter of putting it all together at the same time.  And when I do, it's a great feeling.  When I don't, which is most of the time (you should have seen it tonight when I was playing five from the tee having shanked my first two balls into the trees), it's a potential club wrecker.

But I am going to stick with it.

I shot a 93 last week on the Woodlands Signature course, losing something like six balls in the process, so there is room for improvement.  But 23 over par is a minor victory for me.

I think the Open Championship is a way off for me but I don't think it's quite as boring as the gym or the road, at least not just yet.

Thoughts on my old boss

It's always instructive when Tory ministers tells us, in times of austerity, that 'we're all in it together.'

Whilst terminally ill people die before they get their disability benefits, and others are turfed out of their homes because of the 'bedroom tax', some are more in it together than others.

Iain Duncan Smith, for example, lives in a £2 million home, rent free.  He married the right person and now lives in a sprawling mansion in Buckinghamshire.  Now there's nothing wrong with marrying into money - I'm sure my partner wishes she had! - but there is everything wrong with attacking the poorest in our country for wanting, as Mr Duncan Smith calls it, 'something for nothing.'  He is more something for nothing than most.

And our Old Etonian chancellor Gideon 'George' Osborne, a seriously rich multimillionaire who will not alone inherit a very large fortune one day, he will inherit a knighthood.  Nice work if you can get it.

Mr Duncan Smith despises food banks, accuse them of 'scaremongering' and being 'political', as well as refusing to meet with them.  And Mr Osborne suggests the only reason people use food banks is because they get told about them by Jobcentres.

Now, I have never had the misfortune to need the services of food banks but I do know people who have and these people have one thing in common: they work.

Not the stereotypical Daily Mail vision of scroungers by any stretch but people who work hard, play by the rules, something David Cameron is always banging on about, and trying to get on.  But it's not easy on the minimum wage.

A man I know who used a food bank in the Spring said it was the most embarrassing, humiliating moment of his life, having to go basically cap in hand to ask for some food to see him and his family through until his next pay day.

The food bank he used did not just hand him a box of food.  He had to answer a whole lot of questions to prove he really needed it.  I wonder if the food banks themselves have become a little paranoid after certain newspapers pretended that all you needed to do was turn up and you'd get something. That has probably made a miserable time even more miserable for genuine people in need.

Yet the very richest and most powerful in society, with friends who will pay £160,000 to the Tory party in order to play tennis with David Cameron and his Old Etonian pal Boris Johnson, treat the working poor with utter contempt.

There are undoubtedly those who work the system and they need to be brought to book, but there are far more who are getting shafted and are becoming the working poor.

Meanwhile, Mr Duncan Smith presides over the combined disasters of the Universal Credit and the Personal Independence Payments (PIP), pretending that they are both soaraway successes and ignoring the hundreds of millions of pounds he and his department have spunked away, as if it were their money.  But it's our money.

I have no issue with people being rich. I respect those who work hard, play fair and pay their taxes that make society bearable for all of us.

But I have a major issue with the rich who accuse those with nothing as demanding something for nothing.

Future generations will condemn Mr Duncan Smith as being one of the worst secretary's of state in our history. I just wish the current generation would do the same.