They need Homes

At the end of the day, we need a place to go to. As of right. All of us. Where we know we can go back daily and feel secure.
  
   All those sleeping rough all over our country are our responsibility. The Tories can do nothing for them because they are seen only as a blot on the landscape. The Tories have never cared,

   We need those 500,000 homes, which Labour has promised to build in the first year, to house these young men and women, these abandoned people of all ages. A place where they can all find shelter, a warm room and a welcome. People to talk to and help.

   Even animals need shelter. WE NEED A CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT. We don't need  'a bloody difficult' Prime Minister.

   The Tories, indeed, are the blot on our landscape, on our national consciousness.


   

   

Food Banks amid wealth.

I am paranoid about access to food. Probably the result of living through the war-years in Thalassery. My father had gone off to jail because he did not approve of the British Government and wanted them to quit India. He had bad habits like organising public meetings and processions at a time when meetings of more than five people in public was banned by decree of the colonial masters. He was in jail for about two years. I was seven when he went.

   He was the only bread-winner in our household. There was myself, my two cousins not much older than me, and a spinster aunt. A niece of father's, Nani edathy, cooked whatever there was to cook: mainly moong in many enterprising ways and rice three times a day. Morning and evening it was conjee- rice in its liquid cooking starch, and afternoons it appeared as rice with a catch-all curry called Sambhar, into which dhal and all kinds of suspicious leaves and vegetables went. It was tasty and I love it still. A lot of love went into it because Nani knew how to love.

   At the end of the day, there would not be much food left for Nani edathy, the niece. I would find her scraping the bottom of the rice pan to get a decent serving. Scraping gently so that neighbours would not know there was food shortage in the lawyer's house.

   So, when I see those empty fridges and larders in the homes where women are forced to go to the food-bank for just enough to eat, I feel a tremendous sense of failure about the Tory Government. And anger. And we are supposed to be the sixth richest country in the world.

   Where are those riches going? And who is responsible for this terrible inequality? Why has this ridiculous government abrogated its duty to its less rich people.

SHAME ON YOU, MAYHEM.

Calling Time on May-hem's Tories.

I came to the U K in 1967, for the first time. My husband and I, together with two sons and an 18-month-old daughter were coming away from Eastern Nigeria in a hurry. The Biafran civil war was getting uncomfortably close, and the harassed government in Enugu could not protect us. The British Government advised us to leave, pronto. They gave us a visa in all of 24 hours and we landed at Heathrow on a May morning, my birthday it was.

   My little girl was sick, so we took her straight to the Paddington Green Hospital as soon as we had dumped our suitcases in the dilapidated bed-and-breakfast room we had booked on Edgeware Road.

   The infant had high fever and she was not eating. The hospital took her in and arranged a room downstairs for me to stay in the night. I would wander up in the night to the ward where she slept and stay with her.

   It was a urinary infection and she got better soon. Now, I thought, there was the hospital bill to pay and I dreaded the sight of it. When I went up to the cash-counter to pay, the woman smiled. 'Nothing to pay,' she said looking at my worried face.

   I thought the NHS then (in 1967) was a service for any country to be proud of, and I have not changed my mind since. It is still a wonder of the world. We can't let the Tories dismantle it piece by piece and hand it over to the businessmen to profit on.

   All of us have sick people, old people, and the disabled in our families and amongst our friends. We can't allow the cold-blooded Tories throw our precious health-care away. It took a long time building.

   Let's call time on a government that has no compassion. NOW!

THE ARROGANT TORIES

I am sure many people feel as I do - frustrated, angry and disbelieving, as the Tories treat the electorate with contempt, refusing to tell us what their plans are for education, health, taxation and other issues. 
   We get snippets: triple lock on pensions to go, grammar schools threatening to aggravate already burgeoning inequality of talent and opportunity, NHS to be slowly destroyed, sold off to private enterprise or just cut to pieces.
   So this is my little voice trying to reach the befuddled electorate. I intend to write one short blog and copy it to twitter and Facebook every day till June 8th.
   We can't let the MAY-hem destroy our future. Please share with all your friends and whichever part of the electorate you can reach. WE CAN DO IT as a very good and great American President said.

The Bully Boys

Two bully boys, equally ignorant and fixated on themselves, facing off at each other on the school playground. Let's hope somewhere in the background there are a few wise men and women holding them back.
   One shows off his Mother-of-all Bombs, the other watches his army goose-step with all his metal on show.
   And where is the Headmaster in Turtle Bay doing meanwhile? Keeping Schtum. When did this person get so emasculated? The boys show off their muscle in Pyongyang and Afghanistan and the headmaster looks away. He has no answers.
   The press thinks it is a news bonanza for them. They lost touch with reality a long time ago.
   Let's hope our PM will stay away from this playground fight.

To Face or not to Face.

'That is the question.' I did not take any notice of Facebook until I went to India some ten years ago and my somewhat-younger-than-me aunt complained that she couldn't get news to me or of me unless I put myself out there on FACE. So, after considerable heart-searching, I did.

   And yes, Facebook is how I know what is happening to my Indian family. Births, deaths, marriages, jobs, get-togethers... Sometimes I have a sense of loss in that I am never part of any of this, that I don't even know the new generation - confident, up-beat, seeking enjoyment, having fun, in ways my generation would never have imagined. For instance, we did not go on holidays, we just went back home to family when we had time.

   But now, I am getting more than a little upset about the presumptuousness of Facebook, the intrusions, the constant heigh-ho about birthdays of friends and acquaintances. So I made some rules of my own: I never respond to birthday prompts, I don't distribute friend-lists or seek friends...

   I quickly erase the year-in-reviews and the unsolicited photos after they put up the photo of my son, who had died recently. It took me many days to get over that unexpected image. Leave me alone, I think.

   The adverts annoy me, there are so many. The suggested posts and suggested friends irritate me. But I get priceless information about close friends and family.  And there is the rub. I can't get rid of one without losing the other.

   Fake news Trump style too. And sometimes THEY take me straight to a porn site. It would be large on my list to not see any news about Trump or BREXIT for a week or two. One way would be to abjure ALL screens for that time. Now, there's a thought. My kind of Lent.

   So, for the moment, it's on with FACE for a while longer, but it's on probation. Watch this space, as they say.



   

    

The British Sense of Values

The British Sense of Values

We hear this periodically. Some unfortunate foreigner, or group of foreigners don't have this particular grace, according to some value-pundit.

   Starting from the assumption that all men are created equal (even in America, but may not be treated as such by police officers.) I logically also assume that all mean must mean all men, women and children, including the poor old losers like me. In which case, in all places and nooks of the world, populated by the rainbow hues of humanity, there must be value systems that the 'good' proclaim and practice, and other value systems that the 'wicked' adopt and also practise.

   It then follows that all over the world people understand what is good and bad, irrespective of whether they acknowledge it or not, and proceed to abide by it or not.

   Now - puleese, some value-elevated British person, define for me the 'British sense of values.' Do we mean the ones practised by Teresa May, Modi, Blair, The Salvation Army, The police and the foot-ball coaches...? Have the values changed from the time India was plundered, its young men (including my father) imprisoned, some hung for standing up to the British Raj? Has Christianity re-adjusted, re-wrote its best practices. No more burnings clearly. Are we going to get a new Tablet like that of Moses?

   In my long life I have had the good luck to travel to various disenfranchised parts of the world and I have found the same diversity of values preached and practised as I have found in England.

   Don't for a moment equate the ISIS with the average generous, friendly, kind muslims that I grew up with in Kerala. If women are raped in Delhi that particular abomination is world-wide too. The press is not particularly honest, the Governments are partisan and self-serving and the likes of NIgel Farage are worried about the British sense of values getting diluted. Ah well, there might be values that need to be thrown away altogether. Like talking about immigrants as though they are barely human. Shame on us!