Christmas in Thalassery Thalassery, or Tellicherry, as the British named it in their time, is a small town on the south-west coast of India. My hometown. On quiet nights you couad hear the dash and murmur of the Arabian see, which was only a five-minute walk away. It is an unpretentious, friendly place, which claims to have started the game of Cricket in India. There are many schools and a college, so people tend to get educated. Most men still wear a mundu (a cloth for the lower half of the body), and my father, a lawyer, wore a pair of trousers and a black jacket only when he went to the Courts. There was one Christian family on our road and the two daughters of the family, Mabel and Ida, were my friends. Until Mabel got married, we spent a great deal of time together, walked to college, played badminton and throwball together. Met up most days to gossip. And, Christmas dinner was always at Mabel’s house. Chicken Biriyani rather than Turkey and sweet rice payasam instead of cake. No one put up Christmas trees; generally, no one gave or received gifts. Mabel’s family would attend midnight mass at the local church. And that was it for another year. Christmas has become an expensive end to the year in England. Tree and baubles, fancy food and a cake, gifts all round…My daughter hauled her box of decorations down from the loft and spent a morning creating colour and glitter. On Christmas day, we shall dine lavishly at the house of a Christian friend. There will be gifts given and received though we say ‘no gifts’ every year. The drive to our friend’s house will take forty-five minutes, and the day will be joyous and noisy. I wonder, does anyone go to church for midnight mass anymore?

There is Something Rotten in the State of ...

There is Something Rotten in the State of… --- and the stink is pervasive – on the obsequious media that will turn on Truss when they are sure she is history, (quite soon now from the noises coming from our toe-licking BBC,) and on the Conservative MPs who are like rodents caught in the headlights. Now, a wordy member of my household says, they want to shuffle the deckchairs about and put Ben Wallace and some such layabout at the head of this country. Anyone will do so long as the Tories can stay in power for another year-and-a-half. Jesus Wept! The Mother of Parliaments was thrust into my receptive twelve-year-old Indian head, by the Sacred Heart nuns in my Convent school in Thalasseri, in the mid - forties. A model not only of functioning democracy, but also of elegant government and political rectitude. In 1981, when my father visited, I took him to see the Houses of Parliament, the Palace and the door of Number 10 from a respectful distance on the sidewalk. When he returned to India, he did a brief talk on All India Radio, Kozhikode, about his trip. Full of eulogies for the wonderful buildings, the tidy (!!!) streets, the punctual trains… Late last night all hell broke in the revered Westminster Hall. Tory M Ps were being manhandled into the lobby if they were not quick enough to go in to vote against a labour motion. All decorum had disappeared through the august portals. The Kerala Marxists could not have put up a better example of rowdy behaviour. So much for decorum and elegance ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1.32p.m - The P M walked out of number 10 and to her podium as I was writing and announced her resignation. Now the horse-trading will begin. The Tories do not have the talent or rectitude in them right now to find acceptable replacements. So, we will end up with another set of nether orifices. No escape. I watch with some discomfort – who next? However, much better than the soaps on T V.

Our Winter of Destruction

Our Winter of Destruction I look at our PM, Liz Truss, and I think, how did this come about? What were the Tories thinking? They are self-destructing, I tell myself. I am happy to think that, but meanwhile, we have 18 months of this government. Liz Truss, bouncing on her high heels, travelling in search of a brain transplant. Before that, we had bungling Boris, empty as a finished beer-can. Now crunched up and binned, thank God. About him, the less said/ thought, the better. She took the cap off bankers’ bonuses (and because of that, the bottom off workers’ wages). She gave the green light to greedy fracking, never mind the creaking, tumbling local landscapes. What next? Jeremy -unt is back at the helm, more or less, and he is cruel as well as cunning. Put your crown jewels away and get ready for a harsh winter. The Tories are muttering and murmuring, but no one takes Liz on. What is her power-base? I wonder, what keeps her at No 10. ‘Who will rid us of this…?’ I think, as Liz minces in and minces out. We are in dire need of a government that cares about the people in this country who have to choose between heating and eating. We need a general election, now, not a year later. The advent of -unt does nothing to allay my fears of a subsistence winter. This man is the austerity chancellor. Any ideas, Keir??

Self Destruction? I have to be wary of wishful thinking. I listen to the sound bites coming out of Kamikazi and Busy- Lizzy and wonder what they are hoping to achieve with their loyalty to the notorious mini budget. Self-destructing, I say with glee. The Tory grandees murmur in some remote background, but do not come out of their rabbit holes. Lizzy just goes home and dyes her dress another colour overnight. As she bounces in to public view she looks radiantly smug. Even the Tories must have come across the word mortgage in connection with their loyal lumpen masses who vote them into power. Another 500 pounds or thereabouts on their monthly payment is a minor irritation. Rees- Mogg will instruct them to work harder, in between switching their heating off and inventing meals that are mainly bread and vegetable soup. Maybe more children will become eligible for school meals. Rashford, where are you? Schools will supply old uniforms to more children. Mothers will have nervous breakdowns and become thinner with denying themselves enough food. Fathers will look for second jobs and get progressively angrier. Are we a third world country now? Labour can sit back and enjoy the side-show. Tories are doing it all on their own.

Self Destruction? I have to be wary of wishful thinking. I listen to the sound bites coming out of Kamikazi and Busy- Lizzy and wonder what they are hoping to achieve with their loyalty to the notorious mini budget. Self-destructing, I say with glee. The Tory grandees murmur in some remote background, but do not come out of their rabbit holes. Lizzy just goes home and dyes her dress another colour overnight. As she bounces in to public view she looks radiantly smug. Even the Tories must have come across the word mortgage in connection with their loyal lumpen masses who vote them into power. Another 500 pounds or thereabouts on their monthly payment is a minor irritation. Rees- Mogg will instruct them to work harder, in between switching their heating off and inventing meals that are mainly bread and vegetable soup. Maybe more children will become eligible for school meals. Rashford, where are you? Schools will supply old uniforms to more children. Mothers will have nervous breakdowns and become thinner with denying themselves enough food. Fathers will look for second jobs and get progressively angrier. Are we a third world country now? Labour can sit back and enjoy the side-show. Tories are doing it all on their own.

Chaos There's the mini budget about which the less said, thought about, the better. Give the billionaires a break, for heaven’s sake. Trussliz is just behaving according to her class-imprint. She has no empathy or intelligence to understand what the average person in the street has to negotiate because of her wanton decisions. The mortgage payments go up – so what? And Kwatank is whipping through like the hurricane, Ian. His gaze is dead; as far as he is concerned, the hullabaloo about his MINI is just the usual clatter. Like all else, it will pass. The hoi-polloi will have something else to grumble about next week. Except mortgage payments come by every month… The poor man’s balancing act is one I am familiar with. I once lived on a monthly take-home of 92 pounds. I remember how I used to check the electric metre obsessively. The line on it went round on and on relentlessly. The amazing part is that there have been no calls within the Tories to get rid of either Truss or Kwarteng. They are self-destructing fast. The old guard, Hague, Hunt et al are just watching. With glee, like me?

I Despair!

I DESPAIR! Our P M. Liz Truss. How did this come about? What are the Tories thinking about? They are self-destructing, I tell myself. I am happy to think that, but meanwhile, we have two years of this government. Liz Truss, bouncing on her high heels, travelling in search of a brain transplant. Before that, we had bungling Boris, empty as a finished beer-can. Now crunched up and binned, thank God. About him, the less said/ thought, the better. Our Liz is at the U N this week and I am cringing to imagine her dealing with all those experienced apparatchiks. They’ll have her for porridge if she is not careful; And, not-so-Cleverly holding her hand is not going to cut it. Seventeen days and she has taken the cap off bankers’ bonuses (and because of that, the bottom off workers’ wages). She has given the green light to greedy fracking, never mind the creaking, tumbling local landscapes. What next? Today, I don’t recognise our normal political landscape. The Tories smell defeat in 2024 and they are armed with a wrecking ball. Ed Milliband was at his best at Westminster this week, but I doubt the Tories care. So gear up for a nasty eighteen months. Hopefully the bankers will handover their bonuses to the struggling poor and pay for school uniforms.