What’s Happening At Home: a round-up of the oddities of UK news

Zoë Sharp

I confess that I have not been spending much time at my keyboard over the last week or so. Not through any lack of desire of my part, but because I’ve been on too many drugs.

No, not the illegal type – the kind you have to be prescribed by the nice medical gentlemen at the local doctor’s surgery.

I’ve got a bad back.

Bad backs are traditionally the butt of many jokes. Apparently one in three people in the UK will suffer back pain this year, and it’s been one of the main excuses for those who wish to have time off work.

Trust me, I’d far rather be working.

But, I’ve been dutifully following the advice of my physio regarding posture, heat and exercise, and as my office typing chair is the most comfortable one to sit in, I hope to be spending more time in it. With suitable frequent breaks for moving around and loosening up again.

So, this week I thought I’d look at the oddities that have hit the news in the UK over the last few days.

The first of these was that on September 9^th the Queen became this country’s longest serving monarch, just surpassing the record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years 216 days.

The shortest reigning UK monarch was Queen Jane, who proclaimed queen shortly after the death of Edward VI in 1553, and ousted by Mary I just nine days later, and subsequently executed.

No doubt the Royal Mint will bring out celebratory coinage to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s landmark occasion, but for the moment they won’t be as valuable as a fifty pence coin brought out to celebrate the London Olympics in 2012.

As you can see from the two coins pictured here, the design on the left was changed shortly after its introduction to make the swimmer’s face more clear. Sufficiently low numbers of the original were produced to make them change hands for up to £850.

In politics, Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected leader of the Labour party after clocking up 251,417 votes – 59.5% of the vote. His nearest rival received just 19%. After the last few years of plastic politicians in Westminster, it’s refreshing to find an apparently honourable man with genuine left-wing beliefs holding the most powerful position in the party that always used to represent the more left-wing view. I wish him the best of luck.

A couple from Indiana have relocated to the UK because they claim to have fallen in love with an English pub – The Plough Inn in Shustoke, near Coventry. Matthew and Delores Lawrence decided it was everything an English pub should be, so they upped and made it their local. Matthew has transferred to a UK branch of his loss adjuster firm, while their son, Achilles, has applied to Coventry University.

OK, time for me to lie down with more drugs. What’s the news from where you are?

This week’s Word of the Week is hamartia, meaning the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall. It comes from the Greek hamartánein, meaning ‘to miss the mark’ or ‘to err’, and was first used by Aristotle. 

Cometh the Man....

Cometh the man, cometh the beard.

                             

No, not him!

                                                

No not him

                                             

This one!

Here is Caro’s understanding of UK politics at the moment. I know nothing but neither does anybody else….

                                               

Labour was unelectable. Because they had a muppet in charge. The Lib Dem vote collapsed because they had a muppet in charge. The only real alternative was the Tories because although everybody hates them, they seemed to know what they were doing at least. North of the border, the nice mildly left social conscience vote jumped into bed with the Nats after only 34% of us had voted for independence a few months earlier.

                                          
                                                            Yvette or Liz

So now there is an election for the new leader of labour. Three were standing ….and I confess I had to look their names up because I don’t think anybody cares. (Yvette, Liz and Andy). Andy is a shiny bloke, like all politician nowadays. He looksd a bit posh and buffed up. Like he’s never cleaned out the cat litter tray in his life.

                                         
                                                                        Liz or Yvette

At the last minute a fourth person joined the leadership battle after a last minute scrape round by the trade unions. Beardy was a rank outsider but he got late votes taking him up to 36 nominations, one more than was needed to qualify.  24 of them meant it, and the other 12  actually supported other candidates but voted for him to widen the field. One of them, Margaret Beckett, now describes herself as "moron" for  doing it.

                                                
                                                            Andy Burnham (shiny)
                                 

So who is Beardy..briefly….

He’s Member of Parliament for Islington North Incumbent Assumed office 9 June 1983, 60% majority at the last election.

A member of the Socialist Campaign Group

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign

Amnesty International

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Stop the War Coalition

Anti-poverty campaigner

Supports the renationalisation of railways

Introduction of a living wage

A higher rate of income tax for the wealthiest

Increase in corporation tax to fund public services such as free higher education

Served on the National Executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (and was arrested in 1984 for protesting outside South Africa House ...so was  I actually)

Re Human Rights Issues he was once reportedly punched by the horrible slimy  MP Robert Kilroy-Silk. (He denied it but there was a scuffle!)

Huge campaigner on animal rights issues

Signed motions calling for a ban on the importation of foie gras into the United Kingdom

Sponsored the motion opposing the Yulin Dog Meat Festival

People's Assembly Against Austerity

He rides a bicycle ( he doesn’t have a car)

He is  teetotal

And a  vegetarian.

He backed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons expressing admiration for Arsenal which was of the opinion that it is the best football team in the world.

He has been awarded Gandhi International Peace Award for his "consistent efforts over a 30-year Parliamentary career to uphold the Gandhian values of social justice and non‐violence.

He has won the Parliamentary "Beard of the Year Award" a record five times.

                                  

So after the usual  TV debate nonsense where .. the four candidates Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Shadow Care Minister Liz Kendall, it was beardy who ‘won’…. And his popularity keeps growing. The more people hear him, the more we like what we hear. Nobody is more surprised than he is. (which makes him more popular!). When he was personally attacked during a debate he just shrugged and said, smiling, ‘I don’t do personal, I just do politics.)

                                            

So what is happening now is that Labour MP’s are now attacking him and the more they do it – guess what? The more popular he gets.   Just  read this, quoted from a national paper….

                                                       

“During the 2009 expenses scandal, “Beardy” was revealed as claiming one of the lowest amount of expenses of any Member of Parliament. In 2010 he claimed the smallest amount of all 650 MPs; in an interview with the Islington Gazette he said: "I am a parsimonious MP...I think we should claim what we need to run our offices and pay our staff but be careful because it's obviously public money...in a year, rent for the (constituency) office in Finsbury Park is about £12,000 to £14,000." He rents his constituency office from the Ethical Property Company.  “

                                             

You can see why he’s unpopular with them, but popular with us.

It seems the Labour front line are terrified of one thing. Democracy.

                                                          

The newspapers are having a field day. There is a chance, just a slim chance that a nice, committed, old, non shiny, bloke might get to lead one of the biggest political parties in the UK. And it will be interesting to see what happens to the Nat vote north of the border, if the General Election result was a revolt against the right rather than a vote for nationalism.

                                                    

So ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeremy Corbyn. I don’t care that he might not be right/correct.  He’s a breath of fresh air. And no you can’t have him.

Caro  14 08 2015