Yesterday, Thursday, is my shopping day so I needed to remember to buy cat food without which, Miggles our adopted cat would be left bereft. I find that as a male cat he has rapidly transferred his affections towards the young female carers one of whom, at least, is a 'cat' person and showers him with affection. Whilst on the subject of being showered with affection, I remember well when we used to visit Almuñécar, a small town on the coast of Spain east of Malaga. Here Meg and I got off the beaten track and discovered a little coffee bar where they happened to serve some hot chocolate which I think was some of the finest to be had in Spain. The little coffee bar was stuffed full of locals, practically all female, and a six month male baby was being passed around from one neighbour to another. The child had a beatific look on his face as well he might as he was passed from loving bosom to loving bosom. An elderly gentleman was leaning against the bar and I asked him, in Spanish, if he was the father of the child. The answer, as I expected, was that he was not so I asked him to whom the child belonged and got the most wonderful response that this 'child belonged to all the world' This puts me in mind of the wonderful expression originating I believe in India that 'it takes a village to raise a child' We had hints of this when we lived in Hampshire. We had to buy a house in a hurry and bought one in a Close in the district of Hedge End. Living in the Close were several children from the age of 4 to about 10 and they all played together much of it on their bikes and in and out of each other's houses. The various mothers took care of whatever child happened to be around and put an elastoplast on them if they fell off their bike, for example. When it came to the Millenium celebrations, we closed off the Close with some strategically relocated traffic cones and then utilised a little green area the developers had provided nearby. Here we set up our Millenium party with lots of garden chairs and trestle tables. The mothers provided the face painting for the children whilst the men used their car batteries and extension cables to provide us with some music. We all bought supplies of beer, wine and 'street food' to eat in our hands and the communal atmosphere was wonderful to experience. Having said that, the children grew up, went to university and moved away and the whole communal atmosphere faded. Meg and I acted as surrogate grandparents for a couple of children whose father was a doctor and mother was a midwife and who lived about two or three doors away. Again, these children were in our house quite a lot and we enjoyed their company tremendously. When we came to leave, there was much crying and heaving of shoulders as the young children, on their way to school, had to say goodbye to us and in fact the whole departure process was incredibly emotion filled.
After lunch, we had our normal monthly session with the chiropodist who calls around once a month and then settled down to complete our viewing of the Trump 'Heist' programme which was quite an eye opener. I do not suppose it takes very long for disillusionment with the current government to set in. Today it has been revealed by the Sky News Westminster Accounts project, which tracks the flows of money through the political system, that since December, 2019 Keir Starmer has received more than £107,000 in freebies ranging from invitations to top flight sporting events and, of course, the donations for his wife's clothing which hit the headlines recently. What is so disappointing about all of this is that on Day One of his premiership, Keir Starmer could have set the tone and declared that the slightest whiff of scandal or indeed impropriety would result in instant removal of the miscreants from their post. Instead, by accepting all of these gifts which is two and a half times the amount claimed by the next highest recipient, a terrible impression is created and some Labour MPs are already expressing their unhappiness. Sir Keir ignored warnings from some in his senior team that the issue of freebies could cause him political damage while in opposition. Senior Labour figures are incandescent that the story about freebies for the Starmer family has dragged on for days, and ministers going out with different and often contradictory explanations. Firstly, I think it was Harold Wilson who said that the Labour party had to be a moral crusade or it was nothing and accepting these huge amounts of money looks as though the leader of the Labour Party is in office for his personal gain. There was a golden opportunity to draw a line under the undoubted sleaze of past Conservative governments (particularly the Johnson government) and this has been missed. It also feeds into the dual narrative that all politicians are just in the game for their own personal profit and also that they 'are all the same' Accepting money from the football industry is particularly dangerous as the government is seeking to exert a degree of control over it. There is also a strong case that the PM and his spouse should receive a personal clothing allowance given their public appearances instead of having to rely upon a wealthy donor. Other societies seem to manage these affairs reasonably well but accepting a clothing allowance from a wealthy donor does not go down well in this era of people being forced by necessity to shop in charity shops for their own clothing. It looks as though the government could do with much sharper political antennae to ensure that issues like this do not arise. Keir Starmer could have put the issue to bed much more easily by clarifying what is necessary for the performance of one's role (and clothing comes into this category) and that which he should personally pay out of his own pocket. Senior figures in the Labour Party such as Harriet Harman are already expressing their disquiet and going on the airways to imply that Starmer should have realised the political damage and sought a solution much earlier.
© Mike Hart [2024]