The Whole Foods Experience

I use the Whole Foods Cafe as my local caff, popping in three or four times a week. Large espresso and a raisin and cinnamon bun - £2.99. Entertainment, and there's always plenty, free. I tend to avoid Monday mornings (mummy and baby time) and any time between 3 and 4, when the schools come out and children are brought in for a snack. Question: what's the difference between poor kids' and rich kids' after-school snacks? One gets a Big Mac for two quid and the other gets a Whole Foods banana and strawberry smoothie and a muffin for a fiver. Is a muffin better for you than a Big Mac? Not necessarily, but it has the Whole Foods imprimatur so it must be ok.

Today when I thought I was safe from weans, my entertainment was listening to two spoiled brats aged about five wailing because they couldn't have cupcakes. I don't understand why some middle-class parents don't have survival skills. Do the weans really need a long explanation to do with high sugar levels and how we're having risotto for dinner later and I don't want you to spoil your appetite? Is there not a time when a parent is allowed to say: You can't have it because I said so? End of.

But that level of gnashing of teeth was mild compared to my experience on Tuesday - and apologies to my fellow pensionistas in HEAPS if they heard me talking about this on Wednesday. Enter mother and three primary age kids. A lot of time is spent choosing what to eat and drink. All the other customers are aware of what's going on because mother has a particularly strident Norn Ireland accent. Eventually everyone settles. And then, mother starts haranguing one of the kids: 'Ollie, give that back! That's just greed! Sheer greed! You've eaten yer own and mine and now you want to eat hers! Nothin but greed, Ollie, just greed!' And on and on and on.

We share longish tables in the Whole Foods cafe and at one point I look up from my paper and catch the eye of the guy opposite me. We do a bit of eye-rolling. I really want to turn round and see this Billy Bunter-style food criminal. I sneak a look and see a shilpit wee cratur aged about nine, head down and shoulders up over his ears. From what I can see of his face, it's scarlet - and still mother goes on and on.

I really want to interrupt her. If only I could say something. Like: 'Can it, wumman! You've had your say. You've reduced all three kids to sullen silence. The two wee girls are looking as uncomfortable as Ollie and you'll be lucky to get out of here without a major tantrum from one of them.'

But, of course, I say nothing. The childless are not reckoned to be entitled to an opinion on child-raising. But I do know this mother is humiliating Ollie and, despite the strong bond between mothers and their sons, Ollie may not forget this public shirrickin.

Boy, am I mad!

It's been a busy old day so I'm just reading my copy of the Herald Scotland now and have come across an article entitled: Govan Ferry axed two years after relaunch. 

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/govan-ferry-axed-two-years-after-relaunch.21203961

Glasgow City spent £300,000 building a pontoon so that a ferry could take people from the Govan side of the Clyde to the new Riverside Museum, all as part of the Govan regeneration project. This restored the old ferry link between the banks of the Clyde that ran for 200 years till the mid-60s. It didn't bring any jobs (the ferry guys seemed to be Polish or Russian) but it got tourists into Govan, on the subway and by bus, and it brought a bit of life to the town centre. 

The new ferry was run by a private company, Clyde Marine, which also runs 'river cruises' notably from Broomielaw to Braehead - or should that be ran? Since rumour has it this service has ended too. 

The stories of this company's incompetence are legion. 

Their website was never up to date. There were never any signs on either side of the river telling you if and when the ferry was running. You could go to Govan and discover the ferry was 'aff' or go the long way round to Riverside, only to discover just by looking that the ferry was actually on. They never seemed to know the tides, so on several occasions their Broomielaw-Braehead service couldn't get under Bell's Bridge and passengers had to complete their journey by bus. 

I for one could see that these chancers were running a very poor service last summer (2012) and complained in writing about being let down so often in my efforts to show visitors around. One of their staff phoned me and the root of the problem then, according to her, was that the ferry needed repairs costing £30,000 - and there was no money coming from either the Govan Initiative or Glasgow City Council or the Scottish Government. I asked her who else they'd approached for funding. I used to know a wee bit about these things and I know there are other sources: the Prince's Trust, the EU Social Fund, the Big Lottery. She got very quiet.....

And I knew straight away: entrepreneurs, my arse - we were dealing with amateurs.

I wrote to Nicola Sturgeon (Govan MSP) and I hope she kept my letter. If ever an area could ill afford to waste £300,000, it's Govan. This is an area of multiple deprivation, with more social and economic problems than you could shake a stick at. On this occasion, I don't blame the council at all. Just give me half an hour in a room with the boss man of Clyde Marine, one Hamish Munro, who claims: 'The year after the Riverside Museum opened, passenger numbers collapsed.' He blames the recession and the weather.

Hamish, your company allowed passenger numbers to collapse by running a totally amateurish operation. And I suspect what you want to do now is screw some more money out of someone to keep the service running. Personally, I'd send you off with a swift kick up the jaxie. Then I'd put in some Govan boys to run the operation.....

Can we talk?

Journalist and presenter of Crimewatch Nick Ross has got himself into bother over a book he has written, in which he touches on the issue of rape. A storm has broken over his head, with some women's groups claiming he has taken the view that rape comes in many forms and isn't always the same.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22677513

This is contrary to the accepted view on rape which is that rape is rape. There aren't different kinds of rape and all forms of rape are equally heinous.

So here are a couple of tests:

Is Nick Ross entitled to his view that there are several kinds of situation that can be construed as rape? Yes, he is.

If we say 'rape is rape' and don't discriminate between types of sexual assault, can we increase the number of rapes being reported and the number of convictions? The answer to that one is absolutely not: reported rapes and convictions for rape are falling.

Rape has become a subject we almost don't dare to discuss in the UK. There are so many misunderstandings and prejudices around the issue it's easier not to talk about it at all, but just pretend we all agree with the accepted view: rape is rape. Of course, a lot of views are expressed on the basis of nothing: I bet the people attacking or supporting Nick Ross haven't read his book but are responding to extracts presented - maybe out of context? - to them by newspaper journalists.

Even suggesting women have a duty to protect themselves and each other can bring hate down on your head, as I've discovered for myself: I suggested on Facebook that women on a night out shouldn't get so paralytic with drink and/or drugs, they put themselves in danger and that pals should look after each other if they got into that state. I wasn't thinking specifically about rape, in fact, since I'd just heard of a nursing student who got out of a taxi, turned the wrong way in an area she didn't know well, wandered about and fell into the river and drowned. Within a couple of days, I was wishing I'd kept my mouth shut.

The subject of race is the same. There have been some horrible racist views expressed in the press and in social networks about the killers of Lee Rigby. All Muslims are put into the same category: mad imams radicalising young men and sending them out to destroy western society. There is no evidence, of course, that anyone radicalised these young men or that the UK is awash with Muslims who plan to attack our way of life or want to do anything other than live a normal, ordinary life, go to school and college, bring up a family and hold down a job. And many people don't seem to understand that we're not talking about immigrants when we talk about Muslims in the UK. Most Muslims are British by birth. But all immigrants get lumped into one category and the cry goes up: deport them!

So here's a test: when a Lithuanian woman murdered her baby in Fraserburgh:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22677513 did we decide all Lithuanians were murderers?

And when a Slovak man murdered Moira Jones in Queens Park in Glasgow, did we decide all Slovaks were capable of such a crime? http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/slovakian-jailed-murder-glasgow

There are undoubtedly a small number of people in every community that we could happily live without  and maybe we need to talk about these issues, but let's try to do it calmly. We have a reputation for what the French call 'le fair-play'. Time we showed we know what that means.

It's only a book!

Good article in Saturday's Herald Scotland by Ian Bell:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/no-crime-to-move-on-from-all-embracing-scottish-novel.21176823

Novelist Alexander McCall Smith has expressed dismay at the large number of crime novels being published in and about Scotland. He feels they give the wrong impression of the place. I think he's right and he's wrong. There are an awful lot of Tartan Noir books around. I've just declared them a no-go area after reading 5 on the trot: 2 by Denise Mina and 3 by Alex Gray. I was reading them as a change from the Scandinavian Noir books of Camilla Lackberg, which I was starting to mix up. But then I found myself convinced I'd read one of the Denise Mina books already.....

However, they don't give the wrong impression of Scotland: readers know the difference between a story and real life. For example, I know the characters of 44 Scotland Street (created by - ahem - Alexander McCall Smith) are as phoney as all get out. Ian Bell's too nice a man to call them twee, but I will. Once in a while I'll zip through one in a couple of hours just for fun but I don't imagine the whole of Embra lives in the New Town and has a private income or a rich daddy who can set them up with a wee art gallery of their own. And I don't think there's a wee boy of 6 there who talks like a Cartesian philosopher.

I like the Peter May books, set in Lewis, because I've been there and I think he captures the atmosphere very well, although I'm sure residents of Lewis won't agree.....And I also like the Anne Cleeves books set in Shetland because I haven't been there and she lets me imagine the surroundings easily. (I have to say I'm dead jealous of people who live in a place where you seem to be able to walk down to the pier and get on a boat at the drop of a hat - and, more important, where the boats always go. No booking, no bread shortages - Colonsay were 5 days without a boat last week.)

I think what I'm getting at is that I like the idea of every part of Scotland being celebrated in writing in a story of some kind. This is, I'm convinced, a very important time in Scottish writing and not just for crime stories.

We have James Robertson, who describes the bigger Scottish picture: our history and our future. If you haven't read Joseph Knight or The Land Lay Still or The Fanatic, you've a treat in store. Then there's the poetry of John Burnside, which I seriously recommend.

I could go on but you can look up the Scottish Review of Books yourself if you want to know more.

Immigrants

Time to tackle this one head-on, I think, after the awful death of Lee Rigby. I've noticed for a couple of years now that any time there's a major terrorist alert or attack in either the UK or the USA, this kind of post appears on Facebook:

Now friends in France and Belgium tell me they are finding it on their Facebook pages too. I have no idea who is putting this out but I suspect their motives. 

I don't know what happens in the USA or France or Belgium where immigrants are concerned, but I do know what happens in the UK and this post is nonsense:

Illegal immigrants in the UK get NO money from the state - and nor should they expect to: they contribute nothing to this country. If they are found to be here illegally, they are arrested, taken to prison and deported unless they can come up with a very good reason to stay.

Asylum seekers are a different matter: an asylum seeker must declare their status on arrival in the UK, saying why they think they should not be deported. They may claim they are at risk of political or religious persecution - in some cases even that their life is in danger - in the country they came from. If they get leave to remain in the UK while their case is investigated, they get £5 a day to live on. No posh houses, no car, no free education or travel, just money for food. And they have no way of knowing when the UK Borders people will come looking to deport them. They do get legal aid but that's because they have no money and are not allowed to hold down a job, no matter how well qualified they are. 

If an immigrant is allowed to remain in the UK, and wants to be a citizen, they then have to pay for the citizenship test and find thousands of pounds for different kinds of visas. 

I know this because my family have been through it. 

It's so easy to debunk this illegal immigrant = welfare scrounger crap that I have to ask why it keeps appearing. I think it's about playing on our fear of immigrants. And not just any old immigrants. The black, brown, Muslim ones. (Not the yellow ones - they're our friends these days.) You know, those people who were, we're told, never in the UK till about 50 years ago (a lie), who have no commitment to 'our' way of life (another lie) and make no contribution to the UK economy (yet another lie). If we go back not that far in history, a lot of us in the UK are from immigrant stock and we are proud of our heritage. 

My message is, let's cut to the nitty-gritty: immigrants are not terrorists. That's what the far right - the people I suspect are putting out messages like the one above on the internet - want us to believe. They are the same as the rest of us. 

The problem of young men like the two in London yesterday and the brothers in Boston is not Islam. These young men have never lived in a Muslim country and would almost certainly reject such a way of life. They like the Western life but they suffer from a lack of status, lack of a decent education, alienation from an economic set-up that excludes them. They're no different from a whole generation of 18-30 year olds in the UK who can only expect the minimum wage while watching the rich get to be very rich. In the UK, that's a real problem and we have to face it. 

Vive l'Europe!

I voted against the UK joining the European Community in the referendum of - when was it? - 1973? 1974?

I had absolutely nothing against the rest of Europe. Au contraire, I'd lived in the EC happily for a year. I certainly didn't feel the shadow of the EC loomed over people's lives and could easily imagine myself going back to live there again. I remember crossing the border from France to Spain in 1969 and my French friends being annoyed at the passport formalities, which didn't really exist any more in the EC. I also remember trailing from one office to another in France in search of the right stamp for my residence permit, my work permit and my fiche d'état civil - no, I didn't know what that was either, just that I had to have one. I was an English assistant in a French school and all I knew was that the German assistant didn't have all that palaver. I learned the meaning of the expression: Il faut que je me patiente that year, believe me.

The problem was back then that I just didn't think the UK/GB/Britain would be happy members of the European club. The Brits are not good partners. We're too used to being top dog. Commonwealth: top dog. United Nations: one of a small group of top dogs, admittedly mainly due to a historical accident dating from 1939-45. World War 1: war between two emperors to see who would be - yep - top dog. These days, the UK is hardly a world power but we remain the best pal of the USA because the USA is - you've got it - top dog. Or will be until the Chinese call in their debts.

So I'm not really surprised so many Tory MPs want to leave the EU now. What I am surprised at is how badly the Tory leadership is handling the matter. And I am delighted that Labour and the LibDems are mainly keeping shtoom and just adding the odd word of common sense - a bit like lobbing a squib into a bonfire - to the debate. Not that I feel particularly sanguine about leaving the EU. Every so often, the words 'What the f....... is up with these people?' escape my mouth. They want to give up our membership of a huge captive market, which shows every sign of expanding? In favour of what, may we ask? The chance the City and its financial morons will see us right? Yeah, like they did in 2007.

And yes, since I'm voting for Scottish independence in 2014, I want membership of the EU to be part of our new nation's negotiations with the rest of the world.

In a way, as a European, I've grown into Europe. What a pity the Tories haven't. Or to put it another way: the Tory Party - forgot nothing and learned nothing for 40 years.

What's your opinion?

I fill in opinion polls online (for money) for a couple of fairly reputable companies. Well, I'm opinionated and I have the time, so why not? The companies don't commission the polls, they just design them and carry them out using their databases of registered opinion-givers. We're not told who has commissioned the polls. There's a filtering system to ensure the polls are not dominated by any one sex or age-group or income-group, so I imagine we represent a cross-section of the population.

Usually, the polls are about comparing fruit juices or finding out where we shop or trying to suss if there's a market for a new online bank (what, another one?) but from time to time we are asked about politics. Always UK politics. In fact, always politics from the Westminster Parliament point of view. And usually fairly general: about the economy or how you plan to vote in the next election.

Yesterday, I was sent a poll which covered something slightly different. Every poll has a wee counter in the top righthand corner that tells me how far through the poll I am on each screen. By the time I was 30% of the way through, it was clear to me I was dealing with the following subjects: what my views are on gay marriage, immigration and an EU referendum; what my voting intentions are in the next general election in 2015; and what I think of Ukip v the Tories.

As the poll went on, it was clear to me that most of it was irrelevant to me: it referred to Scotland as a 'region', made no mention of the independence referendum and mentioned Scottish politics - the SNP -  only once and in the same bracket as Ukip and the BNP, as a minority party rather than the mainstream party it is north of the border.

The questions about immigration started thus: did I think immigration was a big problem, not much of a problem or did I not know? In fact, in Scotland immigration isn't a problem. Quite the opposite: our ageing population needs to encourage as many young people to come and live here as possible in order to support the economy. But there wasn't an option for that. Similarly with the EU: who do I think would negotiate a new deal best: Labour, Lib Dems, Tories or Ukip? The same day, a Guardian article quoted Ipsos Mori polls which found 53% of Scots would stay in the EU while only 34% of English people polled were in favour of staying in. In Scotland, we don't seem to think the EU needs to negotiate. No option for that either. On gay marriage, I can't give you any stats but I have a gut feeling that UK society has moved on further and faster than your average Tory or Ukip politician and is pretty tolerant of the idea of gay people having the same civil rights as everyone else.

The same set of questions and reply options were used for every issue. I could have chucked the poll but I carried on, mostly clicking on the 'don't know' boxes. I wanted to get to the last page, where I knew there is a wee box where I would be allowed to express my opinion. And I did.

It suits polling companies very well to lump all of the UK together, without making any difference between the different countries - saves paper, I suppose. But in political polls, it's almost perverse to ignore what's happening in Scotland. What's up down south? Is everyone in denial about the independence campaign? Or so dominated by right-wing newspapers they can only see the right-wing Ukip agenda that's being pushed on them?

I'm a passenger - get me out of here!

I used to travel by plane a lot when I lived in Islay and then later worked out of Dunoon. In 15 years, I had a lot of diversions: I lost track of the number of times I was diverted from Glasgow to Prestwick due to fog and then driven on a bus past my own house on the way into Glasgow airport to collect my car. But I can remember only two real 'incidents' that might have turned out to be dangerous.

The first was when my plane from Tiree to Glasgow got struck by lightning. The lights went out momentarily before the secondary lighting came on. We seemed to drop several thousand feet, leaving our stomachs somewhere up in the sky. I had been given an 11 year old boy to look after. He was going to Glasgow for more cancer treatment and wasn't looking forward to it. After the pilot's words of wisdom, (along the lines of: 'Sorry about that, folks, just a wee glitch - but we're okay,' the boy said: 'Now that would be really funny!' 'Funny?' said I. 'Yes,' he said, 'if I died in a crash before my treatment!' Said I: 'Do I look like I'm laughing?'

The second incident was coming into Glasgow airport in very high winds. We were on a 'wee' plane (a 35 seater - quite big compared to the 14 seater Loganair planes of the 70s) and got diverted to what the pilot told us would be a 'less blowy' runway. As we landed, a gust of wind forced the port wing tip to the tarmac. Sparks flew and there was a definite wobble but the pilot recovered beautifully and we sailed up to the stand no bother. He checked with us as he shut down the engines:'Everybody okay?' When we assured him we were, he added: 'Right, see you in the bar!'

Laconic is a word that was invented for pilots. Capable is another. Well-trained is a third. Even though I don't like planes (on long haul, I'm the one staying wide awake because it's only my will power that's keeping the plane up there) I trust any pilot to take care of me. They know their routines and they follow them to the letter. It's the only way to be safe. And  let's face it, the pilots don't want to die any more than their passengers do.

So I'm amazed to read the reaction of one passenger who was caught up in 'airborne terror' at Glasgow airport yesterday. Anybody else see this on page 2 of today's Herald? There was an emergency on a BA flight due to a 'technical issue.' Big plane. 160-odd passengers and crew. The pilot and crew took passengers through the landing and evaluation drill, told passengers they would be met by emergency services on the runway and got them in the brace position. In the end , they landed safely and didn't have to use the evacuation chutes. Comment from this numpty: 'I wish we had been told more about what was happening, we should have been told if the crew knew we would land safely.'

Here's my request to any pilot of a plane I'm on: if you need to declare an emergency, please do the safety briefing and then concentrate on what's happening on the dials. Don't bother trying to reassure me. Above all, don't waste time working out our survival odds: Folks, we have a 60-70% chance of getting through this! Just land the fkn plane!

The best part of the Herald's report? 'The aircraft landed safely and the incident was stood down.' Works for me.
 

Is this a yoghurt I see before me?

I'm waiting for a Tesco delivery. It was due at 7.45 but the driver phoned to say they'd had to combine two deliveries into one due to a shortage of drivers and he wouldn't be with me till 9pm.

Ish.

A small digression: I've been hearing about this driver shortage at Tesco for about a year now. What is up here? Do Tesco pay badly? Treat their drivers badly? They used to be a happy bunch of people, these drivers - chatty, keen to tell you how busy they were and how well their shares were doing. Not so much now. They put a good face on it but they're obviously under pressure. Maybe time for a change of management style.....

Anyhow, I've got a movie to watch tonight - and a bottle of Chilean wine to watch it with - but I'd rather wait till Tesco have been before I put it on. Well, actually, there's also the fact that I've ordered doritos and a dip and they're in the delivery van.

So for about half an hour, I've been watching telly. Avatar. I like sci fi. I hate the adverts on real TV. They seem to come up every 15 minutes and they go on and on and on.....

This is obviously a family film with family adverts because there's an ad for Cheerios and one for yoghurt voiced by Harry Hill. He talks about using 'twice the amount of milk' to make a really creamy yoghurt. I've made yoghurt. I used to live in a place where the Coop only stocked strawberry yoghurt so I made my own plain stuff. Had a dinky wee machine that made 6 at a time in glass jars with wee orange lids. Not an exciting taste but if you added fresh fruit or honey or jam or lemon curd (good grief, I'm drooling!), it was yummy. So a word for Harry Hill: you don't add 'twice the amount of milk' to yoghurt. It's the basic culture and the length of time you heat it that make the yoghurt set and turn creamy. Also, you refer, Harry, to a 'hand-picked' fruit compote under what looks like a fairly thin layer of yoghurt. Is there any way to pick fruit other than by hand? You're a scientist, Harry - well, a doctor - don't just read the script - tell the makers of Danio they're talking mince!

A wee break there: my delivery has been and gone at 8.45pm, the driver having decided to skip his 40 minutes down time in favour of horsing on and finishing early, so I'm switching off the blue people and the stupid adverts and putting on Seven Psychopaths. Wine chilling, dip and doritos to hand - and, a special treat, a wee box of Milk Tray. I'll get back to you on the total experience. Bonne soirée, tout le monde!

It's Bitzer!

Michael Gove. Heaven help us, he is Scottish, educated at a private school in Dundee and minister of education dann saaf. He is apparently a very bright guy. Myself, I think he's a nutter, one of the Tory party's privately educated wonks who thinks he knows more about education than the rest of us and is sadly in a position to impose his views on parents and teachers across the land.

I knew all along he reminded me of a cartoon character and, finally, I've pinned it down: he's Bitzer in Shaun the Sheep. Now I've seen it, it's obvious. Pretty bright - for a dog. Easily led - usually by Shaun - you could probably tell him anything. And he's always equipped with a whistle, a clipboard and a checklist, just like his mates in Ofsted.

I like Bitzer. But I wouldn't want him taking decisions about my kids' education.

The sun has got his hat on

Did you hear that? On balance, and ignoring all the guff we've been reading for the past twenty years, sunshine is good for you. Especially if you live in the north of Europe where you might be a bit short of sunshine and thus vitamin D. This definitely applies to Scotland, where it looks as if we had the summer of 2013 yesterday. Apart from making you feel better and more cheery, sunshine can reduce your blood pressure, cut heart attack and stroke risks and even prolong life. Wonderful, huh? 

There are a few 'buts' coming up, of course.

You can't go out and sunbathe the way we did when we were young. A friend of mine used to slap on olive oil or even the old Crisp n Dry to help her to burn fast - well, you just never knew when the sun would disappear. You're still more likely to get skin cancer oop north, especially if you're fair-skinned or red-headed, so caw canny and wear a hat outside! Use factor 25 in the sun. In fact, and I speak from bitter experience, you might want to go for factor 50 as you get older. 

Indeed, if you are a wee bit older and on medication - and remember: the NHS has got GPs on a bounty for every one of us they can get onto life-extending drugs - you might want to check those inserts that come with your medication. This can be quite challenging. Here's the insert with one of my stomach meds - yes, both pages! 

 

I don't normally read this stuff - life's too short. But when I developed a fairly nasty side-effect to a previous stomach med (visual and auditory hallucinations), I decided to start reading the lists of side-effects enclosed with everything I'm prescribed.

To my amazement, two of the meds I take mention photo-sensitivity as a side-effect, and this is not even one of the rarer side-effects (1 patient in every 100). This would explain why even factor 50 sun-block didn't protect me in Fuerteventura in March where any bit of me that stuck out into the sunshine just fried.

So be careful out there but enjoy the sunshine - if it ever comes back!

What? What?

Thought I'd stay off tinternet for a few days. Give things - mainly me - time to cool down, since I was getting quite agitated last week over the elections down south. Then I read Ukip are planning to set up shop in Scotland.

Ke-rist on a bike.

How did that happen? How did the loony right come to the conclusion they had a chance of picking up votes in Scotland?

Well, it's thanks to the Tories, of course.

Which leads me to ask: what are the Tories for? It's bad enough they have an agenda that is so obviously against the interests of most of the population of the UK and so extreme they seem to be leaving their Lib Dem partners in a permanent state of 'You wot?' policy-wise. But the Tories are traditionally centre right, not as they seem to be in the past few days, well to the right of Genghis Khan, saying anything to be right-er than Ukip.

Worse still from my point of view, they seem to have taken Labour with them. Maybe. I'm not sure. It's hard to gauge what Labour are up to but a couple of articles in the papers suggest they see their salvation in following the Tories into the darkness.

I write as someone who cares about politics. I accept that most people don't. I don't want the governance of our country left to a political group - I want us all to have a say in what happens - and to say it loudly.

Anyone want to join me? Anyone?

Ukip if you want to.....

Boy, when Ken Clarke gets it wrong, he gets it wrong with clogs on. Ukip is not full of fruit-cakes. In any case, being normal has never been a qualification for a politician. The political parties all have their fair share of eccentrics like, well, Ken Clarke. These people bring a new dimension to political thinking and sometimes offer news ways of looking at the world.

No, Ukip is dangerous. I'll allow you to ask me why.

Name 5 Ukip policies.

They want to get the UK out of the EU - to be 'independent' - not realising apparently that no country in the world is really independent, in the sense that we all have to trade with each other if we want to survive. According to Ukip, everything that's wrong in the UK is the fault of the EU: from the recession to the Euro to straight cucumbers to most of the population of Bulgaria apparently planning to settle here in 2014.

Independence doesn't, of course, extend to Scotland, according to Ukip, since they want to abolish the Scottish Parliament.

So that's two - admittedly contradictory - policies: out of Europe and no parliament for Scotland. Any more? It seems Ukip want to cut corporation taxes and abolish inheritance taxes, though we're a bit short on the detail of how they're going to afford to do that. Even with those ideas they're still some way short of a manifesto. Their policy review doesn't seem to be moving forward very fast.

So, in a way, there's a kind of poetic beauty to what's happened. Since the last general election, the Tories have seized on a whole range of far-right ideas: mass immigration, the NHS being exploited by foreigners, benefit scroungers from abroad and so on. And they've presented these ideas in the most dishonest way possible. They claimed about 12 million people came to work in the UK from the EU between 2000 and 2010. Yes, but 12 million Brits also took up the right to work overseas. They claimed almost a million Poles came to work here. Yes, but most of them have gone home now and some Brits have gone to live in Poland. They claimed most of the UK budget went to  the unemployed including people from the EU. In fact, only about 13.6% of GDP goes to the unemployed - and only about 14% of Polish people who came here to work have ever claimed unemployment benefits. They claimed a huge amount of income support, housing benefit and the rest went to 'illegal immigrants' and asylum seekers, when we know that only 0.7% of the total budget is 'fiddled' and most of that by UK citizens.

And now the Tories' right-wing ravings have come back to bite them on the bum: Ukip has been so good at taking the Tories's own ideas they've made themselves appear to be the only political party that cares that people in England are actually worrying about these things.

So who's got the plan? I mean, of course, the plan to seize back the political agenda from Ukip. Myself, as a Yes voter in the Scottish independence referendum, I'm a bit complacent: I reckon the prospect of Ukip rule down south will bring in a few hundred thousand new Yes votes in Scotland. The prospect of a UK dominated by these people can only be good for the Yes campaign.

Afghanistan

Three more young men are dead. Six of their colleagues are in hospital recovering from horrible wounds. Is there anything left to be said about Afghanistan, IEDs and the presence of UK troops there?

I'd probably have a lot to say if I was the mother or partner of one of these young men. As it is, I feel helpless. I don't want our young people being killed and injured in a war that seems to have nothing to do with the UK. I believe our people are only there so that the US can boast it has the support of other nations. And the UK so loves to be loved by the US, it looks as if we'll do anything they ask.

It looks to me as if people don't recognise that the idea of the 'single-parent' family is not new. For as long as there have been wars - world wars, Korean war, Vietnam war, Falklands war, Iraq war, Afghan war - there have been children deprived of their fathers and women deprived of their men. Not to mention combatants surviving with awful injuries and post-traumatic stress syndrome. And none of them sure they could count on the support of governments when the war was over.

Just don't show me the serious, concerned face of David Cameron when deaths happen. If government cared that much, the troops would be home.