I am not Gruntled

It’s twelve degrees here, in what we are pleased to call the East Midlands. Twelve! I am not happy. It’s cloudy and chilly and threatening rain, and not even my yoga practice of sun salutations and sun piercing breath can make it sunny in my heart. I’ve even dug the heater out because I’m sitting here in t-shirt, thin jumper, waistcoat, shirt and cardigan and I’m still cold.

So, finally Sunak has called an election and like everything else he’s done, he’s called it in the wrong way and at the wrong time. July is a very strange time to have an election; he’d have done better to wait until the autumn but I expect he was afraid that even more policy failures would come home to roost. There’s talk of the Tories being out of power for a generation and god, I do hope so. They really deserve to be. But what possessed Sunak to stand in the rain letting what must have been an expensive suit get soaking wet? Was there no-one available to hold an umbrella? Or did he think that would make him look weak? There doesn’t seem to be much discussion about this in the media and I suppose it is a minor point, but I do think it’s weird, not to say self-defeating. But then pretty much everything he’s done has been weird and self-defeating. There’s a lovely meme doing the rounds about it:

(Are you the Prime Minister? Shut up, Withnail, of course he’s the fucking Prime Minister!)

It’s a shame really – it ought to be a landmark, having the first Hindu Prime Minister but just like the first woman Prime Minister you think, did it really have to be that woman, that Hindu? But I guess wealth and privilege make colour and gender invisible.

So it looks like in six weeks we will have a Labour government. Not that it’s a done deal but it looks pretty certain; I just hope they manage to get the postal vote out in Scotland because in typically ignorant fashion, Sunak has managed to call an election during the Scottish school holidays. What we don’t want is to get more Tories by default, just as we’re moving up there. That would not be good. I myself will be voting Labour. I’d much rather vote Green but right now I think the priority is to get this bunch of ***********s out, and Labour are a close second in my constituency.

In other news, Paula Vennells, the former CEO of the Post Office, is giving evidence at the Horizon enquiry and claiming she knew nothing about it. I don’t believe this for a moment and even if it is true, she was the CEO for god’s sake! The buck stops with her. The fact that she was ever a Church of England priest says a lot about where the C of E is at the moment. Watch the sitcom Rev; it is not a work of fiction.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b0178fhq/rev

This just in: my short story ‘The Queue’ will be published soon in Stand magazine. It’s a dystopian, Black Mirror-ish look at a future where the economy has been destroyed by climate change and the government forces unemployed people to stand in a queue for the chance to win big on a talent show. I’ll post a link when it’s published.

That’s all for now folks. Make sure you have a vote. Apply for a postal vote now if you need it; go to http://www.gov.uk and (I’m saying this between gritted teeth because it really annoys me) make sure you have photo ID.

Happy Thursday.

Kirk out