9th December 2019 3 days before the General Election
I wrote this, privately, to a number of friends today and several thought I ought to publish it more widely...
Dear Friends,
3 days to go and I’m really upset by how things are... I'm in quite a state actually... yet another sleepless night. I’m OK but never felt so much a stranger in my own town and locality. Maybe it’s living in the old “Redbelt” of Labour heartlands, now bruised blue and becoming a Johnson/Trump “Rustbelt”. I live in Bolsover and regularly visit Ashfield and, less so, Mansfield.
It’s an incessant drone hearing and a headache reading such right wing and pro Johnson stuff on social media. Hate to say it but I’m even finding myself spotting the kind of people (7 out of ten?) who voted Brexit and are likely to vote Conservative in this area where I live. It’s a tribalism in me and I despise myself for it getting in the way. And then I become patronising feeling, “I know best what they need". It's just like, when a teacher, I taught so many local people, and saw those slow in seeing beyond the village boundary...
I remind myself that these are the children of Thatcher who saw what she did to our coal mines and hosiery industry and yet, after years of austerity (that hasn’t touched me financially), they seem to have forgotten. This amnesia is allowing them to vote for Thatcher's spoilt child Johnson who will to take us out of Europe (which won’t affect this 71 year old much, if at all). So, yes, I am close to despair and fear Friday the 13th...
I pray, yes I pray, and am crossing my fingers. I’d even stand in one leg, if I thought it would help a final surge of sense - “Anyone but Johnson” I cry! I am arguing in my BLOG and twitter feed for folks to vote tactically....
And this morning I read page 48 of their manifesto... Tory intentions are coming thick and fast now.... and all is not well.... they are becoming Orwell... just read this and be afraid....
ANYONE BUT A CONSERVATIVE
