All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

By

Michael Casey

Well my viewing figures have dropped off from USA, I think it may just be because the West Wing are all in Holy Lands, Muslim, Jewish and soon to visit Rome. So they cannot get to their desk to see what I’m saying today. I bet Theresa May would have liked a consoling word from Donald Trump. The policy of pay for your own social care has gone down like a lead balloon.

I have to declare an interest, nearly 20 years ago our dad went into a home after his near fatal heart attack, I was in the bed right next to his on the very same ward 20 years later. As for the home, the family paid for it, it cost 6 years salary in today’s money. The price of a house. Obviously we all thought it was unfair that he had worked hard all his life paying tax, but if you pissed your life up a wall you would have got it free.

That is the reality, who is going to pay for all the care? Two million extra over 75s who may need care. So who pays. Obviously we’d all love for the State, the Taxpayers to pay, but when the elderly are in the millions, what should happen. In the old days University was free, my brother bought my little sister a tricycle with his grant, a fiver I think. He went to Queens Oxford and my little sister got a tricycle, 50 years ago.

No SEVEN times as many go to University, or Uni as its called. Everybody thinks its a right. SEVEN times as many, if you have a child you could afford to buy the child an ice cream, but if you had SEVEN children what do you do?

This is simple Maths, and we says Maths in England not Math, we are not Americans. I won’t make the obvious Diane Abbott jokes. So what do you want for your Society? Education and Care, yes we all do, but who pays for it with all the high numbers? Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland will lend us some money from all the Oil she still thinks she has. In fact that has all but gone. Scotland will become an Oil Rig scrapyard centre as a means of making money, according to a news report I saw.

There is a money tree being planted the length and breath of UK, right next to the wind farms, the wind from the turbines helps the £50 notes grow faster, in Scotland they have £100 notes, but I’m not jealous, good luck to them. Before I forget I stumbled over this picture of the Heather and Bonnie Scotland, it was GREAT, so do go visit Scotland, it looks amazing. And for the record when I was working in a hotel at CPNEC, the Scots guests were truly nice folk.

With all the lack of money the Political Parties have to explain who will pay, who will pay. Only they won’t they’ll just try and trash the rest. Our Liberal party seems to have dissolved at the moment, and Labour now has a stick to beat the Tories with namely Social care. Before Labour would have said soak the rich now they will defend the Grey vote, because it could help them win after an amazing fightback, or rather Tory own goal.

Boris has been leashed and tethered so far in this Election Campaign so I fully expect him to be let loose to attack Labour. If 80% of the Labour team said their own Leader was rubbish before, why is that not being repeated Ad Infinitum? If his own team have no faith in him, why should you. It seems as if the arrogance of being an expected runaway winner has come home to roost.

At the start of the Election I said it would NOT be a landslide and I predict 45 seats win for Mrs May, if she can character assassinate Corbyn then she will win, but now she will have to work really hard. The irony is that Labour will be defending the Rich and their Greed, and that way they can beat Mrs May, Politics really is that Topsy Turvy.

Terms are all relative, and I’d not bothering to put everything in speech marks, punctuation gets in the way of thought. I write for your ears after all. I am glad of one thing though. Tribal voting seems to be ending, Tactical Voting is coming to the Fore. It always should be like that. No Party deserves our loyalty, just as no petrol station nor grocery store deserves our undying custom.

They have to work for us and not the other way around.

One final thought, my mother was born in a shack on the shores of Cromane Lower opposite Dingle where Ryan’s Daughter was filmed. See photo below.My dad was a blacksmith in Kerry too, they came to England in 1944 with just the clothes on their back.  Dad spent 40 years sweating in asteel works in Smethwick.Their children studied hard, in what is now called inner city Birmingham, my bothers went to Queens Oxford, and Downing Cambridge. I’m the writer in the family. My children, the grandchildren of Irish peasants if you like, and the grandchildren of a very poor Shanghai people, and a Shanghai mum, these girls will be a Doctor and maybe a PhD in English. So if this can happen in 1 and then 2 generations why should anybody vote Tribally for any Politician?

We did it for ourselves