The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Sage advice... there’s no debate about it
Well, a week is a long time in politics, isn’t it? And here we go again, with another major, life-changing vote on June 8 that could alter the increasingly raddled face of our individual and national futures.
Crivvens. Seven weeks is going to be a long, long time in politics.
Anyway, thus far into the process (only three and a half days? Jings!), it feels like all the arguments, in all senses, have already been trotted out fullyformed from the mouths of babes, sucklings, suckers, pundits, pollsters and those unfortunate creatures known as candidates, whose lifetime raison d’etre appears to be standing up to be knocked down by the great British public.
But I have ferreted out one piece of hitherto well-hidden good news.
The Prime Minister is not going to take part in any televised debates. She’s said so.
Now, as someone who has in the past (on your behalf – you owe me big style!) sat through legions of the pigging things in a usually hapless attempt to sort out factual wheat from rhetorical chaff, I regard them as the spawn of Satan and believe with a passion that they didn’t ought to be allowed. Slugging it Even if the threat of replacing Mrs May (or any of the rest of them, for that matter) with an empty chair could quite properly call forth the cynical response from the watching millions: “How could they tell?”
However, maybe it is not at all unlikely we will see the PM up there on our screens, slugging it out verbally with the best of them.
After her wonderful impression of Jim Trott from The Vicar of Dibley over the calling of the forthcoming election (“No, no, no, no, no, no, YES!”), it’s not a huge intellectual leap to visualise her as Mrs Doyle of Father Ted fame (“Ach, go on, go on, go on! I will, I will, I will!”).
In the meantime, the rest of her Parliamentary colleagues seem to be either in the “Bring it on!” or the “Make it stop!” camps, with the Labour Party in particular being likened to turkeys voting for Christmas.
Without wishing to carry the fowl and paltry poultry analogy too far, it does indeed make me think of turkey – but Turkey with a capital T. Shades of President Erdogan, if only in the idea any kind of opposition is “sabotage”?
We’re not there yet of course. But it’s only seven weeks until June and seven months to Christmas. And a week is a long time in politics… Heartened I was, I will admit, rather touched by Prince Harry’s interview in which he told of his difficulties in dealing with the death of his mother and the chaotic effect that had on him right into his adult life.
I suppose no one should be surprised by such a thing – losing your mum in childhood in sudden and tragic circumstances, let alone in such a public fashion, would be disturbing, distressing and downright unbearable for anyone, let alone with the world poking its nose in and monitoring your every move, especially when it means being required to walk miles behind your mother’s coffin at the age of just 12.
He seems, however, to have been very lucky in his relationship with Prince William, giving a very sweet tribute to his Captain Sensible older brother, who told him he needed and must get some kind of help rather than just racket on in an attempt to avoid dealing with things himself. Good influence Sage advice and good to hear young men taking these notions on board; and, even for someone like me who is no fan of the concept of royalty, for young men of privilege to use the exalted position in which they accidentally find themselves, for the greater good.
Their mother, whatever you thought of her, did try to do her best with the hand of cards she was dealt and it says something for her influence that her sons have taken that on board for a new generation.
I have to say, on a lighter note, that where Harry’s potential future contentment is concerned, I am warming to that Meghan Markle – I like the cut of her sassy Transatlantic jib.
And I hope, if it’s Harry she’s planning to marry, she doesn’t have to give up too much of her own individuality to make it happen.
She has, it would seem, stopped writing her blog on life, the universe and everything but I was charmed to find that it was called The Tig after a particular brand of Italian wine, Tignanello, which she tasted and, she gleefully claimed, experienced: “…unbridled joy.”
She has also recommended the excellences of red wine hot chocolate, combining: “…two of every lady’s classic loves, wine and chocolate.”
She may not be going to Pippa Middleton’s wedding (unless Harry gets a move on; the bride is apparently operating a “no ring, no bring” policy for guests with significant others) but she seems to have knocked that lady’s ill-fated attempts at lifestyle guru-ism into a cocked fascinator.
We’re not there yet of course. But it’s only seven weeks until June and seven months to Christmas. And a week is a long time in politics…