Hi Everyone
Last week it was DDay - The Longest Day. This week we are approaching the middle of the longest six weeks of political jousting with the publication of the different Manifestos where each party spends one hundred pages and more outlining what they are promising to do over the next five years. I would guess that 99.9% of the population has never read or even seen a Manifesto and I would also guess that most journalists and representatives from other parties looking to pick holes in their plans, either speed read it or only read what they consider to be important. Then of course it is a five year plan. When I worked for a national building company I had to produce a five year plan. The first year was fairly accurate to predict but by the time I got to the third year and beyond it was a work of fantasy probably designed to keep me in a job. In this election, we seem to have another layer of 'experts' called Fact Checkers who check that all the promises actually stand up to scrutiny. It seems that none of the parties are able to convince the fact checkers that their plans will work despite the fact that they say their plans are fully funded and fully costed, and if they are not convinced surely neither are we. As an example, one party is promising 8000 more teachers in our schools which seems pretty impressive until you divide it into the number of schools when it works out and about one third of a teacher for each school and that does not take into account of the number of teachers retiring or leaving the profession. So there we are, another set of Manifestos destined for the incinerator or, at best, in a dusty box in someone's loft unless you want to read it to the young children in your family at bedtime to guarantee that you go to sleep before they do.
Back in the days of Fruit, Vegetable, Flower, Game and Lolly shop everything was seasonal and June was the month for the annual bonanza - tomatoes. There were three sorts of tomatoes, cooking tomatoes which came from the Canary Islands early in the year that were used mainly for cooking as, by the time they got here they were too soft and overripe to do anything else with, tomatoes from the Channel Islands in April and May that were ok but expensive, at least they were in our shop. Then in June came local grown fresh tomatoes. I would go on Monday evening with the Junior Partner to a local market garden where we filled the car with the best tomatoes that any customer had ever tasted. That attracted customers who only ever faced the Senior Partner in June and July to buy the prized fruit (yes tomatoes are fruit) and to the Senior Partner's fury, nothing else, but by the end of the week, every tomato was gone. Now I know how much the Junior Partner paid for them and how much the Senior Partner sold them for, so I can confirm that it really was an annual bonanza, but still not enough to make the Senior Partner smile of course
Now in the great scheme of things I am a nobody except maybe to a few of my loyal Rubbish readers and it is very unlikely that my vote will have any meaningful effect on the overall election result but I am alarmed by people who say that they will not vote at this election because they are fed up with the two main parties. That is a blow to our future democracy and, in any event, you cannot complain about the result if you do not cast your vote although many people probably will.
Just a Thought:
The only way I will get the keys to 10 Downing Street is if I buy an advent calendar.
Tomato growers have a tough time, they have to ketchup wth their work.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Brian
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