Get your hard hats at the ready …
Rusters might not have noticed but the UK’s General Election process is now cranking into gear with just over a month ago.
While the rest of us – the flood-suffering residents of Fishlake included – are just trying to get on with our lives having now collectively reached the terminal stage of boredom with it all, the “professionals” (the political strategists, official Party candidates, policy wonks, broadcasting reporters and analysts, learned pollster academics, ‘vested interest’ lobbyist and think tanks) are only just moving from the traditional ‘Phoney War’ stage to what might colloquially described as the meat in the proverbial beefburger.
It’s the period when the UK political Establishment and its strangely disparate crew of baggage-carriers and hangers-on finally reach the point where everything any one of them ever went into the political ‘game’ for comes alive.
If you can conjure in your mind the image of a loose bunch of sex-mad swingers from all over Britain setting off for a (six months in the planning) three-day orgy at some well-kept luxury five-star Georgian manor house set far away in the Warwickshire countryside, you might just get the drift.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I’m sure like me, most Rusters – after putting it off for as long as possible – are finally having to get down to deciding which of one’s offspring’s dreaded roast-turkey-and-all-the-trimmings-plus-Queen’s-Speech-at-3.00pm-Christmas-Day gatherings one is going to attend this year, which issue always almost boils down to a choice between those you’d rather be with (but of which the hostess is a hopeless cook) … or those whose turn it actually is this year (but whose out-law family members you don’t really get on with).
But I digress.
For readers of this organ who have the stomach to read on, I now present for your delectation or otherwise the following selection of items I spotted overnight on the UK media websites:
Phillip Inman reports upon a reaction by the Institute of Fiscal Studies to the announced policies on the minimum wage of both the Tory and Labour Parties, as appears upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN
Henry Deedes, political sketch-writer, on yesterday’s Lib-Dem’s election event, hosted by Chuka Umunna in London, as appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
May Bulman, social affairs correspondent, on the news that UK councils are now spending over £1 billion per annum on ‘temporary homeless’ emergency accommodation, on the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
Ross Ibbetson on yesterday’s raft of main Party announcements drip-fed via the media to the voting public, as appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
Geoffrey Lean points out how modern ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politicians, actuaries, environmental agencies and other interested parties somehow always contrive to make for-reaching decisions that defy logic and common sense, as appears upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
John Crace, political sketch-writer, skewers Brexit Party Nigel Farage as only he can, from the website of – THE GUARDIAN
