Reality Check

Some things never change...

I've been pondering whether, when I've finished our Daphne's current adventure, I should:
a) start writing another Solent Welfare Rights Project novel, taking my regular characters through the roll-out of Universal Credit,
b) cast off with Daph on another 4mph thriller or
c) create a new Welfare Rights Lit cast facing UC far from south Hampshire, perhaps in a North Midlands city not unlike Stoke-on-Trent.
d) leave the grown-up stuff for a bit and write more blogs and stories for Sonning Bear, who is both cuter and probably far more commercially viable than those leftie humans I write about.

If we are to take the intervention of the Eastleigh MP in last weeks UC roll-out debate at face value, a) is not an option.  All is well with UC in Eastleigh - in fact, it's a jolly good thing for all concerned.  According to Mims Davies (Conservative...)

"Eighteen months ago, I visited Radian, a housing association in my constituency. Radian expressed to me and to our hon. Friend the Minister for Employment concerns about the impact of universal credit on tenants. Eighteen months later, those people are in work, paying the rent and working with the housing association. The outcome is positive. Labour Members are simply scaremongering."

Should we therefore picture Martin, Hilary et al sitting in their office, drinking even more tea and coffee than usual, playing Solitaire on their computers and discussing nothing more contentious than their plans for the weekend, while Father Cornelius, Tom and Paula package up the remains of another day's community meal for the freezer, having served only their own staff and a couple of loyal social workers, while unneeded tinned stuff for the foodbank gathers dust in the storeroom?  Not much material for a novel in that, is there?  Of course, those notorious scaremongers The Trussell Trust have been making wild claims about how demand for foodbank support has rocketed where the full UC service has rolled out but hey, what do they know?

My home area is still inflicting UC only on those unlucky enough to slip into the UC lobster pot via the Gateway Conditions, so in 'the day job'* I have little experience of it.  Hence the idea of creating a new cast of characters in an area still waiting for Full Digital UC roll out.  I imagine it would turn out rather like a benefits-themed version of Neville Shute's On The Beach.  If I set it locally, I could also link it into Stoke-on-Trent's bid to be City of Culture 2021 (something that I whole-heartedly endorse) although I'm not sure a story about claimants and advisers laying into the injustices of Welfare Reform is the kind of culture the current Council regime wish to encourage.

The most appealing option is another adventure for Daphne.  I have notebooks crammed with observations from narrowboat journeys and plot outlines based upon them, plus several computerised drafts of opening chapters and exchanges between characters.  The second most appealing prospect is writing Sonning stories, because they're jolly, escapist fun and I enjoy setting up photos of the bear to illustrate them so much that he's pretty much taken over my personal Facebook page.

The deciding factor may be this comment from the Solent Welfare Rights Project's Facebook page.  The fictional advisers put up a post wondering if, since I was on short time throughout November (NaNoWriMo) I might write them into another novel.  The response from one reader was a cry from the heart:

"Please please please I'm currently reading the books again for something like the seventh time I need more!"

That's really very touching.  In all seriousness, apart from Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake I still don't think there's much fiction being written that reflects the fall-out from Welfare Reform and I'm not sure there's anyone else telling tales where the claimants and advisers usually win the day.

So sorry, Mims Davies, you're out-voted - again!  It's (almost) time to get the kettle on at the Solent Welfare Rights Project!

PS.  The whole series of 'Claimant Commitment' stories, what was to have been the last novel about the Solent Welfare Rights Project, is free to download for Kindle tomorrow (29th October).
The first part is here...


*The Day Job, with the CAB, is currently exactly that - one day per week - as I'm sharing my half-time post with a colleague to avoid either of us being made redundant, at least for now!

Bear with me...

As mentioned in my previous post, I've spent much of this summer with my husband Jon on our little narrowboat, making a 600 mile journey down to Godalming in Surrey and back to Stoke-on-Trent.  Along the way (and along the Wey...) I've been making plenty of notes for possible future investigations for my boat-dwelling amateur detective, Daphne Randall, as well as jotting down ideas for a possible return to the Solent Welfare Rights Project to catch up with the team as they get to grips with Universal Credit.

However, my human heroes are in danger of being upstaged by a cuddly toy!  The entirely true story of where and how he came to join the crew can be read - from the bear's perspective - in our local Inland Waterways Association magazine (page 18 - 20).  You'll find it here:

https://issuu.com/waterwaysassoc/docs/knobsticks_autumn_2017

Sonning is such a cute character that I can't resist writing more stories about him, so there is no shortage of material from our travels to share with the IWA.  The plan is to use his adventures to explain aspects of narrow-boating, canal history and waterways wildlife to younger readers.  They'll also have plenty of photos of the small bear to illustrate them, as I often posed him admiring the passing landscape or even trying his hand - or rather, paw - at steering the boat. 

Since he was found wearing only a striped Breton top, somewhat under-dressed for boating, I set to work making him some appropriate outfits. 

 

Clever cutting up of an old pair of jeans - already being cannibalised to repair another pair of mine - gave him dungarees and a hat, while a 'Bag for Life' rather appropriately provided him with a life-jacket!

 

The jeans also gave him a boiler-suit while a kind friend's gift of felt squares enabled me to make him a little duffle coat as autumn saw us back on the Trent.  He also has waterproofs - made from a Sainsbury's bag and sticky tape, pyjamas and, for his visit to Nottingham, a Robin Hood costume!

Since getting to Stoke, Sonning has met a little friend (called Hanley), who needs a new outfit himself if there aren't to be copy write issues.  Hanley's current mission is to show Sonning why Stoke-on-Trent deserves to be City of Culture 2021, so I'll be posting their adventures together, on and off the waterways, on this blog. 

Look out for #WhereIsTheBear and the #BearsBackingTheBid on Twitter too!

Back to Back the Bid

There's a very good reason why there have been no posts on this blog for months.  I've spent most of the summer on a 600 mile narrowboat journey from Stoke-on-Trent down to Godalming in Surrey and back, punctuated by intermittent returns home by train to cut the front lawn, top up the tomato watering system and work my one day per week (usually as two together per fortnight) at Citizens Advice.

On my travels, I've sketched out plots and made navigational notes for some more adventures for Daphne Randall, my narrowboat-dwelling amateur sleuth, and completed the first draft of her next, an old-fashioned whodunit which unfolds along the Trent and Mersey Canal between Fradley Junction and Shardlow.  With Stoke-on-Trent bidding to be City of Culture 2021, here's an extract from the first chapter in which Daphne and her crew set off through Stoke-on-Trent, in the spring of 2015, en route to the last match of the season at what was then the Britannia Stadium.  I hope it gives a flavour of the canal corridor through the city and its under-appreciated charms!

    Harry brought my tea up as we were chugging through Longport, passing the first of the bottle kilns visible from the canal, which peeps out from behind a tumbledown brick factory and stands in a squalid yard scattered with junk. Under the road bridge, boats line the wharf of a busy boatyard, some for brokerage sitting on blocks out of the water, showing their dumpy black hulls. Beyond the stone-faced chandlery is Steelite’s robust, modern, red-brick factory, quiet for the weekend and thoughtfully reflected in the still pool of a wide winding hole. No old-fashioned potbank this although, only a gentle curve ahead, is Burleigh’s Middleport Pottery, a Victorian survivor rescued from redundancy.

    ‘Did I ever tell you that was where I first saw this boat?’ I asked Harry.

    ‘You did, duck. At least twice. And that funny story about your mum and the coach party.’

    Just past the restored pottery, the waterside warehouses fall to desperate disrepair again, the fine brickwork braced with iron struts yet still crumbling. I gave the building as wide a berth as I dared, knowing the cut beside it was full of debris.

    ‘Take the tiller for a bit, pet. I’ll wash the mugs up and look in on the dog.’

    Custer was snoozing contentedly in the cosy warmth of the cratch, betraying Harry’s soft-heartedness with the dusting of dog-biscuit crumbs by his snout.  I couldn’t be angry with either of them.

    Harry brought us around the long, sweeping curve to Festival Park, through an open post-industrial landscape which once blazed with hot light and fire as the Shelton Bar steel works. He checked his watch. The carvery pub by the marina does all-you-can-eat breakfasts and Harry was feeling peckish, but he opted to press on.

    ‘I’ll get an oatcake from Kay’s boat when we get to the Brit,’ he decided, steering us on under the noisy A53.

    Before we reached the first lock, the deep one at Etruria, I fetched Custer from the cratch and brought him back to the rear cabin. Harry and I are both careful boaters and take locks cautiously but you can never eliminate all risk of mishap in them and I was haunted by the thought of the poor little chap being trapped where we couldn’t reach him in the event of a problem. When I dropped Harry off with his windlass, I moved Custer into the engine room, closing the doors of the stern hatch with me outside.

    There was a boat coming up. Harry was chatting to a woman as they worked the paddles together, filling the chamber and lifting her boat and partner up to my level. Harry opened the gate and the woman stepped back onto her narrowboat. The couple waved as they passed me.

    ‘Where are they off to?’ I asked Harry, as I drew level with him.

   ‘Through Harecastle and out into Cheshire as soon as they can. They’re doing the Four Counties.’ He seemed downcast. ‘I was telling them about some of the things there are to see here - the potteries, the museums, the pubs - but they weren’t really interested. They said other people told them Stoke was a dump and they shouldn’t hang about.’

    Harry seemed to take that personally. As he wound me through the deep lock and the one below, he made a point of showing me the pale and pretty briar roses in the hedgerow which flanked the towpath, of listening appreciatively to the clear songs of the blackbirds and smiling at the dainty, cheeping blue-tits fluttering through leaves made luminous lime by the sunlight shining through them. He praised the restoration of the bone mill at the museum and the devotion of its volunteers, the quality of the towpath, upgraded as part of the national cycle network, and even the artistic merits of some of the graffiti. I hadn’t the heart to point out that on every other run through this section, he had been the first to grumble about the litter, dog mess, speeding cyclists, tumble-down buildings and mindless spray-painted tags.

    Harry was still maintaining this spirited defence of his city when we reached Lock 37, a desolate sight as it cowered in the shadow of the paint-daubed railway bridge. I thought he would be thwarted by that but I had under-estimated him.

    ‘It was about here that I first figured out that I fancied you,’ he said with a grin of fond reminiscence, pushing the gate closed behind me. ‘I reckon I’ll always have a soft spot for this place.’

He leaned across and kissed me.

    I smiled as I watched him set his windlass to the spindle and await my signal to turn. If Harry could find a place in his heart for lock 37, there was surely nothing that could make him fall out of love with his home town. I was lucky to have earned a similar level of devotion.

.

Catching Up (Part 5) - A long-awaited Decision

    'I think this is it, Luvvie...'
    Lyn Walker held the brown envelope her husband had brought in from the hall with the daily junk mail.  Her hands were shaking slightly.  She needed to know the decision it contained. She had been expecting it for weeks.  It meant so much she was almost too afraid to read it.
    Her so-called medical assessment for Personal Independence Payment, which had taken place more than two months earlier, had been an awkward affair.  The assessment centre had been awkward to get to, with too little parking and that too far away to walk and then a steep, uneven path to the door which Terry had to push her up in her wheelchair.  The young woman who carried out the assessment, who Lyn thought introduced herself as 'doctor' someone - Lyn had been too nervous to remember her name, even though she meant to make a note of it - scarcely raised her eyes from her keyboard and seemed to be finished very quickly.  Lyn was certain it had gone badly on that evidence alone, although none of the workers at the Solent Welfare Rights Project seemed to know who the slightly-built young doctor might be.  She wasn't one of the usual suspects whose ill-considered reports were at the root of so many legal challenges.
    While she waited for her PIP claim to be decided, Lyn continued to receive her Disability Living Allowance; the middle rate for daytime care needs, the higher rate for mobility as a Motability car.  She checked her account anxiously on the days it was due to be paid, half-expecting it not to have gone in.  She had seen people when volunteering who knew nothing of the decision on their new claims until their DLA payments unexpectedly ceased.  So much hinged on her getting DLA.  Terry, her husband, now loitering awkwardly at her side, claimed Carer's Allowance for looking after her, although he didn't receive a penny of it.  It overlapped with his Employment and Support Allowance.  To their great relief, that had recently been reviewed and awarded without a face-to-face medical.  Terry was still in the Work-related Activity Group but, as a carer, he didn't have to do any actual work-related activity. 
    Lyn had explained that too him when he started to get aerated about the prospect of being sent on courses or to do work experience.  That was just as well, since she would never be able to manage at home all day without him.
    'I'm glad you understand all this, Lyn love...'
    Lyn did understand it, far better now than she had ever done.  She worked alongside the advisers who had helped Terry and herself through several crises, representing others just as she had once needed to be represented, at least when her health allowed.  Her colleagues were generous with their support, quick to share their knowledge and experience, and happy to step in if she was too unwell to see a case through to the end.  If what was in this envelope was wrong, she knew they would stand by her through every battle she needed to fight to put it right.  That would almost inevitably mean facing a three-member tribunal.  It was rare for a poor decision to be corrected at the reconsideration stage; in fact, the team had recently learned that there were perverse targets within the DWP which actually mitigated against them putting things right at the first opportunity.
    'Open it then, Lyn love!' urged Terry.
    She was sure he wouldn't be happy.  Her own expectation was that she might get the enhanced rate for daily living, if she was lucky - thirty pounds more than her current middle rate care - and the standard rate for mobility.  That would be thirty pounds less than what she got for mobility now and would mean she couldn't get a leased car through Motability with it.  Terry, who almost always did the driving, would be really angry about that, even if they were no worse off overall.
    Lyn picked a corner of the envelope open and ran her finger along the top, opening it with a slightly ragged tear.  She took out the letter inside, the usual dirty grey paper the DWP used for letters, which was meant to show they didn't waste money on fancy stationery but, according to Hilary's husband who had worked there, cost no less than white.  She unfolded it anxiously, still trembling.
    'Oh!'
    'What?'  Terry snapped.  'If those buggers have...'
    'I've got the enhanced rate for both!'  Lyn could scarcely believe her eyes.
    'Blimey!' said Terry, peering over her shoulder.  'So you have!  Well done, Lyn love!'  He kissed the top of her head.  'Let's have a brew!'
    Lyn smiled grimly to herself.  It was a sad state of affairs that the maximum award of a benefit for severe disability was cause for celebration.  She looked on through the letter to see where she had been awarded points.  There were four for needing assistance to cook a meal, three for needing assistance in and out of a bath or shower, two for needing an aid to use the toilet and four for assistance to dress her upper body; thirteen points, where twelve were needed.  On the mobility side, she was judged able to stand and move more than one metre but no more than twenty; twelve more precious points.  On good days, she could do better than this but fewer than half of her days were good days.
    'It'll be weird, not battling the old Social for once,' laughed Terry as he brought their mugs in.  He had opened the new pack of chocolate biscuits as part of the celebration.
    'I'll still be battling them, Luvvie,' said Lyn.  'I'll just be battling for someone else rather than me!'      

Daphne's General Election Dilemma (or "It's Déjà Vu All Over Again")

Another 'which way to vote?' conversation between two old friends, Daphne Randall from the 4mph Thrillers and Welfare Rights Lit's Hilary Carrington.  In case you're new to this blog, their previous discussion is here.

    'Hi Hils!'

    'Daphne!  How lovely to hear you!  Are you well?'

    'Never better, pet.'

    'And Harry?'

    'No worse than usual.  We're out at the Brit for the match tomorrow, then off to Coventry and the Ashby Canal for a week.'

    'I'm really rather envious.  I could do with a break myself.  It's all go at the Project.  We're still, trying to get to grips with this new fully digital Universal Credit system.  Our work is more IT helpdesk than welfare rights at the moment and, as you might imagine, the Community Café - especially the foodbank - is dreadfully busy.'

    'We're spared that until next spring, thankfully - and maybe longer, if the bookies have called it wrong with the Election!'

    'Wouldn't that be a relief!  I have to say, I'm surprised Harry's able to take a holiday just now - I would have thought he'd be hard at it, with an election to cover.'

    'He's hard at it, alright - his garden hasn't looked so tidy in years and, with it wet today, he's even started decorating his spare room.'

    'However does he have the time for that?'

    'He's resigned, pet.'

    'Resigned!'

    'Aye.  On local election day, the Gazette carried a Tory election flyer as a four-page wrap.  Our Harry's not always on our wavelength, Hils, but he prides himself of taking an even-handed and independent line, so he told his editor this tacky ad had cheapened the paper and undermined his neutrality and integrity.  He came home in a blaze of righteous indignation, had a whisky, took his shears to the brambles out the back, went through them like napalm then borrowed a rotavator of the old lad next door and churned up the lawn.  It scared the daylights out of the dog!  He's got it all laid out as flower beds and a kitchen garden now and, when it gets dark, he's either catching up on Gardener's World on the iPlayer or Googling "Constructive Dismissal", unless I take him round to the pub.'

    'He must almost be old enough to retire, though?'

    'Only a couple of years off, pet.  He hoped to keep working a while yet.  He's not got much saved up, after his divorces and such like and I cannot keep him on my wage.  He'll have to get a job of some sort.  He was joking about putting up for Council last night.'

    'That's ironic, considering how you two met!  He's certainly got the political knowledge but which party would he support?  You're always pulling his leg about him being a Tory - he isn't really, is he?'

    'After this business, I'd say not.  He was even cheering Jeremy Corbyn on Channel 4 last night, though that was when he said he'd keep his allotment if he became PM, rather than for anything he said on defence.  I cannot see him joining the local Labour team, mind.'

    'Out of loyalty to you?'

    'Partly that.  Partly because he cannot forgive them wasting so much money on those new offices.'

    'I rather liked the multi-coloured one!'

    'That's easy to say, Hils, when it's not your public services being cut to pay for it!'

    'Fair point, Daph.  Poor old Harry, though!  He must be missing the buzz around the General Election.  I see a couple of your local seats are officially marginal and at risk of going Conservative this time around, if UKIP votes go their way.  I always assumed yours were all safe Labour.'

    'Far from it, pet.  There's a rogue right wing up here that does all kinds of strange stuff and the left is no more predictable.  I'm not even sure how I'm voting myself.'

    'Really?  I would have thought that, nationally anyway, Labour had done quite a lot to win you back.  If the leaked manifesto is anything to go by, they'll pick up any of my colleagues' votes not better used tactically.  Finally, some proper pledges on reversing more of the benefit cuts than just the Bedroom Tax!  Whatever is stopping you this time?'

    'Well, you know how the BBC cannot seem to hit town anywhere without finding some old lad or lass to say they've always voted Labour before but cannot vote for Corbyn?'

    'Indeed!'

    'I'm the equal and opposite reaction to that.  I've been reluctant to vote Labour - except as a lesser evil - but now, under Corbyn, it's finally looking like a genuine force for good again.'

    'I do agreed, Daphne.  And I am starting to get really rather suspicious of those interviews.  I wonder whether they show people saying that more to encourage others to think it than because it's so prevalent.  They never ask what exactly these people don't like, or which actually policies they disapprove of.  And they interviewed a couple in York who carried on about working during power cuts in the nineteen-seventies but looked younger than us - and we were still at school then!'

    'Plenty of voluntary sector organisations are afraid to speak out and tell the truth for fear of losing funding.  Is it any wonder if the BBC is the same?'

    'If you feel that way, Daph, what's the problem with voting Labour?  Is it Brexit?  We were both awfully upset with the Referendum result and I would love to be able to vote again, when people can see what a mess it really all is and that they haven't got extra money for the NHS, just fewer doctors and nurses - but at least Labour seem keen to keep us in the Single Market, like Norway.'

    'It should be an easier call this year but my worry is that I'll vote for the local Labour lad, he'll get in - but nationally, Labour won't - then he and the other so-called "moderates" will go off to form a new version of the old SDP, blaming Corbs for the collapse of the party and taking no responsibility for creating the split narrative the media have been running throughout the campaign.  It won't be the 1970s all over again, it'll be the 1980s!  I'm not even sure they'll stand by their leader if, by a miracle, Labour wins.  What if they still form their own party, or vote with the Tories to keep benefits low or the railways in private hands, or for a "no deal" Brexit because it's the will of the people?  I'm not sure I can trust them not to.  I'm still feeling the only way I can demonstrate what I really believe is to vote Green.'

    'Which is fair enough, unless your Labour-lite candidate's position is so precarious he gets defeated by a Tory.  You fear your Labour candidate might renege on these promises or even quit the party, but you know a that Conservative MP would oppose everything you hold dear.  I think you have to chance it.  Blairite or Thatcherite isn't a happy choice but it looks like the only safe one.  Mind you, I'll probably be holding my nose and voting LibDem.'

    'Just as long as we get a second Referendum and not a second coalition, Hils.'

    'They did promise not to.'

    'They're politicians, pet.'

Schrödinger's Fox and Other Animals

I was stopped on my way into the office this morning by a pleasant, studious-looking chap with a microphone, who introduced himself as being from Radio Stoke, before asking courteously if I had heard about Theresa May's plan to give MPs a 'free vote' on fox hunting and what I thought about that. 

Unfortunately, in addition to making me sound like Darth Vader's long-lost sister (I'm sure he has one, with Star Wars having almost as complicated a series of misplaced relatives as Classical Greek tragedy), the cold I am currently fighting off has dulled my wits slightly, so I did my best to actually answer his question. 

With hindsight, that was a mistake.  Not because I don't have an opinion - I do.  It's further down and will explain the title of this post.  My mistake was not responding by questioning why he hadn't been loitering about outside the CAB in December last year, when the local rate for the Benefit Cap was slashed by £6000 (Child Tax Credit/ Child Benefit for two kids), or whether he had taken his trusty vox pop microphone out on the streets to find out if people approved of the cuts to benefits for widows and orphans last month? 

My point, in short, should have been that I find it bizarre that it's so much easier engender debate and elicit sympathy when the issue is cruelty to animals.  Cruelty to humans - whether that's through sanctions, the Bedroom Tax, cuts to disability and sickness benefits or the new 'two child limit' and 'rape clause' for CTC and Universal Credit - raises barely a shrug of the shoulders.  Moreover, we're told it's generally popular with voters, who approve of cutting benefits to encourage the workshy to take jobs and the feckless to stop having kids.  Animals are defenceless, they would argue, so we have to protect them. I get that: I don't disagree.  But human children are also pretty defenceless and last century we started taking serious measures to protect them too, by making sure their parents had enough money to keep them in the necessities of life and to put a roof over their heads.  Now, we often don't - indeed, if we cap a family's benefits, the first thing stopped by the state is a slice of the rent money. 

How are people content to let that happen?  I will take a great deal of convincing that the fault doesn't lay at the door of media representation of people on benefits.  Imagine if instead of the usual seasonal celebration of British Wildlife we had Bad Springwatch, where we saw foxes going berserk in chicken coops and ripping up new-born lambs - but not hunting wild prey and absolutely never their pretty, joyful, gambolling cubs.  Birdlife would be represented by chip-thieving seagulls hanging about seaside resorts and feral pigeons crapping on statues of national heroes, not chirpy blue-tits or majestic kestrels, while the evil alter ego of Chris Packham (a Richard Bilton for animals) would exhort people not to put seed and scraps out for the birds, or snacks for hedgehogs, on the grounds that it encourages dependency. 

That, folks, is the equivalent - in animal terms - of the TV output about claimants. 

What about the foxes, though?  Well, I'm not in favour of fox-hunting.  To me, not only does it seem barbaric to the wild animal to chase it for fun, it's surely cruel to both dogs and horses to ride them at speed across a route that hasn't first been checked for hazards, such as barbed wire fences, slurry pits and broken glass, and dangerous for them and their riders.  A planned drag hunt, following a scent trail, mitigates these risks and prevents the risk of trespass onto land where a troop of horses and hounds aren't welcome.

What never fails to amuse me is that if the subject arises amongst people with divergent views (I sometimes go horse-riding, so do encounter people strongly in favour), two completely contradictory defences of the practice are offered.  I'm either told 'the fox usually got away' or, alternatively, I'm assured that fox-hunting is the most effective way of controlling the rural fox population. Hence, 'Schrödinger's Fox' - simultaneously alive and well, having cunningly outwitted the pursuit, and dead.

Perhaps the pro-hunt lobby should pause to consider the effect of their preferred method of control.  Those foxes that do get away are the swiftest, the sharpest, the 'fittest' in the most Darwinian sense.  Those killed by the hunt are the slowest and the least fit.  You are, therefore, breeding a cleverer, faster rural fox, a wiser and wilier foe, generation by generation.

You should be worried.

Politics and Principles

I'm not always kind to the political figures who have walk-on appearances in my novels.  If you've read either the welfare rights lit stories or the 4mph thrillers (or even both - hello, greatest fan!) you'll know what a venal, conniving, disloyal and unscrupulous bunch of villains scuttle through the corridors of power in my fictional councils.  There are a few valiant exceptions - after all, did not the redoubtable Daphne Randall hold a seat on Stoke City Council in the parallel universe of Grand Union?  However, in the aftermath of the Local Government elections - and some very local in particular - perhaps the grounds for my cynicism have become more apparent.

In the village where I grew up, the first borough councillor I recall seeing elected was a LibDem, right up to the point where the Tories seemed to be in the ascendancy, when he swapped his gold rosette for a blue one and retained his seat.  A few years later, as the tables turned, he threw the blue rosette away, blew the dust off of the old gold one and regained his seat in the council chamber.  If you were being charitable, you might argue that he found common ground with the Tories in the John Major years only to return to the liberal fold when the likes of Michael Howard and IDS were Conservative leaders.  Alternatively, you might think he was merely an unprincipled opportunist. 


I find myself uncharitably disposed towards those who jump straight from holding elected office with one party to campaigning to be elected for another without a decent period of transition and reflection in between.  Perhaps that's because my own political journey moved at positively narrowboat pace, from leaning towards Labour before I could vote (late 1970s), becoming interested in the case for nuclear disarmament (early 1980s), voting Labour the first time I could vote (1983), joining the Labour Party and meeting my husband at a Labour Party event (1987), campaigning for the Labour Party (late 1980s to mid 1990s) and being a local candidate for an unwinnable borough council seat (1988), giving up my party membership (mid 1990s), voting Labour in a General Election for the last time (2010), voting Green for the first time (2015), joining the Green Party (2015). 


With a lot of overlap between the values of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and the policies that have drawn me to the Green Party, I find myself with a foot in both camps, hoping that the Greens will prevail where Labour are historically unlikely to do well (and against avowed Blairites), while hoping Labour will hold firm and make gains too.  In the short-to-medium-term, the only vaguely realistic hope of preventing further NHS privatisation, further social security cuts and the immoral waste of precious resources on Trident is a left-leaning Labour Government requiring SNP, Plaid and Green votes for a Commons majority.  To me, being triumphalist about Labour's poor showing this week would be like engaging in an exuberant goal celebration after scoring against your old side in front of their fans, even if their losses had come at the expense of progressive - rather than regressive - opposition. 


So I really don't get how any politician of integrity can, overnight, defect straight from holding office for Labour to doing the same for the Conservatives (or, for that matter, vice versa).  I find it extraordinary that anyone can switch right to the Tories in the light of their assault on the NHS, public services generally and the most disadvantaged citizens of this country - including children.  If you are desperately unhappy with Jeremy Corbyn as your party leader, maybe you might step aside and consider whether to change your voting allegiance.  But surely, if you are so much more comfortable with Theresa More-UKIP-Than-UKIP May as your party leader that you're now willing to represent her party, you should never have claimed to be a Labour councillor - unless, of course, Labour and the Tories really got so close in outlook and policies in the Blair years that their policies and candidates were interchangeable and natural Tories were comfortable flashing red rosettes to steal working-class communities. 

What the big picture hides are all the small local disputes that muddy the waters of local politics.  Apparently, Labour losses in the Welsh valleys are attributed locally to issues with bin collection, a strictly local issue of the 'tough on dog poo, tough on the causes of dog poo,' variety favoured by that chameleon former councillor from my youth.  The Tories may crow about winning one local seat around here and Labour right-wingers mutter darkly about their national Party leadership, but there isn't a great deal poor old JC can do if two former Labour councillors - now running as a Tory and an Independent respectively - face off against the new official Labour councillor on the basis of local, not national, feuding.  When drawing conclusions from Local Government results, absurd situations like this get lost in the bigger narrative although, where they arise from personal rather than policy differences, they bring politics as a whole into disrepute and stoke the general mood of cynicism. 

The fictional Gerry Matthews would fit in nicely; he'd just have to swap the purple rosette on his shiny suit for a blue one.  I'm sure plenty of real Kipper councillors will be quick to do just that.