Lowlife 116 – Labour Pains

Labour Pains

By Dominic Horton

So the general election will soon be upon us and the politicians have burst into action in a frenzy of activity spewing forth their policies, promises and polemics. The main parties are all looking for an angle, any angle, to give them an advantage over the competition, much in the same way that big businesses do to sell their goods and services; the businesses pursue profit and the politicians power.

The late Screaming Lord Sutch - general elections

are just not the same without him.

When I have a number of jobs to tackle I usually get the hardest, most onerous tasks out of the way first. So, for example, if I have a number of shirts and T-shirts to iron I will tackle the more difficult shirts first. The ironing will follow changing my bed sheets, such a quick yet tedious chore I find, just like voting in a general election I suppose. Labour leader Ed Miliband must use a similar approach to mine when undertaking tasks for the election as last week he decided to get his visit to Blackheath, West Midlands, out of the way on his campaign trail. 

Blackheath forms part of the constituency where I live, Halesowen & Rowley Regis, which the Labour party inexplicably lost to the Conservatives in the last election when the bouffant-haired, permanently grinning James Morris took up the seat. It is very off putting when Tories like Morris try to be nice all of the time. It makes you wonder what dark skeletons they have in their cupboards.

The race between Labour and the Tories for the seat of Halesowen & Rowley Regis is likely to be a close fought one, hence the appearance of the Labour head honcho on Wednesday. You could describe the Black Country town of Blackheath as “earthy” and it is unlikely to be Miliband's ideal type of place. Blackheath is apparently a bastardisation of the words “bleak heath” so that gives you an indication of the kind of town that it is. I like it, mind you. You can be sure that he didn't kiss any snotty nosed babies or visit a local public house so that he could hold up a pint of bitter to the cameras. I hope he didn't anyway, on both fronts, for his sake.

The front page of this week's edition of my local newspaper, The Halesowen News, shows a photograph of Ed Miliband and local party candidate, Stephanie Peacock, greeting the crowds in Blackheath. When I ask my dear son Kenteke to pose for a photograph he has a very distinct grin, where the muscles around his mouth form a smile for the camera, but it is false, for show. This was exactly the kind of smile that Miliband was putting on for the newspaper's camera. In truth he couldn't wait to get back to the safety of Westminster. 

Stephanie Peacock and Ed Miliband with his false grin.

You can picture Miliband asking his secretary on Wednesday morning what places he had to visit on that day and being told that Blackheath is on the agenda. “Oh fine,” Miliband would say, “that's only down the road.” “No, not Blackheath, South-East London,” his secretary would correct him, “Blackheath, West Midlands.” “Oh dear.”

Miliband has sent me a personal letter and I know it is personal as it is headed, “Dear Dominic.” But in Ed's letter to me he refers to “me and my family” and my “working family” but he should know, with it being a personal letter, that I live alone as a bachelor and that I am currently a job seeker. I wish Ed would either get his facts straight or just head the letter “Dear Sir/ Madam” (or even better “Dear Madam/ Sir” as I don't see why women have to come second all of the time) to show the letter for what it is, a mass mailshot to the electorate. So Ed Miliband has annoyed me this week. The Liberal Democrats have been annoying too as they keep sending me emails despite me repeatedly clicking on the “unsubscribe” link. The Tories have not done anything specific to upset me this week but they don't need to as they are just plain annoying.

But even the Tories are not top of the league table of annoying political parties as they are outdone by the madcap fantasists of UKIP. The UKIP pound sign logo looks like a joke and reminds me of the pound sign that used to be on the box of the board game Monopoly in the 1970's, which is indeed very fitting as UKIP almost have a monopoly of being hapless politically inept berks. I thought that our local UKIP candidate is a man named Nathan Hunt as Neddy La Chouffe told me about him as he is one of Neddy's neighbours, but it transpires that Hunt is not standing for UKIP in the election, though he did stand in the council elections earlier in the year. It is difficult to have any confidence in a man who has misspelt tirelessly as “tirelsly” in his council campaign literature and put a rogue apostrophe after the word “business” in a sentence where none is needed – he obviously didn't work tirelessly enough in proof reading his leaflet.

James Morris MP with an even worse false

grin than Miliband's, by request of Toby In-Tents.

But at least Hunt has his priorities right. In his list of six key issues he cited his second priority as, “clean all signage coming in and out of the ward.” I reckon that is a guaranteed vote winner if ever there was one; I just hope Hunt is not given the responsibility of spelling any words that appear on new signs.

At least I have yet to have a door knocker disturbing the quietude of my Codger Mansions home. Thinking about it, I have never had a political candidate knock my door in the build up to an election. Maybe they give Codger Mansions a wide berth knowing that they will get short shrift from me. James Morris MP certainly got short shrift from me when he approached me after a fun run in Halesowen last year. I was having tea and cake with Kenteke and with his perma-grin Morris asked me, “Did you enjoy the run?” An innocent enough question you might think but politicians are never off duty and they always have an agenda so I replied, “You are wasting your time talking to me I will never, ever vote Conservative, I vote Labour and that's that.” My words, and the menace in my delivery, did the trick and he sloped off to irritate another potential victim.

If a one Sir K Frazer Commons was standing for office then I would definitely vote for him given his opinions. For my Uncle Albert's birthday my brother, Albino Duxbury, bought him the wonderful gift of a leather bound volume of Aston Villa related newspaper articles from the late 19th century to the present day. Some of the match reports were accompanied by other articles and one such piece caught my eye because of the fascinating headline: “Injustice of Abstainers Escaping Taxation.” The article from an edition of the Daily Mirror from 1913 explained that Commons had put forward a view in the Commons (confusing I know) that teetotalers should be taxed as unlike their beer drinking contemporaries they are not contributing to the Treasury through alcohol duty.

The author & Kenteke, shortly before being 

disturbed by James Morris MP.

In effect Commons was arguing that abstainers were shirking their responsibility to the nation by not drinking. I have never thought as beer drinking as a patriotic act but it is an interesting angle. There were a few inmates in the Flagon & Gorses last night who were extremely patriotic by the time I arrived. There was no point trying to discuss the election with the drinkers in question as given the state they were in they probably wouldn't have been able to remember who the current Prime Minister is let alone be able to engage in constructive political debate.

In this country we scoff at foreign elections that are rigged, usually in favour of the ruling party who are dictators in all but name. We British can smugly declare that our electoral system is fair, uncorrupt and water tight in its security and integrity. That being the case the oddest thing about the voting process is when you come to the big moment of casting your vote pencils, and not pens, are provided for you to put a tick in a box. Hardly foolproof as a simple rubber eraser could compromise the process. It is a shame that Nathan Hunt didn't have an eraser when he was drafting his campaign leaflet as he could have corrected his glaring mistakes. Except for the biggest mistake of standing for UKIP of course.  

© Dominic Horton, April 2015.

Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall

Email: lordhofr@gmail.com