I’m annoyed with the Tories. It’s coming in waves at the moment: some days I even slightly look forward to the next government coming along just to put Labour out of its misery, and besides, it might put Ken in a better position to regain London in 2012 off the back of a fading Cameron honeymoon. (Cloud, silver lining, desperate hope, me? Never!) But at the same time they are just so singularly irritating. At least back when they were the nasty party you knew that voting Tory meant a vote for publicly flogging ruffians, the NHS reduced to a singular travelling carnival (limited seasonal availability – please book in advance) and the privatisation of all breathable air into fifty seven gaseous franchises to be owned and operated by companies specifically chosen for their ability to hire older, half-dead Tories as chairmen of the board. (Chairmen, yes.)
(OK OK, I’ll be straight with you – I don’t really have a tattoo, and the title was just a ruse to get you to read at least part of a political post, which no one ever does. Sorry. You can storm off in a huff now… but wouldn’t you like to stick around to see what happens next?)
But in this bold new age of the Cameron, the Conservative and Happy-Smiley-Cuddly Party have ditched all that in favour of utter blandness, in order to reassure you that when they win the next election they will be ever so careful with the country and not mess it up even a little bit. And, sure, that’s progress of a sort. But I sincerely hope that no-one really thinks they have the faintest idea of doing anything big, bold and good. Boris is right: the Tory administration in London will prove a test-bed for the next government, and that means a government of low-level incompetence – infuriating to anyone who watches it closely enough, but not splashy and exciting enough for the papers to notice. Take the latest from City Hall: star appointment Tim Parker resigns on the basis that Boris has finally realised – months after being elected – that becoming Mayor of London and promptly handing over TfL to someone else is a bit like a pilot wandering down the aisle of a plane asking if anyone else fancies a go at flying the thing.
(If I had got a tattoo, what would it have been of? Hopefully something geeky and obscure, like </head> on the back of my neck. Although I think it’s been done, and it wouldn’t validate anyway. Bah.)
I honestly have not met a single person who thinks they know what Cameron’s government would actually do. I know they’ve carefully identified tax cuts which will deliver the maximum benefit to the very poorest in society, like inheritance tax and stamp duty. I know they’re going to do away with Labour’s out-dated top-down target-based hyphen-loving culture for public services and instead introduce things like (to quote directly) “a national focus on the health outcomes we want the NHS to deliver”. But most importantly of all, I know they’re determined to tackle Britain’s ‘broken society’, even though Boris Johnson thinks the very idea is piffle. Oh, really? I’ll sit down and shut up then, because even though the risk of my being repeatedly stabbed by a gang of vicious drunken yobs is about as high as the likelihood that anyone is still reading this you can never be too careful, especially given that a guy in an orange top gave me an odd stare on the way home today, and he might just be the harbinger of fatal doom. So, anyway, what you got Dave?
(Why not get a tattoo which looks like the surface of a pavement? Potential stabbers would just look right through you, and you could continue in your merry invisible way as long as you stayed away from any countryside. And let’s face it: crime just doesn’t happen there.)
With a probable recession looming, increased levels of government borrowing and tight budgets all round, the Tories have decided that they would go ahead and mend our ‘broken society’ with tax breaks for married couples. Yes, seriously. As an ‘early priority’ and a ‘key policy’ no less. The mind just boggles.
I don’t even understand how the damn thing is supposed to help. OK, so let’s for (barmy) argument’s sake say that when a man and a woman go for a jolly outing to the registry office and return as severely-indebted man and wife they are blessed by Almighty God with the golden touch required to raise happy, well-adjusted (middle-class) children. That’s, ur, if they have children at all: but maybe there will be a special deployment of nudge + wink economics at this point to help the process along. Right, so redistributing money to these shining married beacons of happy, well-adjusted (middle-class) humanity away from single and unmarried parents – who, let us be reminded, are much crappier at being parents in the first place – will therefore help society because, ur, those in need of the most help will be left poorer in favour of extra cash to those already doing hunky dory? What?!
Oh, blimey. It’s just mad enough that Gordon Brown might copy it. What a depressing thought.
(Out in the real world, Tasha got fantastic GCSE results and Lucy came over to visit: we saw Mamma Mia in the cinema and Let There Be Love at the Tricycle. 
)
Me: LP cover style?
One of my favourite little moments in life is when you manage to get hold of a stash of digital photos from long ago which had been lying unbeknownst to you on someone else’s hard drive. Joshua and I decided to crash Matthew’s house this afternoon – believe it or not, my first visit – and this was exactly my reward. It’s a curious collection: survivors from a computer disaster a while ago, mostly in black and white and blurry… but it makes them feel all the more valuable, somehow. It also reminded me of the real reason I blog! Now I can reminisce just by typing in key words and have small, happy chunks of memory fly back – look, here’s Clare and me writing silly notes, or Matthew and I having philosophical arguments, or meeting Scrappy. Blogs don’t have to be read, silly, they’re really for you.
Me, Matthew, Joshua, Clare and Fabio
A somewhat drastic change of scenery from Willesden Green
Hello there! I’m back, and the first thing you should do is check out my photo gallery and make yourself all jealous and\or amused at the dry predictability of summer holiday snaps. Go on, do it now – I’ll wait. Done that? Sure? Right, now for a drop of the accompanying written commentary…
Some holiday things:
- Firstly, there was the reading. As already alluded, book club has really spurred me into action and this holiday I finished The Lost Continent before reading White Teeth (absolutely loved it), Finity (silly sci-fi, though fun in places) and The Time Traveller’s Wife (a great read, though curiously lacking much tension). I then started Lolita which I’m now half-way through and struggling with: at times the book just succeeds in creeping me out.
- True to my modern history roots, one of the most interesting bits of the holiday was the ‘Story of the War’ walking tour in Dubrovnik. An excellent guide made it utterly compelling.
- Watching something in German makes even the most banal of TV hilarious. Special mention to the host of a phone-in quiz TV channel at 1am, who alternated between a hushed silence and manic shouting that the prize money had just reached DEN DHOUSAND! euros.
- Buses in Dubrovnik are cheap, crowded and not averse to attempting to chop someone’s arm off in their doors. Pretty decent in all though, which we ascribed to the grand powers of the imaginary TfD.
- Jakov appeared at the airport!
Back in the UK: it was AS and A2 results day on the 14th, which means mega-congratulations to Lucy, Josie, Lou, Andy and everyone else at Waseley, as well as Maya, Fliss, Sanna and everyone else who was either failed to let me know how they did yet or I’ve forgotten. Yay!
And now I must return to my swiftly reducing Outlook pile of outstanding items, which include a better quality photo of me and Ken, a business project (more on that later) and other assorted things which demand my time. But if you feel like pulling me away from such stuff for post-holiday reunions, please do get in touch
So, we sit. The Self family sit on the hotel balcony overlooking the sea. Each chair is positioned precisely to minimise eye contact with any other member of the family, but granting splendid views of each other’s (tanned) backs. What are we doing? Why, reading, naturally! An old French novel of epic confusion, The Time Traveler’s [sic] Wife, some Dan Brown, an issue of Nature and Finity. I’ll leave you to decide who was which, naturally.
Two French holiday-makers stroll past. Looking at us, one concludes to the other “well, they are English” in an obvious attempt to explain such eccentricity. Not, obviously, in English. But as it happens, it’s not so impossible to find non-English speaking English, and my parents happen to belong to such a niche. So there.
I felt like correcting them – “British, actually”. But I didn’t. The weather’s lovely, though.
(Apologies for the writing style, but we have honestly all been reading a lot.)
Right, I’m off! As of tomorrow morning I’ll be on holiday for two weeks in Croatia – hooray hooray
Things I won’t miss: rain, clingy London heatwaves, news reports which include the phrases “confident Cameron” or “another bad week for Labour”, Boris, the guilty feeling I get when I look at the work I should be doing or spam. But I will miss lots of people (you all know who you are 
) and I wish you all a fantastic time whether holidaying or not! I also think Andrew’s mum deserves a special shout-out (remember those?) on this blog, as I discovered on Saturday that she’s a fan – indeed one suspects rather more than her son is. So hi!
But before I go… in the last few days, aside from my annual stint working – yes, actually working! – on the QPCS UCL summer school I’ve also managed to see The Dark Knight in the cinema and Little Miss Sunshine (finally) on DVD at Lucy’s. Both excellent: The Dark Knight didn’t drag as I’d feared it would, and although everybody’s comments are inevitable coloured by his death it’s true to say that Heath Ledger was excellent as The Joker. Little Miss Sunshine was curiously advertised on the DVD blurb as ‘riotous’: it isn’t a riotous sort of comedy at all, at least not for me anyway, but a more understated and interesting kind which I did really enjoy. And the scenes of the little girls at the beauty pageant at the end are even creepier when you bear in mind that it was genuinely no exaggeration of real life pageants 
Finally – I like the way that when David Cameron actually does come out with something I’d wholeheartedly endorse the Torygraph manage to find someone to attack it. I suppose one of the silver linings of a Conservative election victory will be right-wing squeals of betrayal…
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
