Living In A Spivocracy

Cameron, Osborne and half the cabinet were partying at Rupert Murdoch's last night. Rebekah Brooks was there as well. They must think we've got short memories...

(And they'd be right.)

I've been reading Alan Bennett's selected diary entries for 2015 in the TLS. He records hoping for a Labour victory in May because it'd mean he could give up thinking about politics, safe in the knowledge that government was in the hands of people who- if incompetent- at least had some hazy notion of the common good. As it is the spivs got back in- and it behoves us all to watch our backs.

"What's all this about a nurses pay scandal?" My mother asks, puzzling over the Telegraph headline. I tell her it's all the about the Tories destroying the NHS so they and their mates can insert their noses in the trough. She doesn't take any of it in, of course.

Gearing Up To Christmas

This is the day I decided to come out of denial and get with the Christmas spirit so I switched on the Christmas tree lights and wrapped presents. Ho ho ho. What else would be especially Christmassy? I know, I'll open a bottle of port.

Sainsbury's delivered our Xmas shopping this morning. It came to £50 more than we spend in a normal week.

Mary called round mid-morning with a card. She's like a character from Austen or Gaskell; she tells my mother all about the latest doings of people my mother no longer knows- if she ever did- and pumps me for information which I do my best not to give her. "What's to report?" she asks. And I look at her blankly.

It's hard finding things for my mother to watch at Christmas. She doesn't like movies, she doesn't like anything with a story, so she's stuck with documentaries on BBC 2- most of which feature arctic wildlife. The one she's watching at the moment was shot in Dead Horse, Alaska.

Dead Horse- isn't that a brilliant name!