Heaven, hell and the minimum wage (written in the style of Matthew Offord)

As part of Barnet trades council's election campaign without a candidate I am keen to get up early and get out onto the streets of Barnet. After a wholesome breakfast of a fruit salad and some oat cereal which should keep me going for a couple of hours, I gather up all the things I will need for today's stall.

My significant other is not likely any time soon to be my actual husband - it is too bad as I will miss out on that handsome £150 tax break that the Conservatives are offering for anyone prepared to tie the knot that couldn't see the point of it before. Nevertheless, he very kindly offers to give me a lift, but I turn him down because I want to get on public transport and see how it works.

I make my way up to the bus stop and wait in the unseasonally glorious sunshine for a 251 bus only pausing to exchange some bored looks with my fellow passengers. I do not have to wait long before [...oh, God, I'll skip this bit and get on to the more interesting part].

I am excited to see that there is a B&Q superstore at Whetstone. I can't wait to hurry inside and roam up and down the crowded aisles looking for a wallpaper pasting table. I hope no one thinks I am going to do some decorating! I want it for a quite different purpose altogether!

I exchange a couple of text messages on my mobile phone with someone that I am due to meet at my final destination of the morning. He tells me that he is very relieved to hear that I have bought a table and that he doesn't have to bring the picnic table I asked him to bring along in case after all. This means that he is now free to RIDE HIS BIKE! He's very pleased about this as am I.

Barnet trades council is very hot on the environment, unlike the Tories who are lashed up in Europe with a bunch of climate-change deniers. I would be please to elucidate to anyone that I could find that would stand there and listen to me long enough some of the highlights of Barnet trades council's proud record on the environment. It includes:

- we are signed up to the Coalition for a Sustainable Brent Cross Cricklewood Redevelopment;

- ummmm... er... that's it. (Note to self, must dig out some more environmental cred point scoring achievements.)

[skip to the good part where I finally get to name-drop a local eating establishment] I finally reach East Barnet after a rather bad-tempered bus journey completed with my wheeled case full of leaflets, a rucksack, my new wallpaper pasting table and a rather officious bus driver. Since I am early for my meeting with my fellow campaigners I am delighted to be able to pop into the Sunshine Cafe on East Barnet Road just opposite Sainsbury's and a few doors down from the Lord Kitchener public house, and have a delicious egg mayonnaise sandwich and a scalding cup of coffee. It's a real privilege to be able to eavesdrop on some old maids of the parish congratulating each other on still being alive. I think we can all relate to that!

P.S. How could I forget?! While I was on my 251 bus-ride through Mill Hill I saw that Roger Tichborne out campaigning in the blazing heat, him and a stout fellow. I'll bet Roger's sorry now that he succumbed to the inducements of the Lib Dems, and resisted the allure of joining instead my rather confusing election campaign without a candidate. Only time will tell. That and the good voters of Mill Hill!

[anyway, back to East Barnet, bloody hell, how much longer can this go on?] Where was I? Oh, yes, at East Barnet I finally got to set up my stall outside Sainsbury's. We got there just after the Labour Party canvassers left, that was a close shave. I managed to snatch a few words with one of them, who told me that the council is run by the Tories. It's interesting what you can learn from these political johnnies.

My stall was on a very serious matter, far too serious to parody in a blogpost like this. Hopefully, you'll all've given up reading by now and won't tick me off for that. Anyway, while we were campaigning in the glorious April sunshine, asking people to fight for jobs, homes and public services and not to vote for the racist, fascist BNP, a group of Christians stood next to us doing some open-air preaching. But not before one of them came over and introduced himself as a fellow trade unionist. Did you know that the Unite union organises a faithworkers branch? No, neither did I, but it does! And this chap is a member! After we had had a nice chat about why it is wrong to vote for the BNP, he went back to his preaching of the gospel telling people that they have a basic choice between Heaven and Hell. It looked like the good people of East Barnet knew exactly what he was going on about!

Anyway, over the next couple of hours we met a good many more very interesting people and I hope we managed to steer some of them away from evil and onto the righteous path of loving their neighbour as they would have others do unto them. That could be of any faith, of course. (I hope I haven't missed anyone out.)

There was just time on the way back to get a lift from one of my fellow campaigners who kindly drove me up to the High Barnet station passing a pub - I think it was called the Old Red Lion, Barnet - where a large number of men in football shirts stood drinking in the scorching heat of the unseasonably warm spring afternoon. I wonder what they were doing. I'll go back next week and find out.

I am pleased to say that I just had time to stop off for a revivifying fresh juice drink at the Blu Cherry juice bar on my way back through Whetstone, before catching the 251 bus back home to my home. Tired but revivified. And rather tired. It's these things that make being a non-candidate so rewarding.

We're not as bad as we paint ourselves

I just had a hollow laugh at a Reuters general election report. The latest opinion poll puts the Lib Dems in the lead. In itself, that's no laughing matter, but the statements below are. What a miserable impression our political leaders give of the state of British politics:

"What [the] last 24 hours has shown is there are a growing number of people who just desperately want something different, they want more of a choice than the old politics of the past," Clegg told Sky News.

...Cameron, addressing party activists in Gloucester in southwest England, said a weak government would be bad for Britain...

"A hung parliament would be a bunch of politicians haggling, not deciding. They would be fighting for their own interests, not fighting for your interests," he said.

"They would not be making long term decisions for the country's future. They would be making short term decisions for their own future."

...Cabinet minister Alan Johnson told the Times newspaper that politicians should stop scaremongering about a hung parliament.

"It wouldn't be as good as a Labour government but anything is better than the Tories," he said.

Are we feeling reassured?

A rude awakening

The first voice I heard this morning was Neil Kinnock's. What a nasty shock! It's only the first day of the election campaign. I shall be voting Labour, for some complex reasons related to it being the party founded by the trade unions, even though that relationship is in an advanced state of decomposition.

However, or perhaps because of that, I loathe New Labour, and people like Kinnock set us on the road of "reforming" the Labour Party and gutting it of its democratic structures.

John Humphrys gave Kinnock a deserved hard time on Radio 4's "Today" programme. You can hear it here. After five minutes and a lot of waffle about personalities (yawn) there is a priceless section on New Labour's approach to the economy. Kinnock blows a lot of hot air, but cannot avoid the accusation that Brown's slavish devotion to unregulated free markets has helped to lead us to the economic mess we are in now.

I've transcribed the exchange below:

John Humphrys: ...when a man says to the nation, there will be no boom and bust and then effectively denies that he actually said that, and that is precisely what we get, we get boom and a spectacular bust, people are entitled to say ‘hang on a minute’...

Neil Kinnock: Do you think it started here, John?

JH: Oh, yeah, let me tell you why it did. Because what Gordon Brown did was encourage the boom here, he encouraged unbridled lending and borrowing, didn’t he?

NK: I remember those years of what you call unbridled borrowing and lending and we all know the result.

JH: Yes, a boom, an unsustainable boom.

NK: Other than Vince Cable, can you name me one single politician that was warning that it was going to end in tears and that therefore governments should have been retrenching since the early years of this century? You cannot find one, and you know very well that the borrowing and the lending were part of the experience that this and several other countries had; in our case, in the longest sustained period of economic growth in the whole of British economic history.

JH: It was a long sustained period of economic growth because it was built in part on sand... he didn’t at any time worry about that. He didn’t even include the price of houses in inflation rates. House prices were raging away, he didn’t offer the mildest note of caution about that; he didn’t offer any caution when private debt passed a trillion pounds for the first time; he didn’t offer any note of caution to the City, he said ‘take more risks’.

NK: We know what happened, we can examine it in detail, it would be ridiculous to hold an individual, a Chancellor or Prime Minister, responsible for the collapse of global capitalism, which was based on an utter miscalculation and a great deal of hubris in the operation of the market economy.

Now, I’m sure Gordon Brown will take whatever share of responsibility that comes with that. But it is absurd to suggest that this monumental change in the whole context of global economics is related or attributable to the economic policies of Gordon Brown which did bring us those years, which brought sustained growth and will again restore sustained growth...

JH: So you are telling me that Gordon Brown’s unsustainable boom was not even related to where we find ourselves today?

NK: I didn’t say that. I said, first, he will take the share of responsibility properly due to him, not exaggerated. And, secondly, it would be utterly absurd to attribute all that has happened in the global economy in the last two years or so to the policies when Chancellor of the Exchequer or when Prime Minister.

JH: That’s a straw dog. I didn’t say that.

Miss Andry says...

frankly, I think you're all a bunch of Gene Hunts.

P.S. In case your irony antenna is set on low this morning, I should explain that this is my take on the "Ashes to Ashes" poster tit for tat between Labour and the Tories. Even Conservative A-Listers like Harrow West PPC Rachel Joyce seem to think this macho willy-waving dignifies politics. How low we have sunk.