Future dull
This time last year, the polls put the Tories on 40, Labour 32 and LibDems 18. Today, it’s Tories 39, Labour 34 and LibDems 18.
Perhaps the most turbulent year in politics for decades has altered nothing. Changes of leadership, intermittent joy and despair from the two main parties and lost leaders all amount to zilch.
Professional politicians and party zealots have suffered the nauseous kaleidoscopic spectrum of moods – often buffeted from misery to joy by a single day’s headlines. Our 24 hour news service gives a permanent drip-feed of fear or hope into our ravaged souls.
Why do we put ourselves through it? Does it matter who is up and who is down? Full-time politicians have night sweats at the fear of confronting their P45s. But after the autumn of the election-that-never-was, there is no danger of a General Election until 2010. If "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." still holds good, it will be a comforting result in three year’s time for most sitting MPs. In Wales, Labour still has a lead of 37 to 21 over the Tories which reflects the traditional share of seats.
All parties have rushed in to occupy the mushy centre ground of politics. The Left are pretending to be Right, the Right Left and the LibDems’ habitat is fully occupied. All we can look forward to is a sinking stalemate of sameness. Cool down. The future is boring.
Alpha's Omega
The sickening news of the loss of 360 jobs at Newport’s Alpha steelworks creates a sense of repetitive deja vue.
I cannot recall the number of times this plant in its many forms has closed before. Changes of owners and production have always resulted in new fragility and uncertainty. The steel market has emerged from its protracted recession and hopes were elevated for Newport's steel jobs.
The steel union Community have been acerbic is their condemnation of Alpha’s management. Local MP and AM, Jessica Morden and John Griffiths are on to the case. I’m sure every effort will be made, over the holidays, to rescue the plant.
Many of the workforce have been victims of serial redundancy at Llanwern and ASW. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to them. Judgement on the management will be reserved for now. But Community have never expressed such anger before.
Ann's epistle
A rare delight in the Christmas mail. The poet Ann Drysdale has sent an inspired picture of valleys life expressed in a Christmas Cliché. Ann is the author of Real Newport. I am especially indebted to her. Her vivid description of night time in hospital in her book prepared for the Kafkaesque experience I had last month. Thanks Ann.
Cliché
1.45 am 25.12.06
The air is soft and still. The dogs’ toenails
Click on the tarmac. Their warm faeces
Swing from my finger in a plastic bag.
Christmas Eve has morphed into Christmas Day
Without the intervention of a night.
There is no darkness. Lights along the bypass
Cast their long shadows over the verges.
Electric greetings hanging in festoons
Urge happiness and merriment, including
The odd oblique reference to the Christ.
And now the bird, the old poetic constant,
Treacles his little heart over the pudding
As if to blackmail me into responding.
He seems to think he’s Keats’s nightingale
Or Shelley’s skylark. He’s been done to death.
Tom Hardy got the bugger bang to rights
And poor Mad Jack, God rest him, had a go
So what on earth can one more poet do?
Another poem? Might as well. These tears
Are unbecoming in the elderly.
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