Conservatives

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

This Letter was written last weekend just as the storms were breaking in Israel, Gaza and Palestine. Since then events are unfolding at a fearful pace and I have not gone back to update this blog. There are better places to find out what is happening as we try to keep all people in our hearts. This program is always first aired on KWMR.org on ‘The Lowdown show’. KWMR.ORG is in the middle of its fall Pledge drive. If you feel you can support the little station that could and can and does make a difference, we are all grateful – especially in these difficult times. Thank you. https://kwmr.org

On this bright Saturday October morning, The Primrose Hill Farmer’s Market is bustling. The stalls are overflowing and there seem to be more shoppers, children and dogs than I have seen all year long. Like squirrels, we are stocking up for the winter ahead. I buy olive oil and artichoke hearts from the Olive Bar, then see Ron, who now walks with a cane, with his Horizon collection of honey and I choose a jar of freshly harvested heather honey. From Pete, of Brambletyne Farm, I gather eggs, small windfall apples, some of the last Negro Kale and fresh mushrooms. Spelt bread from Olivers and the French baker who always gives me a sweet grin and his ‘best’ loaf. Alex of Five-Way Fruit is doing a brisk trade with perfect pears and the last of his berries grown in plastic greenhouses. Here is lovely Angelina, who comes at harvest time with their family wine and olive oil from Italy. Onto the back of the market and Varley and Crouch for Parmesan and a slice of three-month-old sheep cheese plus 100 grams of Parma ham for tonight’s supper, with Matthew’s Eden Farm Organics baked potatoes. Mathew also has the last of the fresh carrots – they are getting large, but with their tops on, are still fresh. I remember to buy unpasteurized milk and butter from Steve Hooks’ farm stall. But no meat today, either from Hooks or Picks or even one of Rafik’s chickens. I pass by fresh pasta, smoked salmon, empanadas, fresh broth and tempting macaroons. On my way out I take a loop through Ted’s Veg and there is the prize of the morning. Bert, of Ted’s Veg, has a basket of fresh walnuts. They are still moist, and the shells green with damp mould. They lie cool in my hand as if they have been plucked from a woodland floor. I scoop two handfuls into a bag and hope that Bert will have more next week. Only when I get home do I realize I have forgotten onions and garlic. The day is full: a noon-time haircut followed by a Film Festival screening. When finally we come home, I am exhausted. Flat out on the sofa, rehydrated with Russet apple juice, I can face the small plate that Walter prepares for me. One of Alex’s moist pears, sliced alongside of thin cuts of the sheep cheese and now those precious walnuts are crushed, the meat glistening and as fragrant as an evening fog-laden autumn walk. Like the squirrels on the hill, I have come home with gifts of the forest.

Away from home, wars join natural disasters to fill our newspapers and TV screens. The war in Ukraine remains in the news as much for the war as for the political ramifications, and manoeuvres that are played out on the world stage. Zelensky still strides about in Army fatigues but now they are pressed and clean for he is as often at conferences as he is on the ground with his troops as they enter their third winter in the fields of battle. This is getting messy and does not look to end any time soon. The stakes are too high for both sides.

Nature skips her stones across the deserts and into the lake scolding us for our unwanted cheap behaviour. Storm Daniel flooded and crushed the dams around the city of Derna and swept villages away in Libya, while earthquakes shook villages free from the hillsides of Morocco and Afghanistan.

Coming home from the market, and thinking about what to write for this weekend letter – focusing on the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences that take place in September and October – but while I was plucking carrots, choosing cheese and walnuts – another war exploded. Israel was attacked from The Gaza Strip by Hamas in the biggest attack for fifty years. Among the targets was a music festival held close to the border between the two territories. Israel’s Zika rescue service have so far removed 260 bodies. Images of the festival audience running for their cars also showed the Israeli hostages taken. Many are young, beautiful in their youth, as well as children and grandparents. This was a family day out. There is no pause now, with the Israeli Prime Minister saying the country is embarking on a “long and difficult war”. Hamas claims to have struck Israeli cities while Israel clamps a siege on Gaza. Iran’s officials say “not me gov” and the politicians here are sobered, clambering to position themselves to the right or the left of their own moral consciousness.

The politicians have returned to work beginning with the Conservative and Labour Party conferences. The Conservative party held theirs at the end of September in Manchester, rudely giving the High-speed rail 2 – leading from London to Manchester – the chop. Despite the fact that this was probably not planned out well by their conservative cronies all those years ago – let’s change things for change’s sake – such as the rail tracks width so that no trains running on it could actually link up with other trains across the country or – hold it – going on into Europe. And taking additional slices of the country pie by cutting back on solar panels incentives for farmers. There are a lot of big Conservative farmers who don’t like this new form of harvest, seeing solar panels in their fields as a blight on ‘this green and pleasant land’ preferring their huge combines to scoop out the earth’s resources rather than receive the sun’s bounty.

Now in October, it is the turn of the Labour Party – and even though this brand new war has caused a moment of reflection – the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is doing his thing and so is the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, she of flaming red hair and a true Council-house background. Now she is ready to roll and she does. Can she and Sir Keir deliver on housing, the cost of living, the NHS backlog, interest rates, immigration and God knows whatever else. There are some serious messes to clean up. They are an unlikely team but that in itself may help to make them work in harness. During these months and years ‘in opposition’ they have learnt ‘when to hold ‘em and when to fold them’ with each other’s style. If they can both keep focused on the country and not themselves, then there is a chance for The United Kingdom to righten the ship of state.

A little Glitter for Sir Keir at the Labour Party Conference

An interesting development is the addition to the Labour team of Marina Wheeler KC – ex-wife of ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson as Labour’s new “whistleblowing tsar”, offering advice on proposed protections for women against workplace harassment, helping the party strengthen the employment rights of women. After the mandatory six-month break between roles, Sue Grey the former Civil Servant, whose report on the parties at Downing Street during the Covid lock-down helped bring the aforementioned Boris and his boys to the dudgeon – is now Labour’s Chief of Staff. Sir Keir Starmer has more than welcomed these women – formally from the Conservative party – to join him, he has plucked the cream of the crop.

Volunteering at our Community Library has its perks beyond meeting and greeting people from our community. There are books to be borrowed and relished and – tempted by politics – and the writers I do. However the inner truth of ‘Johnson at 10’, by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell – documenting the chaos and downfall of the Johnson premiership – is too unbearable to read. But I dive into the muddled waters of ‘Politics on the Edge: A Memoir from Within’ by Rory Stewart with the heartbreaking truths of its pages showing me a Conservative party system rotten to the core and it makes me deeply afraid as I face my naiveté.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

They took to the stage on all three major television channels; the BBC, ITV, and Sky. Rishi Sunak trots eagerly up to the podium in his Gucci loafers, though sometimes jacket-less, unsuccessfully portraying a working man. Liz Truss walks carefully in her heels with a smug smile and discreet earrings – one day saying one thing and the next day saying another. She is changing statements, but maybe not her mind which appears to be missing in action at the moment. These are the Conservative leadership rivals to be the next Prime Minister clashing on how they will address: high inflation, the rising cost of living, gas prices, Ukraine’s war with Russia, while sidestepping how both of them are looking to kill the National Health Service. But then the broadcasts stop, the candidates and their lies are just too transparent and boring. Now each gets a news moment as Liz changes her earrings to gold stirrups visiting a farm, and Rishi puts his jacket back on to speak at the Royal St. George’s Golf Club.

Like the story of the frog in the hot-tub, the National Health Service is coming to a slow boil. The news has me hold my head with the charts of the numbers of medical staff, doctors, and nurses that have left the Health Service. There are two main reasons for this. Since Brexit, European nurses and doctors are better off regarding pay, hours, and family situations returning home. English-trained nurses and doctors are fleeing abroad to countries that pay more. England is reaching out to poorer countries and importing staff from those that pay even less than England. This migration has gone on since we English, Irish and European nurses flew to America, Canada, and Australia for better living and pay. But nobody talks about Brexit being the cause for this new low, the ridiculous staff-patient ratios, and the non-pay of nurses and doctors. The government counts on the moral inability of nurses and doctors to abandon their patients, and laugh all the way to the locked coffers.

The sky is cloudy and dull, pouting at being left behind in grey England while these two politicians vie for the Conservative leadership. The chambers of the House of Commons sit empty as ministers flee the city, following the example of their old boss Boris Johnson, who took his family off to Greece for the holiday month of August.

There is no rain. The streets are sticky with the detritus of human and animal food ingested and eliminated. Leaves are falling from trees a month ahead of Autumn. They are dry, crisp, and crackle when kicked about on the pavements. There are no conkers on the chestnut trees in the park and those not-so-old trees are dying.

The second heat wave was well underway, and the scheduled train strikes still a day off when I traveled from Waterloo to Hampshire. The South West trains are all new and all air-conditioned which bought a welcome relief from the rising heat. I am meeting three old friends for lunch at the North Hants Golf Club. The youngest of us is only 75 years old. The tables and umbrellas are set out on the veranda overlooking the first and last holes of the course. Though it is hot we can safely gather in the shade. We sort of look great – in our elderly way. We were children together, almost sisters, and though our paths diverged our roots were seeded in the same soil. My friends stayed close to their rootstock and settled deep in rural Hampshire and Wiltshire, each raising champion horses, sheep, and cattle.

Four for Lunch, Sue, Susan, Ann, and Susette

The North Hants Club is well over 100 years old but was still young when we were. Within that world, there is the sweetnesses to be found in any close-knit organization that becomes a family. Jackie has been a part of the kitchen staff for 43 years and we have known each other with mutual respect and admiration through all that time. The kitchen, where deep frying remains a specialty, is stellar and provided us four Caesar salads that were not on the menu along with teasers from their small tapas plates. It was grand to be together and share our autumnal news. We spoke of our lives, of families, and thought of old friends, remembering that though now we are four, we used to be six. The relentlessness of life continuing after another’s death has a bite to it that is hard to define.

Returning to London the train stops at Weybridge and ‘all change’ is called out – to anyone who can understand the voice through the microphone. There are no leaves on the line, these tracks have not buckled from the heat but there is a fault with the train and so we are directed to a local one waiting on a side platform. ‘Change at Staines for the fast train to Waterloo.’ But I don’t. I stay seeing the names Virginia Water, Staines, Barnes, East and West, Putney, and Chiswick before Clapham and Vauxhall. I realize this so slow train travels alongside the western A30 road laid down over the old Roman Road and follows the historic London to Land’s End coaching route – a popular place for highwaymen. William Davies, known as the Golden Farmer and robber of coaches traveled across Bagshot Heath and was hanged in 1689 at a gallows at the local gibbet hill between Bagshot and Camberley. The Jolly Farmer pub built close by was in remembrance of him.

Sculpture to honour the Windrush Generation of Immigration at Waterloo

The train pulled into Waterloo and the platform exit is beside the newly erected statue tribute to The Windrush Generation immigrants who came from Jamaica and the Caribbean to help England after the Second World War. It is a fine statue, showing hopeful and proud parents and their young daughter. She would grow up to become one among us in nursing school, another sister from another time. Tourists from Africa and America proudly stand beside the statue for their photograph moment.

I was not alone in going out today with a cardigan and umbrella though neither was needed. We, and the earth, are crying for rain – or would be if we could cry. All we can do now is sweat, copiously, as we wait for the bus. An Asian gentleman of about my age is also waiting for the number 274. When it arrives he graciously extends an ‘after you’ gesture to let me board before him. We sit on opposite sides of the bus in the reserved for old people seats. The bus driver is not yet exhausted and the bus almost empty. It is August. Hot, dry, there is no school, and whoever can be – is on holiday. I find myself imagining the cold rainy days of autumn, wishing for them, and having a hard time believing the evidence before me that we are seriously damaging our planet. ‘First, do no Harm’ is the Hippocratic oath and here we are committing murder. The bus goes quickly along its route carrying its few passengers. My gentleman friend gets off at Prince Albert Road. He smiles at me and I at him. It is a moment of grateful recognition but I’m not sure what of.

Now there are hosepipe bans imposed by most of the Water districts, whose own leaks are responsible for almost 30 % of water loss around the country. Then quickly news comes of the other leaks, of sewage from more faulty treatment plants into the local rivers and streams, or to the sea for those low-lying coastal areas. It is too much for the cartoonists who show pictures of Boris Johnson, remember him? the still – but on holiday – Prime Minister, entering the sea somewhere in Greece. Sewage flowing outwards but not yet gone.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad. Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch

Muriel Murch

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