The Aged P

A metaphor enters the material world for Gordon Brown and his regime – even the bin men want them out…..

Our current lords and masters were lining up for a photo shoot

When just a few yards away this happened

Maybe the driver, seeing Brown and his gang nearby, panicked at the thought of another five years of Labour rule….

Yesterday evening the third and final party leaders TV debate took place at Birmingham University with one week now remaining before voting on Thursday May 6^th.

Most pundits seem to agree that David Cameron came out the winner and the post debate polls appear to show the public reaching a similar conclusion. Certainly that is the message  being carried by most of the media – and it’s good for Cameron because a lot of people either didn’t watch the debate or dipped in and out of it and will therefore rely on the media’s reporting to mould their own impressions.

Why did Cameron do better this time? Partly because his opponents didn’t sparkle.  Clegg was still a pretty boy but his “the other two parties” riff, so effective in the first debate, lost its novelty value, he did a fair bit of reading from prepared notes and, more significantly, on Immigration and Europe he was playing from Liberal Democrat positions that simply do not resonate with the view on the streets.

Brown just looked like a dead man walking, pale and tired and reduced to attacking the records of previous Tory governments (after thirteen years of Labour rule not even the most dim witted of cats would drink from this ancient bowl of milk) and endlessly regurgitating swathes of statistics in the manner of some minor Soviet official lauding the achievements of an obscure ball bearing factory beneath the brooding portrait of Stalin during the second five Year Plan.

Cameron, however, scored because, as Guido Fawkes pointed out, for this debate, instead of Frum he went Palin.

There were no mentions of worthy ‘Big Society’ concepts, no vacuous ‘vote blue, go green’ slogans. Time worn, winning Tory messages were pitched; tougher immigration rules, tackling welfare dependency, lower business taxes, sound money and smaller government.   Result? Clear win for the Tory leader.

In the first two debates Cameron had played safe, appearing to adopt a David Frum strategy of avoiding treading on the sensitive toes of the cultural “elite”. But this time he went ‘Cuda, hitting on those hot button issues that resonate with the man and woman in the street but embarrass those who fancy themselves as intellectually superior.

Like Palin in America he didn’t pitch for the approval of the chattering classes in London NW1 – the BBC panjandrums, the Guardianistas and all the well heeled high earners who care so much for the downtrodden but holiday in their Tuscan villas and send their offspring to expensive fee paying schools. His message was aimed at those ordinary mortals whose lives and aspirations have suffered by the imposition of policies designed mainly to allow the guests at North London dinner parties to bask in the glow of their own self righteousness – and it worked.

Will this translate into enough votes next Thursday to ensure a working overall majority for the Tories?  That’s the difficult question because the dice have not yet finished rolling  and nothing should be taken for granted. But, after this performance, Cameron and his party would appear to be in a better position as they enter the final strait than they were a fortnight ago after that initial eruption of Cleggmania.

Love this phrase from Troglopundit

If Gordon Brown were an American liberal politician, the media would already be reporting on this woman’s tax returns.

One thing you can say about the British press, left or right, there is very little respect for politicians and they will quite happily rip out your gonads whoever you are…..

Gillian Duffy, a 66 year old widow from Rochdale in the north of England lost her husband to cancer four years ago. She has a daughter and two grandchildren and it seems that, before she retired, she worked for the local council helping handicapped children. She is a core working class Labour voter who would no more consider voting Tory than fly to the moon. She spoke to Gordon Brown while he was out pressing the flesh, voiced one or two concerns and afterwards said she had been pleased with his answers and would be voting for him.

So far so good – Mrs Duffy is exactly the sort of person Brown needs to connect with to recover Labour’s position in the polls and he handled her rather well.

Then he blew the whole thing when he climbed back into his car. Not realising that his mike was still switched on he launched into an angry rant

He told an aide: “That was a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?”

When the aide said they did not know who was responsible, the Prime Minister snapped: “ridiculous”.

His companion suggested that television crews who filmed the encounter, in a residential street in Rochdale, would not broadcast it.

But Mr. Brown said: “They will use it.”

The aide asked what Mrs. Duffy had said, and Mr. Brown replied: “Everything. She’s just a sort of bigoted woman who says she used to be Labour.”

What had been Mrs. Duffy’s crime? She had told him she was concerned for her grandchildren’s future over issues like the national debt, university tuition fees and the levels of immigration – and it was the remark about immigration that triggered off Brown’s rant.

For years the issue of uncontrolled immigration has been a major concern for people like Mrs. Duffy who, because they do not live in the leafy suburban enclaves inhabited by the wealthy chattering classes who dominate the world of media and politics, are the ones who have to confront daily the pressures placed on housing, schools and health services by a massive influx of immigrants both legal and illegal. But for decades the political classes of all the main parties have refused to recognise this concern as legitimate, suppressing any debate with accusations of racism and bigotry. The result? The emergence of the British National Party (BNP) as a political force to be reckoned with in certain parts of the country.

At last, realising the dangers of keeping the lid closed down on debate, politicians have started making vague noises about tougher regulation but what the Brown incident truly illustrates is the contempt that people like him feel for the ordinary folk they claim to represent. The most terrifying feature of the whole incident is the light it sheds on the moment the mask slips once a hack like Brown slips back into his protected bubble – and this poses an additional question – which is the real Mr. Brown? Is it the affable chap asking after Mrs. Duffy’s family or the bad tempered and sneering creature looking for a staffer to blame for getting him involved with the lady.

Damage limitation programmes immediately came on stream once the Labour spin doctors realised how much stuff was hitting the fan. Apologies have been profuse but in a way that merely serves to underline the extent of the hypocrisy.

The stench is overpowering…..

Although the polls have apparently settled into a pattern with Tories ahead in the mid thirties, Liberal Democrats around thirty and Labour one or two points below the Lib Dems the runes are still difficult to read. With figures like that no party would have an overall majority (i.e. 51% of MPs) – however, as I have mentioned before, these national samples might well camouflage regional variations and I am still sticking my neck out for a narrow Tory overall majority.

Nevertheless there is still much talk of a ”Hung Parliament” and that would raise some interesting constitutional issues. Remember that Gordon Brown is the Queen’s first minister and if there was no leader with enough MPs to guarantee a majority HM would be involved in the process of selecting a new PM although she would not be involved in any negotiations. Her power, however, rests in the fact that she could refuse a request for dissolution of Parliament (a new election) from a PM if she felt somebody else could form a viable administration.

UK Polling Report succinctly spells out the key constitutional facts

1) The prime minister remains the Prime Minister until he resigns. Even if he has lost his majority or is no longer the largest party, the PM remains PM until he resigns. It is his right, if he wishes, to wait until Parliament reassembles and to try and get approval for a Queen’s speech, even if he does not lead the largest party.

2) The Queen’s government must continue. When the Prime Minister resigns the Queen immediately invites someone else to replace him, in the knowledge that they will accept. The Palace will not allow there to be a period without government.

3) The Queen will not involve itself in anything that could be construed as being partisan, and does not personally involve herself in negotiations – though the Palace will closely follow the progress of negotiations.

4) Should the Prime Minister resign, the Queen will invite the person most capable of commanding a majority in the Commons (or at least, getting a Queen’s Speech and budget past the House). That will normally be the leader of the largest party, but it doesn’t have to be.

5) Should a Prime Minister loose a vote of confidence, or something regarded as a vote of confidence like the vote on the Queens Speech, they must resign or request dissolution. A dissolution remains the personal power of the monarch, and she may refuse if the Parliament has only just been elected and there is a chance of an alternative government.

For those who find it curious that the monarch still retains this tiny measure of authority remember that, although she has to always appear non partisan, Elizabeth II has met all her Prime Ministers once a week for nearly sixty years – she probably knows more about the mechanisms of UK government than anyone else alive……

Don’t let’s crack open the champagne yet because there is many a slip twixt cup and lip but maybe we can allow ourselves a beer. Five polls out this weekend and if they represent a trend (and in this currently highly volatile and fearsomely unpredictable scenario that could be a monumentally gargantuan IF) then thing might be getting just a teeny weeny bit rosier for the Tories.

Mike Smithson at Political Betting reads the runes

Overall it’s been a good polling night for the Tories with the party well established in the mid-30s across almost the full range of surveys that we’ve seen.

Apart from MORI, which looks like a rogue, the Lib Dems will be delighted that they are still in there at around the 30 mark.

Labour will be quite concerned about those two surveys with them on 26% – well behind the blues with not many campaigning days left

However all these polls need to be taken with three significantly large grains of salt. Firstly remember that, despite the media fascination with messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg, we are not voting for a President. The election is for just over six hundred Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister and the bulk of his or her Cabinet will themselves be MPs who have managed to persuade a majority of colleagues to support their programme.

Secondly the polls are usually a nationwide sample of opinion but, over the last few elections, there have been quite substantial variations between different regions of the UK so those percentages might well camouflage localised shifts in voting patterns.

Finally a well supported third party like the Liberal Democrats could suck up votes from either of the other two “main” parties at different rates in every constituency making the final tally even more difficult to predict.

Of course those complications did nothing to stop a whole tranche of Hot Air commentators waxing lyrical on the unconservativeness of Conservative Party leader David Cameron at the tail end of an Allah post. The overall impression appeared to be that Cameron was a closet Marxist surrender monkey whose intention was to stitch a hammer and sickle in the centre of the Union Jack and use taxpayers’ money to erect a mosque on every street. He was even blamed (admittedly indirectly) for Obama’s 2008 victory because we Brits were even deeper in the tank for His Styrofoamness than the Americans.

Now I admit that even though I have been a Tory activist since the 1950 election (I was ten years old and my activism consisted largely of singing a rude song about the Labour Party in the school playground) and that when I die you will find the name Maggie engraved on my heart it is possible that some guy sitting on his porch in Hanksville, Utah is better informed about the UK than me. But for what it’s worth I shall make my stand and declare that Cameron is offering a decent, conservative programme.

Reduce spending to cut the deficit within weeks of assuming power.

Cut some taxes

Allow groups to open their own schools, funded by govt but outside local authority control

Give Head Teachers greater powers to run their schools with minimal govt interference

Every police force will be run by a locally elected commissioner to reflect public concerns

Much tighter control of immigration

Ensure that our forces are effectively equipped and better looked after

Remain in the EU but be much less cooperative when our own interests are threatened

There is more and all of it is driven by the recognition that government needs a new paradigm.

The top-down model of power that exists in Britain today is completely out of date. The argument that has applied for well over a century – that in every area of life we need people at the centre to make sense of the world for us and take decisions on our behalf – has collapsed. We now live in an age when technology can put information that was previously held by a few into the hands of the many. This is an age of personal freedom and choice, when culture and debate are shaped by a multitude of voices. But politics has not caught up with this new age. Instead of giving people more power over their lives, we have a government intent on taking it away.

Good stuff – certainly good enough for Glenn Beck’s favourite British conservative Daniel Hannan – and what makes it even sweeter is that a key henchman of Obama, John Podesta, (Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, head of Barack Obama’s Transition team and founder of the Center for American Progress, the most influential left wing think-tank in today’s Washington) has obviously been tasked with firing a warning shot in Cameron’s direction over his lack of enthusiasm for being told what to do by the Franco-German axis that currently dominates the EU.

Worryingly, under David Cameron’s leadership, the Conservative Party’s traditional Euro-skepticism has become more extreme. Consider, for example, his decision to have Conservative members leave the European People’s Party—the mainstream center-right grouping within the European Parliament that includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP—to form a new parliamentary group with a maverick collection of racist, homophobic, and xenophobic members of the European Parliament. Beyond the obvious political symbolism this entails—it is hardly good for Britain’s prestige when its European parliamentarians sit with those who have argued the election of a black U.S. president hails the end of civilization—the decision also illustrates Cameron’s willingness to forgo political influence to placate extreme elements of his own party.

In other words he just cannot understand why the Tories are not having orgasms over belonging to a structure like the EU which currently is the epitome of a “top down model of power” run by shady deals in secret backrooms by groups of corrupt and self serving politicians and faceless bureaucrats – otherwise known as the Chicago style of government.

Sounds like Podesta sees a possible British Conservative administration as a kind of transatlantic group of tea partying rednecks getting all geared up to causing trouble at Brussels – and you know what? That’s exactly what we Tories (and many other Brits) want to happen.

Anything that annoys a left wing Obama mouthpiece like Podesta is just fine with me.

Watch this space for more messages from the bunker……

Imagine its three weeks before the November US midterms. Allahpundit at Hot Air has just done his usual business with the crosstabs and percentages from the latest generic congressional polls. He has posed his familiar exit question, posted the piece and then left the keyboard to feed his cats. As he looks out over Central Park all is right with the world of punditry as Republicans and Democrats spar with each other from sea to shining sea.

His cellphone rings – it’s Ed

“Allah – Salem has pulled your post..some new polls have just come in and you’re out of date”

“WTF” says Allah “has one of the parties surged?”

“Yes” replies Ed “but be prepared for a shock. IT’S THE WHIGS!!!!”

A fantasy – isn’t it? But not here in the UK where a shock wave has hit us with just two weeks to go before polling day. Several surveys now show that the party leading the field is one which last formed a government in 1910.

That’s right – for the first time in a hundred years the Liberal Democrats (aka The Liberal Party) now appear to be on course for an astonishing political upset.

The Conservative in me is bleeding. After thirteen wilderness years of having to watch as Blair and Brown and their Labour henchmen chipped away at Thatcher’s legacy I was confidently anticipating a Tory government which would roll back the centralising tentacles of the Westminster octopus. Cameron. of course, is no Thatcher and I have not agreed with everything he has done. But he has united his party after years of factional infighting following Maggie’s political assassination of and offered, a t last, a believable alternative to Labour’s innate assumption that Westminster knows best.

But I have to confess that the political junkie in me is pumping with adrenalin because the Liberal surge has put all the political pundits totally out of joint. Nobody predicted this and they have been slaughtering chickens to check out their livers as well has throwing their rune stones across the floor and they still don’t know what is going to happen come election day – it’s really cut these pontificating panjandrums of political prognostication down to size and might make their editors wonder if their one pound a word plus unlimited expenses price tag can really be described as giving value for money.

Up to last Thursday it was business as usual. The Tories were still ahead but slightly better economic news was putting a little bit more gilt on Gordon Brown’s Labour gingerbread and the Con/Lab gap was narrowing with Nick Clegg’s Liberals hovering, as usual, in third place around the 20% mark.

Then came the TV debate between the party leaders – a novelty for us but a familiar part of the US political scene for fifty years or so. Cameron and Brown concentrated on scoring points against each other but in what they perceived as a dignified “Presidential” way and the result was that neither of them particularly impressed. That gave Clegg the chance to come up from the inside and pose as the anti-politician, a straightforward kind of guy totally divorced from the punch and Judy politics of the two main parties – and he seized the moment. He came across as Mr Reasonable, the next door neighbour who would act the David on your behalf against the two political Goliaths – and it worked to perfection.

By the next day the media, which for years has been studiously ignoring Mr Clegg, had finally found a narrative in an election campaign that up to then had been fizzling like a damp firework. Cleggmania was born and suddenly being a Liberal Democrat was so…..NOW…..

However, while this Tory still bleeds at the prospect of a soft left bunch of “caring”, vacuous charlatans coming within an inch of the reins of power, my injuries are not yet life threatening and I remain optimistic – so do watch this space as I smuggle more messages from the bunker…..

Kathleen Parker has had enough.

For a long time she manifested a superhuman self discipline in the face of a continuous barrage of provocation from the demented screams and visceral howls of rabid demagogues. She has shuddered in distaste as multitudes of America’s unwashed crashed into the salons of the great and the good DEMANDING explanations from their congressional representatives about why they were going to vote for certain measures. Then this same hoi polloi, now calling themselves the Tea Party, flooded out of their urban hovels and rural shacks onto the pristine boulevards surrounding state capitols clutching crude banners upon which were scrawled vicious threats and bloodthirsty slogans.

Finally they trooped to Washington, goggle eyed, initially, at discovering as they watched their betters going in and out of 1150 15th Street that not all women wore micro skirts and cowboy boots or that some men wore suits and ties rather than T shirts and baseball caps. But they soon forgot their place – and their manners. Orchestrated by the devious and sinister figure of Redstate’s Erick Erickson, the Huey Long of Georgia, they began to grunt and drool in anticipation as they waited for the object of their hate and derision – Kathleen Parker herself.

For Parker, in the twisted and psychotic minds of Erickson and his minions, has committed the cardinal sin – she has dared to consistently, albeit mildly, and politely, criticise their Warrior Queen, Sarah Palin, for cultivating a political atmosphere of anger and hatred.

The courage displayed by Parker in following this lonely path is immeasurable. While a timid and compliant media, bullied into subservience by Erickson’s militias, fawns obsequiously before this ignorant and ill educated hick from Alaska, Parker has made it her life’s work to break the hold of the Erickson/Palin mujahideen.

Thusly do hyperpartisans become mainstream.
It’s fine to be angry about bad policies; it’s fine to hold politicians’ (and journalists’) feet to the fire. But it is not fine to demonize dissent and cultivate rage. We should know by now where demagoguery leads.

Neanderthal nitpickers, doubtless clutching Murdoch’s silver in their grubby fingers, asked Parker to provide evidence of Palin’s encouragement of mob rule. This only serves to display their crass ignorance of world of the enlightened. The presence of Parker’s disdain is sufficient in itself. After all the lady won the H.L. Mencken writing award presented by “The Baltimore Sun” in 1993 and she is a regular guest of Chris Matthews – who on earth needs facts with a pedigree like that?

But now Parker has discovered that she is not alone.

Independents as a group outnumber either party, in other words. Yet, given the hyperpartisanship that began under George W. Bush — and has accelerated during President Obama’s first year, thanks in large part to the enabling mechanism of the Internet — one would think that America were divided into hard left and hard right.
We’re not. We’re a vast middle, slightly right-of-center nation. How is it that so many feel so disenfranchised by so few?

Parker has the answer – they need a leader and they are looking for their own Sarah Palin – a beautiful strong willed mother figure with long hair and flashing eyes. But she also needs to be intelligent and articulate and properly educated and, above all, experienced in politics – and that means real politics. Being mayor of a tiny village on the edge of some frozen mountain or governor of what is essentially a huge National Park containing about three hundred people and half a million caribou isn’t real politics – but writing about politics and meeting proper politicians is the real deal.

Parker at first couldn’t think of a candidate who would fit that profile – so she decided to reach out to those everyday, ordinary Americans who were maxed out by hyperpartisanship but cold with fear about challenging the Palin/Erickson reign of terror….and she found them.

I run into the politically homeless everywhere I go. Meet two South Carolina men named Joe with whom I chatted over the Christmas holiday. Neither plumbers nor six-packs, both are successful businessmen and lifelong Republicans now wandering the political desert. Fiscal conservatives alienated by the GOP excesses, they’re equally loath to identify themselves as Democrats.

Just two ordinary, everyday Americans, chatting over martinis in an ordinary, everyday country club….

Fast forward to the University of Pennsylvania, where I spoke to a journalism class a couple of weeks ago. I talked a bit about the wingnuttery that has hijacked politics and how some of us who consider ourselves moderates (otherwise known as apostates) have decided it’s time to denounce the harsh partisans who feed on polarization. It’s time to give independents a voice.

Those ordinary, everyday students of the media who will one day be going into proper, useful jobs (unlike plumbers or builders or flight attendants) were hypnotised by Parker’s message as she quietly deconstructed the ludicrous claims of Fox to be anything more than a propaganda machine.

Exhausted by her forays out of South Carolina and into Pennsylvania she returned, nevertheless, with a happy heart. For when she asked her two businessmen (and six media students) who could be the Sarah Palin of the Independents they cried out, in unison, KATHLEEN – KATHLEEN – KATHLEEN…” you are a beautiful strong willed mother figure with long hair and flashing eyes. But you are also intelligent and articulate and properly educated and, above all, experienced in politics – and that means real politics – and you won the H.L. Mencken writing award presented by “The Baltimore Sun” in 1993 and you are a regular guest of Chris Matthews!”

That’s why, very soon, Kathleen Parker will hold the inaugural meeting of the Arugula Party at the Camden Country Club in South Carolina (no plumbers, builders or flight attendants allowed) and, within weeks, millions of independents will be picketing Tea Party events waving their arugula leaves at the angry, contorted faces of Palin/Erickson sans-culottes in every corner of America. By the end of the year Palin will be driven back into the icy wastes of the north with her whole hillbilly tribe, Fox will have become a mere shopping channel for rednecks and, in a grand ceremony at the White house, Kathleen Parker will throw a collection of captured Tea Party banners at the feet of President Obama and crown him with an Arugula wreath…

“Independents of America unite – you have nothing to lose but your arugula!”

Cross posted at Conservatives4Palin

On a freezing December day family and friends trudge through snow carrying a coffin to the edge of a bleak graveyard. Ten other coffins follow behind. Eleven men are being buried on that wintry morning, eleven miners shot by police and soldiers, crushed by a brutal regime for daring to demand the right to strike in defiance of a decree promulgated by the ruling elite.

It is an iconic image of working class families beaten but unbowed by the vicious and ruthless security apparatus of an authoritarian government. Off camera hard eyed riot police ensure that the funeral does not transform into an anti government rally. Plain clothes security officers and police informers mingle with the crowd listening out for any whispered manifestation of discontent. Wives, mothers and children of the slaughtered strikers sob quietly for their lost ones. Grieving fathers, brothers, sons and fellow miners mourn in bitter silence, fearful of saying anything that would bring police batons smashing onto their heads….

It would seem a natural scenario for a Hollywood film or a BBC play or a Bruce Springsteen album cover….brave strikers…..brutal police……the proud but silent funeral…..but it is highly unlikely you would ever see this story win an Oscar, a BAFTA or a Grammy. For the striking miners were Polish, the year was 1981 and the regime that ordered the shooting down of defiant miners was a Marxist/Leninist dictatorship struggling to crush a peaceful mass movement  demanding basic human rights – and that sits uncomfortably on the shoulders of many writers and directors and musicians who, though immensely rich, perceive themselves as radical activists of the left using their undoubted artistic talents and skills fighting for the underprivileged in support of Marx’s electrifying slogan

Workers of the world unite – you have nothing to lose but your chains

But if those chains have been hung on you by Communist rulers – that doesn’t fit too easily into the world view of some on the left. So the Chomskys  and the Redgraves and the Fondas tend to put it outside their vision – they ignore it…..and thus what appears to be one of the major seismic events of the Twentieth Century, the political and intellectual and moral collapse of Marxism in Europe has never been  the theme of any major western movie or music album. Nor has there been any artistic declaration of regret or plea for redemption from those in America and Western Europe who for decades prostituted their intellect and values by acting as cheerleaders and apologists for the bullies, thieves and torturers who ruled the Soviet empire and it’s lackey states.

The miners at Wujek were striking as an act of defiance against General Jaruzelski’s declaration of Martial Law in December 1981. The General  had become Prime Minister determined to crush all resistance to the Communist regime after several months of strikes and demonstrations. Unofficial trade union activities were banned, thousands of people were arrested and dragged before military tribunals and strict censorship was imposed on all forms of media and communication. Tanks and heavily armed soldiers and special police units patrolled the streets in an aggressive and confrontational manner and the government decided to deal with the miners of Wujek in a way that would send a lesson of fear and terror to all its opponents.

The miners had occupied the mine as a demonstration of defiance against the regime. A huge force of soldiers and riot police, accompanied by tanks and armoured cars, broke into the mining complex. The miners resisted fiercely, fighting back with picks, shovels and bricks. Finally an officer commanding a special police unit ordered his men to open fire on the miners, killing eleven of them and wounding many more. This broke the strikers resistance and the mine was brought back under government control.

There were critical comments in the west but the Marxist/Leninist regimes had long ago discounted western “opinion” as empty rhetoric. Jaruzelski , like all communists, believed that bullets were more effective than words when resistance needed crushing. He even solicited advice from Hungarian colleagues who had organised the repression of the 1956 anti communist uprising. He also took heart from western communists like the British miners union leader Arthur Scargill who remained silent over the fate of his fellow miners in Poland.

One day, perhaps, the implosion of the Marxist/Leninist charade will attract some future Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens to chart it’s ignominious collapse in soaring prose and golden epithets.

For the time being, unfortunately, we shall have to put up with Sean Penn…..

Footnote #1

At least it might be claimed that those eleven Wujek miners and others killed by Poland’s communist security forces did not die in vain. Poland is now a lively democracy and a member of NATO and the EU, free at last from Marxism’s iron grip. The remnants of the Jaruzeski regime are mostly mouldering away in ignominious retirement. Even better, some former members of the security apparatus have been brought to book for their actions at Wujek and elsewhere. Outside the Wujek mine is a stark memorial for the victims of repression.

Who knows, perhaps one day similar monuments will rise up to the sky in Beijing and Tehran….

Footnote #2

For an intensely moving pictorial and personal review of Polish resistance to Communist dictatorship go here…..

I haven’t posted so much recently because, as “David Copperfield” at The Archway Theatre Horley gets closer our rehearsal schedule intensifies. Last Sunday we did our first run through the two acts (previously we just rehearsed each act separately) and all this week we have a succession of dress rehearsals culminating with the final dress rehearsal next Sunday which will also be recorded on video for sale as a DVD – then we open on the evening of Tuesday March 23rd. We do ten performances, Tuesday to Saturday, over two weeks then strike set on the final Sunday – and that is it!!

We are all amateurs so we do it for love but we will probably fill our small auditorium (95 seats) to capacity for almost every performance. We do ten shows a year plus a pantomime and attendance rarely dips below 90% making us probably one of the most successful amateur theatres in the country.

Gary Andrews, one of our members, regularly writes and directs a big cast blockbuster based on the classics every 2/3 years (Henry V/VI, Les Miserables, A Christmas Carol). The dialogue is always true to the original but obviously stripped down to tell the story on stage over 150 minutes – a tall order but he hits the spot every time. I certainly would recommend his scripts to any group willing to undertake something a little more ambitious.

I became involved in amateur theatre almost by accident early in the 1980s. My wife had joined a group attached to the local church (to help backstage) but when she suggested I might like to get involved I wasn’t too keen. I had this image of amdram being full of frustrated “luvvies” thinking they were west end material and being very pretentious and bitchy.  A few weeks before their first show, however, an actor dropped out so I said I would do a one off just to get them out of a hole – the result? I was absolutely hooked – and it did me good….I had just been appointed to a senior post in a London school, things weren’t going too well (students were fine but many of the staff were neanderthal) and I was getting obsessed – amdram gave me an outlet from difficult times at work – and also brought my wife and I close together in a shared, and very sociable hobby.

We are both very much involved at The Archway, both onstage and helping with the less glamorous but vital administration and it helps to keep us busy in retirement. As teachers we also appreciate mixing with all age groups from nine to ninety – retirement can so often mean you’re surrounded by a bunch of greyheads forever moaning about how wonderful it was in the “old days”…never liked that when I was young and hate it even more in the evening of life!!!!

So, for the next three weeks or so I shall be Barkis, carrying young Copperfield to and from school in his cart and falling in love with Peggotty and always being willin’…………