Green Party leadership up for grabs.

So Caroline Lucas is to stand down as leader of the Green Party. Apparently this is all about letting other top Greens have a go at leadership and who am I to doubt this. Leaders are  still something of a novelty in the Green Party so it stands to reason that lots of members, keen to spend less time with their families, will  fancy giving it a try. All very laudable and democratic but some more cynical political observers, unused to such altruism, will be sniffing around the undergrowth in search of scandal. What could be the guilty secret that has forced Caroline to step down before the organic matter hits the wind turbine?  Does the Brighton MP drive a Hummer or perhaps host wild parties where the guests sit naked under patio heaters eating tropical fruits torn from the mouths of starving children and flown half way round the world at vast expense? Just asking.

Marriage counselling - but not as we know it.

Marriage has never seemed to me to be the most important thing about a relationship and I suppose that to some extent I retain my old anarchist disdain for the need to have our cohabitation endorsed by state or church. Of course here in the real world marriage has practical legal benefits involving children, inheritance and property and it makes sense that those benefits should be available to all couples regardless of sexual preferences. The trouble is that a whole tranche of folk including Muslims, Tory Backwoodsmen, Roman Candles, all the usual suspects, don't want to share the sanctity of marriage with a bunch of damned shirtlifters. Hence the "gay marriage" problem. What to do? Well, if the state opted out of the marriage business altogether and offered Civil Partnership to all consenting adults this would leave marriage safely in the hands of the religions to do what they wanted with. Only the Civil Partnership would be recognised in law and this would of course be available to religious couples before or after their purely ceremonial "marriage".  Divesting marriage of any legal validity but making Civil Partnership available to all might go some way toward abolishing the abusive horror of forced marriage and get such worthies as David Cameron and Barack Obama off the hook at the same time. Job done!
....... and while I'm on the subject, can anyone  tell me why it's considered wrong to go through a marriage cermony in order to stay in this country but OK to marry to increase your wealth and social standing?

Landlord scum clean up on the Olympics.

Some people are lucky enough to end up in a satisfying and rewarding job that they really enjoy but for others wage labour is a grind;  a daily misery that has to be endured. For such people the prospect of self employment  has the appeal of making you "your own boss" and offering some (albeit limited and largely illusionary) freedom. But going into business, which is what becoming self employed involves, comes at a price. Hard decisions will have to be made regarding ones relationships with other members of society and it's not easy to be an entrepreneur and a nice guy. Another alternative is to get enough money together to buy your way into the landlord class, and the same tough decisions will have to be made. Of course not all business types and landlords are complete scum. Indeed many do their best to follow their chosen path in life and at the same try to give everyone a fair crack of the whip; there is after all such a thing as a good landlord. Clearly not in that category are the greedy, heartless swine who have decided to make a fast buck by evicting tenents in order to re-let the property (at hugely inflated rents) to Olympic tourists.
For some unfortunates the Olympic legacy will involve a spell of homelessness. While for some landlords it's all just a nice little earner and fuck the consequences. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits!

The joy of Brick Hill.

Drivers heading west out of London on the M3 and just a couple of miles outside the orbit of the M25, may catch a glimpse of what appears to be a wilderness of heather, gorse, pine and silver birch. This is Chobham Common, home to such rare creatures as the Dartford Warbler, Red Barbed Ant and, some would have it, the elusive Surrey Black Panther. There is no way of accessing the common from the M3 that bisects it but come off the M25 at junction 11 and with a bit of determined map-work you can enter one of the best preserved heathlands in the country. But it's not just the wildlife and landscape that are so interesting because poke about a bit on the fringes of this nature reserve and you come across all kinds of interesting stuff. This remember is probably one of the poshest bits of the Surrey/Berkshire border. Just to the north of the common lies Sunningdale with it's notoriously snooty golf club. To the south west is Chobham Place now  renamed  Wentworth Place for some reason. This huge pile was one of the dwellings considered for Fergie when she split from Prince Andrew. It sold for a reputed £12m a few years back. I have no idea who owns it but with it's gleaming white exterior and formal garden it has an air of naff opulence that screams "Dubai". Also on the fringes of the common you can find Dads Army locations, a mysterious military establishment and best of all the peculiar little settlement of Brick Hill. The place gets it's name from the brick works once located there and consists of perhaps a dozen houses, some Victorian and no doubt connected to the old brick works, plus an assortment of bungalows. With it's  abandoned vehicles and half completed  "good life" projects  the place has a marginal, plotland feel to it that is quite wonderful. For some reason that neither of us can put our finger on, Brick Hill has become one of our favourite places.

London refuses to listen.

I've tried, God knows I've tried. But despite having read all of the right books, endorsing the abolition of the separation of politics from daily life and denouncing the charade of party politics and representative democracy, despite all of that and even despite having spent half a lifetime slagging off knee jerk lefties at every opportunity and despite a thousand other things - I can't help feeling really sorry that Londoners (or at least the few that bothered voting) have again opted to elect as Mayor a right wing free market Tory of the worst kind. Ken Livingston has his faults all right but he at least has an understanding of London and working class Londoners that would be quite beyond Boris. All across town the business class will be rubbing their hands - the rest of us can repent at our leisure

2012. All circuses and no bread.

I don't know if David Cameron wakes up in the early hours, stares at the ceiling and wonders how it ever came to this. I suspect that the old public school conditioned feelings of entitlement and worth keep him immune from such moments of self-doubt. For the rest of us it's obvious that the posh boys are presiding over a bugger's muddle of the first water. The whole double dip pasty taxing Murdoch fuelled fiasco can only run on if the LibDems hold their nerve, and who knows for how much longer the lead in their pencil will endure. Bread and circuses are the order of the day but with the cuts meaning a continuing erosion of living standards it looks as though it could be down to circuses alone. Just how effective will those circuses be in placating the mob?  During my lifetime I have endured every kind of royal occasion from the coronation to endless weddings and a few funerals;  and they all seem to get the national juices flowing in a very undignified way. I can see no reason why the jubilee will prove to be any different. How much of a diversion the Olympics can create will be largely down to our medal haul. The travel chaos and the security clamp down could all be forgiven if British athletes do well. If on the other hand the games turn out to be another monumental cock-up and if the LibDems bottle it we could be due for yet another circus - the 2012 General Election.  But cometh the hour cometh the man. Enter Roy Hodgson stage right.

Anish Kapoor instalation on Bow Quarter - You know it makes sense.

As a Jubilympics Local Leader (see post of 18th April) my duties obviously include liaising between the security forces and the local community - requisition of property for the garrison of troops, smoothing the way for the location of surface to air missiles in care homes, that kind of thing. With the right kind of Local Leader none of this need present a problem. I don't know what's going on over at posh Bow Quarter but clearly the Local Leader needs to get a grip. The well heeled residents of the former Bryant and May factory are kicking up about having weapons of mass destruction on the roof. Unpatriotic or what? Her indoors reckons that the yuppies should have been told that the hardware on top of the water tower was an Anish Kapoor installation; they would have loved it. That's the kind of going foreword lateral thinking that we should expect from all Local Leaders.