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Miserable life. Miserable me. Miserable New Year to you. This is going to be the most exciting political year since 2005 but ushered in by a miserable recess (or rendition, as we now call it): lousy weather, fractious family, mini-flu and awful back pain. The break for renewal and regeneration has been disastrous and debilitating.
Pre-Christmas
Devoted to taking surly grandchildren on Santa Claus Trains. Great fun for me but I'm not sure they enjoyed it. Musing in the travelling madhouse I decided to introduce a Private Member's Bill to pander to Paedophile Panic Populism by requiring all Santa Clauses, reindeers and elves – yes, particularly elves – to be cleared by the C.R.B. Given the efficiency of that body the certification will be through about July and we'll then be free of all those prancing lunatics running up and down going "Ho Ho Ho". Who do they think they are? Charles Clarke?
Christmas Day
My present is a camera! Just what I've always wanted. One grandson got a fire engine so big his feet don't reach the peddles. So he picks it up and carries it round him. Despite its weight.
Boxing Day
My second present turns out to be a cough.
1 January
Which materialises by New Year's Day into a full, streaming cold. Coughing so heavily has strained – possibly broken – my back. Unable now to get out of bed. Happy New Year.
Sunday 8 January
Arrive at Doncaster festooned with luggage which Linda has decided is all essential for le grand retour. No trains to London due to maintenance. So we struggle off the train at Peterborough, queue for a coach to Stevenage, then back onto a train with all the bags. No trolleys or porters. Asked if they can help, GNER staff say they're not insured for luggage. I even have to carry some of the luggage myself. What joy for £99 single (medical treatment not included). Perhaps GNER has a contract for new rendition torture service for the ODPM.
Monday 9 January
Stagger out of bed to chair the meeting organised by the London branch of the New Zealand Labour Party (of which I'm still a member just in case I don't make it here) for Helen Clark. It always impresses Grimsby when I say "I shared a platform with the PM the other night". The more curious sometimes say "What on earth did you find in common?" I just reply "Working together for a successful Social Democratic Government and winning three elections". That shuts ‘em up. Helen is brilliant. As is the High Commissioner's dinner afterwards, though he found fault with my service as waiter to the company and told me I didn't show enough respect to the Lord Chancellor.
Tuesday 10 January
Due to depart for three days on a fishery protection vessel from Milford Haven. By now I'm dreading it with my back. Mercifully just as I pick up the phone to ask the Navy to let me off, they ring me to say storms at sea – vessel delayed – can I get to Holyhead? Since I can't it's off. God in his infinite mercy. It's about as wonderful as Tommy saying I can go home early. Come to think of it I must see Tommy as my own personal God of Infinite Mercy. Why did he send us a Christmas Card putting probing psychological questions to Linda and suggesting I need to see a psychiatrist?
Anyone with back problems is deluged with advice: put frozen peas on; a hotwater bottle. Go to a reflexologist/physiotherapist/chiropractor/doctor. Today Leo Beckett's advice from last night is a physiotherapist. He pummels, kneads, and massages for an hour, at the end of which I find that I can't get off the bed. I struggle like a 20 stone beached whale with the physiotherapist unable to lift me because of Health and Safety requirements while a queue of other victims whimper outside. Tell him eventually that this must be from my parachuting accident thirty years ago. So he now has to revise the treatment. Go to the New Statesman lunch where my groans and whimpers are taken as a brilliant response to their probing on the state of the Labour Party. "Quite right," they agree enthusiastically.
Wednesday 11 January
Evading the Navy Lark opens up great opportunities for political education, such as watching George on Big Brother – his critics are barmy to go on as if he was committing a crime. He's doing himself and politics good by showing MPs as reasonable people.
Attending the first Public Accounts Committee (far from reasonable people) I decide I'm really too nice for the PAC. It's like tag-wrestling. Run in, kick the enemy. Run out again hoping the Chair will protect you. We used to be so nice to civil servants on the Environment Committee. Here we behave like Paxperson on Speed playing at Happy Slapping.
Friday 13 January
While our Chief Whip is enhancing the dignity of the Party by denouncing George at Tower Hamlets Tube Station, and the Liberal Party are all emerging from the closet as Charles haters and would-be Leaders, I'm groaning round Grimsby being asked what's going to happen to the Police/Fire Service/Primary Care Trust/Health Authority/Schools/Ambulance Service/Council Tax. How the hell should I know? I wish people would just leave Tony alone to decide in his wisdom what's right for us. He'll tell us all we need to know in his own good time. Mine not to reason why. Mine to vote or die, though I do wonder why when we're promoting choice so heavily we're not allowed a choice of policies? Or of changes to be made? Or of whether we need change at all?
Sunday 15 June
Rail line to London still blocked. Only Hull Trains manage to get through. Being the only one it's packed to the gunnels with students on concession, escapees from GNER, any riff-raff picked up en route, and us. This time with no baggage, though Hull Trains staff do help carry on what we have. Different insurance possibly.
Wednesday 18 January
Visit of Icelandic Foreign Minister to meet the Anglo Icelandic Group and, less importantly, Jack Straw. I think Grimsby would have done better to surrender to Iceland in 1976 and join them after the Cod War. We'd be richer like they are. We'd still have a fishing industry because the EU wouldn't have been able to ruin it. We'd have had cheap power, stayed out of Iraq, a growing tourist industry and a sensible government. Ask the Foreign Minister if we can reconsider. He thinks not.
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Thank heavens, with this lousy weather and me a mountain of misery, politics still provide a laugh. David Cameron throwing all the Tory policies overboard and desperate that someone should protest. He needs a Clause Four type row because leaders do better in the media if they bash their own Party, something Tony's made a career of. Unfortunately, today's Tories are too whimpish to raise a peep of protest at the junking of the entire collection of prejudices they used to call policies. I'll bet if he proposed the privatisation of the railways they'd cheer. So would I.
The Liberals (sixty one leaders plus Lembit Opik) have behaved abominably to a leader far better than they deserved and chucked away the high position he's led them to. How they can ever be viewed as a grown-up party again?
As for us, I'm still waiting for my personal meeting with Ruth so she can persuade me to let her use my 50,000 word alternative draft Education Bill instead of her inferior product with all its spelling and grammatical mistakes. There's no way Tony is going to get an Education Bill based on this White Paper through. If he wins on that it opens the door to all sorts of lunacy to follow. Having given away all Gordon's spare money in the Euro-budget sell out, smashed up the Party in an Education row and destabilised everything by his new total change policy, is Tony aiming for a scorched earth succession or just teasing us? Interesting times lie ahead.
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