A short rant about the PLP

This is something I posted on FB, which I rather liked.

Well, they started it. In the aftermath of Brexit what we REALLY, REALLY needed was a united party, a united response from Labour that could have shown people what we were about and how we were going to face the future, instead we get formation posturing from Mrs Hodge and half the Shadow Cabinet... It so was not the time to start this silly game. It WAS the time to let Jeremy shine - and if he couldn't shine then, well they might have given him enough rope to hang himself and he could have gone within the next year and fewer of us would have been so disgusted about it. But hey, why let strategy get in the way of your over-inflated ego and your parliamentary salary?

I do like a good rant.

Resisting UKIP

Some of my comrades in the Stand up to UKIP group want to write a pamphlet - with the working title of "How we beat UKIP".  Although we have agreed that this will not be the title - I feel this highlights a fundamental issue.   My analysis of what happened in the general election in Thanet South is very different from theirs, and I don't think there is much chance of an honest discussion within the group of "what really happened" or the "truth" as the more philosophically inclined of us like to call it.

SUTU did a wonderful job in encouraging people to realise that they were not alone... and that we should try to resist the Purple Menace with all our might.  Despite my occasional suggestions that we should do something to undermine UKIP's attempts to seize the council, this was contradicted saying "Farage is our focus".  He didn't win the seat, but both Thanet District Council and Ramsgate Town Council are now dominated by UKIP.   Last night - at our post election meeting - it was said by several speakers that having a UKIP Council (the only one in the country) was somehow "a good thing" because it gave us a focus to continue the struggle.   It may well be - but I cannot see it being objectively a "good thing" for the people of Thanet.   It is "a good thing" perhaps that more people have been politicised and engaged than for a long time - but at what cost?

Personally I would rather not be continuing the struggle - personally I would like to be cultivating my own garden and not attending meetings etc.  I would like to do something useful, but I don't want to continue doing it this way, in this style, and I'm not sure whether the Labour party will be the place for me now either, as some people begin to salivate at the prospect of a return to Blairite values.

How did we "beat" UKIP?

I would love to believe that our relentless campaigning, leafletting, stall running, stickering, etc. had beaten UKIP.  I don't want to take any glory from the people who worked so hard (harder than me probably), but this is why I think we beat UKIP - or rather, why Farage was not elected.   I don't have statistics and so on to back me up - but this is how I analyse the election result here.

In 2010 the Conservatives won 48% of the votes and had a 6,600 approx majority over Labour; UKIP came 4th. with 2,500 approx.  This was after a boundary change had made the constituency a far safer Tory seat than it had been previously.  Labour won it in the 1997 landslide - and Ladyman held on to it, with tiny majorities, partly due to the benefit of being the incumbent.

I have no doubt that Laura Sandys would have comfortably won it if she had run this year.  It is a Conservative seat.  In this election a large number of Tories defected to UKIP as did a roughly similar number of Labour voters, and apparently most of the Lib Dems....The Tories held onto their seat - the polls were wrong, Will Scobie (Labour) didn't in fact have a realistic chance, and we were lucky we didn't have to vote Tory to defeat Nigel.   Many Tories dislike UKIP even more than we do.  Laura Sandys' Hate not Hope letter to the constituency may have been helpful - or it may have been too late to make any difference.   Perhaps SUTU prevented even more Labour people from defecting to UKIP, and perhaps dislike of Farage galvanized more people to come out and vote against him, or perhaps love of Farage encouraged traditional non-voters to come out and vote for him.

People love novelty.  They  don't like change when it's thrust upon them - but they like feeling that they can bring about change.  By getting the only UKIP council in the UK they have got a change of their own making.  We are hoping the council will screw up big time, indeed we are expecting it.  However, our definition of screwing up and the voters' definition are two different things.   Local Kippers may be emboldened by their success and delighted by what the council does (privatised litter fines for example).

No more glad, confident [Friday] morning...

For all these reasons I couldn't share the delight in the great moment when Farage lost on Friday morning.  Of course I was relieved and pleased, but not triumphant: because frankly, with a Tory government, and now a UKIP council there's not much to rejoice about, and the combined evil of these forces rather overwhelms my pleasure at seeing Farage depart from Fannet South in a puff of purple smoke never to be seen again - oh, until Monday, when he returned as the newly-re-elected Party Leader.  But at least he won't be coming here for his next crack at Parliament - which is why I say: Long life and Good Health to our Tory MP  vivat McKinlay!

An agent on the horizon

This is a post from my "Only Writing" blog - but it's part of my current story, so it belongs here too!

In a minute there is time, for decisions and revisions, that a minute will reverse     TS Eliot

For the last few weeks I have been wrestling with GATD and not finding the experience consoling.  I am so desperate to meet my self-imposed deadline of the end of June that I have not thought about much else.  As a results of my very slow progress (lots of editing, not much forward movement) I have only got to 25,000 words.

Temptation!

In this period, the resurgence of right-wing, racist/xenophobic politics has made me feel more politically engaged, additionally the resignation of a number of Labour councillors, creating vacancies and seats to be fought next year, has made me think "Surely I could do better than that!".   A lack of progress, feedback, response and a general sense that my books are still "not good enough" had been lapping around me, making me decidedly despondent.  However, I seemed to be absolutely excelling myself in political arguments.  Clearly there was an alternative career to be considered.

It would be quite immoral to go into local politics for the money - on the other hand, the attendance allowance would be a lot better than nothing - which was what I was earning recently.  And they would certainly get their pound of flesh out of me.  So, I have joined the Labour Party - with the intention of turning up at the next open meeting - to see what I can see.

The Isle of Fannet: my manor and the glans of Kent!

I also know that my fantasy careers are often grim and unpleasant - after all, I might not get elected/selected, and the horror of having to argue with stupid people, and getting to grips with all aspects of local authority business would be at best slightly dull and probably mind-freezingly tedious.  Nevertheless, in something of despair about the writing, I decided that if I didn't "get an agent" or better, the prospect of publication by the end of December I would definitely put myself forward as a local councillor.

Query agents

Last night, as it was the New Moon and according to my Steiner practice of sowing at New Moon, I sent off 2 submissions to US agents.  I wondered about the second one, I found a rather ugly woman who looked likeable - but she was very insistent she didn't want any "Christian" content - now The Ash Grove is not a religious novel - but it definitely does have "Christian content" in the broadest sense of the word - since the hero is a clergyman.  And he does pray occasionally.  And take services.  So, although I liked the cut of her jib I thought I was wasting my time, so I moved on to the next one on the list (these are Tweets from Literary Rejections with details of agents who are looking for writers).   I found a woman at a large NY agency I'd looked at before, although I hadn't looked at her before, but I noticed she was keen on historical novels.  So I sent it to her too.  Last night I received an automatic reply from the first agent, and this morning I saw an email from Foreword, so I assumed that it was their automatic reply - I opened it, to check, and saw a two line email which was conversational and intelligent commenting on something I'd said in my letter and saying "I like your writing so send me the whole thing as a word document."

GOBSMACKED

Actually, it was more like this

Now, my inner critic tells me that The Ash Grove's  pace and quiet unfolding will make her lose interest by chapter 3 - but...what this has done is restored my faith in myself - briefly.  It also means that I don't have to become a Labour Councillor - and that I can carry on writing for a bit longer.  When I last had an agent interested it kept me going for ages, and certainly gave me the essential dose of self-belief that kept me buoyant.  I am really interested to hear what she will say - because no one has read TAG apart from me and Mark - despite a number of kind friends taking it away with them.

GATD
Due to this delicious event I have freed myself from GATD angst, and given myself a day off, in the course of which I have done one good, useful thing, and then devoted myself to pleasure.   M and I went out to lunch at Peens, and I had 2 large glasses of wine, did some shopping, went to the Albion had a cool drink on the terrace, left my shopping there, then had an ice cream at Morellis (chocolate cookies and raspberries) - and couldn't finish it - it was too much!   Then I did some shopping and came home, and I am ludicrously happy still, even though I am convinced Jen K will turn me down.  But a US agent - if she took me on and found a publisher...the sales potential is much bigger in the US... just hope they wouldn't want the sequels too soon.  Anyway, I will try and do some GATD work - it might be months before she gets back to me!

Sex pests on trial...a hierarchy of "horror"

I went out last night to the Society of Authors' meeting and we were indulging in social chat before our proper "discussion" - we being 1 F military historian, 1 F journalist/biographer/playwright, 1 F novelist, 1 F children's writer and 1 M technical writer and me.... and some one began to talk about the news, because by coincidence, 3 well-known men - Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris and Bill Roache were all on trial for coming on too strong with young women.

The conversation was interesting - it revealed what we thought was or wasn't "unreasonable".   And we didn't entirely agree.   I thought people who were adults when men came on to them (we are talking harassment, not rape here), shouldn't be charging them 20 years later, but perhaps I'm wrong.  I think the problem is that all these cases are bundled together, so that underage sex is on trial, as well as a bit of slap and tickle with an adult, albeit junior colleague.  It's quite hard to sort things out, especially since people have subjective responses to the people involved.   There is a sort of hierarchy about what is felt to be awful.

!.  At the top is Jimmy Savile - now widely agreed to be a monster!  Psychopath etc. etc.  Nothing, not all the charity work (penitential in nature?) can get him off the hook of being, widely considered to be the Mengele of celebrity sexual abusers.

2.  Any acts on pre-teenage children - no matter by whom, largely considered beyond the pale...

3.  Acts on boys, teenager or otherwise, by adult men still considered to be "worse" than girl teenagers - since (implicitly) sex is what teenage girls are "for".

4.  Dave Lee Travis - not exactly a monster,but very much a partaker in the 70s sex pest culture. Due to the coy nature of court reporting on the BBC news we hear a great deal about "sexual acts" - why can't they spell it out... what are we actually being called upon to be revolted by here?

5.  William Roache: despite being father of the lovely Linus, and having all his family in court with him, there doesn't seem to be that much sympathy for him.  His victims were early teens, under 16 - and in one case returned to his house after being raped there previously (she said she felt guilty about doing this - which opens up a whole load of issues about guilt/pleasure etc. that are the flip side of child abuse (no, I'm not saying "they like it really" but simply that it's more complex than one might imagine from the media account)).  Bill Roache is a well known nutter of course, a Druid, into astrology, and a proselytising Tory... arrrrgh.  He is widely confused with the more sympathetic character he plays - Ken Barlow - so there is sympathy for him.

6. Rolf Harris: apparently lots of people are shocked by this, because they "liked" him - i.e. felt they could be chums, including our hostess, who had enjoyed his tv work for many years.  So there is a bit of a sympathy vote for Rolf and all jokes about "extra legs" etc (a song I found rather sinister when young - due to a not entirely unconscious association with the phallus!) are thought to be distasteful - the trial is not over, his wife is in a wheelchair, the jury has not even gone out yet - and many people are hoping he will be acquitted.

Evolutionary biology? Or Tory policy?
I think that sums up the conversation - but I am still struggling with the idea that adult women who have received sexual harassment in the work place - which is unpleasant admittedly (I know a bit about it) should somehow be lumped in with underage girls.  I can't quite understand why they are complaining about it now - because however wrong it is, however annoying or upsetting or humiliating it was, a one-off bit of sexual harassment, is something you ought to be able to get over.  

I bet some evolutionary biologists (more Tories!) would say men are "programmed" to be attracted to teenage girls who were at their most fertile and at an age when they will most successfully bear children.   I would say that clearly the men are not interested in any future progeny - and if they have successfully socialised themselves out of that urge, they can bloody well work on socialising themselves out of the rest of it.....    I cannot help noticing in passing that most of the above men have worked for, promoted or been members of the Conservative party.  Given the whole other strand of political paedophilia which seems to involve Conservative MPs past one does wonder what the connection is (perhaps it's something to do with men who are insufficiently evolved???).  Jim Davidson was another (Tory/suspect)...

Joke:  Q. Why DO dogs lick their balls? (er, that's testicles, not playthings)
 I'm beginning to lose track of all the people who have been charged, rumoured to be involved, or just found
generally creepy.  Perhaps it would be safer to assume that all men in positions of power will do this if they can get away with it.   Unless they are in the Labour Party of course?  I am mystified about this actually, I was in the Labour party in my late 20s - early 30s and not a bad looking woman though I say it myself - but but but... there was a lot of joshy, jocular sexism from older Trades Unionists and MPs - who had not yet had their consciousnesses raised. When they said anything we all just screamed at them and told them they were sexist pigs!  I can't think of any Labour chaps doing this sort of thing (unless I have a selective memory).

They do say with the Tories it's sex, and with Socialists it's money (doesn't leave much scope for the Labour party then)...but perhaps that's true.  Money is tempting if you haven't had much,  maybe Labour men get laid more so don't feel the need to prey on kids so much... maybe all that jocular sexism is part of their mating ritual, counter-intuitively it is actually what gets them laid:
   "This is how it works love - we get all patriarchal, you get outraged, and feel the need to correct us, we slowly feign understanding, giving you the pleasure of thinking you've successfully changed our thinking - and then, having focussed on us for a while, you find us attractive, sensitive, perceptive - because we've accepted your viewpoint.  And then we've got you!"  
 Great strategy. There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents....
 "Get your coat love, you've pulled!".

A.  Because they can!