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Keir Starmer's identity crisis
Keir Starmer is a walking, talking political identity crisis. Starmer is a man - at least we assume that’s what he is. We have not verified his biological sex. We see him using the men’s toilets (at least that’s what I assume) and playing football with other people who appear to be (unverified) men. Ok, let’s put it this way. Starmer is an unverified man, or at least, appears to self-identify as a man. I tell you what, for the sake of clarity, I’m just going to refer to him - or them - as a person.
Starmer is a person who lied to Labour Party members to win their votes to become the elected leader of the Labour Party. He made a series of pledges to enact socialist, progressive policies. All of which he’s reneged on. As leader of the Opposition to the murderous, racist liar Boris Johnson, Starmer went out of his way to consistently support the Tory government.
His entire strategy was to remove any possibility of mistaking him for a Labour leader, and one former Labour leader in particular. If anything he was even more right wing than Johnson. Crucially, he had no responsibilities and therefore appeared more competent and professional than Johnson. Having established himself as a Tory clone, Starmer was able to position himself as the “change” candidate against the dripping wet washout Rishi “carry on” Sunak. It was no contest. Starmer won by a landslide and had a mandate to do exactly as he was told by his advisers/handlers.
I see people complaining now that Starmer has no policies, no principles, no political beliefs. Yet his entire career, and certainly his entire election campaign, was built solely on the pursuit of power. Pledges, promises, missions, principles, beliefs - they’re all for losers, people who identify as something or other. Starmer’s handlers positioned him as a nobody. A no-one. Someone no one could possibly identify with. Someone who could win votes from Tories in Tory seats dressing to the right, from Labour voters in Labour seats dressing to the left, and from Liberal voters in liberal seats dressing to the right again but this time wearing orange underpants. Hell, he even won votes from Scottish Nationalists wearing a tartan dress and no knickers.
It was an amazing and amazingly brilliant election-winning strategy. But it does mean that we have a Prime Minister who panders to the electoral threat from the right. It does mean we have a PM who is obsessed with people’s genitals, and whether they had them at birth. And it does mean that we have a leader who eats three Shredded wheat for breakfast every morning just to look tough for Reform voters even though he has a severe gluten intolerance. Hence Starmer’s persistent strained facial expression and his whiny voice.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the cost of fish and chips and more
Three days ago I went to Ambridge’s fish and chip shop in Spilsby to get lunch for me, my mum, my wife and two kids. A run-of-the-mill affair, uncontroversial, and unremarkable.
As a fan and occasional exponent of legacy microblogging, I described my experience in as few words as possible, and - accompanied by a couple of boring photos - I published on my micro.blog website.
Now, I say this whole adventure into the great big outside world wasn’t noteworthy, but that’s not quite true. Mum had given me two shiny plastic twenty pound notes to buy the “two haddock, one chips, and three peas” described in my post, and I had given one back thinking that this “ludicrous order” couldn’t possibly cost more than twenty quid.
It turned out that it cost £20.40, so mum was right to offer me more, although I was also correct in thinking that £40.00 was about £20.00 too much.
On micro.blog, which is known for and proud of its general sedation and nuance, I received zero engagement. Par for the course, expected and absolutely fine. I post for myself, and my kids, and while I certainly don’t mind at all if anyone else comments, it’s not a problem if no one does.
Micro.blog has a clever in-built feature which allows you to “cross-post” things you publish to Threads (among others). So that’s where my fish, chips and peas post went, too.
Unbelievably, when I got back from our long family weekend away, my post on Threads had received over 167,000 views, 333 likes and 351 comments (indicating also that I have been mildly “ratioed”).
Now, I don’t use Threads much and navigating and replying to all 351 comment isn’t viable. I thought it would be more fun to create a Fishy FAQs.
Fishy FAQs
Q: And?
A: And nothing.
Q: And…?
A: And nothing…
Q: And you point is?
A: Nothing. Other than that my mum was right that it would cost more than £20.
Q: What kind of ludicrous order is that?
A: Two haddocks - half each for me, my mum, my wife and ten year old. One chips - half for me, half for my ten year old and four year old to share. Three peas - one pot of peas each for me, my mum and my wife.
Q: Surely you check the total before paying?
A: You mean before ordering? Or before giving £20 back to my mum?
Q: Did they let you off the 40p?
A: No.
Q: When did you last buy a takeaway of any description?
A: November 2024 at the same fish and chip shop. I arrived after it had closed and managed to come away with a battered sausage and a few chips.
Q: Where is this?
A: Spilsby.
And some fact-checking!
Fishy Facts
CLAIM: Fish and chips is still better value than a fast food chain.
FALSE. For pure cost, McDonald’s and similar chains are better value.
CLAIM: BREXIT!
TRUE. Brexit has led to higher prices.
CLAIM: You have to factor in the full cost of getting fish from the sea to the chippy.
TRUE. It’s not just Brexit!
CLAIM: Make your own, it’s cheaper!
TRUE. It’s a lot cheaper, but also less convenient, takes longer and isn’t always or often practical.
CLAIM: No one forces you to buy it. If we all stopped buying fish and chips from the chippy, prices would come down.
FALSE. High prices are due to supply and other costs, not local demand.
CLAIM: Jacket spuds and pizza - fish is a luxury!
TRUE. Cheese is cheaper than fish!
CLAIM: Only 3 peas? You should have got a tin.
BOOM TISH!
CLAIM: 3 pot’s of pea’s? You and your mum will be farting for England!
TRUE. Although we only had one pot each (see above).
Lastly, and most importantly, here’s how prices vary across time and the country.
- Pre-lockdown: £6.50
- Post-lockdown: £11.95
- The other day: £15.00
- Here: £8.00/£19.50/£23.90
- Where I am: &16.00
- Kent: cheap as chips
- Sydney: £7.00
- Australia: £7.50
- Paris (cordon bleu 3 course meal with a bottle of wine): £30
Fish and chips price map of the UK
Ecclesiastical gobbledegook
Had a good week with work. Lots of serendipitous connecting things and people together means that we now have what we hope is a very realistic big funding opportunity in front of us, which will enable us to get started with our proposed new youth centre.
We also got accredited as a Living Wage employer via and thanks to the Young Ealing Foundation. Through that connection we got two hours of free business consultancy thanks to the often-maligned-by-me Ealing Council. I wasn’t expecting much from this, but it was absolutely incredible, such a fantastic consultant! Not only did she give some very honest, useful and practical advice to develop our vision for community transformation, she also put me in touch with a couple of potentially very useful contacts.
She said I very eloquently painted a moving picture of life in Southall with it’s rich tapestry of people and cultures, it’s unique mix of all faiths and none, and it’s wealth of community resilience, resistance and defiance in the face of very real challenges from the National Front and the Special Patrol Group in the 1970s and 1980s, deep-rooted socio-economic problems of poverty, deprivation and low pay, pulling together and surviving the COVID pandemic despite chronic overcrowding and few remote-working jobs, and fifteen years of austerity politics topped off with a cost-of-living crisis under successive ConDem, Tory and Labour-in-name-only right wing neoliberal governments, and the needs of our 16,000 young people currently served by just one youth centre and struggling with the everpresent threat of lack of work and education, drugs, offending and knife crime.
At one point she asked me what my job title is, and suggested I’m working way above my pay grade. Which was nice to hear. She described me as the driving force of our project. I suggested maybe I was more rudder than anchor. She said I’m the captain of the ship!
To be honest, I felt like I’d had ten years of successful therapy in the space of three days.
She also left me with my favourite phrase of the week rightly critiquing a section of text on our new website as “ecclesiastical gobbledegook”.
More tea, vicar?
Just brewed a pot of loose leaf Assam black tea for a change. Great taste. Had it with milk, no need for sugar, could probably drink it black.
Still loving the white tea, as recommended by lzbth@micro.blog. H/t to paternoster@mas.to for the loose leaf advice, too.
For all of my life, for some reason I believed I could have only one kind of tea. Nice to have a bit of variety (which I’m normally all for).
It doesn’t matter, but I guess this also means I’m back on the caffeine.
Fundraising update
Over a year ago I did some refresher training in fundraising on “writing a successful fundraising application”, “winning grants from trusts and foundations”, and “developing a fundraising strategy”. All very useful and highlighted particular areas we the organisations I work with need to improve and do more work to meet funders’ minimum expectations. Nothing we couldn’t do, but it would need a shift in focus and energy, and some new people with specific skills and experiences on (the) board.
There’s no lack of vision, but one of the difficulties with this sort of thing generally in the charity and voluntary sector (in my experience) is that everyone is very busy doing the good work that needs to be done every day and week and month, which leaves very little time or headspace, if any, to work on how to bring the bigger picture to life, to make it happen.
Another difficulty for us has been that one of our key organisations is going through a difficult leadership transition, which effectively means they are out of the strategic picture, at least until that is resolved. That’s likely to be months if not longer.
This year I started fundraising efforts for new youth work. But rather than work on what it would take to make it happen, developing a case for support, and making sure we have all the building blocks of good governance in place, we excitedly jumped straight into finding out what money is out there and shooting off a few half-baked applications.
One thing that seems to have changed since my previous fundraising efforts fifteen years ago is that then it was difficult to get grants for continuing existing work - everyone wanted new projects. Now, it seems that funders all expect you to have a track record delivering the very work you want new funding for. I guess that’s what fifteen years of neoliberal austerity politics does!
Thankfully, now, we have agreed to work on developing our fundraising (and organisational) strategy and getting our own house in order before we start applying in earnest again. This will delay any new fundraising income for us, but that is offset by our current sole funder happily allowing us to repurpose money that was originally earmarked for different work to fund the initial youth work set up instead.
Think of the children
Ealing Council are consulting on their proposals to improve services offered by the borough’s children’s centres to children under five and their parents by reducing the number of centres from 25 to 12.
In Southall, the poorest and most deprived of the seven towns in the borough, and the town with the highest rates of new arrivals to the country, English as a second language, and up to 40,000 new residents occupying all the new builds homes currently being developed, the council proposes to improve uptake of services at the six Southall children’s centres by reducing their number to two.
If you’re not already persuaded that this is an obvious, winning and ever-so-centristly adult and professional management of the local economy, then let me elaborate further with some data!
The problem with the children’s centres as they are now is that they are very inefficient. In some parts of Southall where there are no children’s centres, for instance, as few as a third of children are accessing services offered by children’s centres based in other parts of the town. And while arguably one of the best and most successful of the purpose-built and award-winning children’s centres reaches over two thirds of children in its locality, if we close this one down, repurpose the building as something else (more unaffordable high-rise flat$$$? [like we tried to do with Southall Young Adult Centre, the only youth club in town]), and get our (private) less-qualified and experienced partners to deliver cheaper and less effective children’s services in community venues such as the recently repurposed community-centre-as-a-library, churches, mosques, gurdwaras and mandirs, everyone’s a winner, right?
I should be a highly paid consultant!
To those of you who actually live in Southall, and who are mostly women (of colour) and have children who have used or use these services now, and who say to me, “Hmmm…. This sounds like cost-cutting. We need more children’s centres not fewer. What you’re proposing is madness. You’re a Labour council, why are you doing this? Many people won’t be able to travel half an hour or more on foot or be able to afford public transport to the two remaining centres. Many people won’t want to go to the places where they worship and which are highly patriarchal, not known for confidentiality, and not designed for children’s safe and secure play and development. The library is too small, and small children like to make a lot of noise and run around. Instead of looking for new exclusionary venues, why not just use the safe and secure, purpose-built inclusive children’s centres we already have? Market the services offered in the library and the faith centres”: your feedback is valuable and I have no answers. Please fill in the survey and rate my brass neck out of five.
It’s all a bit rich coming from the same council who lectured Warren Farm campaigners on the health and wellbeing of Southall’s children two short years ago. Local people fought the council’s plans to destroy much of the rewilded land at Warren Farm Nature Reserve in order to build new football and cricket pitches on it, and instead wanted to preserve Warren Farm as a nature reserve so that local children living in an otherwise urban environment would have some wildlife and peace and quiet on open land to visit. Meanwhile, the two cricket pitches at Southall Recreation Ground which are used all day every weekend in all weathers are dilapidated and dangerous.
Save Ealing's Children's Centres
Save Ealing’s Children’s Centres
Actions we can all do:
SIGN THE PETITION - Over 1,000 neighbours already have. Every signature shows our community’s strength.
SPEAK UP BY 27 APRIL - Tell the Council closing 13 centres is unacceptable. Fill in the online consultation.
CONTACT COUNCILLOR JOSH BLACKER - Your personal stories matter. Tell him how these centres support your family.
Template email. Please personalise to make it more powerful, or better still write your own!
VISIT YOUR LOCAL CENTRE - Show it’s valued. Bring neighbours who might not know what’s at stake.
Why This Matters To Everyone
• Your children lose vital services - health support, parenting help, and early learning will disappear from your neighbourhood
• Hardest hit: families who can least afford it - longer journeys, more costs, and fewer services for those already struggling
• Growing population, fewer services - Ealing’s population is increasing while services are being cut
• Your voice matters - especially if English isn’t your first language or you live in an affected area
A new hope
It’s been quite a week.
My Mum has had a rough few years. Eight years ago, aged 71, she lost John (my step-Dad) to cancer. One moment he was fine, the next he started deteriorating rapidly, was soon bedridden, and spent weeks waiting for for death to take him as his body wasted away. Three months and he was gone.
Mum sold their beautiful big retirement bungalow she’d nursed him in, and got a smaller bungalow in the small town where she’d grown up and her cousin still lives and owns the amazing wool shop.
Two years later she had a mini-stroke, fell and broke her ankle, and had to hand in her driver’s licence while she recovered.
Then came COVID-19 and the isolation, followed by misdiagnosed heart failure, and then cancer of her own. She needed major surgery, but the doctors said she wouldn’t survive a general anaesthetic (because of the misdiagnosed heart failure).
She prepared to have the surgery with an epidural. On the day of the op, they decided she couldn’t have the surgery without a general and so that’s what happened. Then there was the radiotherapy and follow up tests every three months since. She survived it all.
Then her beloved, very elderly (and very fat) cats died one after another.
She’s been through a lot!
Just before xmas last year she had a chest infection. She’s had breathing problems on and off for as long as I can remember. As a kid she said it was bronchitis. Later it was asthma. Now, like me, it’s COPD.
She hasn’t recovered from this episode and is struggling to do everyday tasks including personal care. Her neighbour has been a godsend throughout and describes my Mum like she’s her own mum. I’ve been trying to help from a distance (a four hour drive away) to organise home help, etc.
Last Sunday I noticed that my neighbours on the ground floor had a For Sale sign outside their relatively (these days) spacious one bed flat. I messaged my Mum saying it’s a shame she can’t move in there. Me and my wife could help her with the things she can’t do for herself plus keep her company and she gets to see her grandsons in the flesh more than twice a year.
I didn’t really expect her to take it seriously, but as her helpful and caring neighbour said, “It’s a no-brainer.” The neighbours downstairs told me that they hadn’t decided if they were selling or letting, but today I viewed the flat opposite which, although I’d forgotten about it, has been on the market for longer. It’s also in good condition, and my neighbour is not in a chain and has somewhere to move to.
It’s given my Mum some hope. It’s a big move at her age. Fingers crossed it all works out.
The code of life
Big kid has been learning about WWII at school. He took in a photo of his great grandfather (my Grandpa on my Dad’s side).
Grandpa Fred was a coder. He was in the Royal Signal Corps decoding Morse code messages from the Nazis. When war broke he tried to join the Royal Navy. Because he knew Morse code from his job at the Post Office they sent him to Scotland. If he’d joined the Atlantic and Arctic conveys he’d very likely have ended up at the bottom of the cold, dark sea, and we wouldn’t be here.
As a teenager, I remember spending hours typing in pages of machine code from computer magazines into my Dragon 32 PC hoping not to make a single error and produce a playable game “Bomber” at the end.
We’re all coding - encoding and decoding - stories that give our lives meaning and purpose.
Weaving our own unique patterns in the fabric of space-time, searching for answers and connections in the world wide web, and gazing at the stars in awe and wonder for millennia.
Using threads from the code of life created by and handed down to us by our ancestors and their ancestors before them since time immemorial.
From cave paintings to fossils and footsteps on the moon, from the Pyramids to the Parthenon and the Pentagon, we’re leaving reminders of our existence, building structures that help us to organise, process and understanding information about our world.
Now we’re coding large language models and training them on the whole of human knowledge and history hoping that they can tell us the meaning of life and/or not destroy us in the hands of our new Nazi overlords, or serve us up tasteless slop.
I’m not sure what Fred would have made of it all. Like my great grandfather Frank before him, he was from another time, conservative, happy with his lot. He loved Oldham Athletic (“Latics”), the Telegraph crossword, driving carefully, and Freemasonry. He wrote letters on a typewriter.
He had all his teeth removed at a relatively young age in a “buy one get them all removed free” kind of too-good-to-be-true offer, and spent the rest of his days struggling to eat food that wasn’t tasteless slop with dentures that never fitted properly. Raw egg mixed with milk and Ribena was a particular favourite, if I remember correctly.
Fred would have loved his great grandkids. It’s a shame they never got to meet.
He would probably have said, “Give over, lad!”
You Winchester, you lose some
I was chatting to one of the other parents at school yesterday morning and mentioned how little kid is totally obsessed with space, all day and every day. It’s literally the first thing he talks about when he wakes up, and he falls asleep watching Brian Cox videos. They had a special space day at school yesterday, too.
She helpfully suggested visiting the planetarium at Winchester, about an hour’s drive away.
I hadn’t thought about going anywhere outside of London.
Later yesterday afternoon I picked up my guitar for the first time in months, wiped all the dust off it, and strummed the chords to one of my old band’s songs, written by the singer who, coincidentally, hails from Winchester.
By evening, I’d forgotten all about school mums, planetariums and old mates, and I was more concerned about finishing my book and finding out whodunnit?
On page 306 of my book, right in the middle it said (in all CAPS and bold):
WINCHESTER
I checked out the planetarium and ordered four tickets for a nice family outing during half-term .
This morning I told little kid about it and he said he didn’t want to go.