Writing to my MP: ICJP - Complicity in War Crimes

Adapted from this template letter.

Dear Mr Sharma,

My esteemed representative: I write to you today with a heavy heart, weighed down by the profound disappointment I feel in your recent actions. Your unwavering support for Israel, despite its blatant disregard for international law and its commission of war crimes, has cast a shadow over your impartiality and your ability to hold office effectively.

The recent decision by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to serve written notice to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer of their intention to prosecute UK governmental officials for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes has sent shockwaves through our nation. Your name, unfortunately, stands out locally among those who have failed to condemn these atrocities, a silence that could have serious criminal ramifications.

I urge you to reconsider your position on this matter. The evidence of Israel’s war crimes is overwhelming, documented by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Service for Human Rights. These are not mere accusations; they are indictments of a government that has flagrantly violated international law and caused immense suffering to the Palestinian people.

Your constituents, including myself, have repeatedly implored you to vote for a ceasefire. You claimed to support a ceasefire, but when you had the opportunity to cast your vote to represent your constituents, you failed to do so. Worse, you claimed you did. But “humanitarian pauses” are not enough; they merely provide Israel with a respite to regroup and continue its assault on innocent civilians. The lack of leadership and condemnation from our elected officials is a stain on our country’s reputation.

If you are unwilling to do the right thing and support a ceasefire, then I implore you to step down from your position. You have lost the trust of your constituents, and your continued presence in office is an insult to the values of peace, justice and humanity that we hold dear.

Sincerely,

Your concerned constituent,

David Marsden

Curriculum Vitae (Repetitum)

Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.

Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.

My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.

I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.

My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.

Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).

I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.

Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.

An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.

I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.

Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.

Curriculum Vitae

I’ve had a long and winding career in the fields of work and education. At one time, I was doing quite well, but it all got a bit too much and it’s been a bit of a struggle since.

Which is a shame, because it would have been nice if things had turned out better.

I was never really suited to work. It’s almost always felt like a real imposition, a drag, and a massive downer.

The money was never enough, and most of it went on social and recreational activities, which, looking back, were a means of self-medication.

It’s funny, because I really did try hard to fit in and make a fist of it from the age of twenty-nine to forty-three. A mid-life crisis along with pleurisy, a collapsed lung and an empyema, followed by a thoracotomy, two consecutive nine month long frozen shoulders and that bastard GORD (gastro-oesophageal reflux disease) almost finished me off.

Those fourteen years working in therapeutic activities for older people with dementia, and later in training and employment for with adults with psychotic diagnoses were mostly relatively happy and relatively mostly successful (repeated ultimate catastrophic failures, aside).

I went from wiping arses to leading a rehabilitation centre for some of the most disadvantaged people in society.

Before all of that I’d been completely lost. I never wanted to work, only to play music in a band. My first ever paid work was a paper round, but I regularly mis-delivered whenever there was a change to the round. The best thing about that job was getting to read all the different back page headlines and football stories before anyone else.

Dishing It Out

Following on from the pots and pans incident, my wife has decreed that the bamboo plates and bowls I bought as child-safe alternatives to our regular crockery are in fact likely coated with melamine and, therefore, toxic.

She’s probably right, although only for hot food. I had noticed that my hot food tasted a bit funny using these, but I think they’re fine for sandwiches and such.

She claims her eggs taste better (“like childhood”) cooked in our new stainless steel frying pan. I used it to cook an omelette for the first time yesterday, and it was undoubtedly the best omelette I’ve ever tasted. Is that possible?

Beer Nights In

I didn’t drink all of these beers in one sitting, or, in fact, any of them on Friday afternoon, prior to the school run.

Friday night I had a couple of the light beers.

Steeplechase Pale Ale: far too citrusy for my taste.

Deco WCIPA: another one far too citrusy for my taste.

Accompanying snacks made them drinkable.

Saturday night I had a couple of the dark beers. I had a feeling I would like these even less, but…

The Adventures of Mr Malty Baltic Porter: lovely malt flavour, rich, dark, but not bitter.

Salted Cinder Toffee Stout: I thought this might make me throw up, but it was surprisingly good, not too sweet or salty.

🍺

Hey David

Our contract with Plusnet for telephone landline and (not full) fibre broadband ends on 25 November. I started looking around for cheaper and/or better alternatives back in August. Not that there was anything wrong with Plusnet’s service. In fact, compared to Sky and TalkTalk, they’re bloody brilliant. But end of contract time usually means either a hike in price to stay loyal, or finding a new provider that offers new customers a better deal than its existing customers.

So, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a full fibre broadband option available in my area. Apparently, a company called Hey! Broadband had laid there own network of fibre-optic cables in my street, meaning that we could replace our maximum 67Mb download speeds for £28 (due to go up to £54) a month with 900Mb download and upload for 99p a month for the fist six months, and then £29 a month thereafter. It sounded too good to be true!

Of course, we don’t need ten times faster broadband, but the extra bandwidth and improved coverage would be nice. It’s not uncommon now to have one of us in a Teams meeting, another gaming on his Switch, another watching internet TV, and another doing general internet stuff. The first three, certainly, have all complained at times of lag and buffering. And even the last one has found online work meetings in my bedroom-cum-office occasionally impossible due to poor connectivity.

Hey! Broadband make it clear on their website that they cannot guarantee to be able to connect new customers to their network even if your address is within their network area. There may be unforeseen problems. They also make it clear that potential new customers should not cancel their existing broadband service before you have your new Hey! Broadband service up and running for a couple of weeks without any major issues.

So, I wasn’t expecting a smooth service. For one, I had no knowledge of when or where the new fibre-optic cables had been laid in our cul-de-sac. On the adjoining road, maybe. But I would let them sort that out. When the two engineers from Hey! Broadband’s sub-contracted installation company arrived on 2 October things didn’t immediately look hopeful. They were very friendly, but looked barely old enough to be out of school, and had no idea where the cables were outside to connect us up.

After an hour or so of looking around the local area, they came back and informed me of the good news and the bad news. The good news being that they had found a cable that we could, in theory, be connected to. The bad news being that it was on another street around the corner “about three doors away”. They would need to get permission from the homeowner to go into their premises and then somehow connect the cable up to our non-adjoining property. But I didn’t have to worry, they would take care of everything, and we should hear something within five to seven working days.

Of course, seven working days later when I phoned them, nothing at all had been done, and in fact, they asked me to provide contact details for my “neighbours” and to go knock on their door and ask permission to enter their property. Which I could have done, but as I pointed out, I don’t know them, or which house it is, and even if I did, I have no official ID to show that I’m an engineer from Hey! Broadband. I asked to speak to a manager, and was told someone would call me back later.

Days passed until another engineer appeared at my door. He was even friendlier than the previous two, and old enough to have a young child of his own. He’d already had a look around and found the cable in my next door neighbour’s outside storage cupboard (as well as my little kid’s trike in our storage cupboard, which he wondered if I still wanted, and if not, could he take it for his little kid?). I let him take the trike, and he promised someone would call later that day to book a new installation date.

No one called, although we still had the revised installation date for 31 October, and another even friendlier and slightly older engineer showed up. He actually managed to connect us up, pulling the cable through from the street next to our cul-de-sac (“the longest pull” he’d ever done), cabling it out from our neighbour’s storage cupboard up and over our communal porch and up our wall to our first floor flat. He drilled a hole in our wall (reassuring my wife that, no, the hole wouldn’t let cold air or creepy crawlies in) and set us up with new full fibre broadband.

It turned out that he’s self-employed, and does up to five of these installations a day at a £100 a go. He left school aged eleven unable to read or write. As he wired up our new modem, he told me how he had a habit, when younger, of setting fire to things. He went back to college to learn to read and write when his kids started coming home from school asking for help with school work, and he didn’t want to tell them he couldn’t do it. He didn’t ask for a trike, either.

Funnily enough, I met him again two days later around the corner from my big kid’s school while we were feeding the community cats. He was doing an installation there, or trying to. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to pull the cable through on this occasion.

We’ve had Hey! Broadband for a week without any issues at all, and full 900Mb ethernet speeds as advertised, with wifi speeds around 150Mb down and 250Mb up. No telephone landline anymore, which is no loss, as we only ever used it to answer scam calls. I’m now a [Hey! Broadband Brand Champion]heybroadband.co.uk/champion (referral code: HeyDavid M39)

Doctor's Orders

My local pharmacy: Come and get your FREE flu jab!

Me:

My local pharmacy: Come and get your FREE flu jab!

Me: I’ve come for my FREE flu jab.

My local pharmacy: That will be £16.95, please.

Me: I’ve got two text messages from you telling me it’s free.

My local pharmacy: Are you pregnant? On dialysis? Undergoing heart surgery?

Me:

My local pharmacy: Do you have asthma?

Me: Bingo!

ERROR 55 - Internal Communication Problem

Boss: Can you order a new printer for the office?

Me: Sure. *orders a new printer for the office*

Office: Did you order a new printer for the office? It’s arrived.

Me: Yes, I’ll come over and set it up.

Office: No need, we already moved the printer from the other office. And we have a tech person coming in Monday to set it up.

Break in Transmission

Last week’s swimming lesson was cancelled, and the week before that, we went away for half-term. To a very wet and wild north-east Lincolnshire right by the sea (or the Humber Estuary). With no wifi, and very poor data connectivity. In a tin can caravan.

But we all had fun, and the kids got to spend time with their grandparents who live nearby. And use their wifi.

On the night before we left I met up with a couple of my oldest and best friends, Murray and Aaron, who I hadn’t seen for ten (Aaron) and thirty (!) (Murray) years. It was really great to have a couple of pints and talk shit with them, just like the old days, as if it was only yesterday.

Any Old Pots and Pans?

Following on from the successful installation of our new front door (which my wife is now quite happy with), we now have new stainless steel pots and pans to replace the old and “dangerous” non-stick pans we had before.

My wife “read something on the internet” which said that the non-stick coatings are toxic, and so that that was the end of the matter.

Still, they are very nice new pans, even if a little more care is needed when using them to cook and clean.