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HEALTH WARNING! THESE MEN ARE DANGEROUS!
WARNING: ROBBERY IN PROGRESS!Today, March 19 2012, is a crucial day for the future health of this nation and my family. At 1.20pm today our daughter, Sarah, finally gets her PET scan after waiting...
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SPINELESS, GUTLESS & USELESS : LET THE NHS SALE BEGIN!
Murder by Stealth: The Slow Death of the NHS.ARE WE ALL HAPPY NOW? YOU'LL 'REPEAL' THE NHS BILL 'AT THE FIRST OPPORTUNIIY?'WHAT - LIKE THE WAY YOU PROMISED TO TAKE THE RAILWAYS BACK INTO PUBLIC...
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RESPECT REJECTS AUSTERITY
Stitch That, New Labour!It’s been a bad week for our family, but, on a brighter scale, a bad week for the Coalition. After a delay of three weeks, whilst competing Hospital Trusts argued out through...
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GOODBYE FREEDOM: WELCOME TO THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Now we really are 'all in it together'I started this blog a couple of years ago more out of a sense of self-satisfied happiness; it was to be about the joys (or otherwise) of being an unknown scribe,...
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Back to The Prose-face
Looking back over the futile anger of my entries in recent weeks I realise that the world had got the better of me. You can no more stick your politics down someone's throat than you can religion. All...
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POETRY: THE GREAT LEVELLER
CHOCOLATE, PASSION & POETRY Life, as Forrest Gump was wont to mutter, can be like a box of chocolates. Yet sometimes you eat the second layer and the box looks empty. There are not so happy times,...
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The Season of Funerals Rolls On
ONCE MORE, THE MUSIC DIES AWAY ...Our cultural lives are like a marathon. We run along shoulder to shoulder with our inspirational heroes. Then, to our sudden shock, find that whilst we are surprised...
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Reeling Back The Years
Cole Thomas: The Voyage of Old AgeAGE IS A NUMBER …Which grows larger every day ...It was with great regret this week, returning home after a short break in Derbyshire to celebrate our 46th wedding...
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THE MUSIC OF FRIENDSHIP
Inspiration, Music, Chance and Friendship.A pitta the action: Bainton and Iles, circa 2009Next to writing, my greatest passion has always been music. My dear departed Mother, bless her, was a talented...
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The Credits Roll Again
THE SCREEN FADES … THE SOUNDTRACK PLAYS ONDonald Dunn, musician, 24 November 1941; - 13 May 2012From left: Dunn, Booker T, Steve Cropper and Al Jackson. Photograph: Michael Ochs ArchivesWhen I was at...
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BOTTOM OF THE HEAP
PIRATES AND ROBBERS: CAPITAL RULES…Milton Friedman was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite monetarist. He said “What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to...
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FASHION: A KICK IN THE TEETH
Catwalk ClownsThose of us among Britain’s belt-tightened wage slaves who opt for The Guardian for non-tabloid, in-depth journalism on the parlous economic state of the world, mainly to avoid swelling...
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BREAD AND CIRCUSES!
PASS ME THE BUCKETWhen you look back at the punk explosion of the 1970s and some of the healthy, gutsy agit-prop pop and the Tory-infested, wide-shouldered 80s, your mind wanders even further back to...
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The Season of Funerals Never Ends
SOMETHING POIGNANT THIS WAY COMESRay Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012). How sad and how strange to type those words and those dates, yet Ray lived a full, long life, and he gave a part of it to...
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Article 10
TAKE THAT – AND BANK IT!The Condemlition’s hypocrisy road show rumbles on. OK, there’s an unpleasant element of hypocrisy when you look closely at Jimmy Carr, who has made a great deal of his living...
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A FOUR PINT EVENT
SMALL PEOPLE: BIG VICTORYFor one of those brief periods before the rain starts again, the sun is shining this morning. It’s quiet here at the desk, all but for an insistent, buzzing fly which keeps...
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LOVE KIDS? YOU LAZY SENTIMENTALIST!
The New Ideologues: Desperate, Sick and Evil;Where do these nasty political shysters get their regressive ideas?LET’S PUNISH THE CHILDREN FIRST:According to the rabid monetarist Tory MP Nick Boles, the...
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THE BURDEN OF REMEMBRANCE
The Struggle to RememberThere’s currently a cruel though amusing T-shirt you can buy with a tongue-in-cheek slogan which goes something like‘Help for Alzheimer’s Sufferers!When do We Want it?Want...
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Missiles or Scanners? Make Your Choice!
SCANNING OUR NHSIt’s laudable. It’s noble; it’s the kind of thing good people come up with and it represents the finest aspects of human endeavour – the way we should think about one another, the way...
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GRUMPY OLD POETRY
Sometimes Being Grumpy Works …In the time it has taken me to write this, J.K. Rowling, Ian McEwan and Stephen King have probably sold another 500 books between them, but that’s only a modest estimate....
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