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TRULY AGOG
2015

May 12

Official Statement following the General Election

YES, it’s true. I can now confirm that I have accepted David Cameron’s unspoken offer to take on the portfolio for Grumpy Old Grandads in his new administration. I understand, from our leader, that if I can get 3.8 million followers I may be offered a seat in the commons but, at the moment, I am quite happy sitting out in the posh seats in the open. I was told that if I had 56 seats I would need to find 55 other stupid arses to sit on them so declined this idea too.

I intend to remain in situ for the full 5-year term and will start work almost immediately. My prime role, as I see it, is to complain, vociferously and continually, about anything and everything. My lifetime experiences mean I am fully qualified to take up this position.

As well as these blog pages, whatever that means, I also have a twitter account where you can follow my thoughts in 140 characters. I must admit 140 pages would not suffice but I intend to keep up with modern communication methods and trends.

BTW (see, got it already) I will most likely blog daily; from what I have been reading this is as healthy as a daily opening of the bowels and in many cases not dissimilar in content. My simple reason for this, the blogging not the shit, is that at my age by the following day I will have forgotten the previous one completely.

I must now go and meet with my team of extremely uncivil servants, re familiarise myself with my briefs, which I actually last pulled on after the morning bowel movement, and prepare for my first official statement. I should point out that if at any stage I do offer to resign I will make sure I am ready to ask myself not to do so and continue as before. Hat and kilt eating will not be on offer at any stage.

May 13

Safety versus enjoyment

I must point out in this my first proper statement that due to other business in the house (washing-up, cooking, cleaning, sleeping and just lolling around) and my second jobs and directorships, I can only devote an hour or so to this grumpy old granddad role each day and that will be between ten and eleven each night. In the old days, oh there I go, we would call this a late-night sitting, and sometimes an all-night sitting. Knowing what I am likely to write about, I just think it may be a good way to send both you and I to sleep.

I need to point out, at this stage, that growing old, or even being old, is a helluva adventure. By this I mean that things which used to be routine, like putting on your socks, picking your keys up off the floor, even climbing from the bath, do become an adventure. Can you stand on one leg long enough to bend and slip the sock over the foot? Should you balance yourself against the wall? Can you reach the end of your foot? Will you topple and fall? And this brings me on to my first official grumpy old moan; the nanny state we now live in. This all came about because I read the following on the BBC website, linked here

So, as a result of a report kids can no longer go to the sea and have a paddle in a safe enclosed pool. Why? Because, it seems, they might hurt themselves. Children do hurt themselves. Cuts, grazes, bruises are all part of growing up. They do not kill you but they do let you learn from your experiences. Of course I would not want any child to suffer a serious injury but I do want them  to live and not merely exist.  Oscar Wilde said that “to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people only exist, that is all”. Living involves an element of risk.

Apparently, “despite well-positioned signage warning of the risks of going on the wall, these warnings are reported to be frequently ignored”.  Do we set a precedent here? Close the M25 because drivers have ignored signs; ban all dogs from public places because some owners have ignored signs. When will it stop. If people ignore signs and have an accident, hard luck. If you tell me children don’t understand dangers I would give you a one word answer, parents. Look after your children. It’s a full time job. When my kids were young and now when I spend time with my grandchildren I hardly ever took, or take, my eyes off them. I didn’t go to the beach, sit down on the sand, pick up a book and let them go off and play. I watched non-stop or, even better, joined in. I looked out for, and warned them of, dangers I could see.  If we remove everything dangerous from our lives, apart from just existing as Mr Wilde says, we will never learn how to take care. I hate this idea that all dangers should be removed. Snow ball fights in the playground are banned; in fact schools get closed because kids might slip in the playground. Sliding around  is fun and painful though it may be, a broken wrist or arm at a young age doesn’t usually have a lasting effect.

I see the day soon when socks will carry a health warning and old men will not be able to wear them in case they fall putting them on. Old people will only be allowed to shower in case they slip getting out of the bath and old people must all carry their keys on a chain surgically attached to their anatomy. I shall rebel, I promise. I may even wear my socks in the bath and take the plug off the chain.

May 18

The Guardian of our privacy – sometimes

Just one week to go now until the Queen opens Parliament and makes her traditional speech from the throne. Such mutterings as “Philip, why didn’t you put the seat down, I almost damaged the Crown Jewels” and “Who put the Bronco on this way round” are not expected to be heard on this auspicious occasion. As usual, the monarch will simply outline what her government expects to do over the next year or so.

The monarch does indeed have a significant role to play in our constitution, although obviously an unwritten one; constitution and hence role.

This, therefore leads me neatly into my latest moan. During the phone-hacking scandal by so-called journalists at certain newspapers, The Guardian, quite correctly it seems, took a fairly righteous role. In their own words “it was the Guardian’s disclosure of the hacking of the missing Surrey schoolgirl’s phone (Milly Dowler) that finally broke open the scandal. They were, as far as I can see, horrified that journalists should illegally obtain private conversations, texts, emails and they were also horrified at the extent of the investigations that followed stating that it was “unusual in its sheer scale: more than three years of police work; 42,000 pages of crown evidence; seven months of hearings; up to 18 barristers in court at any one time; 12 defendants facing allegations of crime spreading back over a decade”.

How come then that the same paper spends ten years, some say £400,000, trying to publish someone’s private correspondence? OK, the correspondence came from the heir to our throne, the self-same future monarch who will, I hope, one day, read out his government’s intentions. I agree that The Guardian has done nothing illegal, in law, and should not, in any way, be judged alongside those other papers, but morally I am less sure. The justification from Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger is that: “We fought this case because we believed – and the most senior judges in the country agreed – that the royal family should operate to the same degrees of transparency as anyone else trying to make their influence felt in public life.” By this I take it he means that if I write a private letter to my MP, or even the Prime Minister, I should expect it to be published, should a journalist so wish. Rhubarb, in fact crumbling rhubarb.

If The Guardian was trying to prove that the heir to the throne meddles in politics, I would firstly dispute the term meddle and secondly ask, so what? Are you seriously going to tell me that at any of those weekly meetings between monarch and Prime Minister, Her Majesty does not express any views at all because if you are then I am ashamed of our system of government?  Someone who has a unique 63 year experience of so many matters, national and international, should be the prime person with whom a Prime Minster discusses things.

Clarence House has said that Prince Charles was raising issues of public concern and “trying to find practical ways to address the issues”. Sounds a good idea to me. Maybe politicians should think about it? Try to find ways to address matters of public concern. Could catch on, you know.

I suppose, maybe, The Guardian just hoped there would be something in these letters that would create a scandal like the one over phone hacking. Sadly, there isn’t. The Prince is shown as a caring, intelligent, human being who knows what is going on and The Guardian has wasted money, time and, to a degree its own reputation, in following this all up.

We are too fond, in this modern age, of disrespecting an individual’s privacy for the sake of a scoop, newspaper sales or even as a way of conducting vindictive attacks on someone we know. I totally exonerate The Guardian from this last charge but, in some cases, it is just organised public bullying. It humiliates and is a sickness we need to eliminate.

Let The Prince of Wales express his concerns to whom he wants; privately, which means just between the two parties involved not the rest of the world. Privacy should be just that and it should work for all members of society who wish to express a view.