Dear Prime Minister

This is the full panoply of Hart District Council's celebratory efforts for the Queen's 90th Birthday celebrations...

...you may struggle to see them, here let me help you...

...is that better? It's pathetic isn't it? I'm not sure Aldershot bothered at all and I didn't see anything in Farnborough at the weekend.

In the golden, olden days, there would have been bunting strewn across the road like red, white and blue snow, there would have been flags as big as horses from every beribboned lamp post and the - now absent - telegraph poles, shops would have decked themselves out in colour-coordinated decorations and prepared shop window displays that had more to do with royalty, nation and empire than they had to do with the goods the shops actually sold.

It would have been in every town, village and hamlet in the land. We would have had a public holiday, schools would have had a day off, and parishes would have had a day of events with a church service and a hog-roast.

I don't blame the local councils, we all know they've had their budgets cut and cut again by the inadequate cockwombles in Westminster - that's you, as if you didn't know, and under the capitalist system that's been replacing democracy since 1979, they are supposed to expect help from the 'private sector' on these occasions, 'private enterprise' is supposed to step-up to the plate.

The Estate Agents had a go, those are paper discs being shredded in the light-breeze of the last few days, and a couple of reels of transparent plastic mesh (taffeta?), while another shop did have a bucket outside with balloons on sticks to which they had attached a dozen or so cardboard masks of her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh! Very fetching.

You see Prime Minister, the private sector is all about the bottom line, and while they might pay for some gardening work in exchange for disfiguring hoardings on roundabouts, they won't shell out for a bunch of decorations with no 'guaranteed return in the investment'.

That's why we used to have a general taxation system in which the rich (who benefit from the efforts of the poor, or the inherited-wealth born of the efforts of slavery, land clearance, enclosures...) paid enough for local authorities to be given enough to do enough in situations like this.

This was at one end of town; it probably represents a week's child-protection budget!
Or a penny on the council-tax?

Compared to the Silver Jubilee celebrations (two years before the rot set-in at Westminster), both the Golden and Diamond jubilee celebrations have been muted, damp squibs.

It is a sign of the end of 'Empire', the end of 'great' Britain; even Margret Thatcher (the architect of all you stand for) started to distance herself from some of her core policies in her final post-retirement speeches. She hated what you were doing with housing.

Yet you keep banging on about privatisation, forcing schools to convert to academies, out-sourcing, making-do and mending with Chinese money and French technical expertise (which half the company's own board thinks they don't have!), breaking-up the Health Service...

...what are you going to do with all the money you're taking out of the economy Prime Minister? Run off to China and build a nice house in the hills a long way from pollution centres and rising oceans? Their leader is becoming more dictatorial every day, kidnapping publishers from Hong Kong, taking overall control of the armed forces...he's not going to tolerate a bunch of Western toffs buying-up land there, he's too busy making sure his mates buy-up London...and Toronto and New York...!

Although, republicans would probably argue that celebrating the birthday of a highly privileged woman who wants for nothing and gets the best of everything is anathema in itself! If she fails to make it to a hundred will the Household Division take the Royal physicians outside and shoot them? But that's another post for another day.

You command a dying world Prime Minister...badly.

Dear Prime Minister

Bit of a departure from the Euro-vote or your general level of inadequate cockwomblery today Prime Minister, but it contains within it several pointers as to why the 'Establishment' lacks the trust, respect or support of the people (even 'its' people) these days.

Hart District Council Offices - Fleet, Hampshire

I saw these from the local library, parked outside the offices of Hart District Council (Tory) the other day and - being unable to read the writing in front of them - took a shot to enlarge it at home. Imagine my surprise when I read the notice to be 'Police Only'. My surprise being based on two facts I happened to have at my fingertips.

One: That there is a perfectly good (or reasonably saveable...I must confess I don't know the condition of the interior) police station not 300 meters from the location of these vehicles, with parking out the front for a dozen or so vehicles and a vehicle pound attached at the side/back of the building with garaging and outdoor parking for another 20+ vehicles of all sizes, and that two: There is a shortage of parking spaces in the town in question - Fleet in Hampshire.

Indeed, when the council recently 'renovated' the car parks and high street, an exercise which suggests a return to former splendor, they managed to reduce the total  number of spaces available and then increase the number of spaces still available as wholly dedicated to unloading or disabled drivers. The overall change wasn't great, about 14, 18 mabe 20 spaces...something like that, but any reduction would seem to be daft as car-ownership continues to rise, and when also you consider that the reduction in parking spaces was accompanied by an announcement of more ticket-issuing traffic patrols!

Now, Prime Minister...we 'the people' have paid for that police station and the land it sits on, we have paid for the library and council offices, that land and the land the car parks sit on, we - technically - own the spaces down the high-street, yet the people we pay to administer our lives and meet our needs as citizens, whilst keeping us safe, have clearly conspired to punitively tax us, by deceit, through manipulation of the available parking, the regulations around that parking and their enforcement?

Tired old 1970's two-tiered, ramped, concrete lump

If you think I'm being silly, let me take you next door to Rushmoor Borough Council (Tory), where many years ago (mid-1990's), someone thought it would be a good idea to hold a car-boot sale on an underused car-park in the centre of a roundabout in Farnborough town centre on Sunday afternoons. Yes- the very same Farnborough as the one with the invisible, inaccessible high-rise, no-entry, or exit car park.

This proved quite popular; Rushmoor has a lot of poverty among the dormitory'd city-types, due to the old GLC-overspill housing projects, so a little Sunday outing to buy or gossip over other people's stuff - they don't really need - is as close to an outing as you can get with a fiver, on an overcast Sunday.

As a result there was a short period of about 20 minutes just after mid-day when some...how shall I put it...'undisciplined' vehicle-parking would occur the other side of the road in the Council Offices car park. I mean, literally; 20 minutes. Once the eBay bottom-feeders had been and gone, it all calmed-down to the leisurely pace of an odd coming and a steady going.

Enjoy your free parking at our expense! Rushmore BC

Yet instead of turning a blind-eye to what was no real problem at all, the council (whose staff enjoy free parking there, all week), panicked, got over-exited, threw all their toys out of the pram and decided to introduce Sunday parking charges, in all car parks, all day, on a Sunday! As far as I am aware, that car-boot sale and those parking charges are both still extant.

Again, we the people own the land that the offices and car parks are located on, we allow council staff to enjoy free parking as a 'perk' on top of their salaries (everyone else has to pay Monday-Sunday), and again bear in mind that Rushmoor were advertising an evening seminar the other week with wine and canapés (for budding Landlords and people trying to beat the buy-to-let mortgage changes) with...you guessed it...Free Parking!

Left - Of course 'Permit Holders A' work for us, but we have to pay to park on our land!

 

Right - Nanny State, Police State, Fascist State...call it what you will; Orwell would recognise it. They'll be printing the Highway Code on curb-stones next!

I said at the start that there were several pointers to the breakdown in the relationship between citizen and state (or 'authority') in this, and while it does read like one of those 'old git' celebs on BBC2, whinging about nothing, there is substance here as well.

The fact that you can see clearly see the 'one law for them (you) and another law for everyone else (us)' rule in action with both these situations.

The fact that you blame 'Austerity' for needing to cut taxes for the rich (despite the fact that it was rich Bankers who got us in the current mess), yet then accept the raising of those missing tax-pounds by further attacking the poor, even the not so poor, with underhand tactics such as the above are both bloody good reasons for the citizenry ceasing to trust or respect you; you who would rule over us.

Fleet Police Station - day-time only service for years, now shut-up and padlocked

Thirdly, the reason the police feel the need for those parking spaces to be reserved for them at the council offices is because the police station is actually all locked-up and derelict, and despite dedicated parking spaces, often Fleet (a largish dormitory with an existing night-life behavioral problem and a plethora of hot-hatched, wide-boys, with exhausts worth more than the rest of their cars) is without a proper police presence.

Indeed the recent spate of day-time burglaries blamed on career criminals dropping off the M3 or having a day-away round the M25, is probably in no small part due to the fact that the town is all but undefended.

In the 'States this is the sort of stuff that might lead a bunch of 'Rednecks' to arm themselves and take over a hunting-lodge claiming 'federal conspiracy' and muttering about lizard-aliens, over here you just get me verbally pissing in the wind, but I'll keep pissing 'till you get a face full, Prime Minister.