You know you’re getting old when you count up the number of Tory prime ministers who have held sway during your lifetime: in my case, it is Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Cameron, May, and now Johnson. Ten of them. And I had no ideological connection with any of them. I loathed them all. The prime of my life has been under the aegis of Tory prime ministers.
 
But with Johnson, it is fundamentally different. Churchill was a racist and imperialist. Eden, despite being MP for my own constituency, was a wuss. Macmillan, an avowedly one-nation-Tory, was a manipulator, only one-nation while it served his purposes. Heath was out of his depth. Thatcher did not even believe in society. Major was thrown in at the deep end and could never get out. Cameron was a chancer. May was the architect of the hostile environment and a church-goer.
 
But Johnson? He makes you yearn for the old days.
 
The days when Churchill claimed that mustard gas was permissible against “inferior races”; when Eden invaded Egypt; when Macmillan “laid down his friends for his life”; when Douglas-Hume did – well, what did he do?
 
When Heath took on the unions with the 3-day week; when Major did fuck-all; when Cameron introduced austerity and called the EU referendum; when May presided over the Windrush scandal and universal credit.
 
Ah! Those were the days.
 
No thinking person could have any ideological empathy with any of these people who seem to rise inexorably to the top of the Tory party. But my loathing for Johnson is not based on ideology. Or at least not exclusively or even primarily.
 
It is the result of his corruption, incompetence and cronyism, his lying and his selfishness, his ego and vanity.
 
He is not solely a bad prime minister. He is a seriously unpleasant human being. He is a spoilt brat who has been handed everything he wanted until, suddenly and without warning, he was called on to take responsibility.
 
He was responsible for the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. But not responsible for it. It was the EU.
 
He was responsible for playing down the Covid crisis, claiming that this was an opportunity which Britain would be “brave’ enough to exploit. But this was because he was misled by “the science”.
 
He was responsible for God knows how many children. But they are not his responsibility.
 
He was responsible for a frightening alliance with Putin and the Russian funding oligarchs. But that was Labour.
 
He was responsible for some of the most outrageously racist writing I have ever read. But not his responsibility: it was taken out of context.
 
I could go on. And given half a chance, I will. But right now, the evidence is too much. Even the BBC is beginning to recognise the signs.
 
This man must go. And so should this shambles of a cabinet.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: In these physically distanced times, tickets for strong quartet concerts are at a premium. But I have managed to acquire one for the Carducci performing Beethoven Opus 95 and Shostakovich String Quartet #9. I have been listening to the Amadeus recording of the former and the Kodaly version of the latter in preparation for an evening in the Holy Trinity Church, where I am not a regular worshipper.
 

Yesterday was August 30th. It was devoted to celebrations of the birthday of Ted Williams and John Peel. A long lunch, England overcoming Pakistan in the T20 slugfest, followed by the Sox beating the World Series Champions at a deserted Fenway by way of Raphael’s 4 for 4 and a debut home run from young Bobby Dalbec, the first since Daniel Nava’s Grand Slam a decade ago. A good day.
 
But t’was not ever thus. In fact, this shortened season has been no fun at all. No Mookie, no Sale, no Price and now no Mitch. More than half way through the season, we sit bottom of the AL East, with a 12-22 record. We are 11.5 games back
 
How does this member of the Red Sox Nation find consolation at such a time?
 
With a wonderful new(ish) book from Gabriel Schechter entitled Spanking the Yankees: 366 Days of Bronx Bummers.
 
In the UK, we call this a ‘bog book’. I’m not sure whether there is an American equivalent of this expression but you can probably guess that it is a book for opening at random and dipping into on the lavatory.
 
It is a detailed record of cock-ups and disasters which have beset the Evil Empire month by month and day by day.
 
For those who have suffered over the centuries from the smug superiority of the Yankee franchise, and this includes not only obnoxious Boston fans like myself but also the millions out there who have no allegiance to the Sox, this makes for great reading. It has extended my morning ablutions schedule significantly because there is so much material out there, and now it’s all in here.
 
It’s page after page of gaffes on and off the field. Defeat from the jaws of victory. Bad trades (remember DLsbury?) and poor plays. From Opening Day to the off-season.
 
I’ve been starting each morning with these healthy doses of schadenfreude, smiling and chuckling at each entry. And then the book comes with me to the office where the indexes allow me to revisit specific events, particular players and on-this-day embarrassments.
 
I commend this to anyone who loves baseball and hates the Yankees. Even Yankees fans can benefit, because it proves what many of us have known all along.
 
Yankees really do suck.
 
I am pathetically grateful to Fawn Neun of Summer Game Books for sending me a review copy. Thanks Fawn.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: My eldest daughter recently sent me a playlist of the stuff she listens to in her evenings on the veranda in Cary, North Carolina. Amongst the dross (sorry Vix!)was a track from a duo called Mandolin Orange. Serendipitously, a day or so later, a Deadhead friend also emailed me a few links to the same band. And now I have half a dozen albums and several live shows. Check out Wildfire and their cover of Boots of Spanish Leather and then listen to … well, pretty much everything.

Prompted by an excellent Radio 4 dramatization of The Plague, I have been re-reading the Camus novel for the first time in maybe thirty years. And this time round, for me, it is more powerful, more frightening and more relevant, on both a literal and an allegorical reading, than before.
 
Before, I read it as an allegory of the struggle against Fascism. I was not alone in this; indeed, I was in good company. Barthes, Sartre, de Beauvoir all saw it this way, and criticised Camus for using allegory to address such an issue. Too trivial, too slight, too frivolous for such gravity. It is a criticism which could equally be levelled at Orwell.
 
This time, I found myself – it was neither conscious nor deliberate – reading it as a straightforward narrative, taking it at face value.
 
Of course, I noted the parallels and prescience, permitting myself a smile of recognition at references to face masks, to death counts, to the quarantine precautions, the dithering and delays of the authorities.
 
But it is also a story, and a damn good one.
 
It is the history of an outbreak of plague in the town of Oran.
“The town itself, let us admit, is ugly”. Its inhabitants are bored and boring, living an abstract, tedious, routine-filled existence; what Heidigger called “everydayness”.
 
But Jean Tarrou, the communist turned pacifist who is instrumental in the volunteer resistance, records, “I am determined to be the historian of those who have no history”.
 
The plague, the Absurd, transforms the everydayness. Gradually, reluctantly, the Oranians come to realise that they must succumb or fight. No-one can remain indifferent to the indifference of the universe.
 
At first, the townsfolk complain about petty, personal discomforts. They are “like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves”. They believe that their own specific suffering is more important than the communal suffering.
 
But soon, they begin to recognise that the plague erases each individual life: “a feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike”.
 
It is a community issue, that it must be fought by each individual on behalf of all. The protagonist, Doctor Rieux, is one of those who choose to fight, to rebel, on behalf of the community.
 
Rieux and his comrades pursue their fight against this suffering each in his own way. But each of them knows that it is futile. Each of them knows that it increases the chance of contracting the disease.
 
Of course, each of them also knows that they can contract the plague even if they do not nothing.
 
So they choose to do something in the full knowledge that it is useless, futile, pointless.
 
It is a meaningless choice. But the plague frees them to make it.
 
Because, as Camus wrote, it is “the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference which will nourish (human) greatness”. 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Emma Swift's Blonde On The Tracks. It's the songs of course, but it's also and primarily that voice.

“Why is everyone criticising Starmer? He hasn’t done anything …”. That’s a Bob Hope joke from more than half a century ago. Hope was talking about Eisenhower but the gag came to mind recently whilst perusing the latest YouGov opinion poll. Labour is nine points behind the Conservatives, and Starmer is behind both Johnson and Don’t-Know in the Best Prime Minister stakes.
 
Given that the same polls rate this administration as the worst in living memory, given that Starmer won the Labour leadership primarily because of his so-called electability, and given that even the Tory press is giving him an easy ride, one might have thought that a significant lead would be … well, a given.
 
After all, as Tony Blair said dismissively when Jeremy Corbyn was a few points ahead in the polls, “yes, but he should be 20 points up.”
 
Yes, he should have been. And so should Starmer be now.
 
Each day brings more news of government corruption and cronyism. Each morning we hear of more statistical manipulation and lies. Day after day, we learn of yet another fiasco, yet more failures.
 
But we don’t hear the ‘forensic’ voice of Keir Starmer. He’s gone to ground.
 
It’s not the message. There isn’t really one at all. So it must be the medium.
 
True, the occasional tweet sneaks out. Now and again, an article under his byline will appear, usually behind a paywall. Once in a while, we will see him claiming that some government perfidy requires ‘looking at’. But that’s about it.
 
And his deputy and the rest of his shadow cabinet are also keeping schtum.
 
The bastards who screwed us in 2017 are kicking up a fuss. Pay them off.
 
Eliminate factionalism by expelling every faction. Except ours.
 
Don’t mention Dawn Butler. Until Boris Johnson does.
 
We’re only nine points down. Don’t rock the boat.
 
Trouble is, the boat is already rocking. Membership is declining. Some are resigning. More are allowing their membership to lapse. Amongst those who will remain, there is a sense of despondency and depression.
 
So is Labour a lost cause?

Not necessarily.  In the latest Survation poll, which was published at the same time as YouGov, Labour was four points ahead amongst those under 65. But amongst over-65s, the Tories had a 46 point lead. (Hence the nine point lead overall.)
 
As a man in his seventies, I have often thought there was case to be made for 65 being the cut-off age for voting. Those who vote should have a vested interest in the future rather than the status quo.
 
Nearly 50% of Tory voters are over 65, compared to just 14% of Labour voters.
 
So I have a modest proposal for you.

We don’t need to dissolve the people and elect a new one.
 
We don’t need proportional representation or single transferable votes.
 
We simply need to make voting the sole prerogative of those between 16 and 65.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: We have just passed through the ‘Days Between’ and so Jerry has been on my mind and my turntable. Today, from the night he died, it’s Bob Weir and Ratdog at Hampton Beach. You know our love will never fade away.
 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. Friends have alerted me to the fact that it is more than 100 days since I last posted at Not Dark Yet: in other words, not a single post during the quarantine. True, I have had more time at my disposal but I have wasted these weeks. I have been musing rather than thinking, reading more than writing, drinking more than eating. And those issues which I cannot discuss, I have consigned to silence. Now, due to popular demand, I give you what has kept me going during these 100 days or so:
 
 
Angst and Anger
 
But primarily anger.
 
Anger at the sheer incompetence of this government – the lies, the procrastination, the inability to ensure the most elementary of precautions – testing? tracing? supporting? - until it is too late.
 
Anger at the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, based on a malicious conflation of legitimate concerns about the actions of the Israeli government with anti-semitism. It allows Netanyahu free rein to continue with his annexation. It diminishes the cause it claims to espouse.
 
Anger at the media – not solely for what it is telling us, but what it is not.
 
 
Words
 
Other people’s words. As ever, I have been reading and re-reading a great deal of crime novels and thrillers, notably Don Winslow’s The Force, a morally nuanced policier which I commend to everyone. But I have also managed to force my brain into gear in order to understand Carolyn Steedman’s History and The Law: A Love Story. What I relished in these essays on the minutiae of interactions between the two disciplines is the focus on the lives and works of ordinary people. It is what Carolyn does best, and never better.
 
I have also been listening to words. Podcasts and audio books are the soundtrack to my daily route marches around the parks of Leamington. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I read as a chore as a young man, illuminated a couple of cloudy days along the river. Joyce promised that his life and writing would be based on “exile, silence, and cunning”.
 
I wish those words had registered with me 50 years ago.
 
​
Music
 
The lethargy-inducing impact of the lockdown has been mitigated significantly by Bob. First, he gave us three pre-releases from the new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. And then, the new album itself. If we thought the plethora of allusions in Murder Most Foul or the exquisiteness of I Contain Multitudes was sufficient raw material for exegesis, it’s because we hadn’t then heard Key West. I am still playing this album a couple of times a day, still learning and enjoying as it reveals more on each listening.
 
(By the way, was anyone else confused by Bob’s reference to playing the Moonlight Sonata in F# rather than C# minor? I have since discovered that F# is urban slang for ‘fuck off’! Not many people know that. Or perhaps you did.)
 
 
Family, Friends and Other Bubbles
 
The family are fine – thanks for asking. I have now managed to see my Mum, now in her 94th year, three times face-to-face or mask-to-mask. She lives alone and has no wifi or internet skills. It’s been tough.
 
Most friends, of course, have the means to communicate virtually. And we have relished the apéros, the conversations, the debates on policy, the projections of the 60 game baseball season, the test-and-trace initiatives, the concerns over diminishing cellars, the celebrations of Coventry City’s return to the Championship, and a million other things.
 
Only once have I consciously broken the quarantine advice. Black Lives Matter is a cause which cannot wait and Jill and I were proud to be part of the demonstration in our town. It was, most of the time, physically distanced but emotionally and politically close.
 
The pubs can open on Saturday. Chances are I will call in to one or more during the day, even though my instincts and “the science” say we are re-opening too early.
 
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

​“The last quartets of Beethoven are mistakes, absurdities, the reveries of a sick genius. I would burn everything I have composed if someday I wrote anything resembling such chaos.”
 
Being an aficionado of sick genius and musical chaos, I confess I first read these words of George Onslow, the “French Beethoven”, as a compliment. I thought it an honest recognition that everything written before would pale into embarrassing insignificance.
 
Having now heard a piece by Onslow, his string quartet in C minor, Opus 8 No.1, I acknowledge that the world of musicography would not be diminished in any way had Onslow burned everything he had composed.
 
It was a clever juxtaposition by the Consone String Quartet at the Pump Rooms last Friday, as the familiarity of Haydn (Opus 9 No 4) and the banality of the Onslow provided a marked contrast with the sublime complexity of Beethoven’s Opus 131.
 
I first heard the C# minor half a century ago, in a recording by the Amadeus. Since then, I have heard it performed many times – notably by the Petersen, the Emerson and the Lindsays – but the Amadeus has remained my go-to version. Until now.
 
The Consone play instruments with gut strings using early 19th century bows and extracted new (to me at least) sounds without losing the warmth and complexity of the score with its long emotional sweep from opening fugue (beautifully articulated by the Consone) to its charging, dashing, careering finale.
 
Of course, although there are seven movements, the quartet is played without pause. It is seamless, fluid and, ultimately, cathartic. And last Friday, the Consone owned it.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The Consone has not yet recorded the 131. But on Friday, in the break between the Onslow and the Beethoven, I managed to acquire a CD of Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia. I used to have this on vinyl, and although I’m a Kyril Kondrashin kinda guy when it comes to Dmitri, I have been playing this “essential” re-release and can confirm that it is exactly that: essential.  

Tomorrow, Jewish members of the Warwick and Leamington Constituency Labour Party are organising a vigil outside the Town Hall to support Holocaust Memorial Day. Implicit in this, of course, is support for anti-semitism, anti-islamophobia and anti-racism. It will start at 11am, and I'll see you there.
 
This year, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, anti-semitism is at the top of the agenda. Or rather, alleged anti-semitism in the Labour Party is at the top of the agenda, with all leadership candidates agreeing to the 10 ‘pledges’ – they are actually demands – put forward by the Board of Deputies.

​You may think, as do I together with Naom Chomsky and Jewish Voice for Labour and Jews Sans Frontières amongst others that there are some issues here. The most succinct rebuttal I have come across is from @blepharon which I circulate here for those who do not follow him on Twitter or read The Canary. 

I am disappointed that our leadership contenders have 'signed up' to these 'pledges'. I am particularly disappointed that a man of the legal calibre of Starmer and the instinctive Labourism of Long-Bailey have kow-towed.

But we understand that this is not to do with an appeal to the Labour membership. It is everything to do with appeasing the liberal elite, who have chosen to use this issue as their focus for attacks on a socialist agenda.

It is a shame that this trivialisation of the issue should be the case. But tomorrow, at 11am, we shall remind ourselves of the real issue.

The holocaust. The six million who died - horribly - under the Third Reich.

My mother, now in her 90s, is one of the last of the generation who was alive when this happened. But we have told our children who will tell our grandchildren who, I hope, will tell their children.

מיר וועלן ניט פאַרגעסן​

Today from the everysmith vaults: I am listening to Bob's shows from 2000 version of the NET. I saw several of these shows in September of that year, but the one that is playing today is from April, in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not solely the acoustic set, but that band is one of the best he has assembled. 

In the summer of 2018, during the third test between Australia and South Africa, the TV cameras at Capetown showed Cameron Bancroft applying sandpaper to the ball. This attempt to make the ball swing unnaturally was and remains one of the most egregious examples of cheating in a game which prides itself on its ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour.
 
Rightly, it took down not solely Bancroft, but also the Australian captain, Steve Smith, and the vice-captain, David Warner. All three were suspended, sent home, and banned from the game. The coach, Darren Lehmann, also resigned from his post.
 
Throughout the world of cricket, the shock and anger was palpable. And it was no consolation for English fans that the culprits were Australian. It was an assault on the game itself and we were all affected.
 
We now know that, at the same time, the other great summer game, baseball, was also under threat.
 
The Astros were stealing signs, using a video camera in centre field. They did so during their World Series-winning 2017 and again in 2018.
 
And the man who was ‘an active participant in the scheme’ was the Astro’ bench coach.
 
Alex Cora.
 
Alex, who won his successive World Series ring with us in 2018, is no longer in charge at the Red Sox, who acted quickly and definitively when the MLB report was published.
 
The Sox did not wait for the verdict of the parallel investigation into the steal-signing allegations in during the annus mirabilis of 2018.
 
They fired him. I guess even Alex realised that there was no future for him. Not at Fenway. Probably not in baseball.
 
Why? Why did he do it?
 
Because the pressure for success from owners and fans is so overwhelming? Because the need to win is more important than the game itself? Because the distinction between success and failure is so small that the tiniest advantage is worth the risk?
 
Barry Bonds was the greatest player of his generation before he embarked on his steroids. Lance Armstrong would have been a Tour de France winner without blood transfusions. Steve Smith is one of the greatest players cricket has seen.
 
The Red Sox would probably have won the World Series without steal-signing. So would the Astros the year before.
 
The outrage we feel is moral outrage. The individuals  involved have been named and shamed, the Series championships won by the Astros and the Sox will be accompanied by an asterisk.
 
But the loss is the game itself. And on its behalf, I am not just disappointed. I am angry.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Chris Forsyth from The Colony in Woodstock at the turn of the year. A great performance and a great, warm recording. 
 

​


Those of you who went to sleep at all on the night of Thursday 12th of December awoke to the news that the country had an unassailable Conservative majority and that even those Tories with whom one could actually have a conversation were no longer in the party or Parliament. All liberal-minded Conservatives had been purged. In the face of this, Labour appeared helpless. Its attempts to bring the country together with a balanced policy was seen as obfuscation. Defeat was inevitable; the scale of that defeat was not. But as Corbyn announced his intention to step down, Labour HQ emails talked of a ‘state of numbness’ and called for a ‘period of reflection’.
 
It occurred to me, as I sat in my very particular state of physical and emotional numbness, drinking red wine on the Friday lunchtime, that thirty years before I had been lying in a coma in the Midland Centre for Neurosurgery and Neurology, midway between two brain operations. In the course of my period of reflection, I considered two things. The first was whether I would prefer to be still in a comatose state, and thus unaware of the unravelling of British democracy; and secondly, the fact that one of the most sophisticated centres of neurology in Europe is now a housing estate. It was the only specialist facility of its kind outside London, but it fell foul of the Conservative Government’s cost-cutting policies in 1996.
 
The NHS and MCNN (specifically Professor Edward Hitchcock) saved my life in 1989 and 1990, and my post-election musings moved on to consider how, despite the rhetoric, the Tories have always looked to undermine the NHS. Austerity in name was the boast of the Tory/LibDem coalition. But austerity has always been the agenda hidden behind the rhetoric.
 
The carefully structured attack on the NHS – starve it, criticise it, privatise it – was our priority at the last election. Our instincts were sound and they were supported by reams of paperwork concerning the trade talks with the US, articles by senior cabinet ministers, and the facts.
 
But it wasn’t enough to overcome the fatuous and simplistic ‘Get Brexit Done’, a slogan straight out of the Steve Bannon/Donald Trump playbook. You may think, as I do, that when a policy is supported unequivocally by Trump, Putin and Johnson, there is clearly something amiss. A great deal amiss, in fact – and I don’t refer to the great deal allegedly negotiated by Boris Johnson against the odds.
 
Here in Leamington, there was no room for argument. We had as our sitting MP the estimable Matt Western. He is a local candidate, independent-minded, intelligent, personable and trusted across the political divides.
 
Yet he managed a majority of less than a thousand, pushed close by a rich-boy Thatcherite Tory from Windsor who bought a house in Warwick and claimed to be local on the basis of his new home and the fact that he went to university locally.
 
I do not need a period of reflection to know for whom I will vote next time. But if the centrists in the Labour Party are to be believed, many will vote for or against the new leader of the Labour Party. ABC, they say – anyone but Corbyn.
 
I am not a Corbynista nor a Corbynite. But I admire his principles and his  policies even as I am exasperated by his stubbornness and refusal to play the game. A different word here, a an emphasis there, and the likes of Kuenssberg, Peston and the JLM would have no factual grounds for their hysterical headlines, no opportunity for wilful misunderstanding. But that’s Corbyn for you. His strengths are his weaknesses when they are being presented by the daily Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph, Times and yes, even the Guardian.
 
As Alexei Sale points out, the real difference between Johnson and Corbyn is this: “The only people who like Johnson are those that don’t know him. And, conversely, the only people who like Corbyn are those that know him”.
 
Trouble is, in these days of right wing populism, it’s all about reaching out personally, giving the journalists what they want and avoiding serious questioning. This is why, if the ageing, nativist, nationalist, out-of-touch Tory membership got anything right, it was voting in Johnson as leader.
 
They now have five years to regret that decision, but the cost to the country could be immeasurable.
 
For me, the next five years will be five years of struggle against the privatisation of the NHS, the erosion of our human rights, climate change, racism and the return to free market economics.
 
There is more, a hell of a lot more, but this will do for a start.

Happy New Year!

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob has graced us with his presence only once this year, but his fall tour in the States has been remarkable. Currently listening to the residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York. The stunning new arrangement of Not Dark Yet is only one of the many highlights.

When Matt Western, our local MP, his face full of gravitas (not a trace of a smirk), approached the Speaker on Saturday afternoon, he made one of his most telling announcements of his parliamentary career. “The ayes to the right: 322” he declared. “The noes to the left: 306.”
 
He did not, as he might justifiably have done, then raise an index finger in the direction of the prime minister. But I, virtually and triumphantly, did.
 
Not because the passing of the Letwin amendment throws the Brexit nonsense into yet more confusion – although it does.
 
Not because it is yet another defeat for a prime minister who is uniquely unqualified for (and should be disqualified from) his office – although it is.
 
And not because I am enjoying this saga of shenanigans, this cycle of crassness, any more than anyone else – although, perversely, I am.
 
It is because this decision is too important to be decided by lies and ego. It is too important to be rushed through without due diligence.(Even the most academic of our MPs cannot be expected to read and digest thousands of words of gnomic prose in such a short time.)
 
And it is because, underpinning the whole Brexit debate, is the hard-/alt- right agenda which will see us denying workers’ rights, diminishing and deregulating our economy, opening ourselves to a Trump take-over of our NHS and other institutions.
 
Except, paradoxically, in Northern Ireland, which will continue to be subject to EU Law, including the European Court of Justice.
 
Lucky them.
 
I have no idea what will happen in the coming hours, days, weeks and months.
 
The Withdrawal Agreement Bill was released at 8pm last night. I didn’t read it. With a World Series about to start, I need to take every opportunity for sleep when I can. But nor can parliament be expected to take the most important decision for generations at such short notice.
 
And nor can parliament be expected to make the decision alone. At the very least, a confirmatory referendum is required.
 
Bizarrely, Labour is now the only party to commit to this.
 
It has taken months to arrive at this position, but it is the correct one. I applaud Matt Western, who was one of the first Labour members to come out in favour when so many of us were sceptical.
 
But that’s why we voted for him: for his judgement. And why, when the General Election is called, we will do so again.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I am told that an obscure Dead forum contained the following exchange over the weekend. Someone commented how nice it was to walk into a restaurant and hear Wake Of The Flood playing. To which someone else replied “was that Max’s in Leamington?” It wasn’t. But I am playing it in the office now if anyone wants to call by.