Be at Politics

When I got up this morning I walked for three hours to collect water. The heavy bucket on my head made my back hurt but when I got back home I was happy to give my husband some water. We have to be careful with the water because I am too tired to walk back for more. I hope he will be fine because the water was brown and dirty. Our neighbour’s daughter has fallen ill last week. They say it is cholera. Let’s hope everything will be fine with us…

This was of course not my start of the day. I had a shower this morning, after I spend some time in the steam room and the jacuzzi in the gym. I had a cup of tea and boiled an egg for breakfast. After that I turned on the dishwasher and the washing machine. This was a regular morning apart from the jacuzzi and steam room.

I know it is a bit cheap to get your attention this way but think about the difference for a second.

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The Tories have been asked by the Libdems to clarify their flirt with the homophobic Polish Law and Justice party in the European parliament. Does David Cameron really want to join a party who saw Obama’s election as “the end of white men’s civilisation?” How much do the Tories really dislike Europe that they consider this? Read more about it here

Ken Livingstone is still dreaming of a glorious return to city hall…and in the mean time joyriding his way around London  

Nick Clegg has a new haircut and a plan to get into power

Gordon Brown is a phoney, or may be not…

And 2 million unemployed won’t keep Brown from being optimistic about Britain ’cause other countries are doing much worse. Ahum. Get a reality check please!   

I sometimes believe that I was meant to be a princess of a small tropical island destined to lie on a white beach, to be pampered by beautiful men and to lead a good but simple life. Ending up in London was just a mistake of destiny. Do you know that feeling?

This idea usually comes up when I am stuck and don’t know what to do with my writing or life in general.

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Gordon Brown has announced that he, at the end of his term in government, wants to reform public service. Better late then never, he must have thought.  What is he proposing? Brown wants to give people in England more online powers to rate their GP’s, police, councils and childcare. So from this summer patients can leave their comments about their GP’s on the NHS Choices website. A bit like the toptable and tripadvisor sites do for restaurants and hotels. Labour believes that this democratising power of information will give patients and parents the chance to make informed choices about which GP or childcare centre they can go to. The idea behind it is probably that GP’s and childcare centres will perform better. I have a problem with that concept.

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The Dutch radio host Arie Boomsma is suspended for three months because he posed with his bare chest for a photo shoot for the gay magazine L’Homo. The state-funded Dutch Evangelical Broadcaster (EO) took this disciplinary action against the popular Christian presenter last week. It is the second incident with the evangelical TV and radio channel. Last month they reprimanded their well known anchorman, Andries Knevel, because he questioned the creation of the earth in six days, something that seemed highly unlikely to him. His exact quote was: “On second thought, I don’t believe that the earth was created in six days” (Yee, welcome to real world!). All the Darwin hating Christians were shocked for weeks by this news and asked for repercussions. So the good man had to apologise on national television for a quote he obviously supported. The mainstream press is laughing about it. Those silly christians’ with their mediocre problems. But what if it had been an Islamic TV channel?   

The Brits

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Recently Freek wrote in response to my blog about littering:

This is another example of an overinstitutionalised world. I think that many of the problems we have in today’s society stem from the institutionalisation of tasks that used to be performed by families, friends and the neighboorhoud. If we would just do a little bit more ourselves and not expect the government (WHO is the government anyway??) to do it, we would have less problems and have to pay less taxes and hence enjoy more freedom.

I have been thinking about this remark about personal responsibility a lot. It reminds me of this quote made by Thatcher in 1987 in Womens Own magazine:

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