LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 70 – Sunday, 24th May

Firstly, may I urge you all to sign the petition on change.org calling for the resignation of Dominic Cummings?  Of course, he shouldn’t be given the opportunity to resign, he should be fired, but the person who would have to act with alacrity, authority and some moral force is the Blond Buffoon, so no luck there.

     It does seem rather like indulging in an unsavoury blood sport to attack Matt gi’ us a job Beckett, the man whose moral compass can be turned between meals without ruining your appetite, who after attacking the randy professor for breaking the distancing rules to welcome his mistress to his house had to do a 180 degree turn and justify Cummings breaking of the rules. 

     Cummings we should remind ourselves had symptoms of Covid-19, whereas the Randy Prof was symptom free, and the Prof’s tryst did not involve a 600 mile round trip, with stops, to spread the infection.

     The press-ganged ministers forced to humiliate themselves (except for Gove, of course, who probably ‘means’ what he says, which speaks volumes for his despicable character) by enthusiastic professions of support for someone they probably hate and fear were just as predictably weasel-wordedly vile as you would have predicted – though, from an English teacher’s viewpoint, transcripts of their ‘support’ would make a fascinating portfolio for the student of linguistics, social linguistics, politics, morality, truth, doublespeak and so on.

     As a kid I used to wonder at the articulacy of politicians who, after a second’s thought when faced with a poser of a question were able to speak in connected sentences, give a rounded performance, ending in a burst of applause and have said nothing at all!

     I was obviously a good student because, during one public meeting I was called on to give an answer to a question that, had I been forthright would have condemned the person sitting next to me.  I got to my feet, I spoke and, when I had finished I was thanked for my explanation.  An explanation that very carefully gave no useful information at all – and I had my round of applause!

     Having done it oneself, it is easier to discern in others and indeed, bemoan the inexpert way in which most politicians now fail to master the technique.  To be fair, questioning is not as reverential as it was in my youth, but ministers do have aids who prep them for the obvious questions that they are likely to encounter though as with for example, the Blond Buffoon, preparation is only as good as it is thorough and the Buffoon, as is known, is not famous for his application!

     The Goblin Gove is a ‘person’ who seems to thrive on difficult questioning, but this is only because he is able to disassociate himself completely from past history, truth and accountability in his answers.  The latitude of what might laughingly be referred to, as his moral compass must afford him the smug luxury of expansiveness in his fluently empty rhetoric.

     As Sunday morning progresses, so we are finding more people condemning Cummings’ breaking of the lockdown and even Conservative MPs are calling for his resignation – though I still think he should be sacked, by the Blond Buffoon who needs to get more acclimatized to U-Turns, especially as we get nearer and nearer to a no-deal, hard Brexit!

     As the day wears on the situation with Cummings appears a little clearer.  Only 7 conservative MPs have thrown their careers in the party down the loo by coming out against Cummings and urging his sacking, while over 50 Conservative MPs have expressed support.  As one commentator pointed out although Cummings obviously did something wrong and against the rules that he helped frame, the ministers who tried to explain away his crime are even worse as they have jettisoned, or at least called into question, the whole governmental strategy for the saving of lives by concentrating on saving a single career.  As another commentator pointed out, this ministerial circling of the waggons is also an expensive squandering of governmental authority.

     My concern is hardly dispassionate as I regard this government as a travesty, but at a time of national crisis I am also acutely aware (as the government signally isn’t) that any mismanagement will result in even more deaths.  I sincerely hope that Cummings is consigned to the scrapheap, but while his political demise would be a bright spot in the darkness of the rule of The Blond Buffoon and his Cabinet of No Talents, I am much more concerned about the efficient management of the Covid virus and eliminating it.

     But a little political blood is acceptable!

I have just watched the Blond Buffoon’s performance in the daily press conference and I feel slightly sick.  Johnson was asked questions that he could not, or chose not to answer.  He asserted that Cummings behaved honourably, but was unable to draw any clear distinction between similar cases where individuals, at great personal cost, had followed governmental guidelines unlike Cummings.

     Johnson provided us with a shoddy performance.  It was unconvincing and positively degrading to watch.  He insulted the intelligence of his audience and he devalued the government that he leads.

     In future press conferences it would be more seemly for Mr Cummings to take the podium, as he is clearly the person in charge and not the buffoon who fronted today’s fiasco.

     Johnson drew distinctions that did not exist and he asked us to exonerate Cummings behaviour by repeating his perceptions of its moral worth rather than giving any concrete explanations about how what was allowable for Cummings should not be taken as a general rule.  If the ‘guidance has not changed’ how can Cummings’ selfish behaviour possibly be right.

     I now feel that the resignation of Cummings is almost irrelevant.  Johnson is the one who should be considering his position because, as a prime minister he now has, in a phrase that I loved when used about the much missed prime minister May, having “about as much authority as the 'Do not tumble dry' instruction on clothes”.

     R.I.P Premiership: Johnson, May, 2020.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 69 – Saturday, 23rd May

So, “Let them die! Cummings” is now shown to have broken the lockdown rules that he helped frame, by driving 250 miles from London when he was positive with the Covid-19 virus to self-isolate in his parents’ house – a flagrant flouting of the rules.  If we look to the immediate past, other high profile flouters have resigned.  So should he.

     He won’t of course.  The Blond Buffoon would be lost, directionless, gibbering – sorry, even more lost, directionless and gibbering, without him.  And where would Hardest of All Hard Brexits be unless driven (ha!) by the Manic Mekon of Maliciousness!

     I look forward to the puerile mendacity of third-rate cabinet ministers (are there any others?) as they (yet again) defend the defenceless.  I do hope that the Guardian manages to get an appropriately evil photograph of the Bald Bastard (I can say that as I share his follicle challenge) to illustrate the mealy mouthed explanations for his ‘entitled’ flouting.  If, of course, anyone deigns to give an explanation.  It remains to be seen if there are sufficient Tory MPs to force The Blond Buffoon into another U-Turn, and if there is a feeling in the country that Cummings’ position is untenable.  One can only hope!

     This comes at the same time as the fall-out from the self-quarantine for visitors to the UK controversy; the continued failure of track and test; the chaos and division on the school return plans; the continuing horror of the mismanagement of Covid-19 in Care Homes; the total number of deaths and infections; the release of SAGE advice showing just how political the decisions have been; confusion of intentions about how, when and where we can holiday, and on and on. 

     Our present government is exactly the wrong group of politicians in position at exactly the wrong time.  And there is a proposed trip for the Blond Buffoon to the Orange Monster as if the link of shared shittiness was not close and dirty enough even with an ocean between them, they have to get together to share the shame!

My bike ride this morning was through a positive throng of people walking, running and cycling on the Paseo, the most crowded that I have experienced.  The beach was also fairly densely populated with some people swimming – it just shows you what odd times we are living in that such a comment seems remarkable!  Given that Monday marks a further loosening of the restrictions, I confidently expect there to be an exponential rise in people along the front.  We will be open to visits from people in the whole Barcelona metropolitan area, though I am not sure that overnight stays are yet allowed.  There are numbers of second homes in Castelldefels so there must be people itching to get to the seaside for the traditional stay.  Sigh!

     This means that our summer neighbours are likely to arrive as soon as they are given permission, and then they will be here until at least the middle of September.  Usually they arrive just after the schools close, though this year that date is something of a moveable feast to say the least, more conjectural than calendrical!  [ look it up, it exists!]

     My sports club can reopen on Monday as well, though I am not sure that the pool will be open yet.  The web site does not give information about sports apart from some 1 to 1 activities in padel and pilates.  Nothing about swimming.  As my membership of the Club has been temporarily suspended during the virus crisis I suppose that I will know that things are getting back to normal when the bank starts taking money again!  I am looking forward to my first lengths.

     I assume that when swimming eventually resumes it will be in a ‘timed’ slot and that changing facilities and showering facilities will not be provided. 

     We may well have to turn up in our bathing costumes and that means I will have to delve into my wardrobe and see if I can find a tracksuit.  That still fits!  I fear that most of the bits and pieces of past tracksuits are nylon based and therefore efficient producers of static electricity.  As someone who has ‘fallen upwards’ after crossing the carpet of the National Theatre and placing a hand on the exposed metal stair rail and shocking myself from side to side as I instinctively flinched away with one shocked hand and then grabbed for support with the other to be shocked in turn, and so on – I am prone to crackling displays of painful personal electric discharges.  I dread the return to nylonic [that doesn’t exist, but I like the sound] Faradaean [that doesn’t either, ditto] excesses!  But, there again, no pain – no gain!

Just watched 1917.  Superb!  I am usually quite squeamish about films concerning the First World War, partly I think because I feel that I have an emotional investment in the things as my grandfather was a volunteer at the start of the war and he was someone who survived, though not without scars – both literal and mental.  He was wounded during one ‘battle’ (if you can call the ill planned slaughter by upper class idiots a ‘battle?) and was seriously enough wounded to be sent back to Britain to recuperate.  When he returned to his point in the line, nothing had changed except the whole of his company had been killed.  Everyone.

     Every time that I have walked past the statue of Earl (!) Douglas Haig in London, I have felt a personal affront on behalf of my grandfather.  A man who fought in the Somme.  Ah well, let it go, but I am not neutral when I see soldiers in the trenches.  1917 was a worthy addition to the sorry story of the senseless slaughter in France and Belgium – that should never be forgotten.  There are too many easy parallels of the waste of human life in our present time for the excesses of 1914-1918 to be ignored.  Though it would be difficult to say that the lesson has been learned.

     A film worth watching.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 57 – Monday, 11th May

The weather forecast for today was totally wrong and I therefore took advantage of what I understood to be freakish sunshine and went for my morning bike ride.  This time, I did not attempt to go into the Marina at Port Ginesta, being a law-abiding citizen of Castelldefels and not of Sitges, so I turned around at the end of the cycle lane on the Paseo and came home.

     After my dutifully disturbing read of the Guardian, it was then time for the sojourn to the shops.  Masked, and latex gloved I drove to Caprabo to get the ant traps and I attempted to do the rest of my shop there.  Not going to happen, so I slipped along to Lidl to finish off.

     In spite of the fact that Lidl did not have the 15-month mature Cheddar, I willingly settled for the soapier stuff and thought that Lidl is basically a better store than the small Caprabo that I frequent.  But, and there is always a but, there were things that I could get in Caprabo that are never available in Lidl; Lidl is never a one stop store, and that is a real disadvantage: when in lockdown you really do not want to visit multiple shops – you never know when you may come across a Plague Child or three!

     At the end of the shop, I was well and truly knackered, and not finding a parking space outside the house because of the bloody workers next door parking their various vans in OUR spaces was the final, energy sapping straw!

     I gave cursory help in unloading the car when it was parked in the front garden space, and then the heavy lifting, and the meticulous cleaning and putting away was done by Toni while I, literally, put my feet up!  [Are there too many commas in that sentence? Ed.]

It is almost lunchtime and we should be back in rain, if not thunderstorms, according to the weather forecast.  I wonder what the weather is like in the UK, and I wonder how people have reacted to the Blond Buffoon’s clear as mud instructions, suggestions, fugitive thoughts or whatever his broadcast was supposed to be.  It comes to something that, even after a scripted talk by the Buffoon, ministers have to be deployed at once to explain what he might have meant.  For example, who would have know that when the Buffoon uses the word ‘Monday’ he actually means ‘Wednesday’ – perhaps our Prime Minister (sic) is working to an Old Etonian (or Estonian, as my spellchecker wanted it) calendar where there is a languorous two-day difference from the Proles’ week to allow for an elite cushion of prevarication and indolence?

     My British friends and relations are not all of a type, but they are united in their contempt for the leaders who fail to take responsibility, fail to lead, fail to be imaginative, fail to save lives, and then treat us with condescension assuming that we have memories of the same capacity as the much maligned goldfish!  We have not!

     On a Catalan television station that had academics commenting on the Covid-19 Crisis, I noted one subtitle on a part of the discussion had something about the “extreme recklessness” of one group of nations in their approach to the virus.  Four states were listed: Mexico, Brazil, the United States of America – and the UK!  What exalted, socially responsible company to be in!  With equally delightful leaders!  God help us all, what have the Conservatives reduced us to?

     The fall out from the Sunday burbling meander to the nation continues with reactions of bafflement, amazement and disgust now augmented with further negative abstract nous being applied to the muddy exposition that was supposed to enlighten us this afternoon.

     When, by the way the Blond Buffoon going to accept responsibility for being Prime Minister?  He has a duty to appear before the press and answer questions; he has a duty to appear in Parliament and respond, he has a duty to justify his actions in a democratic society.

     We know that he cannot be trusted live to answer questions without there being an extensive amount of damage limitation after he has waffled his way through questions.  He was too frightened to be questioned by Andrew Neil; he fled into a fridge rather than be questioned by a television reporter; he has still not appeared before the Parliamentary Liaison Committee; he has missed PMQs; he prefers pre-submitted questions on Facebook to hard questioning from trained reporters; how often has he actually been in parliament – the parliament that he has tried so hard to limit, either by proroguing it for ILLEGAL lengths of time or by simply ignoring it?  Illness, holidays and cowardice – anything other than facing up to what he has done and is planning (if that is not too strong a word) to do, anything other than public accountability.

     And, in spite of the second highest death rate from Covid-19 IN THE WORLD; in spite of the obvious U turns, the evasions, the missed targets, the criminal lack of preparedness, he still has a reasonable amount of public support!

     I understand that, in times of crisis, there is an understandable “rallying around the flag” effect, to go with the authority that one knows to work together and get through this all, sort of thing – but with him and the motely crew that he has gathered about himself?  Really?  What, in any aspect of his past life, would encourage anyone to trust or rely on this proven liar and opportunist?

The rain-filled day has not materialized and so I will be able to go for my evening bike ride as well, making the culmination of an excitement-filled day – you have to take your pleasures where you find them in lockdown!

     But just to make sure that I do not become complacent in my joy, my computer upstairs has decided to half start.  I get the Apple logo and the little line underneath that gradually fills up to the half way point, and then it blacks out.  With all my years of experience of the wayward ways of computers (I will not frighten you with the nomenclature of the early version of Windows that made me the gibbering technological wretch that I am today) I have turned the computer off and will hope that turning it on again will make all things well.

     As far as computers are concerned, I am a simple, trusting, peasant soul when things go wrong.  And I comfort myself with the fact that I have two laptop computers (at least) that will keep me typing!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 56 – Sunday, 10th May

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and the threat of the “thin end of the wedge” challenge to exercise: if you don’t go out for your bike ride because of a little dampness, then what will you do if the sky is merely overcast tomorrow?  Will that be excuse enough to defer effort?

     Admittedly, rainy days are in the minority in this country, and therefore the opportunities for indolence are fewer too, but the rot can set in at any moment, and the dust can settle on a machine that is meant for motion!

     I do have waterproof leggings and a lightweight rain jacket so it is perfectly possible (if unpleasant) to go for a bike ride and stay relatively dry.  On the other hand, it does make the ride more duty than pleasure.  On the other hand (making three, by my computation!) exercise is essential for the preservation of a healthy lifestyle under lockdown and so the (unpleasant) effort should probably be made.

     As you can imagine, I indulged in such pleasant prevarication, while reading my Daily Dose of Misery from the news section of the digital Guardian and doing the Quick Crossword and, of course, drinking my essential cup of tea.  Time well spent.  And dry too!

     Eventually, I decided to test the weather and, after extensive sampling of the climatic conditions (i.e. opening the kitchen window) I reasoned that, while it was still damp it was not actually raining so the ride could be taken in relative comfort.

     It was only when I was gloved and helmeted with the bike newly charged and ready to go, that I looked at my watch.  I had missed my age-specific designated time slot for exercise, so back upstairs for a cup of tea?

     In the eagerness to return to the comfort of the sitting room I conveniently forgot the possibility of the mind numbing circling of the communal pool as a substitute for the more open and interesting vistas of the Paseo.  It comes to something that I have to write about it before the possibility of doing something that I outlined in the previous sentence becomes an imperative.   Moppy (for it is she, god bless her mechanical revolving cleaning pads) is about her business on our tile floors and therefore the presence of my obstructing feet are an impediment to her efficiency and I should remove them to the pool.  So I will.  And service will be resumed after I have listened on another episode of ‘In Our Time’ on the hoof!

     Which was Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’ – a book I own and have never read, but now I will be able to bluff my way and make links with present economic and sociological thought.  That’s what ‘In Our Time’ is all about!  Learning with walking stick in one hand and umbrella in the other and weaving my way around sun loungers to make the circuits a little bit more interesting.

     As the weather is glum, there are few people about and I am sure that gatherings of the ‘bike gangs’ (that makes them sound so much more threatening than these al fresco bike mounted chat groups are) will be loath to form without the clemency of warm weather.

     As it is Sunday, I will make one of my commercial outings to the pollo a last to get our chicken meal.  As well as facilitating the provision of food it also gives an interesting view of how well physical distancing is enduring.  So far, the distancing has been exemplary, although rain does encourage grouping under awning, so it will test discipline!

     And I can now confirm that discipline was preserved and, apart from the kids who now seem not to wear mask as a matter of course.

Rather than listen to the Blond Buffoon who was speaking at 7 pm I went out in the rain on my bike rather than listen to his bluster.  The lead up to this talk (Why on a Sunday?  Why not in parliament?) was a master class in communication ineptitude as expectation was allowed to distort any possible message.  The new slogan “Stay alert” is confusing and dangerously ambiguous, it just adds to the general air of desperate ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ approach that has characterised the methodology of this government.

     Spain too is easing restrictions in a stepped approach.  You would have thought that any easing would only be in those areas where the virus had been shown to be limited, with extensive testing to verify any such limitation.  Why then has Madrid decided that it is one of the regions where restrictions can be relaxed when the number of deaths and new infections is still rife?

     In Spain and the UK, it would appear that the political is more important that public health, and unless that is reversed then we are going to pay for that in more and more deaths.

Tomorrow is our weekly shop, something I look forward to with pathetic excitement!  There is an added delight this time, as I have to find some ant traps to combat a mild infestation upstairs.  Always something to make like just that little bit more interesting!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 52 – Wednesday, 6th May

I am not, it must be said, a fan of the Blond Buffoon, so I probably did not come to the viewing of PMQs with an open heart and a forgiving attitude.  Be that as it may, I have to say that I have rarely seen a more cringe worthy performance than that of our Prime Minister (sic.) answering questions from the Leader of the Opposition.

     Johnson’s bumbling waffle was an embarrassment, and it was all the more telling because he was bereft of the usual Tory baying to cover up his lazy emptiness.  He is an indolent man, and his shallowness was on pitiful display in this exhibition of his fatuousness.  Starmer destroyed him with the sort of questions to which there is no answer, unless the proven liar changes the habits of a wasted lifetime and actually finds a modicum of veracity and admits guilt for the catastrophe of the management of the Covid crisis.

     It seems almost redundant to say that the number of deaths in the UK is now over 30,000.  30,000 lost lives.  30,000 people dead.  And we are told that we should not jump to international comparisons, even though the government itself produces those comparisons.  We  now have more deaths from Covid-19 than Italy.  We are paramount in Europe with the number of deaths.  Are we supposed to forget that we were told that “deaths under 20k would be a good result”, so we must assume that 30k deaths is a disgusting catastrophe.

     One can go on listing the disasters that this government has ‘managed’: the non-provision of PPE; the whole question of Care Homes; the provision, number, and quality of tests; the lies we have been told; the lack of transparency; the lack of an exit strategy; the slowness of the initial response; the criminal irresponsibility of Johnson in failing to take distancing seriously; the provision of masks for the general population and on, and on.

     It is obvious that we need an independent inquiry now so that this disaster is not repeated.  The process needs to be started immediately and the evidence needs to be gathered as a matter of urgency.  Thirty thousand people have died and it is inevitable that even more will follow them if we do not learn the lessons that can prevent the growth of fatalities.

     The UK is being reported in foreign newspapers with a mixture of astonishment and sorrow and Johnson is regarded as the wrong leader in the wrong place at the wrong time – a watered down version of Trump – and with a cabinet of inadequates: a perfect storm of negatives at the time when the crisis demands the very best.

I continue to go for my bike rides and am joined each time by a whole variety of people who have broken out bikes to take part in our daily Paseo.  There is a certain determination in the exercise that we are taking and few people look as though they are enjoying the experience!

     I miss my daily swim – it gives a shape to my day and it starts it ‘properly’ as I swim at 7 am, then my cup of tea and making notes.  It’s a good start.  I could start my bike ride at 6 am, as our time slot is from 6 to 10, but I am disinclined to do that.  There are limits to my desire to exercise!

Our Catalan lessons have developed, in so far as there is another lesson this Friday in the morning and via Google Meet.  I have not found this system to be one that I get on with, but I am going to try a change of computer and hope for the best for the next attempt!

Not knowing is the worst!

I have no idea what’s happening!  No, really!  I know that the world hasn’t ended because I am still here.  And, thanks to the wonders of the internet radio and (praise be!) Radio 4 I know that the Blond Buffoon has made his first Brexit speech in which he managed to do a very convincing vocal impersonation of The Donald by using sentences composed entirely of unrelated phrases and dismissive waffle.  What a repugnant, self-seeking, condescending apology for a politician he is!

           

            The Donald has some sort of reason for his putrid existence, as he is the logical outcome of the Republican excoriation of every breath that Obama has taken, irrespective of any logic or ideology – apart that is, from the pandering to the lowest possible common denominator of prejudice that they could find.  I am not sure that the previous sentence went any logical way itself, but in its own befuddled way it does at least express my sadness at what the party of Lincoln (whose speed of rotation in his monument must be approaching the speed of light at the moment) has created.

            But The Blond Buffoon is an entirely different creature.  I assume that his hair is natural (at least in its colour) but the buffoonery is entirely intentional on his part.  He is no fool.  He is capable of writing a mean sentence.  He has a sense of humour.  And he wants, oh how he wants, to be Prime Minister.  I don’t for a single solitary second believe that he went through anything even remotely approaching ‘heart searching’ to determine what position he should take on the question of Britain remaining in the EU.  The only thought, no, the main thought in his nasty tousled head was what would bring him closer to his main goal in life.  He has reasoned, because unlike The Donald he is capable of that, that opposition to British membership of the EU is likely to play best with the voters in the Conservative Party whether or not the UK votes in or out.  He has calculated that even if the vote goes against him, he can take the wishes of his discredited party towards his ultimate goal.

            The Capering Clot’s jovial mask slipped when it turned out that he (oh, sorry, not him, just one of his most trusted advisors) told senior officials in the London Mayor’s Office that they had to support his point of view or shut up!  It was, of course, a “cock-up” as he described it later, when the instruction had been discovered, using what he thinks of as the language of the common man, the man in the street (not the woman of course, they are only good for bedding and betraying) to show how blusteringly funny and out of character it all was.  Not a bit of it!  That is the man.  The privileged autocrat with the excruciating fractured conversational line of filler-filled marshmallow ideology to deflect opprobrium.

            You may wonder why this vitriol towards The Beast of Boris.  The answer is prosaic: Toni is visiting his family and I have not turned the TV on.  I am not sure that I know how.  I mean I know how to turn the television on, but not to get the programme that I want.  There is also a way of getting the language into English, but the complex button pressing to get that to occur is beyond my thumbs.  The end result is I have no idea what Spain is up to.

            You rarely hear anything about Spain on the national news on Radio 4, though I think the recent occasion of the Infanta (the sister of the present so-called king) being cross examined in court and, in answer to the questions that she deigned to answer, lying her head off – I think that made the news, and I think that Brits actually got to see pictures of her in court looking uncomfortable.  

As she should.  

But, apart from the more garish and outlandish elements in our news, the day-to-day corruption and the fact that we do not have a government are not deemed newsworthy.

            I can’t really blame the news outlets, because saying, “Oh, the Spanish Popular Party (Conservative) seems to have another case of corruption where their politicians have been stealing from the public purse!” is rather like saying, “Oh, IDS has told another corpse that it is fit for work!”  They are both so common that they are hardly noteworthy.

            But, there is a gleam of hope for Spain.  The right ‘lost’ the election and the ‘left’ won.  But the parties on the ‘left’ still have not agreed to pact – and time is running out before the so-called king has to declare another general election.

            There is a simple solution, and one in which a start could be made to try and rectify the terrible damage that PP has done to the country during their time in power.  But the two parties cannot agree and so, day by sad day, we march on to the unpredictability of a second general election.

            Even my OU studies are not helping, because I have now arrived at that part of the course where our thoughts have turned to Renaissance Art and Death.  Looking at various representations of the Danse Macabre, I feel like photocopying a few of them and sending them to the politicians who I feel are hindering the formation of a new leftist government.  Time is fleeting!  Get on with it!