Richard Hawley wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0
Still my absolute favourite song, ever, ever. First heard it when I was 15 and have loved his bones ever since. Helped make me the woman that I am and love him for it.
Have looked at all the debates and looked at the shower of shit standing in my area and, as the lefties are not standing where I live I am going to vote Green. Have come under serious attack from my family who, despite them and their children being the worst off that they've even been – unemployed, what jobs they do have are temporary, low paid, pensions losing value every day – are going to vote Labour because they see any other vote as letting the Tories in.
Think the whole Brown calling that woman a bigot is just the end of him. My parents, who have been Labour voters all their lives, live in a small, terraced Victorian house, with hardly a room bigger than 12ft square. My mum brought up four kids in her 3-bed house – one room for her and dad, the box room for my brother and us three sisters all in one room. Our room was so small, our beds were pushed together so there was room to open the door.
I'm not telling this tale in some kind of nostalgia for the past in some kind of Monty Python type way. The reason I'm telling it is because some scum private landlord has bought the houses either side of my mum's and lets out the rooms to people from Eastern Europe who've come here to work. On one side, there are currently 10 adults in the house – on the other, 14. Crammed in like sardines, no fire safety, one bathroom. The communal sewers have overflowed twice – my parents, who are in their late 70s, have had to spend time sweeping shit out of their garden. They've complained to the council but been treated, exactly like this woman, as bigots.
The thing that upsets my parents most is that when they met, 56 years ago, they rented a room, in a squalid house, sharing kitchens and bathrooms with other families, until they had enough money to rent a place of their own. All these years and all those advances later – we've put a man on the moon, invented nano-technology, computers for everything – and there are still people doing shit jobs, being paid shit money, living in squalor, no matter what country they come from.
My parents are depressed that, after nearly 60 years of struggling for change, voting Labour, my dad giving up his spare time as a union rep, teaching their kids about community and caring for others, nothing's got better and, despite the obvious discomfort they're being caused by being surrounded by room renters in their old age, not families or people who will look out for them, things are no better than when they started their lives together.
The fact is Labour has failed my parents, their kids, their grandkids and these youngsters coming to this country to escape poverty in their own. The revolution can be televised, or live, but there's no doubt, Brother Gil, that we still need one.