Politics.

Grab yourself an adage

Farage is a cabbage.

Now politics – or politics now!! What do I know about politics? Well not much more than the next man – I look next to me and there is a small child; I'm in Starbucks; he looks and stares. 

 

Does he know more about politics than I do?

Probably.

I hear him whisper to his dad 'a real pirate!'

He's seen my patch; he has a little sister with him and she asks me where my ship is.

I tell her – 'on the south coast.'

The dad tells them 'it's near the beach.'

The boy would like a photo taken with me but when his dad asks him he goes shy so I ask him if I can have a photo with him; he sits next to me and his dad takes rather a good photo; maybe I should have asked for a copy as it was better than some of my head shots.

Off they went and the boy was a lot happier than when he came; in fact they all were.

Someone complained that the country had changed; all the old traditions have gone!

They were referring to immigrants, of course and of course I didn't agree – but then; if the traditions have changed here they have been for the better but I know what they're getting at.

Being out of the country for 17 years in America I return and I see that if the traditions have changed or are changing they are influenced by America.

Instead of hanging around in pubs all day men tend to go to a coffee shop. I was in Starbucks the other day and a really big Irish Labourer came in and asked, in a broad Cork accent, for a grandé skinny mocha. Before I emigrated he would be in a pub.

That to me is an improvement in fact people take food into Starbucks to eat with their coffee – they don't seem to mind.

Going back to immigrants – before the Uganda Asians were kicked out of their country, settling in Britain, in the seventies you couldn't buy an evening newspaper after about six-o-clock. Most of the grocery shops, as well as the newsagents, closed at that time too – now you can shop quite late; so that's another plus, as far as I'm concerned.

I could go to the doctors without an appointment – free – go to railway stations and get on any train without having to book way in advance, mail a letter at the post office without any fear of my reply being lost by a private mail company (lots of letters are getting lost by a private company every day) and not have to pay council tax or poll tax but the rates – which had to be paid if you owned a house AND could afford them.

My three year course at drama school was paid for with a government grant – fees and living allowance.

I could go on, I suppose, but that's what I know about politics – none of those things are available any more.

And whose fault is that?

Well this is the time I play the 'blame game.' Or is it? No!

It's about time we stopped finding things or people to blame and tried to fix things and look to the future and that doesn't mean warning people that there might be an influx of undesirables coming in to the country. I for one welcome everybody here so they can pay tax and keep me in my old age in the custom I have become used to.

I have paid enough tax both here and in America – ah America! The land where everybody is an immigrant; a land of milk and honey where hundreds of people die every year trying to reach; in fact I think it's thousands.

They perish in the desert when there is a little walk between Tijuana and San Diego; the weather is so hot in the desert that they become disorientated through dehydration and die.

And this is because the Americans built a big wall to stop them but do you know one thing: the so called 'illegal' immigrants who make it are like the strong sperms that make it to the uterus so maybe they should be welcomed; because they'll do all the work.

There's a fella called Nigel Farage in Britain – Farage rhymes with the way you say garage but I have noticed on the BBC they are saying it like cabbage – he is the leader of a right wing political party called UKIP; they (or he) has caught the imagination of the population as they are fed up with the posh boys who are the leaders of the 2 main parties here and the Deputy Prime Minister who's party is holding the Conservatives up.

Right Wing I said – they are to the right of the Conservatives and maybe even to the right of the Republican Party and the Tea Party in America.

They have one policy and that is for Britain to leave the European Community and to curb immigration; right wing, I said, and right wing means privatisation (the NHS, the post office, the prisons, the railways etc); capital punishment and the jack boot – let's face it that's where it will end up.

Or will it?