I wonder how many I have looking at my blog are in their late teens? From distant memory it was seen as a huge success for a teen 16+ to bed a much older woman, to have their own ‘milf’. Society seems to accept that this is OK, some might even argue, it’s good to have a woman with some experience to show them the way and then we have Huw Edwards!
I do not pretend to know the man. This said, I am a bit of an expert on gay dads. Many will have known about their sexuality before they got married. They will have lived in an environment where even for them to accept their sexuality was not acceptable, just not a realistic option. They would have to give up everything familiar. Mr Edwards is the same age as me more or less. Back in the 1970’s there were very few parts of the UK where being out and proud was an option. The vast majority of men will have suppressed their sexuality, got married (to a woman they no doubt love) and had children and as life progressed the very real difficulties will have hit.
Sometimes, when we are young, it’s really difficult if not impossible to comprehend what a lifetime actually is, just how long it is. What we think we can manage in our late teens or early 20’s eventually catches up on is.
Many men will just leave their wives and go it alone but for most, they’d already have children by this time. They will have realised that they are performing with their wife but they still love her and absolutely adore their children, they struggle on managing their repressed sexuality as best they can. Sometimes with their wife’s knowledge and sometimes in secret they will find a way to satisfy their need to be with a man or even convince themselves that doing it virtually is enough.
Would it have been a news story so enormous as this if a newsreader had a distance fling with a younger woman? No, it would barely have attracted a mention. Maybe, as was the case with me, the wife is fully aware and accepting because it maintains their life of respectability. We just do not know but ‘The Sun’ came at this from the outset with their suggestions of what went on. To read what they wrote there was a newsreader obtaining sexually explicit images with a teenager. For many reading that they would have presumed the teen in question to be around 14, very much still a child. As it was, nothing illegal happened, both were of legal age and consenting.
I was listening to the radio this morning. People phoning in to explain how disgusting it was for this married man to have sex with a teenage boy … not that there has been, as far as I am aware, a fact that sex occurred but, even if it did, how is this in the public interest?
If Mr Edwards had spent his career being homophobic and challenging same sex relationships then yes, that is in the public interest but, again, AFAIK, he never did. He and his family have struggled through trying to have their private lives.
Then people are saying victim blame is going on, how so? The alleged ‘victim’ was legally able to consent to what he did AND had said prior to the printing of the story by the sun, that the story his parents told is just untrue. We cannot blame a victim who doesn’t exist?
Those who feel gays have got full equality need to understand from this story that they don’t. The UK press will still see their activities as a scandal, their life choices are not private.
It is no secret that the Conservative Party have for decades, indeed, since inception, wanted to get rid of the NHS in exchange for a more profitable US style insurance system.
Under this incarnation of the Tories we are seeing it happen at an accelerated rate.
It is my believe that they saw the Covid19 pandemic as an opportunity not to be missed to weaken the service so much as to be near impossible to fix without an unaffordable investment.
The theory is simple, for years use a policy of austerity to freeze the wages of all those working in the NHS. It would take years to kick in but eventually staff would leave so much as to make the service collapse. They likely never considered that they could escalate the process. Then there was Covid!
Staff within the NHS were put under enormous pressure whilst still living on ever shrinking wages. As staff left, as inevitably they would, conditions for the remaining staff became unbearable. Now doing the work intended for several staff members.
Staff, therefore, left even quicker placing even more pressure on the service.
Within the NHS they worked out two key points which are vital to understand to comprehend the current union action. The most important point is knowing that salaries need to be attractive to encourage staff to join the NHS and, the second, not quite as important as the first, compensation for all the current remaining staff for the years they had their salaries cut to fun the government austerity policy.
So, this is not a simply case of already OK paid people demanding an unrealistic salary, it is about the very survival of the NHS so, of course the @Conservative Party want them desperately to lose this fight.
What do the Conservatives hope to gain from destroying the NHS?
Wealth for the UK. The NHS costs a huge amount of money (7% of the entire wealth we produce), money a government could funnel into tax cuts. Tax cuts buy votes, it keeps them in power. Many of the current Conservative MP’s have connections, some direct, others indirect with private health care companies whether it be by directorships or investments. They personally will gain from the uptake of private health care.
With the reduction of the NHS budget they will be able to afford a much less version of the NHS for the very poor only and, they get to define who the very poor are. Many of the elderly and sick will (sadly) die off reducing the burden on the basic health service, social care and benefits. It is an Utopian world where the Government remains in power by tax hand outs and reduces costs on the most needy giving them yet more money to spend on tax handouts.
What can they realistically achieve before a general election?
Division. Division seems to be their entire game plan for the next General Election. Whether it be immigration, crime attributed to race or striking workers crippling the country, it seems to be what they are going with. They have to really as they sure don’t want anyone analysing their 13 year long record of mismanagement!
Could an incoming Labour government repair the NHS?
Simple answer is, no. They won’t have the money to do it with unless they commit to record levels of borrowing. To do that assures they will be a one term government. As debt rises they will need to either radically increase growth, nigh on impossible since leaving the EU else, raise taxes.
Would they rejoin the EU?
Yes, if they have the balls for it! It is the only sensible thing to do. Nothing promised from Brexit, none of the benefits happened. I can tell you that Northampton still sounds just as Eastern European as it did prior to Brexit, there are just as many perceived ‘foreigners’. I added to it by marrying one so, I obviously support migration in both directions.
As has been seen by the utter disinterest of the US to strike a trade deal with the UK, we are just not significant any more on the world stage. Best this government can come with is some weird trade deal with countries like Peru. They cannot even come up with a single guaranteed benefit of that. It is all based on the vague possibility that some of those signed up to it might sort themselves out and offer as maybe 1% of what we lost when we left the EU.
Conclusion is simple. The NHS is near death and the government despite their protestations that they are investing millions extra in it, are letting it die. They are letting the situation of our country get desperate because desperate people go for desperate solutions, accept crazy reasons for why things are the way things are.
If the country comes together and votes in the next general election for whichever party will get this government out of office, the country will be all the better for it, we will all be the better for it.
In my area, only Labour can beat the Conservative MPs. Voting for anyone else leaves those MP’s with the chance of holding onto their seats.
To steal a line for yet another Idiotic ex World Leader, Donald J Trump and, corrupt it.
Let’s Make Britain Great Again … not that MBGA is particularly catchy and won’t look great on a hat.
Making us great again as we used to be and I mean, really used to be. That has nothing to do with immigration, nothing to do with striking workers, unmarried mothers, those on benefits, pensioners and so on. Those things ‘USED’ to be things we supported, encouraged even. We knew that we needed skilled workers and they had to be paid, we knew we needed a growing population to pay tax in later life and grow the economy. We were proud we had a system in place which supported us at some of our lowest times and, most preciously, we valued our elderly, our grandparents, great aunts and uncles. We didn’t treat them as an unaffordable burden on society.
Just think about it, if we start downgrading our elderly like we are, it’s our own future we are damaging. Likely, most of us will some day be elderly, why would we dare to dismantle the safeguard in place now so that there is nothing left when we are old? You think we’re not? You are wrong. When the government went along with the triple lock on pensions and awarded a 10% increase in pensions, there were calls across the country to scrap it, how could we afford such a huge increase when the country is in so much need? Last year, pensioners were left effectively worse off as pensions rose less than inflation. Then the government announces a scheme to get pensioners back to work, they’re retiring too early, they need to work more. Actually, they have more than one scheme for it. They are already pathing the way to abolish the state pension entirely. With the long term wishes of this government clear, there are people born today who will never get a state retirement pension and, if the pension can go, what chance then the NHS?
One final thing just popped up
Doesn’t our Prime Minister just look like a kid sending a pic to his mates saying:
“Hey guys, it’s me, at Madame Tussauds, look who I am meeting” @rishi
For some reason this keeps cropping up and people keep rising to it like it’s the latest thing to hold onto. A government minister, no less, recently instructed schools not to teach is as being ‘fact’ but as a talking point, as purely a consideration.
Look, white people, out and about, where ever, it doesn’t matter, can and sometimes do get preferred treatment over non white people. This is a truth but it is also a non changeable reality. It is a fact of life.
Let me give some other examples, many gay men, in particular, in many public places outside of the huge cities, cannot walk hand in hand with their partner, it’s just not safe. Is that ‘straight’ privilege? Many disabled people who look disabled (stuff off with the politically correct term argument), they are going to experience ‘able bodied privilege). White guy walks into a bar in a majority black neighbourhood, likely he will be victim of black privilege.
Sure, this should never happen, live and let live, equality for all and that’s a great way of thinking but, it’s not real!
Many thought that after the push throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s to eradicate racism in the UK that the majority of the country finally ‘got it’. No, that never happened. The reality was that rather than being public about their opinion, all those people were more careful where they voice it.
Want any proof of that? OK then, Brexit, a campaign the major selling point of which was to ‘get our country back’. How can that line even be said without it being racist and, the majority (albeit, only just) went for it. We committed trade suicide to satisfy the racist beliefs of those around us, get rid of Jonny Foreigner and get good old Blighty back … now we actually did get rid of rather a lot of them those same people are complaining the country is falling apart and blaming the EU … don’t go blaming them, we’re not part of that any more, we got our country back.
No, I didn’t digress (not much anyway), I am trying to say that, in order to live here we have to accept that our culture is rooted in privilege. There is no such thing and never will be as an interview without privileged bias. I’ve done it myself, interview door opens, someone who doesn’t meet my requirements physically and they’ve no chance. It is both wrong and right. Do we force people to go against their nature and give equal consideration to everyone else and pretend they actually do not have a bias?
How many male interviewers pick attractive ladies? I’ve known gay interviewers pick attractive boys. It doesn’t mean they are not able to do the job, it just demonstrates the preference of the interviewer, what they want to see each day.
So think about it, in many situations there is, indeed, white privilege. I sometimes do it. I see a black guy sagging across the street, get the whiff of weed and think to my white privileged self, he’s up to no good. He could be a lovely guy, I don’t know but he’s not ‘my’ sort of person so I instantly consign him a pigeon hole.
If I see a group of guys walking toward me, white guys, young adults, hands down the front of their Adidas tracksuit bottoms, I don’t automatically think that there are a good trustworthy group of lads because they are white, I actually think, best watch out for this lot because of the way they carry themselves.
We just have to accept that each of us in any given location or situation has privilege. How much we want it to work against us depends entirely on our choices of where we go.
As a white, gay, disabled man who is overweight and very short, am I going to get the same or worse treatment going for an interview as a straight, fit tall black man? No, I think not. I’ve been turned down for jobs because of my circumstances. It is obvious why, I can see what the people who work there look like and they don’t look like me.
Is this ever something we can change? If you say ‘yes’ then, you are deluded.
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