News from the colonies to the old country

So my name cropped up in a Facebook wander down memory lane by some old friends peppered across the UK now.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s we were part of the same student politics organisation.  There were ups and downs, as I recall those times, but it was fun to be involved.  They were exciting times in which we helped to move the world forward in some areas, were beaten back in others.

I felt no real need to enter into the nostalgia but then my name came up.  Someone then asked, "is Dougie Herd still alive?"  Time, I thought, to intervene.  So I added these words to the conversation:

Call this living comrades? Call this alive?

I'm in a Tory Hell with a Prime Minister that thinks the 16th Century was a bit advanced, that global warming is a left wing conspiracy, that Prince Phillip needed a Knighthood from the Australian people, that women have a place but only one of them is good enough for that place to be in his Cabinet, that it's ok for his sister to be gay but not ok for his sister to marry the woman she lives with ... and that football is played with a rugby ball and goals with no nets. 

I could go on but then I look at home and see George Osborne is considered by some to be an economic progressive and free-thinking, intellectual power house.

If that's all not bad enough .... and it is ... we have three types of spiders in our back garden that could kill you if you look at them, brown snakes that'll stop your heart beating if you even think to breathe in the same space as them and a giant chicken-like bird called a Cassowary that could rip your lungs out in five seconds. And that's before we even mention the sharks, sting rays and crocodiles.

All things considered though ... one mustn't grumble.

A luta continua!! A luta continua.