May 2008 Archives

I'VE just had five days packed with both simple fun and (anything but simple) soulful reflection.
Let’s start with the soulful reflection. My partner Posh Boots had gone away, to Spain, on her own 
 without me.
But after a flurry of lovey-dovey texts between us ... a result!
She announced she was returning early.
So last Friday night I went to pick her up from the airport. Even the utterly charmless John Lennon International (no wonder people in Merseyside prefer to fly from Manchester) failed to dint the joyful anticipation of our reunion.

IT’S not the first time the people of Hull have had a minor royal among them, telling them how to live

Yes, long before Sarah Ferguson fetched up in that rough-and-ready northern city and port the local tykes had their very own King of Hull in residence 
 namely moi!
Well, I wasn’t really their king, though they did often call me “Your Majestyâ€? and “the Kingâ€?, and I did on few formal occasions wear a crown


SO, we must all fasten our seat belts because we are in for a rough ride, money-wise.
That was the blunt message delivered earlier this week by Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England.
He warned of a further squeeze on household finances, with food prices and energy bills going up again and property prices falling, maybe very steeply.
We could be heading for a recession, he said, and added that “the nice decadeâ€? was behind us. Eh?!
Mervyn's surely right about the bad stuff coming our way, but I can't agree with his assessment that the past ten years have been at all “niceâ€?...

IF YOU love a place or thing (your country, a city, a town, or even a football club) you need to need to see its faults as well as its virtues.
I think most people understand the sense of such an approach ... if they think about it at all.
There is little merit in being blindly, stupidly, enthusiastic about something if, by doing so, you blot out or even deny negative aspects of its existence.
That does no-one any favours...

SO it’s coming up for 11pm on a Saturday night as I start to write this posting.
I know, I really shouldn’t be at home on my computer just now
 like some sad web 'ead.
I should be out largin’ it in the bars of New Brighton ... or Liverpool.
Except I’m not the type of bloke to be found largin’ it in trendoid wine bars or even “dahn the pubâ€?.
And especially not at the weekends when all the amateur drinkers are out

(Read on for important information coming up near the end of this posting.)

WELL, I did my democratic duty. I went along and voted in the local government elections last Thursday.
Most people, of course, didn’t bother, which is a shame 
 and quite dangerous, given how adrift and disconnected English society is right now.
Politics might not be fun, it might not be very attractive (it has been dubbed "showbiz for ugly people" after all), but it is dead important. Why?