Give racism the Blue Card!

Oh heck, I've just posted a message on Facebook warning people that I am fed up of getting crude racist messages on email and FB from well-meaning friends.

I got the idea from a friend who has done something similar. It just seems at the moment that it's ok to knock anyone. Race, anyone on benefits, the disabled. They are seemingly all fair game.

I got a really vile racist 'joke' via text last week from a former colleague. I might have sniggered at it in the 60's when I was young, foolish and woefully under-educated.

God knows this country has its problems but this sort of shite doesn't help. Neither am I the most PC person going and my irony often leaves people wondering.

The Blue Shed responds

I notice old Lard-Ass leaves out the subject of 'fat jokes'. A bit too close to home eh my adiposely-challenged friend?

How did he know I wanted to be painted Blue? He never asked.

Blue Shed Poetry

Here is my latest poem. I reworked Adrian Henri's fabulous 'Tonight At Noon' and gave it an updated, Rochdale slant:-

Tonight At Noon (Updated) by Hinch (With apologies to Adrian Henri

Tonight at noon
Supermarkets will refuse to stock Easter eggs before March
Tonight at noon
Children will learn how to skip again and to roll iron hoops
Bankers will take pay cuts to help the homeless
North Korea will scatter rose petals over the South                   
The Daily Mail will print messages of joy, tolerance and forgiveness
The first snows of summer will appear
And all our reservoirs will be forever brimming

Tonight at noon
Roaming dogs will clear up their own mess
Drake Street will ring to the sound of jingling tills and happy shoppers
Rochdale will be declared a World Heritage Centre
Salmon will be sighted leaping up the weir on Smith Street
And kebab shops will cater only for vegetarians
Fat ladies will refuse to wear their leggings
In markets and cafes
And track-suits will be worn only by sportsmen

Taxis will give way at crossings
Kareoke in pubs replaced by live music
Long queues outside our libraries
Traffic wardens embrace illegally-parked motorists
Flowers grow where once only litter flourished
Councillors set politics aside in order to work for the common good
Shoppers flock into town to marvel at the wondrous markets
            and
The sun will rise serenely in the West
Tonight at noon

THE BLUE SHED RESPONDS

Oh yes, very bloody droll. Maybe 'tonight at noon' old Lard-Ass will get his backside off the mattress and go out and earn some money.

Sheds don't really write poetry but I'll have a go:-

There once was a geezer called Pete

Who was more on his ass than his feet

He would much rather shirk

As his wife went to work

While he supped his home-brew for his treat

Maybe I can do something more personal to me:-

No wonder this Shed is so BLUE

Being here is as bad as the zoo

I stand freezing all night

As the cats yowl and fight

When it rains I get soaking wet through.  



Public Sector Pension BLUES

Let me put my cards on the table here. I am a recently-retired public-sector worker which, if you believe some of the rubbish being circulated by the Daily Mail and the government makes me out to be some sort of criminal insofar as I have a pension that although small, allows me to live with something approaching dignity.

The fact that I contributed to this pension all my working life butters no parsnips with some as they point out that the money I paid my contributions with in the first place came originally from the public purse.

My pension lump sum allowed me to settle the mortgage on my modest two up, two down, Band A, terraced house. The sum I am left to live on every month equates to less than the National Minimum Wage. For this I spent over thirty years on the front line as a Staff Nurse in the NHS. During this time I dealt with kids with cancer, the elderly, violent drunks, drug addicts, HIV patients, mental illness, severe trauma, burns and all the other stuff you get to see on ‘Casualty’.

There is no bodily fluid that I have not mopped up again and again and again in copious quantities and I have dealt with the most emotionally-draining cases that still cause my eyes to water thirty-odd years later as I recall them.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want a better pension than my colleagues in the private sector although I will admit that some of the deals that our bankers seem to get makes me drool with envy.

No, I believe that ALL people who work should be able to retire on a pension that allows them to live with dignity in old age. Instead of demonising public sector workers for wanting to retain their pension schemes, there should be legislation passed to force private employers to provide similar schemes. Then perhaps their own employees too can face retirement without fear and knowing that they won’t have to work until they drop in order to provide themselves with an acceptable standard of living.

Having retired, I cannot strike but I will be standing shoulder to shoulder on the picket line with my former colleagues on November 30^th. I know that patients will still be cared for because that is what we joined for. We didn’t join the service to stand outside our hospitals, town halls and schools on a freezing November morning to cry out for public sympathy. We are doing it because we believe that the current government proposals on pensions are unfair and will mean that many of our colleagues will have to work longer, pay more in and get less out of it at the end.

It hurts me to see any working man or woman demonised. In the public sector, amongst many other things, we deliver your babies, teach your children, lock up your criminals, empty your bins, wade through your raw sewage, put out your fires, keep your streets safe, look after you when you are ill or dying and bury or cremate you at the end.

We know that people who enter these services do not accrue great wealth and most of us remain fairly anonymous all our working lives. To be honest, that’s the way we prefer it. It takes a lot for us to get angry and stand or march chanting under banners. We know that times are very difficult so we are not asking for big pay-rises, company cars or fringe benefits.

All we want, when we choose to retire or can no longer work is a contributory pension scheme that allows us to live with dignity and respect.

It’s really not a lot to ask is it?

A retired Unite Member

THE BLUE SHED RESPONDS

Well, for once I have to agree with him. First year of his so-called feather-bedded, inflation-proof pension and in the middle of November, he still can't afford to switch his heating on until just before his wife gets in at 5.30pm to save money.

He thinks I can't see him but he sits there in the conservatory with one of those electric throw-overs on him as he tries to keep warm.

I'm not starting to feel sorry for him as he chopped down my predecessor to fuel his chiminea but it's a bit rich.

I heard Cameron on the TV today saying that he thought the pension proposals were 'reasonable'. What a joke. What Pete gets per month wouldn't buy Cameron and his Tory pals a decent canape and a bottle of claret in the Bullingham Club!

I don't think that BLUE Sheds can actually go out on strike but I am very good at going slow so next Wednesday, I will be staging my own sit-down and go-slow strike here in the garden and just hope that those darned cats will take the day off from peeing over me and doing all the other stuff that moggies do.

Some hope!

A shift to the BLUE

Well I see my old pal and former colleague Jean Ashworth has jumped from the Lib Dem ship and landed on the Good Ship Tory-Boy. http://rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/63347/councillor-leaves-lib-dems-for-tories

It says more perhaps about the state of the local Lib Dem machine than it does of Jean's politics. It was probably less of a revelation on the Road to Damascus and more of a "Sod this, I've had enough" moment.

Mind you, I can't see her constituents voting for her as a Tory even though she has a solid personal following. May 2012 will reveal all.

Blue Shed Latest

Sorry it's been a while since my last Blue Blog. Have been busy on my volunteer stuff, house-training our two new, cute kittens Miss Tibbs and Matilda, brewing beer and writing my Xmas newsletter which I will mail out with my cards and also via email for the first time.

Have now joined a local writing group so am sharpening up my pen once again and filling my inkwell with vitriol.

For those of you who don't know, I write a regular column for Rochdale Online using the nom de plume 'John Hardcastle'. He is the character in Keith Waterhouse's 'Billy Liar' who writes in the Stradhoughton Echo as 'Man-o-the-Dales'.

Here is my latest offering:- http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/78/opinion/63217/remembrance-day-2011

I see that the government has joined forces with the Daily Mail to swing its cosh at the disabled. Am neither surprised or particularly upset. After all, that's what the Tories have always done and will contine to do.

There is nothing new under the sun Horatio.

THE BLUE SHED RESPONDS

Two cute kittens? Well pardon me Lard-Ass. They may be cute to you but to me they will just be another eight legs with which to scratch away at my nice bitumen roof when the little buggers are old enough to be let out to yowl, screw, piss and shite to their tiny hearts content wherever it pleases them.

By the way, thanks for nearly setting fire to me on Bonfire Night. I appreciate it. Mind you, as my BLUE predeccessor finally met her end in flames I should not be surprised.

Taling of flames, I see the old hag next door was giving you some verbal over your chiminea... again. Take heed if you dont want the local council round giving you the heat you so richly deserve.

Never mind all the writing. It's about time you got off your fat ass and tidied up the garden for winter or is that too much like hard work?