Month: November 2019

I was told earlier today by my grandmother’s care home that she passed away at 6.15 this morning. It’s a strange phone call to get: One that leaves you with a sense of overwhelming blurriness in the immediate aftermath of confusion and denial.

I haven’t quite got to the anger stage, nor proper grief. I am still still firmly in shock.

But I’d like to share some of my grandmother’s best moments with me in mine (and I hope her) lifetime.

I can remember my childhood fondly. My mother was out working for herself and she relied upon my grandmother a lot for childcare when she and my father divorced. I remember being picked up from nursery by my grandmother, who we called ‘Mama’, and sharing a packet of Jelly Tots each day with her dog.

I remember big salad bowls and healthy meals. I remember the lesser healthy, but equally as hearty ones too. I recall her fondness for making sure that you had absolutely everything you needed to succeed in life.

She took me in a few years back after I’d moved out of Will’s, and she helped me to move out of her home. She had the kindness of a Saint.

There were difficult times, especially towards the end of it. She refused to see me for a while, but I am glad that I was finally able to see her and that I managed to see her yesterday, just before she died. I am glad that somebody did. She was in pain and she had poor recollection, with inability to distinguish my voice, and her face had dried out because she had clearly been refusing water.

Cancer – or, rather, three cancers – got the 88-year-old fighter in the end. There’s not much that can be done at that age. She gave it a good go though.

So, my dear Mama, I know that I don’t believe in your Heaven, but I am hopeful that I’m wrong and that you’ve met granddad and your parents in the paradise of free souls. I hope we meet again soon, because I already miss you.

I’ve been taking a party political sabbatical since March 2017, when I resigned my Conservative Party membership out of concerns which had broadened out to be largely true.

As I made clear in the post at the time, I consider that it’s a duty to former colleagues and indeed a locality that I support them in campaigning.

Amanda Solloway, MP for Derby North between 15-17, has been making a fantastic success of her charity: HeadHigh. She stood up for mental health in Parliament and she continues to do so in Derby. I know that returning Amanda would be the return of a decent one nation, caring Conservative.

It’s a bit more than that though. This election really is one that I wish we were not fighting. Parliament and the government both let us down in the last parliamentary term by blocking Brexit when it was first possible to even now, and the government had continued with plans unwaveringly, reluctant and ruling out a second referendum or a confirmatory ballot.

I believe that was a mistake and I still do.

But here’s a chance to get someone I believe in back into Parliament. Someone whose work in Parliament I followed closely and have had the pleasure of working in the third sector with. Someone who I know can stand up for my values and Derby North.

After all, there is a country to govern. At the start of the summer it became clear that Brexit was inevitable. I fought it a bit. I still do. But here we are, arguing about a result from three years ago. Within those three years, we’ve seen little in terms of anything else and no real heat at the heart of government. We need a return to that and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is not the answer.

Corbyn asks the wrong questions of the wrong people. Rather than asking the public what they want, he instead speaks to his mates and Seamus Milne, who all agree with him that nationalising everything that moves is a good idea. He doesn’t ask “how can we improve your lives?” He just assumes he knows the answers.

Conservatives don’t presume to know anything about you; in fact, that’s kind of the liberal/Conservative thing: I know that you know what’s best for you, too. And I suspect you agree with me that it’s not higher taxes, it’s not taxing you for others to catch trains, and it’s not voting for someone who’s presided over Labour getting to the point where it has to be investigated by the ICHR for anti-Semitism. And on that final note, after Chris Williamson was suspended by the Labour Party for being filmed aggravated that “the party has been apologising for too long on anti-Semitism”, he himself is standing as an independent candidate in the constituency. I don’t really want to ignore the chance of fighting that awful type of politics either.

I will be campaigning for Amanda during this general election and would encourage anyone else who reads this and would like to get involved to contact me in the first instance.