God bless my little baby girl.

Fate takes its toll....

Apologies if you have just stumbled across this blog looking for some decent common sense comment on the world, this post is not common sense; this is emotion the antipathy of common sense. Scroll down the page past this post and I am sure you will find what you are looking for. It’s only 2 posts but I think they make a good point. More, I promise will follow, however I need to write this as a cathartic action and you are more than welcome to read it. It’s just not that cheery.

My daughter is going to die on Saturday. It’s a fact, a certainty I can do nothing about, its going to happen. She is going to die.

She is only little, definitely smaller then normal, the characteristics of her death warrant already there to see where they were not just 3 weeks ago. The dark smudges on the screen claiming to be a cleft palate, the disfigured kidneys and the strawberry shaped head confirming what we really knew all along. She is only 16 weeks old, should have another 24 weeks to go before having to face the world. But she doesn’t get that choice; she was never going to get that choice. Fate in a way that I will never understand had decided that at the moment of conception, the combining of chromosomes not going according to the grand plan, whatever that is.

So what I am supposed to think, how am I supposed to feel? All I feel is an emptiness stunned by the inevitability. I have really known for 2 weeks now, have been able to prepare myself, watch out for my wife and try to work out what she is feeling. But I don’t feel the grief yet, that will come as it will come for my wife. But she has the pain of giving birth to come first. My wife surprises me, she is an artist, a beautiful singer, a pianist – delicate yet tempestuous. I am waiting for her tears, I am waiting to hear her fears, she contains them for the moment but I know they will come and that is what plays on my mind.

It has been suggested that we do not need to act as the executioner, let nature take its course. I can understand why couples might take this option, wary of the ethical dilemma or just wanting to maintain some attachment to the unborn child for as long as possible. But all I see is the continuation of suffering for mother and child, a pressure on my wife that she would find unbearable. It has been having that timetable that has helped us through this process so far, being able to focus knowing that soon we would be a little nearer the truth. Well now the truth has arrived.

My wife and her sister play the piano, Handel, Bach, Mozart. Beautiful duets that occupy the mind drive out the thoughts of what is to come. Since learning of the pregnancy I had secretly hoped for a daughter, another musician inheriting my wife’s skills and beauty. I found out it was a girl as I read the results of the chromosome abnormalities - lifting the heart and spinning it around before being pierced by the bullet. But I know its not the end, this happens to many, many couples every year and the next year they become proud parents and that is what I have to keep hold of. Not the end, but another beginning.

Power to the people!

I was originally going to write about the UK Border Agency and how in its current state it can hardly be deemed fit for purpose. While it has been causing me much personal angst recently and its shortcomings have been highlighted by its recognition of hundreds of phantom English colleges, it will have to wait another day for some Common Dog treatment.

Instead I want to get behind another of Douglas Carswell’s, campaigns this time for Primary style selection of candidates. The comments of Nadine Dorries (see below) and the widely recognised sentiment of MPs being lumped together as ‘they are all the same’, a complaint of both the angry public and the victimised MPs, is a condition of the current selection system. The majority of constituents do not know their MP, they have no say in his/her selection, and very few will have any knowledge or care in his or her views and what they will do for the constituency. All they will know is what party they represent. Currently, unless there is a major scandal such as we are currently witnessing, MPs are very rarely held to account for their actions, words or voting record by the local people. Such lack of accountability inevitably leads to disinterest in politicians and politics as a whole, a sorry state of affairs for the world’s oldest democracy.

While it is a positive sign that the public are willing to make their voice heard (in writing, at public meetings or through the media) when there is strong resentment on a policy such as Gurkha immigration or abuse of the expenses system. What we really want to see is positive involvement of the public at the start of the policy making process and not at the end. If the public and not just the local activist can identify their MP and understand the manifesto that he is running on it would be a start. We have seen it in the London Mayoral elections where Londoners actually became quite passionate about who they wanted inside city hall. Neither of these candidates could be seen as ideal party representatives, but where their focus was on what they can do for the city and not specifically on party politics they were able to capture the public’s interest.

Of course for the selection of constituency candidates, party politics will and should play a major part of a candidate’s manifesto. But by opening up the party’s selection, the general public and not just the constituency committee will be able to evaluate potential candidates true political beliefs and what they would do not just for the party but also for the constituency. Ultimately what this could lead to is the engagement of the public in politics like we witness across the Atlantic, the political parties actually representing the needs of its people and the penalising of failure and inaction.

Like lemmings to the cliff....

My heart sank this morning, waking up to the voice of Nadine Dorries complaining of the victimisation of MPs in a McCarthy style witch hunt on the R4 Today programme. I am sure David Cameron was sharing my pain and it probably gave him a nasty bout of indigestion with his cornflakes. We expect our politicians (4 years in to a parliament) to be fairly politically astute by now but it is mind boggling how little they really do understand. To claim that many MPs are innocent and are therefore being unfairly treated misses the point of the public’s anger completely.

We expect our MPs to recognise what is wrong within their constituency, what is wrong within legislature and what is wrong with this country and then campaign to put things right. Admitting that all MPs knew the expenses system was wrong but that the Fees Office briefed them in a wink wink, nudge, nudge style that it was in lieu of 'poor' pay only goes to highlight their failure as our representatives in parliament. We want MPs to identify the issues and have the courage of their convictions to stand up against corruption and failing policies and sort it out.

Incidentally there are a large number of government servants that are forced to work in London all a considerable distance from their family / main homes and many on a salary a third of what an MP is paid. Who are these people? Our servicemen and women working at the Ministry of Defence. They are provided with rented accommodation set at capped rate and paid for directly by the MOD and then also given a small daily allowance for food. They also then have to pay a set amount of food and accommodation back out of their pay matching what they would have to pay if living in a accommodation on a military base. These men and women work just as long hours (if not longer) then our MPs and they earn a lot more respect as well!!!