Crossing the Channels

Well how bizarre is this!

Following on from yesterday’s report, I am currently sitting in the Club Lounge of the P&O Ferry Pride of Calais. I have not turned into a snob who prefers to travel in luxurious settings. The fact was that if I paid an extra £10 for this, I was guaranteed a full refund should there be any complications with the travel. As the French rail drivers were still deciding whether they were going to operate, or cooperate, it seemed a decent investment.

Meanwhile, I am sitting at a desk, sipping complementary fresh orange juice and eating complementary biscuits and looking at complementary toblerones. My lap top is plugged in and I have just been skyping my friend in Australia to complete a conversation that we started earlier today. Had I had my headphones with me I could have spoken to her too and shown her the view of the approaching French coast.

I am fascinated by technology. I don’t necessarily have a burning desire to know how it all works. I am merely grateful for the advances that means keeping in touch with important people is relatively easy.

When my friend first arrived in the UK from Australia in 1990, I don’t think any of my particular group of peers possessed a mobile phone. My friend J was the first one to get one and that was probably in the middle of the 90s. To think that I can now phone S in Australia via Skype at any time of the day totally free of charge with a full video call is simply astounding. If the greedy companies could get themselves sorted out to ensure that there is not this huge cost between the UK and the continent, I could continue talking to her for no money either. Surely, the time has come for us all to be able to access free internet at any point. I’m happy to pay for my dongle, which I bought a few months ago. It really ought to be useable as I transfer from one side of the Channel to the other.

Dongles, laptops, mobile phones, iPods, cameras, camcorders, satnavs – even taking a day trip or a half day trip across the Channel is full of equipment and chargers. That is one slight draw back but it is worth it. I can amuse myself for the next hour and not get agitated that I am in the middle of the ocean. I can see France approaching although it seems to have disappeared in the mist at present and I can take photos with my newly charged camera. I’m almost regretting the fact that I left the camcorder at home.

The mobile phone is an incredible resource and a wonderful invention. I would not be without mine for anything. I don’t really mind about what type it is though I do love the accessibility to emails and so forth as well as my photos and the information applications. I quite like the games too when I want to lose a few moments to insignificant activity.

I lost my first mobile phone in a service station in Devon. It was a great wad of a thing; cumbersome, black and you had to extend the antennae out to receive or make calls. The phone that I had before the iPhone was so small I constantly lost it in the depths of my bag. Yet for all the faults of always been accessible, they are so much a part of our lives now that you can hardly begin to imagine life without one. It wasn’t so long ago that people didn’t have landlines in homes. An amazing journey has taken place to where we are now.

So, I am waiting for a phone call from my sister to say that she has arrived in Calais. Without this technology, it would be far more difficult to rendezvous. Even if I get lost driving round Calais alone for the first time, I can simply phone her and keep in touch. Also, the Satnav is already set to ensure that I meet up without too many problems.

And yet for all the technological advancements, there are so many ways that our society is still resolutely in the dark ages of pre-mobile phone existence.

Spiritually we are pretty bereft and the revolution has yet to take place. Emotionally, there is no cohesion in truth apart from pockets here and there. As a society we are well and truly stuck in the Thatcherism of me, myself and I. That is going to take generations to overturn.

However, having read another blog this morning, with accompanying hyperlinks for me to view, I was filled with a sense of hope.
This is quite amazing considering some of what was written referred to the hopelessness of our hopes in 1997. One newspaper columnist stated that she thought she had been voting Labour in 1997 but it turned out that she had mistakenly voted Tory, not because she had ticked the wrong box but the “right box” had not even stopped at a shade of purple. It had gone all the way to True Blue.

The ceaseless list of New Labour policies that were adopted to placate the roaming voters and Middle England is quite astounding when you see it written down in black and white. Even the spending on education and health can be drawn to question when you look at it in the right context. Major’s government was hardly social democratic and yet even they didn’t go as far as certain Labour policies like student tuition fees to name but one that particular raises my hackles.

Yet, we are in a time of hope as one should always try to be immediately prior to an election. As the 6th May approaches, I may change my mind and become as despondent as I was on that infamous night of 9th April 1992 when all my hopes vanished in a haze of apoplexy.

The hope, for me, does not lie in the election of one party. Rather it lies in the election of no party. The vision and the social democracy that I believe in and value could happen. It would mean people disregarding their old, familiar ways and their set assumptions around party loyalty. These politicians, following on from the expenses fiasco, would have to do some more rethinking, and people would have to work together.

Let’s face facts, I, like other people who feel disenfranchised by this government have had to do some serious rethinking. As a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, as someone who genuinely feels committed to social equality and the ending of all injustice and prejudice, I have had to rethink.
As it happens, this is pretty easy for me to do. I live in a Tory stronghold, or should I say stranglehold. There is never likely to be another colour of MP in this constituency even if proportional representation was in place.
However, if I was in a different type of constituency, I would have to really consider how I voted.

I cannot vote for a party who does not seem to believe in the things that I hold dear. Admittedly, my ideology may have more in common with Dennis Skinner than Simon Hughes but the policies and manifestos of these two parties veer me towards the yellow rather than the red.
I don’t think I can possibly explain in this short blog how much that pains me to say. It is actually heartbreaking. By even considering such a move, I feel as though I am betraying my truest love, my father and mother, my entire belief system. However, it is because I have a belief system and values that I have to say this.

I cannot vote Labour because to do so would give them the mandate to continue in this shoddy vein.
I remember having an argument with people in 1987 and again in 1992 about whether Labour should shift ever more central just to get elected. I vehemently refused such an idea. I was accused of being an idealist. Even my cousin, who has since rescinded his Red Card, said that there had to be some shift towards the centre in order for “us” to be elected.

Only at what cost? The cost of everything that you believe in? Free education for all who want it? Free health services where the rich or even the middle classes don’t have to jump the queue by paying a few bob or two? A fair and valued judicial system? A fair and honest approach to government that berids us of the second unelected chamber and the anachronism of a constitutional monarchy? An economy run for the good of the people rather than the good of the few? Brave decisions? Appeasement? Integrity?
And I haven’t even started on the war.

We sold out. Let’s face the facts. We sold out to the highest bidder for the sheer hopefulness of power and the final stampede against Thatcher, even though she had long since gone.
We sold out because it was apparently the only way to get elected and those of us who agreed, albeit subconsciously, to this trade off were anticipating a way back to socialism, at the very least with the second term.

We remain disappointed.

So why the hope?

Well, with Clegg doing so well last Thursday, there is a strong possibility that the Liberal Democrats are going to get a fair share of the vote. With the first past the post system that we currently have, even if they have the majority of people voting for them, they will not get elected into government unless something utterly sensational happens. However, the number of MPs that do get returned to parliament of the yellow variety could dramatically increase.

The projected hung parliament has taken on a completely different scene all of a sudden.
Prior to this major swing, either the Tories could have been reliant on UKIP and even Nick Griffin should he get elected, or Labour would have been in the hands of all sorts of Celtic arrangements with Alex Salmond and his Plaid Cymru counterpart.

With a workable number of Liberal Democrat MPs the power of Clegg and his party increases dramatically. Labour, if they want Liberal support will not be able to stop merely at promising electoral reform. They will have to fully consider Cable’s economic stability ideas. They will have to consider the costings and the philosophy behind the very sensible education package that is currently on offer from the Lib Dems. They will have to look again at the tax system, ensuring that those top 1%ers get taxed properly and fairly for the good of all.

Not only that, but those who hold power within the Labour Party are going to have to listen to the left. In order to secure their support, they are going to have to listen to their views and ideas. They are going to have to reconsider some of their policies and potentially move in a different direction.

This is no longer a two party state, we hope. This is no longer about a tiny minority of MPs holding the balance of power. This is something else entirely.
But what excites me most is the idea that people are going to have to look at policies properly without having to hide behind the party lines. There is a real hope for democracy being the real winner here.

I’m not sure what this has to do with mobile phones and communication, other than the fact that writing my thoughts down like this has eased the considerable stress of getting from Dover to Calais.
But of course, it has everything to do with communications and embracing technology and new ideas and change.
It is all about crossing the channels. Even a phobic like me has to do it at some point in their life.

Maintenant, le soliel est dans la ciel bleu et j’arrive en France a ce moment.
Time to go.

A bientot.