I have learned something.

Next time I feel tired and drained, best be honest and cancel my arrangements. For I have screwed up mightily at last night's dinner out. Faced with a couple of tory voters I found myself in a boozy angry place I haven't been in for many years, and I was unpleasant; too tired to make my argument sensibly but aggressive enough to kill the evening.

A long, long time since I felt that angry. And yes it was wine, and yes it was Steve and yes, whatever. It was born of a frustration at the way things are, which doesn't justify my behaviour but does explain it. I hear about people dying on the system, I hear about people going hungry; this 'recovery' of ours is costing lives, and it is my belief that a lot of people don't want to hear it. So there I was saying it in the wrong place, in the wrong way at the wrong time. Brilliant.

In the end, I can only apologise. I sent an email to that effect, and hope it is enough, if not, there is not much to be done. Edited to add: I just received a very gallant reply, and all is exceptionally well. They don't seem to have minded my momentary transformation into a befrocked Che Guevara. Friends are ace.

Politics on the other hand...

I don't want to be just a whinging gob in the face of so much that is wrong. Stories like this:
(http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/28/man-starved-to-death-after-benefits-cut

And this (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/killed-benefits-cuts-starving-soldier-3923771) fill me with fury.

Both of these happened in 2014, 100 years after the Great War we still let soldiers starve. We shouldn't be letting anyone starve. Tory Glory. I can't tell you how much it costs but I can tell you how much it weighs; 35 kilos, Mark Wood's body weight at time of death. 35 fucking kilos.

Meanwhile the Great Great Great Great Great Grandson of William IV presides over an utterly corrupt government where his ministers spend monstrous amounts on limousines etc, and he tells us we are all in this together.

I fall into a kind of hopeless rage. Years ago, I barely saw and couldn't change anything. Today I see and still can't do anything.

Lesson on the Green

Join a party, I thought, make a difference I thought.

I am a lifelong Labour voter, but who are they now and what do they stand for? They have been an inadequate opposition, would they be an adequate government? Where is the necessary corollary to the right wing? Where is any interest whatsoever in environment and climate change? So I go to the Greens.

And I find a mishmash of unworkable twunk, together with some fine ideas. As more and more Labour/Libdem supporters join the Green party, the whole thing begins to look like a trojan horse for far left policies. The watermelon joke has some truth in it. I've got no problems with a party being socialist, as long as it knows what it is and does what it says on the tin.But the Green Party is about supposedly about green issues, and we may just be forgetting what those are...

Within the Green Party there seems to be a convenient belief that social justice and environmental concerns belong together. So what is beginning to happen is that socialist policies are being touted in the mistaken assumption that a more egalitarian society is bound to be more green. Said policies need to have a voice, they belong surely in the Labour party; But Labour seems glum, compromised and inarticulate. If Labour worked out an appropriate environmental programme, I think I might well go back.

Some ideas to be found on the site are immense; a universal income, the protection of the NHS... a movement to a different kind of economy and a massive infra structural overhaul.The idea is to create a self sustaining model for society, but it costs a huge amount to get it all in place and working so you can't punish the cash when you need it to get the whole thing going.This goes against a distinct 'dark green' undercurrent of wanting to sock it to the man, a bad idea if he's the one paying for everything. As I have already said on the site, it is very wrong to attempt to govern people if you despise them.

I find much less concern about animal and ecological conservation than I would like. Some people want to save the planet 'for their children.' This annoys me. Why not save the planet for itself? Why not save trees because they are trees? Why must there be a human advantage to it? As I write this, I have a strong experience of dream deja vu, in which I was saying exactly these things. One me existed only in profile, but there was a strange little woman who lived in my chest, had at least 3 dimensions and plenty to say on the matter. She looked like me, but may well have had touches of face-hugger meets Aegis. The image has struck me so powerfully, along with other curious nightmare flashpoints that I must pause.

Just when I was giving up

I find someone working on a policy so dear to my heart I could jump up and cheer. If it can be hammered into shape I will definitely second it, and go to the party conference to support it. Fingers crossed.