Royal Fail

Tonight I am going to delight and entertain you with an angry rant about the national postal service that we are subjected to in this country; Royal Mail

There's a big debate going on in government at the minute over plans to reform the NHS. One of the things that the big wig tory toffs keep regurgitating is "competition will be good for the NHS!". Now, what they need to do is stop sniffing their own farts and apply this logic to the Royal Mail. Royal Mail is in fact one of the national establishments that actually could heavily benefit from having to fend off some competition.


My husband and I live many hundreds of miles away from our families and so when it comes to birthdays and mothers and (in the imminent future) fathers day etc that we can't make in person we have to fall back on using the post to send our lovely greetings cards and gifts. But it's hit and miss as to whether or not what we put in the post will get there. I mean, you could quote statistics for lost post if you wanted and I would snort at you. We use the mail so infrequently that the ammount of times cards and gifts haven't shown up at the other end means that if you used me as the sole example, the Royal Mail would probably have a 20% failure to deliver rate. That might look small, but I can bet that if this was a national statistic there would be hell to pay. This is also not taking into account the things that haven't reached us from other senders, even when special or recorded delivery is used.

Above: the jolly British postman. Perhaps if he stopped meddling with the concerns of the local townsfolk and actually did his job then Royal Mail wouldn't be the national disgrace that it is.

There are other couriers available. Businesses will use TNT for example, who will come and collect their mail and send it off on its way....but who delivers it at the end? Royal Mail. This means that we've recieved bills too late and had to pay charges for late payment, even though Royal Mail didn't even have to bother collecting and sorting it. They just had to deliver it.


Some of the frustrations we've suffered from this horrendously managed company:

1. We're still waiting for a parcel that my mum sent me 2 and a half years ago
2. My mum, brother and sister are still waiting for their birthday cards from 2 years ago
3. My in laws are waiting for various cards to arrive. I believe my mother in law is still awaiting a birthday card my mum sent her for her birthday this year in fact
4. When we were up to our eyeballs in student debt, we recieved final demands sometimes months after they expected a response
5. Job application forms have failed to show up
6. A letter from British Gas threatening to break into our property to switch our electricity meter to a pre paid meter arrived the day before they said they would be breaking in - the date on the letter was two weeks previously and we were going away to visit family the next day (in this instance British Gas weren't even supplying our electricity so we called up and gave them what for, but had the letter arrived a day later? We'd have been, frankly, fucked.)
7. A sympathy card from my husbands work colleagues which was posted three days after his father died didn't show up until 3 months later. They posted it from a mile away from our home.
8. Train Tickets sent to us via special delivery arrived but the post man decided he couldn't be bothered to ring the door bell and get me to sign for them. What followed was a game of cat and mouse in which we never actually got our hands on the tickets until the day before we were supposed to travel. In fact, for rcorded or special deliveries, or parcels that are sent via Royal Mail, this has become the norm for us, something which hasn't been helped by the fact that the sorting office from which we have to collect it now has been moved from somewhere quite central to an out of the way backwater which we can only get to by bussing into town then getting a train out to it.

And now yes my fathers day card has apparently failed to turn up. This has pissed me off to no end because it was posted with an application to ChildLine who emailed me to acknowlege reciept of my application. I know ChildLine are in the same city, but then again that doesn't necissarily mean jack shit going by number seven above. In the great scheme of things a fathers day card is absoloutely nothing, it's a mere trinket really, but I paid for a service and that service was not provided. And it is getting to the point where it is all too frequently not provided, I must have chucked so much money down the black hole which is Royal Mail over the years. It's not like we have a choice...I mean, we could in theory use a courrier for big parcels but that's expensive, and what other choice have we for things like cards or application forms? There is no other way of doing it.

What makes me laugh is that post men like a good strike but every time they do I kind of get a bit bitter and even more cynical. If the post is delayed for a few days then so what, boo hoo. But the fact that their service for the rest of the year is so abysmaly poor, I just can't get behind them when they do. You know, perhaps it's true, perhaps the conditions in which they work is what shits them up and fucks the service up. So why can't the higher ups just sort it out? I for one would gladly pay up to a pound, if I can be honest with you, if I knew it would definitely arrive. You could say well that's special delivery for you but you shouldn't have to buy special delivery every frigging time. That should be saved for special occasions. And you shouldn't have to buy special so that your cards get there in a timely fashion. Royal Mail, seriously, I implore you, hire some more staff, modernize, do whatever the hell you have to do to get your service up to scratch. I'm sure paying a few pennies more isn't going to piss us off.

What pisses me off more is, like I said earlier, whatever I pay I have to because I haven't a choice, there's no other option.

I don't know how the system could be shaken up to promote competition or anything like that, but someone needs to look into it, someone trained up in logistics or some such thing. Because at the minute it's disgraceful, and I'm sick of buying cards and stamps only to, essentially, throw them into a giant red trash can.

Bahrain from an English F1 fan's point of view

As we deliberated over which instant coffee we fancied a couple of weeks ago (it must be fairtrade, but do we stick with tried and tested Percol Columbian or take a chance on Asda's Extra Special Tanzanian blend?) Ben turned to me and out of the blue said,

"I'm in two minds over whether or not to watch the Bahrain Grand Prix if it goes ahead."

What our choice of coffee had to do with a motorsport event taking place on a small desert island in the Persian Gulf which is not generally known for its trade in the brew, I will never know, but he made the statement and I felt it only fair to give my view on the subject.

"Well I'm not. If they decide to go ahead with it then I'm boycotting it. I'm not having it broadcast into my home."

"But what if they send in Human Right's experts and show that the situation is improved there?"

What he was referring to is, of course, the news reports that Bahrain, like much of the Arabic world, has been suffering from a touch of civil unrest. What shocked us both the most was that doctors and nurses who treat pro democracy protestors had been arrested and held for what essentially ammounts to treason. It seemed brutal to us that such people had been arrested for trying to care for humans to whome the powers that be decided shouldn't be treat.

We continued our little debate, about the ethics of holding a a major international event in a country which seemed to be actively persecuting a good proportion of its population. We're terrible arm chair do gooders like that. Ben pointed out that Bernie Ecclestone didn't want to turn F1 political. I argued that by going to a country in which such things are happening, and host an event at which the Bahrain monarchy would inevitably be strutting around on camera and generally spilling their money all over it, then it couldn't help but be political and so they should stay away until the unrest was over. And such has been my opinion, and is my opinion still.

Of course, this weekend the government of Bahrain dropped the state of emergency rule, and the FIA, after a "fact finding mission", decided to reinstate the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Well the fans of course have all gone wild and there are already petitions and facebook pages (ah yes, facebook, the best thing that ever happened to the arm chair do gooder) zooming up against it. And since before the FIA even made a decision, everywhere that F1 is present on the internet there are an alarming number of Bahraini's popping up saying "but everything is fine, don't believe the liers, come back to Bahrain life is good and wondeful here!". Paid propoganda? Many of the other fans certainly seem to think so.

The truth of the matter is, whilst I consider myself to be relatively decently read and I like to keep touch with what's going on in the world, I wouldn't have the foggiest with where to begin on the situation in Bahrain. At first you see the pictures on the television and it screams "police brutality and hostile dictatorship beating down on innocent protestors!" and that is bad. It is always bad. In no world, in no context, is police brutality and hostile dictatorship baring down on innocent bystanders a good thing. As such, this is most people's reason to avoid the Bahrain GP. F1 should not go to a country where these things are actively taking place.

And yes perhaps I'm a hypocrite because I still watch the GP in Turkey and China who are also topping the list of "human rights being squashed here" but the difference is there isn't active civil unrest and disobediance. The fresh taste of blood in Bahrain does not sit comfortably with international fans.

If you go to the F1 company page on facebook you will find little recent activity about F1 in and of itself. It has been completely taken over by what one can only assume is the Bahraini propoganda machine such as I mentioned earlier. If you chose to listen to what people are saying here without stepping aside to think for a moment, without any other source of information, you wouldn't know who or what to believe. Some say that hey, nothing untoward is happening here, everything is fine. Others say pretty much what the news tells us. More say that the protestors are in fact the evil ones, torturing innocents and brutalising students for not taking up arms with them in protest. Then people seem to get even more down and dirty...hey, you, you've sold us out to the Saudi's says one, well you've sold your very soul to the Iranian's is the reply.

And every time someone who is obviously not from Bahrain goes onto the page? They would be instantly jumped upon...you don't know, you're not here, do you even know where Bahrain is? Stupid Americans...believing all those lies. Welcome back, F1!

Desperation? Is there ever smoke without fire?

Clearly, at this point in time, people there are being hurt, oppressed, tortured. Who is the guilty culprit? Does it really matter? Doctors and nurses are being tried in what Amnesty International describes as a "secret military court" behind closed doors, even though the state of emergency has been lowered. Is this an environment into which F1 should be going?

Bahrain is already scheduled to open the 2012 season. Will things have changed by then...I don't know. But this is not a question for now. There are more issues than just the mucky issues of human rights abuses; for one, should the Bahrain GP go ahead then the season will be pushed right back into December. Being that teams begin work in January and usually have a few months off, this would really be stretching things. Then there is the fact that some in Bahrain have said that should the GP go ahead, a day of "rage" will be held in protest on the day of the GP. Whatever the situation may be now, however quiet or "peaceful", that certainly leaves massive potential for security threats for all involved in the race, from drivers to spectators.

All in all, I don't pretend to know all about what's going on in Bahrain, but I do know that for a variety of reasons the race should not go ahead this year. There are reasons why it should, of course, but they are spurious and stink of money hungry business men and monarchs rubbing their hands together.

The government has said it hopes the race will go ahead and will help to unite the people, however the issues there are obviously much deeper than they would appear at first glance. F1 is not the answer to Bahrain's problems, but the problem of Bahrain is certainly one that F1 cannot afford to saddle itself with.

Finding solutions to problems

Good afternoon all, I hope you're feeling well today :)

I've been having a bit of a huff because none too many of my regular favourite bloggers have been updating too frequently, today I have only one new blog entry to peruse! But then I have to (wo)man up and say you know what Bex, you haven't exactly been bombing the blogosphere with posts yourself...so here is my solution to the problem, I post to you all my own entry and perhaps you all will post some back!

I've been attempting to be more proactive in problem solving this week in general. My motivation to do anything at all of any use is probably at an all time low after a couple more rejections. I'm under no delusions that for every job I apply for there are probably hundreds just like me, and hundreds who are much better qualified than me, also applying for said job.

Going off on a tangent here, it pisses me off when politicians say "oh, there's always jobs available" because actually when you look in detail, all those jobs available are looking specifically for those with x ammount and type of experience. I don't begrudge them that at all because it's their business, but when ignorant upper class tory toffs who've never wanted for anything make such sweeping statements and then flood the market with yet more job seekers with their idiotic cuts, putting pressure on us who are maybe a little rusty in the workplace and already desperately seeking some kind of work, it just makes me so bloody angry! Even a basic 5 hours a week part time cleaning job seeks someone with experience and a frigging drivers liscence! It's so very very frustrating!

Back off of said tangent...I know I can't just sit around on my arse all day and expect a job to come to me, but after applying for fuck knows how many jobs of all different kinds (I'm not proud, I will lick your toilet bowl if you'll pay me for it. Ok maybe not.) I must be doing something wrong.

 So I'm looking into volunteering again. I've sent off a few applications at this point and am just waiting back on responses. I can only think that taking on a couple of different roles might give me the experience that employers want and make me look considerably less rusty. Also less lazy. And also will allow me to prove what I've been doing all this time (I got rejected from one lucrative looking job, a job that didn't require any experience at all, because I couldn't provide references for the past two years to prove I hadn't been, I dunno, running a fraud ring or something, though I do say that even had I been in work I could have been partaking in such activity so I fail to see how this is a safeguard at all.).

This isn't just the only problem in my life I'm seeking solutions to, though it would indeed be a mega huge boost to my energy and motivation levels just to see something happen in this sector. I'm also trying to jumpstart my weightloss (again, I hear you cry!). I've been scrutinising myself very closely here. I've stopped going to see my dietician because despite her one little tidbit of information about insulin peaks and troughs (hence explaining some of my dizzy spells and evening binges) she's actually done nothing to help me. She asked me at one point to stop worrying about calories and concentrate on eating healthily. I did this, and in a month I gained six kilo's, which I have struggled most terribly in loosing again even after going back to jotting down and tracking everything I eat.

Our meetings consisted of her trying to think of healthy meal idea's based upon her diet and lifestyle. Don't get me wrong, she's so skinny...but she's not me. And she (obviously!) doesn't have my lifestyle. Cook some garlic chicken up and slam it in a pitta bread, now that's a fantastic idea but I can't afford to cook up fresh meat twice a day. I tell her this and she looks at me blandly before saying "well, how about beans on toast?". You mean to tell me your advice is to live on a diet of beans on toast? Oh no not just that, you also need to partake in healthy cooking practices! Listen lady, I've already cut my portions in half and dry fry everything that isn't either dry roasted, grilled or boiled or steamed. There is no fat in my food cupboard, no cooking oil except that "1 cal per spray" shit (actually I say shit, but it's very good).

Before I turn into one of these women who proclaim I do everything right and yet only put stones and stones of weight on, don't worry I'm under no such delusions. I'm just saying that when my GP sent me off to see a dietician I was expecting/hoping for firmer help. Actually the GP herself gave me more relevant information. The dietician regurgitated a lot of secondary school biology nutrition...in fact everything she ever told me I could find for you on the NHS website. There's nothing new that she ever told me that I didn't already know. I mean her super duper fatty scales were great but meh. I was sent to her by my GP because I have weight related fertility problems and I was told that the dietician would have an understanding of the effects of PCOS on the body and the way in which this itself effects weight loss and how a particular diet may be issued to help ease the effects since it is closely linked to diabetes and insulin resistance. No no no. Just eat frigging beans on toast and garlic chicken and your problems will be solved.

Then she wanted to stop our one to one sessions and get me to go to some group ones like an NHS based weight watchers I guess but after some thought I decided not to go. In conjunction with one another it's not a problem but as the one and only solution? If she can't even help me one to one, on something that's supposed to be tailor made and focussed on me and my lifestyle, what does she think a weekly group weigh in and talk about "healthy fats and good cooking practise" is going to do? I'm not stupid, I don't need to be taught not to smother my roast in goose fat. I don't need to be told it is unhealthy to eliminate all fat from my diet. I don't need to be told the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates or how they are broken down and used by the body.

And no, I didn't learn this from the frigging internet.

I decided to take it upon myself to look at what I'm doing wrong without her guidance. and this involved doing something she didn't do and look at my diet over the long term and it turns out that the snacks and going over board that I would do maybe one or two days a week is actually enough to scupper all the hard work I do the rest of the time. Maybe if it's once or twice a month, or strictly only one day a week it'd be cool, but not the frequency I'm at now. Also, being stuck in job hunting with no money to actually go out and about and be a bit more active (sorry but solitary neighbourhood walks around here are not something I'd willingly participate in.) doesn't help. So I'm trying to build a routine of activity up.

It is difficult, not least of all because of my asthma, and I'm affraid my own laziness will sabotage me but what can I do? There's no one keeping me this way but myself at the end of the day. I'm wasting no more time on idiotic dieticians who regurgitate the same old shit but mixed up with the enthusiasm of one who is paid to say "Eat beans on toast!" every day. I can go to my mother, ask how I should loose weight, and hear the same from her.

Honestly, I'm a bit frustrated that until I develop a life threatening condition I don't seem to be eligible for any help besides being told to eat beans on toast once a month, and I'd really rather not develop such a condition first. But the only person whose going to help me is me, not dome ditzy so called health professional who spouts off the same crap I can watch on Channel Four once a week.

Actually I think my relationship with food is much less about my willingness to eat a healthy, balanced diet (which I do, on the whole) or my difficulty in being active, but is on the whole much more psychological. Still, I can't afford to fork out for therapy and the NHS doesn't seem to have cottoned on to the fact that many people don't binge because subliminal messaging in adverts tells them to or because they would rather eat chocolate than beans on toast. Once again, until I put my life in danger through purging or starving it seems that I won't get any psychological help and will just have to carry on regardless trying to manage my mood swings on my own and not just self medicate with chocolate.

Anyhow. Yes. Solutions to problems. I be masterminding them yet again. Ahem. Sorry about the rant there I didn't intend it to get as such but hey, why not leave it up there for posterity (and Ben's amusement). I'm sure everything will eventually come to me, I just have to work at it in the meantime :)

"The Lunacy of Windfarms" - or the lunacy of Sian Lloyd?

If there's something that pisses me off in the world it's the selfishness of certain (though not by any means all) country fucking bumpkins. They want all the privilege of modern life (and why not?) but none of the downfalls. They are the first to complain that the price of living their idealistic good life is much too expensive and the first to complain that services such as mobile phone coverage doesn't reach them in sufficient ammount. Oh, and also the first to complain when terrible eyesores such as phone masts and windfarms ruin the view they feel somehow entitled to.

Now this isn't an argument about whether or not Windfarms are better or worse for the environment, it's not a campaign for renewables because we're all on a sinking ship having been shot in the hull by global warming. It's about the economics of energy and self sustainability for the future.

I for one have no desire for the UK to be dependant on foreign oil and gas forever. For a start, as soon as push comes to shove, do we really believe that Russia and the Middle East are going to start selling valuable resources they need themselves when the wells start to run dry? What happens after, are we going to continue to buy all of our energy from Europe for example because we want a pristine landscape?

I'm not saying windfarms are the only answer. I'm not saying they should be, because they shouldn't. We've put all our eggs in the fossil fuel basket for long enough so we should know better from our past mistakes. But given the location and resources that we have here in the British Isles in abundance, free for the picking...let's not pretend that windfarms aren't going to play a big part in supplying our future energy needs. It's not just a matter of replacing our current dirty oil gas and coal burning power plants either, our population is growing. We need more energy.

So short of imposing a Chinese style restriction on families we really do need to start planning for the future. Sad thing is, apparently those who live in areas which are ripe for the picking are starting to get pissed off. I'm not saying I don't understand where they're coming from, but come on, we all need to do our bit here. They're happy to live off the juice of dirty power plants that other people have to live in the shadows of, happy for other people to live next door to nuclear power stations so long as they can watch TV and put their washing machine on without having to think about the danger (however slight) other people live by for their sake. Heaven forbid they have to look at a substation or a turbine. Good God what ever were we thinking, enforcing such a terrible fate upon these poor innocent country folk?

If you're wondering, I'm rambling on because Welsh weather woman Sian Lloyd was just on the BBC saying "Thank God the people of central Wales are finally waking up to the lunacy of windfarms"

Oh and let's now thank God preemptively that the people of Cumbria and Hartlepool and all the other places throughout the British Isles living in the shadow of nuclear wake up to the "lunacy" of nuclear and turn them off and the people of central Wales, now deprived of their wind farms and nuclear are left in the dark. Yes, let's thank God.

It's not that it isn't a shame that pristine landscape is affected by this, but if we want our modern conveniences without paying through the nose for it, wherever we are be that the Welsh valleys or the inner city, it's something we have to put up with to be honest. Everywhere that there is now a power plant (of any kind) was once pristine until we humans came along and trampled all over it. Why not, you know, just rip it all up and give it back to nature and live as our primitive hunter gatherer ancestors did?

No? No one wants to do that?

Well you could have fooled me the way you're making a fuss about windfarms.

That is all.

Becoming Empowered

So, a week and a half ago I wrote about my struggles with weight loss, more specifically the mental ones. The lack of will power, the ingrained habits, the reliance upon it as an emotional crutch. All issues that many women of my size face when trying to shed the spare baggage.

I promised myself when I wrote it that I would take each day as it comes and I can say with confidence that so far it's helped me immensely to take on that attitude. I've also started drinking all my water (Well...sugar free fruit squash anyhow) and I'm seeing again the improvements that I first saw when I first started out back in August last year. I feel a bit foolish having to do it all again but this time I have the benefit of experience on my side. I know what does and doesn't work.

I've had two particularly delicious victories this week. The first was Wednesday, when Ben managed to get an impromptu day off work. He wanted to take me out on a date (yes, we're married and still dating, it's the best way to do it!) but not too pricey, so we ended up deciding on Pizza Hut. Normally this would mean me 'taking the day off' so far as the diet goes, but knowing the day in advance what we were doing, I was able to get online and take a look at their nutritional info and plan not only the meal but the rest of our day (so far as food goes) in advance. What's more, my reignited enthusiasm for this seems to really have rubbed off on Ben and he did it too, which made things much easier for me; it's always difficult when eating with people who aren't restricted as you are, and he has always been the strongest of the two of us when it comes to will power vs food.

Anyhow, it all worked out pretty damn well as we figured out our current calorie allowance would enable us to have starters, the main, and a dessert. Of course as the weight starts to come down, so will our calorie allowance, but the adjustment seems to be nice and easy and slow.

The next victory was yesterday. Becky called an impromptu coffee evening, but it was so impromptu that this time I didn't have time to plan ahead. Still, instead of grabbing a huge hot chocolate with lashings of cream and marshmallows and a heavy chocolate cake I went for a cup of tea and a lighter cake.

Well, I thought it was a lighter cake. Victoria Sandwiches, in my experience, are usually made with a whipped cream filling and what my cookery teacher of old called a "fatless sponge" which sounds like a dieters dream but is actually just full of sugar. Nevertheless, to make it work it is usually whipped into submission and is 99% air so I thought hey, a wee slice of that will be an indulgent treat that I don't have to feel too guilty about. Only, it wasn't fatless sponge, it was just a regular old cake the way that anyone would make with margerine, and the whipped cream filling wasn't whipped cream, it was lemon flavoured butter icing. It was rather delicious, but I felt a little cheesed off as I thought I was getting something completely different.

Anyhow, I later did cave in and had a bag of crisps too, but it was still a victory day. How? Well I knew the cake would be, maximum, 700 calories and the crisps is about 200. That is an awful lot of calories, yes, but once more, since I'd been tracking them so diligently and knew what I was having for tea (and knowing I'd been caught short before I could leave and so hadn't had lunch) and knowing that I could happily skip out on my bananas and custard dessert I'd actually be fine. I was; I came in 584 calories below my daily goal, even with the cake and crisps after all was said and done.

So, compromise has become my weapon of choice. Compromise and planning. I know this might sound really silly, especially at this early point in the process, but I feel really quite empowered by this. Before, the meal out on Wednesday would have marked this week as "ruined" and I would have gone straight for the cake and hot chocolate last night. But it was not, and so this week is a total victory week! I'm going to look at it like this; if every week of working out a body builder becomes stronger in the arm, then every week I do as well as this, passing these challenges in such a manner, I come out of it a stronger person with a stronger will power. I'm building up my self control "muscles"!

I did something else quite empowering today too. Now I feel a bit odd about it, maybe a bit embarrassed and squeamish as if waiting to be told off for it, even though I know that's actually completely ridiculous...I have problems with asserting myself and standing out from the crowd to have myself heard, so that's why I feel a bit odd. I never used to, but I think years of having the shit ripped out of me for it makes me feel a bit foolish and stupid and shy. Well anyway, however I feel about it now, today I kind of took a step towards breaking free of those particular mental restraints and emailed my local MP about the reforms that are being planned for the NHS which will, apparently, lead to a more privatised system. Not as in you need private health insurance to be seen to or anything like that, but what has been proposed has caused some concern amongst many people.

Anyhow, a few months ago I got involved with a group called 38 degrees regarding the selling off of acres of our national forests. I was actually rather enraged by the proposition, and found this group compiling a petition against it. I opted in to keep up to date with their various campaigns, and when the government did a U-turn on the selling off of the forests they held a vote about which issues we should campaign for next. The percieved privatisation of the NHS was one of the issues that a lot of people felt strongly about, and I amongst many added my vote that this should be something we should try to have our voice heard over. It came out way ahead, and a petition was formed, which I put my name to. Then they asked us to write to our MP's.

Now, they asked us this regarding the forests, and another campaign regarding the UK's position on EU human trafficking laws they'd been supporting. Indeed, I think they always do. Normally I ignore those requests. For a start, like I said, it's one thing to put your name on a petition, but to actually step up and write, speaking personally and voicing my own concerns and asking my questions. It always made me feel uneasy. I know it's probably really stupid and I shouldn't feel this way, but I think it's a fear of looking stupid. Even a fear of being wrong. What if, actually, all the hype is over nothing? What if I don't have all the facts straight?

My friends and I aren't known for keeping our opinions to ourselves, especially politics. They say you shouldn't bring up money, religion or politics at the dinner table, and I think that if my friends and I were to be invited to such a fancy dinner we'd be kicked out for doing just that. It doesn't hurt us though, it's good to belong to such a group of friends who can stand up to such discussions. And when one of us doesn't have the facts right, it doesn't really matter. We all have a laugh. It's nothing really. A minor embarrassed flush of the cheeks is the generally the worst thing to come out of such discussions.

But that's my friends, we're friends for a reason. It's intimidating to write to some stranger for whome this is their job, their very livelihood. I'm a bit of a coward underneath it all, and fear rejection probably more than anything else in the world.

But then, as I disregarded the request and went to check my inbox, I happened to see an old email from Liverpool Anti Fascists sitting there and it begged the question; If people like Nick Griffin can preach the hateful horrible racist nationalist crap that they do and get elected as MEP's for it, why can't I spout off to my MP who is as accountable to me as anyone else in my constituency about what I think? We're a democracy after all. Everyone is supposed to get heir say, apparently.

So I decided to go ahead and wrote an email to him expressing my concern about what is supposedly going to happen to the NHS and asking what he thinks of it all. I'll be pretty chuffed if I get a response. I hope I do!

I know it's not much and I know I didn't exactly do it off my own steam, but it's a start, and despite now feeling like "oooh what's he gonna think about me just emailing him a load of shit about that when he probably has a million and one other more important things to worry about" I still feel pretty empowered by it. It's not the biggest issue in the world right now, and it's not the one I particularly feel the most passionate about but I do feel concerned and now that I've taken a step in this direction who knows, I might finally get the guts to actually step out and get my voice heard about the things that really get me riled up.

Like the fact that penny sweets are no longer a penny. I've never been so enraged in all of my life.