Merry Christmas

About a year ago, I penned a semi-tongue-in-cheek blog entitled Happy New Year. Judging by the polarised reactions from respective political camps it was one of my best, so I thought I’d emulate it here, complete with a one-size-fits-all trigger warning for the congenitally perpetually outraged and offended. Here then are just a few recipients of a big beautiful Merry Christmas from yours truly.

Lord Malcolm Offord

First on the list is the Lord who jumped ship from Tories to Reform UK earlier this month, thus securing Reform their first seat in the Upper House. It’s not that I like the guy – I don’t know him at all. Neither am I signalling my support for Nige & Co. What I’m celebrating is the rectification of a democratic deficit. Reform have five MPs; two more were elected on a Reform ticket but now sit as Independents. Reform are riding high in the polls, nailed the 2024 local elections and punch above their weight when it comes to influencing discourse and opening the Overton window. Reform deserve to ennoble at least one of their own, but this has been denied them because, well, they’re Reform. Justice will out, and they’ve now got their Lord by other means. The phrase that springs to mind is, ‘If the mountain won't come to Muhammad …’ How delicious is that!

Baron Mackinlay of Richborough
My second Lord of the day is Craig Mackinlay who, when Tory MP for South Thanet in 2023, underwent a quadruple amputation following a sepsis infection. He was fitted with prosthetics and returned briefly to the Commons before being ennobled. He’s such a brave, driven, charismatic individual; whatever his politics he’s deserving of respect, admiration and a Merry Christmas.

It was earlier this year, when I attended an event where he was on a discussion panel that I was truly blown away. Seated in the second row, I watched and listened in awe as he stood to eloquently and passionately present his case, clumsily but successfully using his prosthetic hands to manage his notes. He poured scorn on climate change – its extent and dangers. While each piece of evidence he quoted was ‘correct’, much of it was incomplete or presented in a dubious context. His ensuing inductive logic thus led to unsound conclusions. No one could doubt that, despite his personal trauma, he has retained his passion for Britain, Britons, and the British countryside; it’s just that when it comes to policy solutions to achieve positive outcomes, he’s unfortunately mistaken rather than maliciously deceptive.

Markus Campbell-Savours MP
Markus represents the Cumbrian seat of Penrith and Solway. He was suspended from the Labour whip when he rebelled in a vote on the Government's plans to tax inherited farmland. He did so because his constituency is mainly rural and agricultural, and he’d previously promised voters that a Labour government wouldn’t introduce such a tax. He’d been reassured to that effect by the party’s higher echelons. He therefore felt it was a matter of honour and integrity to vote against the tax. Well done that man! There’s a warm welcome awaiting him at Reform UK, I’ll bet.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Hegseth gave the orders to blast murderous drug-smuggling Venezuelans out the water, thus saving countless American lives. I’ll raise a glass to that. Meanwhile, the Democrats are beside themselves, bleating that the boats might have been full of fishermen. In their defence, Democrats have difficulty telling the difference between a man and a woman, so a high-powered luxury speedbird versus a diesel-chugging trawler is bound to confuse the heck out of them.

National flags
Still with one foot in America, this bit of national flag-flying deserves a shout-out and a Merry Christmas. The day after my op, Hubby helped me shuffle along the Churchill Hospital corridors to kickstart my recovery. At the end of one corridor, a large picture window overlooked the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes fluttering side by side over, what I later learned was, the American Garden. The present Hospital was originally built in 1940 by the UK Ministry of Health as an Emergency Medical Services Hospital for air-raid casualties. This proved unnecessary and it was taken over by the United States Medical Services in 1941. Oxford City Council stepped in when the Americans left in 1945. The garden, and the flags, remain as testament to ‘The Special Relationship.’ 

Back in my hospital bed, I messaged a right-so-far mate and told him that the flags had gladdened my heart but undoubtedly p*ssed off the wokies, which gladdened my heart some more. 

He responded: “Glad to see you’re back to your old self already”.

Princesses Bea and Eugenie
To royalty now, and a joint ‘have a good one’ to the two Princesses who declined a ‘personal invitation’ from Kate Middleton to attend her sickly sweet, artistically sub-standard Christmas Carol Service. I think Ms Middleton was hoping to manipulate a show of familial unity after her sanctimonious public admonishment of the princesses’ father, ‘Prince’ Andrew, and their mother, Sarah Ferguson; Kate probably played a key role in their banishment and eviction as well. Suddenly, because it suits her PR campaign, she wants to preach love, family and togetherness. Whatever Andy and Fergie might or might not have done, the princesses are bound to be upset for their parents and want to close ranks. And I can imagine how they might object to some middleclass social climber upsetting their life-long, birth-right Royal applecart. A lesser consideration is that the princesses’ wedding dresses were far more stylish and flattering than Kate’s. And their husbands are much dishier.

David Hinton, CEO South East Water
Hapless Hinton has overseen a nightmare period of no water supply for tens-of-thousands of homes and businesses in Kent. Apparently, the Pembury water treatment works failed, repeatedly, and they’ve failed before. This is not good. Locals have every right to be angry and demand compensation, especially for already hard-pressed businesses.

Hinton is on my Merry Christmas list because he’s in enough trouble already, and rightly so, but without people firing off at anything and everything regardless of justification, such as:

1. The charge of ‘poor communication’ doesn’t hold water (tee hee.) Updates on the SEW website, duplicated by email and text message upon request, were timely and as informative as possible.

2. As for ‘insufficient advice being provided’. Hmmm: ‘Please boil water before consumption or teeth-cleaning until further notice,’ sounds pretty definitive and accessible to me. But just in case there was a disconnect between brain cells, an FAQ was available to explain what ‘boiling’ means and how to cool boiling water to a palatable temperature. Cough.

3. Then we had businesses complaining that SEW hadn’t provided tailored advice for their particular use of water. Of course they hadn’t. SEW instead referred businesses to their local Health and Safety Executive for bespoke direction. Water engineers are water engineers, not hairdressers or baristas.

4. Complaints about delays to turning the water back on are unwarranted. Water outages take time to locate, analyse and repair. Afterwards, you can’t just turn the taps full on and restore water instantaneously. For engineering and hydrological reasons, it has to be done slowly, judiciously, iteratively. SEW explained all this, and their caution was proved right …

5. … Multiple deadlines to resume water supplies were missed. That’s because the necessarily cautious turn-on resulted in the discovery of extant faults, so the resumption of supplies had to stop for further investigations and rectification. Doh!

6. CEO Hinton hasn’t personally addressed the situation in public. In one respect, he ought to because the buck stops with him. On the other hand, right now he wouldn’t be able to add any more information or explanation as to what’s already out there. In any event, the line of questioning from press, politicians and public would be ill-informed, loaded, leading and designed to secure a gotcha rather than anything constructive. He’s wise to avoid such a charade.

It should also be noted that SEW has been upgrading multiple aspects of the offending Pembury works since September 2024. Details are in the public domain and show that it’s an unavoidably long, complex and multifaceted process. It can’t be done overnight or by clicking fingers; beating SEW with a stick won’t make things happen any quicker. So I’m offering a carrot in the form of a Merry Christmas to Mr Hinton. May he enjoy a festive game of Monopoly, perhaps fleecing everyone through his ownership of the Water Works. Or maybe Cluedo, when the water baron can suffocate a journalist in the toilet with wet wipes.

Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters
I really ought to wish them a Happy Hanukkah and not an M. C. These chaps were banned from attending a football match between Maccabi and Aston Villa at Villa Park, because they’re Jewish and there’s a significant Muslim population in Birmingham. That has to be the reason, because all other explanations and data spouted by the police to justify their advice turned out to be a pack of lies. West Midlands police are either institutionally antisemitic or cowards. Neither is a good look.

Ellie Reynolds
The final Merry Christmas goes to Ellie, one of thousands of survivors of the Pakistani rape gangs. She participated virtually in a panel discussion I attended, the topic being whether the forthcoming public inquiry would achieve anything. Despite what she went through, Ellie now comes across as confident, poised, dignified, disciplined, eloquent, brave and caring. Her personal agenda is limited to justice for all the victims and prevention of future abuses. For that to happen, she argued, the inquiry must focus on the unique motives and modus operandi of the Pakistani Muslim rapists. Widening the inquiry to include all sexual abuse by all perps covering all motives would miss the point.

Shortly afterwards, Ellie and some other survivors stepped down from the inquiry panel, claiming that the inquiry was downplaying the racial and religious motivations behind the abuse, which she believed was a manipulation tactic to cover up the scandal. Jess Phillips MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, who is overseeing the inquiry and who is reliant on the Muslim vote for her Birmingham seat, claimed otherwise. I ask you to watch and listen to Ellie, followed by equal scrutiny of Phillips, then decide with whom you’d rather share your Christmas lunch.

Around about this time, Ellie shared a platform with Nigel Farage and emphasised calmly, politely, professionally, clearly, that Pakistani men targeting white women is racist, yet this had not been called out as promptly (far from it!) as something a Reform MP had said recently.

Whadabout ...?
Christian purists will undoubtedly lecture me that, in a true demonstration of Christian forgiveness and turning the other cheek, I ought to extend seasons’ greetings to those with whom I normally go into battle. Ooooh, that’s a big ask. I mean, I would try it if I thought it would do any good. For example, if I thought a smile from me to Jess Phillips would prompt her to put the interests of Ellie & Co above those of the rapists and their protectors, then I’d do it like a shot. If a friendly word from me might banish antisemitism from the hearts of cowards and idiots, then yes of course I’d wax lyrical. If extending my hand in friendship resulted in a handshake not a punch, then count me in. But as long as the odds continue to be stacked against such noble efforts, I’ll leave well alone and wait for St Peter to do the maths at the End of Days.