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Since we last spoke, I've been to Birmingham to see my lovely daughter Sammy graduate from the Conservatoire, where she's studying the violin, in the magnificent setting of the Symphony Hall, Birmingham. It was a fantastic day, a wonderful ceremony, despite the nine hours driving and the chaotic organisation, and we are, of course, immensely proud of her and her achievement. The Conservatoire is a wonderful place of learning, and Sammy has had a terrific four years there; what's more, she's still there, now studying for her MA. But thinking about it has prompted me to have a bit of a rant. It started with this week's report that the UK gas supply companies have not only put up their prices by a massive 15%, but also said they were going to regionalise prices because of the differing costs of transportation. Now I'm old enough to remember when the power companies, alongside the railways, the telephone companies and the water companies belonged to the nation - as they should. Time to take them all back into public ownership, because the people that now own them have milked them for the best part of twenty-five years, inspired by that most wonderful of philanthropists, Margaret Thatcher, and now they're simply taking the piss. Nothing the country relies upon, like public transport and power, should be in anything but public ownership.
What has this to do with my daughter's graduation ceremony, you ask? Well, the guest of honour at the ceremony was the celebrated actor, Karl Johnson, who graduated from the Birmingham School of Acting forty years ago. He made the point that things were much easier in those days. If you were going to university, you got a grant. Not a loan, but a grant. Because your parents had been paying into the government's central fund, you were entitled to money from the state to enable you to live while you carried on studying. The thought of young people having to pay for their tuition fees is repellent to most people, though, as with everything else, they're too shit-lazy to say anything about it. There are some diehard tories (God, I'm so ashamed, I've mentioned the Thatcher thing and the tories on my editorial page! But it's in a good cause) who would say that you shouldn't have anything without paying for it; but in my opinion education is education and should be paid for lock, stock and barrel, by the state. The same state should also scrap prescription charges (aren't we in the UK being discriminated against? The Welsh and the Scots get free prescriptions), after all our National Insurance contributions should pay for the National Health service and everything we get from it.
The same thing applies to dental practices. We're paying twice over for a service that in some cases we can't even avail ourselves of. Rip-off Britain has never seemed so rotten. It isn't entirely the fault of the current government, though they did introduce student loans, and that in itself was evil enough. No, it started when the charming, inspirational and humanitarian Margaret Thatcher (I promise I won't mention her again in this issue - excuse me whilst I vomit all over a picture of the old hag) decided that the well-off should be even more well-off and have private ownership of everything that actually belonged to the country. At the time of privatisation, the railways, the power companies and the water supply were all making a profit for us, the shareholders, the people of Britain. So she took them and their low prices away from us and gave them to the people who already have all the money, i.e. the tories, and let them bleed us dry. New Labour, of course, is simply conservatism with another name. There isn't a single decent socialist among the rank and file of new labour, and so those of us who are decent, caring, Christians who believe that those earning more should pay more tax to ease the burden on those earning less, are not represented - at all. It makes the thought of leaving this rotten, corrupt, wretched country behind and finding somewhere decent to live rather tempting.
True socialists, the people who took on the bosses and fought for decent wages and working conditions for the majority of the people of Britain, would die rather than join New Labour. I was a member for a short while. I thought Tony Blair was going to be the salvation of the country, the crusader who was going to put everything right that the tories had done in their evil power-reign. Unfortunately, I, like millions of others, was misled. We were sold down the river by people we trusted. Like I say, Sammy's graduation ceremony was a triumph, and represented everything that is good in this country - but when you think of the sacrifices we've had to make because of a government that no longer cares about the welfare of its people, it makes you realise how great the divide is between the rich and the poor. Politicians pay themselves a salary that's probably five times the national average and then decide how much people earning below the national average can afford to pay towards their children's education. Even with our meagre contribution, Sammy will leave the Conservatoire with a student loan debt of more than £16,000.
They're an evil bunch, politicians. They let you down. They lie. They are not to be trusted. I hate them all. Let's have a revolution. And on that happy note, I'll bid you farewell until the April issue, and the greatest conductor that ever lived - Herbert von Karajan - the April special issue.
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Gateway is published by Paul Edmund Norman on the first day of each month. Hosting is by Flying Porcupine at www.flyingporcupine.com - and web design by Gateway. Submitting to Gateway: Basically, all you need do is e-mail it along and I'll consider it - it can be any length, if it's very long I'll serialise it, if it's medium-length I'll put it in as a novella, if it's a short story or a feature article it will go in as it comes. Payment is zero, I'm afraid, as I don't make any money from Gateway, I do it all for fun! For Advertising rates in Gateway please contact me at paulenorman@yahoo.co.uk Should you be kind enough to want to send me books to review, please contact me by e-mail and I will gladly forward you my home address. Meanwhile, here's how to contact me: paulenorman@yahoo.co.uk