FraserWords

Well, they bred them tough, the children of the 1930s. I suppose when you’ve had to fight for every single tiny thing you’ve ever had – education, food, work, health, even freedom –  you bloody well fight for life, too.

If it had been anybody else lying in bed with pneumonia at a frail 86 last Monday morning, I would have bet you money the bloke in the black cloak with the long scythe would be paying a visit very shortly. But my father? I think that somebody’s going to have to beat him over the head with a baseball bat if they want to stop him collecting his telegram from the queen. And I rather suspect that if anybody tries it, he’ll clock them one right back.

So for now, I stay twice a parent, children looking up at me, father looking back at me, standing there in the middle trying to meet everybody’s needs. I think it’s a job nobody ever wants, but if fate throws it your way you have no choice but to accept it.

Thanks to those of you who offered good wishes.

In the wider world, as an old man fought for his hard-won life, politicians were electioneering. The Conservatives were insisting, as they always do, that the NHS is safe in their hands. Here, in the real world away from the lies, the emergency carers deputed to assist my father’s fight for life at home managed to turn up for about 50% of their appointments; had I not been there, he would have had to manage on his own. There’s too much demand on not enough staff, and the Conservatives, as ever, are lying.

Not that Labour can square this circle: too many people making too many demands on not enough staff made an equation they never looked like solving, and our political age of pygmies lacks men and women of the courage to challenge, to innovate, to initiate, like Nye Bevan.

Beyond health, the world expressed astonishment that bankers had been helping rich people avoid paying their fair share of tax. Imagine.

And everybody will shrug their shoulders and go back to demonising single mums getting pregnant for benefits and foreigners coming here for free health care and £15 an hour builders taking cash for jobs so they don’t have to pay tax and those filthy cheating lying criminals who really matter, the ones who are really harming our economy and our country, the scum ordering us to vote for the Tories because they’re good for business, they go free.

Should we appreciate the irony that as the Conservatives hosted bankers and investors and hedge fund managers at their annual Black and White Ball at which the rich make hefty donations to the party that protects their interests, David Cameron was hectoring the poor by saying fat people won’t get benefits if they don’t lose weight? Fat poor people bad, fat cats good. New lies. Same as the old lies. And what chance do we have of avoiding the same old lies after May? That’s right. Fat chance.