No more lies…

The old young woman in a tangle of white sheets, turned her face ceilingwards to peer at her son. Her eyes looked so big to the boy, huge, as if eating up her old young face – an emaciated face, now, all bones and sunken caverns: sharp cheekbones, sharp nose, sharp jaw…and those bulbous brown eyes over the black shadows of her cheeks. Not his mother’s face at all.

‘My glasses…’ says she, her voice little more than the faintest exhalation of sour breath. ‘have you seen them?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ He lied too easily, perhaps, but it was for her own good. He didn’t want her to see the crap she was coughing out of the depths of her rotting body into that bucket beside the bed. ‘I’ll have a look for them later.’

Later? Later than when? Would there be a later? The dead feel nothing. The dead are just dead. She was living in death, right now, feeling the death inside of herself. But not for much longer. Not long, he sensed. And how would he cope with her final dying? This old young woman, become so like a stranger to him, his mummy, mother, mum. What would he do then? What?

With surprising strength, she leaned precariously from the knotted sheets, to touch the bucket on the floor. ‘Here,’ she hissed at him. ‘Look in here. Is that phlegm or blood? Tell me will you?’

He peered into the bucket, saw the black, blood-like jelly , then blinked it away. ‘Not blood,’ he reported with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders. ‘Just phlegm. Now, no more of this stupidness. Rest. You’ve got to get better.’

From under long brown lashes her big brown eyes were abruptly cautious. She was watching him, assessing his response. ‘So not blood?’ she finally managed, in that terrible aspirated wheeze.

‘No.’

‘Thank God for that.’

And while she gave thanks, the boy cursed the bitch God who’d done this to his mother; God had stolen his mother away and replaced her with this cadaverous stranger – this sick creature of tendons and bones, dressed in his mother’s pink nightdress. This old young woman. It wasn’t fair.

He thought, f**k you God! but said aloud: ‘Let me brush your hair for you. It’s a mess from the bed. You look like some ragamuffin.’

Sitting on the edge of the bed he gently brushed the tangles from her hair. He let his fourteen year old mind go blank. He hummed tunelessly to himself. Some of her clothes were draped over the chair in the corner of the room: that black dress with the white polka dots she liked so much, a blue cardigan, and a white brassiere that she’s purchased a month or so ago from Mrs. Miller’s shop. Eventually, she fell into a light, restless sleep.

From the window he saw blackbirds in the trees opposite. There was a strong wind blowing the trees to their full height today. A sudden daze of sun from behind clouds left him blinded and dizzy. He imagined himself with the sun burned as twin points of light in the pupils of his eyes. The wind was blowing out of that sun. It filled the house with whispers, and made the dustbin lid rattle wildly along the sideway.

His mother took a little mushroom soup for tea. It was a canned soup that he’d opened and heated in a saucepan on the stove. She had four, five spoonfuls, no more than that. Not enough to keep a frog going. But then the dead don’t eat. Closing his eyes, he looked briefly into the spinning cavern of himself, hearing the sinuous voices of long dead grandparents. He tiptoed to the door, hoping she wouldn’t call him back.

He wondered if he should telephone his dad? His dad had left home four years earlier, left the boy, left the mother. There was nothing more remote under the sun than that man. The doctors had requested a meeting with his dad before his mother left hospital that last time. They’d spoken their terrible secrets in some cluttered office, and his mother’s dance of death had commenced.

‘She mustn’t know the truth,’ his dad said. ‘You’ve got to be brave and tough it out. Whatever happens she must never know the truth.’

‘Will she stay in the hospital?’ the boy asked.

‘No, she hates hospitals. She’s going to die at home. She’ll be happier at home.’ His dad’s hands were clenched into fists, as if he felt the same desolation in his veins and binding flesh as the boy felt. Hard white hands, they were, with the stains of tobacco on the fingertips; he still wore his gold wedding band. A tall man in a worn flannel shirt, who promised: ‘I’ll be able to help out – you won’t have to face it on your own.’ Which was a lie, of course, because the boy hadn’t seen him for nearly a month.

He tried to watch television but his mind wandered with the wind outside. It filled the void of the world with its wild ruckus. Whispered through the house, which, to the boy’s imagination, became full of mocking voices. He sensed his mother upstairs, darkness gathering in her head, sucking in all the light around her. And within him dwelt a terrible solitude.

Later that evening, when he entered her bedroom to check on her, he found his mother dead. He was deeply shocked by the waxy-yellow appearance of her skin in the fading light. Her eyes were wide open, bulging, but he couldn’t bring himself to close them. He wondered briefly if the dead wait with the unborn in the darkness beyond? He pulled the sheet up over her face, isolating himself from the stare of the dead. For the first time in his life, he felt a little afraid of his mother. Everlasting death was something to fear. He had the doctor’s telephone number on the pad downstairs. He would have to telephone him soon. They would take her away, he supposed, this stranger who had been his mother – this old young woman.

But at least he wouldn’t have to tell her any more lies, he thought. Death ended the necessity for lies. Death ended. Out in the night a dog lifted its head up and howled. He drew the curtains on the darkness with all its various impossibilities, and went to phone the doctor.

Gordon Brown tells it as it is…

You’ve probably seen Mr. Brown’s erudite and lucid explanation for what’s been happening on the political front in the Sun newspaper. But in case you haven’t, I present this:

“I CAME into politics because I wanted to change the world.”

Oh, just like in the pop song… Well, Gordon, didn’t you once say you’d “saved the world”?

Wouldn’t that do?

No?

Ummm, you haven’t really changed the world, but you’ve well and truly shafted Briton…that’s got to account for something, hasn’t it?

“I love this country and, like most British people, I’m proud of the way that we decide things democratically.”

Which country do you mean then, Gordon? Scotland? Wales? Northern Ireland? England? ‘cause the UK isn’t a country, you know, old bean? Nor is Britain! You seem a tad geographically confused? Perhaps you’re referring to Spain? Off to Torremolinos for your summer hols, eh? Already slipped into holiday mode….

“We’ve got no big history of extremism in this country because our Parliament – the oldest in the world – has always been a symbol of how we decide things fairly together.”

So why the hell are we spending soooo much money on “anti-terror measures”?

Your mob spend much more now than when we were getting regularly bombed by the IRA!

And in fact we wouldn’t have any problems at all, if your mate Tony hadn’t gone off on one and invaded Iraq and Afganistan…after misleading Parliament and the electorate.

“But our democracy has been discredited by the scandals of recent weeks — revelations that have made me furious because it seems some people have been serving themselves and not the public.”

You’re furious?

You didn’t know what was going on, then? No news on the planet Zarg, eh Gord?

You didn’t claim for two different second homes, while living in the same “grace and favour” flat for twelve years? And what about that flat you purchased and placed in your wife’s name while switching your second home designation to Scotland? Would that have been done to avoid Capital Gains Tax?

“So I’m determined to do whatever it takes to clean up politics.”

Yeah, right, so what have you done? Sacked half your cabinet? Rid yourself of all those Nu-Labour MPs who’ve been shown as “troughing”?

Nooo, none of that!

Instead you’ve set up a committee!

Gordon, I’m sorry, but you are a first class joke! If you had the least thread of moral turpitude or human decency you’d call an election NOW!

It’s what the people WANT and they want it NOW!

Not simple minded platitudes, but an ELECTION…NOW!

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics…”

Oh, dear, yet another wave in this sea of troubles surrounding poor old Blighty…and it’ll come as no great surprise that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the root cause of this latest swell! See here.

What villains they are!

One recalls Benjamin Disraeli over a hundred years ago explaining there were three kinds of lies – “lies, damn lies, and statistics!”

Government statistics are “routinely abused for political gain”. This is shameful because if policy is based on rigged statistics, then it, too, is likely to be flawed. Ministers are all too eager to cite misleading statistics that reflect them in a good light and attack those that don’t as flawed and biased. So they tend to put pressure on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to change the way they come with the figures “until eventually they come up with the answer the Government wants”.

The ONS is no stranger to controversy. You’ll recall last September the Office for National Statistics released numerous figures regarding immigration numbers in the UK. An official working for the Home Office was present during the briefing and passed out a press release that stated that the number of eastern Europeans choosing to immigrate to the UK was at an all time low. The head of the Royal Statistical Society, Professor David Hand, declared that the press release was meant to distract journalists at the briefing. He claimed that “While that is serious enough in itself, our concern is broader. In particular, we believe that the whole incident epitomizes some of the bad practices that have helped to undermine public confidence in official statistics”.

Professor Hand continued: “The release of such ministerial statements alongside statistical releases can focus attention on one aspect favorable to the government, distracting from other statistics and presenting an unbalanced view. At worst this can help to ‘bury’ news perceived as unfavorable to the Government.”

The permanent secretary of the Home Office, Sir David Normington said that “I regret that a Home Office press release was given to journalists at the press conference on 21 August and I have apologized for this.”

A spokesperson said on behalf of the Home Office that “It simply is not true to say that the Home Office misled the public or presented an unbalanced picture of immigration statistics. Like all parts of the civil service, the Home Office provides a clear picture of statistics. That is why it published a clearly labeled and 100 per cent accurate press notice to media to coincide with the official release of Home Office statistics.”

Ummm. Sure it did. You’ll remember, too, I feel certain last December’s little upset over knife crime figures? You don’t?

The Home Office was at the centre of another row over crime figures after the head of the UK Statistics Authority accused it of issuing “selective” statistics on knife offending. Sir Michael Scholar, head of the Authority, said the release of details on an initiative to tackle knife attacks by both the Home Office and 10 Downing Street had been “premature”. The rebuke was highly damaging, particularly as it followed disputes over the way the Home Office has dealt with release of crime, immigration and asylum figures. Sir Michael said that the release of stabbing data was “premature, irregular and selective”. And poor Jacqui Smith had to apologise! See here.

With all this in mind is it any wonder the “Empire strikes back” with the accusation that ONS’s decision to release the latest set of figures on UK immigration was “at best, naive or, at worst, sinister”. Mr Woolas (Immigration minister) suggested that the fact that one in nine people who are in Britain were born overseas was “neither new nor informative”.

That being the case what really is his problem? The ONS was made independent of any ministerial department (by Gordon Brown) in order to ensure impartiality, honesty and accuracy in the data it presents to the electorate (us). Here, once again, you clearly have a case of a Government Minister interfering and trying to prevent the release of data that he feels may prove embarrassing to the Government. He should, without further delay, resign.