This morning we found ourselves right in the middle of Mr Cameron's Broken Britain.
The shower blew up. Nothing more dangerous than Electricity and Water, it is a combustible combination.
One minute there we were enjoying a pleasing, warm, cleansing shower then came a flash, a bang, but thankfully, no Wallop.
But then again no shower either.
So maybe it was an exaggeration to call it Broken Britain, it was really just a broken bathroom, but it was shocking, indeed it could have been literally shocking and now we are heading off to B&Q to get our 10% discount on a Wednesday.
Being old is one of those conditions which you only ever think is happening to someone else.
He is old, she is old, I am really still nineteen and ready for anything.
But I can use my freedom pass (you can tell who is old and who is not by the name they use, if it is a Bus Pass or a Senior Bus Pass then they are old, a freedom pass is simply a gift of nature like sunny days and Pimms) to travel into town and then claim my 10% Discount assuming of course that I can park, in our B&Q on a Wednesday, the disabled parking fills up first.
Mr Camerons use of the phrase 'Broken Britain' annoyed liberals like me and his solution 'Big Society' annoyed us even more.
But ..................
Maybe he is on to something.
Things do break, which is why we have insurance, but as Mr Dilnot argues you cannot insure against getting old so something should be done before another 20,000 people have to sell their homes to pay for their elder care.
One of Mr Osborne's rooks came home to roost with the suggestion that one way forward was to pay for elder care through the sale of a home after the elderly resident no longer needed it, when suggested by the previous Labour Administration this was rubbished as a 'death tax'.
Maybe my shower is broken but I don't think that society is at all, in fact when viewed from the outside, apart from the weather, Britain is still a great country.
The future will throw up issues around University Education, there is still a major misfit between job availability and the skills needed to do them, and as we are reading the care of a growing elderly population needs to be handled carefully if it is not to become a financial time bomb for both individuals and society at large.
For working class people the traditional jobs in Pits, Shipyards or Steel are simply not there anymore and there is not the same pride to be had in claiming to work in a call centre!
According to the commentariat future social conflicts are inevitable as the middle class are squeezed whilst the underclass fails to respond to either the carrot or the stick as employed by Mr Duncan Smith.
The Church continues to be the butt of both humour and Mr Dawkins but in congregations where black and white, rich and poor, young and old, gather round the altar to break bread, there society is renewed in the worship of Jesus Christ to become a 'new humanity'.
Mr Cameron does not appear to have the necessary language to express the complexity of the social change facing western democracy and so we get 'Broken Britain' and 'Big Society' both of which fail to address the nuances of the social changes we are experiencing.
But there is nothing nuanced about a broken shower, it needs fixing, so our next trip out will be to B&Q .... the things you'll do for a discount .............
The shower blew up. Nothing more dangerous than Electricity and Water, it is a combustible combination.
One minute there we were enjoying a pleasing, warm, cleansing shower then came a flash, a bang, but thankfully, no Wallop.
But then again no shower either.
So maybe it was an exaggeration to call it Broken Britain, it was really just a broken bathroom, but it was shocking, indeed it could have been literally shocking and now we are heading off to B&Q to get our 10% discount on a Wednesday.
Being old is one of those conditions which you only ever think is happening to someone else.
He is old, she is old, I am really still nineteen and ready for anything.
But I can use my freedom pass (you can tell who is old and who is not by the name they use, if it is a Bus Pass or a Senior Bus Pass then they are old, a freedom pass is simply a gift of nature like sunny days and Pimms) to travel into town and then claim my 10% Discount assuming of course that I can park, in our B&Q on a Wednesday, the disabled parking fills up first.
Mr Camerons use of the phrase 'Broken Britain' annoyed liberals like me and his solution 'Big Society' annoyed us even more.
But ..................
Maybe he is on to something.
Things do break, which is why we have insurance, but as Mr Dilnot argues you cannot insure against getting old so something should be done before another 20,000 people have to sell their homes to pay for their elder care.
One of Mr Osborne's rooks came home to roost with the suggestion that one way forward was to pay for elder care through the sale of a home after the elderly resident no longer needed it, when suggested by the previous Labour Administration this was rubbished as a 'death tax'.
Maybe my shower is broken but I don't think that society is at all, in fact when viewed from the outside, apart from the weather, Britain is still a great country.
The future will throw up issues around University Education, there is still a major misfit between job availability and the skills needed to do them, and as we are reading the care of a growing elderly population needs to be handled carefully if it is not to become a financial time bomb for both individuals and society at large.
For working class people the traditional jobs in Pits, Shipyards or Steel are simply not there anymore and there is not the same pride to be had in claiming to work in a call centre!
According to the commentariat future social conflicts are inevitable as the middle class are squeezed whilst the underclass fails to respond to either the carrot or the stick as employed by Mr Duncan Smith.
The Church continues to be the butt of both humour and Mr Dawkins but in congregations where black and white, rich and poor, young and old, gather round the altar to break bread, there society is renewed in the worship of Jesus Christ to become a 'new humanity'.
Mr Cameron does not appear to have the necessary language to express the complexity of the social change facing western democracy and so we get 'Broken Britain' and 'Big Society' both of which fail to address the nuances of the social changes we are experiencing.
But there is nothing nuanced about a broken shower, it needs fixing, so our next trip out will be to B&Q .... the things you'll do for a discount .............
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