The Santa run had to be postponed.
The Harley was fine, more a case of a willing spirit and weak flesh on the part of the rider.
Besides there is the Crib Service with the grandchildren at 3 00 pm.
So we curled up on the settee with a coffee and read the Newspapers.
Of course its all year end stuff, will things get better in the New Year? Will the constant encouragement to overspend and load the credit card with debt mean, as a famous Private Eye Christmas record released in the sixties had it, that there will be a profit (sic) over the land?
The papers are full of lectures from politicians and pundits telling us how to go about helping to end the downturn and avoid the inevitable recession that is feared.
The big society seems to have fizzled out.
There is no future in the rhetoric of all in it together when the 99% are camped outside St Paul's and the 1% are drinking Champagne and eating steak in the restaurants in Knightsbridge.
Maybe we will wake up in 2012 to be reminded that this is the year of International Co-operation.
From those 28 pioneers in Rochdale in 1844 the Co-op has grown into a world wide phenomenon.
As the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the launch of the International Year, Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.
At a meet the Candidates session in Penrith before the last election I asked the candidates about co-operation. The Conservative candidate dismissed the idea out of hand as naive.
The IYC web-site has a blog' see: http://uncoopsyear.wordpress.com/
It seems to me that providing a 100 million jobs around the world as co-operatives do, is anything but niaive.
Communism has failed, although the totalitarian repression of many 'communist' regimes was not actually communism.
Capitalism is also failing to provide either economic viability or social responsibility.
So maybe IYC 2012 can open a debate about the way forward in a world where religious oppression and totalitarianism are in the ascendant.
Maybe the big society will work if it becomes the co-operative society.
My first job was as a delivery boy for the co-op in Stoke on Trent. I had a bicycle with a huge basket on the front and I delivered the orders, long before supermarkets came up with slogans like, you shop, we drop, the co-op was delivering customer's orders, or at least I was.
It's a long journey from a push bike to a Harley, I can't imagine pedalling a bike now, but maybe if the weather picks up I might get to try out my new Christmas present, motorcycle boots, early in the year of co-operation .......
The Harley was fine, more a case of a willing spirit and weak flesh on the part of the rider.
Besides there is the Crib Service with the grandchildren at 3 00 pm.
So we curled up on the settee with a coffee and read the Newspapers.
Of course its all year end stuff, will things get better in the New Year? Will the constant encouragement to overspend and load the credit card with debt mean, as a famous Private Eye Christmas record released in the sixties had it, that there will be a profit (sic) over the land?
The papers are full of lectures from politicians and pundits telling us how to go about helping to end the downturn and avoid the inevitable recession that is feared.
The big society seems to have fizzled out.
There is no future in the rhetoric of all in it together when the 99% are camped outside St Paul's and the 1% are drinking Champagne and eating steak in the restaurants in Knightsbridge.
Maybe we will wake up in 2012 to be reminded that this is the year of International Co-operation.
From those 28 pioneers in Rochdale in 1844 the Co-op has grown into a world wide phenomenon.
As the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the launch of the International Year, Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.
At a meet the Candidates session in Penrith before the last election I asked the candidates about co-operation. The Conservative candidate dismissed the idea out of hand as naive.
The IYC web-site has a blog' see: http://uncoopsyear.wordpress.com/
It seems to me that providing a 100 million jobs around the world as co-operatives do, is anything but niaive.
Communism has failed, although the totalitarian repression of many 'communist' regimes was not actually communism.
Capitalism is also failing to provide either economic viability or social responsibility.
So maybe IYC 2012 can open a debate about the way forward in a world where religious oppression and totalitarianism are in the ascendant.
Maybe the big society will work if it becomes the co-operative society.
My first job was as a delivery boy for the co-op in Stoke on Trent. I had a bicycle with a huge basket on the front and I delivered the orders, long before supermarkets came up with slogans like, you shop, we drop, the co-op was delivering customer's orders, or at least I was.
It's a long journey from a push bike to a Harley, I can't imagine pedalling a bike now, but maybe if the weather picks up I might get to try out my new Christmas present, motorcycle boots, early in the year of co-operation .......
No comments:
Post a Comment