Christmas Dinners Up!

Last Friday, to my first (and probably last) non-family Christmas meal of this year. It was the Christian Viewpoint Gillingham Men's Club, to which wives and significant others were also invited (unlike other gatherings). It was a conclave of various different churches from around Gillingham who turn up and Gillingham Golf Club was that place to turn up. Arriving at 7.40pm (five minutes before the meal started), at first I couldn't get in, since the front doors were locked. I went round the back looking for an alternative entrance, but all I found were loads of wrought iron fire escapes, more locked doors and the smell of the Christmas meals coming from the kitchens. I doubled back and went around the other side, but this was even less promising, yielding only a locked clubroom shop. As I returned to the front, I saw a couple approaching and they appraised me of my blind spot, which were the buzzers 'bar' and 'flat' next to the doors. It never occurred to me that a golf club would have a door bell and so I was not looking for it, yet it was right under my nose as these things tend to be. I wondered who might be in the 'flat' - living at the golf club must be quite surreal, unless it's squatters who have installed their own buzzer system. The meal itself was enjoyable and I had most of my discussions with a man in his seventies from the GMC (Gillingham Methodist Church), who was quite passionate in explaining his new holidaying designs, being a nudist. Now, there are several people I know who could not hold a serious discussion on the topic, but this gentleman and I did. He had only discovered a few years ago and he only practices it on holidays and only then round specifically designated beaches and poolsides. He confessed to being a bit of an evangelist on the matter, saying it was so liberating and because everyone's just like you, no-one is staring at each other. Discussed in such sober terms, this conversation had no impact on the comsuption of my main meal and dessert. He was also a well-travelled man and we shared foreign exploits. After the room of about 50 people had finished, we had a talk from the dean of Rochester Cathedral, a man in his early forties though he had just celebrated a silver wedding anniversary with his wife. It was a witty and amusing speech with one of the keystone ideas being that we should explore our souls to discern our direction in life and not just a one-off consulatation but a continual journey of understanding. All in all, an enjoyable evening.

It's been a week since my last post and that really is a long time in politics because any possiblity of discussing the Iraq Study Group proposals drags on and on. Mike Capes, the Labour chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, dissembled that there was no point on the government commenting on the ISG proposals, because British foreign policy is not run by the ISG members, "no matter how eminent they may be." Yep, the people running our foreign policy are not in the least bit eminent, but they still come from Washington D. C.. Capes said it was foolish to make any policy statement on the ISG before the Americans had done, but then suggested we had an independent foreign policy because we shouldn't comment until the Americans had. Squaring a circle maybe hard enough but triangulating the squaring of a circle is plain bizarre. Capes was obviously hoping that if he said enough words people would get confused or fall asleep and assume he made sense. Assumptions can be deadly. This is the guy who is supposed to hold the government to account, but he is regurgitating (in every sense of the verb) government lines, which were gobbledegook in the first place. Be afraid, be very afraid. forget House of Lords reform (though only for the time being), it's the select committees that need to be shaken up and actually serve the country. Give them some independence and some teeth so the government can not continue on blinkered disastrous policies, that ignores select committees when it doesn't agree with them. The only trouble is, we would need an honest government in power to achieve that.