The political and the personal ~ Murraymakes

The Political.

The debate about obesity is back in the news. I seem to remember writing an article about this years ago for a political periodical, where I suggested that the government should subside watercress, or kale, or something. My theory was that crap, fattening foods are cheap and good, healthy foods are expensive, and so no one should be surprised that weight is a problem.

This morning, Diane Abbott was being very naughty on the Today Programme. Government must do something, she said, staunchly. But, said John Humphrys, most reasonably, you were in power for years and you never did anything.

Ah, said Diane, and this was the naughty bit, but you know very well that I was not in government.

This was an inside baseball joke because all politics geeks know that Abbott and the leadership were never exactly cosy.

She then refused to talk about what Labour had done or not done in the past, and criticised this government for doing nothing now. People need help, she said. It’s no good just telling poor people they are useless because they are overweight. (There is some evidence to suggest correlation between poverty and obesity.)

It made me think about personal responsibility and what the state should do. I’m an old lefty at heart, in that I really, really do believe in government. I know all its flaws, but I think there are people who need help in helping themselves, and that the free market is too red in tooth and claw to be left to its own devices.

I think government should not only do certain things, but that it can set a tone. Matthew Parris had a theory that Britain became a kinder place under Tony Blair, for all his faults; more open to and tolerant of immigrants and minorities.

I remember knowing that I could never vote for Margaret Thatcher or the Conservative party of the eighties and nineties, not because of economic policy or geo-political theory, but because of Clause 28. That tone was a bad and horrid tone.

It was the wording of it that really got me. It said that schools could not teach the ‘acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’ Someone sat down and drafted that clause. Someone wrote that sentence, and thought it was a good one. It is dripping with contempt and less than and general mean-mindedness.

A lot of people probably never knew what Clause 28 was, let alone what it actually said. They cared about jobs and pensions, and so they should. But I knew, and I cared, and it made the Tories impossible for me. Tone matters; leaders lead. That nasty little clause effectively said that it’s all right to look down your nose at someone because of whom they love.

So I think that what happens in Whitehall is very important in many different ways. But I’m not sure about the obesity thing. Is it really government’s job to put the nation on a diet? Isn’t that rather intrusive and patronising? Surely the decision to eat or not to eat is a very personal one indeed?

Although I do think it is a national scandal that a small bag of watercress, with all its iron and vitamin C, costs over a pound, whilst a tin of spaghetti hoops, groaning with hidden sugar and salt, is nineteen pence.

The personal.

The grumpiness has gone, and I have decided to enjoy the snow. It’s a still, calm, pretty day, which helps. As the blizzards have stopped, I took the rugs off Red and Myfanwy, so they could loaf about with the air in their coats. Despite the fact that it is still minus two, their clever internal thermostats are so efficient that they stayed beautifully warm.

The snow is still too deep to do actual work with them, so this morning, after feeding and watering, I just hung out with the herd for a bit. I go and stand with them, and one by one, they come for love. I scratch all their various sweet spots, and chat to them a bit, and feel their lovely velvety muzzles and smell their glorious clean scent.

It’s easy to take this for granted, to accept without question that they are just very nice, polite people, who are naturally relaxed and affectionate. But when Red first arrived, she did not want any of this. She stayed in the furthest corner of the field, waiting for me to go and fetch her. The moment I took her halter off, she disappeared. In a new place, with a new human, away from her old herd, she had no desire for contact. She was distant and uncertain.

The very fact that now she mooches by my side like an old donkey is a small miracle. She whickers when she sees me and comes straight along, hoping for love or food or both. She knows I am her person.

We got here through time and patience and thought. We took steps forward and steps back. Sometimes I really do think she is my best life lesson. She lifts my heart and opens my mind, and I don’t take that for granted for a single second.

Today’s pictures:

Mostly of snow trees:

The amazing thing about these is that they were all taken in colour, but the landscape is so monochrome at the moment that they almost look like black and white.

We have two new additions to the field, a lovely pair of robins, who are flirting about all over the place, and come and sing to us in the feed shed: