Verbal gymnastics by Abe soundalike

The Friday Thing

WAS Jim McMahon’s Hathershaw Address, with its shades of Abe Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg (“government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”) an indication that he sees himself as leader of Oldham Council after the May elections?

After all, he already has a substitute budget in his jacket pocket.

Jim was introducing his vision of a Co-operative Council that is, apparently, a kind of power-to-the people melange in which councillors actually listen to we ordinary folk.

Like me, you probably thought councillors got their generous allowances for listening to we ordinary folk already, but perhaps they’re not doing it or perhaps they are listening but not taking any notice. Maybe that’s why we feel we could lose at least a third of them without suffering any significant impact, except that we would save a lot of money to spend on more useful things.

Jim, however, had a severe attack of the rhetorics (a nasty affliction related to thesaurusitis and a mild form of cliché clap, English or Chinese versions).

And so we had: “By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe and where we live together, freely in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

There was more in the same style with Jim’s verbal gymnastics allowing him to use the word “together” three times in one sentence. Now that’s what you call togetherness.

Jim’s heart is in the right place and no one would argue with the need for Oldhamers from all communities to come together in shaping the future of the borough and improving the lives of its future citizens. But isn’t that what local government was set up to do, what it was always supposed to be for?

Will calling it a Co-operative Council make it any better? Will it pay a divvy?



ISN’T it rather galling how our national government always seems so gung-ho about going to war?

There is more relish than reluctance about putting our brave men and women into the front line in some far flung (though not flung far enough) corner of the world like Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a nation we are a financial basket case in that our basket has no money it, leaving families right across the land in dire straits, possibly for years to come.

Bombing Libya will cost millions, possibly billions before it is done so why didn’t our Government and the Opposition say: “Just hang on a minute, we can’t afford this.”

Why didn’t they follow the Arab League (where there are more billionaires than there are grains of sand on Blackpool beach) and say sorrowfully: “Yes, we support the action in Libya, but no, we are not taking part, but thanks for asking.”

Supporting the desperate poor in the Third World is one thing; financing wars that are not our business and that do not affect us are something else entirely.

Isn’t it a pity that those who govern us and who get a testosterone kick out of involving us in wars are not the ones who have to go to the front line?

Are they trying to build a new empire to lord it over? Heaven help us.




FINAL WORD: As a former smoker (there are still days, more than 20 years since I last lit up, that I fancy a fag) it was startling to see in the Budget that a packet of 20 cigarettes now costs £7. That’s a ridiculous amount of money to put something in your mouth and set fire to it. But would I pay it if I were still in thrall to nicotine? Yes I would.