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Breaking News

Here we go, this year's election has been called.  Apparently the neverendum was so popular, following the blockbuster of the general election the year before (or whenever it was), that this time we are going to combine the Brexit vote WITH the general election!  Wow!

I am so far into not giving a fuck.  Its like that moment when you feel the strength go out of your muscles, even the next easy move is beyond you.  I just do not have the micro-nutrients within my muscles to be able to flex once more for the next hold.

Not one of the parties fits the bill.  Even those that I am more traditionally predisposed to blow it in some major way:  Labour - fight themselves harder than anyone else; the Lib Dems lest we forget joined the coalition; SNP - have Nicola Sturgeon who I am sick to the tits of with her fucking mandate;  the Tories I could never, never vote for because of their smugness, history and sheer self-interested expedient evil.  Even the Greens, who on paper are the best fit for me, would potentially ban my beloved diesel-engined Bongo because of some trifling air pollution concerns.  A classic example of every moderate environmentalist's dilemma!

Fuck the fucking lot of them.

That goes for the internet petitions too.  Change.org, 38 degrees, whatever those green ones are for the official Houses of Commons stuff.  I used to think it was alright until you realise they will petition for any-fucking thing, and claim loads of credit for Osbourne quitting one of his jobs, micro-beads getting banned or Wednesday following shortly after a Tuesday.

So instead of moaning, here is my manifesto.  This is the climbers manifesto, and if you don't agree with it, write your own.

1.  Access legislation same as Scotland's.  Imagine it!  being able to walk anywhere that isn't round someone's house and doesn't have crops on it.  Instead, we get the internal policemen in your head wondering when someone is going to shout at you.  Or - worse - a middle-class Englishwoman passive-aggressively informing you of some hazard she has just invented.  Like if you're wild-camping with your son in Thetford forest, you need to beware of the deer-stalking in the forest.-  because apparently that's how they stalk deer, they randomly shoot into a tent in case a 10 point buck is sleeping there.
Scottish Access Law.  Also, Clickbait.

2.  Don't fuck the environment up.  Its not red tape to want pollution controls - as long as I keep the Bongo though.  By the way: I fully support renewables and cannot get away with people moaning that wind turbines are eyesores.  If you don't want wind turbines on hills, you better have changed all your lightbulbs for LED ones and got a+++ appliances all round.  If you've built your own straw bale house - whinge away.

3.  NHS.  Yes please.  Public Services generally.  That includes Mountain Rescue still being free.  Wankers who think we should have insurance- thus enriching insurance companies even further- can fuck off.  That goes for bicycle insurance too.  Just fuck off.

4.  I like foreigners; they are cool.  I want to be able to travel, and I want people from foreign countries to be able to come and receive the same hospitality as they've shown me.  Especially if they are into climbing.  I want a load of Basques, Yanks, Slovenians and Iranians over here, now.

5.  That includes refugees too.  I feel sorry for refugees.  They only want the chance to slave away for piss-poor wages in order to prop up the gold-plated pensions of a load of old cunts who don't want them to actually have to live here.  In quest of a better life than being raped or macheted by some coked-up teenager who is being told God wants him to do it. Or drowning when your inflatable boat capsizes because we cut the Coast Guard budget in the Med.  

6.  Golf-courses.  They can go.  They represent all that is wrong with an deeply unequal misogynistic, environmentally-bumming society.  Look at Donald Trump's golf course in Moray (the SNP invited him in), bulldozed over a Site of Special Scientific Interest.   Turned out to be prescient that did.

There we go.  Anyone who wants my vote better promise me all that.  Its a good job none of these sorry lot will, because I would be genuinely disappointed when a) they didn't do any of it post election- inevitable, or b) they genuinely enacted all of it, in such a stupid way that even I would relish imprisonment in a brick womb. 

I'll be off climbing now.  At least I've got a week booked in May with no telly to have to shout at.

Oh hold on, just before I disappear for a week- there is one group- only one -who have politically raised any interest for me at all.  Meet the Alt National Park, they're all over Facebook at the moment.  So, who would have thought that Park Rangers might be the most radical group in America.  Certainly no one who has watched Valley Uprising where they all had intolerant moustaches and silly hats and hassled the peace-loving climbers and their hot girlfriends.  But here we are!
Coolest logo since the anarchy sign.


Sadly, they are also in America, but have a flick through their Facebook posts - they don't like Trump cutting parks budgets, aren't keen on deregulating industries' ability to pour pollution where it likes because its cheaper, but also put out longish but sensibly reasoned posts with cool graphics.  Can we start doing that over here please?

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