{"id":314,"date":"2010-04-23T16:25:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=314"},"modified":"2010-04-26T10:52:15","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T09:52:15","slug":"st-george-blake-and-shelley-and-hang-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":"St George, Blake and Shelley – and hang Parliament!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"The<\/a>
The Spirit Level<\/figcaption><\/figure>St George’s Day<\/a> again and the High Street is festooned with flags. We must be proud of our local saint – though as Judith Maltby<\/a> points out, he probably wasn’t local at all, at least not to England. <\/p>\n

Perhaps this excitement is a sign of election fever? There’s certainly been some here; for the first time I can ever recall, a Parliamentary candidate has come to the door – the kind of good old-fashioned politics that makes you proud to be British. Actually, first to call was a canvasser who said ‘I’m looking for Tories: are you one?’ I vacillated but added that since it’s a very close race in High Peak, I’d love to talk about the issues. He responded: ‘I’m a messenger, not a missionary!’ However, he did then bring Andrew Bingham, the Conservative candidate, to the door – and I didn’t even inquire whether the non-dom Lord Ashcroft<\/a> was funding their campaign. <\/p>\n

I forgot to ask whether he agreed with Shelley that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’ – that might have been an opening to ask his views of the current Poet Laureate too. (Should one select an MP on the basis of poetic preferences?) I did however have a question about inequality, prompted by my current reading of Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone<\/a>\"\". I should have quoted William Blake:<\/p>\n

Is this a holy thing to see
\nIn a rich and fruitful land,
\nBabes reduced to misery
\nFed with cold and usurous hand?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are sharp questions about this in a letter from Rev Dennis Nadin<\/a> in today’s Guardian: ‘Where is the voice of the poor to be heard in this election?’<\/p>\n

And now I see that the same Andrew Bingham can be spotted walking past the famous Café Royston (of League Of Gentlemen<\/a>\"\" fame) in a short video about the constituency by John Harris called Hang Parliament!<\/a> on the Guardian<\/em> site. It seems from this that although the Conservatives want us to ‘vote for change’ that doesn’t mean any change to the voting system. Perhaps, as Lord Curzon found out<\/a>, it will all end in tears?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St George’s Day again and the High Street is festooned with flags. We must be proud of our local saint – though as Judith Maltby points out, he probably wasn’t local at all, at least not to England. Perhaps this excitement is a sign of election fever? There’s certainly been some here; for the first … Continue reading “St George, Blake and Shelley – and hang Parliament!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[41,67,75,76],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-blake","tag-election","tag-shelley","tag-st-george"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}