The Unorthodox Website Blog

There is constant realignment on the British political scene. This is not always obvious, as for many decades the House of Commons has been dominated by two political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, who have both formed many governments over this period. But the realignments have involved the emergence of the Social Democrats some decades ago, who later joined with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats, and the resultant lurch to the Thatcherite right of the Labour Party, which has now become informally known as New Labour. It bears very little resemblance to old Labour, seeking to pander to the property owning, get-rich-quick middle-class ‘yuppy’ type voters, and abandoning its traditional working-class base.

The ‘first past the post’ electoral system used in Britain, and also in the USA, ensures strong governments with large majorities, but often based on minority votes. This is because most votes are completely wasted under this very undemocratic system. Governments are decided by relatively few voters, nearly all of them living in constituencies which are ‘marginal’ with regard to the two main political parties. The rest of us are, effectively, disenfranchized.

If we live in a constituency where the sitting MP has a huge majority, not only is there very little possibility of unseating him or her, but whichever candidate or party you vote for will be a complete waste of time. In effect, you don’t have a vote. At least not one which counts.

All a candidate needs to be elected under our system is a majority of 1 vote. All the votes in excess of this are thus wasted and effectively not counted, and votes for all the other candidates are similarly wasted and count for nothing. Thus all these voters, probably the majority in the constituency, have effectively been disenfranchized.

Take this hypothetical simplified example, where Party A wins the election in a constituency by getting 20,000 votes, Party B gets 19,000 votes and Party C gets 18,000 votes. Under our ‘first past the post’ system, the candidate for Party A gets elected with a 1,000 majority, all other candidates lose.

In this example, it can clearly be seen that only 19,001 of the votes actually had any effect whatsoever on the result of the election. Thus of the 57,000 votes cast, 37,999 were totally wasted. The candidate elected had 20,000 people vote for them, and 37,000 vote against them (999 votes for the winning candidate were ‘wasted’, these electors might just as well have not voted at all.)  Then imagine this being repeated throughout the country, and it is easy to see why we get governments with big majorities of MPs, but most of the electorate have not voted for the Party in government.

In most European countries there are different forms of voting which are much fairer. Either true proportional representation, where EVERY vote counts, and those for losing candidates are totted up nationally, and if a certain threshold is reached, extra candidates are deemed elected. Or second and maybe third rounds of voting, where the candidates with the lowest votes drop out, and people who voted for them can then choose between the remaining candidates. Or the ‘alternative transferable vote’ systems whereby there is one round of voting, but the electorate can indicate their second choice if their first choice doesn’t receive enough votes to get elected.

The advantage of the ‘first past the post’ system, often quoted by its supporters, are that it gives strong government by single parties with large majorities. The disadvantages are obvious: these strong governments are often undemocratically elected by a minority of the voters. Thus we are constantly saddled with governments most people haven’t voted for, but the ruling government can then do more or less what it likes as the opposition parties can rarely muster a majority of MPs in Parliament to vote against any Bill. This is because the ruling party is over-represented with far more MPs than it is entitled to, and all other parties are under-represented with far fewer MPs that they should have.

PR and the other alternative voting systems frequently give rise to situations where no party has an absolute majority, and so coalitions have to be formed. These involve agreements and compromise between various political parties to achieve a consensus. So it could be argued that nobody gets exactly what they voted for. But at least everyone’s vote counts, and perhaps compromise and consensus is what is needed in politics.

Of course when one political party is elected with a huge majority under our political system, all the members and supporters of that party think ‘first past the post’ is a great system. The landslide victory for the Labour Party in the 1945 election, for instance, led to a triumphant march towards Socialism in the ensuing years, with the taking into public ownership of many industries and services, and the setting up of the National Health Service. This would probably not have been possible under a coalition government elected under a system of PR.

On the other hand, the ensuing years resulted in governments of different political persuasions, and eventually privatization of most of the industries/services once nationalized. This was partly ideological, but it must also be admitted that some of these nationalized industries and services were wasteful and inefficient.

Had the 1945 Labour victory resulted in a Labour-led coalition of political parties forming a government, then perhaps full-scale nationalization, creating huge State monopolies, would not have occurred in all these industries and services. We may, for instance, have had instead a compromise whereby individual companies were kept intact, albeit now publicly owned, either as cooperatives or as just publicly owned companies. The system which operated in former Yugoslavia, and which was, by and large, far more dynamic, competitive and successful than the British/Soviet model of huge State monopolies.

Then we come to our unwritten constitution, which is that of an unelected Head of State, i.e. the Monarchy. This too is quite undemocratic, even though the power of the constitutional monarch is reduced to a puppet or ‘rubber stamp’ of the undemocratically elected government of the day. But surely the electorate should have a say in who is our Head of State, who represents us abroad, who officially receives foreign Heads of State, and who we are required to swear allegiance to in our courts of law, etc.? I strongly objected, when doing jury service, first to being asked to swear on a Bible I didn’t believe in (I was able to affirm), and then to have to swear allegiance to a Queen I didn’t even recognize as a legitimate Head of State since nobody had voted for her, however good or bad she was at the job.

EU flag

We are now members of the European Union, and despite what politicians say, it is likely that this will either collapse completely, or eventually develop into a federal super-state along the lines of the USA. I see little scope for unelected monarchies or quaint undemocratic ‘first past the post’ electoral systems in a federal European structure. Nor, of course, for currencies like the pound sterling. In a federal European republic we would have one voting system based on proportional representation or some sort of alternative transferrable vote or a second and possibly third round of elections, and of course one currency - the Euro. And the sooner the better as far as I am concerned. The EU has already resulted in much progressive legislation in Britain, including the equalization of the age of consent for gay men, the sweeping away of other discriminations against gays generally, the eventual achievement of equalization in the age of retirement for men and women, etc..

As a Socialist, I would dearly like to see the Labour Party return to its Marxist working-class roots, and the same would apply to its sister parties in what was once known as the Socialist International - the various Socialist/Social Democratic parties in other countries.

How an ESU (European Socialist Union)  flag might look

Ideally, in the distant future, I’d like there to be the opportunity to establish Socialist constitutions in Britain and other European countries, and for these states to break away from the EU and form a Socialist European federation. These constitutions would enshrine the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange as the basis for the economy, but would allow all shades of political opinion to be freely expressed and voted for, and would allow all democratic political parties/organizations to exist and contest genuine free elections. Any political party or coalition elected and forming a government, could then implement its own brand of Socialism (and there are many).

Alternatively, the government elected could then announce a referendum on the Socialist Constitution, proposing an alternative. If they won a substantial majority in the referendum, say two-thirds of the vote, then a new constitution would be put in place - be it one based on private enterprise, a constitutional monarchy, or even perhaps a Communist constitution in which the State starts to ‘wither away’. All options would be open.

Meanwhile, back to reality. We are faced with three major political parties, only two of which, Labour and Conservative, stand any chance whatsoever of forming a government under our first-past-the-post electoral system. Both parties follow Thatcherite policies, and at the moment there seems little prospect of this changing in the near future.

The most those of us who disagree with these policies can do is register our opinions in protest votes (which might unseat a few MPs in marginal constituencies) and in extra-parliamentary activity, such as demonstrations, strikes, etc..

The whole political scene, with the Press and media dominated by The Establishment and the political rightwing (even newspapers like The Independent and The Guardian are hardly leftwing voices for some sort of Socialist alternative to capitalism), is thus very depressing. We can only hope the continuing crises of capitalism results in a resurgence of Socialist ideas, and that a more representative electoral system is introduced in Britain so that at least, if we vote for the minor parties, we know our votes will not be wasted.

Although the podcast interviews have stopped for the time being, things have been going on behind the scenes.

After-life researchers are seeking empirical evidence that the ‘Diana’ entity is indeed who she says she is, though the numerous interviews still available on the Internet (see http://www.archive.org/details/DianaSpeaks or http://www.sessionswithspirit.info/) already provide considerable evidence from voice patterns, phraseology, emotions, intimate knowledge of Diana’s life and the very energy of the Diana personality that it is her.

I am very pleased to report that one of the new developments is that the ‘Diana’ entity via her voice channel, Andrew Russell-Davies, has talked over the phone with a materialization medium who is, with others, seeking empirical proof as to whether it really is her or not.

I can’t say exactly how this evidence will be obtained, but these materializations are repeatable experiments occurring regularly, so there are many possibilities.

John Logie Baird, the TV pioneer, once described a partial materialization in which the fingerprints of a suicide were obtained, and then matched with the fingerprints on the razor with which he killed himself.

If even a partial materialization of Diana’s hand could produce her fingerprints, arranged in advance by the materialization medium and the Diana entity speaking thru her voice channel Andrew, and the fingerprints then matched with those of Diana when she was alive, we would have our empirical proof.

I eagerly await further developments. Meanwhile, it is reported from the same source that a TV station in the EU has expressed interest in the ‘Diana’ entity, via her voice channel Andrew Russell-Davis, being interviewed by a skeptic who will be trying to catch her/Andrew out. So far nobody, including myself, has been able to do this. In many interviews with American medium Rose Campbell and phone conversations with myself and other after-life researchers, ‘Diana’ has never once made us doubt that it is she. I posed a question which I thought might catch her out, but her immediate and accurate answer helped convince me I was talking to the spirit of the real Diana.

So listen to the podcasts, hopefully there will be more soon. But even better, we may get Diana speaking on radio and TV around the world about such things as the future (or lack of it) of the Monarchy, the apparent assassination in Paris, and other matters. And she will tell the world that she was not pregnant with Dodi’s baby (or anybody else’s) at the time of her death, and explain, as she has in the podcasts, how Mohammed Al-Fayed may have got the wrong idea from something Dodi his son might have said over the phone about their forthcoming engagement.

Meanwhile, my own article on the Diana podcasts and my phone conversation with her is expected to be published in Tales From The Woods magazine towards the end of this month. I personally don’t care if people think I’m nuts - I’m spreading the word about this. I played some of the podcasts to two friends last weekend, and have now sent a link to my brother who I told about them when I met him the other day.

We’ll be proved right, and maybe a lot sooner than some people think.

I really feel there is currently no political party of the Left I feel happy about joining.

What is needed is some sort of re-alignment of leftwing politics in this country. Ideally, this would involve a shift to the Left from the Labour Party itself, or alternatively the Party splitting into two, with the leftwing finally deciding it is time to launch a real Labour Party based on Socialism, since New Labour is now guided not by Karl Marx’s ideas but by the ideology of Margaret Thatcher. Even the Cooperative Party (part of the Labour Party of course) seems under the control and influence of New Labour politicians like Gordon Brown, rather than influenced by the ideas of Robert Owen who started the cooperative movement.

Outside of the Labour Party, we have the various ultra-leftist parties, which can be categorized into three sub-groups. There are the Trotskyite revolutionary parties, there are the successors to the orthodox Soviet-style Communist parties, and there are the odd groups like the WSM/SPGB who claim that the Soviet Union and other ‘Socialist’ countries were, in fact, ’state capitalist’.

None of these four categories seem particularly attractive to me. Although I applied to join the Cooperative Party, I shall not take up membership or pay any subscription in view of what I have learnt. They are entirely controlled by and subservient to New Labour, and will not act as a leftwing pressure group inside the Party. Indeed the whole Cooperative movement in Britain seems to have lost its vision of promoting a different form of public ownership, and employs many younger people who think it is just another capitalist business.

The practice of the Cooperative Bank in encouraging people to take out loans they can ill afford, charging them interest, and also encouraging high-interest investment accounts prove they know little about Socialism or the ’surplus value of labor’. The only legitimate way to create value is thru labor; all unearned income is stolen from the workers’ wage packets somewhere in the world. Even the prizes in lotteries, TV quiz shows, etc. is, of course, paid for by the toiling masses in the end, as value cannot be created without labor.

At least the Cooperative movement still has some commitment to green and ethical policies, and is still owned by its members. But the Cooperative ‘loyalty’ card blurs the distinction between the genuine profit-sharing of a consumer cooperative in the form of ‘divi’ and the gimmicky loyalty cards gathering points given out by capitalist retail outlets.

The orthodox Communist parties, such as the CPB, are too tainted by the history, policies and symbols of the 20th Century Communist parties, the Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries of that era. Few people nowadays are going to vote for, let alone join, any party with the hammer and sickle as its emblem, so this also taints the various Trotskyist political groups.

All three ultra-left groups outside the Labour Party envisage eventually to move to a self-governing society where the State has either been abolished or has been allowed to ‘wither away’. They have learnt nothing from 20th Century experience, where even with a strong Socialist State the masses never were motivated to take control and hold on to it, and a new ruling class of opportunists, careerists, bureaucrats and corrupt Party officials distorted Socialism to their own ends.

If these groups can’t see that without a State at all it would be so much easier for a new corrupt ruling class to take over, then they are living in cloud-cuckoo land. It would take an extremely politically mature working class to be so committed and involved in running a Communist or syndico-anarchist utopia that all attempts by criminal and opportunist elements to take over or exploit the people could be nipped in the bud by sheer collective power of the masses.

A strong Socialist State would be needed for centuries to control criminal elements, to ensure work was adequately rewarded, to give even a politically immature electorate at least the chance to vote out a corrupt or inefficient government and replace it with an alternative, albeit Socialist alternative, government. After hundreds of years of Socialism then perhaps, just perhaps, people will be ready to work together and control society without artificial regulators. I am not optimistic about even this remote possibility, as I think there will always be elements in society out to take over and exploit the masses, and eternal vigilance on its own is not enough to defeat these determined, selfish elements motivated by greed and lust for power.

So my political dilemma continues, and is likely to do so indefinitely. At least until there is some substantial political realignment of the Left in this country.

I am NOT about to give up my independence and freedom of thought by joining some political group, such as the Cooperative Party inside New Labour or the CPB outside it, which tell me I must vote for Labour candidates, however rightwing or New Labour they are, in the absence of a Labour-Coop or CPB candidate standing in my local constituency. No, I will decide for myself who to vote for, whether it be Labour, Communist, Green, Liberal Democrat, or whatever.

However, I hope the Left can sort itself out and once again give the electorate a genuine Socialist party they can vote for, and indeed join, which is not tainted by the mistakes of the past, and which does not hold on to unrealistic visions of an impending utopia where everybody lives happily ever after without the police, money or all the other trappings of the State.

I am now narrowing down my choices to probably two: remaining outside all political parties/groupings, or joining the Cooperative Party.

Both the CPB and CPGB have failed, so far, to answer my questions. The Cooperative Party does not need to answer or clarify anything for me: I know they are committed to multi-party democracy with genuine free elections, and that they will promote the Cooperative movement, which I see as one of the main forms of Socialist public  ownership in the future.

Yes it would mean I’d be expected to vote Labour in elections, but the same is true of the CPB which puts up very few candidates of its own.

But I still haven’t decided whether to join any political grouping. I’d like, for instance, to see what direction Labour goes in after losing the next General Election, or after dumping Gordon Brown as leader.

But whatever happens I am a strong supporter of the Cooperative movement, so I guess the Cooperative Party would be my natural home, even if there is no local Party I can become active in.

I’ll think about this over the next few weeks/months. Meanwhile, if the CPB in particular bothers to reply to my two emails, I’ll consider them as well.

Regarding the comment about the World Socialist Movement, this sounds to me totally impractical. They are advocating Communism without even an intermediate Socialist stage, i.e. the State not ‘withering away’ gradually, but disappearing overnight. This is a sure way to a new corrupt dictatorship, as the masses are clearly nowhere near politically mature enough to run society without a State machine. Some self-interest group of opportunists would quickly move in to fill the vaccuum, and a dictatorial new ruling class would emerge. 

I assume the WSM includes the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a well-known non-Leninist party advocating Communism or syndico-anarchism. It is not for me.

In fact any sort of society with the State not existing at all, whether being abolished overnight or withering away over decades/centuries, seems quite impractical. If it is ever possible, it is so far in the distant future that it is not worth even considering at this point in time.

So, no, I feel I can no longer describe myself as a ‘Communist’. I am a Socialist who believes, for the foreseeable future, i.e. the next few hundred years at least, a strong State with all that entails will remain necessary. This means a police/security force, a monetary system, multi-party elections, etc..

Hopefully, over the next few hundred years, a Socialist system can be established worldwide, and we’ll see how society develops from there.

The CPB red flag logo

I have come to the stage when I am in a dilemma about British politics. Not just which party to vote for, but how to become more active by perhaps joining a political party again, and if so, which one.

I have been a member, at different times of course, of both the Labour Party and the old Communist Party of Great Britain. I finally left the CPGB in 1976, and rejoined the Labour Party, but when it abandoned unilateralism (i.e. unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain) under Neil Kinnock’s leadership, I finally resigned from the Labour Party. Had I not done so at that time, I most certainly would have with the advent of so-called ‘New Labour’ under Tony Blair’s leadership, and the removal of the passage in Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution, once printed on all Party membership cards, calling for the common ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange. This was the very basis of Socialism and without it the Party was just another capitalist political party, the Tory Party Mark II, albeit with genuine Socialists like Tony Benn still inside it.

In the years since 1997 I have been in a constant dilemma as to which political party to vote for in local and national elections. I have, during these years, voted mainly Liberal Democrat, as it seemed to have the most left-wing policies of the three major political parties, not being afraid to oppose the Iraq war and propose increased taxation to support essential public services. I had also voted Green in some local elections, and voted Labour when supporting Ken Livingstone in his bid to become London Mayor, and in his 2008 bid for re-election to that post.

Now I face a new dilemma, since the Liberal Democrats, never a Socialist party in any case, have now lurched to the right again. We now have the three major political parties in Britain all following almost identical rightwing policies.

I have written many blogs and articles on the Internet about Socialism, Communism and the mistakes made in the past and how we can go forward into the 21st Century. However I would like to be able to take these ideas and join a debate inside some political organization.

So I now have two dilemmas: which political party to vote for in local/national elections, which would be resolved if I could solve my second dilemma - which political party/organization, if any, to actually join and become an active member of.

Recently I have been studying the manifestoes and websites of several of the possibilities. There are the various Communist parties and their successors, all very small groups. These include the Communist Party of Great Britain (using the official title of the old CPGB of which I was once a member), the Communist Party of Britain (more closely following the policies of the old CPGB, and still linked to the Morning Star/Daily Worker daily newspaper of the Left), and Compass ‘direction for a Democratic Left’ (which seems little more than a center-left think tank), among others. Then there is the Cooperative Party (an integral part of the Labour Party, and therefore controlled by New Labour politicians/policies), the Labour Party itself, the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats.

I seriously thought about joining either the CPGB or the CPB, but rejected the former as it is seems to be yet another Trotskyist group advocating workers’ militias, violent revolution worldwide, and rejecting progressive campaigns such as that to abolish nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

The CPB seems a much more attractive option, but I am seeking more information about its policies. So far two emails to them seeking clarification remain ignored and unanswered, as did a similar email to the CPGB.

Joining either Communist Party could be a retrograde step given that I have moved on since my CP days, though I deeply regret the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former Socialist societies of Central and Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia, believing the 1989-91 period was an opportunity to democratize and reform them whilst retaining the gains already achieved by their imperfect Socialism.

Could I bring myself to call myself a ‘Communist’ again, given that the 20th Century experiments seemed to prove that, for the foreseeable future at least, it was an unworkable idea? Communists see Socialism as an intermediate stage to a utopian society, i.e. Communism, where the State has withered away, there is an abundance of goods and services, and which operates on the principle ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. A completely self-governing society, where everyone works and in return takes just what they need, no more or less. This requires an incredible degree of political maturity, of self-restraint, and of class discipline. It would involve the masses becoming actively involved in politics, in governing society, and in making sure no group of opportunists and careerists sought to entrench themselves in positions of authority and distort Socialism to their own ends, as happened in the Soviet Union and many other Socialist countries.

I have come to the conclusion that if Communism is possible, outside of small communes of dedicated idealists, it is a long way ahead, probably centuries away after many years of Socialism, before such an idealistic society would emerge, if indeed it ever does. It may well always be necessary to have all the machinery of a State to run society, protect democracy and control crime.

The CPB ‘dove and hammer’ logo

So I haven’t at this point of time rejected joining the Communist Party of Britain, whose main slogan is ‘for Socialism and Peace’, and who include the dove of peace as part of one of its logos. The current Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is a member, which is encouraging. I can live with Communism as an ideal to strive for, albeit in the far-distant future.

The Cooperative Party is very attractive because I am very much committed to the idea of worker/consumer cooperatives as an alternative, in many cases, to both huge, State-owned monopolies, or private enterprise. The system of competing cooperatives and publicly owned companies in a Socialist Market Place was pioneered successfully in Yugoslavia, before that state tragically broke up due to ethnic conflicts following the collapse of Socialism which swept across Eastern and Central Europe.

However, visiting their website and seeing reports/pictures of their conferences and debates addressed by rightwing New Labour politicians such as Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband, makes me feel they are currently too much under the control of New Labour. I would be far happier if people like Tony Benn and the far Left of Labour had more influence, and if the Cooperative Party acted as a Leftwing pressure group inside the Labour Party.

I have no real enthusiasm to join the Labour Party itself under its current ‘New Labour’ banner, with all that this implies: commitment to council house sales, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, privatization, the replacement of Trident nuclear submarines, etc. If I supported any of these policies why not join the real thing - the Conservative Party?

Nor have I any real enthusiasm to join the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats. The Green Party has certain attractions, but it is essentially a one-issue party focusing on the environment, and like the Liberal Party is has no grand long-term vision for achieving Socialism, let alone striving towards true Communism.

The Democratic Left, which emerged in 1991 from the remnants of the old CPGB, seems now to be little more than a wishy-washy center-left think tank, so I don’t think that is a real option.

I may well decide to remain a ‘free thinker’ outside all political parties, deciding which one to vote for at each election. In some elections I split my vote between candidates of different political parties.

If I joined the CPB, I would presumably be committed to voting for New Labour, since the CPB itself puts forward very few candidates of its own. Like the old CPGB it advocates supporting the Labour Party when there is no Communist candidate standing, but all Communist parties have always been refused permission by the Labour Party to affiliate.

It seems to me that the Communist Party of Britain may be my best option, should I decide to become a member of a political party again. It is the one which most closely conforms to my current political beliefs, but I need assurances that it has learnt from the mistakes of the past. Above all, in any future Socialist society, we need pluralism in both the political and economic fields. This means genuinely free elections with different political parties putting up rival candidates for election, and forming a government if they achieve a majority. This could be under a Socialist Constitution, which would replace our present unwritten Monarchial constitution, and could only be established after winning a referendum at some point in the future, presumably when Socialism is established and working successfully.

In order to work successfully, I believe the old concept of nationalization and huge State monopolies has, for the most part, to be abandoned in favor of smaller-scale competing cooperatives and individual publicly owned companies.

There could still be central planning, and certain industries/services would perhaps be better nationalized, such as the railways and public transport generally, possibly the utility companies, and the banking and financial institutions. Nationalization of the latter group would mean huge deposits at the disposal of the Socialist government, which would keep personal taxation down to a minimum. A true People’s State Bank, fully protecting the real value of the investments/savings.

This is a difficult era for Socialists and Communists. Particularly in countries like Britain, or of course the USA. If there is to be a revival of Socialism it is more likely to occur first in South America, as is happening at present, in Africa/Asia, or in the former Socialist countries as their population yearn for the security/stability they lost in 1989/91, and become increasingly disillusioned by capitalism, with their society dominated by foreign multi-nationals and in many cases, by corrupt politicians and enterpreneurs out to feather their own nests.

Karl Marx      V. I. Lenin

(click on pictures to enlarge them)

As Karl Marx stated, Capitalism is an unstable system. It relies on constant wars and a huge armaments industry to get out of constant recessions due to low wages, high unemployment and over-production, and is doomed to go the way of Feudalism and other historical eras. As Marx said, the march towards Socialism, and hopefully ultimately Communism, is inevitable.

The pendulum will swing leftwards again, but only if we learn from the mistakes of the past and evolve politically. As Comrade Lenin said - ‘two steps forward, one step back’. It is now time to start stepping forward again with new ideas as to how Socialism should operate in the 21st Century.

Will I join the CPB or some other political party? Watch this space!

Margate (the guest house closed in the 1960s) (click on the pictures to enlarge them)

August is coming to an end, and Winter will soon be upon us. Already the nights are drawing in.

We’ve had wetter Augusts I suppose, but as far as sunshine and warm temperatures are concerned, this has undoubtedly been by far the worst August I can remember in all 63 years I have been on Earth.

Last year was a bad Summer, but that August, and every August as far back as I can remember, there have been warm sunny days when I could lie on a beach somewhere, or by a lake or pond, and go swimming. Not this year. For the first time in my life, unless the weather improves dramatically in the next 5 days (by which I mean completely cloudless skies and temperatures of 25C or above for at least 2 days to warm the water up) this August will be a complete wash-out as far as swimming/sunbathing is concerned.

Luckily we had a few exceptionally warm days in May, June and July when I was able to get some swimming in. But the weather was not particularly good during our week’s holiday by the sea in early July, nor when we had pre-arranged day trips to the coast on four occasions earlier this Summer.

So what has happened? We hear about ‘global warming’ but we’ve seen little sign of it here. Apart from one day a few years ago when I was up the Serpentine Lido and the temperature in London hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, we’ve seen increased rainfall and gray skies during months which should give us sunshine and blue skies.

We may have an Indian Summer, which for me will be problematic as August was the month when all my clubs took a break, or three of them anyw