Shabana Mahmood is spot on about Labour’s immigration irony - Sarah Todd
Life can often feel like we are banging our head against the proverbial brick wall. Over the last few days your correspondent has managed to do this while sorting out washing - life in the fast lane - and then knocked the other side of her head for six against the door jamb while unpacking some supermarket shopping.
Sharp wits will be quick to wonder whether it has knocked any sense into whatever grey matter lies within.
Gosh both bumps hurt; to the extent that for a few days it didn’t seem sensible to get behind the wheel.
There were a few half-hearted offers to run the wife to the nearest hospital’s accident and emergency department, but what would that have actually achieved?
Sat around for hours and hours among coughing and sneezing kids and those wanting a sick note for Monday morning. A few sweary drunks or druggy types thrown in for good measure. Or to make an appointment with the doctor? Well, that would be about three weeks on Tuesday. No, an hour in front of a roaring environmentally evil wood burning stove catching up on the ridiculously rose-tinted (but weirdly watchable) new incarnation of All Creatures Great and Small seemed to do the trick.
Starting work at the age of 17 - the local newspaper took this aspiring reporter on before her A level results were in - and paying tax for more than 35 years since it’s impossible not to feel financially invested in our overstretched public services.
It will take more than a middle-aged woman who has had not one - but two - bangs on the head to come up with a solution but is it far right (like those brutish black Labradors) to suggest normal, hard-working, law-abiding people want their political leaders to talk about everyday things like access to medical help rather than spouting on about happenings on the other side of the world?
What on earth has happened to the Green party? Time was it would have been campaigning about saving the planet in a friendly sandal-wearing way, now it’s upsetting good people at home and abroad with its conference vote on the definition of Zionism.
One of the only Labour politicians worth their salt at the moment - apart from Markus Campbell-Savours who lost the whip for his opposition to the family farm tax - is Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. She has expressed her dismay at the numbers of requests she receives from fellow ministers urging her to be more liberal in dishing out migrant visas.
She is spot on in pointing out the irony of her own party calling on her to import more workers from abroad while Britain's youth unemployment crisis continues to spiral.
Old sayings such as charity begins at home, sweeping in front of your own door before your neighbour’s and making sure your own house is in perfect order before criticising anyone else spring to mind.
Maybe it’s the bangs to the head, but forget the likes of fantasy football. It’s interesting - as we arrive at the other side of conference season - to ponder politicians. More specifically, what a premier league line-up would be?
Straight in with a controversial one. Nigel Farage. But, with the caveat of Kemi Badenoch by his side keeping him on the straight and narrow. Then aforementioned Shabana Mahmood and farmer supporting man of principle Mr Campbell-Savours. Next, Reform’s Richard Tice. Not only does he have lovely hair, but he knows about business and making - not being daft with - money. Former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron would be given the nod. His staunch support of his Cumbrian constituents - he seems to turn up to anything and everything that they care about - sets him head and shoulders above so many. Throw in the fact he’s always speaking up for farming. Not the big boys, but the small-scale holdings that are the backbone of British agriculture, and he’s earned his place.
Baroness Kate Hoey, a former Labour bigwig, would be there. It’s nothing to do with her support for foxhunting, it’s the fact that she has always spoken up for what she believes in.
Thinking aloud, what’s not to like about somebody who, back in 2013, was fined for driving through a red light having previously criticised cyclists as "Lycra louts that run red lights"? She took it on the chin and didn’t waver from her long-held belief that all cyclists should pay tax and be registered. The late Ann Widdecombe would be there. If she believed in something she, like Ms Hoey, wasn’t for turning.
The rest of them? They want their heads banging together.