Tom Roper's Weblog

Roy Mayall

A literary review's blog may seem an odd place to learn about the realities of being a postal worker under Royal Mail's 'modernisation' regime, but the London Review of Books' blog has some posts by Roy Mayall, a pseudonymous postman. Starting with a diary piece in the Review itself, he has now written two posts on the blog, Attendance Procedures and Off their Electric Trolleys. I look forward to more.

Auntie's impartiality

Whatever position one takes on the BBC's refusal to show the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal for the people of Gaza, their protestations about impartiality ring hollow. I had in the post the other day, I can't imagine why, a mailing from the local Tories inviting me to an Energy Forum where, doubtless, the speakers would turn up on bicycles followed by flunkies carrying their briefcases in 4X4s. This event is to be opened by a BBC weather girl, Ms Lee-Preston. This is scarcely impartiality. I cannot not remember Michael Fish, Bill Giles or Ian McCaskill lending support to political parties. But I suppose I'm an old-fashioned Reithian.

The emblematic significance of the pink tie in Cameron's Tory party

In the latest London Review of Books there is a long article by Christopher Tayler, Heir to Blair, on the Conservative party under Cameron. In his research he gives the doubly alarming information that he attended a meeting of local Tories at the University of Kent, addressed by Oliver Letwin, alarming firstly because, when I was a student there, no senior Tory would have got near the campus without a ducking in the Keynes pond. In those days, 1974-78, Tory students would often, as a provocation, invite national figures from the Party to address them, in the hopes that counter-demonstrations would be organised, become violent, and the infant Thatcherites could paint themselves as defenders of free speech against the Bolshevik mob. But at Kent they never dared.
The second disturbing thing is that Tayler reveals that both Letwin and the local Tory student Gauleiter hang pink ties round their necks, as if this were part of a Cameronite uniform. I have several ties in pink, in light coral, salmon, flamingo and shrimp, wearing which I used to think I cut something of a dash. Must I give them up, lest I be mistaken for a hoodie-hugging Thatcherite-in-green-clothing?
Apropos, I have had a wonderful idea: the Tie Blog. Each day I shall photograph the tie I am wearing, and post it to a photo-blog. It will take time, but the end result will be a unique document of man's alienation in the early years of the 21st century.

Technorati Tags: kent, keynes pinkties, tories

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot

It's tiresome and school-boy-facetious of me, but I cannot help being amused by the news that the environmentalist Nicolas Hulot might run for the the French presidency next year. Unfortunately for sub-editors everywhere, he appears to be ruling out the possiblity.

Technorati Tags: hulot