Category Archives: Op-eds

June is my favourite month. English asparagus, Jersey Royal potatoes waiting to be scrubbed, local strawberries, roses, Wimbledon and cricket – what not to love? – not to mention my birthday later in the month.

As a child I thought my parents had been very clever in arranging my birthday almost exactly halfway between two Christmasses. It spread the presents out very neatly. My memories are of sunny days, sometimes on the beach if the date fell at a weekend. And icecream.

We lived on the Isle of Wight until I was nine. Again I thought my parents had been brilliant in locating our family in the middle of an island so that, whichever direction we went, we would always end up on a beach. Although we didn’t have a car, steam trains were still running all over the island and there was a small halt just 10 minutes walk away.

I have been writing about scams for many years.

In fact, the blog I used to write was targeted for a massive Denial of Service attack years ago, which managed to bring down the websites of several MPs who were hosted on the same server. I had been exposing an outfit that kept on being shut down by the courts then re-opening under a new name. I was sent threatening letters before my website was attacked. This incident was investigated by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and we tracked the technical source of the attack to Romania.

I have to admit that it did shake me a bit. I was advised to never use public wi-fi, and I am still very cautious about doing that even today. However I still post information about new scams on Facebook, so far with no adverse effects.

Last month I wrote a diary entry “Avoiding scams“, about the genuine texts we had all received from the Government and the fake ones that looked very similar. Ironically some people thought the Government messages were fraudulent, including important texts telling them to shield.

Given the number of dodgy cold calls we all get, even with Telephone Preference Service in place, how are we going to be able to tell whether a test and trace call is genuine?

Yesterday Sarah Olney asked Matt Hancock that question in the House, and actually received a helpful answer.

After Happy Monday, today is Blackout Tuesday.

I have mentioned before that I have been attending the Great British Home Chorus during lockdown. Every weekday at 5.30pm Gareth Malone leads a 30 minute rehearsal from his garden shed – the broadcasts are usually live, with all the risks that entails.

Yesterday, he didn’t start with a warm-up as expected but spoke from the heart about racism and the fallout from George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. It was a very powerful statement, and you can watch it here:

It’s Happy Monday. Lockdown is, apparently, over – at least that seems to be the way many people have interpreted a gentle easing in the restrictions.

There is even some good news for those of us practising shielding. We are now allowed to go outside the home once a day, either with a housemate or for a socially distanced walk with someone else if we live alone. We can’t go to the shops, or go to work or visit others in their homes. I was quite excited when this was first flagged up on Saturday, but am now having second thoughts.

Up until now we have followed the government’s guidelines for self-isolation scrupulously for 11 weeks. We were expecting to stay at home until the end of June, and were not too dismayed at the prospect. As I’ve said before, our house and garden feel very safe, and we are content with that. We have great online conversations with the various members of our family, and although we miss being close to them we can live with that.

But this week trust in the government’s plans has plummeted, post Durham-gate. It’s not just that I don’t trust the advice we are being given, it’s also the fact that many other people are ignoring even the most basic social distancing rules.

This is really rather special.

There have been lots of collaborative music projects during lockdown, with varying degrees of success, but the story behind this one is rather different. Churches in many countries around the world have stitched together their version of The Blessing by Elevation Music including The UK Blessing.

In Ireland three weeks ago a group of friends conceived the idea of producing a Blessing with a distinctive Irish flavour. But importantly it was to bring together churches and Christian organisations from right across the island, from across all the Christian traditions and incorporating all styles of music used in worship.

The old Celtic song “Be Thou My Vision” was adopted as The Irish Blessing, the music was arranged, a website was set up and a call went out for musicians to play or sing.  They received 420 responses, representing all 32 counties in Northern Ireland and the Republic. You can see the breadth of the vision in the video – monks, drummers, orchestral players, Irish dancers, singers in every style, even a piper and a church bell, and The Priests put in an appearance too. Contributions came in from churches of all denominations including those serving immigrant communities.

Another rose in my garden – Nostalgia, this time

I haven’t bought any clothes at all since going into isolation. Our (albeit temporary) change in shopping habits is having a huge impact on people in the garment trade, which these days are spread around the world, often in the countries least able to support the workers.

So I was intrigued to read about Lost Stock, an initiative of Mallzee, an online shopping app developed by a company based in Edinburgh. They explain:

During lockdown, we learned of the situation in Bangladesh as retailers were rejecting or cancelling the stock they’d ordered from factories abroad. This is catastrophic for workers on the ground in developing countries. They’re being left with no income, and there’s no safety net in place for them. We’re used to solving big problems, and we’re experts in personalisation which makes us uniquely positioned to do something about this awful situation. That’s why we came up with the idea for Lost Stock.

The concept is simple. We use our data wrangling powers, our logistics partners and our network of awesome influencers to create Lost Stock. We match up clothes that retailers are no longer taking with consumers who are looking for a great deal but also want to do something positive to help factory workers and avoid clothes going to landfill.

The concept is simple – customers in the UK order a mystery box for £35 (plus £3.99 delivery) which will contain three tops or shirts. The contents will be worth, in total, at least double that amount.

The best way to support charity shops at the moment is to store your donations at home. Many of us have been using this time to sort out our cupboards and wardrobes, putting together bags of clothes and other items to go to a local charity shop.

I have been hearing that thoughtless people have been leaving lots of binbags outside charity shops during lockdown. The grim truth is that most of those ‘donations’ will end up in landfill, at the charities’ expense. The shop volunteers haven’t been able to handle, clean or store the items, which will now be contaminated by rats and other animals. The charities will have to pay to have the items removed.

There are over 11,000 charity shops in the UK and they make such an important contribution to the community and to the environment. Charity shops reduce the overall consumption of goods by giving them a longer life, they offer low-cost items to those who can’t afford much, and they raise funds for good causes. They are an important element in the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle chain – it’s a win-win-win situation.

One of my colleagues here on Lib Dem Voice has suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek, that I should write about editing the blog in lockdown. That could be as self-referential as an Escher drawing, but I have risen to the challenge.

At one level, very little has changed. We are sent posts by email, we edit and publish them, sometimes after a correspondence with the contributor about length, or content, or style. Sometimes we turn posts down because they aren’t really relevant or of interest to our readers. Sometimes posts are simply badly written – we try to help if we think they could be polished up. We particularly try to encourage posts from young and/or new contributors.

At another level, everything has changed. It seems that lockdown has thrown people into two camps. In one group are those who are incredibly busy and rather stressed because they are trying to work from home in less than ideal circumstances, while simultaneously attempting to home educate restless children. In another group are those who have far more time on their hands than usual.

Our team on Lib Dem Voice is split in the same way. I fall into the latter camp so have taken on a larger editorial role at the moment, and am trying to support colleagues who are councillors, or working for MPs, or volunteering, who are all spending huge amounts of time dealing with the fallout from lockdown where they live.