"And then he said..."

I'm not wholly surprised that this letter wasn't published in Lib Dem News - there must have been a backlog building up while the paper was “off the air”, so to speak. But since I was cross enough to write it, I reckon I'm cross enough to post it here…

I note with some dismay that the reception for Parliamentary candidates at conference in Brighton will be sponsored by Tesco. Would this be the same Tesco that is busy destroying jobs and small local shops across Britain, siphoning money from local communities to its shareholders, clogging roads with traffic and filling landfills with excess packaging materials, and bullying farmers and suppliers into accepting ever-decreasing prices? The Tesco whose planning applications are being opposed by Lib Dem activists in Focuses up and down the country? If this is what constitutes professionalising the party, I'd rather stay an amateur.

I also spotted with a fit of giggles that Iain Dale has selected this as the 35th best Lib Dem blog in the country - apparently not noticing that until a day or two ago I had gone a month without updating it, and that in the almost four years it's existed in its various forms I've spent about six months in total writing about politics.

But, hey, it was still a nice thing to discover - because, you know, my life was so hollow without validation from the man whose commitment to liberalism is so great that he was able to transform a Lib Dem majority of 483 into one of 10,606, just by standing there for the Conservatives.

Tesco and Iain Dale - it's like being back at school, where the greedy fat kid and the spotty loser always follow you and your mates around in the hope they'll look cool too.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I made a last-minute visit to Tesco earlier today and found the managers up step ladders and sitting on top of the veg displays, taking down all the decorations so that when the store reopens (presumably on Boxing Day) all that Christmas stuff is firmly in the past, where it belongs. So I thought I'd write this:

A Christmas poem, with illustrations, by Andy Darley, aged 37 and three quarters.

'Twas the night before Christmas and Tesco was packed
I'd hoped to avoid it but finally cracked
Veg canelloni and tortilla chips
Green & Blacks' finest puts weight on my hips

The meat aisles were bare - all the joints had gone
If you wanted a turkey you'd find there were none
And all 'round the store the managers ran
To pull down the tinsel according to plan

Decorations vanished, the season deposed -
For Tesco it ended the moment they closed
It's all about profit, the year's highest sales
Compared with all that, the Nativity pales.