Nye in the Kingdom of Bevan, TV licences and the injustices of life .........

I once owned a juke box, it was a RockOla, and rock it did, Abba to the Zutons, with Lola by the Kinks around halfway.

I sold my Juke Box when I downsized.

Then I gave my Vinyl away.

Then Amazon, Apple and Spotify took over my life.

A couple of weeks ago in the Oxfam shop in Hexham I bought a record player, a Crosley.

It is packaged as a suitcase.

Opens up as a record player so now I am buying singles, mainly singles.

Groovy Kind of Love by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders is so far my best buy.

However nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Last night the new Bruce Springsteen flowed out of my Amazon Echo on demand.

Always difficult to know whether to be up with the birds or down with the kids.

It's difficult to imagine any one of the current candidates running a campaign never mind a country but we are left with the prospect of a Prime Minister elected by the last surviving 200 members of the Conservative and Unionist Party all burning with the desire to leave Europe without a deal and to reduce taxes.

I suspect that the Union is hanging in the balance right now.

Well can I say that as I anticipate 75 coming over the hill like the cavalry, although that's probably me going over the hill on a zimmer frame, now it seems, my free TV licence is about to be taken off of me.

Which is interesting in terms of value for money because whilst I pay for a licence I don't watch TV because either I watch Netflix or I watch Apple TV or I watch Amazon so if I watch TV it is usually the News at Ten although these days I am usually tucked up in bed by Ten.

So basically, apart from subsidising the Church of England out of my pension as a House for Duty Priest I subsidise the BBC out of my pension by buying a licence I don't actually use.

This weekend, according to the liturgical calendar as opposed to the Gregorian Calendar, I will have been ordained for 50 years, amazing really.

Especially because I arrived at the Cathedral late for the rehearsal, I had stopped in a record shop to listen to the new Rolling Stones single, then, because I was late and wearing jeans the verger didn't believe that I was one of the Ordinands, and I must have had 'that' look on my face and the Canon conducting the rehearsal asked if I was bored, Mmm, you should never ask that question if you don't want to hear the answer.

So I retreated to the retreat house and kept my head down until Sunday.

The person I knelt next to was ordained after me and after the scent of the Bishop's aftershave had faded I murmured to him, 'just goes to show, you can fool some of the people some of the time'
the Canon who was following the Bishop, after doing that job myself I realise now that he was the Bishop's Chaplain, gave me quite a look of disapproval.

Well it is fair to say that for the first whatever number of years I made no demands on the health service at all, as a child of course there was no Health Service but recently I have benefited from the gift of Nye in the kingdom of Bevan, but it seems that most of the candidates for PM want that public good to be surrendered to American Health Care Companies along with chlorinated chicken for supper.

One of the Candidates was my MP when I lived in Cumbria, Rory the Tory, apparently he left the Labour Party after Iraq, well what can you say or do? Well Rory went for walk around Afghanistan where he was apparently the Governor, I suppose after Eton it's the least you expect, so Rory and Boris will I am sure rise to the occasion as David did so well, or as Stanley might have said to Olly another fine mess you have gotten me into!

So it is it seems austerity is for posterity.

As I once remarked in an email to Rory the Tory, 'We know who got all the pies' and no-one went to jail, even the Right Honorable Michael Gove MP.

No wonder we lost the 'War on Drugs'!




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