Bad Campaign

I have just seen the latest Tory electioneering poster and cannot believe what it says. For those of you who have not seen it, it’s a simple blue poster with a picture of a woman who looks as if she is related to Samantha Cameron, bearing the legend, Married People Are Just Better.

So, according to David Cameron, as a single woman, I am just not good enough. Even if I happened to be a nun wiping the brows of dying AIDS victims in Africa, or a Medicine Sans Frontier doctor voluntarily performing surgery on crippled children, I am just not as good as someone who is MARRIED. Is it really that different to the outdated adage, that behind every great man is a great woman?

So how exactly would marriage make me better? Am I better because I have someone to take out the rubbish? Or that I have someone’s socks to wash? And has anyone told men this? ‘I am sorry husband, but you cannot be cross with me for spending our weekly food budget on a pair of shoes, because we are married, and that just makes me better than about anyone on the entire planet.’ Yup. Mother Theresa, the Dalai Llama, and George Clooney. They’re just total losers.

But here’s the real snag. Has David Cameron even considered that about 98% of single women would be delighted to be married, except men don’t much want to be? Cameron has in effect, just alienated about most of the single female population of the UK who now have to sit on the tube staring at this smug poster, gnashing their teeth because they have more chance of being killed by a terrorist than living in connubial bliss.

So how to resolve this problem? I want to be better and I have no one willing me to marry me right now. But as I sat here alone last night as a single, useless and lumpen just-not-good-enough member of society watching Newsnight, a suitable object for my self-improvement presented itself to me in the shape of Rory Stewart.
Rory is THE thinking womans crumpet. Not only has he walked 6000 miles across the Middle East with his dog, and written about it in his book, 'The Places In Between', he actually understands the politics of the region. After serving as an officer of the British Army and a diplomat, he was made deputy governor of two provinces in Iraq at the age of 29. He has helped Prince Charles by living in and developing a not-for-profit project in Kabal to regenerate the commercial centre of the city using traditional Afghani skills, has a working knowledge of the languages of the Middle East, and is a director at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Wow.

He always looks as if he has just got out of bed, he has funny teeth, and an odd kind of face, but this man radiates philanthropy, compassion, intelligence and moral decency. He is so not a typical member of the nasty party, they should consider themselves honoured to have him.

As I watched him on Newsnight, struggling with his obvious concern at the woeful lack of understanding any of us have (politicians especially) about the political and religious factions within Afghanistan, I couldn’t help wondering where all the other Rory Stewart’s are. To have people who are so obviously well informed, must be a priority.

Some of My Published Work

Md PDF Some Work

Twinkle My Pussy

 

The wonderful James Ravilious who died in 1999, captured the real countryside in his photographs. Taken mainly in Devon, James was a self-taught photographer who lived amongst the people he photographed. His pictures remain a valuable document of a way of life now unknown in the countryside.

 

My Woolly Friends

Mia Davis Photo of Richards Castle Woods
Woods 

Work in the Country

One of the abiding myths about the English countryside is that no one needs any money. It is quite possible to imagine that the people of the countryside needn’t even go to shops – that we simply pluck berries from trees and kill the sheep in our back field when we’re a bit peckish. Yet the recession in the countryside is having an alarming effect on market town economies. Recent figures show a massive increase in unemployment within rural areas – and the outlook for rural communities looks bleak.

The Commission for Rural Communities, recently published figures which reveal that the greatest rise in unemployment rates are within rural areas. Restormel in Cornwall, an area of great beauty which includes one of Prince Charles’s homes and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, sees more applicants for a single vacancy than in any urban unemployment blackspot. A quick search of the employment service website yields six jobs in Perranporth – three of which involve cleaning caravans for £6 per hour. Rural Wales is now second only to the North East, as having the highest unemployment rate in the UK, whilst even the affluent Cotswolds have seen unemployment rise by a sharp 22%.


Market towns across England are seeing shops boarded up, lending an air of western movie style dilapidation, as redundant signs flap in spring winds. With only a handful of shops in the first place, the effect on once thriving towns is equal to a large factory closing in an industrial city. My own tiny market town of Ludlow in Shropshire has seen six shops, including Woolworths close for good. There is an attempt to fight back by creating local currencies and showcasing art in empty shop windows, but the debilitating effects on the local economy are profound. For every shop that disappears, so do several jobs. When we talk of unemployment, it is normally illustrated by sad looking souls shuffling around inner city job centres. Yet the rural poor are too far away for the government and media to get excited about. Behind the cottage doors of Rural England is a quiet desperation and silent shame; the fear and humiliation associated with unemployment and poverty. Yet it is difficult to quantify. In a small town, no one wants to admit they’re struggling to pay the rent. Just as competing with the Jones’s is essential to city life, in the countryside it is more so. Who wants to be talked about in the village post office as the man who is now claiming benefits? Yet these families suffer just as much as the urban poor, competing for a handful of ill-paid jobs, and spending twice as much on petrol than any city dweller. And as the recession continues its grip, the market town is dying before our very eyes.


In previous years, the demise of the countryside has centered around the loss of farming. Farmers are still struggling, many have given up, but the centuries old market town remained the beating heart of the countryside. Now however, even they are at risk. Visit London, and it’s easy to understand what has happened. The loss of cappuccino bars and the closure of Bond street tailors and Rolex dealers speak for themselves. In the countryside however, it is hard to equate the mysteries of the world of finance with what is happening to the community. Canary Wharf seems as distant as a far away star. The lambs still gamble and the fields are lush with new grass. But walk down the main street of a country town, and the empty shops tell their own sorry tale. Somehow, the money has gone away and the people of the countryside are left to survive on agriculture and tea rooms alone. The second homers who have been so vilified in the past, are not arriving with their city wage bonuses. When the Rolex dealers do eventually re-open, it will take far longer for the rural economy to gain momentum. The real countryside has nothing to support it, and like a field of blighted potatoes, is left to rot.