Hello from "Cordelia" or "Evita"

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Not really sure how to introduce myself...or how much detail I should give at first. I'm also rather depressed right just this minute, so I might sound a bit miserable...forewarned is forearmed.

I am Louise from Reading in England, and I have just been through two years of "intenseness" during which I was diagnosed as AS. In fact I think it is more like 13-15 years, since I can remember very clearly the dates on which the principle "characters" entered the stage, and particularly when the most important of these characters did so. For fellow Brits, it involves public figures, so maybe I should just say that part of the AS is an interest in politics and in politicians, and in one particular politician. (It could be assumed to be a crush but then again that implies sexual interest...so maybe it's not the right word at all, though I suppose when I was younger I didn't have the vocabulary to express the emotions relating to this person so sex was what sprang to mind. Although when I saw him on TV for the first time he seemed much more like the father I'd always wanted but never had and that's closer to what it is now in my twenties.)

Anyway, I'm 26 and I'm unemployed but trying to break into political research (and cartooning - I have kept a meticulously detailed political cartoon diary of about 4,000 strips of British politics over the last two years, it is a very personal diary though and I am frequently in it trying to act as a sort of Evita to my Juan Peron!) in order to use my skills as best I can. I have been employed in the past and went to university, but I've always ended up in some kind of depression and "bailed out", which means my career is idling in neutral. I always have a dream where I'm in an aeroplane - as a passenger - and can never fully reach "cruising altitude". I had a similar dream the other night where I finally reached that altitude in a 747, but the pilot (who happened to be the above politician) couldn't find a runway to land on in the middle of a very dark sky. I had been to see "Flightplan" - in which Jodie Foster expressed all of the emotions and reactions from others I've experienced over the last seven months since our general election, with the exception that she found her missing daughter and I seem to have watched mine blow up in front of me this week.

I sell regularly on eBay (stamps and postcards) for a bit of money (though I live with my parents) and try to keep that as free of British politics as possible. I am a keen stamp collector - of political propaganda stuff mostly from the former Soviet bloc and USSR - but am reluctant to go into that full time as it seems a "dead" area. I do like archiving and collecting, but it doesn't seem to me to have much life or interest in it, whereas politics fascinates me...sometimes I see it as a Shakespearean tragedy (King Lear springs to mind to describe the above pol, and I feel like his Cordelia) or a soap opera or a comic farce or even an episode of Bagpuss, rather than being particularly interested in any particular area of public policy. "Men not measures", as Edmund Burke once said.

My other interests are in Eastern European culture, history (esp 20c) and ethnography, and I also sometimes make rag dolls, though that has been put on hold as I can't seem to find much enthusiasm for anything right now. I lived for eighteen months in Poland studying the language but I came back home when things started getting "interesting" for "Lear" two years ago. It was a bit of a coincidence, but not much!

Sorry to sound like a miserable old cow, but I wandered in here looking for support...I am seeing a regular psychologist (free on the NHS) and a Autistic Society recommended counsellor

Welcome to Wrong Planet

Welcome to WP, and good luck. This is a pretty friendly place most of the time. I hope you find what you are looking for.

Plenty of people use the forums for emotional support. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Hi Louise. I'm Robert from Cambridge UK, and I am obsessed with politics as well. I'm a leftie, and I hate the Tories. I support the Lib Dems, but I am really a socialist.

PM me if you want to talk about politics and stuff!! !

Oops...

Hi Robert. I'm an ex-Labour Party. That might tell you something about who I'm referring to.

I have to confess I am a Tory...well, a Conservative at any rate. I defected from Labour about eighteen months ago. I couldn't stand Blair any longer and the Liberals just seemed as bureaucratic as Labour.

Though political colour shouldn't matter (as I found out - I went through six months of soul-searching before I defected) - we live in a democracy and what we need is all kinds of opinion represented, not just those we personally find palatable. To "hate" someone who has a different viewpoint causes more trouble than its worth, which I've found out the hard way, particularly when I 'fessed up to my Labour activist ex-boyfriend.

Hi, welcome. We have fun people here. *pounces you and bites you*

^_^

-roughly translates to "I like you."

Hi Nomaken - that's a very very smart avatar you got there. Trying to upload mine...

My gosh!! ! I've read your posts, and I agree with almost everything you say.......you sound very liberal to me..

But that is just my opinion. For all I know, I could be a "New Tory". New that would be bad!! !

Robert:

I suppose I would call myself a Christian Democrat. At heart I am a libertarian (socially and economically liberal); after having lived in the high-tax, high unemployment economy in Poland I felt that it was better for people to be able to make more of their own decisions than have an all-powerful nanny state and public sector. Poland is caught in a double whammy - not enough tax revenue to provide proper social services but enough taxation to stymie employment. The problems of that kind of economy are slowly being felt here. I think I went out to Poland a reluctant socialist and came back a reluctant conservative, just after Howard took over and the party looked like a serious contender again, and it took six months to acknowledge it and realise it wasn't just an anti-Blair reaction or that I was a Liberal Democrat.

Cameron appeals to me but he is far too young for the job. It also sets a dangerous precedent that each new potential prime minister has to be younger than the previous one. Eventually it will be a "graduate training scheme" job! For me the perfect prime minister would be sixty-plus, old enough to have served at most levels of government or opposition to acquire dignity and respect, and to have spent long enough in parliament to know how to use rather than abuse it. Also sixty is not the age it once was. (Although Cameron and Blair look like Ace Rimmer and Normal Rimmer from Red Dwarf...) Plus I'm not comfortable about the social background of him and his cohorts. What the party needs is to attract young people like myself, who didn't go to either public school or Oxbridge. I'm actually turned off by most of them, they look a bit Hooray Henry-ish to me.

Davis would have been a nightmare and dragged us back to the dark ages though, so I suppose DC is the lesser of two evils. I'm not entirely sure there was a successor to Howard though until the others e.g. Tessa May, Letwin, etc had proved themselves in government and developed some gravitas. What's really needed is for the party to pull together for once and stop thinking of local issues and put together a united national campaign. There was too much "oh we'll win locally but we're screwed nationally" during the general election, and I have a feeling that more than anything else put voters off. You've got to have self-confidence to go out there on the doorstops, and selfish local candidates forgot they were pushing a national government platform rather than promising to clean up the doggy-do on the footpaths once they got to Westminster. That's the council's job.

I hope if the Tories get back next time they don't get a whopping majority, look what happened to Blair and Thatcher. Ideally majorities should be in the 40-90 range, just enough to work with and feel secure, but not enough to take for granted on controversial legislation. Labour majorities have always been bolshier than Tories though; I reckon Blair's majority now is roughly equal in "purchasing power" to Major's in 1992 before it started to get eroded. I also think Blair was the right thing at the right time; sadly I also thought the same about Howard.

Part of me felt that Michael Howard was actually more left wing on some issues than Tony Blair. I think it's healthy that he got the party back to being an effective opposition and potential government than leaving it as a mess. It's sad that he felt he had to step down, as what we all felt in May was that the party needed stability and continuity. What we got was the usual suspects like Ken Clarke coming out of the woodwork and carping that we were all too right-wing when he had ample opportunity to contribute to party debate. At least we have got Europe out of our system. A lot of the party workers are too nice though to really be effective politicians - what we need is a bit of opportunism and flexibility.

Sorry to blather. I'm a liberal, I guess (have you done your Political Compass? Google it - it's quite interesting), but I value good leadership and solid domestic policies more than a platform which exactly matches my own views. Having been in London on 7 July I am fearful that any action against Iran will just inflame the situation still further.

Getting a bit tired so will log off, but thanks for responding to my post. Feeling a bit better than I was last night - just been to see "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" - first class film, and highly recommended. It's the first Disney movie I've ever seen which has added bits to the story (nothing dramatic, just little vignettes) and actually improved on the original book.

which is which?

(Depends on your point of view!)

Cameron as Ace and Blair as "Normal".

On one of the commentary tracks on the RD DVDs one of the cast mentions that in the "Meltdown" episode Rimmer looks very Blair-esque.

Though unfortunately I never really liked the Ace character (so it's entirely objective LOL!). Normal Rimmer, for all his faults, was funnier.

Last edited by catwhowalksbyherself on 08 Dec 2005, 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

(Howard v Blair = Bottom)

Howdy, catwhowalksbyherself. I have three cats. But none of them can type (as yet).

The only cats I have are toy ones. But one's pretty realistic...I bought it in a street market in Warsaw, came home, put it on the kitchen table while I made myself some tea and my landlady freaked when she thought I'd brought a dead kitten into her house...I collect "interesting" toys, my room is full of dolls and I still take a teddy bear (albeit a toy badger, Boris, that looks a bit like Piglet from Winnie The Pooh) to bed with me - ever since I split up from my boyfriend I found I needed company in bed.

Would like to have one (a cat, not a badger), but I would prefer a big black crow...if I'm allowed to keep one as a pet. I'd get two - Rudyard and Kipling.

i can sort of see that one

have you seen (or read) Roald Dahl's 'the witches'?

You know that scene towards the beginning where the little boys hiding in the great hall, just after they bolt the door and take off their masks - Andrew Marr* reporting in hushed tones live from the tory conference.

* it was actually mardell, but marr has more of the little boy lost look.

Yes, I did the political compass a little while ago. I think I got:

Economic: -7.50 (very socialist)
Social: -4.00 (fairly liberal)