Hello and welcome to my blog! Here you can read my articles, ramblings or just general rants that I need to get off my chest. To start with I’ve posted an article that I wrote just before the 2005 General Election. Shortly after I appeared as a contestant on ITV’s “Vote For Me!” [I’ll post more about this later] I was invited by London’s ‘Capital Radio’ to “Meet the leaders”. An opportunity for me and a few VIPs [ha ha!] to put questions to the leaders of the three main parties. You will understand when you read the piece why this article is titled “What a complete and utter coward Tony Blair is.” Enjoy! Pop in again soon for more words of wisdom [or otherwise] from yours truly!

What a complete and utter coward Tony Blair is - I detest him more than ever now!

I’ll come to him later, but the weekend wasn’t a complete waste of time - Capital Radio put us up in a fab 4 star hotel, the Trafalgar - right in Trafalgar Square next to the Canadian embassy. We did the touristy thing visiting Her Madges Buck cottage, Houses of Parliament etc [as my PA had never been to London before] - then Saturday evening went to Leicester Square to see the film Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [I’m still undecided - might have to see it again].

Early Sunday morning we went to Capital Radio and there were police and security flunkies everywhere. After the usual frisking and searches we went to the green room and I started chatting to the other 19 guests - we were collectively referred to by the staff at Capital as the ‘experts’. We were all given large tags with a ‘UK Leaders Live!’ logo on them next to our names [I kept mine as a souvenir].

The other ‘experts’ were an eclectic and interesting bunch including; the President of the Students Union, the leader of the NUT, the campaign director of “Stop The War!” coalition, the delightfully articulate Director of ‘Liberty’ Shami Chakrabarti, the head of UK’s branch of ‘Amnesty International’, the mother of the murdered young black man Stephen Lawrence, Doreen. A retired copper who ran a campaigning group urging tougher sentencing, the lovely Nell McAndrews [dunno what she does exactly but I’m sure she does it well!] who was there to talk about being burgled twice and she now wants to leave London. I managed to have a long chat with all of them. The final person to arrive was Claire Raynor. I’ve always admired her for her outspoken views and her stance on religion. I was shocked though at how old she looked and she didn’t seem very well at all. She shuffled in slowly on two walking sticks and panting for breath - three people immediately jumped up and offered their seats. But once seated and composed she soon started chatting and laughed approvingly at the sticker she noticed on the back of my chair which read “The world would be heaven without religion”. Claire is Vice President of the Humanist Association [of which I’m a member - as well as Liberty, Stop the War! and Amnesty International; do you think I’m a joiner?]. But Claire was there to slag off the state of the NHS and criticising its privatisation by stealth under this ‘Labour’ Government, drawing on her knowledge and experience as a former ward Sister.

Anyway, after about half an hour the producer walked in and told us the bad news. We’d only be meeting one of the three leaders - Chas Kennedy would though be speaking to us on the phone from Scotland. However, HRH Prince Tony didn’t want to be quizzed by any of us but would take pre-selected phone calls from the ‘general public’. Consequently, after Kennedy’s slot we would have 2 minutes to leave the studio before phoney Tony swanned in!

The producer mumbles something about Tony not being briefed of the procedure [even though it was planned week ago and it was networked across the whole country!] ……….. Claire shouted that he was a “damned coward!” which prompted the embarrassed producer to say “oh Claire you’re awful!” - “no, she’s right!” I retorted.

Obviously his cronies and advisers didn’t want a repetition of his disastrous recent appearance on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ when the audience booed the sweaty, lying, psychotic mass murderer when he walked in the studio. We ‘experts’ of course wouldn’t have done that as we were all far too civilised.

We were all finally seated in the studio in front of the 2 presenters -
Margherita Taylor [who??] and Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel Four News.
Guru-Murthy said he would single us out on particular issues but we should
feel free to raise our hands if we wanted to speak. Mickey Howard, apparently the ‘leader’ of the Tories, was the first. Wearing an open necked pink shirt he looked very haggard and had the demeanour of someone who knows he is a loser. He smiled politely and said
hello to us all and I was almost beginning to feel sorry for him.
Margherita solemnly announced that Howard’s favourite record was “Everything I do” by Bryan Adams [we all tried to stifle our laughter/vomit] as a few seconds of it was played with Howard looking highly embarrassed [oh the indignities politicians put themselves through!].

Krishnan’s first question to him was very blunt and highly ageist; “Aren’t you too old to be running the country Mr. Howard?” - at which point Howard looked about 100 years old. He stumbled and waffled his way through the question as adequately as well-briefed and well-seasoned politicians do - the half hour just flew by. Doreen Lawrence attacked him brilliantly on his appalling show as Home Secretary and Claire Raynor managed to get in a few seconds - she wanted to say a lot more but Krishnan forcefully shut her up. The rest of the time was taken up by articulate and well rehearsed phone callers. I raised my hand twice to speak - Krishnan clearly saw me as I was right in front of him in the front row, but I [and most of the other fellow panellists] were ignored. Then Howard left looking a bit more deflated than when he came in and it was Charles Kennedy’s turn - talking on the phone. He spoke to Shami Chakrabarti and the Student Union’s
President. I raised my hand twice more and frantically tried to get the
attention of Krishnan - but to no avail. We were all beginning to think it
was a waste of time…….. I’d been awake most of the night composing
questions! I whispered to the “Stop The War!” bloke sitting next to me
“what could they do if we refuse to leave when it’s Blair’s turn?” - he
grinned and said “ok, I will if you do”. I am convinced he thought I was
joking, but I was deadly serious - despite all the security flunkies there
were twenty of us there and the programme would have at least been delayed
so Blair would’ve had no choice - face us or be off the show!

But when Kennedy said his goodbyes [his favourite record by the way was
“Heroes” by David Bowie] we were all ushered out. Everyone got up and made
towards the door. I didn’t move. I was the last one behind Claire and a
member of Capital Radio was holding open the door smiling sweetly. “Oh
sod it!” I yelled and went down in the lift too. The room next to the
green room was blocked by about eight serious looking blokes in suits and
holding radios - obviously Blair was hiding behind them until we were all
safely out of harms way. “He’s a bloody coward!” I yelled over their heads.
Everyone was fuming in the Green room that we couldn’t even question the
bloke that’s already won the election. The bloke from “Stop The War!” was
saying to no-one in particular “I’m gonna make sure everyone hears about
this - I’m gonna put something in our paper” ….. I just looked at him
contemptuously.

“You’re all welcome to listen to the rest of the show in here” said the
flustered radio woman ………. but most of us left and couldn’t be
bothered.