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Living with privatized ‘services’
The header pic is a screenshot from Southern Water’s latest self-promoting newsletter, passed to me in the week they managed to leave 31,000 households in Hastings with no water coming out of their taps, in some cases for five days straight. Southern’s incident updates made much of the fact that they set up three ‘water…
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Why we all hate Southern Water
Over the last few years, as utility bills have pushed more and more of us onto the breadline, and increasing numbers are falling over the edge into destitution, Hastings has had numerous problems with both electricity and water supplies. Water is the big issue just now. In my part of town, the taps ran dry…
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Braybrooke – I will be voting after all!
I always write a blog about my ward’s elections just before voting day. I really thought I wouldn’t this year, local politics being as it’s been lately but – look, I’m doing it! This has been a very strange election campaign period for me – a few years ago, I would have been right in…
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Talk of the Village
When when word got around that William Wood had put together a whole story collection inspired by snapshots of life in the village where he lived, some people were a bit worried. “Am I in it?” “You didn’t write about what happened to X, did you?” “Where do you get your ideas from?” — A…
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Facebook got it right for once
Graphic violence indeed. Facebook has taken to covering up images of USA police violently assaulting university staff and students. This is one of three horrendous arrests I had videos of on my page – the other two appear to have disappeared. In each case, it was university professors who’d come to support and protect their…
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Let more daylight in
Why are local politicians in Hastings putting their names to a Shon Faye event? What is the “sex doesn’t exist” / “sex doesn’t matter” / “it’s complicated” ideology that Shon Faye promotes? Just how convoluted is this? Let me attempt to put it a coherent sentence… Starting with Judith Butler, it’s a build-up of out-of-context…
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Who’s a racist, then?
We really aren’t that racist. What matters most to most people is figuring out how to be decent humans and get along with everyone. That doesn’t mean that racism and all the other dreadful behaviours aren’t out there – they are, and they’re deadly – but out and about amongst people, you don’t see much…
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24 hours in the slough of despond
This is a long read, and it’s all about those times when the political gets really, really personal. I hope it’s useful, and hope it reads okay! Rocking and reeling and finding the way home Yesterday was one of those slough of despond days. I’d been on the edge since a sobering experience at a…
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Can you keep a secret in a village?
Many years ago on holiday in Cumbria, author William Wood was enchanted by a village not unlike that portrayed in his new book. “Imagine what it would be like to live here,” he said to Anna, his wife. Neither ever dreamed this dream would come true. William was brought up in the South East and…
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Urgent appeal for brains and courage!
“I will thkweem and thkweem until I’m thick. I will throw myself on the floor, I will blow up the world if you don’t give me what I want.” Anyone who’s ever cared for a two-year-old will recognize the catastrophic tantrum, the baby-turned monster who’s realized the world does not always bend to its needs.…
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Kay Green 