Dear Friends,

I have been wondering!    It is not often that life echoes fiction, but it almost did, for us theatre folk, on June 8th!

Blind Choice OR Would you vote for a man who wore make-up?

Some years ago the youth Company at Llandovery Theatre performed one of our plays – Blind Choice or Would you vote for a man who wore make-up?  a political satire on the spin of politics.  An election is looming – and in order to appeal to the younger voter, the Conservative Party set up a TV programme complete with Spin Doctor and young ‘glamorous’ Agent, and present three young candidates – who are ‘grilled’ on their aims and beliefs.   At the end, the viewing audience vote, via their screens, as to which chap they would choose as Conservative candidate for Wandsworth West.

Hung Parliament!

Fate intervenes!  A young, unemployed man, Dan Death, wanders into the TV studio, and is mistakenly picked as one of the contestants.  The ‘count’ is rigged, so no-one organising intervenes to correct this, but when it comes to the voting, Dan wins, not by just a few votes, but by a million!

Fast Forward to the Election, the young maverick, resisting the make-overs and ‘grooming’ –  is still his own man, but at the Election count, the two major parties come in with exactly the same number of votes.  Three re-counts, and then the resolution is by the toss of a coin.

The final screen display at the end of the play states ‘HUNG PARLIAMENT!’

I don’t have a vote, being a mere cat.  And though I am not a sooth-sayer, I sometimes have ideas while sitting on my window-sill.  I suggest – as it is likely there could be another election within, say, the next year, you lose no time but go now to your sitting MP and make sure (whatever the party) that he or she is going to support, up to the hilt, the demands for more funding for the National Health and dementia care, and that university fees be abolished.  Add to these three, your needs for good access to primary and secondary schools, without asking children to travel hundreds of miles a week, this could and should be the responsibility of the County Councils.  So get onto them too!

Questions that need answers!

As I come to the end of my letter, news is flooding the airways of the terrible inferno at Grenfell Tower in London, with such a tragic loss of life, and reports maintaining that the cause of the spread of the fire was because the cladding on the exterior of the building was not fire retardant.  Are there tower blocks in Wales constructed using such cladding?  The answer may well be – YES!    All should be checked and dealt with today, now, without waiting for any Public Enquiry.