Monday 27 June 2011

More unsent letters to editors (no.1946) : The Guardian gets it wrong again....

Dear Editor,
The Guardian got it wrong when you advised us to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last general election - and your continued desperate and failing attempts to rationalise this blunder fools no one. We now have a Conservative government which is propped up by limp and I hope embarrassed Liberal Democrats and which is intent on wiping out any hope those who live in poverty  have of gaining access to opportunities which will improve their situation.

You got it wrong in your cowardly promotion of the bombing of Libya. Certainly by choosing the easiest target you took an expedient rather than a principled course. Otherwise you would have insisted that we in the United Kingdom from our unquestionable democratic moral high ground should not only  assault Libya but also that we should batter to smithereens the leaders of Saudi Arabia,Bahrain, Syria, and China to name but a few. Sadly it is nearer the truth to view the United Kingdom government as a school playground bully who picks on those he knows don't have the power to retaliate.  Yet you at The Guardian have on many previous occasions reminded us that military intervention seldom works and always causes human suffering. So, shame on you now. We all know that what follows from our exercise of force upon Libya will not bring peace or uncorrupted democracy. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan.

And now for your final error : you are in no position to advise the Scots as to whether they should participate in a UK Olympic football team. Given your pitiful advice on the other two much more fearful issues considered in this letter, I respectfully advise that you retreat to your editorial home "tae think again."
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sharpe

Thursday 2 June 2011

Coronation Day, Dundee, June 2nd, 1953

On Coronation day in 1953 we lived on the Clement Park housing scheme in Lochee and our family were the first and only people in the street who had a television. My Dad (I called him Daddy then) was like that. We also had the first telephone, the first car and the first washing machine. The day dawned cold and grey and it was still like that at about half past ten when it seemed like everyone in our road as well as all our relations poured into our living room to watch the coronation on our brown bakelite nine inch screen Bush television.  Mum (I called her Mummy then) put out cakes and scones. My pal Gerry Laing and I watched the royal carriages rolling down the London streets for about 15 minutes until it got boring. The television screen was tiny and in black and white and the picture was spotty. It wasn't as good as seeing a technicolor picture down at the Rialto. Gerry and I sneaked out of the house and sat on the back steps. The coronation wasn't all that bad. At school we had been given a free mug with a picture of the queen on it but better than that we'd been given a bar of Cadbury's chocolate in a tin box. We'd also got a day off school.
Gerry went around to his house and got an old tennis ball and we decided to play football on the back green. It wasn't great playing football with a tennis ball but it was better than nothing. He was Charlie Tully. I was Billy Steel. It stayed cold and grey for the rest of the day.