By Isle of Wight Observer
Mr H is currently firing ‘elf on a shelf’, across the Solent on a trebuchet, to see if it’s a more reliable form of cross Solent transport – it will certainly be cheaper!
This will be my last column of 2023, I had planned to do a round-up of the year, but between the outbreak of horrendous wars, a cost-of-living crisis no one imagined would be this bad and the weather causing all manner of problems, it appears to be another year that most of us want to forget.
So what of 2024, what exciting plans have you all got? Or have you all decided that ‘the best laid plans of mice and men …etc’ means you’ll just go with the flow? There is a lot to be said for that.
Someone that has got plans for next year is our Prime Minister. His early January looks set to be a belter, when the Rwanda bill comes back to the Commons for its third reading. It will be at this point he realises any goodwill from Christmas has entirely evaporated, as the right wing of his party grab him by his short trousers and tell him what he has to do get their support.
As the PM knows, the Rwanda bill is unworkable; it only applies to 100 migrants a year and is ruinously expensive, to the point it would be cheaper to give them £500,000 each to start a new life wherever they pleased. They’ve spent £240m so far and it hasn’t started yet. It also requires us to take people into the UK from Rwanda as part of the reciprocal arrangement. You can accuse the Rwandan government of a lot of things, but being stupid isn’t one of them. The deal has now become a metaphor for the last 13 years of this government, out of touch, out of control and probably out of time.
The thing is, it’s not even popular with us, the voting public. The reason being, we are by-and-large pretty tolerant people, just wanting to get on with our own lives. The cost of living and housing are far bigger issues. That and the UK population is falling, so when we take migration to our shores out of the picture, we aren’t having enough children to support our ageing population. Try as they might, the government can’t convince people in their 70s to start having kids (I know, how selfish).
So, what of 2024 for the Island? I’ll try and be upbeat. The council needs to find up to £10 million more in savings (cuts) due to a lack of the Island Deal we were promised (sorry, I’ll be more upbeat). We will have our own children’s services department, which is a good thing (see). We will be the proud owners of an MP (Bob Seely), that has spent his time in Parliament, not on ferry fares, nor on the cost of living or housing, but on presenting a bill to strip Harry and Meghan of their royal titles. Something I suspect is not top of the list of priorities for Islanders. We will still have the £2 bus fares (see I can do it).
The positive in all of this and the thing that keeps me fighting for a better outcome for the Island, is that the community here is great. Just look on social media at the positive stories of people helping each other out in their time of need. Just imagine what we could do if we had a government working with us, rather than against us.
We all love the story of the nativity, a community welcoming a foreign family in from the cold – it enriches us on every level. Let’s not lose that.
Merry Christmas.