Go home and prepare for government

It is such a beautiful day here today, that I am going to find it hard to be depressing, but I am sure I will manage it one way or another.

As already mentioned by others, 'tis the season of political party conferences. The Cons have traditionally gone to Brighton every year, but someone told me that they are cynically moving to the Midlands for this year's get-together. Their defensive walls are beginning to crack.

The only thing I know about Birmingham is that everyone who finds themselves there - even the natives - spend the rest of their lives trying to get out.

This was particularly true when you were forced to drive through the city centre when trying to get to Scotland from the South. Now they have a by-pass, so you have to make a special effort to take in the charms of 'The Venice of the North'.

Birmingham is a far North as the Conservatives dare to openly go in groups of more than three without disguise - any further would inevitably result in political carnage, if not actual carnage. Say what you like about Brummies - they do not hold a grudge. They are just as willing to hire the NEC to the very people who who destroyed their thriving industries as to anyone else. Basically, the only way the city can make money now is hiring out the building and selling the conferences food, coffee and hotel rooms. They're not fussy, they hire the building to arms dealers as well.

Jeremy Corbyn's speech was so uncharacteristically persuasive that he has even garnered the grudging admiration of some of the blue delegates going to Birmingham. Everyone is worried now. You didn't think Trump would be elected, did you?

The grandest of his pledges was to re-nationalise certain key pieces of British infrastructure such as water and rail networks. This was the most unbelievable part of his speech. We cannot afford to buy them back.

We sold-off the most profitable bits of our national services, but we sold them for peanuts. Part of the deal to the shareholders was that the government would contribute heavily to the costs of improvements to the infrastructure. These 'improvements' have been few and far between, but still very expensive. They all all create huge profits for building companies, and the companies cease working on them when the government money runs out, leaving them half -finished. Helping big business is supposed to be good for the economy, but I see no beneficial results as yet.

There is no money to be made from fixing leaking water pipes. It is not glamorous enough.