There has been a lot of discussion about the Queen’s speech wasting time. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m, not averse to change, but this is a wonderful tradition and it seems a shame to sweep it away. Besides which, since when have the politicians, who are the ones complaining, done anything other than waste the time of Parliament. The heckle. They ask questions simply to score political points. They make speeches just to waste Parliamentary time so that certain legislation cannot get through and yet they have the audacity to claim that the Queen, who is after all only presenting the agenda of what they intend to do, is wasting time. If I were being a cynical dog, I would say it is more that they keep changing their mind on what legislation they want to bring and watering down their proposals. Consequently they would rather not have them set out clearly at the start of the year, so that it makes it harder for us, the general public to notice. When you start to see it in that light, then as citizens we should be standing up and demanding that the Queen’s speech continue, rather than let out politicians bulldoze us into submission.
On a more domestic matter, we have proved that batteries do last about the same length of time if they are doing the same job. We have two smoke alarms and the second one started beeping, demanding a new battery, within hours of the first one. We now have quite a chorus of beeping going on and will do until the nice man from Tesco’s arrives with some replacements. I’ve just got vision of the batteries being the items that appear on the top of his sheet as being out of stock and having to live with this beeping until next week’s delivery.