Current location:	Liverpool
Current mood:	contemplative
Current music:	Friday's today in parliament podcast
Entry tags:	phone, politics, r.i.p.

Yesterday I learned that one of my regular customers at work had passed away when I was off sick. Geoff was in his nineties, but very fit. He would come in every sunday, on his bike; a little unsteady on his pins when walking, but fully at home and at speed when cycling. He was one of the few customers who would get automatic hugs when he was leaving, and I shall miss him.

The other death of note is, of course, gary moore. I'm composing this on my phone, so embedding a load of you tube videos is difficult, but imagine at least Rosin Dubh, Out in the Fields, and Parisienne Walkways here.

And so to taxes... Top of this week's Pravda Golden Dozen is a post by someone earning three times what my entire family does complaining about how he is part of the squeezed middle and being adversely affected by coalition policy. I do actually have some sympathy for him, which is why I'm not linking to the post, but I think he was foolish to post without more consideration of how high his income actually is. The reason I mention his post is that it's a perfect illustration of something which we, as politicians, should bear in mind a hell of a lot more often: most people genuinely believe that they are normal. Thus people who are earning more than 90% of us do can genuinely believe themselves to be part of the squeezed middle, and people who are actually poor will vote for parties who would hammer them. As a liberal, my instinct is to educate so that people are more informed and hopefully this effect will be lessened, rather than exploiting it as, labour and tory do, but as a cynic I'm not sure how effective that would be... And of course, our glorious leader's cack-handed alarm clock britain bollocks was an attempt to exploit this very phenomenon, so perhaps I'm alone in wanting to cure people of misconceptions.

(composed on my n8 with swype keypad, so coding is non-existent, and typos may be rife).