It's Friday - My little Joke with a serious Intent

Thought I'd come up with a little joke for Friday, based on something I heard at the LGA conference about how we are really divided. It's been such a miserable month - but it does have an overall serious message which I hope you will find it apt summary of the month. 

So, some aliens land on earth, all of them 6 foot 10 of male appearance.

Suddenly the Remainers and the Leavers stop arguing
Football fans forget their differences
Grandparents and teenagers alike join hands
North and south divides disappear
Rich and poor come together
All religions look to each other for help.

One day, the leader of the aliens skypes the UK and says that they lost their way playing Planet Pokemon Go but like it here now, especially our beautiful women, and want to stay,
but the people didn't believe him and were wary, because they'd seen some tweets that told them the aliens were violent.

But a  LibDem women came forward and said - Let's hear what he has to say first - I think they should stay and I have some rooms'

The SNP leader who was looking for some new friends said 'where are you, I'll come and see you, you might be able to help me stay in the EU and in return you can come to Glasgow.'

A confident Tory (known as Conservatives) said 'No they must go back immediately but if you want to start a business in the UK, then speak to Boris.'

A confident Labourite (known once as New Labour) said he agreed with the Tories but wanted to check with the unions first and then perhaps the EU and also before they go would they first 'smash May back from her heels - thankyou'

The very unconfident labourites (known as Corbynistas) pointed aggressively and said 
'NO, you, you, with the fat wallet, 2 tongues and the 20inch willy - leave our women alone and go back to your own planet!'


(if you didn't laugh, then can you ask Boris to help me tweak it, please?)

Well, we are being invaded by aliens - ISIS - these are not human beings amongst us, killing children, women of any religion, but radicalised empty vessels.
Let us unite in a way we never have - coming together for synergy, strength and support,

Have a peaceful weekend - enjoy, don't major on the minor and understand your neighbours. Let's enjoy our freedoms for some have none - and appreciate everything you have.

Theresa May and the Butterfly story

I was extremely impressed with our new Prime Minister today, She kept to our overall strategy of self responsibility, keeping within our means and answered questions on struggles of today.

I congratulate her on not only completing her first PMQs with grace and dignity but also wiping the floor with Corbyn, who is certainly no match for May. I don't feel the need to describe what I saw with any graciousness. His inexperience was evident and he has brought it upon himself.

It's also satisying to see my great party united as I always said it would be, and seeing that all are signed up to making Brexit a success. It reminded me of one of my favourite stories about struggle and how it is not always a tragic notion. It confirms my belief that there is no light wthout dark, no lesson without failure and no confidence without endeavour.

Ahead are the real struggles we now face with terrorism growing and unbelievable upheavel across the globe, but that is why we must be grateful for the now and enjoy life with all it's ups and downs.

The Story of the Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!

In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.

Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

Ben Gummer: Congratulations and the Wine Rack

Congratulations to our wonderful MP Ben Gummer who has been promoted to Minister for Cabinet Office, which is an extremely important role ensuring collaboration and communication across departments, public services, government transparency and so much more.

He thoroughly deserves it and is a first class member of parliament for Ipswich.

Well done Ben! We are all so proud of your achievements so far.


Below is his latest article on the 'wine rack' on the Ipswich waterfront.

Winerack: A New Beginning   The Winerack.  Named by this newspaper and for years now a symbol of our town’s arrested development.   I could go through the sordid history but it will depress you and I want now to cheer you all up.  The long and the short of it is that the financing was dodgy, the developers vanished, and the building has been left as a testament visible from throughout the town to the vanity of a credit-driven bubble and speculators’ greed.   Since work finished in 2009 the building has sprouted almost as many urban myths as the buddleias growing at its base.  Happily, contrary to well-known taxi fact, the concrete structure does not have cancer.  And so – at some considerable risk – it has been purchased by local property developer John Howard, who plans to complete the scheme, starting in January next year.   The Winerack is an important building for me.  It demonstrates two things: first, that getting things takes time and you need to be patient.  Back in 2011 I intervened to get the administrators sacked and pushed the Irish toxic bank that owned the site to move quicker to a sale.  Even so, it took another couple of years before John could purchase the shell and it has taken another three for him to complete all the surveys he needed, redesign the building, sort out the various planning permissions and find a contractor able and willing to take it on.  It has been a monster task.  When building work eventually starts, it will be the result of six years of hard work by a number of people – any one of whom could have given up, leaving the shell to rot for a few years more.  So – patience and grit: it’s a symbol of that.   Secondly, the Winerack has become a metaphor in my mind – and those of many in the town – of our recovery from the devastating recession we suffered seven years ago.  Standing there unfinished but full of promise, it is an emblem of the work-in-progress that is our town’s regeneration.  All our progress over the past year – funding for the Cornhill, Wet Dock Crossing, Enterprise Zones – has been founded on hard graft in the five years before, almost all of which has been invisible to most Ipswich eyes.  We now have the promise but the execution is still to come.  So with the Winerack.   Timing is all.  I did not want work on the Winerack to re-start until it could be properly funded: the last thing we needed was another fly-by-night developer coming to get hopes up again only for all of us to be let down.  But I also knew that we needed to get work going before the next downturn, which would inevitably come our way.  As with funding for the Wet Dock Crossing, the Cornhill and – I very much hope – our railway, it may be that we have just got in under the wire.  Why?  The fundamentals of our economy in Ipswich are now far stronger than they were back in 2008/9: more businesses, employing more people, in an economy that is in better shape than for some time.  The challenge we face in the next few months will test our mettle, certainly – but in a good way.  For if we can make it through the period of uncertainty that we are now in, we have shown that the town has a sustainable future founded on the hard ground of solid investment, not one built on dodgy developers’ sand.   Welcome to Ben's regular newsletter. If you have any comments or concerns, please get in touch with my team.  Email: Ben can be contacted directly at ben@bengummer.com Ben's office address is: 9 Fore Street Ipswich IP4 1JW 01473 232 883