Speculation, Fact and Fiction

Saturday saw a town-wide Breast Cancer Awareness Day in Witney, Oxon. There were pink balloons and ribbons everywhere, a cake sale, girls with baskets selling goodie bags and much else besides. Just about every shop joined in with their staff in pink clothes, including the chaps in the bank. There was a ladies' Morris side, all survivors, all in pink and doing their thing with gusto. It was all great fun, positive, life affirming and all the rest of it.

And there were two Daleks, one of which was zipping round with a collecting tin. So I took a photo with my phone.

The Dalet was actually bronze in colour. Sorry, I didn't have either son to hand to explain a) why my phone was deciding to only take b/w pictures or to b) press the necessary buttons to return it to colour mode - which one of them did with suspicious alacrity when I got home while swearing blind no-one had been playing with my phone...

Dunno what the rights situation is regarding Daleks doing this kind of thing is, but I do sincerely hope neither men in suits from the Beeb or anyone from the Estate of Terry Nation has sense of humour failure over this. It was all part of a great effort in a very good cause.

By sharp contrast, most highly unedifying was the sight of the local Tory party stall set up in the market square, all blue posters claiming Gordon Brown is about to inflict massive cuts on the NHS. The usual belligerent activists trying to browbeat passers-by into signing some petition. They don't just ask, Tories round here, they will harangue you as you walk away if you refuse. Oh and David Cameron was there doing sweet reasonableness for a TV news crew.

It was apparently entirely coincidental that the Tories were doing their thing at the same time as the Breast Cancer event, according to someone I spoke to.

Yes, I believe that as much as I believed Maggie Thatcher promising the NHS was safe in Tory hands.