Mildy irritated by this leaflet this morning, which on closer inspection turns out to be from the Liberal Democrats. I would have thought better of them had this been clear from the front cover.
Closer inspection also reveals that Maguire was a captain in the Royal Military Police, so perhaps not quite as cuddly as she now likes to appear. I once knew a former sergeant major from the same outfit, the sort of chap who only had to appear, for youth misbehaving outside a pub at closing time to melt away. He did not seem to have to say or do anything; his presence was enough. I also once read a fictional account of much the same phenomenon, in a novel by the rather dodgy Houellebecq, in his case a French paratrooper who had seen service in the unpleasant French wars in Vietnam which came before the US one. Paratroopers who were issued with a clasp knife involving a sort of blunt metal spike, which when stuck in the back of necks was a handy way of killing people - with the knife illustrated at reference 2 not being quite the thing. But I dare say officers are not expected to get their hands really dirty.
Back at the leaflet, the Liberal Democrats seem to have quite a good eye for the issues which might catch the Surrey eye - without appearing to be any more up-front about the costs of doing anything about them than the other parties. Nevertheless, while I shall continue to vote Labour, I dare say the Liberal Democrats have a better chance than Labour of loosening the grip that the Residents and the Conservatives have on public life in Surrey.
PS: Houellebecq, despite being a bit dodgy, gets at least 18 mentions in the present pages, quite a lot of them from more than a decade ago. See reference 1 for some of them.
References
Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Houellebecq.
Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/pain-one.html.
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