Happy weekend
people! Well done on exercising your democratic rights and voting, or
indeed not voting which you are also perfectly entitled to do, the
other day. It would seem that the majority of the UK do not agree
with me, and are rather more right wing, still hey ho. Most people
don't listen to the Residents or wear pirate hats in public either
but I am not crying about that all over facebook. That's the thing
with democracy, you get what the majority of people want, not what
you want, it's actually a pretty good system really, and for all the
proportional representation whiners out there, even if the coalition
had spent millions and millions completely reforming our voting
system for that to happen we would have woken up to a right wing
government on friday morning, but it would have had 85 UKIP MPs as
well. People like UKIP, I don't, but some people do, and there's not
a thing I can do about it except try and change their mind with
reasoned discussion. I can't even persuade my wife to listen to Trout
Mask Replica though, so I can't see how I'm going to persuade someone
who believes wholeheartedly in British sovereignty and small
government to change their mind. Won't stop me trying though, on both
counts.
I woke up yesterday
morning after about an hour and a half's sleep with what felt like a
massive hangover, and discovered I had scrawled a whole load of notes
down about the election night coverage, thus I now feel duty bound to
try and put them into some sort of coherent bloggage, as clearly that
was what I was going to do. Couldn't face it yesterday, due to being
so tired I couldn't feel my eyeballs anymore, I may be too old to
stay up watching political punditry all night and still make it to
work the next day now, that's quite sad really.
The coverage itself
is worthy of some comment, for the sheer amount of wasted money on
the BBC and for the so-close-but-still-so-far channel 4 coverage. In
the case of the BBC, where they used to have just Peter Snow throwing
statistics around with a bunch of odd graphics, now Jeremy Vine is
job sharing with Emily Maitlis and her Giant iPhone, I don't think we
needed both of them working all night, is it so they can have more
tea breaks? In which case surely they could both use Jeremy's
holodeck and take it in turns. As to why they made poor Sophie
Raiworth stand outside doing a giant jigsaw puzzle in the freezing
cold all night, I am still none the wiser. Or why all the poor girls
are jammed into figure hugging dresses and high heels, including the
politicians (I've spent a day dressed as such, it is very
uncomfortable). I am also still baffled (and always have been) as to
why we need a helicopter filming Mr Cameron and chums driving to the
counts, is it so we can comment on how frivolous the route they have
taken is and complain about their mileage claims? For that seems
marvellously ironic to me. I also enjoyed them cutting off the
Northern Irish interview about the breakup of the UK from the SNP
threat to go to a result from the mainland, while not bothering to
show, or even really mention much, the Northern Irish results.
After feeling
utterly let down by Channel 4's show of pointlessness and shit lefty
jokes 5 years ago, I was quite pleased to see they had Paxman and
some proper Channel 4 news people on this year. It was an
improvement, but all the gogglebox bits were getting in the way of
results and once again re-affirmed my lack of faith in the british
electorate to know what they are talking about. Also, Paxman is not
so good at reading jokes off of an autocue, and his trademark stare
and condescending 'Idiot' catchphrase began to wear thin. However, I
am sure their coverage was not really aimed at me, and were I still
19 I would probably have loved it and become more politically engaged
as a result, so hopefully it is doing that. I could have watched
David Mitchell and chums doing a carbon copy of the BBC style
coverage all night though, without all the sketches and bollocks
thrown in, maybe they can all swap around in 5 years, and we can see
Andrew Neill and David Dimbleby reading crap jokes from autocues
instead?
If you're expecting
one of my usual lefty rants then I am afraid you will be
disappointed, I already did one of those, and I am quietly resigned
to another five years of tory government. Being from the generation
dubbed Thatcher's Children, I am used to it. I had my free milk taken
away, and now my teeth are falling out, but that's beside the point.
We survived, Cameron is not going to eat your baby, stamp on your
puppy and poke you in the eye. He genuinely believes that he is doing
the right thing, so did Hitler mind you, but again that's not the
point (although I have now lost the argument by bringing up the
Nazis. Hell, in for a penny and all that, those banging on about
proportional representation should remember that it was just one of
many weak facets of the Weimar Republic that allowed Hitler to rise
to power, but one shouldn't blame a voting system for genocide. My
3rd year history teacher did, but I'm pretty sure he was
wrong). So calm down, we lost, get over it, if I can't get to play my
White Noise album at a party I will not shout loudly about it all
night, I will sit calmly in the corner trying to ignore the fact that
some bastard is making me listen to Fleetwood Mac, and look forward
to getting home where I can listen to the White Noise in peace. If
this metaphor is lost on you then there may be no hope at all.
(there is no power
in this earth that can make me link you to a Fleetwood Mac album)
It seems to me that
the biggest problem we have is that all politicians are just trying
to get into power, which obviously makes sense as it's the only way
to get paid for it, same as all writers are trying to get published.
But it would be nice to have a real choice in the two main parties,
for as my father told me, any thing other than a vote for labour or
conservative is a wasted vote. He was wrong, where we lived anything
other than a vote for Lib Dem or Conservative was a wasted vote, well
played Dad, well played. He had a point though, for all the recent
multi party politics rhetoric, Thursday night has taught us that
first past the post is the clear winner in this election. Nobody
liked the coalition, so they voted a majority government in, and we
still don't trust labour.
Scotland however,
raised a very important point by voting SNP. Having resoundingly said
no to independence earlier in the year, it was clearly not a vote for
another referendum, whatever Alec Salmond says. The SNP were the only
credible party (whatever you think of them they have been running the
Scottish parliament fairly well for the last four years) offering a
left-wing anti austerity agenda, and you could only vote for them in
Scotland, so maybe that's what happened there? The labour party were
no longer offering them the traditional labour party policies, so
they jumped ship to the SNP. Makes sense to me, I know the Greens
offer an alternative here, but even I can't take their manifesto
seriously and I am their target audience of weirdo hippy tree huggers
(worth pointing out to locals that even Totnes has a Tory MP, with a
massive majority no less).
As to the polls,
well, I think they underestimated the blandness of the seemingly
endless campaign. I only made my mind up who to vote for as I looked
at the ballot paper and stuck the pencil in my ear in an attempt to
gross out the next poor hapless voter. Where's the choice? You may as
well flip a coin most of the time, which is why so many people don't
vote, and fair play to them, there is no point in most
constituencies, they are mostly made up of safe seats.
I did think Cameron
might have lost it by inadvertently describing 0ver 30% of the
country as a joke. By calling Russell Brand a joke (he's not, he's a
comedian, but I can understand the confusion Dave) for not voting, he
could maybe have angered the non voters into going out and voting
against him. Luckily they both made sure it all happened after the
deadline to register, so well done both of you, democracy be damned.
A lot of people listen to Russell's bizarre rantings, and dismissing
them all out of hand in the way Cameron did just shows that the only
people he cares about in our country (and if I hear the UK or the NHS
described as 'ours' again any time soon I may scream, punch someone,
or both) are those who vote, the rest of you can fuck off.
Incidentally, the most insightful thing I ever heard from Mr Brand
was when he pointed out than when he was poor and banging on about
inequality he was accused of 'Politics of Envy' and now he is rich he
is called a hypocrite, having suffered a hugely scaled down version
of the same thing, I understand this completely.
I very nearly didn't
bother this year, as again, the sheer length of the campaign had
knocked most of the political engagement out of me. Had the polls
opened the morning after Ed said, albeit rather unconvincingly, 'Hell
Yes' to Paxman, I would have skipped out of the door, voted for this
new and strangely charismatic Milliband and been happy with my
choice. Despite having voted (albeit tactically) for a labour
government three times in a row and got Tory-lite instead. As it was,
having spent 6 weeks listening to ever more desperate and whiny
politicians begging for my vote, I had lost focus, and was
considering not bothering, since I live in the safest of all safe
tory seats anyway. Just because people choose not to vote (and a lot
of those who don't vote that I have spoken to probably shouldn't
anyway, occasionally I think my mum was right, and you should have to
pass a test before you're allowed to vote) doesn't mean that your
government should ignore you, and treat you as a joke.
I'm also always
saddened by those who treat it as a game to be won or lost, rather
like football, and pick their team and blindly vote for them again
and again because that's what they do (and equally, the crowing over
victory or crying and shouting like the worst kind of bad loser).
Back to my parents again, my Mother once admitted to having voted
green (back when it really was a wasted vote) to scoffing laughs from
my Father, because she liked their policies. I firmly believe that
she was right, and you should vote for who you agree with, and not
just 'your team'. Which also means that we need Parties who set out
their policies along ethical lines as to what they actually believe,
rather than letting the press set their agenda as to what they think
will make them most electable. I would rather have everyone publish a
manifesto a month before polling day, let everyone read it and make
their minds up and then vote. Instead of nearly two months of
name-calling, pointless debates and polls and punditry that are able
to turn even an educated, politically engaged chap like myself off of
the whole idea of voting. Policies not personalities please, if your
campaign hinges on someone having a funny face when he eats, or
looking like a blown up condom with a face drawn on it, then you
have lost me completely.
The most interesting
thing I noticed about election night, came from a German, Henning
Wehn, who appears on 8 out of 10 cats a lot. He pointed out that
there is no reason for anybody in this country to want to stand for
parliament, as we treat them all like crap, and they are not
(compared to what they could make in the private sector) that well
paid. If we could change just one thing about politics, it would be
to try and get the people who try to work for us, and represent us, a
little respect for what they are trying to do, rather than calling
them all self-serving scum and wanting them all dead. Slamming the
Lib Dems in the way we did for having put the needs of the country
over the needs of the party is the perfect metaphor for what is wrong
with the voting public in Britain, we can't cope with the fact that
their Manifesto was written with the happy knowledge that they would
never need to actually implement it, and the hard facts were that the
tuition fees policy was unworkable in the environment they were
thrown into. We can't always get what we want, but if we try
sometimes, we make damn sure we can't get what we need either, to
paraphrase Mick Jagger.
The most important
thing I learned was not to underestimate the young. I laughed at our
local Lib Dem candidate because he was only 22 and had never even
voted before. My reasoning being that he is the same age as my
stepkids, and I certainly wouldn't trust them in any position of
responsibility (no offence kids, you know I love you, but you know
what I mean) so why would I vote for someone who can only be spotted
in his campaign photo with some school kids because he has a suit on?
And then Mhairi Black goes and gets herself elected at only 20 years
old and gives a wildly impressive speech about Trident. She still
hasn't finished her dissertation. Don't tell me the next generation
aren't politically engaged, go and talk to some different kids,
you'll be surprised.
So while I am by no
means happy that we have five years of Tory government ahead of us, I
try to look at the bright side, at least Billy Bragg will get his
career back, and maybe Ben Elton will start doing funny stand up
again.