The System Works

Dave was off work all week with illness (not Swine Flu, he was assured by NHS Direct). Whenever I got home he was complaining of not having found a new job on the internet. Maybe he should have tried looking on job sites. I found numerous jobs for him just looking in the back pages of the Yellow Advertiser. He claimed that 'Beautiful Scandinavian Massage' was not his forte, but in these politically correct days, he must surely be in with a chance.

Especially if the Liberals get in, which they did in Brentwood North thanks to me and six other people. Dave and I went to vote, and as usual it all seemed rather quaint and no more likely to exert influence on anything than a bloodless magical ritual. And then I discovered from Ross that the Liberals (for whom I had voted) had usurped a previously safe Conservative seat by a mere seven votes. A difference had been made. Ross had been running around all day with a blue rosette, 'knocking people up' on behalf of the Conservatives, an affiliation announced earlier in the year when leaflets were left on our doorstep in Harrods carrier bags for him to distribute. I won't hold it against him, but I will point out that he missed a trick by not distracting me from voting with, say, a carefully-placed bottle of whiskey. Expenses would have covered it, I'm sure.

The European elections were going on at the same time, of course, with a ridiculously lengthy form including parties called things like 'Animals Count' or 'The Really Real Honest-to-God Socialist Party starring Arthur Scargill' (I thought he was dead, but maybe I'm thinking of Bernard Manning). My parents voted for some kind of upmarket BNP presided over by a man with a horribly smug half-smile. Their policies seemed to be a grab bag of popular prejudices. For example, they vowed that no lottery money would be awarded to 'politically-correct' causes. What did this mean? That it would only be given to politically-incorrect ones? A grant to the Little Warley chapter of the KKK?