A note from the wilderness

I have just discovered that the hotel provides complimentary wifi.  This does translate to "very slow wifi" but there again you can't get much cheaper than free.  Unless you are an MP (don't go there. Ed.)

Today is Thursday, and tonight I shall be braving the uncertainties of the British railway system to get myself from here to home.  To be precise, I shall be braving the uncertainties of the Southern railway system, which is even worse.  I hear tales from colleagues who travel on the trains to the north of our capital, and they are tales of power sockets and wifi, and even seats, available on trains.  They seem to have this thing called a timetable that tells them when the train will leave and arrive, and sometimes their train does leave and arrive when the timetable says it should.  

My old gran, god bless her soul, was a bit of a character, and she did not always get things right, but she was one for a pithy comment.  Such gems as "black as Newgate's knocker", "it's grey over Lil's way" and "you like like a bag of sh!t tied up" were just some of her more frequent musings, as was "it's grim up North".  Having always thought my gran had a natty turn of phrase, if not a little bit on the "has she been on the sherry" side of sane, I do feel I need to take her to task, in spirit if not in body, over her views on the North.  It is self evident that those little matchstick women and matchstick men, with their flat caps and whippets, have got it sussed, and just act dumb to keep us soft Southerners guessing, and more importantly to keep us from going up North and seeing how good life can really be.  I did go up North once to Guildford and was not a little surprised at how normal it seemed.  Not at all like Open All Hours, that groundbreaking documentary on life in the North done by David Dimbleby or Ronnie Sullivan or someone.

One final comment on the state of our government.  First thing to say is obviously that we now have one.  After the election results, the nation was bracing itself for a long wait while the chaps in suits decided who was getting the expenses-paid trip to visit all the heads of state, and who gets to sit in the big chair.  In the end it all happened rather quickly, and was certainly pleasing on the eye.  My favourite bit was the morning after the night before, and there was a constant Cam cam on the front door of our newly appointed leader.  I can only assume the door had just been painted, and we were therefore watching it dry.  At one stage, the camera person thought they saw a twitch of the curtains, and zoomed in with the kind of dizzying camera work that could, frankly, put a chap off his cornflakes, but it came to nothing.  So the camera zoomed out back to watching the door, and I swear it had dried significantly since we last saw it.

One final final comment on Clegg.  I have been rather swept along with Cleggmania, and think he seems like a pretty decent sort of chap, even if he did go to some posh school.  I felt he gave a very good account of himself in the first leaders' debate, fairly good in the second and even-stevens in the third.

 Now that he is deputy Prime Minister, he does seem a little bit star struck.  If I compare the body language of Clegg and Cameron, then Cameron does seem to be statesman-like, whereas Clegg seems a bit "bloody hell, I am actually here" like some star-struck tourist who gets on camera whilst a famous person is being interviewed.  The only bit missing was Clegg getting on his phone to ring his mates.  "You'll never guess who I am standing next to...."

I wish them well, since there will be trouble ahead.  I hope that there are changes to the voting system, so that votes can count again.  Golfy sent me a link where you can see how effective your vote can be in your postcode, and mine was 0.04% of a vote, on account of the fact that one party gets 60% of the vote every time.  With some kind of PR, at least my vote will count in the total, and that may urge me, and many others who obviously retreated back to basics of voting either A or B, to vote for who we really like, not just for the one that is "most effective but not the one I like least."

I had a dream

Last night, I had a dream that I was Jeremy Clarkson.  The reasons for mentioning this are twofold: firstly, I don't dream much.  The time between going to sleep and waking up is often to short to get in a bit of REM sleep.  And to be honest, if I do ever dream then the chances are I would forgot it anyway, my age being what it is.

Secondly, I know for a fact that Golfy fancies Jeremy Clarkson.  If I try to evaluate the feelings this thought arises in me on the Cringe Scale, then it falls somewhere between the dream I used to have where I was sitting naked outside the Headmaster's office (it was meant to be a parents' evening), and the feeling I had when I awoke at 9am in Athens Airport.  I appreciate this latter experience obviously sounds rather lame, but I should add the rest of the story.  We were Interailing through Europe and had arrived at Athens Airport at 1am.  Doing what all rightful backpackers do, I got out the rollmat and sleeping bag and went to sleep on the floor, only to awake in the middle of the main area at 9am during rush hour, with my fellow travelers doing nothing but sitting and watching me.  (Note to self: there is a blog somewhere in my Interailing stories.)

Anyhow, back to Jeremy.  I have to say it was quite fun being the big man.  No longer did I have to be troubled by those irritating things like recycling, driving a diesel and other people's feelings.  It was not all plain-sailing though.  The hair was a nightmare.  Where it does exist, and that is diminishing by the day, it is, how do I put this without offending, curly.  What do you do with curly hair?  I know what I did in my dream; I died it white and shaved it in to little balls like a poodle.  I must check him out on Top Gear just to check it was a dream.

As for Golfy, I also know he fancies Esther Rantzen*, whose experience in politics should, by rights, kill off any wish to stand as an MP.  She stood on an anti-sleaze ticket in Luton South against Margaret Moran who did some dodgy things, the final thing being that she stood down, and her replacement was a church pastor.  Dear old Esther got only 17** votes and lost her deposit, which was, apparently, a 69th birthday present to herself.  Next year she is buying herself a stick with which she intends to beat herself.

So that is my dream.  What is yours?

* My lawyers would like me to point out that Golfy probably does not really fancy Esther Rantzen, and that his taste in women is generally very sound, although there was the time...

** My lawyers would like me to point out that this number was written for comic value, and that Esther actually polled 1,872 votes.

Well wasn't that a disappointment

For reasons other than the election, I could not sleep last night so got up around 4am for a cuppa and to check out the election, and to be honest it was pretty disappointing.
From 10pm last night they had published the "exit poll" which laid out a slight Tory victory, Labour second and LibDem a very poor third.  Then with nothing else much to do, they played with their various toys, SwingOmeters and other wizzo graphics, to work out what things would look like if the exit polls were correct.
Then they would cut to a person who reminded us that exit polls can go wrong, remember 1992 they say, but that did not stop them doing all sorts of projections, and wasn't it fun.

I have to say that the show, live as it was, did provide good entertainment and they did manage to keep it zipping along and it was pretty interesting most of the time.  By 4am they looked absolutely knackered, but to their credit they made very few mistakes, and in fact it was the technology that gave them more problems than tired brains. 


So, now what we have is a long wait until all the counts are in, and the political jockeying is finished, and I really do not know how it will all end.  Let's watch that space!


Have a good weekend, speak again next week.

Have you voted?

I know I have. Remembering is not so hard, not least because my son's schools is a polling station, so he has an INSET day today. The house is therefore alive with the sound of Ben 10 and other toxic children's TV, Wii games and other noisy activities.

I have visited the said polling station, better known as the school hall, first thing this morning, beating Golfy by a good 10 hours. I tried to convince him of the well known theory that a vote cast in the morning has more weight and influence than one cast in the evening. Mumbled scientific explanations about doing the Times crossword in the afternoon is easier were met with monumental indifference. The boy has a lot to learn.

The sun is currently shining, my belly is full, and all is well with the world. The conference call I am currently on is very interesting. I may tell you about it sometime. Can you tell I don't have much to say.

So, tomorrow we shall be able to discuss in detail the results of General Election 2010.

Elections, leaders and debates - a Bluffer's Guide

As anyone who is anyone will know, I was in the 'van last Thursday and so only caught the leader debate assessments after the event via the relentless news coverage. And that coverage seemed to think that Clegg "owned the stage", to borrow from those cheeky X-Factor folks.

I was therefore very interested to see the second debate last night. We don't have any of that new-fangled Sky stuff down in Scobi Mansions, so we had to make do with the time-delayed BBC News 24 coverage. Once or twice we did hear a collective groan from various houses in the street, so knew that in about half an hour something of note was going to happen. Other than that, the delay had little effect.

I feel duty bound, therefore, to provide my input on the debate. I did sense that the "old parties", as Clegg kept referring to his fellow leaders, definitely seemed to have learnt something from the first debate, and each of them were much more even-handed in their distribution of beatings (and I will resist any dodgy references to fagging at Eton) and so that made for a bit more of a knockabout event.

There were a couple of interesting points from my perspective. The headlines from that morning's papers about Clegg barely featured. The compere did mention it once, and Clegg dismissed in a couple of seconds and moved on to what he wanted to say. None of "the old parties" brought it up, so I guess my comments yesterday were obviously read by them both, and they both agreed there was no mileage in it.

It was pretty difficult to find any great differences between their policies. Of course there are differences, but they do seem to be a drop whereas the big problems are an ocean.

Overall, the polls seem to make it a fairly close run thing between the three. Clegg may have got a couple of percentage points over the other two, but nothing to get too excited about. Having said that, in my opinion, the fact that he did not crumble means that he is still in the race.

So, where does that leave us? Those who are died-in-the-wool of any of the three colours will stay that colour, those who are floaters may well be swayed by personality, since they may well perceive there are no great policy differences, and those who just don't care may be slightly interested by a real three-horse race, but on the day of voting will probably choose This Morning over a visit to their local polling booth.

Have a good day one and all. Gotta get a hot cross bun and apple juice for maggot 2, and carry on with addressing my ever growing Inbox.

You may think you know what you don't think, and think what you don't know, but...

I have no desire to be an advertising site, but I liked this link.

Tell it what you think about various things, and it will tell you what party matches your views. Give it a go.


http://www.votematch.org.uk