View from the Boundary

Barney McGrew reflects stoically on his defeat as Labour candidate in the Trumptonshire constituency. Farmer Bell held the seat with an increased majority for the Conservatives. So I wondered why there had to be two recounts. I assume either the Green or Lib Dem candidate were trying to save their deposit.
Listening again to the figures, it must have been Miss Lovelace, who had 3.8% of the vote and might be the sort of person who would make a fuss.
The full ballot paper read,

Barney McGrew (Lab)

Farmer Bell (Con)

Dibble (UKIP)

Miss Lovelace (Lib Dem)

Windy Miller (Green)

and if all this sounds far too good to have been made up by me, you're right but there's still time to listen to the full story on the Radio 4 i-player where it was featured at the beginning of last week's edition of More or Less, the programme about numbers and statistics.

What's Left

Today's news that Nigel Farage's resignation has been rejected by UKIP has closed off my next career option of standing for the leadership myself. With Jacob Rees-Mogg quoted by Paddy Power at 50/1 to get the job even though he's not yet joined the party, I had thought I could stand against him

I would have explained that I could take the party in a new direction with new policies like no immigration controls and compulsory reggae on all pop music radio stations.

I've been wondering why each beaten party has to re-assess, re-modernize and think again after each defeat. Surely, they stood for what they believed in last time and the verdict went against them. To have to think of some other things to believe in looks a bit contrived, as if getting elected is more important than the things one gets elected to do.

No vote has ever been as decisive as that returned by Scotland. The SNP is a National party, apparently a 'socialist' party and has democratically almost created a one party state but history hasn't looked fondly upon one party states run by National Socialist parties. I'm beginning to wonder what constitutes 'left' any more as I understood it to be an international movement, not sympathetic to nationalism.

I did a questionnaire on the BBC website a few weeks ago to find out if I was left wing or not and, according to them, I am, but the questions were all very similar and apparently written as part of an O level project. Do you think multi-national corporations should make billions of pounds of profit and the minimum wage should be abolished. 

It appeared that a bun fight over who gets all the cash was the only difference between left and right, as evidenced by Arthur Scargill's Socialist policy of a minimum wage of 25 thousand pounds a year. I'm sure it was a fully costed economic agenda and he asked, What's wrong with that?

Well, I don't regard Economics as a proper science, either, Arthur, but I think it could find a loophole in that proposition.

I can see how profit is a dirty word and 'each according to their needs' would be fine by me, my needs being whatever books and records I want to buy plus a few gin & tonics or a bottle of Chateau David. But there must be more to life and politics than an unseemly scrap over a pile of cash. 

It is certainly absurd to think that the pursuit of innocent wildlife across benign countryside in order to rip it to bits is okay. 

I would personally keep the royal family but I wouldn't let them out to go hunting, shooting and fishing, which they do seem prone to do.

A motor vehicle is a convenient thing to have, given a bit of open road, but I haven't had one for 20 years now and I don't miss it much. Admittedly, to get to certain places, I am taken by others in theirs but public transport can be good fun. No, not the Circle line in midsummer at 5 pm, but definitely the bus from Bowness to Hawick or even just the one coach train that runs from Westbury to Swindon and back all day.

If a University education that leaves you with a recondite certificate in a Humanities subject can also leave you with 30 thousand pounds of debt, then all education needs to be paid for or none at all. Since it was decided to send 40% or more of the population to higher education, it's no longer any kind of guarantee of forthcoming high earning potential and, so really, 'education' should be available to whatever level each individual is capable of attaining. But 'education' is a sinister word and showing that one has taken the point being made appears to be the way success is judged these days. It would be preferable if equal points were given for successfully arguing the contrary point.

But all of those things would be a part of a more complete definition of 'left' for me. In fact, it would include anything worthwhile that doesn't put the mercantile or speculative accumulation of money above all else.

And, by now, I think there's been enough politics on this website to last us a while. I look forward to seeing the new Labour leader, Yvette Cooper, being followed dutifully about by her swooning husband during the next General Election campaign. I hope his hair is nicely coiffured and he wears a lovely outfit.