Vote.... or DIE! (not really petal)

Dear ballot blog,



Good evening my dears. Tonight is a night loaded with significance. A night that is crucial to the whole ruddy country. A night so exciting and thrilling that at least 12 percent of you will have the first clue what the devil I'm talking about. No, it's not all you can eat rib and taco night at TGI Heart Disease, it's the first meaningful political debate on these shores since Pitt the Younger offered Henry Addington out onto the cobbles for 'cocking a snook' in his general direction and they had a jolly good dust up.



It may not be the only form of political debate in this country (the entertainment o'rama otherwise known as PM's questions isn't exactly engaging, but, I swear it does actually happen. Actually, for all I know it could be hosted by Simon Cowell and takes place on the back of a live horse, but I've looked it up on Wikipedia, so it must be real), but tonight will be the first televised debate of it's kind in the history of this country, so it's importance in rescuing the country from the collective political malaise we're in, simply can't be overstated.... but dear Lord, I'm going to try.



As the debate is going on right now, I will refrain from commenting on it for now (it'll give my bile duct 24 hours to recover from the amount it had to pipe up to my throat to spew at the telly in furious, spine shattering rage). But as it's on ITV, I'm just pleased it wasn't interspersed with clips of Ant and Dec standing backstage and gurning at the camera the second Gordon Brown opened his hideous mouth only to discover he actually has a reasonable speaking voice.



For only the second time in my life, there is the real possibility of a change of government in this country, which fills me with a mixture of warm nostalgia for the last time and a blood thirsty, gurgling rage at what a wasted opportunity it was. The more I think about it, I lurch between these two conflicting ideologies like a pixel in a game of Pong, until I become a slobbering, gibbering mentalist, rocking backwards and forwards in my bath chair whispering something about being 'tough on crime...'



Actually, looking back at the above paragraph (I don't recommend it) it's actually the third time I can remember a 'very real chance' of a change in government. The first time, it was a fresh faced, ginger hued, Neil Kinnock who was challenging the ash faced, hair lipped, John Major in what was surely about to become a landslide victory for Labour. They were finally securing the advantage by means of harnessing the nation's collective exasperation over the Thatcher years and our desire to take it out on the whole bloody lot of them. It seemed like the tide had finally turned against the Tories, until Labour snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and lost in what was the finest hour of Major's career, just beating the day Norma put an extra Dairylea triangle into his lunchbox into second place.



In terms of unexpected victories, it was pretty well up there with the time David spotted Goliath off his line and chipped him from the halfway line. What seemed to swing the vote in Major's direction was the nation's collective fear to hand over the reigns to an un-tested, un-known opposition party and joy for the fact that he wasn't Margret Thatcher. The 'bounce' in popularity that the party experienced due to a change of leader was certainly similar to the one that Gordon Brown's takeover had on the Labour party, when he very nearly called a snap election within months of taking office and the Tories struggled to find their voice (As good decisions go, it was right up there with Hitler saying to Goering: "Let's have a pop at these Russians then...").



As a leader, Major seemed to bring a kind of post-apocalyptic serenity to the country, which quickly turned to numb acceptance, apathy, then ridicule. He was the last of the 'Spitting Image' generation, brought down by his depiction as a grey robot, obsessed by the quality of his peas, rather than an empowered world leader taking the country through the end of a dismal recession. The country had been ready for change, but bottled it at the last minute when Thatcher refused to lose an election to the nation, instead resigning to the will of her own party after they saw the writing on the wall. The Major years actually saw improvements - the inequalities gap reduced for the first time in a generation (and the last), inflation began to reduce, making business more competitive and Take That were only taking a minute, girl, to fall in love. To fall in luuu-uuve.



However, after years of greedy feeding at the trough of government and with a leader who didn't actually seem to have the fight to lead the party, the Tories began to tear themselves apart. The old dragons refused to leave behind the fun fair that Thatcher had bought them free candy floss at for two decades, so decided to stand by the tea cups, stomping their feet and making a spectacle of themselves. Infighting, backstabbing, undermining and a series of ridiculous sex scandals would dissect the party. It was to be a grizzly climbdown that would leave them unelectable for nearly 20 years leaving a political vacuum that was ready to be filled by two blokes with faces resembling the Joker and a wooden oar, who had a few beers in the pub and wrote 'New' in front of their party logo, eventually deciding to divide up power between them for a hundred glorious years.

Yes, 1997 was a glorious time. A time where left wing politically active singers larked about sipping champagne in Downing Street, where politics fell behind personality in the pecking order and the power of the media grew into a huge monster, threatening to swallow the system whole. The Sun won Blair an election, and we all rode off into the 'boom' years with a credit card in our pockets, listening to Mini-Disks and eating Sushi. People's lifestyles became more liberal and we became a generation of better educated, better travelled and ethnically aware gap year students. In the post Tory hype, we were distracted just long enough by suddenly having enough credit to make us happy, fat and bored.

I remember feeling, during my student years, that we didn't really have any great struggle to mobilise us. I wanted to be engaged, but felt less and less so. Tragedy in 2001 sparked a series of events which would lead us into a war we didn't want or need. I was afraid. I'm sure everyone was. I was affraid this could be a war on our doorsteps, fought by terrorist groups who's motivation I couldn't possibly understand from my own little white, middle class shell. So Tony and George took the war away from our shores and put it on theirs. It seemed like a clever political move, fighting "terror" and turning the whole thing into an insane, Orwellian perma-war movie broadcast from 'foreignland', keeping us afraid enough to stay politically immobile, without actually having to fight another country. A war against a noun can never be won. The adjectives are pushovers though. No spine.

It kind of backfired though, didn't it. We finally lost faith, and Blair himself found himself, like
Thatcher before him, essentially forced out of his own party rather than lose them an election. The Tories had bumbled from Dracula, to a Tax inspector, to a balding gnome in search of a leader who could unite them. One ring to unite them. One Camering.

So we get pretty much to where we are now. Apathetic, screwed over by a politics concerned by lining it's pockets, keeping us afraid, or pandering to our desire to spend money on crap, even when there's none of it about. Cameron hardly appears to be the 'new broom', with his sub-Blair smooching and terrifying face leering at us from posters. Brown might actually be gong insane, driven to grinning awkwardly from the corner of his mouth and dying behind the eyes. All he wanted was to lead us away from Tony's personality and drivel based politics. Now he finds himself appearing on Penis Morgan's chat show rambling on about his bizarre life while a confused public wonders when Ant and Dec got so old.

What to do about this bothersome election then? For years I was an advocate of spoiling your ballot if you hated all the candidates, if only to register your displeasure. The problem with that is the rise of far right, pork chop faced, Question Time celebrities, who prey on our apathy. There's got to be someone better than them to vote for... anyone... a piece of cheese... Boris Johnson... anyone.

Are politicians more or less competent than in previous years? Are they more or less trustworthy? Are any of them worthy of your vote? Probably not, but give it to them anyway. If nothing else, you could watch the debate and pick the one you'd least like to hit with a broom. It's only action that will get us out of this mess. Either that or a bloody big cloud of ash bringing an apocalypse. Sorry... that's obviously an insane fiction. It could never happen.

Screamifyouwanttogofasterxxxx