FraserWords

It’s hard to know where to place your vote, and now the manifestos (or should that be manifestoes? I can’t be bothered to check) are out, it’s harder.

For starters, most of my life democracy has been but a fiction to me. I’ve lived most of my life in Devon and Cornwall, in constituencies that would elect a chimpanzee so long as it was wearing a Conservative rosette. Most of my electoral life, the most important thing about my vote was not voting for policies in which I believed, but using my vote in the fervent hope of preventing one more Tory chimpanzee.

Which is all unfair on chimps, I know: yes, chimps threatened with losing so much as one scrap of personal gain will rip each other to shreds, but they’re not total Tories. There is also an element of working together for the common good in their simian society.

Anyway. Tactical voting. I’d like to support the Greens because they’re the only party calling for decent public ownership of public service. But with that comes the risk of making a Tory victory in my constituency more likely. So tactical voting. Always done it. Unless I find myself in a four-way marginal where a socialist has a chance, or the SNP puts up a candidate in Cornwall, I always will. Or unless this backward country introduces proportional representation.

Oh, I know. I can hear you howling, especially the Tories who work so hard to preserve the status quo in case anybody has to actually share things and work together: “Proportional representation just brings weak, useless coalition government!” Well indeed. Imagine that…

Anyway. Me. I scoured the manifesto(e)s. Does anybody suggest that there should be some form of subsidy for the likes of me and Brother Fiddle, who slave away at words and music and try to increase the sum of human happiness while causing no harm to anybody? No.

Why is it that people who make others miserable – power utility executives, generals, bankers, lawyers – are rewarded handsomely for their perfidy, while those who strive for simple joys, like Fiddle and I and our very much welcome new Brother Utah, Fiddle’s wonderful American musician friend, have nary a penny with which to scratch our sorry fat arses? Doesn’t that strike you as skewed? No? Then you’re an idiot.

But I suppose that’s principle. What about policy detail, then?

For example, I have long believed a law should be introduced whereby people who use public services at a time that coincides with school drop-offs and collections should be led to a quiet dark alley and shot. What are they on? What thought process goes through their mind? “I know, I have things to do at the Post Office, what I’ll do is wait until school collection time when it’s really really busy and then I’ll stand endlessly chatting my empty head off while everybody else waits behind me in the heat with the complaining children when all they want is a first class fucking stamp.” Is this reasonable law proposed? No.

Another example. Where is the policy that will stop farmers being enabled to buy, at our expense, ever bigger and bigger machines? They now drive tractors and trailers that are bigger than some of the farms I grew up with, ripping out hedgerows, smashing trees, crushing fragile tarmac. They barely fit around the wind turbines the taxpayer has paid the farmer to erect, so the farmer can enjoy the profits. Why doesn’t somebody stop it? It’s so bloody selfish, apart from anything else: ‘roads must suit me’, not ‘I will proceed according to the roads’.

And finally, why does nobody talk sense?

There is nothing more important to the welfare and progress of the majority of the people of this country than stopping any more of the petty, jealous, nasty little policies of a white public schoolboy elite that cares only for itself and its chums in the banks, the law firms and the big business. It is vital to stop the Conservatives. The country has never really recovered from their last long period in government under the evil Thatcher; while other parts of the Western world made progress we stayed stalled in a little-Englander narrow-minded stew of jealousy, greed and prejudice.

All the opposition parties should take Nicola Sturgeon’s lead and work together to ensure the Conservatives’ selfishness, their placing of individual gain above the ideals of working together for the common good, can never again be enabled to despoil our country and our values. But no. They won’t. Call it vanity or ignorance or greed, but they insist they can win. They can do it alone. Well they can’t. They should all wise up to the fact that more and more people like hearing about decency from progressive, passionate, committed women.

Ah well. It has been a beautiful week. Fine music, thanks to Brother Utah grabbing Brother Fiddle by the scruff of the neck and talking sense to him (and by the way, there will be a very exciting new Tony Hazzard CD on the way so long as the old sod heeds our warnings not to fiddle with what Brother Utah has produced or we’ll break his arms). Fine food, thanks to Mrs Fiddle. The wonderful, wonderful sights and smells of Spring. Sunshine. Long walks. Lots to drink. A new book to read (Owen Jones’s The Establishment, of which more later). Even an extraordinary family history discovery which has reunited brothers who have not spoken for 60 years. Life can be good. If only there wasn’t an election which the Tories are going to win.