Postal vote

Well, we've had an election.

Choices for us in England:

Labour Party: Currently running the country, and have been doing for 13 years so should have acheived some sort of Utopia by now, with an unelected leader who is serious, fairly unpopular for ambiguous reasons based on stuff all politicians do, and according to my Mum looks like the Gruffalo. Used to represent the "working classes" but now somewhere slightly left of right.

Conservatives: Smarmy, rich-representing group who believe they have the natural in-bred (often literally) right to rule, but led by a charismatic geezer called Dave who my Mum says looks like Data off of Star Trek only made all out of Silly Putty. Trying to appear somewhere in the political middle ground in order to get the serfs to vote for them, they are in reality just waiting for an opportunity to make the rich richer and to suck the very life-juices from the still warm corpses of the majority of the populace. And that's not opinion, that's scientific fact that is.

Liberal Democrats: Not likely to win as they said they would have to raise taxes slightly to improve the country's plight, and there's no room for truth in politics so, despite a recent surge in popularity on telly, they're as likely to get in as a clone of Chairman Mao dressed up as Hitler and singing "La Marseillaise".

Others: Mad, bad, deluded, optimistic, pessimistic, fascist, socialist, religious, single-issue, and unlikely to get a seat anywhere except in the viewing gallery at the House of Commons. Shame really.

As I've yet to set up my Anarchist Hedonism Party due to red tape and my own inflexibly comprehensive set of rules, I did my dutiful thing and went to the polling station to put my X in the box.

With a pencil.

Now, I'm no expert in vote fraud, but I've heard that it is in fact now possible to REMOVE pencil marks and replace them with a facsimile that is almost indistinguishable from the original. Terrifying thought.

Happily, concerns about possible vote-fixing will be mollified because there is an observer in force at the village hall, in the form of a chap called Martin. He is supremely qualified for the position of election security enforcement because he has a beard and once worked at the local dairy, so has experience of herding.

Anyway, I made my way to the voting booth, which was a shallow wooden box not unlike an upright coffin, told a confused elderly chap next to me who to vote for (he was very grateful) and then put my ballot paper in the high-tech storage device (a wooden box with a slot in the top sitting on a paste table).

Then, in a weak moment of post-voting indecision, I suffered a bout of political angst and tried to get my ballot paper out of the box to change it, before being thrown out by Martin and threatened with a damn good milking if I ever tried that sort of thing again.

I tend to have a policy of voting for the least likely party to get in.

This means that, this time next year when whoever is attempting to lead the country suddenly finds that they can't actually keep the absurd promises they made to get our vote find that, actually, in the harsh light of day and COMPLETELY due to the mismanagement of the previous incumbents, they're either going to continue along exactly as their predecessors did or actually make things a bit worse, I can say "Well, I didn't vote for them" and smile smugly as I queue in line for free soup.

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P.s. Looks like the conservatives have got in, so we're a classless society again apparently. Not enough of a majority to win outright so, for the first time since 1974 it's going to be a hung parliament.

Four years of being run by a huge committee.

Ooh dear . . .