There is a period in the British calendar that most people dread and unfortunately that time is upon us.
It is a time of lies, deceit, sycophancy, boredom and terrible clichés. It is a time when people roll their eyes in disgust; a time for ranting and a time for puking at obsequiousness. It is a time when some grown men will cower rather than answer their front door. It is a time when most people will want to switch off their TV sets and stop reading newspapers. It is a time of awful tabloid headlines (no change there) and violence-inducing editorials. It is a time of tedium. It is a time of pain, anger and frustration. It is a time for old men to kiss babies and visit people they don’t care about who are sitting in hospital beds. It is a time for liars to visit schools and pontificate.
It is time for a General Election.
The TV will be full of insipid politicians blithering on about subjects that matter, but peppering their rhetoric with false claims and lies about other politicians. Old politicians will be wheeled out to make jingoistic speeches on behalf of the current crop of deceitful buffoons.
TV presenters will wet themselves in public as they tell us the results of meaningless opinion poll after meaningless opinion poll. Speeches will be over-analysed, every word being examined to determine its hidden meaning.
If you are very unlucky, you will live in a marginal constituency, which means that all manner of boring politician will descend on your locality, possibly even knocking on your door to urge you to vote for them.
Guess who lives in a marginal constituency? Yes – that’s right – I DO!!
The sickening sycophancy started a week or two ago but now the election has been formally announced, the entire process will crank up several gears into rampant overdrive.
Babies will be kissed so much that their heads will be covered in a thin film of politician saliva.
Some politicians may even stand on a soapbox and wag their fingers in a condescending way to the electorate while making a speech full of big words, political clichés and total bullshit.
I hate elections – perhaps you have guessed.
I enjoy watching the news but during this month of political upheaval there is no news other than the bloody election. Here is a typical 30 minute news bulletin during an election:
“Welcome to the Six O’Clock News. The headlines tonight – the election stepped up a gear tonight …”28 minutes of political crap.“… and now other news. A giant asteroid measuring twenty miles across is heading for Earth and may arrive before the end of the election. That might affect opinion polls. Here’s what the party leaders have to say …”To be honest it is our privilege as a democracy to be able to vote and so it should be. However, what I object to is the constant barrage of political nonsense that I am forced to absorb with all five senses for a month.
Gordon Brown announced the election yesterday, April 6th. The election will take place on 6th May. That’s a whole month when my living room and all newspapers will be full of politics. People will talk about politics and argue about politics. Politics is tedious and I will have to eat it, sleep it, crap it and then flush it away, only for more tons of the stuff to seep into my life the next day.
It drives me nuts.
So who can we vote for?
We have three main political parties and quite a few minority parties.
The current Prime Minister is a Scottish man called Gordon Brown, leader of the Labour Party, who is a dour sourpuss. As I watch him on TV I feel my good humour sapping through my feet and by the time he has finished talking I have mutated into Marvin the paranoid android. Gordon Brown’s image consultants have made him aware that he lacks any kind of charisma and in the past have urged him to smile. But therein lies a problem. When Gordon Brown smiles he changes form a dour sourpuss into a scary alien. I walked into a room and sat watching him on TV attempting to smile to reassure people that he is a happy chap and after ten minutes I turned to Mrs PM and said “Is this a new science fiction series? He’s a really scary bad guy.” Mrs Pm told me who it was and I almost ran from the room in terror – it was only morbid curiosity that made me stay.
His main rival is a man called David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader. David Cameron is young and serious and has moulded himself on Tony Blair (even though Tony Blair was a former leader of the Labour Party). Cameron proclaims that he is a man of the people and that he understands how the average person on the street thinks. He claims that he is just an “ordinary bloke”. Except he’s not. He’s a highly educated rich bloke who has about as much in common with the man on the street as I have with duck-billed platypus. He is a good presenter but he is as shallow as a puddle.
And finally we have Nick Clegg – good old Nick, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party. He is an average man in the street, so average in fact that if you were to walk past him you would miss him – even if you had just had a twenty minute conversation with him. He is Mr anonymous; he has no charisma and reminds me of one of those stereotypical automatons, you see carrying their briefcases on business trips abroad.
I have a choice between a scary dour sourpuss, a public school snob who claims to be as streetwise as Vanilla Ice and a man who looks and talks like a boring businessman.
I could go for one of the fringe parties:
The Green Party, who claim that our planet is becoming a greenhouse while offering no proof whatsoever and want everybody to sit in the dark to save the planet.
The BNP, a party who want to rid the UK of all non-white people, even those who were born here.
I just wish that the Monster Raving Looney Party had a candidate in my area.
So it looks like I will have to go for one of the “big three”. How are they going to tempt me?
Labour: We want fairness.
Conservatives: We want change.
Liberal Democrats: We want fairness AND change.
Not much help there either.
The truth is that I am totally disillusioned with politics, simply because in the past couple of years they have been exposed for fiddling their expenses, some small amounts of cash admittedly but some running into thousands of pounds. A large percentage of them have been exposed as liars and have destroyed our trust in them – and even worse, tried to justify themselves in the most outrageous ways:
“I need this money to maintain my house. Those who disagree with me are just jealous!”
Such things infuriate me.
What’s more, these same people, or people of their ilk, will start to talk to me about fairness, honesty and integrity while lying through their teeth.
And, because I live in constituency that is quite closely fought between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, I reckon that they will all be lining up to knock on my door and lie to me in front of my own house.
I will be glad when it’s all over.
If I had any political desires myself I would stand as an independent candidate but to be honest the thought of sitting in the Houses of Parliament listening to a tsunami of verbal diarrhoea would fill me with absolute dread.
I think I am going to become a hermit and move to cave in Wales for a month. Mind you, knowing my luck, they would find me there.
I think I might just turn to apathy – at least it might make sense.
