While we’re waiting, I shall therefore do the easy thing and make some points that have been boiling within my breast for, ooh, most of my career in librarianship, really.

So, Dear Assorted Persons Who Ought To Know Better:

1. Alphabetical order is not an amusing foible only some of your colleagues indulge in. If things are not filed in the correct order, we cannot find them, and those of us that give a monkeys about customer service find it mildly distressing to have to tell a reader we can’t find their request/library card/application form/complete works of Charlotte M. Yonge.
2. Dear reader, seriously? Your email account is eating your library reminders, yes, very frustrating I’m sure, but seriously? You expect us to waive your weeks and weeks-worth of fines because you didn’t know when the books were due back without the email from the library? Despite the due-date stamped firmly on the label in neat black ink? Oh, you do expect us to waive them. Well, I shan’t, and what’s more, I think you’re a twerp, and further to that, the fact your email account went kablooey neatly proves exactly why the email reminders are a courtesy only and the lack of them is in no way proof that your books don’t need renewing.
3. Commuters of London! I will buy a pair of pinking shears and cut through each and every one of your goddamn headphone wires if you don’t turn your MP3 players down right now. [Nothing to do with libraries, but still. Worth saying].
4. I wish I didn’t have to shush your children, shush you, grab your toddler before he falls down the stairs (where the hell were you?), rescue your hat from the top of the stacks (he was hot. So he threw his hat in the air. I know), stop you climbing up the book-shelves (are you trying to kill yourself? There’s a kick-stool right there), dissuade you from looking at porn on the internet, dissuade you from playing WarShovel (or whateverthehell you call it) on the internet with the sound on, ask you to hold your domestic arguments elsewhere, or pick up dozens and dozens of books you have pulled off the shelves and dropped onto the floor when they turned out to be of no interest to you. This is a University, damn it, not a crèche.
5. I will put away my data entry and pay full attention to you when you put away your iPhone and pay full attention to me. Deal?
6. If you dump a pile of books in front of me with no comment, I will ask you whether you want them returned, renewed, or lent. I’m not sure why you find this offensive. I find your slamming things down in front of me and staring haughtily at the wall behind me offensive, for that matter. Do I mutter ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ under my breath? No, I do not. I merely think it.
7. The next person to remark, however jovially, that it must be lovely, working in a library, sitting about reading books all day, will be summarily disembowelled and hung on the ramparts as a warning to others.

And that’s only the minor snits and irritations, folks! Aren’t you glad I didn’t get started on funding cuts, those lying twat-weasel Lib Dems and their ‘no tuition fees!’ u-turn, and the fact even some of the lecturers are bloody illiterate woo-merchants these days [This last remark does not in any way apply to any of the teaching staff at Reed's place of employment, who are all very literate and clever indeed (Reed, you arse, do you want to get fired?)].

In America, well, chiefly America abortion clinics have been bombed, and last summer one of the few doctors prepared to save a woman’s life by doing a late-term abortion, rather than, say, let her die and her child die with her anyway, was shot dead at church. Killing is wrong, you see, but apparently some few deeply religious people think two wrongs make a right, so if they kill a ‘killer’, that’s OK (for the record, I am pro-choice. No one should be forced to have a child, at the cost of their health, their life, their sanity). Even though their own scriptures tell them the exact opposite. Thou shalt not kill. Turn the other cheek.

Now, I am not religious. I’m not even one of the doubting Thomasinas. More of a, ‘there is no God, and Richard Dawkins is not his messenger’, sort of person. But there are times when I think I have more faith in deities, Providence, The Universe etc. than a great many people who are extremely religious. Extremely. These are people who put their entire life, every hour, every spare penny, every thought, at the service of their God. And their family’s lives. And the lives of anyone else they can convince to join. To those of proselytising faiths, this kind of devotion is an ideal to be looked up to. I personally find it boorish and tiresome, and if not directly hypocritical in itself, then a lead cause of hypocrisy in others (which makes persisting in proselytising… hypocritical). People join extreme faiths when they are broken, anxious, rootless, fragile. Needy. People pretend to believe in extreme faiths under pressure from their family and community, out of fear. Fear of losing those they love. Fear of rejection. Fear, sometimes, of death. How is it not hypocritical to demand that someone believes with threats and menaces? How is not hypocritical to take advantage of someone’s loneliness and fragility to make a convert? How could any faith be honest and true under these circumstances?

But I digress. The main point I wanted to make was, why do some Extremely Religious people start using violence? I don’t mean violence to defend their very lives in a war zone. I mean those that bomb/stab/shoot people they’ve never met before, who were no threat to them or their faith (though I think claiming someone is a threat to your faith is like claiming someone is a threat to your thinking about pink elephants. It’s the inside of your head. Do with it as you please, surely (preventing someone practicing their religion by keeping them away from their sacred places etc. is, on the other hand, a shitty thing to do. It’s not a threat to faith, though. Not being able to physically get to a chapel doesn’t instantly stop you being a Methodist)). Where was I?

For example, I disagreed with the Iraq War. I was horrified when it started, and horrified that it was entered into on a fiction, and so angry I couldn’t think straight at the reports of abuse of prisoners, dead children, the selling off of the rebuilding contracts to wealthy pals of the American government before the war even began, the ugly, ugly cynicism of it all. I protested. I signed petitions, I marched in the streets of London, I argued with and (with wine on board) harangued people who were pro-war. I did not vote Labour in 2005. Many of the things I said about Tony Blair and George W. Bush and their cronies are, even by my lax and sweary standards, unprintable. And that was pretty much as cutting as I got. Why did I not try to rush into an MP’s surgery and stab him, now, in 2010, when all the worst of the war is over and done and unchangeable, given that I disapproved so much? Because I had no faith that adding to the violence would change a jot or tittle of it, or improve a second of it. Because I do have faith that humans can learn, try to redeem themselves, make some sort of amends, maybe. If they live long enough.

But these Extremely Religious people, they have no faith at all, not even in their God Himself. Where their scriptures say, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord’, they decide they can’t wait for God to take this vengeance in His own way, in His own time. They must tell Him His business. Who to take vengeance on. How. When. They have no faith that their God knows what He is doing.

And they have no faith that God will chose the right level of vengeance. To God, their scriptures tell them, a human life is the merest blink of an eye against all of eternity, and God will decide what happens to a person for all of that eternity. But this will not do. Suffering needs to be immediate and earthly. They kill, not only those they perceive as responsible, but any amount of bystanders, who could well have shared their beliefs. Hypocritally, that’s alright, because ‘God will know His own’. Oh yes, God doesn’t know who He’s supposed to be blowing to shreds in an urgent manner, but God will know which of the shreds are destined for Heaven and which for Hell. God won’t rip off the legs of an infedel sinner here on Earth and has to have it done for him by People of Faith who know, oh, how certainly they know, whose legs to rip off seeing as God won’t, but they trust him to give a consolation prize to any who have been maimed by mistake because they happened to be sitting on the bus. As if God where merely the orderly following on behind them with a broom and a sieve.

Worse, these Extremely Religious think that human flesh is expendable. The flesh that according to them God created with such love and tenderness, they will tear apart again just to make an incoherent scream of rage, like a toddler smashing his toys in a tantrum. The great gift of life, that their scriptures so treasure that they all prohibit killing, they will batter to pieces and then throw the pieces in their God’s face. ‘I did it for God’ they say, ‘In His Name’. If a grown man smashed the, the, oh, I don’t know, something expensive, let’s say television, you’d just given him, and then claimed to have done it for you because a newsreader said something sarcastic about you, you’d think he’d gone barking mad. Check that, you’d know he’d gone barking mad. And what’s more, you’d know he didn’t really care about you, in fact, possibly shared the newsreader’ low opinion, given that he valued your gift so little.

And another thing, why the hell does it bug the Extremely Religious so much if someone makes a joke or a sneer or a nasty little swearyness about their God? OK, so it’s not nice or polite, but why the killy-stabby-burn-in-effigy frenzy? Is their God really so pathetically little, and their faith in him so pathetically fragile, that one good joke would shatter it? Isn’t their God big enough, powerful enough, and self-evidently good and glorious enough for all the blasphemy and sarcasm in the world to roll right off Him leaving him spotless and perfect as only an omnipotent and omniscient Creator could be? If God is so great, why does he need some paranoid, hysterical and deeply, deeply needy delusional teenager to do his dirty work for him?

So. Fundamentalists of the Bomb and Shoot and Stab and Bloody Mayhem and Vengeance variety, that’s your dirty little secret, isn’t it? You have no faith in your own God. At all. You can’t even read your own holy texts, you ignorant little shits.

I leave you with this clip of Robert Llewellyn, who put it rather well.

You must understand that most of my understanding of Tea Party politics comes from The Guardian and the BBC. The Guardian, I agree, is a rather woolly-liberal left-of-centre rag, but the BBC? Prides itself on making sure both sides think her reportage is biased.

The basic ‘idea’ behind the Tea Party Movement – outrage at the government bailing out the banks, resentment of ‘government interference’, being pro-free-markets – are all comprehensible, even reasonable (not that I agree with free markets, what with being a raging Communist European cheese-eating surrender-monkey [Mmmmm, havarti - Ed]). But then the Tea Party fields Mid-Term Election candidates like Christine O’Donnell [moron], Glenn Beck [media whore. Shouty media whore], Rand Paul [misogynist thug.] [STOP PRESS - oh good God they've elected the misogynist thug]. Dear, dear, beloved USA, what the fucking fuck?

And the whole ‘Obama is a Muslim (despite the fact he goes to a Christian Church regularly) and wasn’t even born in the USA’ thing (poor Hawaii. It may have only been a State since 1959 but it’s been part of USA territory since 1898). It looks call-for-the-men-in-white-coats insane this side of the Atlantic.

I assume Tea Partyers [Partyites? Partinis? Partaloons?] don’t give a flying-fercrying that We The Rest of the Planet think they’re insane. I assume, in fact, that giving a flying-fercrying would be seen as an act of weakness and the giver of the flying-etc. would be hunted down by an armed Sarah Palin in a helicopter. [Is this the one who thinks New Hampshire is in the great Northwest?]. So there’s nothing any of us this side of the Atlantic can say to the USA about politics that would have any kind of useful impact. [The Guardian (bless, the patronising eejits) even tried it in 2004 and the good denizens of Ohio were, unstartlingly, deeply unimpressed.]

And yet, dearest USA, best friend and closest ally and child of our loins, grown up so very tall and strong, whatever you do, whatever you decide, fucks directly with us Europeans. We’ve helped you fight your wars, we’ve bolstered your economy and bought your pretty computers. We eat, drink, love, breathe and shit your culture. When you rile up Differently Religious nations, they bomb us as well as you. When your economy tanks, it takes ours down with it. When you shout ‘jump!’ we all shout ‘how high?’ (and then argue about whether that’s too high or not high enough, admittedly, but at least we react). You are now, whether we commie bleeding-hearts like it or not, the Alpha of the Western pack. You are responsible for a great deal more than the shenanigans going on inside your own borders. Your shenanigans, no matter how much we protest, are our shenanigans too. Thanks for that, oh Globally Dominant ones. Any chance of electing some people who could point to us on a map?

But there it was, when I got in. A small flimsy envelope all over slightly crooked University stamps, and a wildly excited husband standing over it and jigging impatiently from one foot to another.

Ah. Yes. That MA I was doing. Yes.

I opened the envelope. I read the first few lines of the letter. I passed it to S. I felt bemused. I felt… empty. Oh, I said. Oh. There was much hugging.

And S got out the champagne.

At which point I started grinning like an eejit.

Ah well, what’s another happy hangover between friends?

I think I may have mentioned, on occasion, that when stressy, I lose the off-switch for my brain and develop insomnia (fret me not with your counsel, I have been like this since I was six weeks old and frankly, the only thing that really works is not getting stressed in the first place). So, currently, I am not sleeping. To sleep, at this time, I need perfect warmth, perfect stillness, perfect pyjamas and perfect darkness. As the bed partner has developed a cold (another cold! What in hell do they feed him at work?), I am faced with the idiotic choice between staying in the warm comfortable bed thinking: ‘Stop coughing. Stop coughing. Stop – oh, he’s stopped. Now his nose is whistling. Wake up. Wake up. Now roll over. Oh, dammit, now he’s coughing again. Oh God, he’s snoring. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,’ ad infinitum, or moving to the spare room and thinking ‘This bed is too hard. I’m cold. I need the loo. This bed is really hard. Why’s it so quiet? I need the loo. It’s cold,’ ad infinitum.

I could always get up and read, but that rather defeats the object of being a hard-core whiner, don’t you think?

Anyway, two nights of that, and approximately three hours sleep, no, not per night, but in toto, yes, I know, not good, and no I did not fall down in a deep sleep smack in the middle of the lunch queue but believe me I wanted to, what was I talking about? [One moment please. I must just reach over there and slap her awake - Ed].

Ah yes. this morning, the one thing hauling me onwards through all the vagaries of commuting (what is it with trains? Why do they not turn up? Why do they not turn up when you’re tired? Are they allergic to yawning?) was the thought of AMT, the Best Little Coffee Stand in London. Organic milk, Fairtrade coffee, giant squishy pretzels, a scary fresh orange squeezer, and the smiliest staff. Smiley staff. On a Wednesday morning. With nothing to look at but a bazillion snarly commuters and pigeon-spattered paving. Oh, how I love that coffee stall. It can power me all the way to nearly lunch-time. Oh yes. And it’s right next to Boots, so I can top up on Rennies and aspirin while I’m at it. Ahhh, drugs.

The coffee stand is gone.

There is a square, rusty shadow on the pavement. There is no coffee stand.

Now, I knew their contract with Network Rail was up for renewal. I vaguely knew that they had been out-bid by Caffé Nero, who, while not actively sucking (Costa, I’m looking at you. Expensive and crap? I am so not transferring my loyalties), are not my lovely smiley 100% Fairtrade organic milk providers, and will not make me feel like a Good Person while I stagger woozily towards the buses.

What I did not know, is that AMT, thanks to Network Rail’s cheerfully rapacious decision-making, have now lost 40% of their retail outlets. That probably means that 40% of my amazingly smiley people, including Aziz, who was so polite and smiley he regularly made me almost tearful at the wonderful goodness of my fellow humans, have to find new jobs. I can only hope they have found new, better, jollier jobs. And I did not know that AMT were shafted by their own desire not to shaft us, their snarly commuters, by upping the coffee prices so they could out-bid Caffé Nero. See that link to Network Rail above? I linked it to their contacts page. I have already politely emailed them my displeasure. And now you can too, if you wish.

Oh, and not that this story was in the National news. Oh no. I found it on New Consumer, and Hippy Shopper. You did know that London is trying to achieve Fairtrade City status, didn’t you? Not very heart-warming, is it?

Fucking Pirates.

But what was that thing I quite enjoyed doing, back in the dim and distant past when my belly-button was quite a different shape? Oh, yes, blogging.

So, chez Reed, we are adjusting ourselves on the tenterhooks for the sake of Youngest Sister’s A-levels, apparently in postal transit somewhere about the South East of England. While Youngest Sister is spending her days in completely ignoring the subject, oh wise young mortal that she is, her mother and I are gleefully working ourselves up into a foam of anticipatory worry.

Which makes this as good a time as any to discuss A-levels. As for the annual Journalist’s Jamboree of blame, opprobrium, aspersions, whining and self-congratulation that engulfs the comment pages, I can remember it repeating itself word-for-word when I did my A-levels, *ahem*tumpty years ago. I put it down to jealousy. These students, look at them, they get to be 18, have iPods, have sex, they can afford to drink like the proverbial Lord one is as drunk as, and still, still they do better year on year. Bastards.

No, the problem with A-levels, truly, is most certainly not that they are getting easier. Rather, I think it likely that teachers are getting cannier and students are being more carefully groomed to be able to do said A-levels. The year is spent learning what sort of information to retain, and how best to regurgitate it – exam-passing is a skill, and the kids are picking that up superlatively. Talented little oiks.

I am far more distressed by the stories about students with ninety-seven As and an A* turning up at the portals of OxbriLondrews to do Literary Literature and Philosophical Musings Thereon and finding themselves utterly floored by the Gerund. Or Science Genii of the future having to spend their first year being painstakingly taught to spell ‘Socioeconomic constraints on biological determinism’. (Incidentally, is this truly true? Do universities now offer remedial classes in Writing Like a Person of Normal Intelligence and Maths Without Fingers? [In which case, can we enroll Reed in the maths one? - Ed]). While it seems to me perfectly obvious that the Teenager of Today is perfectly capable of learning a great deal of stuff and, vitally, being able to regurgitate under conditions of controlled torment, it is not nearly so obvious that they are being taught anything they really need to know. I know of English students who simply don’t know who Samuel Richardson is [Lucky, lucky swine], Biology students whose grasp of Darwinian Evolution is somewhat more shot than my own, and in any case have never heard of Alfred Russell Wallace, Politics students who leap back with shock on being told that Fascism and Communism are not after all one and the same thing, despite historical results, and therefore calling me a communist because I won’t let them take a reference book home makes me laugh hysterically for quite some minutes, because, dear reader, I was.

Back in the year *vigorous coughing*, when I attended my very first lecture, admittedly in a narcotic haze of aspirin and liver toxins, because after all I do believe in doing things properly and that includes spending Fresher’s Week plastered, I did have a vague notion of how to spell every author on the curriculum, and a vaguer notion of what exactly their books were about, as such, except in the case of James Joyce, but then, that was the point, and indeed anyone claiming to understand Ulysses in the first year was made to clean the Arts Block toilets. And this was because my English A-level was mostly dedicated to two Shakespeare plays, two Victorian novels and an untidy heap of poetry, the teaching of which entailed things like ‘context’ and ‘background’ and ‘what everyone else was up to at the time’; a somewhat old-fashioned proceeding, admittedly, but one that was fit for purpose, in that while I did indeed spend most of my first year at University feeling stupid and overwhelmed, I knew what I was feeling stupid and overwhelmed about and how to improve the shining hour [i.e. live in the library, and now your life is irredeemably blighted]. The Student of Today does not even know what they do not know. For the A-level they took was not intended to give them a shallow and somewhat patchy grounding in the subject while hammering the set texts in with the Hammer of Desperation and the chisel of Midnight Espresso. Their A-levels were about passing A-levels. For that is what everyone, students, parents, teachers, governors, ministers, all wanted. For students to pass their exams. And now they do.

And now they must work out how to understand what they’ve learnt, all by themselves.

[Apologies for any fall in standards in this blog - the Fragile Flower is still draped over the ottoman, so to speak, and can't take much kicking. Which is boring of her]

Anyway, it rather derailed me because I felt it was somewhat underhand to poke fun at Gordon Brown and his zippedy-doo-dah new Cabinet of Young Things when the poor chap was having to start his new job at Critical, also known as ‘Hello, is that your country that has just burst into flames?’

And onwards to Today’s Petty Whinge:

The stupidest little incident has been irritating me for nearly a week now.

Allow me to contextualise a little. There is another website/ set of fora where I hang out and talk drivel. Hanging out and talking drivel is far much less like hard work than having all my words standing or falling on their own merit, so even though I have been lackadaising all over the blog, I have been persisting over there. And of course we got the news on Saturday that a flaming car had been driven into the doors of the Glasgow Airport terminal, and the drivers had possibly even thrown fire bombs before being flattened by police and by-standers. Naturally we were all shocked. A person, who I shall name Person (because, OK?), posted something-or-other, which was promptly removed by the moderators. So Person wrote another post saying, basically, that whoever had alerted the moderators to his post, ‘clearly think it is OK to try to throw petrol bombs at children in airport terminals.’ And then Person stormed off in a huff.

Now, I was all for being horribly cross that one’s post had been removed. But I was not at all amused by the implication that one of the other ‘regulars’ had done it (we are not that kind of people. We are all rabidly free speech), and that therefore one of the other regulars was pro-terrorism. However, many of the other regulars took time to contact Person, explain that the forum in question had all sorts of other readers who don’t post but could’ve alerted the moderators, and also, if he used language, the post would be automatically moderated by a profanity filter. As it turned out, the post had been automatically moderated for the liberal use of the words ‘sod’, ‘bastards’ and ‘bloody’, and the human moderators decided the subject excused the language and re-instated it within 24 hours.

Did Person apologise for the hissy fit and the utterly unwarranted accusations? No. Did Person acknowledge calling us pro-terrorist was a bit rich? No. Is this what I care about? Not really. Anyone’s allowed the odd burst of soddishness. Especially when upset by scary news. What does bug the absolute britches off me is that I am the only one who said anything (and that a mild, ‘I’m not sure I like the implication that whoever removed Person’s post is therefore pro-terrorism.’). Everyone else was busy being reassuring and explanatory and hunting Person down so they could encourage said Person to return to the forum. The very forum that bases its raison d’être on civilised, polite, rational conversation, no shouting, no ad hominem attacks, even on difficult subjects. It’s why I could make the effort to stay there when the rest of the internetty boiling was too much like hard work.

Now, either I have missed something in my lackadaisicalery, and Person is allowed lee-way the rest of us aren’t and wouldn’t dream of claiming, for reasons I have not understood, or I am excruciatingly thin-skinned and up myself. But because everyone is refusing to discuss it, I can’t find out. And because everyone is refusing to discuss it, I am highly reluctant to open the subject and start a truly unwelcome shit-storm and put myself firmly in the unwelcome category. It is for this very wimpy reason that I am not linking to said forum.

This being my blog, I shall say what the hell I like though. I think Person’s reaction was rude and unwarranted. I think even if Person did assume (and why? Person has been posting for years, surely Person understands that there is automatic sweary moderating?) a regular had yanked his post [heh heh heh; oops. Sorry. - Ed], and therefore let fly in extremis, Person should have said sorry. More to the point, the other regulars owed it to each other to remonstrate with him, politely and mildly of course. As it is, one rather gets the impression you can say whatever the fuck you like in whatever unpleasant tone you like and everyone will butter you up big-time. Just like any other damn forum. Obviating the point of this particular special forum.

I have avoided posting this for nearly a week to make sure I wasn’t merely being a snarling bitch and making mountains out of molehills. Does the fact it still bugs me to hell mean I have a point or that I am a very snarling bitch? Or is it the fact that Person is allowed off and I didn’t think anyone else would be – what have I missed abut Person? Am I being an idiot?

The Editor, by the way, is disclaiming all responsibility for this post and thinks I am indeed being an idiot. So I may well take this post down later. Also, am off work with high temperature, so judgement probably severely impaired. But hey, like I said, my blog.

Now, I did spend a few possibly delusional months, some time ago, announcing that I thought Gordon Brown could well be a good PM. I am no longer nearly so sanguine, partly because Brown tried to tax my underpaid little arse off – see the bit about scrapping the 10p rate? – and partly because I’m not entirely sure our marvellous fiery economy is layable at Mr Brown’s feet (I’m thinking, economies bounce up and down in cycles, don’t they? Well, make sure you’re chancellor on the up-bounce (and run away to Number 10 before it goes splat, the which splat you can then blame on the current Chancellor/ global warming/ the Tories)), and in any case, I feel a little jaded about an economy that prevents me from ever buying a house anywhere at all in the British Isles. And as you can see, discussing the Economy, stupidly, turns me into Bernard Levin. I promise to lock all the parentheses away in their drawer for the rest of the post.

Anyway, there was some cause for schadenfreude. I can’t be the only one who danced up and down in the street on hearing that Patricia Hewitt has resigned. I can only assume she resigned now because she knew Brown is not so much of a flaming eejit as to keep her on, and she may as well jump with some fluttering rag of attempted dignity clutched about her rather than be picked up by the foot and wrist and flung into the middle-distance. If only the silly bitch had had somewhat more dignity and buggered off in April. What am I talking about? I’ll allow Aphra to explain.

And I see that the departing Mr Blair is being wrapped in olive-branches, loaded into a giant catapult and fired at the Middle East. I was about to get good and cynical about that. But in Sierra Leone they see him as a hero. Northern Ireland also seems to have gone rather well. Nevertheless, Iraq is an unspeakable hell-hole somewhat of his own creating, which makes the whole thing soap-opera interesting, don’t you think?

Not too shabby a burst of developments for a quick sandwich-related absence, eh? Tuna, thanks for asking.

Sorry, do I sound sarcastic? I do hope so. I was trying very hard. I’ve been silent so long I worry I’ve got out of practice.

So, Elections, Local, Welsh, and Scottish. Just at present I thought I’d keep my own political views out of it. For the record, they are dyed-in-the-wool crimson and somewhat to the left of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and Tony Benn*. Allow this information to influence your judgment as you will. So, leaving entirely aside the question of who you may have voted for [Unless it was the BNP, in which case Reed will come round to your house with photographs of a) tortured asylum seekers and b) of every famous and useful British citizen of less than utter Anglo-Saxonity and wreck your afternoon], let us stick to the mere subject of voting per se. I thought I’d waste a tea-break trawling through all the intelligent and thoughtful comments left by my fellow citizens on the subject of voting in general. The BBC had set up a ‘Have Your Say’ page especially.

Dear God, people, but what’s wrong with you? So many, so very many snitty claims that none of the parties represented them, so they wouldn’t vote for any of them, or that it wouldn’t make any difference who they did vote for, so they couldn’t be bothered, or in one spectacular case, that they were ‘revising’ from 7am to 10pm and the polls should have been open at a more convenient time. Oh, all right, those of you who will insist on being students, bloody well be students then, but you’re letting the side down. I never let some daft exam or other stand between me and the ballot box.

Those of you who think it makes no difference who you vote for, so you won’t, you’re wrong. You seem touchingly to believe that They (as in the politicians) will notice your refusal to engage and indeed, even be concerned about it. You seem to think, for some daftly naïve reasons of your own, that They actually want you to vote.

Oh my dear saps. The last thing They want is your vote. They love it when you sit down and shut up. They each have their own inner hard-core of trusty eternals, who they can rely on to vote for them come fire, thunder, floods or the Judgment of Heaven, and they only really care when the hard-core start dying of old age and it’s time to indoctrinate a new generation. If the don’t knows, undecideds, issue-considerers, and just generally needing-to-be-convinced don’t vote, it’s wonderful. No having to waste oodles of cash trying to convince you to vote for Us not Them. No worrying that you’ll break loose and vote the other way at the General Election. No having to keep promises just to keep you on board. They can get on with fossicking about in each-other’s stationary cupboards and being self-serving and power-mad. If, on the other hand, they knew that they had been voted for, marginally, by a bunch of people who were really only choosing them because of the road-resurfacing thing, do you think they’ll fail to resurface the damn’ road? Or, at least, do you think the new lot will fail to resurface the roads, seeing that the old lot got junked for not doing it?

And yes, it is perfectly true, oh individual voter, that your vote as is straw and peanut-shells in the grand scheme of anything at all. Quite right. But the fact you voted, oh now that is an entirely more cheerful matter. As a student [incoming smug mode] I got a house of eight other students to all come down to the Polls with me and vote. All I did was announce loudly that I was going to the Polls and was anyone else coming with me? Lord knows who they voted for, or if it made any difference, but one vote suddenly became nine, as far as I can tell solely because I got off my then-much-perter bottom. How many of your friends, acquaintances, colleagues even, do you think you could dredge out of the Slough of Despond by the simple announcement ‘Well, I’m going home via the Polls. Anyone else?’

And who cares if they are all foaming idiots who vote with their scrota? They voted, they will be noted as voters, and the politicians with any kind of brain at all will panic like ants under boiling water. It’ll be hilarious. I promise.

*(No, I cannot see how leaders of great dictatorships can actually be considered left-wing regardless of what anyone’s propaganda machines say, so let’s leave Stalin for a less civilized argument some other time, because, yes, I was brought up a Communist, so yes, I do know what I am talking about, and yes, attempts to tell me that Mao is left-wing can lead to unpleasantness. But now you know).