Back to the 80s

So Gordon's gone (with a magnificent speech). I'm in the dark office, marking dissertations, munching Ferrero Rocher and listening to the Boo Radleys' Giant Steps.

"That's it Gordon, sod orf like a good fellow. Cousin Cameron's going to make the place safe for the gentry again".

We're fighting an imperialist war. Posh Tory Scum are in office, aided by ex-Labour splitters. Nottingham Forest are (almost) back to the top division. Fluorescent clothing is in fashion. I'm eating ironic chocolates. Let's face it, we're living in 1983. What's next? Bashing the miners?

Heartbreaking as his speech was (video here), a few things shouldn't go unchallenged. Gordon said this:

I loved this job for its potential, to make this country I love fairer, more tolerant, more green, more democratic, more prosperous and more just – truly a greater Britain…having shaken their hands and looked into their eyes, our troops represent all that is best in our country

He's wrong. This country isn't fairer. The inequality gap has grown inexorably wider. This new parliament contains more privately-educated people than ever before. Poor people die younger and live worse lives. They will never be judges, politicians, senior civil servants, lecturers or company directors. Britain is less obviously intolerant, and yet the media reflect a high degree of hatred and distrust for those who are poor, working-class, regional, black, unChristian and non-heterosexual, often thinly disguised as humour. This country isn't more democratic. Some hereditary Lords have been replaced with party donors, many of whom don't pay tax in return for their vote and their say. Clearly this country will not be 'more prosperous' for long - and what money there is will be concentrated in the hands of a tiny élite, as it is now. As to the British troops: some are driven into the armed services by poverty, but as to the rest, there's no excuse for wanting to kill for money - there are no threats to the British state, only imperialist wars in the service of another country's foreign policy. Bloody Sunday isn't forgotten. Too many Iraqis, Afghans and British citizens have been tortured with British connivance to allow that comment to pass unchallenged.

There is a bright spot:

7.46pm: William Hague and his team were booed by a crowd of protesters as they walked down Whitehall.

My colleague Hélène Mulholland has just seen Chris Huhne, David Laws and Danny Alexander (three members of the Lib Dem negotiating team) walk into the Norman Shaw building, an office building for MPs. She says they did not look particularly happy. Protesters were shouting at them: "Don't do it." 

 My catchphrase seems to have caught on:

7.37pm: William Hague has come out of the Cabinet Office. He said that he had some recommendations that he would take back to his colleagues. Asked if there was a coalition, he said we would find out soon enough. As he was speaking, some "troops out" protesters were shouting: "Tory scum."

Politics-free post

For light relief, some totally untopical humour. I love Joyce Grenfell - her monologues and appearances in comedies like St. Trinian's. Followed by Sandy and Julian from Round the Horne - they specialised in polari, the romany-inflected gay slang which allowed them to say pretty much anything on prime-time 1960s radio.

Things which annoy me about TV journalism

I'm hating the constant whir of helicopters which accompanies any outside broadcast. Apart from the shameful waste of fuel (in this day and age), it serves no journalistic purpose at all. A newsreader intones 'those dots are people. One of them is someone important talking to journalists. One of those journalists works for us. Let's ask her/him what's being said'. Journalist: 'I can't hear a thing. There's a bloody helicopter hovering above my bald patch'.

It's just a desperate attempt to add drama to undramatic situations, or to situations which are dramatic but aren't recognised as such by media folk who fear words. The low point of this helicopter journalism was the pursuit of Nick Clegg's car from King's Cross station to Lib Dem headquarters, which filled 20 minutes of BBC coverage last Friday.*

Clegg gets off the train. Journalist announces that Clegg's going to Lib Dem HQ. You'd expect something else to fill the time until Clegg arrives at said HQ to make a statement. But no, we have to follow the car all the way to generate an artificial sense of drama.

Related to this non-journalism is the pointless Outside Broadcast. Like Helicopter Journalism, it betrays contempt for the viewer, who is assumed to be deeply stupid. A few days ago, the Queen's constitutional role was discussed. Rather than ask an expert in constitutional history, we had Nicholas Witchell, the 'Royal Correspondent' (he isn't) outside Buckingham Palace, because viewers wouldn't understand that the subject was the Queen if they couldn't see the Queen's house.

What's the news, Nick? Liz coming out to have a word is she?

'The Queen isn't here. She's in Windsor, as she is most weekends'.

'Thanks Nick. Back to the bloody studio'. I want my licence fee back.

Here's Nick Witchell's finest hour:


*Actually, the most gratuitous use of helicopters ever was Flying Gardeners, a show in which a helicopter was used to fly some gardeners to a garden to do some gardening. A second helicopter was used to film the first helicopter flying the gardeners to the garden to do some gardening.

The environmental damage must have been incalculable. Clearly the name of the show came before any thought was given to content. It angered me so much that I actually made a formal complaint to the BBC. I doubt that they took any notice of me, but the show didn't last long, presumably because it was such a stupid and wasteful idea.

Not with a bang, but with a Twitter

It's both fun and sickening watching the end in real time, via journalists' Twitter feeds. Niall Paterson (a Sky hack and therefore a hack of the lowest kind) is literally peeking through the curtains at people changing into suits ready for an announcement, inbetween spinning for the Tories. It reminds me of an age ago, glued to the TV while Ceaucesçu was jeered, hounded out and eventually shot. There's no dignity afforded to the vanquished: the Sun-spoiled mob must have blood and rolling news channels must be filled. Not now, and not in the future - Cameron will have his turn.

What must the atmosphere be like in Downing Street. Government phones are switched off, party ones ignored. Eye contact is evaded, photos and desk junk hurled into cardboard boxes like Merrill Lynch bankers on their last day. Civil servants disappear, or become suddenly insolent and high-handed. Old rivalries are buried or, perhaps, flare up as blame is assigned. Less and less, I guess, is being said as a wave of miserable realisation breaks. This really is it. 13 years of highs and lows gone. What awaits those in the inner circle? They live for politics, high and low, principled and shabby. No more limos, civil servants, institutional dinners, urgent texts, but also no more placating bullshitters, sycophants and dependents, toadying to the undeservedly powerful. For some, a further lifetime of corruption as PR firms, corporate boards and lobbyists beckon, but they know that truly, they represent the past. Certainly opposition holds no joys - ex-governments spend the first year in opposition licking wounds, not energising themselves for the fight. What remains is the rediscovery -welcome or not - of real life. Taking buses, learning to e-mail, looking for work, talking to constituents, starting from the bottom again.

I genuinely hope that, liberated from the shackles of power he voluntarily assumed, Brown can leave politics to do great things. Neal said last week that he'd have loved to see Brown stop in the middle of the TV debates and announce 'Sod this. You two bicker. I'm off to run the IMF'. Now's his chance.

I remember 1997. Despite already hating Blair and distrusting Brown, I felt the hope, the sheer optimism that came with new faces, fresh ideas, honesty and openness (yes, I know, the irony is overwhelming). I'm so sad that so much talent was wasted in petty politics, authoritarianism, hopeless fawning to power (the US, money and celebrity, principally). Idealism ebbed away so quickly as those in power realised that power itself is not an end, yet failed to retain their ideals, failed to remain daring and radical (as the syndicalists predicted in the 1920s).

There's no such feeling today, even in Tory ranks. Hardcore Tories are simply relieved that their natural right to rule has been (partially): like the Republicans, they're democrats only when they've won. Old ideas are flooding back, whether it's uncaring free marketeering (yes, the same idea that's just bankrupted the country) or hunting.

It feels like the end of the 1930s. A tired, gloomy, listless fag-end period awaits. Except for me. I'm going to Norway, even if I have to lick toilets clean for a living.

That's all, folks!

Judging by the mood music on the post-election live blog, we're getting a Liberal-Conservative coalition, or alliance of some sort.

Lots of Labour politicians are against a deal with the Lib Dems. They argue that the mathematics is against Labour, that a deal would be unstable, or that 'the people have spoken'.

I think these people are insane, or cynical. If cynical, it's because they want the Tories and Lib Dems to inflict the massive cuts supposedly needed before a quick second election follows the inevitable collapse of the coalition, leading Labour to clean up. These idiots want a few months out of office to grab the leadership and cabinet jobs for themselves. They don't want to do anything radical with electoral reform because they're in safe seats.

I think they're insane. The only reason to be in politics is to be in power. There's no point having ideals unless you're ready to put them into action. Refusing even a few months in government suggests that you're tired and out of ideas, or that you prefer political manoeuvring over making life a little bit better for your citizens, however limited.

They need to rediscover conviction. If they have better ideas than the Tories, if they think they can do the country good, it's their duty to grab control of government and hold on as long as legally possible. I'd like to see the current Cabinet retire to the back benches and shut their faces: discredited, broken hacks all, obsessed with triangulation, personal fiefdoms and last decade's personality wars. Their job now is to seal the deal with the Lib Dems, then mutely vote Aye to every proposal put forward by a new generation of motivated, dedicated leftwing parliamentarians until the Tories are dead and the country renewed.

Brown, Balls, Straw, Mandelson, Blears, Harman - the lot: shut up and sit down.

Update - journalists seem to think that Labour has given up on talks with Lib Dems (and here). Luggage being removed from Downing Street, presumably Gordon's. It's all over. The Tory boot will be stamping on our faces for the foreseeable future. 

Beach House - Devotion

This is a fairly recent purchase, though I notice that they have a (critically panned) third album out, Teen Dream. I rather like Beach House. Devotion (their second: the first is imaginatively titled Beach House) is a mix of hushed dreampop and indie with male and female vocalists backed by hushed organ. Some of it's very hummable and some, er, isn't. It is, I should warn you, a bit twee. To some of us, that's a good thing. To others, it's like a dose of the clap.

Screw the markets (redux)

The bond markets are joining the rightwing press in their attempted coup. They're going to ignore the UK's massive economy and downgrade its credit rating if the Liberals go with Labour, even though this could be a more stable partnership than Con-Lib.

This sounds ominous. A Lib-Lab pact would "almost guarantee" a downgrade of the UK's top-notch credit rating because both parties oppose early spending cuts to reduce the government deficit, according to analysts at BNP Paribas. They advised investors to sell the pound against the dollar.

"A Labour/Liberal government is the least-liked option by markets and would almost guarantee a downgrade of the UK sovereign," the analysts said. This is because "both parties agree that early expenditure cuts could harm the economy."

Taken to its logical conclusion, presumably the financial services sector would prefer us not to have elections at all. I'd rather devalue and export our way out of recession than rely on these vultures for a single pound.

More Lego Magic

How's this for genius? A Lego machine whose only function is to turn itself off!

Coup? What larks!

Morning all. How's your day shaping up? I'm invigilating an exam. In law. For one person. It's multiple choice. So I guess I'll use the next hour and a half to mark some dissertations. While being vigilant, of course.

I saw The Sun on the way in. The rightwing papers are excelling themselves in hysteria. A couple of days ago, The Sun was calling Brown a 'squatter' who needs to go. Now he has gone, it's shouting about 'chaos', 'running away' and stitch-ups, as are the other Tory papers. The Telegraph even calls it a coup!

This is the 'vast rightwing conspiracy' in full cry. They all like the First Past The Post system - until it delivers a constitutional method for the Labour Party to stay in power. Whether you voted Labour or not, the system is working. These papers are democratic, but only when it suits them. The Tories and their media friends are trying the full GW Bush election tactics: don't win, but get the juggernaut rolling anyway.

There's a roundup of the media coverage here and a picture gallery of front pages here: its viciousness and lack of concern for law and fact is horrifying.

So The Sun splash (headline: "GOING BROWN") began: "Downing Street squatter Gordon Brown finally turned his back on power last night - and left a trail of chaos behind him."

The Daily Mail called it "A SQUALID DAY FOR DEMOCRACY" and saw it as a cynical way for Labour to keep hold of power. As did the Daily Express with "THIS SHABBY STITCH-UP."

By far the best headline among the Tory-supporting press was the Daily Telegraph "A very Labour coup".

The big gun commentators at the Mail, such as Quentin Letts ("What a tarts' bazaar"), Richard Littlejohn ("a scandalous piece of party political self-interest") and Peter Oborne ("Yesterday was a revolting day for British democracy") were on fire.

Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun was also over-heated: "Gord riddance to the Scottish idiot," he wrote in a piece headlined: "THE END OF AN ERROR." Kelvin MacKenzie was generous to "psycho" Brown: "I believe he came into politics to do good. He may have failed but when he leaves he will not fill his wallet and besmirch the good name of No 10 in the manner of Tony Blair."

In case journalists have forgotten, the Tories polled 36%. The Unionists polled 1-2%, as did the BNP and UKIP (neither of which gained seats). So 60% voted for Labour, the Lib Dems, Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Plaid and the SNP. That, to me, says that Britain is liberal-left country and legitimises a liberal-left government.

It really is time to move to Norway.

Can you tell what it is yet?

This charming creature was crocheted by Christine. I'm not entirely clear why, but it's a fine piece of work.

Goodbye, Gordon

How do I feel about Gordon Brown's resignation as Prime Minister and party leader? Ambiguous, I think. When he and Blair took over the Labour Party, I already distrusted Blair, but hoped that Gordon's background in proper Scottish socialism would keep the party honest.

On that, I was totally wrong. As Chancellor, Brown seemed to see it as his duty to make the Labour Party safe for bankers, speculators and associated charlatans. Pension contribution holidays continued, regulation was almost abolished, tax rates on banks, hedge funds and speculators were slashed (hedge fund traders pay tax of 18%: their cleaners pay 20%). The eocnomy was run on the fantasy maths of the city while manufacturing was allowed to die. Brown supported every rightwing dream of the authoritarian Fabian faction - illegal wars, ID cards, nuclear weapons, the lot. He saved the economy after the crash, without a doubt, but he saved capitalism rather than saving us, because he long ago lost his ideological and moral compass.

And yet, and yet. There's a personal tragedy here. I don't care about the gibe that he was never elected as PM: nor was John Major or Margaret Thatcher. Nobody is, technically: he's elected as an MP and the biggest party chooses. The tragedy is the way in which an intelligent, passionate and committed man sold his soul for power, then found himself unable to wield that power effectively. The struggle to succeed broke him, distorted him, hollowed him out. Sometimes, we're told, he's a loving, jolly man in private. Perhaps, and perhaps he'd have won and governed well.

Let's not forget, too, that he suffered the misery of a dead child, yet had to continue in office and political life as though it had no effect. A few years ago, a Swedish prime minister took time off for depression. How sad that our own political system is so staggeringly immature that a period of mourning and recovery would have been depicted as weakness. Sad, too, that his near-blindness and partial deafness were points of mockery.

I'm sorry for him on a personal level, and I'm sad that a man with such potential wasted it all. The cliché is that all political careers end in failure. For poor Gordon, his started in the same way. He's both brilliant at small politics (you don't get to be PM without eating a lot of rubber chicken and burying plenty of daggers in friends' backs) and useless at big politics: tone deaf when it comes to public opinion (e.g. the 10p tax, and ID cards) and incapable of communicating effectively ('bigot-gate').

Will Britain and the world be better off without him? I wish it were so, but I see no heavyweight intellectual in the Labour Party - the Cabinet is a collection of bitter losers and degenerate children of Blair, obsessed with presentation and power, yet lacking principle. John McDonnell for PM!

Steve Bell's election morning cartoon

May the farce be with you

I never really 'got' Star Wars. I've seen most of the original three films, but I've never sat through them from beginning to end. The only one I've seen all the way through was the first of the 'new' prequels because a 'friend' made us go to Rhyl on the opening day. It was one of the worst cinematic experiences I've ever had. A plot to rival Balamory (seriously guys, if you're stealing the basic outline of the fall of the Roman Republic and birth of the Roman Empire, surely you can make it interesting) and graphics reminiscent of Civilization II, which I was playing a lot then.

There are two anecdotes about the films which spring to mind: Spielberg or Lucas telling whoever played Leia that 'there are no breasts in Star Wars' as they bound her tightly, and Harrison telling Lucas that 'you can type this shit George, but we sure as hell can't say it'.

So if you've never seen Star Wars, here's a two-minute synopsis of the originals. In Lego. I'm not sure if they're fans or not.

Why we need Proportional Representation

I think a basic requirement for a democracy is that the party distribution of elected members represents the votes cast. Although PR possibly breaks the constituency link which gives citizens an identifiable local representative, it needn't be the case.

Some people say that PR allows extremist parties in. Firstly - you can limit seats only to parties with 5% of the national vote, but more importantly, SO WHAT? The point of democracy is that you should get who you vote for. If your electorate is a stupid bunch of bigots, you get a bigoted government: unless you make a concerted effort to defeat them electorally and intellectually. If that doesn't work, you can always begin the armed struggle!

Someone clever has calculated the election results as they'd have been under PR and the intermediate system, Alternative Vote. The results are shocking. Blue = Tory scum, Red = Labour class traitors, Yellow = Liberal Democrat splitters, first green = Scottish National Party, second green = Plaid Cymru and the last column is 'others' (Northern Irish parties, Greens etc). Note that under any other system, we'd have a stable Labour-Lib Dem coalition today.

FPTP: TOTALS	307	258	57	6	3	19
AV: TOTALS	281	262	79	5	3	20
STV: TOTALS	246	207	162	13	4	18

Sun burned

This is from the Guardian's live election blog. It's worth repeating as a demonstration of the way certain elements of the media have deliberately discarded the notion of reporting new in favour of trying to distort the public sphere:

The Sun is looking a bit daft this morning. Alongside the headline "Fears for £ as Gord hijacks Lib talks" (on the print edition), its frontpage splash says markets are expected to dump the pound today following Gordon Brown's attempt to stop David Cameron forming a government.

DEFEATED Gordon Brown yesterday sparked fears of a City meltdown after trying to hijack a Tory-Lib Dem deal for a unity government.

His bid to rise from the dead by persuading the Lib Dems to prop him up raised the prospect of a stock market "Brown Monday".

If this is a Brown Monday, let's have more of them. As I write, the stock market is up 5%. And sterling is up 1.2% against the dollar.

Sometimes I believe in Karma

(Walking down to the swimming pool).

Idiot in rear of car: [Incoherent abuse]
Me: ??

A minute later… thanks to the glorious intervention of the traffic lights at a complicated junction:

Me: I'm terribly sorry, I didn't catch what you said to me.
IinC: [Dives down to hide]
Me: You definitely tried to communicate with me. Could you repeat it?
IinC: mumblemumblemumble
Me: Are we acquainted?
IinC: [Now sitting up, staring fixedly at unwavering traffic light] ………
Me: Only, your tone sounded distinctly pejorative and I wondered why you would do something like that.

Lights change. Car zooms off. Idiot in Car leans out and repeats whatever it was. Too late. I was already happier, sure that for a brief moment, the worm had turned.

Two authors for the price of one

The Hegemon produces quite a number of novelists and poets (insert libellous comment about place of work here), including Alan Apperley, Howard Jacobson, Paul MacDonald and Mil Millington.

If you'd like to see Paul interview Sathnam Sangera about his rather wonderful memoir of living a double life (dutiful Black Country Sikh boy and dissolute urban cosmopolitan journalist), get your free ticket here and turn up at 1.00 on Saturday May 22nd.

Stuff the markets

I've been getting increasingly irate over the weekend by the sight and sound of bond market traders and bankers telling the media (and thus us) how our next government should spend our money. Politicians are (rightly) terrified of the markets, which pass judgement on political decisions by selling or investing in the currency and government-issued debt, which is how day-to-day state spending is financed.

The world's a more complex place than I'd like: the markets exist and to some extent are useful, but we're in danger of losing democracy, simply because some very rightwing people accountable to nobody are happy to bankrupt countries they don't like. They aren't 'rational actors' of the type deified in economics textbooks: they attack liberal and socialist governments.

Even if you think this is OK, remember this: the ratings agencies which are bankrupting Greece and may turn their attention to the UK are the very same people which told us that Enron, the Icelandic banks, credit defaults swaps and all the other insane financial instruments were absolutely fine. They're not just vicious, selfish capitalist scum, they're utterly incompetent.

Added to this is the fact that they're paid to cause short-term moves in the bond and currency rates (ruining a country's currency or bond yields is as profitable as boosting them) and you have a recipe for selfish destructiveness in the fiscal system. Who loses? Governments which need to pay pensions, build new hospitals or schools without waiting for the next tax year.

Let's remove them. Let's organise the IMF and World Bank to trade debt instruments between sovereign nations. Some of my readers know much more about this than I do: are there ways to circumvent these bastards?

More Kerry snaps

The rest are here.

The barbecue coals, on slow shutter speed.

Rossbeigh beach

We watched gannets diving for fish - but they're too fast for me!

OK, a bit sneaky, but I like it.

Kerry, Sweet Kerry

I was in Co. Kerry, Ireland for the long weekend, at a birthday party. I took a lot of photographs, though my battery died before we went to some of the most beautiful places. The whole set is here, though some of the pictures are of people you won't know. There are a lot of sea, mountains, birds and associated natural wonder. Click on them for larger images.

Robin's eggs. They were delicious.

Killorglin

Welsh wails

I'm sorry, I'm still going on about the election. It only happens every 5 years though (except that a hung parliament makes another one likely much sooner).

In particular, my conception of Wales has been radically altered by the result. I have this delightful idea that the Celtic nations are somehow cleverer, ideologically more sound and less predisposed to capitalist exploitation through their shared histories of colonial oppression and in particular, their suffering at the hands of the Conservative Party. Leaving aside the travails of Ireland, Wales and Scotland have seen their languages basically killed off (though Welsh is now doing well), their industries destroyed (coal and steel in Wales, these plus shipbuilding in Scotland) and replaced with colonialist tourism and second-homes thus destabilising local communities, their economies skewed towards low-paid services and suffering the contempt of a metropolitan elite.

Scotland hasn't forgotten - only one Conservative MP has been elected, on the English border. But poor Wales, abandoning the radical traditions of nonconformist Cymru Cymraeg and the vibrant mass proletarian socialism of the Anglophone mining valleys, has allowed the Tories to sneak over the border to claim 8 seats. Not just in the holiday areas where English rich people have retired, but in bustling towns like Conwy and the rural Vale of Clwyd. The Lib Dems did appallingly, as did Plaid Cymru, a great socialist nationalist party. No longer can the inscrutable Welsh quietly congratulate themselves on being wiser, more longsighted and more moral than their English neighbours. No longer can I speak and write of a country devoid of the selfishness and greed of perfidious Albion.

Ach y fi, indeed.

Naive and sentimental music

Turning to my CD collection for solace, I find that the next album in my alphabetical odyssey is The Beach Boys' Smile. Now, I'm not one for hippies - I distrust the narcissism and flakiness which betrayed the efforts of serious revolutionaries in the 1950s and 1960s - and the Beach Boys were if not hippies themselves, at least soundtracked the tamer shores of hippyness. A mantra of dope and surfing does not produce radical change.

But that's all by the by. Slip on Smile and you're transported to a different psychical world. It's part of the Beach Boys' mythos, an album Brian Wilson called his 'teenage symphony to God, the never-legally-released follow-up to Pet Sounds, which Brian Wilson composed in his inspired and desperate attempt to keep up with the Beatles, a battle which led to decades of mental health problems. A version was released in 2004 and some tracks appeared on later albums, but not Smile as it was written. Oh yes - Wilson wrote the album in a big sand box he'd had installed in his living room.

'Good Vibrations' is the most famous track - under the jauntiness of the simple melody is an incredibly complex piece of music, stitched together from 30 pieces of music. Other tracks are nursery rhymes, snatches of half-remembered hymns and children's songs, underpinned with composition techniques learned from the experimental classical music scene! What's it about? America - from the Pilgrim Fathers to Hawaii.

Sadly, Wilson's mental health problems, disagreements within the band and the Beatles' releases of 'Strawberry Fields' and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ended the album's chance of release. A lost classic.

Here's Surf's Up and Good Vibrations in the amazing stereo mix (the album was composed in mono). Great Theremin! Followed by God Only Knows, from Pet Sounds. Give them a listen - under the apparent lightheartedness, there's heartbreak, fear and terror in a shiny pop package!

Remembering students with commitment

In all the depressing excitement, I forgot that 4th May was the anniversary of the Kent State Murders. My institution's Students' Union refuses to join local protests against Nazis. Kent State students turned out to protest their country's destruction of Vietnam, and four of them were shot dead by the National Guard, which fired randomly on the crowd.

Here's Ohio, the song Neil Young released a few days later to commemorate this evil act. Full story here.

Stupidity 1, Rationality 0

Dr Evan Harris, Lib Dem and friend of science, lost his seat. Homeopaths everywhere will be delighted. Everybody else: go here.

Meanwhile, Dan and Ewar live-blogged some of election night, highly amusingly and accurately. We agree that Martin Amis and his friends were horrible, that ITV is an intellectual black hole, and that Kirstie Alsop (evil Tory property TV show host) and Chris Addison (thoughtful bourgeois comedian) provided a lot of fun by drunkenly bitching about each other. Unfortunately not on Youtube.

Oh yes: the British National Party did disastrously. Their leader even lost them votes in Barking, where he stood!

A national hangover

How was the election for you? I gave up somewhere around 5 a.m. or so. I'm in an extremely bad mood and likely to remain so for the next five years: it looks like the Tories are going to form a minority government, tempered slightly by the knowledge that they can be defeated in Parliament at any point.

Gallingly, the Tories won The Dark Place by 691 votes. I'm scrutinising passers-by, wondering whether they're amongst this bunch of traitors. This city is a monument to the depredations of Conservatism, and now they've been invited back to deliver the coup de grace. Rob Marris cared for, and fought for, my university. A Tory MP won't give a damn.

What's astonishing about Paul Singh Uppal, the victorious Tory candidate here, is how little information is available about him. The Tory webpage is incredibly patronising: apparently we should vote for him because he supports Wolverhampton Wanderers (it doesn't say for how long, and he fought a seat in Birmingham last time) and he doesn't like crime! No policies, no career details (another page says he 'runs his own business' which doesn't help): he clearly has a lot to be ashamed of and I'd like to know what. I've sent him a list of questions - let's see if there's any reply. He makes a passing reference to being a fresher at Warwick university, but there's nothing substantial. He thinks the answer to a massive public sector deficit (caused by bailing out the bankers who've just paid for the Tory victory) should be: tax cuts for businesses despite repeatedly calling for more money to be spent on public services!

He also hates racial equality legislation and can't use apostrophes properly:

 The Race Relations Circus 

…the McCarthyistic mouth foaming utterances of the race relations industry, which through accusation alone can slay political careers and stifle well intentioned and principled debate. I say this because I have seen with my very own eyes the modus operandi of this circus, employing individuals to perpetuate this climate of political correctness. In reality this industry/business does dreadful damage to Britain’s race relations. It seems more concerned with securing it’s own funding streams and non jobs for it’s membership of zealots. The cost of this is all is so much more than financial, as we lose decent people and gag those who point to the emperor’s new clothes. 

Last night was a series of hammer blows as reactionary, frightening Tories defeated good and bad Labour and Liberal candidates alike. My beloved Plaid Cymru fared poorly, as did the SNP and the Lib Dems.

There are some bright spots: if the Tories can't win an outright majority in the midst of the worst depression for decades and the most unpopular prime minister ever, then they're in deep trouble. Mark thinks this is the last Tory administration - I'm not convinced but it's an intriguing prospect.

The Green victory in Brighton was a bonus too, though I wish she'd beaten a Tory instead of a Labour candidate. Actually, my emotional reaction to Labour defeats was a surprise. I despise the government so much that I thought a degree of sang-froid would be the order of the day. Instead, wave after wave of depression hit me. Not because I'll miss the New Labour faction which lobotomized the left, but because I know what will reward all these new Tory voters: more poverty for the poor, privatisation, deregulation, cuts in public services and a country which will become a playground for the unproductive rich, the tax-evaders who funded the Tory campaign and endless assaults on the BBC in the cause of Murdoch. Fewer medics, longer queues, worse schools for ordinary people, universities like mine attacked or even closed.

The Lib Dems might restrain the worst impulse of the Tories, but let's be clear: we're in for a miserable time, and our rulers will not care, because their purpose in life is to consolidate their own power and reinforce inequality to reward 'winners' in our disgusting and selfish economic system.

The other bright spot was the puncturing of the media bubble: the newspapers all chose candidates and plugged them relentlessly, and it made no difference at all. The Tories had the Murdoch press (The Sun, News of the World, The Times, The Sunday Times), the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Express and the Sunday Express. The Lib Dems had the Observer and the Guardian, while Labour had The Mirror and the Sunday Mirror. Despite all this, the Lib Dems gained 1% of the vote (and actually lost seats, thanks to our rotten system) and the Tories only gained 3-4%. So it's time for the media to shut up and stop being so self-aggrandising.

Apart from exhaustion, I'm utterly numb with despair. There's a progressive majority in this country, but we're going to get a reactionary government which openly despises the poor, the working-classes and progressive values. We're in for years of social darwinism, xenophobia and bigotry.

Everybody down the Bullingdon club

Right, as I'm expelled from the building for the second day in a row (electrical fault), I'm off to find some Tories and commit a hate crime. Have a good election day, see you in mourning in the morning.

Don't vote for this:

Music Mania

Today's number: Bat For Lashes's Fur and Gold. Er… I confess to being fooled by marketing dressed up as music journalism on this one. I used to buy NME every week and spend liberally on whatever they claimed was the great new thing. After a few years, I realised that they were mostly talking utter bollocks and became a bit more wary.

However, Bat for Lashes seemed to get rave reviews from everybody so I bought a copy. I played it. I played it again. I put it away for a few weeks because sometimes an initial listening just doesn't work, whereas a piece might sound brilliant given some time. Not on this occasion. I admit defeat. I'm not cool. Bat for Lashes sounds like a teenager's parody of KAte Bush, about whom I'm largely neutral-to-admiring.

Trapped in Stumville

Dear Dr Vole

Application for Lecturer in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

UOS000667

Thank you for your application for the above job.  After careful consideration I

regret to inform you that you have not been shortlisted for this job and we will

not be proceeding with your application.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in this job, and wish

you well in your future career.

Yours sincerely

Professor Uwe Nochance

Head of School

Bah!

Coffee spoons? Lucky bloody Prufrock

He measured out his life in them (it's in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T. S. Eliot). I fear, after this morning's 2.5 hour meeting, that my life will be measured out in minutes approval and Any Other Business. My brain is leaking from my ears and no substantial work (research, marking) has been achieved.

Shock Labour lead in Stumville South West

It's election day, for Liberal and Labour voters - Tories get to vote tomorrow.

Labour surged into a 100% share of the vote this morning, exit polls show. By 7.01, the voter had decisively swung behind Labour in this Labour-Tory marginal. When asked why, he replied 'because although Labour have betrayed the people on everything from illegal wars to civil liberties, they did bring in the minimum wage and Sure Start. And anyway, David Cameron is Sauron and I don't fancy working in Mordor'.

OK. The voter was me and nobody else had yet turned up. The Guardian's claiming an 8% lead for the Tories, which wouldn't quite give them a majority, but we'll see: national swings don't count for much in a constituency-based system. They may be doing better in their target marginals, which is bad news, and worse in their Lib Dem targets, which is good news.

The Tories look like getting 35% of the vote. If true, that's an awful result for them. Under Michael Howard, generally loathed, running against Blair (still inexplicable popular), they took 33%. If Cameron can't improve hugely on that, with his personal skills, apparent transformation of the party, in the middle of a massive depression and running against Gordon Brown, then he's an idiot. They should have had the result sewn up years ago. How have they blown it?

I didn't cast my vote for Labour with any enthusiasm. My local MP, Rob Marris, has been an excellent constituency representative and very good on university issues, but he's voted for every reactionary proposal New Labour has dreamed up. Yet again, it's a matter of voting for the 'least worst'. I actually would be very happy with a Lib Dem-Labour coalition: the Lib Dems would tame Labour's authoritarian, reactionary streak, and Labour would rein in the Lib Dems' concealed neoconservative economic policies. However, Rob gets my vote for his personal qualities too.

All the newspaper front pages are here.

I'm reading The Spirit Level at the moment, a social science book for the rest of us, which conclusively demonstrates that unequal societies are sick, violent and mentally ill. Not just the poor in unequal societies, but the rich are less healthy and happy too. I've learned a couple of things from it: I need to move to Norway, and that Cameron's Big Society is utter, utter bullshit. His tax policy - in the deepest recession for 70 years - is to cut taxes for the super-rich. This will make the UK more unequal, and therefore sicker and more violent. Drink and drug dependency will increase and quality of life will suffer. But hey: toffs will be able to rip apart foxes again.

Follow this link for a presentation of the most important graphs proving the points made in the book.

To boldly go…

The inaugural lecture of the CTTR is by Prof Jan Borm, an über-academic: German, Chair of English Literature at a French university, giving us a tour d'horizon of Arctic studies in German, English, French, Russian, Danish, East Siberian, Czech and Inuit cultures, taking in Foucault, Rousseau and everything in between, delivered with panache.

OK, I have an academic crush. And after the warm white wine, I'm going to break into my quarantined office to (as Faustus puts it) 'burn my books'.

Author to look up: Jean Malaurie. One of his four volumes of autobiography about his 32 Arctic journeys, Hummocks, is available in English and sounds fascinating.

Place your X (-Factor) here

Today's newspapers are depressing: moronic, manipulative and arrogant (The Express: 'Only David Cameron Can Save Britain' FFS). The worst is The Sun, that racist, reactionary mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch. Bored with mindlessly cheerleading for David Cameron and worried that it won't scare voters away from Brown and Clegg enough, they've turned to… reality TV.

Most depressingly of all: Cowell's on record claiming never to have voted. But in the minds of Murdoch and his executives, that doesn't matter. He's famous, and Sun readers know who he is. Therefore they should do what he says.

I give up. I'm also ashamed that I, and you, know who he is.

The exile returns

Hail comrades. Sorry for the silence: Vulcan intervened, and when I got back to the office this afternoon, I was immediately booted out after an electrical fault closed the building. We're now faced with the delayed launch of the Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Studies - with the warm white wine locked back in our building! Noooo…

Meanwhile, I had time to take this delightful photograph of a promotion plastered across the lift doors in my building…

So now for whom do we vote?

We vote for whomsoever is grammatically and syntactically accurate. I've heard Clegg and Cameron use 'less' where they mean fewer, and thus (by a process of elimination), I'm left with Brown. Yes, he colluded with the financial industry to bankrupt us all - but so did Cameron. Yes, he launched an illegal war - but Cameron supported him. Clegg? Too rightwing, and I'm in a Tory/Labour marginal, so it's all down to minutiae, and I take my stand over 'fewer', especially as Brown had a free education and Cameron/Clegg's parents paid handsomely for their offspring.

Back Wednesday, Lugh permitting!

Meanwhile, voters should study this:

The state will become a Conservative fiefdom, with even local police forces directly run by Tory politicians in the name of "democratic accountability". The City of London will not be reformed. Wealth will become ever more concentrated in fewer hands. Scotland, Wales and many English regions will be devastated by swingeing public spending cuts – almost their sole economic prop for the last decade – and by ongoing de-industrialisation.

The management of an economy burdened by excessive private debt, fragile banks and a faltering economic recovery will be ideological. The prison population will grow even faster than under Labour as populist social repression intensifies.

There will be some worthwhile improvements – the scrapping of ID cards and aspects of the Big Society programme which has been too quickly dismissed by liberal critics – but in the round Britain will become a meaner, less generous and more unequal society despite David Cameron's declared intentions. This will be Murdoch's Britain, with the BBC to be cut back and Sky's influence extended. Government will be in thrall to the right of centre press. The sale of our companies to the highest foreign bidder will accelerate.