Foxy Politics


Here’s one to think about when we have to go to the polls again later on in the year (I recommend getting there early this time). Dunno where this came from but it made me chuckle.

I find it very hard to resist a political movement which boasts the support of both Queen’s lead guitarist, still resplendent in his perm, and Francis Rossi OBE. However, my support for this very noble cause has been tempered by the little bastard who left a huge pat of runny turd in my vegetable patch this week. This is the latest in a long, cowardly campaign to disrupt my growing season, and I know our local fox is the culprit.

Forever finding huge stools and dirty great holes dug among my seedlings is really starting to get on my wick. While I am totally and utterly opposed to hunting down these magnificent animals, this particular one is gonna feel my boot straight in his goolies if I ever catch him. Magnificent Mr Fox, my arse.

Heidi Unlikely


Well what to make of all that then? Certainly a lot better than when I retired to my bed last night. Quite, quite amazing. After 13 years and all the disasters that have befallen the Labour Party, the Tories STILL didn’t run away with it. And where did that Liberal surge disappear to??? Gives you some faith in your fellow citizen’s judgment- if indeed your fellow citizen actually managed to get a vote at all. What a fiasco that was. Sorry, I don’t mean fiasco, I mean heinous crime. I think I can imagine my reaction to being turned away at the ballot box. May have had a little word, as I know many did. Legal challenges to come, no doubt. Whatever way it takes the actual result, this surely hasn’t been a triumph for democracy and something has to be done.

Maybe we’ll get a re-run anyway because, as I write at 08.32, it’s still very unclear which way it’ll go. Personally, I think we’ve had a result. If in October/November last year you’d have given Gordon a whiff of a chance of a coalition he’s have bitten your arm off. And if it does go the other way, and Tory government being reigned in by the Liberals is surely more palatable than a huge Conservative majority as was looking to be the case just a few months ago.

Whether or not we have another election to either the polling station scandal, or to decide once-and-for-all who runs the country again, I suspect that Gordon Brown (texture like sun) has had his chips, with or without curry sauce. What prince Alan Johnson for next leader ?

News just in: Heidi Alexander has just held Lewisham East for Labour, so our little village of Blackheath sends another Labour MP to the commons (for now anyway). In the words of Joan Collins “WhooHoo”.

But let us not get too happy with ourselves. Let us spend a moment to think of all those who sadly will not be with us anymore, at least as far as this round of political shenanigans goes:

Peter Robinson DUP. (East Belfast)

Jaqui Smith, LAB (Blockbuster Video, North)

Charles Clarke, LAB (Backstabbers Union)

Limpet Optic, LIB (TV Studio Anywhere, South)

Nick Giffen, Waffen SS (Berchtesgaden, West)

Esther Rantzen, IND (Lala Land North)

As the sun goes down. We won’t remember them.

Good Riddance.

Results Just In


12.25: Joan Collins comes out for the Tories (shock) and tells Andrew Neil that “David Cameron, WhooWhoo!” (punches the air) “He’ll make a great Prime Minister because he has a very good look” (I’m not making any of this up, check it out on iPlayer)

Victor Meldrew (or at least the bloke who plays him) declares he wanted PR all along (having bigged-up Gordon for years).

Martin Amis, looks like he’s been on the shandy since early on, manages to say “Clegg” using four syllables. “Ch-ll-eel-gh” well done! Have another sip. Mind you, if I’d have been sat next to David Starkey all night I’d be tempted to have a snifter or two.

Hang on a minute! Am I actually watching the BBC’s election coverage? Who’s next to give their considered opinion? Timmy Mallet?

Exit Poll, Exit Democracy


12.00: Polling stations running out of ballot papers? Others able to handle the numbers of people turning up to vote? Polling lists not updated, leaving people not being allowed to vote ? Disenfanchised would-be voters staging sit-ins in protest at not being able to place their cross on the ballot paper ? Some stations kept open to let people vote after the exit poll was declared. This really is appalling. Anyone would think Jeb Bush was the returning officer. If it happens around here, they’ll be Hanging Chavs all over South London. Fly in the UN Observers!

More as it comes in.

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Back to You in the Studio


So how long did you stay up? I went into this evening with such a great determination to see it through til the early hours. After all this is the most exciting of elections in living memory, isn’t it? Well that’s what the BBC kept telling me. Tight as a gnat’s chuff, apparently. As I start this post it’s 11.15 pm and I’m already wilting. At 10 o’clock the exit poll was announced and it declared that, after all that had gone on over the past four weeks, the Tories and the Labour party had run away with it, with the Liberals in a poor third. Maybe the Beeb has it all wrong (again) but it does seem depressingly familiar.

10.49 brought the first result from the constituency of Sunderland Somewhere. They’d employed an army of small boys, running like the wind, to carry the ballot boxes to the counters, (bank tellers, I’m told) who ripped through the piles of votes at the speed of light to ensure they declared their result before any other count. If you lived in Sunderland, wouldn’t you want a little more care spent over your precious vote? I know I would. Bloody annoyed me. Felt the whole system was being trivialised. How wrong I was. I was peaking far too early. When Dom Jolly, Kelly Holmes, Bruce Forsyth, Fern Britton and Don Logan from Sexy Beast were asked to contribute to the night, I knew that this was the time when serious political thought and coverage was crashing down to earth like a UKIP Nazis in a PZL-104 Wilga 35A Polish fixed-wing aircraft.

The one thing keeping me awake is the appalling news that large numbers of people have been locked out of polling stations, the system seeming unable to cope with the late rush from the night workers, the Dog and Duck or wherever. Who the Hazel bears is running this debacle? Robert Mugabe ?

Anyway, not wanting to go on like an extended Twitter, I shall leave you to watching the coverage. And anyway, Eric Pickles has just come on the TV and I feel like being violently sick.

More as we get it.

Kevin Philips Bong


Oh fuck it! I wasn’t going to, but why not ? Haven’t watched it for a while, it doesn’t do any harm, and certainly no more silly (or even slightly silly) than the BBC coverage. Fuck me! They’ve just had Sir Ben Kingsley standing next to Bruce Forsyth in an interview about the exit poll !! Jesus H Christ. So glad the BBC isn’t dumbing down ! (apologies for all the exclamation marks) (!)

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The Conveyor Belt


If you’re sitting at home, trying to remember what the last batch of Tories were like, help is at hand. I can bring all those memories flooding back:

Now, doesn’t that give you a nice warm feeling all over? Like the time you tried to slit your wrists in the bath ?

But never fear, dear reader. Just put your cross in the wrong box tomorrow and, on Friday, you can start to enjoy the class of 2010: Same old lovely, trustworthy, salt-of-the-earth sort of chaps.

I say you can enjoy it, I shall be under the duvet crying into my bottle of scotch. Put the cat out for me, would you ?

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Yellow Lines


Unlike me, Nick Clegg spent his Bank Holiday Monday in Blackheath. I, of course, was stuck in the office. I’m not saying he has any influence in the rotas in my office, but it seems strange to me that the one bank holiday Monday I’m not banging on the door of a pub in my village, urging it to open, Mr Clegg took to the streets of SE3 to drum up support for his party at the upcoming election. All very exciting for the people of the village, I’m sure ,and proof that everything is to play for in the hotly-contested constituency of Lewisham East, which covers our little part of London.

I don’t suppose he missed me much, though I have seen several snaps of Mrs C anxiously looking around to see if she might catch a glimpse of me. Oh well, she’ll catch me next time. By the way, if you do what I did the other night and close your eyes as Nick Clegg speaks, doesn’t he sound like Jimmy Carr?? Honestly, try it. It’d be a much better election if Jimmy Carr, Alan Carr and Johnny Vegas were the three candidates, at least the debates would be worth listening to.

Anyway, I have no real problem with Mr Clegg, and it’s about time someone prominent in this whole debacle turned up to tell us our votes actually matter. BUT. How the fuck does he get to park his dirty great bus on the Blackheath one-way system without getting a ticket ? Surely this is a politcal scandal of Profumo magnitude. A man of the people? My arse! I haven’t seen any footage of him as Mrs C looking for loose change in the well by the gearstick, then legging it up to the parking meter before the parking wardens slap a post-it to his windscreen.

Blackheath has, I believe (though I’m sure some pedant will put me right) a couple of lads employed as traffic wardens (by whom I know not), beautifully adorned in lurid bright blue uniforms, and woe betide anyone who pops into the newsagents for a lottery ticket of a packet of gaspers. On their return they can consider themselves rather fortuitous if there isn’t a little note pinned under the wiper blades, asking them to cough up. These blokes are swift and determined. One suspects a lucrative bonus scheme is in operation.

And why the hell not? The village is congested enough and the little streets can darely deal with traffic and the legal parkers as it is, let alone that lovely breed of double-parkers who feel the laws don’t really apply to them (but surely not our politicians).

So anyway, Cleggy saves himself a quid or two (he better not claim for it !!!!) and the poor sods in the Everest Inn nepalese restaurant were treated to whopping great photos of Nick and his uncle Vince beaming at them from the back of the bus as they prepared the lamb tikkas and the mismas for today’s punters. There did seem, having studied the photos, a large number of nepalese and/or gurkas cheering Clegg on. I wonder what the connection is? Does he double-tip when he leaves The Saffron ? Do they give him extra After Eights and hot towels ? Does he declare this ?

A pal tells me (and I believe him) that Clegg pledged that, if elected, local hostelries would never again be short of lemons, the introduction of a cap on estate agents in the village, and a unilateral ban on green foam top-hats on St Patrick’s Day. A Blackheath border patrol would limit the numbers of Eltham Nazis coming into the village on a Friday night and standing in my spot at the bar, and he will fund a high-speed bus link to Greenwich (or anywhere else, come to think of it).


You can see what another local lad thought of it all here
(he has the slight advantage on me of having actually been there)

Well nice try, Nick, but I’m sticking with Gordon. He pays his parking fees (I’m pretty sure), I could never vote for a Jimmy Carr impersonator and I can’t trust a man in a yellow tie. Last time I wore one was at my wedding, and we know what a balls-up that was !