Mock the Vote

A lot of you have written to ask, just how will you be voting, come polling day, if you can be bothered, that is, to shift your arse and walk down to the polling station?

Obviously, I cannot speak for the other members of the team, whose political views range from rabid right wing frothing mouthed New Labour supporters to basically Communist Green Party supporters.

Myself, I don't think I have much choice on the day, because I live in a "safe" Conservative seat, and though there are candidates from UKIP, Labour and Lib Dem, I think that just about does it. The Lib Dem candidate is a mere slip of a lad, 24 years old, so you can tell how seriously they're taking the whole thing.

So here's my reasoning.

• Conservative. I will never. Ever. Forgive them. For what they did to this country. The breakdown in our society, the selfishness, the violence, the mean streak that afflicts us, the state of our transport system, the state of our hospitals, the state of our schools and even those school dinners: all their fault. Ringtones, directory enquiries, cowboy clampers, cowboy gas/electricity/telecoms companies, drought, crap music in the charts: all their fault.


• UKIP. Why do people hate the EU? Because, socially, the EU is basically socialist. UKIP are essentially people too mealy-mouthed to join the Bee eN Pee.


• Labour. It's not that you had an affair - it's who you had it with. The war in Iraq raises many issues, but the major one for me has been the unedifying spectacle of a Labour government - a Labour government! - going to war as closest ally to and at the behest of a bonkers right wing regime: the Bush administration. There is something badly wrong in the world when the oil company-backed puppet president of some seriously whacky people is able to persuade a Labour government to go to war on a platform of "energy security."
  
  And it's not just that you had an affair - you didn't wear a condom. They just wanted rid of Saddam, so they had absolutely no regard for what would happen after they'd achieved that. Not enough troops for a proper occupation and no plan for the peace.
  
  As for identity cards - don't get me started. Do they think I'm stupid?
  
  Vote Blair get Brown? Maybe - but I've little faith in Gordon Brown. He's a tinkerer. The tax system now bears all the hallmarks of a tinker, a meddler. It's not clean, it's not transparent. Little tweaks here and there, that's what you get with Mr Brown. At least the Lib Dems have always been honest about their tax plans.


• Lib Dem - 1% on income tax, they've been saying it for years - fine. Do it. Do something. Against the war. Fine. Against identity cards - fine. In favour of votes for prisoners - er, not an election winner. Capable of running the country? Probably not, but then nobody else in politics really is.

If there was a Green candidate, I might consider it, because I think that ultimately we'll all have to like being Green or lump it. But there isn't. Perhaps I should join the party and run myself, next time. I'd make a great Prime Minister - despotic but always right.

And finally, a special message for the nation's farmers: next time you're reeling from a self-inflicted wound, a foot-and-mouth epidemic, or BSE, or floods, fire and famine, I'm going to think about all those "Vote Conservative" posters I saw in your fields, next to the piles of manure and rusting machinery. Self reliance, hangin', floggin', huntin' with hounds - that's who you are. So when you next need help - help yourself.