This is a plan?

Well I don’t know about you but the general election year has got away to a cracking start. It’s hard to tell policy from parody as Labour seem intent on whipping up hysteria from every formerly forgotten corner of the realm, on enlisting the help of anybody gullible enough to cast their ballot in favour of state ownership of their very souls. Not content with their usual ‘cruel Tory’ stories - you know the stuff; half eaten babies discarded in bus shelters to be sexually abused by grandees and Lords under the protection of Her Majesty herself – they seem intent on self-destruction by comedy construct.

Pink battle buses, presumably to appeal to the under-tens, a refusal to properly condemn the abusers of the under-tens if there’s a vote in it, Ed Miliband’s potentially slanderous statements in the House of Commons, Tristram Hunt’s nun-bashing, Ed Balls forgetting Bill Somebody’s name, Diane Abbott's mayoral ambitions, rent-control, fuel price freezing... the list goes on. And on… And on. The ‘an owl for everybody’ spoof doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, does it?

It is clear to those with an independent, un-addled brain that all of Labour’s pretend policies are made up on the hoof; knee-jerk gimmicks to try and be all things to all people. The trouble with that approach - as Kinnock discovered to his electoral cost - is though you can fool some of the people all of the time, those people are already voting Labour and as fast as they breed, there still aren’t quite enough of them to be sure of tipping the balance. Kinnock of course had to swallow his pride, give up on British socialism and go off to and become a multi-millionaire… as a passenger on the juggernaut of much less accountable European socialism.

What ought to be abundantly clear is that truth has no place in politics – especially as so many voters demand it – what matters is how you package up the lies you control. While David Cameron can disguise his offerings with an expensive and flashy gift-wrap and a nice shiny bow, Nigel Farage will offer you a no-frills what-you-see-is-what you get package, in a plain brown wrapper. Even Nick Clegg can still at least pop his cheap plonk in a Tesco’s single bottle gift bag and Natalie Bennett, eschewing the damage that unnecessary packaging does to the environment, unapologetically brings no gift to the party. Ed Miliband, meanwhile, is still in the corner, a sticky ball of uncoordinated glitter, bells and saggy bows, gibbering slightly and high on Sellotape™ fumes.

Labour's not-very-magic Battle Bus

With the SNP about to eliminate Labour in Scotland just as the Scots did for the Tories (Scottish independence is surely in all our best interests?) and the Greens and Ukip taking great bites out of Labour’s former shoo-ins I have a sneaking suspicion that Ed, like Gordon before him, would actually prefer to lose. Why, given Labours’ abysmal record with money, would they risk taking over the reins of an economy not yet out of the slump? No, let the Tories fix it up, get us into the black and then there’ll be more to spend – pink buses for everybody! My money is on Ed leading Labour to another five years of whinging and moaning and belittling success from the sidelines; after all, it’s where they seem happiest. 

Rank Hypocrisy

Well, I am on notice that no electoral matters will be allowed on the premises. ‘Her indoors’ has had a day filled with Labour & Tory General Election launches, pledges, manifestos, dossiers, claims, counter claims and outright lies and bullshit. Me, I’ve been at work so I don’t get to hear any of it and I truly miss the bullshit above all. From what I have managed to pick up both the main parties have turned stark, staring mental.

I’ve heard a rumour that David Cameron threatened his ministers with expulsion unless they back his pro-EU stance but then signalled to Angela Merkel that he just might be prepared to campaign for out and then – still rumour as far as I know – dangled the carrot of a referendum being offered in 2016 instead of the end of 2017. If his plan is to run interference with the scrambled brains of an already confused electorate then it’s working. We don’t know if he’s in, out or shaken all about. Just imagine the confusion as soon as he puts his left arm in…

Then there’s Labour. Their toothless attack dogs have been frothing at the mouth since the start of the new year, spouting all sorts of ridiculous charges against the Tories: they still eat babies, Iain Duncan Smith personally kicks away the crutches of the disabled; George Osborne dances and claps with joy when he sees misery and David Cameron user poor people as literal doormats to keep his shoes clean. Meanwhile Labour’s grasp of economics is still mired in fantasy and class war, Labour vowing to tax England more to pay for nurses in a separate country, Scotland.

“Whatever anybody else promises you, we will promise more!” seems to be Labour’s electoral strategy. Given the rabid outpourings of their supporters it’s a gambit that may well pay off – after all, they have been paying poor people for votes for far too long to abandon that successful business model. So expect another 120 days of the electoral barrage as each side abandons Britain’s real interests in order to muckrake, disparage and generally gainsay the others. Add to this the Greens, Ukip, the SNP and whoever is your local ‘third party’ and your doorbells will be ringing like a massed band of marauding Krishnas.

They all want your vote and they’ll pretend to be your friend to get it, which brings me to my second gripe. It seems that, confused by a plethora of unusual rank insignia, British servicemen are opting to take the lowest common denominator approach to recognising their superiors - treating them as equals. The use of saluting and calling senior people ‘Sir’ is a part of forces life and while it may sit uneasily with the egalitarians out there it is merely a formal way of recognising the hierarchy necessary to run an efficient and disciplined organisation.

Politicians and political activists would do well to remember that. When they’re in office they may well acquire top-dog status and be deserving of a deferential doff of the cap. But when they are on the doorstep, grovelling for my ‘X’ they are the underdog and woe betide the smarmy vote-seeker who dares to call me ‘mate’. Whatever your party colours, I’m not your mate and you’re certainly not mine. 

Old Battsby’s Almanac

'Tis the season to be forecastin’ and now the Great Battsby  reveals – in an exciting two-part collector’s edition – what the fuck is what for the coming year. Hear ye, hear ye, for all I foretell may come to pass… and then you’ll look pretty daft if you’re not prepared. (Example Top Tip: stock up on Marmite. As a typical British delicacy there is a buzz in Brussels that the EU are intending to make it illegal. You heard it here first.) And now, before my crystal balls fog up:

January

There will be snow. In parts; not all parts. I’m on safe ground here in predicting that the country will go into shutdown mode.  As oil and gas prices tumble, heating will become so cheap that marauding ideologues will need to sabotage fuel tankers rather than concede their trite point that people need to choose between eating and heating. As people sit in the cosy and cheap warmth of their homes rather than brave the chilly commute to work, protesters will take to the streets having chosen cheating before heating.

February

The NHS finally succumbs. After twenty years of there being just six days to save it, it takes just six days to sell off every part in a massive public offering, clearing the deficit at a stroke. Shares rapidly rise; leading Labour to denounce the coalition’s cut-price rip off of the UK taxpayers. Within months waiting lists are halved by skilful new management and bouncer-assisted triage and in a ruinous twist for Labour many individuals see a boost to their pensions and retire to the sun, thus further relieving the strain on healthcare. Andy Burnham, in a desperate attempt to claw back some credibility, buys his own hospital and runs it into bankruptcy within a few weeks.

March

In an unusual coalition of enemies, Labour, Conservatives and LibDems form a giant new party to campaign under the single slogan ‘We are not Ukip’, carpet-bombing the electorate with leaflets claiming that all Ukip prospective MPs – especially former Labour, Conservative and LibDem ones - are vampires, racists and serial killers. Ukip’s polling surges to over 30% with support from Prince Phillip and - for the first time - The Queen herself declaring for Farage. The old three parties and their flag-wavers still remain clueless as to how this could possibly be.

April

It rains and rains and rains, just as it always does in spring. Three houses are flooded in Somerset and a wave washes a child’s abandoned toy off a seawall in Devon prompting environmental activists to boycott the seaside and mount protests at Downing Street demanding action. In a freak accident a few unwashed eco-warriors are injured when a burst water main causes their ancient VW camper van’s bald tyres to aqua-plane off the road during yet another Balcombe anti-fracking intervention. This is seized upon by Natalie Bennett as evidence of Global Wettening. It immediately stops raining and The Greens poll rating slumps below 1%. Again

May

The general election proves dramatic and confounds all the pollsters. Labour, campaigning to avoid discussion of any issue of national importance – on which they are universally wrong – push a vague agenda of ‘being nicer’ to everybody. The Greens lose their only MP. The LibDems lose every deposit except Vince Cable’s, who nevertheless loses his seat. And between them Labour and the Conservatives retain just 20% of the overall vote. Turnout is at a record high although voters reject most political parties in favour of the newly included ‘none of the above’ option. At 15% Ukip are invited to preside over a coalition of ‘none of the above’ and decide to declare the election void. Without a government the UK’s international standing rises to its highest in over a century and across Europe countries clamour to leave the EU and join the UK. The Euro falls to a value of just 23p.

There may be trouble ahead...

June

The rains subside, the sun comes out and my crystal ball begins to mist up… I see swirling vapours and turmoil; there may be trouble ahead… 

...to be continued.

Autumn Statement

Ah, the Autumn Statement; that recently minted mini-budget bodge and an opportunity to electioneer for all the Chancellor is worth. A bit of a tinker with this tax a bit of a smidge off that, a tap of the magic wand and - poof! – all’s wonderful again. A few hundred people better off by a bob or two, a few hundred worse off by a handful of shekels and the economy cured by a sleight of hand most amateur of conjurers would immediately recognise. “Where’s the tax cut?” shouts the audience plant. “It’s up his sleeve!” replies the audience and then they all gasp in unison as he produces a bunch of flowers from up his arse.

It’s an undignified spectacle during which one man tries to make the numbers tell one story and a few well-rehearsed adversaries try to convince us it’s all a pack of lies. At the end of the performance we all turn back to our mundane lives, turn out our empty pockets and realise that money truly does talk; in our case it says "goodbye". Nothing has changed at all. Ed Balls, Chuka Umunna, Danny Alexander and Uncle Tom Cobley and all were cued up across the news channels, eager to claim credit, disparage, chide or challenge and yet not one of them had anything genuinely useful to say.

Labour’s only real response to the statement, along with all their legions of creepy activists, was to take to social media to decry the failure of the coalition to balance the books and then foolishly to suggest that Labour could do better. Even most Labour supporters know that their blighted stewardship of the economy - even during a boom - was ideologically feckless, wasteful and downright incompetent. And come on, even if you honestly believed Ed Balls had it in him to reject all that he supported in government you still have to face the reality that if you vote for Balls there’s the horrible possibility you’ll get Miliband. As Prime Minister. Think about that for a moment.

Has that moment of madness passed? Good. To even suggest for one minute that any sane country could hand back the reins to a party that pioneered policy finagled by carefully selected focus group and that embarked on the biggest, most disastrous social engineering experiment this nation has ever seen is infantilist delusion beyond risibility. Don’t even dare. The mere fact that the opposition has suddenly shifted focus back from the NHS to the economy and their beloved ‘cost of living crisis’ line is surely evidence that they have absolutely nothing positive to offer.

None of this is real...

So jump up and down and wave your banners, whoever you support, whoever you believe. Then when the euphoria subsides, when the two-minute hate/joy/delirium passes, trudge back out into the cold, wet dark winter streets and have a good look around. Budgets are for selling newspapers and keeping commentators in work; they are not for the likes of us. No government is going to solve your life for you, least of all any government that fervently believes it can. If you haven’t decided which way to vote – for make no mistake the election starts here – vote for the party which promises to do as little as possible to interfere with your existence. That’s your job and yours alone. 

The Greatest Show on Earth?

So, this car pulls up, all the doors fall off and a funny-looking bloke with daft hair and ill-fitting clothes gets out and hilariously ‘soaks’ the audience with a bucket of glitter and a squirty flower on his lapel. Enter Ed Miliband to the rousing rendition of Entry of the Gladiators and all those in the audience look nervously at each other, unsure whether to laugh… or stampede for the exits. What fresh experimental, presentational hell is this?

The Labour Party is in panic; nine months to a general election and not a single credible policy in sight. Even in opposition, which ought to be easy, the rigid sticking to gimmicky cries of ‘flatlining’, ‘he just doesn’t get it’ and ‘cost of living crisis’ has failed to make a dent in support for the Conservatives, while any hanging onto Labour vote pledges is entirely accounted for by people who would vote for a month-old turd if it sported a red rosette. Labour is desperate and so desperate is it, it wants to give Ed one more chance.

So here it was, his bi-monthly, make-or-break speech where he would finally differentiate himself from the uni-dimensional portrayal of schoolboy Marxist so beloved of the tabloids. What did he do? He repeated all the usual, insubstantial, ineffectual, impotent, aphoristic, idealistic, unachievable juvenile gumpf  about fixing things that are so far out of his compass as to be practically celestial and then, in order to distance himself from the beauty parade of politics he referred to himself as looking like Wallace and made light of ‘BaconGate’. What a fucking tool.

Ed thought that by making a joke about the pig buttie business he could become a self-deprecating, down to earth man of the people. No Ed, no matter that nobody believes you can achieve a single one of your wild visions, it was just possible that while you were off on your flight of fantasy, some people were engaged enough to forget about what an idiot you are… but then you reminded them. Send in the fucking clowns indeed; Mock the Week is unlikely to come calling any time soon.

His main point seemed to be that he couldn’t compete in Glamour Politics with the likes of David Cameron who, despite all you may think of him, looks the part. He certainly looks better IN the part than Miliband ever could. Neither would Ed engage in Gesture Politics, promising things that, while sounding like good ideas, were undeliverable. Maybe he hopes we will have forgotten his vote-winning intervention in the energy markets last year - mere empty words being enough to put everybody’s electricity bills up at a stroke.

“If you want a politician who thinks that a good photo is the most important thing, then don’t vote for me,” says Ed, the man who posed with the Sun newspaper to the chagrin of the most intransigently tribal Labour voters in the land. He then went on to have publicity photos taken which may as well have been captioned: "Look at me with all the brown, lady people NOT exploiting a photo opportunity!” Desperation, thy name is Beaker and thou art a Muppet.

There's a reason you can't buy publicity like this.

Ed’s attempts to appear normal are painful. His attempts to explain how he understands that he doesn’t appear normal only make it so much worse. Whatever he thinks the people of Britain want, they definitely don’t want somebody who pretends to care about what he thinks they ought to care about… I think. What Miliband’s joke writers may have missed in their frenzied re-branding of the damaged goods their leader represents is that Send in the Clowns is a song about rejection.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

It’s a confusing world out there for the unwary voter. On the one hand, you are told, the Nasty Tory Storm-troopers will come rampaging through your homes in dawn raids to wrench your children from your bosom, burn down your property and put your old dad out into the street to beg. On the other hand those lovely, caring Labours will fix everything for free, heal the sick, feed the multitude and reverse global warming or cooling - whatever – and it won’t cost you a penny because they will make the energy companies and the bankers pay for it all. I know; it’s a tough call, right? (The LimpDems will, of course, just watch from the sidelines.)

But here’s the thing, see, what evidence do you have that any of those warnings or promises will come to pass? Labour are laying it on thick about the baby-eating ambitions of the evil Tory villains, but is any of it actually true? Seriously, has the sky really caved in? How many hospitals have been pillaged for spare parts? Hasn’t public spending more or less stayed as it was? Have they somehow accelerated whatever it is the climate-changers say is changing? The fact is none of you know; not one of you. People would have died, got sick, become more stupid or polluted the planet whoever was in power and not a single one of us is sufficiently well-informed to accurately apportion blame. You need hindsight for that and even that can be unreliable.

Well, as it happens, as far as Labour is concerned at least, we actually do have some hindsight; not only are they responsible for creating the gory mess that is multicultural, low wage Britain, they even have the gall to admit it and moreover that they spent every last penny – and then some – in doing so. They even confess now that they would have to be just as austere as the coalition, phrasing that as tough talk on the economy. Yet at the same time they appear to be promising to restore the benefits (that the coalition haven’t really taken away) which is sort of tempting if you don’t understand any of this. And by way of largely irrelevant distraction, David Cameron’s father-in-law is going to make a packet from wind farm subsidies. The bastard. You should hate him because he’s rich. Boo!

It shouldn’t be necessary to be politically sophisticated to be able to make an informed choice. But when people can’t even rely on their own memories what chance is there? For instance, which came first, the tax credits or the depressed wages or the immigration flood, all of which are interlinked? And those windmills; are they a good thing, bringing energy security? Or are they just another way to rob the poor and give to the rich? Did the coalition really deliberately flood Somerset? For the average disconnected voter it is almost impossible to discern how much current strife is the result of which administration. Atos, for instance, was appointed by Labour and not as people are eager to believe, by the Tories.

If politics was actually about governance there would be no need for party politics. Like any giant company, the nation would simply appoint the best managers and accountants and scientists and engineers and lawyers and replace them as and when necessary. Regions would act like subsidiaries, responsible to the people who paid their wages and town councils would be hired and fired and held to account directly by citizens. If politics was about governance.

But it’s not. Politics is about power, ONLY about power; getting into power, having power and retaining power. In a private, profit-seeking company the very word ‘politics’ generally implies distasteful and counter-productive manoeuvring, often contrary to the company’s best interests. National politics, like stage magic, is a game played in the public gaze, masquerading as acting in the greater good whilst concealing the real motives which are rarely concerned with such outcomes. The general public and many MPs never quite grasp the prestidigitatory nature of the game and still believe you can genuinely change things in an instant – now that WOULD be magic.

So, in the run up to next year’s general election you can forget about governance altogether. The coalition has made all the changes it realistically can and they are hoping for continued good economic news. The opposition has rushed out so much paper policy in the last few weeks, it’s unlikely they will attempt any more, but they are going to ignore the economy and concentrate on how you feel. From now on it’s all about sloganeering. The governing parties will promise you fiscal responsibility and a steady hand on the tiller, while the opposition will promise, promise, promise knowing that people, having not really paid attention, will vote for bread now, not understanding that, with less government interference, cake is within their grasp.  

It’s a mess, but there is a solution. Belgium recently ran without a government for a year and a half and nobody really noticed because the government doesn’t actually run things at all; it just talks about running things and occasionally rouses mobs of gap-toothed, frothy-mouthed villagers with burning torches to mob the streets and demand… er, something or other. Then everybody goes home and nothing really changes. So, if you’re unsure where to place your ‘X’ next May you could do worse than vote for whichever party is offering you the least. That way, you won’t be disappointed.

Keeping up at the back

Watching Top Gear last night I was brought up short when the year – and Hugh Bonneville’s television show – 2012 was mentioned. In my mind the London Olympics only just happened but no, it was the year before last. Jeremy Clarkson later tried to reason that time travelled slower in the past because, at the age of twenty-five a year was one twenty-fifth of your life, whereas at fifty a year occupies a mere fiftieth. It certainly feels as if the calendar pages are flicking by at an alarming rate, like the old movie gimmick.

And as time appears to pass more quickly, the pace of what is often called progress also picks up and the world goes by in a blur. To a twenty-something a five-year motorway widening project becomes an interminable part of their entire driving life whereas we grey-hairs think, gosh that was quick – I remember when all this was fields. Similarly, for all the new, first-time-eligible voters in 2015 the New Labour project is a backdrop to all the rosy memories of childhood, yet long enough ago that their only political recollections will be the five years of strife that accompanied their GCSEs, A-levels and struggle to enter the job market. (No wonder Labour want callow, spotty youths to be given the vote)

To proper grown-ups, however, the coalition has hardly had a chance to get their feet under the table and sheer common sense says that with the signs of recovery on the way we shouldn’t be changing horses in mid-stream… and other sayings from ‘the olden days’. We have lots of such old saws, we ancients, such as “The proof of the pudding…” and “A stitch in time…” and  something about doing things more quickly by taking the time and hurrying up… or something. Obviously, at our age we can’t be expected to remember all the details but we know they are wise words.

We also know that all the political headline-grabbing on all sides is ephemeral frippery; here today, gone tomorrow. Scandals, lies and sensational claim and counter claim. Fraud, embezzlement, accusations, refutations and the occasional public apology. There is almost nothing that a modern politician can’t overcome simply by waiting for our imperfect memories to file their misdemeanours away under, ‘meh’. While the rest of us may be forever unemployable following a spell ‘inside’ it seems to do public figures no harm at all; if anything the added ‘colour’ can sometimes even be the making of them.

And yet, for all the enormity of electing a parliament, on which the basics have never changed – we want experience, energy, vision, leadership and fiscal prudence – we are distracted by the immediacy of keeping up with modern life. Only when they’ve struggled on  for a few more decades will the new voters realise that all the time they spent on Pinterest and Spotify and Tumblr and Facebook and Angry Birds and FaceSpace and YouHoo and HiYah! and Buzznet and Flickr and Haribo and Yolo and Rolo and Ohoho was mere padding to fill the days when time passed so slowly. The important stuff was all happening in the background – where only the old people could see it.

Stop the EU, I want to get off!

In 1966 Millicent Martin starred in the film version of Anthony Newley's musical ‘Stop the World I want to get off’ encapsulating forever that feeling we all get when time accelerates and you no longer want to keep up and understand what ‘the young people’ are talking about. 2015 may well be the last election that gives the British people a choice in how their country is run and the worrying thing is an increasingly large part of the electorate are so disengaged and distracted they don’t seem to grasp this. Britain is at last open for business again but I just know this year is going to fly by – I only hope we don’t remember it as the year we all got off and shut up shop.

Manifest Nonsense

It’s a rum old game of deception, is politics. Spoof, poker and real-life liar dice all rolled into one but with human stakes. The consequences of getting it wrong are enormous, but it’s simpler than you think and no qualifications are needed. Actually, no qualifications would be preferable; in the days when most MPs came from the world of work you at least had some idea of what they stood for, right or wrong.

Now, however, in the age of the professional hot-house grown, mass-produced political clone they all look and sound the same and you have to work much harder to work out whose side they are on. Not, it would seem, the side of the masses who supposedly vote for them but who are kept in the dark by obfuscation, hedge-betting and the wielding of power as if it were just a big game. Line up the population, shoot as many lies at them as you can before being found out, then just press re-start, no harm done.

Just as it is in a holistic healing centre’s interest to keep you on the books and sell you yet another bottle of costly snake oil to complement all the crap you’ve already swallowed, every politician wants you to believe only his side have the magic solution to everybody’s problems. But everybody is of little concern when the battle is no longer fought on the welfare of the many but on the rights of the few.

Why else was the vanishingly small issue of single sex marriage hyped up into a matter of national urgency? It affects so few people in proportionate terms yet raises the blood pressure of some groups in alarming ways. Me? I couldn’t care less so much it hurts, except insofar as being agog at all the fuss. But of course that was the point; stir up a mood and challenge the other fella’s view. SSM had nothing to do with liberty for gays and everything to do with establishing credentials and probing for weakness – an opportunity to use a modern hate crime – homophobia – against the opposition.

Another hate crime – racism – the weapon du jour of the committed Marxist troublemaker, was deployed against one of the least offensive persons in politics, Nigel Farage, in Edinburgh yesterday. In an outstanding display of irony, a baying mob of anti-English, National Socialist, student agitators hurled abuse at him, suggested he fuck himself and tried to tar him with dirt of their own fevered imagination. Mobilised not by principle or by policy, they were nothing more than a hired hate mob. I expect Alex Salmond is delighted at their sterling effort to present the rational argument for a separate Scotland – the English would welcome it after that.

What I smell is simple desperation. The profligacy of pursuing ideological dreams without worrying about paying for them has brought us to the situation where the UK credit cards are all approaching their limits yet some flavours of politician are still pretending all will be well. It’s like carrying on the commute after losing your job and hoping the family and neighbours won’t notice as you spend your days in the library. It doesn’t actually achieve anything and it’s not good enough, is it?

In two years we have to decide which band of fools we want to lead us out of the darkness of the European recession – because most of the rest of the world is quietly getting on with it while we rend our garments in the street. The trouble is, I no longer know what they stand for and I think that’s important when it comes to a vote, don’t you? With just two years to go is it too much to ask that colours are nailed to masts and manifestos are mocked up? Because there are voters out there with no idea where to place their ‘X’.

What THEY think WE don't know...

Running a political party really can’t be too much unlike running a business. You need products that people want, at a price they are prepared to pay and then you need give them the clear reason and opportunity to buy. Oh and you need to keep your costs down too, if you want to profit by your labours, so people want to know what return they will get on their vote. Margaret Hodge can bang on all she likes about corporate responsibility but if I was a political party I’d be looking for a business model a lot more like Google and a lot less like Woolworths.

In Dreams

Part Two of Battersby’s Self Help Series is entitled “Aren't dreams rubbish?” It’s true because they are… because I said so.

“Sleep on it” they tell you, “things will look different in the morning.” Invariably they do, but that’s surely got far more to do with the fact that you wake up to a new day, rested and ready to tackle the problem. Or else, you’ve been tossing and turning all night long, solving the puzzles in a demented frenzy of exhausted non-sleep, before finally dropping off at 0430 for a fitful couple of hours of kip.

Does your brain genuinely sift through the crap at night, ordering the data, filing the facts and coming up with solutions? Or are dreams more likely just the outcome of the random firing of synapses merging incomplete thoughts and memories into a hotchpotch of images and sound that you somehow believe made some sense in the brief seconds between opening your eyes and actually waking up?  Nobody really knows, whatever they tell you.

Woody wind-chimes clink softly in the background, a counter cacophony to the reedy tones of the pan-pipes and the soft tinkle of an indoor water feature. Birdsong in the distance and maybe, if you listen hard enough, the plaintive song of a humpback whale trying to reverse climate change by crying out for krill. You lie in a hessian hammock, suspended by hand-twisted jute ropes between the reclaimed ship’s timbers in the urban Hobbit house of the dream analyst. Surrounded by ethnic art, mostly phalluses and fat fertility goddesses, the smell of bubbling lentils teasing your nostrils, you give yourself over to examination.

“Tell me all about it,” asks the analyst and then, “So what do you think that means?” Eager to share you spill out what you can remember and of course, it makes no sense. But you’re paying through the nose for this, so you launch into an outpouring of long-held anxieties, insecurities and angst and pretty soon, after the tears, after the cup of utterly gopping, lukewarm camomile tea, you’re writing out a cheque and booking another session.

The tea leaves, palm-reading, Tarot, phrenology, astrology… even the sacred ‘talking cure’… it’s all some form or other of cold reading, taking your money in return for giving you affirmation by helping you give voice to your own thoughts and dressing them up as remedies. Charlatans, dressed as confidantes, disguised as friends who live in beautiful houses paid for by you.

What’s my point? I’m not sure I really have one, actually… but wait. Why would any political party invite you to vote for it and its pretence that it will do anything good for you? Only because votes, like therapists’ appointments, mean income. Without your consent they can’t sell you their claptrap. Without votes they can’t feather their own nest while dismantling yours. The fact is, if you wake up and look around you, they need you more than you need them.

So today, vote for whoever you think best represents your local needs. Fuck the partisan bullshit, bollocks to the received wisdom, reject the ideology and go for a bit of self-help. If Kev, or Phil, or Sue or Stu floats your boat then don’t just dream about it, get out there and do it. Get yourself to a polling station and vote for what you believe in... or dream on.

Everybody's got one.

You have a vote. Just the one. A single, solitary voice in a cacophonous sea of sibilant pleas. A white noise of need with every breathy wish slightly different from the next. To each his need, goes the Marxist aphorism, but my needs are not your needs and yours not mine, so we’ll settle for something in between, if you please.

You didn't always have a vote and that was a shame. But if you thought that being given one solved that problem, think again. Because you may as well not bother scribing your ‘X’ unless you understand what it might do. Disraeli was against expansion of the franchise, believing an increase in voters would bring into parliament "a horde of selfish and obscure mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief". Wise words.

The best you can do with your single vote is to add it to others in a way that reduces the number of selfish and obscure mediocrities. How’s that working out for you, voters? Since at least the nineteen seventies there has been an upsurge of that very type of parliamentary member; the opportunist career politico, elected exactly as Disraeli foresaw. Now it’s rare to find any other kind.

Being a good leader does not mean being popular. Few successful bosses are liked by all their employees and those who are are rare indeed. Everybody delights in the tawdry stories that portray world figures in a dim light. In Britain particularly, the schadenfreude runs deep in our psyche. So when it comes to electing our leaders in the national pissing contest we call a general election we really should avoid, at all costs, casting our vote on popularity; that’s how Nick Clegg got in. (Don’t worry, he’ll be off to Brussels quite soon.)

Whoever gets in has to be on the side of Britain, because once they’re in our votes no longer matter. We were sold to Europe in 1973 without a vote being cast. Binding promises to give us a say in our relationship with the EU have been broken. Treaties are signed without consent and wealth is plundered at the whim of unelected officials. If you think the last point is exaggerated, put yourself in the place of a Cypriot saver - as their banks open today for the first time in two weeks – being told how much of their own money they may see.

You think a vote for labour will maintain your welfare lifestyle? Look around you. What wealth we have will be driven away as closer European integration means we have to spread the love ever more thinly. Your life will only get poorer as the population grows in the wrong way. You think a vote for the Conservatives will give you a vote on Europe? Don’t bank on cast-iron Dave’s hollow pledge; he has already said he will fight to keep us in. You like the Libdems? Then you’re not wise enough to have a vote.

Which leaves UKIP. Of course they won’t form the next government. Of course they don’t have all the answers. Of course they are not all uniformly attractive and popular people. Of course there are one or two nutters in there – me for a start - that goes for any party. But think about this, my vote-wielding chums. The other parties are suddenly turning nasty. The trash talk before the fight has started. To the LibLabCon troika, UKIP is the most unpopular smell in the air right now. They must be doing something right.

 You have a vote. Just the one. In 2015 you will have just one last chance to do the right thing for Britain. Don’t vote on party lines. Don’t vote for your narrow, short-term, personal interest. Between now and the general election register your concern and make your protest heard. In every local election, in every by-election, rattle those old party chains and vote for UKIP. Labour won't desert their EU masters, but you can make the Conservatives listen; make them change. That way, come the general election you might just have one final chance to vote against the EU.