There were elections here on Thursday. I went to vote. With Lila and Joey. Who were given free pencils. So it wasn’t a completely wasted event. I voted for the Conservatives because its the fucking council elections so who cares? The Tories generally keep the expenditure down and thus we pay less council tax. Who knows? If services are a bit reduced as a consequence, I’ll just have to put my lawn mowings out for collection once every two weeks. I can live with that.

I think I was the only person in the country who entered the polling station with local considerations in mind. Everyone else, especially here in Barnet, had an agenda. Based on national, governmental politics. Basically: fuck up Boris every which way you can. Because everyone hates Boris. Rightly so. And local elections are always used as a protest against national government, everyone knows that. Because the result doesn’t really do much harm one way or the other, so you can protest almost ‘for free’. Until Labour get in, as they did here in Barnet, and your council tax goes up 400 quid a month. Then its not quite as ‘free’ as it should have been.

So it was always going to be bad for Boris and the Conservatives. Except… it really wasn’t anything like the bloodbath that was expected. Ok, the Tories lost their 3 ‘crown jewels’ of Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster, but they never had a great deal of local control in London anyway. Yet Labour, who won all three of those, did pretty much nothing else of note. Which is strange in our pretty-much 2-party nation. But when you go to put a cross in the box for a Labour person, you see Kier Starmer. And your pencil starts to hover. Then shake a bit. And your arm won’t move it towards the box. Then, at the last moment, it slips into the Lib-Dem box instead. Which, as is always the case, is pretty much like just spoiling your voting paper. A waste of time. Like the Lib-Dems. Who actually had the best result of all the parties from these elections. Due to all the hatred of Boris and Starmer.

All the leaders proclaimed victory. Boris, because it was nothing like as bad as it could have been. Really should have been. Starmer because his poxy party took three London boroughs. And what’s-iss-name, Sir Thungumy, claimed that the Lib Dems will now go on to win the next general election. They’ve suddenly become ‘Manchester City’, even though they play like Scunthorpe.

Then Starmer got summoned by the police for his own little ‘not-a-party’ in Durham during a lockdown and that soured his already sour expression somewhat.

Basically, the people get to vote against all the lies and distortions and spin, then the leaders come out and lie, distort and spin. Learned that lesson then.

Happy Saturday, from the People’s Republic of Barnet.

A xxxx