I’m a political ‘centrist’. It’s my natural position. Right in the
middle with my head up my arse. That’s where I stand, politically. And
I don’t mind whether its the benign Tory centrism of David Cameron
(well, that ended well, didn’t it?) or the moderately, left-leaning
centrism of Tony Blair’s Labour, I’m comfortable in the middle. Once
the Tories get in any way overly nationalistic, xenophobic or start
moving rightwards, I’m out. Once Labour revert to excessive trade
union influence or slip to the left, I’m gone. I’m a liberal. Note:
small ‘L’. So naturally, intuitively, logically, I should vote for the
Liberal party. In whatever incarnation. Yet I never, ever have. Not
because, for my entire adult lifetime, it would have effectively been
a ‘wasted vote’, because I’ve wasted lots of votes, torn up ballot
sheets, ‘abstained’, when I really didn’t like any of the candidates.
But because of issues with some of their policies or, more often, with
the dubious quality of their leadership. As perfectly exemplified by
the incumbent, Vince Cable. You can give him all the knighthoods you
like; he’s still a tosser. A horribly smug, arrogant, nasty tosser.
Ok, he’s preferable to Corbyn, election-wise, but only because Jezza
is so dangerous to everything I stand for. And I would say that this
Liberal-phobia is just a ‘me thing’ but their ‘success’ in the last 40
years’ elections would say otherwise. Because even when they have 40%
of the voters; they’re never in the right constituencies at the right
time sufficient to get them more than 2% of the parliamentary seats.

So how far has the country come (read: ‘descended’) over (fucking)
Brexit? that the Lib-Dems are ‘top of the opinion polls’ at this very
moment. I know opinion polls never equate to election results, but
they are a clever indication of… of… of opinions. And in the
opinion of a (ok, small) majority of those polled, the Lib-Dems
represent the ‘best on offer’ of the current bunch of shattered,
broken, useless, hapless or just frightening options currently
available in this fine democratic land. And if that indeed is the
case, one can only say: GOD HELP US ALLLLL!!!!

And then thank Him for the cricket. Fantastic first match yesterday
against South Africa and man-of-the-match Ben Stokes. Who would have
won that award for his quite unbelievably brilliant catch alone. If he
hadn’t batted like a demon and bowled pretty well too. To Ben Stokes:
“we forgive you”. I mean grievous bodily harm, assault and violence
can only take you so far, but when you play cricket that well? We’re
no longer allowed to care.

There’s a football match being played tomorrow night. The biggest, the
grandest, the most important, most amazing, richest (other than the
Championship playoff final, obvs), most spectacular game of the entire
year. Or for some of us, for the entire half century since we last
played in something so BIG. I’ll say no more for now but may have
cause to mention again. Just so ya know.

Happy Friday

A xxxx