My newspaper didn’t arrive this morning. Sunday morning. The ultimate ‘tea and newspapers in bed’ morning of the whole week, the defining morning for the entire concept of such a simple but fabulously decadent pleasure when both Mel & I are there to share in its enjoyment (she takes the Magazines, I take the Sports sections and politics; there is no deviation from gender stereotyping allowed in my house). And the fucking papers didn’t arrive. ‘Delay at the depot’, said Yogi, our newspaper delivery executive. And I am aware that even mention of such a decidedly ‘first world problem’ makes me some petty dilettante nancy-boy tart, so I went digital and downloaded the Times onto my iPad. Which produces the exact same wordage but via a medium that I don’t wish to read them upon.

But what I did read scared the shit out of me. Again quite literally so but I’ll save the whole ‘bowel movements’ issue for a dedicated article at a more (in)appropriate time.

Because as soon as they announce the election, Corbyn shortens the lead that Boris has enjoyed for all those lovely months when it didn’t matter a toss. Now it does and the polls start in earnest. Although three polls gave significantly different results. Though we must always remember, and apply the required syllogism, that:
Opinion Polls are statistics
All statistics is total bollocks
Therefore…

You really don’t need to be Aristotle to complete the missing deduction. Especially as opinion polls are all fatally flawed. Because they tell you that ‘40% back Boris and only 22% Corbyn’. Which, if we were a nation using proportional representation would be fabulous and accurate. But we’re not. We are, as we always have been, first-past-the-posters, which makes prediction difficult verging on impossible. Classically, the Lib-dems poll up to 40% of the vote, yet end up with 9 seats out of 625. Because they ‘just’ come second in virtually every constituency. The winning party can often end up with less of the nation’s percentage vote. Which is why the Lib Dem’s and other small parties all bang on about PR all the time. They would do brilliantly. As did Hitler’s National Socialists when they managed to first muscle into power in 1923 (or thereabouts).

But in the absence of PR, the mere percentage of voting intention is almost irrelevant. You need to know how those percentages are distributed in each constituency. So really they should poll within constituencies and then collate all that together for a national picture. But they don’t.

I just this second had a visit from the Lib Dem’s. Not all of them, though as there aren’t that many it actually could have been. ‘Will you be voting for Luciana Berger?’ they asked. ‘No’, I said. Not because I don’t have admiration for her and her principles (basically the principle that Jews should be allowed to live peacefully and unpersecuted in this fine nation) but because I worry that voting Lib Dem would take votes from the small Conservative majority held here and allow Labour to sneak in the back door. In other circumstances, with a ‘different’ Labour I’d think differently. But then again, Luciana would still be in their party and the MP for somewhere in Liverpool, like she was.

It’s all about the basics. Going back to ABC. ANYONE BUT CORBYN!!!!!

Happy Sunday

A xxxx