And another thing…

ALTERNATIVELY titled: “Shona Boyd broke my heart”.

I can’t imagine that party politics would play such a role in any classroom today, but in the run-up to the second general election of 1974, my Primary 6 class teacher, Mrs Baird, instructed us to design a poster showing support for our preferred political party.

Only two of us chose Labour: me and Andrew Clinton.

Virtually every other kid chose the SNP, establishing, for me, the truth that the nationalist message has the greatest appeal when aimed at ten-year-olds.

And one girl drew a “Vote Conservative” poster. Her name was Shona Boyd and she was my first crush. My love even managed to survive the dreadful realisation that this pretty farmer’s daughter was a supporter of Ted Heath! Alas, my affection remained unrequited – just as Heath’s plea for affection from the electorate was also ignored, for a second time, that autumn.

The day before polling, we were told to take down the posters, which had been put on display around the classroom walls; our room was to be used as a polling place and it was feared that our childish scribbles might persuade voters to switch allegiance at the last minute. Polling day dawned, and I’m sure it must have been a day of intense drama and political significance. But for the pupils of Beith Primary School, it was simply an unexpected day off, and a chance to ponder what might have been with the class’s only Tory.

And to collect chestnuts, also.

AND at last, after waiting patiently for 19 years, I got my chance to vote in a general election.

Having flirted briefly with CND in 1980 (but really only because I wanted to flirt with a girl who was more into it than I was), I was pretty political by the time Thatcher went to the palace in May to seek a dissolution. I was heavily involved in my church – which, like the Labour Party, had itself gone through some pretty momentous and defining splits since I had joined it three years earlier – and was, I think, reasonably well informed about the major issues of the election.

I was also unemployed, along with my sister and dad, so I wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic about the future. Nevertheless, I had already decided, by the time the election was called, that I would not use my first ever general election vote to support Labour.

I remember, even as a school pupil, watching the coverage of Labour’s implosion – the surprise election of Michael Foot as leader, the new electoral college which gave the unions 40 per cent of the vote for the party leader, the policies of unilateralism and withdrawal from Europe, the defection of the “Gang of Four” and the formation of the SDP, Benn’s egotistical, selfish and near-successful challenge to Denis Healey as deputy leader, the onward march of Militant… Now that I think of it, it was a busy four years for Labour wasn’t it? And I vividly recall thinking that this was a party woefully unfit to govern. And I was right.

My mother was not chuffed. We fell out more than once over my refusal to support Labour; she saw my intention to support the SDP candidate (rightly, as it turned out) as a wasted vote that would only help the Tories win.

Polling day, 9 June, was warm and sunny. With two other friends, both of whom were also casting their first vote in a  general election, we headed up to Beith Primary School in the early evening. I don’t remember the polling place being particularly busy, but apparently turnout was high that year. All three of us placed our crosses next to the SDP candidate’s name. None of us even knew what his/her name was.

I watched the results in the living room of a friend from church who was himself a Tory. So he seemed pleased as the results came in. I felt a strange mixture of emotions. I didn’t really understand what was happening with national swings and per centage shares and all that; all I saw was a succession of messages appearing on screen saying “Labour hold”. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, I thought. And every time I saw one, I was actually quite pleased. Having voted against Foot’s party, I found myself having an unexpected deathbed repentance, vaguely hoping that the pundits had been wrong and that Labour would give Thatcher a run for her money after all.

They didn’t. There were 209 Labour holds that night. All the gains were the Tories’.

Mum was still up by the time I had drudged home at about four in the morning. We didn’t really speak much. She was clearly upset, at me and at the country. I sloped off to bed.

A MYSTERIOUS woman, identity unknown, slipped an envelope through my letterbox this morning. Inside was a card and inside that was this…

And Another Thing…

Oh Tom I am in love with you, I know you through your blog
You’re witty and intelligent so would you like a snog?
Every day I read you first, what will today’s post be?
Politics or Doctor Who? Nick Clegg? The SNP?

Iain Dale and Guido, they are fine, I take a look
But you’re the only blogger that I follow on Facebook.
Don’t get the wrong idea about me, Tom – I am no cyber-stalker
Just because I sit outside your house doesn’t mean I’m off my rocker.

Politics is serious – or so we keep being told
But your jokes about the LibDems never, ever will get old.
I’d love to leave a comment, something clever, smart and droll
But, I am too worried you’d dismiss me as a troll.

And now we have your podcasts and I get to hear you speak
Your manly Scottish brogue, well it just makes my knees go weak.
I follow you on Twitter – your Tweets are all I see
You have three thousand followers – I wish it was just me.

But one thing is a barrier to our new blogging life
You write about her far too much – that’s right, I mean your wife.
I know she’s always nagging you about the time you spend
Writing all your blogposts – it must drive you round the bend.

She’s contemptuous of your blog and, well, to me that is a sin
She doesn’t know she’s lucky to have you, that Carolyn.
“Turn that damn computer off” you told us that she said
Choose me instead, there’s not one post of yours I haven’t read.

Spend all night on your laptop writing posts? That would be fine
If only you would choose me as your blogging Valentine.

Love,

Your Secret Admirer
x

UPDATE at 3.45 pm: I take it that despite some comments to the contrary, you all know that this was Carolyn’s work, don’t you? I mean, I don’t have to point that out, do I? No? Thought not. Glad that’s settled, then…

“GET YOUR coat, love, you’ve pulled.” Or how about “I hope you know CPR because you’ve just taken my breath away”?

Or even the one immortalised in the Bellamy Brothers’ classic 1979 hit, “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”

Have any of those lines ever actually worked? Surely not.

The reason I ask is that Carolyn and I were chatting the other night about how we first got together. Sometimes we look at Ronnie and Reggie and wonder how on earth it actually happened. And what better day than today to reminisce…?

We were working in the same department of a large local authority (pointless detail: our boss was John Brown, big brother of Gordon. Scotland’s a very small place). She was based in the office on the floor below the press office, where I worked. Occasionally she would be despatched upstairs to help out in the press office. And I… well, I noticed her. I mean, everybody notices Carolyn. But the thing I noticed the most was that she was completely out of my league.

Did that stop me? Put it this way: if someone has the self-confidence, even arrogance, to believe he would one day make a good MP, would being regarded by a girl as something she’d just stepped in dissuade me?

Because here’s the basic truth about me and Carolyn: she doesn’t like me very much. Never has, never will. Oh, she loves me, I’ve no doubt about that. But we always roll our eyes whenever someone on TV says something like “I married my best friend.” I mean, if I’d married my best friend I’d be living in Brighton right now with a gay, male psychiatric nurse who at least shares my enthusiasm for sci-fi.

So, no, Carolyn and I would never describe ourselves as “friends”, best or otherwise.

Anyway, back to 1996…

She didn’t like me, and she made that clear to me whenever she saw me. I had a cat and a dog at the same time when I was a boy, and the dog loved the cat. It was always trying to be its friend, trying to get the cat to play with it. The cat wasn’t interested, would ignore the dog’s overtures or, occasionally, swat it away with a dismissive flick of a her fully-extended claws. Well, you get the picture…

But perseverence is a wonderful thing. As Carolyn admits today, I wore her down.

I had a three-pronged strategy. The first was juggling (obviously). I’d use any excuse to walk downstairs to her office on some pretext or other. And when I did, I just happened to be carrying three oranges with me. And then I would nonchalantly juggle them within sight of her desk. In my mind she was re-assessing her view of the big guy from upstairs. In reality, she just tutted more loudly.

But she must have warmed towards me, because soon I was showing her my holiday photos, CDs I’d just bought, my scars…

Then there was her major Achilles’ Heel: public transport. Or rather, her aversion to it. She didn’t have a car at the time and I did. So I quickly realised that offering her a lift home would win many brownie points. That was how we actually got to spend more and more time together, just the two of us. And even when the traffic was heavy and the journey home seemed to be lasting longer and longer each day, she didn’t seem to mind.

She was also impressed at my knowledge of astronomy, though in truth, I’d become a bit rusty since I’d hoovered up Patrick Moore’s Observer’s Guide as a teenager. So as I walked her to her mum’s front door, I would authoratitively point out the lesser-known constellations to her, such as “the Great Barbecue”, the “Teakettle” and “Merlin’s Armpit”…

Ah, how time passes when you’re in love. One minute I was dropping her off at her mum’s, the next it seems we were returning from our honeymoon.

Everyone’s relationship is unique and special. How couples actually get together is a real-life drama (or sometimes sitcom) in which most of us play a role at some point.

This, I thought, would be a good idea for a blog meme, but I’m not going to nominate anyone else to volunteer their own experiences of how they met and wooed their partners. Those are personal details that not everyone will be keen to share. But if anyone – other bloggers or readers of this one – care to offer some juicy or funny details, then please do.

And if anyone has ever successfully used the line “Did the sun come out or did you just smile at me?”, I need to know.

EVERYONE loves a good dose of nostalgia, yes?

So when I happened upon Paul Cornell’s excellent blog this morning, I was delighted to find a link to this blast from the past: the Weetabix Doctor Who promotion in the mid-1970s. The memories came flooding back: my best friend Brem and I, both avid collectors of the Target novelisations, would head home after school via the local supermarket, where we would each spend our saved-up dinner money from that day to buy a packet of Weetabix each, just so we could complete our collections of the cardboard stand-up figures contained inside.

Incidentally, dry Weetabix eaten straight from the packet is a rubbish snack. Just so you know.

I think this particular promotion was Weetabix’s second in the space of about a year, but I can’t find any reference to the earlier one, so maybe I’m misremembering.

ODDLY, the most recent General Election is the one of which I have fewest recollections.

The whole campaign, from what I recall, plodded along rather predictably. The only visual “moment” from the national campaign I can think of was of Tony Blair giving Gordon an ice cream cone. Hardly the Prescott punch or Sharron Storer moment.

In Glasgow, I was fighting for the new seat of Glasgow South, Cathcart having been consigned to history by the recent boundary review (although the Holyrood seat retains the name). There was a good, rather than excited, atmosphere in the campaign rooms – a former café on Clarkston Road, directly opposite my constituency offices. Every day we would arrive early, push up the metal shutters and wait for the inevitable trickle of constituents – both supportive and hostile – to begin. And every day I would print off a new number and display it in the shop window: the countdown to polling day. This was as much a reminder to activists as voters as to how long we had to complete the tasks of labelling, postering and canvassing we had set ourselves. (And I’ve just remembered that 2005 was the last General Election when candidates in Glasgow could attach posters to lamposts; the council have since banned it, to a mixed response from party activists.)

Despite expectations that Iraq would feature heavily in the campaign, I don’t remember that being the case at grassroots level. It was certainly raised on the doorstep, many times. But most voters for whom Iraq was a barrier to voting Labour were, for the most part, unfailingly polite. And when I asked them how they had previously voted, many of them turned out not to be Labour voters in the first place.

It’s a fact that time goes at a fraction of normal speed during election campaigns – well, if you’re a candidate, anyway. So it took about just under two years from the start of the campaign for polling day to arrive. That was hectic, as usual. I was picked up first thing by my campaign manager and taken to the polling station at the end of my road to cast my vote (and no, I’m not telling you who I voted for – it’s a secret ballot). The previous election, when I was first elected, Carolyn came with me to vote and a press photographer captured the moment for posterity. This time round, however, Carolyn was having to balance work and motherhood, so I voted alone.

Over the long day (about 52 hours, give or take) I tried to visit every polling place in the constituency and exchanged a few words with the tellers and the activists (of all parties) standing outside. There’s always a sense of tense calm on polling day itself, an awareness that the arguments are done and dusted, there’s nothing more to be done except await the voters’ verdict. So there’s little point in falling out with your opponents by then.

It was obvious that the LibDems were making a big effort among the substantial Muslim electorate in Glasgow South, exploiting their highly principled* position on Iraq. And I wasn’t surprised to discover later, at the count, that they had leapfrogged the nationalists to come second.

On BBC1 at ten o’clock, David Dimbleby revealed the exit poll prediction: a Labour majority of just 66 seats. I raised an eyebrow; lower than I had expected. But maybe our majority was being underestimated? It turned out not. At eleven, Carolyn and I left the house and met my election team at Queen’s Park Football Club and a small fleet of vehicles headed to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre for the count.

Ah, yes – the count… In 2001, Cathcart had been counted last of the nine Glasgow seats and Carolyn and I had been very, very late to bed. And so it proved omce more four years later. It was after three in the morning before the Returning Officer called all the candidates together to show us the spoiled ballot papers and to read us the result. I was relieved that my majority had held above the 10,000 mark, although in per centage term it was slightly down on 2001. The LibDem candidate was actually the first person I met that night who told me, quite authoritatively, that I had won.

All I remember about the actual announcement of my result was being accosted by three or four reporters as I walked down from the platform immediately afterwards and asked whether or not I thought Tony Blair should resign. Well, of course he should! After all, he surely had to be punished for leading Labour to a third election victory in a row! The b*****d…

I had always believed that Tony’s announcement in 2004 that he would lead the party into one more Genereal Election and then serve a full term before stepping down was a mistake; the frenzied media speculation which began at 10.00 pm on polling day was entirely predictable.

Tired to the point of exhaustion, Carolyn and I headed back to the social club at Queen’s Park where we were just in time to see Galloway’s victory over Oona King in Bethnal Green. Then, a moron from a neighbouring Constituency Labour Party who, shall we say, had faced some difficulty in reconciling his own views on Iraq with the government’s, called me a fascist. Comradeship, eh? But I was too tired to make a big deal of it. Instead, after one drink, we headed home.

As we got ready for bed, I noticed I had received a voicemail from Jim Knight, who was defending a majority of 153 in South Dorset. He was calling with the happy news that, against the odds, he had increased that to 1812. That was a nice note on which finally to go to sleep.

* yeah, right…

Next instalment: 1983

THIS morning I took the unusual (for me) step of switching on “airplane mode” on my phone.

Having been called three times at my flat while I was getting ready to go to work, I decided enough was enough. For a brief, all-too-fleeting period, I would be incommunicado. No texts, no calls, no emails informing me I had received a new comment on the blog.

It was a strange experience. Like many in this whacky modern world, I’ve become so dependent on my phone it’s unhealthy. If I ever leave home, even for a short while, and later discover I’ve left the phone on the sideboard instead of slipping it into my pocket, I become anxious. Whose calls am I missing? What if comments are left “unapproved” for too long? What if I have to make a call?!

It’s a very modern condition, a consequence of living in the “information age”.

So today I took a stand. Not that I would leave my phone in my flat while I was at work – that would be madness! But switching to “airplane mode” was a surprisingly relaxing experience. It was an unfamiliar experience, walking up Millbank without fretting about whether the noise of the traffic might be drowning out the noise of a journalist trying to have a word or my office attempting to remind me about a meeting I should have been at half an hour earlier… I recommend it.

Once, while visiting the flat of a friend I hadn’t seen for a few years, we were enjoying a relaxed chat when his phone started to ring. I stopped whatever I was saying mid-sentence, expecting him to answer it. But he didn’t. He let answer machine get it. He didn’t even listen to hear who was calling. My friend observed the surprised look on my face and explained: “Why do people think that a phone call is always so important that it should interrupt conversation you’re already having?”

A very healthy stand against the tyranny of the phone call, I feel.

So from now on I will seek to practice what my friend preached. I will turn off my phone for at least an hour every day and try to enjoy the real world more.

But obviously just for an hour. You think I’m insane?

HAD A VAGUELY interesting Twitter exchange today about turnouts at general elections. Gosh! It isn’t long before someone in these threads mentions their desire for a “none of the above” option on the ballot paper, is it? I wonder if there’s a term for that particular phenomenon…?

I once flirted with the notion that voting should be compulsory. But I quickly rejected the idea, based on the principle that democracy means having the right not to take part, as well as the right to get involved. If people don’t want their voice to be heard, that’s up to them.

For the whole of history, politicians have been depicted as venal, dishonest hypocrites. And politics itself has been seen as a necessary evil. Come to think of it, not even that necessary, sometimes.

But if you listen to some of the critics today, you might be tempted to believe that it’s only under Labour in the past decade – and especially since the expenses scandal – that the public have decided they distrust politicians. Before then, politicians were adored and venerated; political satire didn’t exist until 1997 and MPs were treated like gods in their constituencies…

There have always been – and will always be – those who look at any political system and find it wanting. Only a perfect system, designed according to their own personal predilections and preferences, would be good enough to merit their participation. So they walk away, while others engage anyway.

How do you distinguish between the positive abstainers and those who simply don’t care and can’t be bothered? And should we even bother to distinguish?

A standing committee on which I once sat heard an argument (I think it was from David Wilshire MP, but if my recollection is wrong, then I apologise) in favour of a “None of the above” option on the ballot paper. Complete nonsense, of course, and I’m still unsure whether David (or whoever) actually meant the proposal to be taken seriously.

George Robertson, the former Defence Secretary and Secretary General of Nato, once had to inspect the spoiled ballot papers after the count in his Hamilton constituency. On one paper, instead of placing a cross, a voter had written beside George’s name, in tiny letters: “They’re all bastards but he’s less of a bastard than the others”. George made the case to the returning officer that, since the voter had expressed a preference for a single candidate, albeit in an unconventional way, the vote should be counted as a vote for him. It was.

I have a similar tale from the last election, although you would have to be a fan of the BBC Scotland comedy Chewin’ the Fat to get the joke. I was number 3 on a ballot paper which featured five names. Someone had written “wank” against numbers 1, 2 and 4 and had written “good guy” against my name. I therefore argued that the vote was mine, since a preference had been clearly expressed. Unfortunately, since the voter had placed no mark against number 5 on the paper, the returning officer ruled the voter’s intentions were ambiguous and so the paper remained officially spoiled.

The point being that there are already ways of indicating that you are a disgruntled voter, rather than just staying away on polling day. Spoiled ballot papers are counted – abstentions are not. A “None of the above” option would be nothing more than a gimmick – great for the media and for the anti-politics brigade but proving nothing, and improving even less.

EVERYONE has a story to tell at the moment of a Journey From Hell; connections missed, flights cancelled, trains late, car stranded, etc.

Well, at the moment, I’m sitting in the living room of my London flat. I shouldn’t be here. I should be at home, snuggling up to Carolyn, trying to wrest the blanket off young Ronnie and wondering why he’s in the bed with us in the first place.

But I’m not. Because I thought I could get home on a British Airways flight from London City Airport. I was wrong.

After a breathless journey from Westminster to the airport via the Jubilee Line and then Docklands Light Railway (DLR), I arrived to see that the flight had been delayed from 8.30 pm to 10.05 pm. Hmm. Fair enough (though I’m not sure why people are so much more tolerant of airline delays than railway delays). Grabbed a bite, got the laptop out, Read the David Tennant interview in Doctor Who Monthly. Checked the board: still scheduled for 10.05.

Then, at 9.30, an announcement: our plane had left Frankfurt and was due to arrive here at 10.15. But if we didn’t board by the time the runway was due to close at 10.30, the flight would be cancelled. Also, oddly, it was announced that boarding would take place ten minutes before the plane landed. Not an encouraging sign.

At 10.15, I was phoned by Tom Greatrex, special adviser to Jim Murphy, the Secretary of State for Scotland, who was hoping to catch the same flight. He had just found out it had been cancelled. Oh, joy!

There was an offer from British Airways of a room in a nearby hotel… for 20 passengers. And there were many more than 20 disappointed passengers there. I opted to go back to the flat and catch a train tomorrow instead. An airport staff member led a small, unhappy group of us outside the terminal building – except that I and another bloke who was trying to get to Glasgow were trailing behind the staff member, who, at the bottom of a stairwell, disappeared behind a security door, letting it swing closed before we could reach it. It was locked fast. What the hell do we do now? We banged as loudly on the door as possible to attract attention. Nothing. I kicked it, quite hard. Still nothing. Best retrace our steps back upstairs, we decided. The door at the top of the stairs was locked as well!

I suddenly had a vivid scene in my head of me and my new compatriot hunkering down for the night in a stairwell, our very existence unknown to the world outside. A confused-looking woman soon came to our aid at the upstairs door, however, and then our original guide retrned to fetch us, very apologetic for leaving us behind.

“It might not have been too bad,” said my new friend when I told him of my fears of an uncomfortable overnight stay.

“Are you kidding?” I replied. “Didn’t you notice there was no toilet?”

Back on the DLR to Canning Town, where I jumped on a Jubilee Line train. Which turned out to be suspended because of signalling problems. This was just getting silly. Would I ever get back to the flat, or would I be doomed to wander the streets of East London forever?

Jumped back on the DLR, this time all the way to Tower Gateway where I disembarked and jumped on a District Line train. Reached Victoria. Hurrah. Walked to the flat, glad to get some fresh air.

Wrote this post.

And now to bed, with an early rise in prospect, not to mention almost a whole day at the office tomorrow written off.

And before you say “You should have got the train tonight in the first place”, I would have, had there been one running after the last vote in the Commons. Even the Caledonian Sleeper wasn’t taking bookings because they couldn’t be sure whether or not they would be able to run a service in the current weather conditions.

I could just barf.

YOU could almost taste the euphoria in Twitter at the weekend. Ha, ha! Iris Robinson’s career, and possibly marriage, is in tatters! And, the icing on the cake? She tried to commit suicide! Dearie me, we haven’t enjoyed politics this much since… etc, etc…

Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad, but very nearly.

I know that what Iris Robinson has said in the past about homosexuality was incredibly stupid, offensive and hurtful. She should – and was – taken to task very effectively at the time.

And in asking that people – even her critics and opponents – show compassion for her is nothing like the same as saying she doesn’t deserve criticism for her actions. As far as her private life is concerned, that’s a matter that should be dealt with within her own marriage and I’ve no comment to make. The financial dealings are far more serieous, particularly given her and her husband’s positions of responsibility.

But criticism doesn’t necessarily exclude compassion, some human empathy.

Yes, Iris Robinson has expressed some really stupid views on some things, and yes, she has become the author of her own – and possibly her husband’s – downfall. And yes, it’s human nature to want to gloat at the poetic justice of that.

But I’ve never been a fan of human nature (as the Christian poet Steve Turner said: “I believe that mankind is basically good – it’s just his behaviour that lets him down.”). Would it be so difficult not to offer the predictable response; to take a deep breath, hold your nose and express the hope things might improve for Iris and her husband?

I see that Greg Pope and Iain Roberts at Liberal Democrat Voice are saying pretty much the same thing, proving that not everyoine on the left is entirely consumed with schadenfreude.

It’s easy to feel sympathy and compassion for your friends and allies, for people you like and admire. It’s far, far more difficult to feel the same things for those whose views you abhor. But just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Here endeth the lesson.