Thersites Writes

...I'm very busy right now. That is, I am whoring myself out to capitalism for lots and lots of filthy lucre. (I.e. working on my part-time job.) More quality posts soon, as I‘ve got lots of material! Please just let me have a kebab and beer first.

I like to check who has been visiting the 'blog from time to time. Most visitors are British. But the odd American, Canadian and Estonian (hello Evestus!) creep in from time to time. There's also one visitor from Washington University. He/she/it has viewed my 'blog at least once, and while using an Apple Mac too. Show-off. Oh, and there’s someone in Cambridge (UK) who views my site via Linux. Which is all very up-market, is it not?

But yesterday had the most 'interesting' visit of the lot. It seems I was graced by the presence of someone from no less than the American Department of Defence. By the looks of it, they're based in Virginia and work for the US Navy. And it seems they’re in the bit of the Navy that is concerned with "Space and Naval Warfare Systems". So, err, hello there...

(This is where the author starts to get paranoid. He then makes a hat out of tin foil.)

So what were the results of the local elections in my neck of the woods?

Well, I used to live in Slough up until February of this year so I still think of it as my ‘home turf’. Alas! For Slough is a total shithole. The town is full of ugly buildings, ugly functionality and people with ugly minds and attitudes. Slough has got this banal horror about it, that’s all I can say about the dump. It’s the only place where everyone has a job but where it’s as bleak and joyless as any rust stained town in the North.

It also used to be a Labour stronghold. That is, up until two days ago, when the polls opened. Back in the glory days, Slough was so Labour, it did in fact become a nuclear-free town. This was part of the party’s lip-service to naff faux-left ideas in the 70s and 80s. (The fact that some of the architecture would not look out of place in Chernobyl is an irony lost on many of the natives.) But then the war in Iraq took place. This made the large Muslim population in Slough decide to teach Phoney Bliar a lesson. Net result: Labour’s seats in the council have gone down from 26 (a big majority) to 15. The Tories have gained two seats and now have eight in total. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems have gone from only one seat to six. This means Labour is still the largest party in Slough Council. But it is outgunned by the 18 seats now in the hands of small parties, plus the large number of seats now held by its main rivals. This is a seismic shock of sorts. Slough’s been Labour for longer than most can remember. Now it is in the No-Man’s-Land called ‘No Overall Control’ (NOC). That means the Labour councillors will now have to start working with the other parties, and not run the place like their own private fiefdom like they used to. And it was not just the Muslim vote that fucked the Labour majority this week. The fact is that most of the locals are now pissed off with Labour’s big promises and the lame delivery too. Slough voters have had to pay a bloody fortune in Council Tax, and they have got sod all in return. ‘Them chickens’ have truly come home to roost.

But for me, Slough is now fast becoming just a bad memory. Let’s talk about where I now live. That is, the green and sylvan realm of Winchester. I was a voter there back in ‘97, when the current MP, Lib Dem Mark Oaten, fought two elections to win the town off the Tories. Second time around and he won himself a big majority, which he kept in 2001. Then the Lib Dems won the bulk of the seats on the Council and Winchester turned into one of the party’s strongholds. But now, the Lib Dem total has gone down from 26 to 15 seats. In the meantime, the Tories, long thought dead and buried, have gone up from six seats to eight. This is a small comeback of sorts, which is just one of all the other small recoveries the Tories have made across the UK this week. So it is that Winchester too is now a NOC zone. The cosy Labour reign, with the odd Lib Dem gain here and there, that began in 1997 seems to be at an end. UK politics scene in the UK may soon be a lot more, err, ‘competitive’.

I was meant to have cast my vote in the Local and European elections today. But alas, I forgot to register my vote in Winchester until it was too late. Now, this is a pain as I have voted in every election I’ve been eligible for since I was 18. I saw it as one of those affirmations that I was now a man. (That and the pubic hair.) So my not voting has made me feel a bit like an electoral eunuch. I can’t even idle about on the sidelines and glare menacingly at all the lucky people who did get to go to the ballot box today. I might get arrested.

But it seems I’m one of only a few people under 30 who do in fact give a toss around here. (That, and in the country as a whole.) Of all those who have turned up to vote in Winchester this year, I’d say, from what I’ve seen, that at least 70% are over 40. A big chunk of them in turn are retired or OAPs. Young people, it seems, don’t care much for Democracy. We would much rather be ruled over by the old. They’re the ones getting elected or the ones doing the electing, not us. It’s just childhood by proxy. We are far too dozy to want to grow up.

I got fined for returning a book late today. That’s as exciting as it’s been so far. I only realised that the book was meant to be back yesterday when I saw the return date – and remembered the library had just closed 20 minutes earlier. I then tried to renew the bloody loan via the library’s website, but when the stamp said ‘return on 8th June’ what it meant was: ‘return on 8th June WHILE WE’RE STILL OPEN, BITCH!’ Hurrah for anal library systems! I tried a few times to get the book renewed online… and then gave up.

So I woke up really early and got to the library as quickly as I could. For some reason I felt very ashamed and I didn’t want anyone to see me return the book and pay the fine. I approached the counter nervously. My eyes were turned down. I felt like a naughty schoolboy about to confess to the headmaster that it was me who had sold the dinner ladies smack and had run a whorehouse out of the girls’ toilet. The shame!

There was a middle aged librarian waiting for me. She just looked at me casually, checked the book in and then asked me to pay the 10p fine. I was gutted. She handed me the change and the receipt with a smile and then headed off to attend some shelves that were in need of tidying. I skulked off towards the IT area, pale and feeling rather embarrassed.

It’s just that I’ve NEVER been late with a book before. It felt like I’d just lost my innocence or something. Surely, my standards had slipped. Also, I hate parting with cash, even if it was 10p. I mean – THINK WHAT I COULD HAVE BOUGHT WITH THAT MONEY! It was a day of trauma all round.

So, Ronald Reagan is dead.

I never liked him, or his politics, nor what he represented. I don't believe that he 'won' the Cold War, any more than Winston Churchill single handedly beat the Nazis or 'The Thin Red Line' alone beat Napoleon. But at least Nancy Reagan was wise enough to use her husband's Alzheimer's Disease as a good argument for stem cell research. I think she shall now become a major campaigner for it, and that I can agree with.

But the other thing is, he was my first American President. I can remember as far back as Jim Callaghan as PM in the UK. (I was born in '77.) But I only really became aware of the office of President back in 1981 when I would notice on the news this odd man with an American accent who claimed to be running the US. I grew up with him there, so it was a bit of a culture shock to see him leave abruptly in the late 80s and be replaced by George Bush senior. It always seemed like he was there forever, you see. Time flows differently when you're a child. And from then on, I still couldn't get the feeling out of my head that he'd been there for years and everyone - even Clinton - were just brief replacements. He had become part of my world, and it seemed sacrilegious just to consider a replacement for him.

And now he's dead. Dying young is tragic, but so is dying old. After a while, people are there for so long that they become permanent parts of the world, until you couldn't possibly imagine them not being there. And then one of them dies... and you are left with a big hole in the landscape. So farewell then, Mr. President.

As any Euro-watcher will know, Germany and France are at the core of the European Union. Is it any surprise? Both countries were conquered (at one time or another) in WW2, were occupied by foreign powers in that war and both have a past they need to get away from. They also represent the main forces of influence (both political and cultural) in mainland Europe and have been as such for centuries. So, to repeat myself, is it any surprise that they are the driving forces behind European Federalism? (Apart from - eek! - Belgium.) They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We, meanwhile, were unconquered but not quite able to come to terms with the past, present or future.

So where does that leave Britain? Half the political establishment thinks we should join the Euro ASAP, all learn French and start saluting the EU flag. The other half seems hell-bent on whoring us out to Washington DC and get the odd peanut in return. No one at the top of the political pile really wants to step outside this consensus and come up with another future for Britain, where it works alongside the whole world rather than just parts of it. Isn't it a shame that while the French and Germans eagerly seize their future, we are too timid to find our own?