Alan Bennett: May Days

8 May. A feeling of bereavement in the streets. I shop for supper and unprompted a grey-haired woman in the fish shop bursts out: ‘It means I shall have a Tory government for the rest of my life.’

In the library they say: ‘Good morning, though we’ve just been trying to think what’s good about it.’

I wanted a Labour government so that I could stop thinking about politics, knowing that the nation’s affairs were in the hands of a party which, even if it was often foolish, was at least well-intentioned. Now we have another decade of the self-interested and the self-seeking, ready to sell off what’s left of our liberal institutions and loot the rest to their own advantage. It’s not a government of the nation but a government of half the nation, a true legacy of Mrs Thatcher. Work is the only escape, which fortunately moves along a little.

9 May. My birthday. A nice woman in a leopardskin coat who always speaks wishes me a happy birthday. I say that I wish it was. ‘Why? What’s happened?’ ‘Last Thursday. The election.’ ‘Oh, you don’t want to worry about that. They’re all the same.’ At which point (we are in Shepherd’s grocers) I hear myself as very rarely shouting at the top of my voice. ‘No, they are not all the same. This lot are self-seeking liars, the cabinet included, and we’re landed with them for another five years.’ She tries to calm me down but I tell her not to bother, with other customers peeping round the shelves to see who is making all this din.

She is waiting outside the shop with a cake she has bought me for my birthday and I kind of apologise. But as I walk back home I wonder how long it will be before this crew turn their attention to the BBC.

From Alan Bennett's diary, London Review Of Books.

The drawing is an old one he unearthed of Miss Shepherd, the lady in the van.

PS Alan writes about recording the Christmas edition of Private Passions for the BBC World Service, which you can hear here.

Turing's Law: Vote For Nothing

A posthumous pardon given to Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing will be extended to thousands of Britons if the Tories win office.

The national hero who helped Britain win the Second World Ward but committed suicide after being convicted of gross indecency had his sentence scrapped by Royal Pardon in 2013

The Conservatives have now pledged to introduce a new law helping to “lift the blight of outdated convictions” from other people found guilty of similar offences.

“Thousands of British men still suffer from similar historic charges, even though they would be completely innocent of any crime today,” the Tory manifesto read.

“Many others are dead and cannot correct this injustice themselves through the legal process we have introduced while in government. So we will introduce a new law that will pardon those people, and right these wrong.”

It comes a month after Labour announced it would introduce a ‘Turing’s Law’ to allow the family and friends of deceased men punished for consensual relationships to have the convictions disregarded...

Telegraph.

Oh whoopdefuckingdoo!

Thank you for this meaningless gesture, guv.

Labour's manifesto has some more of them.

The Tories have also promised to scrap the Human Rights Act.

PS Hats off to the Telegraph who manage to run this without using their dread word 'gay'.

PPS Alan Turing's notebook sold for £1m.

Election 2015: Snog Marry Avoid?

The tension's mounting as the main parties General Election campaigns gear up in earnest. So what better time to ask the classic question: Snog, marry or avoid? Or vote for?
...

Surprisingly, twice as many men (10.1%) would marry Farage than women (5.5%) - that also happened in the "snog" category.

Mirror.

Snog Nigel? You just know his breath stinks of dead men's farts.

Thanks to @MarcusInE17. x

Election 2015: 'The Gay Vote'

Around 6% of the British population are estimated to be gay. But little definitive statistical evidence exists on how they vote, says Joe Twyman, of YouGov, a pollster. Generally, he says, they tend to be slightly less fond of the Conservatives than is the population as a whole, and slightly more likely to support Labour or the bedraggled Liberal Democrats. In a YouGov poll of gay, lesbian and bisexual people last year, two-thirds of those asked said that they would not vote for an MP who had voted against same-sex marriage (the other third said they would). But it is not their biggest concern: like the broader population, the economy and health care are the most pressing issues, says Mr Twyman...

But perhaps the biggest boost for the party is yet to come. After the same-sex marriage vote, Philip Cowley, a psephologist at the University of Nottingham, worked out that 58% of Conservative MPs born after 1970 voted for it, in contrast to 45% of those born before that year. Younger people are more likely to be socially liberal and to support same-sex marriage. Undecided future voters are less likely to see the Conservatives as the nasty party on gay issues. And gay people who might once have been furtive in voting for them can now be bolder about their choice. After all, for some, coming out as a Conservative may once have been as hard as coming out as gay.

The Economist.

Meh.

Photo Opp Of The Day 2: In Sheep's Clothing

Peter Brookes, The Times, Actually Saturday.

Election 2015: Are You Talking To Me?

General elections demand that party leaders reach out to the people. Baby-kissing walkabouts in town centres must be endured, but they just don’t stack up the numbers of voters needed to win an election.

Leaders are therefore required to make themselves available to media outlets that, in normal times, they seek to avoid. These modern equivalents of the hustings are considered by politicians to be important, partly to explain their policies but mostly to maintain as high a public profile as possible.

As long as they avoid gaffes in their TV, radio and newspaper interviews, the content is altogether less important than the fact they are seen to be there. Blandness is considered a virtue where the personal counts more than the political.

So which of the media teams has created the best schedule and what do they say about their campaign strategies? The Guardian has compiled a list of all the interviews the three main leaders have given since the campaign began on 30 March...

*blah blah blah* ...

Note that all three leaders did interviews with Attitude, the gay lifestyle magazine. The message was patently obvious: vote for us because we are inclusive LBGT-friendly guys...

Roy Greenslade, Media Guardian.

Well, there you billy well go!!!