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9:43am on Thursday, 8th June, 2017:

Saving Money

Anecdote

Well, I voted. The choice on offer, in ballot-paper order, was:

Liberal Democrat
UKIP
Conservative
Green Party
Labour
Christian Peoples Alliance

Put another way:

Naive
Dead
Bonkers
Naive
Bonkers
Deluded

I didn't want to vote for any of these. The Liberal Democrats have a leader with illiberal views and are in total denial over Brexit. UKIP are a single-issue party and their single issue has disappeared. The Conservatives want to repeal Human Rights legislation (and to take us back to the 1980s). The Green Party are also a single-issue party, but their issue is largely accepted by the other parties anyway so they're left floundering. Labour is attempting to persuade us that the country will be safer if Diane Abbott is Home Secretary (and to take us back to the 1970s). I've never heard of the Christian Peoples Alliance before, and don't expect to again.

My constituency is so rock-solid Conservative that even if everyone else voted for a single opposition candidate, the Conservative candidate would still win 55% to 45%. I don't actually mind their candidate, to be honest: he has a wonderful knack of always backing the wrong horse when it comes to any kind of internal power struggle in his party, as a result of which he gets to be in shadow cabinets but is never going to be in government himself and so won't be able to put any of his ideas into actual practice. It's fun watching this happen; indeed, next time there's an incidence of Conservative party in-fighting, I'll see whom he supports and bet money against them.

Anyway, I went into the polling booth not actually knowing which way to cast my vote, which is not a pleasant experience. It was a case of deciding which of the other candidates did I want to try to save from losing their deposit. UKIP and the CPA weren't in the mix, and I also rejected the Green candidate because of his alarmingly smug and ingenuous vote-for-me leaflet (he really should have saved the trees); also, he lives in the same street in Great Horkesley that we used to live in, which I regard as a negative. This left me with a choice between the Lib Dems and Labour.

I almost tossed a coin, but eventually went with the Lib Dems as they need the money more.

It's not as if Tim Farron will be their leader for long after the election anyway...




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