April 14, 2005
Elecshun Speshal
Handshakes: no.3 in a series of errrr probably 3.
Can anyone guess which one of these two men turned up on my doorstep this afternoon?
Was it:
a) George W Bush, leader of world's largest polluter, the USA
or
b) George Robertson, ex-Secretary General of NATO?
Much as I would have loved to order Dubya off my property, it was in fact George Robertson, who was accompanying Slough MP Fiona MacTaggart, in her quest to invite me to vote for 'Labour' on May 5th.
I've never voted Labour and I'm not going to this time. I like to shout at Mr Blair when he's on the telly, mainly for things like nasty PFI deals, postal vote shenanigans, ID cards, the NHS, Iraq etc etc.
Fiona MacTaggart, who wrested Slough from the ebil Tories in 1997, at least listens to her electorate - but voted for the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and for ID cards and the recent anti-terrorism bill. But I'm not going to vote for Blair after Iraq, PFI, cronyism etc etc. Slough is one of the safest Labour seats in the south east so I expect Ms MacTaggart will be returned. Although I don't agree with her party's policies, she does seem to work hard for Slough (and it needs it) so it could be worse. I wonder how many Labour MPs are facing lost votes because voters don't trust Blair.
Still, it was nice of her to turn up personally on my doorstep along with George Robertson, and after my initial confusion that he was actually poverty-stricken proponent of morality Geoffrey Robinson, he embarked on trying to convince me, in a sort of mild reasoned way that a lot of Scottish politicians have, that the war on Iraq was justified. I don't know if he thought he could change my mind on it, but he was happy enough to spend 15 minutes arguing about Mr Bush, Syria, Iran, the UN, Israel, Libya and Kosovo - and him reassuring me that the US has no [further] military intentions in the Middle East. I wonder if he was electioneering round Slough just for the very purpose of deflecting adverse comment about Iraq.
0 out of 10 for the indefatigable Respect party, who sent 3 kids round with leaflets which were dumped casually outside my front window. I then shouted at said kids in my best Victor Meldrew voice, and their leaflets went straight in the recycling bin.
Meanwhile, in music land, this is great.