Friday, May 07, 2010
Democracy 3: Buzzards and bicycles
The usual hike at lunchtime, taking a break from the Beeb. At the peak of the hill a buzzard pushed out of a tree clump directly below me and drifted, within boomeranging distance, to a clump further down. At least, it may have been a buzzard; alas I had no Nige there to help identify if it was a buzzard or a hawk or a kite or a golden eagle or a wren or a cormorant or a condor or a pigeon or a duck. Then three mountain-bicyclists hoved into view. They were youngish thin bespectacled modernish gents who looked like they probably voted Lib Dem. The first one was saying to the second one: “…he murdered me on the hills. I could beat him on the downhills and flats…I outspin him every time…. Though he might not have been putting the juice in….” The third one gave me a wide beam and a Good Afternoon. Well we are all brothers today. It even might be Con-Lib soon. We all put our cross in the box and hope for the best, with our hobbies and dimly-glimpsed opinions on this fragile shell of a planet. Only 36.2% of us voted Tory but we must all be conservatives or nothing makes sense or has any worth.
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6 comments:
I might vote preservative next time
Bicyclists - the new hikers?
Buzzards Brit, soar and mew or peep. Or is it phew and meep, anyhow they are oft mistaken for golden eagles so why not, from Monday call them eagles.
Once, in the hills near Blair Atholl I came across a walker carrying a Harrods bag, Gave him a wide birth, as opposed to a beam.
What do you think 'putting the juice in' means?
I'm not sure, Z, but I have slightly queasy notions about adrenaline and various kinetic fluids.
Bicyclists -- I hate those guys. They need to decide whether they are vehicles or pedestrians, and not just switch back and forth based on how annoying it is to me.
As for your elections, as far as I can tell it has now become all about proportional representation, which seems nicely meta to me since the problem with PR is that the government gets distracted by the pet projects of the smaller parties that can now "punch above their weight" (see, e.g., Israel). Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to let the BNP (1.9% of the vote, and probably more in a PR system) have 12 seats in Parliament.
I don't think it's really about PR though the media are making it so by suggesting it's critical for a ConLib deal. In fact, there are much more important factors - first, propping up Labour in Losers' Coalition would be a disaster for the Libs' reputation; and second, economic events are going to dictate this anyway.
I suspect that PR is less important to the Lib leadership than it is to their activists anyway.
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