Skip to main content

Election fatigue.


As the day draws nearer a feeling of ennui descends over Coastalblog towers. The ineivitable consequence of a five year fixed term parliament. Too much foreplay and eventually you start wondering what’s on telly.

The problem for me is the politics of repetition. The same lines, the same messages, banged out again and again. I don’t doubt that it’s done as all sides consider it the most effective strategy, but it’s tedious in the extreme. But (sigh) it works.

Consider the Tory lie that the financial crisis was a result of labour overspending. If you can cast your mind back a few years to the heady days of 2007/8 you will no doubt be able to recall that it was nothing of the sort. You will recall a global financial crisis caused by the greed and criminality of a banking elite and the foment and fervour of an overheated housing market. You will further recall George Osborne being opposed to the actions taken by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling which, as it turned out, stopped the whole thing being much worse.

Well, your memories, as it turn out, are wrong. Or at least they are according to Conservative election policy, which has been to bang on about the deficit, over and over, linking it inextricably with Labour. Over and over. Deficit. Debt. Labour. Bad. Deficit. Debt. Labour. Bad. Got that monkeys? Got that in your heads now? It may not actually be, y’know, true. It may also be true that Osborne has borrowed A QUARTER OF A TRILLION POUNDS more than he said he would. But still. Deficit. Debt. Labour. Bad.

As this particularly egregious example displays, it’s effective. Not that I’m blaming just the tories, if I hear Nick Clegg use the word “stability” one more time I fear a part of my brain will dissolve. Likewise Farage and immigration. Sturgeon and Trident. God help me even labour and the sainted NHS. I can’t take another photo op of Andy Burnham nodding sympathetically at a nurse. I know it’s important, but in each case it simply feels like some policy wonk in a bunker has crunched some numbers and gone “This is it, this is the issue we can win on, now bang on and on and on about this, and nothing but this. Ad nauseam, people” And so we continue with the same lines, the same phrases, the same rote responses until even those of us who do actually genuinely give a hoot about the outcome are whimpering in a corner. Begging for it to end

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A whole new world.

I appear to have moved into the pub. Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here? The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong. As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mi

Mad Dogs and Immigration Ministers

It is with no small degree of distress that I'm afraid to say I've been thinking about Robert Jenrick. I know, I know, in this beautiful world with its myriad of wonders, thetre are many other things about which I could think, the play of sunlight upon dappled water, the laughter of my children, the song thrush calling from the sycamore tree a few yards away from where I type this. Yet the shiny, faintly porcine features of the Minister for Immigration keep bubbling up into my consciousness. It's a pain in the arse, I tell you. A few years ago on here I wrote a piece entitled The cruelty is the point in which I argued that some policies are cruelty simply for the sake of it, pour decourager les autres . I was reminded of that recently when I listened to Jenrick defending his unpleasant, petty decision to order murals at a migrant children's centre to be painted over. You've probably heard the story already; deeming pictures of cartoon characters "too welcoming&

Genius loci

 At the back end of last week, I heard a sound which told me Autumn had truly arrived. It seemed out of place, as we sweltered in unseasonable warmth, but it is as reliable an indicator if the seasons turning as leaves browning. A slightly comical, slightly mournful honking, early in the morning then again at the turn of the day The pink-footed geese are back. It is one of those sounds which is part of the fabric of this place, the siren being tested at Ashworth Hospital means it's Monday, Bringing practice means it's Tuesday, and the migration of the Pinks to their wintering grounds at Martin Mere means it's time to dig the jumpers out. It is one thing I do think I'd miss if I moved away. The arrival of these faintly ludicrous birds, strung out loosely against the sky in their rough v formations is something which seems to have burrowed its way deep into my consciousness, a sign that yes, things are definitely not all they could be, but some things are still working. T