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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last day of the county season

 Look, I never claimed to be cool. As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons. I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket. Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport. Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. N...
Post a Comment
Read more

D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad.  You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot.  The word I'd use is "stupid". It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration.  I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it. So you...
Post a Comment
Read more

The three most tedious food debates on the internet.

 I very much only have myself to blame. One of the less heralded aspects of running a business is that one is, regrettably, obliged to maintain a social media presence, it's just expected. And, if I have to do it, I'm going to do it very much in my own voice, as I don't tend to have time to stop and think when I'm bunging something on Insta. It seems to have worked okay so far. But, as a man better versed on the online world than he would prefer, I should have known better than to stick up a picture of our bread rolls, fresh out of the oven. In my defence, I did preface said picture by saying "one of the most tedious debates on the internet is what these are called...". Doubtless you've seen the argument somewhere, it's one of the workaday tropes that shithouse FB pages use to drive engagement. Need a few thousand clicks to raise the profile of your godawful local radio station/page about how everything was better in the past/shelter for confused cats?...
Post a Comment
Read more