General Election

05/05/2005

Fairly miserable day, after a stormy wet night. Strong westerly winds, soggy rain that clears to showers and brighter conditions by the late afternoon, and I am afraid that it is more of the same changeable weather over the weekend. I use the bad weather to concentrate on indoor work, which is not so difficult when the bright outdoors are not so tempting. My only excursion is to cast my vote in the general election, we really did not want to vote for any of them, and dearly wished for one of the bizarre fringe parties to waste our votes on. I particularly liked the “Death, Dungeons and Taxes Party” whose main policy plank is the re-introduction of the death penalty for minor offences; regrettably, they did not have a candidate standing in Argyll. Therefore, there was nothing for it but a shameful tactical vote for the Tories who, because of boundary changes do have a slight hope of unseating the Lib Dems, who for reasons already expressed, I despise. We will have to wait a extra day for the results because in the cuckoo world that we now inhabit the election authorities have loudly proclaimed the recruitment of double the number of vote counters, the same press release also announces that the count will take twice as long as normal. Dare one ask why? In the same vein, I have asked the National Farmer’s Union if they can supply me, as an access provider, with a copy of the new Countryside Access Code, conceived and published by Scottish Natural Heritage, a Scottish Executive Agency. All very reasonable you might say, but oh no, the code is not available to members of an organisation, only to members of the public, why? It conjures up a group of snotty boys in shorts chanting; “You’ve got to play in our game, we’ve made up the rules, but, ha ha, we’re not going to tell you them”. The level of jingoistic madness does extend back to the NFU, who admit that they do have some copies of the code, but only sufficient for, and I quote, Members and Branch Monitors of the Environment, Land Use, legal and technical sub committee. Ye gods, pour me a drink. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.