Diary Friday 9th June 2017

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I stayed up all night watching the live UK general Election results coverage, thrilled to see good seat taking by the Labour Party, but with Tory gains in Scotland it was not quite enough. Britain is now trapped under a hung Parliament. Theresa May seeks an alliance with Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party, (DUP), who only have eleven seats in Parliament themselves and who are widely perceived as an anti-IRA organization with a history of terrorism in the long Troubles civil war against the IRA. May’s pursuit of affiliation to the DUP risk starting that conflict anew. The DUP are fanatically religionist, homophobic, opposed to pro-choice in their anti-abortion stance, pro-creationist, and known to serve a climate change deniers. Trump would love them. The coverage was often cringe-worthy on the BBC, with an obsession with graphics that belonged on the holodecks of the Star ship Enterprise. Dimbleby was irritated by a fly that kept buzzing him, and spent o long talking about anti-tory tweets from pop-singer Lilly Allen that he forgot to discuss some actual election results that came in and got transmitted on the view screens. Watching Amber Rudd panicking as she nearly lost her seat was priceless, a was seeing Lib-Dem former leader Nick Clegg actually lot his. That should warn others about partnering the Tories, a useful warning to the DUP. The extremists of UKIP all lost their deposits which was satisfying. Other losers included a candidate of some small party or other who stood in Corbyn’s constituency and took just 11 votes. More serious and distressing was Scottish losses to the Tories, which actually let them scrape up their narrow victory over the collective opposition. The voting was matching the exit poll prediction extremely well and though I wanted to stay with the coverage to dawn I fell asleep about 3.30 am. I was woken at 9 am by a phone call about sales work, but the caller lost interest in me quickly as my last few ales roles were not too successful. Later I visited the community centre where this afternoon’s event was simply playing board games. Five of us played Monopoly. I finished second. We got lots of free pie, pasties and cakes there too, a great temporary antidote to the mess my country is in now. Arthur Chappell