Friday, June 05, 2009

Closure

Well, following on from last night's post, I'm sorry to report that Pat Lally (like every other Labour councillor in Broxtowe) lost his seat. And the new Conservative councillor is called Eric Kelly, which is much harder to make a comedy name out of (there are plenty of half-rhymes with Eric, but no real ones except 'cleric').

Still, following on from last weekend's (or thereabouts's) post, I can confirm that The Pickwick Papers really is worth reading! That Dickens bloke does have something going for him, after all. I think he'll go far.

6 comments:

David said...

Eric Kelly and his big fat belly?

Zoomy said...

That would actually work, but sadly I just wrote his name wrong. He's Eric Kerry. And his... friend called Terry?

Anonymous said...

Ben. It may surprise you to know that Dickens was a mnemonist as well. His wife once wrote in her diary that he (Dickens) spent more time with the people in his head than he did with his family.

Dai

Anonymous said...

Conservatives? ewwwwww... :

Zoomy said...

Tell me about it. The district of Broxtowe has ended up as an even split between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - five county councillors each - but I seem to have come to live in the half of Beeston inhabited by its entire population of elderly racists who remember what the town was like before all those foreigners moved in, and think the working classes are nasty creatures. The Lib Dem candidate seems not to have even bothered campaigning around here - I didn't get so much as a single leaflet through the door. If I moved a mile north, although it'd be less convenient for work, I could be living in the part of town with all the ethnic minorities and workers. The votes, and parties standing, in the two areas, make interesting reading:

Beeston South & Attenborough (my area)
Conservative 1889
Labour 1700
Lib Dem 432
Green 306
BNP 278

Beeston North
Lib Dem 2026
Conservative 905
Labour 549
Green 334

I'm not sure where the north/south dividing line is, but those results make it sound like there's a big fortified wall of some kind.

Still, it might make things interesting at the next general election (Broxtowe's MP is Labour, narrowly beating the Conservatives in 2005) - presumably Labour's popularity will have rallied somewhat by then, but these results will doubtless give the Lib Dems an excuse to pretend that it's a neck-and-neck fight between them and the Tories, the Tories a semi-justification for claiming to be the most popular party in the constituency and Labour a real dilemma for how to go about campaigning. All signs at the moment are that they're planning to take the tack of "only we can fix all the things that have gone wrong on our watch just lately", but maybe they'll come up with something more sensible over the next year (no way there'll be a general election before that, barring some political miracle) and actually stand a chance.

Or I might just move to Mansfield, where the Mansfield Independent Forum, a loose coalition of people opposed to the very principle of party politics, won six of the nine available council seats. See, that's the kind of constituency for me!

Okay, non-politics blogging rule is in effect again, as of... now!

David said...

hmm Kerry is harder, hence why the Democrats picked Kerry as their Presidential candidate in 2004, so the Republicans couldn't make up silly rhyming puns about his name.