You're AVin a laugh

Referendum time. Uncertainty, ignorance and divisive opinion stalk the land as giant billboards loom over us. It's time to decide how we elect our members of parliament.

Or, at least, it's time to decide on the formal voting system for the election of members of parliament. The actual decision making process is far more complicated than the anti-AV camp would have you believe AV is (and that is very complicated indeed, they want you to think that the AV system is as complicated as a maths problem your eleven year old child is asking you for help with, as frightening as the question 'what do you think?' is when asked of any man in the vicinity of a partner and a changing room and, worst of all, that it's foreign, and not funny foreign like 'Allo 'Allo or friendly foreign like a Greek taverna selling chips, no, proper frightening foreign, like a bearded backpacker with a grudge and a burka), consisting as it does of one part what scandal your MP has been implicated in, one part how shifty and sweaty they look on television and one part politics. Next to that, the mechanics of election is an absolute breeze.

The alternatives are the current system of first past the post, and the proposed system of an alternative vote. Previously of course everyone thought that the alternative vote was one for the attention seeking transvestite candidate, but it turns out to mean an alternative to first part the post.

So, with first past the post you essentially vote for the candidate that you think is least likely to screw up the constituency or the country, while cheerfully ignoring the many dull but worthy candidates on the ballot paper.

AV is a much more sophisticated proposition, giving as it does a chance to list the dull but worthy types as your second or third candidate in a show of condescension unparalleled since Victorian industrialists patted small children on the head prior to tossing them under a loom.

We are being told that the danger of AV is that if enough people try to spread their democratic munificence, we'll end up with some bonkers party getting a seat in Parliament. That this is coming from some conservatives is an irony that has not gone unnoticed.

The real challenge of AV is that instead of voting for the single candidate that you find the least repulsive, you have to choke back the gagging reflex and come to terms that you're expected to give your approval to three folk who are actively seeking election.

The media were ready to make much of the pro-AV camp not being able to make the thick British public understand AV? However, the British public have been soaking up the Eurovision song contest for decades now and are quite at home with sophisticated voting systems thank you very much. Moreover, the BBC did a fabulous job of explaining how AV works using biscuits, and showing how the nation's favourite biscuit can be determined using preferences. ITV used crisp flavours as an example and that is all you ever really needed to know about those two broadcasters.

With that angle to the story dead on it's arse, they have dusted off the cliché that politics makes strange bedfellows and show pictures of really quite gruesome types smiling through gritted teeth and explaining that although they are in different parties, they agree that such and such a voting system is the best way forward.

What it actually comes down to is which politician you want to annoy the most and in this case it's not so much first past the post as a dead heat that not even a photo finish will determine. The big political fear is that there will be a very poor turn out and that this will be held up as evidence that the new system, if chosen, does not have a mandate. The reality is that just like AV the public needs more choices, because we're all familiar with different types of voting systems; we want to express a preference for a dance off, a bush tucker challenge or, my favourite, a swimwear round.

e Day + 1

Oh God…is it not over yet. Right, that’s it, I’m going into media black out mode. If I hear one more opinion from the ‘experts’ who predicted that this was a ‘three horse race’ and, oblivious to the fact that all the polls were wrong and all their opinions were wrong, are STILL spouting into camera, I shall have to double my regular breakfast tipple of horse tranquilisers and brasso.

e Day - tally ho!

Nigel Farage, standing as a parliamentary candidate for UKIP and so a Europhobe of the first water, has been hurt when the small aeroplane he was travelling in crashed. The pilot was also pretty badly hurt.

Exciting rumours that it had been shot down by a Fokker proved to be unfounded. Apparently the ‘vote UKIP’ banner it was trailing wrapped round it on landing.

Hoisted by his own petard?

e Day - on the box

In normal society, whenever somebody begins a sentence with ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ two things happen: the first is that the air is filled with the sound you get when you rub a balloon between your hands, as everyone in listening distance cringes i8n anticipation of what’s coming next, and the second is that some arsehole shares views that have been out of fashion longer than rah-rah skirts.

So how anyone campaigning on being a racist was ever going to work I’m not sure; but that doesn’t stop the BNP, who were out on the streets yesterday assaulting the voters. That’s right, a BNP councillor had a fight with some of his constituents. On camera. Nice.

There is a proud tradition of pugilism and politics merging though – well, there’s the Prescott incident, when Prezza battered some oink who was guilty of a) egg throwing and b) possession of an offensive haircut.

At least Prescott had some style though, and a rather excellent left hook I seem to recall.

e Day

It’s election day! Thank Christ. The election has been described variously as ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for ugly people (which is odd, because I thought that’s what ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ was) or Eurovision for straight people. Whatever, it means that after tonight, there’s a chance that the media won’t be saturated with politicians and pundits the way a mattress at a crime scene is saturated with an undiscovered corpse.

So while schoolchildren roam the streets because some schools are closed to become polling stations, there is some excitement that it’s all finally happening. This is, I think, despite, rather than because of, the media frantically trying to whip up excitement in the election in exactly the same way that somebody tries to convince an unwilling participant that bondage really is good fun.

Meanwhile, life goes on normally for everyone not voting. Case in point are the tourists taking photographs of the telephone box outside my office. It must feature in tens of thousands of photographs, no doubt all of some smiling tourist standing in or beside it. Of course, for total authenticity, the telephone box should contain a urinating tramp and be festooned with business cards for prostitutes.