The Curmudgeon

Two months of spine-sapping boredom, lies, promises, more lies, pamphlets, even more lies, pledges, pontification, preaching, obfuscation, back-stabbing and, of course, even more lies.

It is now virtually certain that there will be a general election in May or, as we literary types now call it, Mendacious May, the month when the truth dies a slow and agonising death as the politicos think up more daft promises and kid themselves we are ever dafter to believe them.

The electorate, if we were still simple-minded enough to believe in words like integrity, honesty, self-sacrifice, duty, blah, blah, blah, will be subjected to endless spin pumped out from the telly, the radio, and the national press from now until that Thursday in May when tens of millions of us will not bother going to vote.

That the politicians think we'll believe it stupefies me and also stupefied speakers at this week's Beggarsdale WI debating society, which made history in it own little way by actually withdrawing its own resolution.

The proposition was "This House believes that any politician proved to have told deliberate lies to the voting public should be forced to resign on the grounds of false pretences and fraudulent utterances."

Now this was quite a clever one, thought up by Cousin Kate the Postmistress, local representative of the Genghis Khan faction, who has been in mourning since Maggie got the chop.

It was clever, you see, because a lot of us dim-witted ballot box fodder seemed to think that there was an ancient tradition in British politics that gentlemen or lady MPs did the decent thing and resigned their £200,000 a year jobs (with perks, that is) if caught out telling porkies.

Nobody believes a blind word that any politician from any party says these days (unless, perhaps, the Monster Raving Loony lot). We know fine well that any promises made will be instantly forgotten once No 10 has a tenant for another four or five years.

I mean, Maggie once promised that the NHS was safe in her hands, just as it was tilting into the nose dive it has been in ever since. Then there was Tony and "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime."

What a larf. Britain's cities now have more crime than New York and the Chief Inspector of Schools admits that 40 per cent of our kids get a lousy education. The Liberals, of course, want to legalise cannabis and feel sorry for that poor Saddam Hussein because Dubya and Saint Tone have been ever so nasty to him.

As I said before, what amazes me is that the politicos still seem to think that anyone believes what they say. In that case, they should note the result of the Beggarsdale WI debate.

The motion was withdrawn, you see, after the Doc's wife pointed out that if politicians had to resign for telling the electorate lies, there would be no one left to run the country. "And would you like to do such a dirty job?" she demanded.

That sent shudders down a few score spines so we all went to the Beggars' instead. That's what I call honest, down-to-earth politics.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.