Clutching at straws

By Conor Pope / @conorpope

If this week is remembered in years to come it will surely be as the week that America arrogantly attempted to upstage the UK’s local election and referendum coverage by killing Osama bin Laden. Thankfully, the death of Osama (or Obama, if you are Fox, Sky or the BBC) was overshadowed by a bit of straw from Bury.

In a similar way that the bin Laden’s frustration at his own failure to convert the western world to Islam may be compounded by the revelation that his burial at sea may not have been in accordance with Sharia Law, the news that a council election in the north west was decided by the candidates pulling straws after polling the same number of votes was an insulting disposal for the decaying remains of the Yes To AV campaign.

Don’t get me wrong, I support AV and I actively campaigned for it. Well, I supported in that if people mentioned it in the pub I would tell them I support it. And sometimes I wore a ‘Yes to AV’ badge. But that, admittedly, was it.

I always felt it was a losing battle; Britain is a country that seems to pride itself on its quirks. That’s why we have a monarchy; allow pictures of topless women on the third page of our most-read newspaper; have the metric system for some things and imperial for others and have red phone boxes in central London that still work despite their sole purpose being for tourists to have their picture taken in them.

This means that when it really comes down to it I think the people of Britain quite like the thought that we can still have elections that deliver a party with a majority despite receiving fewer votes. When it happens in the US, of course, it’s mental because they only ever have two candidates, but here it’s the kind of thing we would embrace with a roll of the eyes and a cup of tea. Then again, making major decisions on the flip of a coin is something psychopathic comic book villains do in the United States, but here we make those people Chief Counting Officers. Even I can’t help but feel amused that someone has become an elected councillor through an act of drawing straws, which she appears to have kept, presumably for posterity reasons: “See this kids? These are the bits of straw which deemed me better to represent the people of Ramsbottom than my Tory opponent.”

I imagine the Yes To AV campaign team are now feeling tired and dejected right now. My only piece of constructive advice for them would be to have a rest and take another leaf out of bin Laden’s book and watch The IT Crowd.

If I can take a sole piece of good news from this week, it is that it looks as though Frank Miller’s plans for Holy Terror, Batman! will have to be shelved.