Soft on bankers, soft on the causes of banking

Just back after a gig in Lancaster and an all-night bimble round some deserted Cumbrian motorway service stations. I put 450 un-Green miles  on the clock, so I thought I’d update on my unscientific posterwatch poll. It’s good to report that I’ve seen a good few Green Party posters, most especially in the little village of Bircher, where every hedge and every house seems given over to the Greens. , for some odd reason. Other than a sprinkle of Green, then, it was almost wall-to-wall Real Tories in the hedgerows and Lib Dems in the towns all the way from Presteigne to Lancaster.

With a few exceptions;  In Craven Arms, I’m sorry to report I saw two BNP posters pinned high up on lamp posts (is that legal? Note to self; ring Shrophire Highway Dept.) UKIP popped up here and there on my drive up through Shropshire and Cheshire; maybe five or six in total over the whole 450 miles? Just south of Shrewsbury I saw my first New Labour poster, which was quite exciting, because until that moment, I’d seen twice as many BNP as Labour posters, anywhere, at any point in this campaign.

Cheshire was as Real Tory as you’d imagine, with the Lib Dems doing all right in the towns, and the Greens still popping up more than UKIP. Round Warrington and onto the M6, the Lib Dems were outnumbering the Real Tories; but I didn’t see any more new Labour posters, until I got to Lancaster, where I saw another two, almost lost in a small sea of Green.

Over 22 hours of wakefulness and 450 miles of driving, then, the poster count goes something like this; Real Tories, hundreds, Lib Dems, also hundreds. Greens, dozens, UKIP half a dozen, New Labour three, BNP two.

It just occured to me; what does Nick Griffin mutter under his breath after he’s met one of his core voters? ‘Liberal scumbag?’

A highlight of my trip to Lancaster was popping in to see my old chum Ian Dicken at the Lancaster Musicians Co-Op. He played me a song that we’d written and recorded one night in, he thinks, about 1999. It’s called ‘End of the World’. Drink may have been taken; certainly we’d all had a pull on our trusty old briars. Ian plays piano, bass, mixing desk and drums, I’m singing, and Lancaster’s legendary Melvin ‘Melvis’ Dodd blows some pretty mean trumpet. Apropos of nothing this, but when Ian played it to me last night, that was the first time I’d heard it in 11 odd years, and I thought it sounded great; so here’s a link to the MySpace page Ian has kindly dedicated to that night of recording. He seems to have decided we were called The Sexy Puffs….