And then again, not.

By chance, I found myself at a page which linked to this. As we older folk say "I have no fucking idea how or why". I'm sitting at the computer after a Sunday afternoon at the allotment.

                                       

This is not the allotment; this is a dead weed on a lay by in Northumberland, 2, maybe 3 weeks ago. The allotment is a slice : a sample of the geological strata it occupies, a shallow amphitheatre on the site of a former quarry. And of the people who use it - as an outlet for a specific kind of non-art creativity - the application of knowledge, skill, temperament, a taste for grunt level physical work, the exact experience of time passing.

Today, I did little, slowly and distractedly. Greenhouse, dried chicken shit and volcanic dust. Pulled rhubarb, spinach and wild garlic.

I was there on my own - Jill has sprained her ankle - and I'm really just the helper. The usual backchat about such-and-so was different. We were standing under a warm grey sky in the aftermath of the election. The Tories won through cynical manipulation of 'fear' - Mail headlines claiming Ed Miliband was planning 'class war' and that the SNP were about to invade Godalming. And the use of faulty and deliberately misleading polls, overestimating the Labour vote by 3-4%.This wasn't worked out on the back of an envelope, this is hardcore organised and strategic planning, based on real information and used to scare a jumpy electorate. 

Added to the genuinely hopeless Miliband, and the SNP with almost total support, the Liberal Democrats were punished for their participation in the 'Coalition' - but not their Tory masters. And we all dived in and whooped about a 'hung Parliament' and a Tory defeat. I believed it and joined in and bang! the bastards have a 100 seat majority over Labour, LDs are shot. The SNP will be kept out of English politics - they will have tax raising powers. And that's how it was done : cruel, painful and efficient. Using only the things they found lying around :

News International and Murdoch. 

Ashcroft former Tory vice chair and non-dom and now running a polling company. 

UKIP and the idiot Farridge to cut into the white working class Labour vote.

Labour trying to grab some credibility via Russell Brand - aka the yoof vote.

Polls that say what you want them to say and the same numbers meaning a Labour majority AND the end of civilisation. It worked, not a fluke, not by chance or the skin of anyone's teeth. It worked because the class represented by the Tories - financial capital, outsourcing, banks and communications companies. The burghers of Godalming and Darras Hall will support = vote, but the real stuff is the raw power of capitalism.

We are passed by, overflown, surveilled and obedient. Or maybe we're not.