2024 General Election Review

The result: Wales stops feeling blue

I stayed up until almost 5am watching the election results come in. Admittedly, I didn't watch it all - after the exit poll announcements at 10pm I watched the Star Wars film, Solo, to kill a bit of time before the actual results were declared.

By now, everyone with a passing interest in politics will know the headlines. Labour won with a big majority - something that felt unthinkable after Boris Johnson's huge win for the Tories in 2019. 

The Liberal Democrats went big as well, their 72 seats being the party's highest total for a century - going back to when they were just Liberal, no Democrat. 

Plaid Cymru won 4 seats, doubling their representation in the House of Commons. The number of constituencies in Cymru had dropped from 40 to 32, so some MPs had been squeezed out already. Every remaining Tory incumbent lost - including a record 4 former Welsh Secretaries. Most of the seats were won by Labour and the Liberal Democrats got one. 

The exit polls predicted a depressing total of Reform winning 13 seats. In the end they got 5, including panto politico Nigel Farage finally becoming an MP. Subsequently there have been questions over whether several Reform candidates were real people. The picture of their candidate in Clapham appears to be AI generated. Several candidates in Scotland have a nonexistent digital footprint. They still got thousands of votes though. 

I was happier to see the Green Party win a new record total for them of four seats. Jeremy Corbyn held on to his seat in Islington as an independent candidate having been ejected from the Labour Party. Amazing to think he was leading Labour in the previous two elections. Other independents won in areas with large Muslim populations, which is being taken as a protest vote against the Labour Party's stance on Gaza. The success of the independent candidates took some of the gloss off Labour's victory. 

I was flicking between channels on election night. I stayed mainly on BBC 1 Wales which focused on results from Cymru. BBC2 was the general BBC UK coverage chaired by Laura Kuenssberg, who I feel has been very partisan towards the Tories for several years. She was matey with Boris Johnson and seemed like his personal PR machine at times. Watching Laura slowly assimilating what was happening was quite amusing. Her expression turned increasingly sour as the night wore on. 

Meanwhile, on ITV there were some decent guest pundits including Ed Balls and Nicola Sturgeon. Sky's coverage was also quite good. It seemed that Sky announced results a fraction before the BBC. Sometimes they announced a bit too quickly, at one point they erroneously credited the Greens with a win in a seat Labour won off the Tories.

Early on in the night Andrew RT Davies, leader of the "Welsh" Conservatives, lost his cool on BBC1 Wales and lumped the blame for the Tory defeat squarely on (now ex) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In fairness, he wasn't wrong in his criticism of the decision to call an election without a coherent campaign strategy. Rishi may have felt a July election would wrongfoot his opponents but it also seemed to wrongfoot his own party. 

I knew two people personally who were standing as candidates. My fellow Barry Town fan, Ian, was the Plaid Cymru candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan. A former work colleague, Charlie, stood as the Tory candidate in Llanelli. Neither won, but props to them both for standing. 

Now the dust has settled and we get to see whether Labour have been all mouth and no trousers in their promises of change. It's been barely a week and so far they seem to have made the right noises. I'm a bit concerned that the new health minister has links with private healthcare companies. But overall it feels that things may be different now. 

30 seconds of fame

A while back I blogged about a piece I wrote for the When Saturday Comes website about half and half scarves (which was then published in the magazine).

My collection of everything
that's wrong with modern football

Last night at just past 11 o'clock I had a tweet from a producer on BBC Radio 5 asking if I was the guy who wrote the article. When I said yes they asked if I would like to be on Radio 5 this morning to defend half and half scarves. Apparently a pub in Manchester had banned people from wearing them in and Radio 5 wanted to do a bit about it on the breakfast show. I said yes. I mean, who wouldn't like to be on national radio first thing in the morning?

It's interesting to see what goes in to a tiddly piece like this. First there was a phone call at 11.30pm, then another call at 7.15 to check I was still available, then the actual call where I waited for them to start talking about the topic, then I had to listen to grumpy Liverpool fanzine editor who reckoned watching football should be an Orwellian-style 'Ninety Minute Hate', then my 30 seconds saying 'they're just souvenirs', then grumpy bloke again, cut to the eight o'clock news, a goodbye from the researcher who had phoned me and it was all over.

Was it worth it? Maybe. It was a different way to start a Monday. Do some people care too much about trivial things like half and half scarves? Yes. Clearly they do. Is there anything wrong with wanting a memento of a big game? No, I don't think so.

Unofficial Ars-cannon-nal

I can understand people who follow big clubs being fed up with tourists turning up and buying half and half scarves at league games. Although, as Cathy pointed out, it would have been nice for my four year old niece to have had a special scarf to commemorate the first game she went to earlier this year. But while half and half scarves are apparently the worst thing about Premier League football, they aren't that common in the murky depths of League 1. My niece will have to wait until Shrewsbury next get one of the big boys in a cup.

I hope it's Liverpool, just to annoy that grumpy fanzine guy. I will be buying two!

Have they found the Yeti?

Not yeti...

But BBC News are asking the question based on hair samples.

More covers

A while back I did a post about cover versions of songs I liked. Here are five more, including a cover of gone-and-long-forgotten boy band Five.

Foo Fighters: Band on the Run
Radio One are celebrating their fortieth birthday by asking loads of contemporary bands to cover songs from the past forty years. There have been some really good ones and a couple of days ago it was the Foo Fighters covering the Wings classic. And, boy was it good. I'm guessing the BBC will release the tracks on a celebratory album at some point. And I might just have to get a copy.

Terrorvision: Get on Up
I've never heard this on tape, but it was the last song of a brilliant gig Terrorvision did at The Bierkeller in Bristol on the tour promoting what turned out to be their last album. The original is, of course, by Five. I keep hoping Terrorvision's version will turn up on a posthumous release sometime (they've already had three come out!).

Tori Amos: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Take a grunge classic. Transpose it to piano. Hear it sung by Tori Amos. You can imagine how powerful this cover is.

Lily Allen: Oh My God
This is from the Mark Ronson album 'Version'. If you haven't heard it yet find someone who's got a copy and borrow it. What producer Mark Ronson has done is ask a whole bunch of people to cover various songs. I'm not a huge fan of Lily Allen, but I do like the Kaiser Chiefs, and the combination somehow just works. Other tracks I really like on the album include Amy Winehouse singing 'Valerie' by the Zutons, and a cover of the Smiths classic 'Stop Me'.

Hootie and the Blowfish: Please, Please, Please, Let me get what I want
Speaking of Smiths covers, this one from H&tB's collection of unreleased and live tracks is pretty good.

More factoids...

This time culled from, er, Time.

There are 90 guns for every 100 citizens in the USA, making it the most heavily armed country in the world. The country with the next highest aresenal of civilian arms is India. With 4 guns for every 100 people. Four and a half million guns are purchased in the USA every year. Worldwide, only eight million guns are produced a year.

Scientists have used sugar-eating microbes from the ocean to convert food into electricity. Apparently a cup of sugar can power a 60-watt bulb for 17 hours.

And this gem of a story made it into the most emailed section of BBC News despite being almost 2 years old: Jogging your way to saggy breasts
(It's top quality research which incidentally is sponsored by a sports bra manufacturer)

Stuff I learned from Mark Thomas’ book

Every job in the defence industry is subsidized to the tune of £13,000 plus change

That money comes out of our taxes

Far from being the impartial, fearless newsgatherer it wants to portray itself as, the BBC bottled it when the opportunity came along to expose arms dealers who’ve given money to the government

If the Indian government ever drops a nuke on Pakistan, it’s likely to be from a British-made plane

Most cabinet ministers visiting foreign governments are corporate whores touting the wares of Bae Systems

It’s illegal to sell torture equipment in the UK, but people still do it, and you can buy it on the web

The Labour government cares more whether you pay your TV licence than whether you are selling arms to UN-blacklisted regimes

If you’re going to break into an arms fair and cause havoc, one of the best ways is to dress up as a ‘penis of peace’ and hide a battering ram inside your giant papier mache cock – plus make sure you’re naked and greased up with olive oil to make life even harder for the security goons trying to grab you

Still haven't bought your own copy? Get along to Amazon.