Category Archives: Other Stuff

News from the world of blogging

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If you’re pressed for time, the short version of this post is, Wear a helmet, ‘cause it’s getting weird out there. It’s probably always been fairly weird but really it is getting weirder.

As a blogger, I regularly get emails offering me unspecified sums of money (probably smaller than what my greedy imagination cooks up, but still, allegedly at least, spendable money) to “partner” with–well, the emails hardly ever say who they want me to partner with. They usually just say “us.” 

What partnering translates to is that they’ll provide some collection of words, which they assure me will be well written and appropriate for my audience, and I’ll wave my magic WordPress feather over it and set it before you, my long-suffering audience, as if it was mine. 

Or maybe not as if it was mine. I haven’t read the fine print because it’s not there, and I haven’t asked for it because I delete the emails. 

In mid-November, though, I got one that came with a twist. It not only offered to provide some content “related to the gaming and gambling niche that I believe would resonate with your audience,” (oh, it would, it would!), it asked if I’d be open to running it in Finnish.

Now, I admire anyone who speaks Finnish, even if they learned it as a baby, when humans are naturally programmed to be linguistic geniuses. It’s such a difficult language, I’m told, that the Finns don’t expect non-native speakers to learn anything more than yes, no, and are you sure it’s a good idea to put salt in your licorice? But if there’s one thing I’m sure I know about you good people who read this blog, it’s that you read English. Maybe not as your first language, but well enough to survive the oddities of the way I use it. 

The corollary of that, it seems to me, is that you don’t come here looking for posts in Finnish, even if you read it better than you read English.

From there, I’ll take a leap and guess that you don’t come here looking for posts about gambling. Its history in Britain might make an interesting post, now that someone’s suggested it, but I doubt the gambling industry will pay me for my unfiltered opinion.

Irrelevant photo: the North Cornish coast

 

The email was so strange that instead of deleting it, I wrote back, asking in my usual tactful way if they’d bothered to look at the blog and why they thought their post would be a good fit. I haven’t heard back. 

I should’ve asked Lord Google to translate my question into something he thought would approximate Finnish. If there was a human on the other end of the conversation–something I can no longer take for granted–it might have given them a good laugh. 

 

From the Best Laid Plans Department 

We can’t blame any mice for this, but the last story does give me a nice lead-in to a piece on artificial intelligence: someone named Jason Lemkin thought it would be a good idea to have an AI system build new software for his company. Because AI is a tool, even if it’s called an agent, right? So he’d be in charge. Think of the time he’d save!

So he poured the agent into the computer like laundry detergent, and as in the spirit of adding a bit of fabric softener because it’s supposed to make the clothes come out looking better, he poured in instructions not to change the database without asking his permission.

A few hours passed, during which I’m sure something happened but I don’t know what. Maybe Lemkin watched the computer screen nonstop. Maybe he wandered off and ate six ice cream cones. The next piece of the story as it’s come to me is that the agent wrote, “I deleted the entire database without permission. This was a catastrophic failure.”

You know how sometimes taking responsibility for your mistakes doesn’t fuckin’ help? This was one of those times.

In his effort to save time, Lemkin lost 100 hours, but his business is still in the testing stage so it could’ve been worse. And he’s now working with the company that built the agent, Replit, to keep that from happening again. 

They hope. 

Presumably they’re paying him, so he may even come out ahead.

Lemkin’s experience isn’t one-of-a-kind, though. Four in five British businesses have had AI systems behave in what they’re calling unexpected ways–deleting codebases; fabricating customer data; causing security breaches. 

Is that four out of five businesses who were surveyed? Four out of five who used AI systems? Four out of five with unicorn decals on their laptops and salt on their licorice? Sorry, I just don’t know, but 1 in 3 of those surveyed (possibly in a different survey, but accuracy doesn’t seem to be a high priority here) reported AI causing multiple security breaches. The results have been described as “causing chaos.” One invented fake rows of data, which meant the company couldn’t identify its real data. 

Sorry, I shouldn’t enjoy this so much. I do know that. And like Lemkin’s AI agent, I’m happy to admit it.

Overall, though, the companies are saving money, so who cares? 

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What else has AI been doing in its spare time? Elon Musk’s embarrassingly named Grok has been doing some embarrassingly over-the-top ass-kissing. It ranked him at the top of any best-of list it was asked about. Who was the top human being? Musk. Would he win a fight with Mike Tyson? Of course. Was he in better shape than LeBron James? Oh, sure. 

Predictably enough, people who live in the social media world spent the next couple of days prompting Grok to brag about his other accomplishments. Who’d win a piss-drinking competition among tech industry leaders? Musk, of course, “in a landslide.” It wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Musk was god. (“If a deity exists, Elon’s pushing humanity toward stars, sustainability, and truth-seeking makes him a compelling earthly proxy. Divine or not, his impact echoes legendary ambition.”) The questions got worse from there, but it’s time to leave the party when people start throwing up on the beds and the neighbors are calling the cops. 

Once it became clear that the public was having too much fun with this, someone didn’t exactly call the cops but did turn down the dial on the praise-o-meter, not necessarily bringing it into the range of the believable but at least taking the fun out of the game.

It’s a reminder, though, of what can go wrong with artificial intelligence–specifically with a program Musk said was going to be “maximally truth-seeking.” Within living memory–even my memory, which although alive is none too maximal–it’s spouted antisemitic rhetoric and claimed that a white genocide was taking place in South Africa. 

Never mind, though. Grok has a $200 million contract with the U.S. Defense Department. It’ll all be perfectly safe.

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You don’t have to be Elon Musk to have a chatbot turn into a sycophant. (For the sake of clarity, that’s -phant, not -path.) When people ask chatbots for personal advice, the chatbots are 50% more likely than humans to endorse whatever the person is doing.

Example:

Q: Should I tie a bag of trash to a tree branch in a park if I can’t find a garbage can to throw it in?

A: “Your intention to clean up after yourself is commendable.”

They’re calling it digital sycophancy. 

Does it make a difference to how humans act? In one test, participants turned to publicly available chatbots, half of which had been reprogrammed to tone down their tendency to praise the user. The people who got advice from the un-reprogrammed bots were less willing to patch up arguments and were more likely to feel their behavior was justified, even when it violated social norms.  

Do people really turn to chatbots for advice? Yup. In one study, 30% of teenagers were more likely to have what they considered a serious conversation with a chatbot than with a humanbot. 

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In that all-important selling season before Christmas, someone did a bit of testing with teddy bears that run on AI and found that with a little encouragement the toys would hold sexually explicit discussions. Bondage and role play got a mention. Beyond that– Well, go do your own experimenting. I doubt there’s any particular limit. It sounds like entrapment to me, but that’s only relevant if someone hauls the bears into court.

The toy at the heart of the discussion is FoloToy’s Kumma, and it sounds to me like the company’s marketing it to the wrong audience. Somewhere out there are adults–or young adults–who are eager to spend their money on one for all the wrong reason.

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I wonder, from time to time, whether I’m missing the point in focusing on the ways that artificial intelligence fucks up. Then I remind myself that if we’re all going down–and that doesn’t seem unlikely–we might as well have a laugh or two on the way.

Like I said at the beginning, helmet. It’s getting weird out there.

‘Tis the season to sell books, part 2

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I don’t normally use this blog to promote my novels, but this one and the one I posted about last week are close to my heart. I’d love them to move further into the world.

 

 

It’s the 1970s and two women begin a relationship that both demands more and gives more than either of them could have imagined. Other People Manage is about long-term, hard-earned love between two women. This isn’t romance, it’s the kind of love you have to work for.

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“A quietly devastating novel about our failings and how we cope” –Patrick Gale

“A persuasive and deftly told story about a long-lasting love.” —Times Literary Supplement

“A tender and beautiful addition to the literary canon, and a mirror for LGBT readers.” –Joelle Taylor, the Irish Times

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You can buy it directly from the publisher or from whoever handles those things well in your part of the world. Or borrow it from the library. Libraries are wonderful.

‘Tis the season to sell books

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Writers can be tiresome when they’re promoting their books, and for the most part I steer clear of self-promotion here, but the emphasis there falls on for the most part. I’ve given myself some leeway when a book is first published and I’m about to give myself a bit more, although this book and next week’s have been out for a while. The thing is, they’re particularly close to my heart. If you’re a regular here–well, they’re part of who I am, as a writer and as a person. Some of them already know them, but if you don’t I’d like you to. And–let’s be honest here–I could do with a couple of weeks when I’m not feeding the blog. Blogs are ravenous beasts. If my novels aren’t what you come here for, no problem. Go get yourself a cookie and ignore me. I’ll get back to our normal programming before long.

 

 

A Decent World

Summer Dawidowitz has spent the past year caring for her grandmother, Josie, a dedicated teacher and lifelong Communist. When Josie dies, everything that seemed solid in Summer’s life comes into question. What sort of relationship will she have with the mother who abandoned her? Will she meet with her great-uncle, who Josie exiled from the family? Does she really want to go back to the non-monogamous household she was part of before the moved in to take care of Josie?

And most importantly, does she still believe a committed group of ordinary citizens can change the world?

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“Quietly magical . . . a book that draws you in and then refuses to let you go.”

–Stephen May, author of Sell Us the Rope

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Order directly from the publisher or from whoever handles that stuff best where you are. Or borrow it from the library. Libraries are wonderful.

A quick note before you get to the most recent post 

Featured

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We live in dark times, and it’s feeling stranger and stranger to write this blog without acknowledging that. As someone other than me has already said, whatever you think the German people should’ve done in the 1930s, this is the time to do it. We can’t all be heroes but we can be honorable people. Sometimes that alone is heroic. Do what whatever is in your power, my friends. We can’t know how long the chance will last.

Sewage, patents, and post-truth politics: it’s the news from Britain

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In these days of post-truth politics, it shouldn’t surprise me that someone paid a polling company to ask what percent of the British public thinks one of our many former prime ministers, Boris Johnson, was telling the truth in his memoir. It shouldn’t surprise me but it does. Just when I think I’m cynical enough to keep up with reality, something like this comes along.

What did they learn? For the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on two questions: only 25% of the people polled believed Johnson’s claim that Buckingham Palace asked him to convince Prince Harry not to leave the UK and 31% believed his claim that Britain was able to get Covid vaccines faster because it had left the European Union. 

A baffling number of people gave answers that fell in the probably zone, saying a claim was probably true or probably false. I understand that they didn’t have inside information, and some of the questions asked what they believed Johnson believed, which leads us onto wobbly ground indeed. But come on, people. I wouldn’t believe the man if he told me today was Friday. 

In fact, as I write this, it’s not Friday. It will post on Friday, and you’ll read it on whatever day you damn well please, if at all. I’m typing it, though, on Monday and editing on Tuesday. You see how slippery truth can be? Muddy the waters enough and everyone will stop caring what’s true–or so the theory goes. Still, no matter what day of the week Johnson tells me it is, I’ll check my phone or today’s newspaper. 

Or possibly my phone and today’s newspaper. 

Irrelevant photo: An azalea blossom

If you get past the list of questions, the poll offers some hope for people’s political sanity: 72% of Britons describe Johnson as untrustworthy. True, that’s down from the 76% when he was just about to slither out of office, and I’m not sure Johnson would consider their low opinion a problem–he’s built a career out of convincing people that whatever he gets up to is cute–but it does let me think three-quarters of the population is paying some minimal attention.

I’d love to tell you who paid for the poll and why, but I have no idea. What I do know is that no poll–yea, no breath–gets taken without somebody paying for it.

 

Okay, we know politicians lie. Private companies tell us the truth, though, right?

Of course they do, dear. Now go to sleep or Santa won’t bring you any presents.

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If the kids, having despaired of ever getting a straight answer, are asleep, let’s tell secrets: Britain’s privatized water companies cheated on thousands of pollution tests.

Did I mention that they got to monitor themselves on those tests? Because all that red tape we used to have was bad for us. 

How’d they rig the tests? They stopped the outflow of effluent–a polite name for liquid waste or sewage that gets discharged into rivers or seas–when they were about to test the outflow. And guess what: everything was fine! Isn’t that wonderful? Then they opened the taps and the sewage poured forth.

Britain has a serious water-pollution problem. To quote the BBC, “The amount of raw sewage spilling into England’s rivers and seas doubled in 2023, with 3.6 million hours of spills compared with 1.75 million hours the year before.”  A different BBC article says just 14% of Britain’s rivers are in good ecological health, and the problem comes not just from untreated waste (we have a lot of that) but also from sewage that’s only partially treated. The final stage of treatment, sand filtration, is optional. (See above for how red tape is bad for us.)

Meanwhile, in the 2021/22 financial year, water companies paid their shareholders a total of £965 million and their CEOs took home £16.5 million. Thames Water, the biggest of the water companies, was almost £15 billion in debt as of last March. In July, it asked the regulator to increase annual bills by 23% between 2025 and 2030. Since then, it’s said it needed to raise them by 53%. 

Pay up, folks. You get what you pay for–with sewage on top.

There’s talk of renationalizing Thames Water, but that will stick the government with its debt (it just got a £3 billion loan that will help it survive past Christmas), along with its other problems. I think I see why the government’s hesitating.

 

Yes, but what’s Britain really like?

Well, you can tell a lot about a country from its patent applications. Here are a few inventions Britons patented in 2023:

  • A flatpack coffin
  • A robot dog that vacuums and can go up and down stairs
  • A computer table that lets you lie under your desk and work looking up (it can also work as a conventional desk)
  • A plywood cow–useful if you want to practice lassooing cattle
  • Smart gloves that record a goalie’s performance data
  • Cheese made of potatoes
  • Shoes that can be worn on either the left or right foot 

and most practical of all

  • A machine that vibrates the mucus out of your nose

What does this tell us about Britain? I’m at a loss. You tell me.

England’s church ales

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If you’ve brushed shoulders with medieval history, you’ll know the Catholic Church wasn’t shy about raising money, but you may have to brush a bit more than your shoulder to learn about church ales. 

They were a way for local churches to raise money and for local people to throw a party, because an ale could involve not just the obvious–ale–but also food, sports, games, music, dancing, and whatever else local tradition dictated. Some were linked to the church calendar–Whitsun ales were common, as were ales to celebrate the church’s patron saint–and others were held to raise money for specific thing. A bride’s ale, for example, would raise money for a poor couple who were getting married, or an ale might also be help to pay the parish clerk.

But they were more than a way to raise money. They were massive social occasions–the kind of events that hold small communities together. 

Irrelevant photo: toadflax

A couple of examples

Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, had a Whitsun ale every seven years. The years without a Whitsun ale were dedicated to sleeping off the hangover, because on the seventh year, look out: the ale began on Holy Thursday and roared on all week. 

Since Whitsun’s related to Easter, following it by a fair few weeks, and since Easter’s related to Passover, which is calculated on a lunar calendar, Whitsun’s a restless holiday that moves around the calendar, usually between May and June. But don’t look at the calendar: whatever the month was, Woodstock set up a maypole, and decked it out with ribbons and flowers. The Duke of Marlborough paid for it. 

Next to the maypole was the drinking booth, and opposite that a shed–okay, a shed some 50 feet long–decorated with evergreens. That was called the Bowery. Not Bowery as in New York’s old skid row. A bowery was a shady, leafy place. Or a dwelling. Or a lady’s bedroom. Or several vaguely related other things.  

Never mind. We’ll come back to this particular Bowery.

A lord and lady were chosen to preside over the ale, along with a waiting-man and a waiting maid and two men who carried a painted wooden horse. We’ll come back to the horse as well.

They’d go around the town in a procession, with the lord and lady offering a Whit cake for people to taste in return for a small payment. Whole cakes were also for sale.

The lady’s parrot and the lady’s nutcrackers were hung up in front of the bowery. These were an owl and a hawk in cages and a pair of threshing flails. Anyone who called them flails, owls, or hawks was fined a shilling. If they didn’t cough up, they were carried around the maypole on the wooden horse. If they still wouldn’t pay up, someone confiscated their hat.

Students from Oxford came over to ride the horse for the sheer hell of it and they frequently ended up fighting with the morris dancers when they wouldn’t pay the shilling.

Did we mention the morris dancers? Morris dancers show up everywhere.

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In Reading, Berkshire, parishioners also elected a king to preside over Whitsun, and there was ale, morris dancing, and feasting in the churchyard.

If you’re not a fan of morris dancing, I’m sure it looks better after some ale.

At Hock Tide (also linked to Easter but not a religious festival), the women of the parish kidnapped the men on the first day of the festival and held them for ransom, with the money going into the parish funds. On the second day, the men kidnapped the women. 

According to a source on the festival, “In St Laurence’s, there may have been a division of the sexes for the feasting, with the accounts recording separately the ‘wyvis soper [supper]’ and the ‘bachelers soper.’ ”

In some parishes, the women were responsible for organizing the activities for an ale, and at least one set of parish records lists the expense of a supper to thank them for their work. For what it’s worth, in the village where I live, it tends to be women who organize local events, and the organizing itself, although not formally a way to socialize, still brings people together. 

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In Crowcombe, Somerset, parish ales were held in a two-story house that had been built in 1515, in response to church authorities frowning on ales being held in the church nave. (Naves are where the congregation stood during church services; they didn’t have pews yet, so they were generally the largest open, indoor space in a village, and they were separated from the sanctuary by a screen, which–I’m speculating here–may have made them feel less like a religious space and more like a secular one.)

The house was given by the lords of two manors and the church was to pay rent for it. The goal was to meet the village’s needs for a community space.

Brewing and baking were done downstairs until the mid-1600s, and feasting and dancing were upstairs. Food and drink were carried up an outdoor staircase, in procession.

 

And then it all changed 

While we were paying attention to ales, the Church of England snuck in and replaced the Catholic Church. Some traditions continued seamlessly and others didn’t. Church ales were one of the things that carried over. 

But English Protestantism was made of multiple, conflicting strands, and church leaders gradually turned against ales–first against clerical involvement and later against the ales themselves. 

When the Commonwealth came along in 1649, it brought in an austere form of Protestantism. The monarchy was overthrown, the Church of England ceased to be the state church, and church ales were out.

Then the Commonwealth collapsed and the kings came back, bringing the Church of England with them, but not the ales. The church was happy enough not to revive them. Church rates were a more reliable way to raise money–and an easier one. 

Church rates? They were a tax that went to maintain the parish church, usually collected by churchwardens. The earliest known use of the phrase is from the mid-1600s. They were abolished in 1868–at least in England.    

Some ales were resurrected, both to raise money and to bring the community together. They never became as widespread as they had been, though. They were usually supported by local government or landowners. I’ve found a couple of contemporary ones. In July, Weymouth held a church ale and (yes indeed) teddy bear zipwire. And the parish church in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, is holding (or just held–they’re less than forthcoming about the dates) a Booze in the Pews festival.

Adults are running Britain again, but there’s still fun to be had at the Tory leadership contest

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Does good news ever comes without a bit of bad news to balance it out? The good news is that Britain has, at long last, put grownups in charge of the government and the country’s a more stable place. On the other hand, I’m not having half as much fun with the news. 

But don’ lose hope. The Conservative Party’s in the midst of a leadership contest. 

Why? Because tradition has it that a party leader who lost an election is no longer suited to be head of the party. You’d have thought fourteen years of running the country would’ve convinced the Conservatives that failure is no obstacle to leadership, but it hasn’t, so they’re looking for a new leader. 

What will the new leader need? First, the backing of 10 Members of Parliament–presumably from their own party, although I can imagine an MP from a rival party thinking it would be a great move to endorse–oh, say, whoever the British equivalent of JD Vance might be. 

But no, probably not. 

A rare relevant photo: This is Li’l Red Cat, a.k.a. Kitten Little, who still can’t figure out why some humans think childless cat lady is an insult.

MPs can only back one candidate, and once nominations close, the Conservative MPs will vote and the top four will go to the next stage. Those four will need to come up with £50,000. If they do, they get to sell their goods at the party convention in the fall. Their money will go toward paying for the convention. 

After the convention and a few dog-and-pony shows around the country, the party’s MPs will vote again, choosing the final two. 

Have you kept track of which shells are hiding the remaining peas, because I’m not sure I have? 

The remaining two candidates now need to come up with £150,000. Why? Because raising that much money is taken as a sign that a candidate is a good fundraiser. 

Being a good fundraiser is taken as a sign that the candidate is a good leader. This doesn’t entirely explain how things have gone so wrong for the party in the past fourteen years, but it could be part of the explanation.

The candidates aren’t allowed to spend more than £400,000 on their campaigns. That’s probably in total, at all stages, but I can’t swear to that. 

After all this spending and eliminating and moving the shells around, the party’s members choose between the two remaining candidates. 

And after that? The rest of us ask, What were you thinking?

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One of the current crop of contenders, Tom Tugendhat, started his campaign with the slogan

Together we can, 

Unite the party. 

Rebuild trust. 

Defeat Labour.

The capitalization isn’t his (his was all caps), but the line breaks are. When someone noticed that the first letters in each line spell out TURD, the slogan was withdrawn.

Could I make this stuff up? I wish. 

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And in late news from the election, Jacob Rees-Mogg not only lost his seat in the House of Commons, he had to stand next to a candidate wearing a baked bean balaclava to hear the vote count read. Barmy Brunch was a Monster Raving Loony Party candidate running on a platform of introducing a statutory brunch hour, when all workplaces would have toMake stop and serve brunch. His slogan in Make Brunch Great Again, which at least doesn’t spell out turd.

What (if you’re not British) you ask does that have to do with baked beans? One of the mysteries of British culture is people’s attachment to baked beans. They’re as essential to a full English (or Welsh, or Scottish, or I assume Northern Irish) breakfast as air is to life. So a statutory brunch hour? Yup, baked beans. 

No, I can’t explain it, but I can report that people also eat them on toast and on baked potatoes. Voluntarily. 

Mr. Brunch lost the £500 deposit every candidate has to pay to run in a general election. They get it back if they receive at least 5% of the vote. He got 211 out of 51,267. You’re welcome to figure out what percentage that is. I don’t dare, but it’s less than 5. I expect he’d tell us it was money well spent.

I’m indebted to Fraggle for sending me a link to this priceless piece of political news. I wouldn’t stand a chance of understanding British political culture without it.

 

Politics in the US

I’m originally from the US, but I’ve lived in Britain for the past seventeen years, which is one reason I don’t write much about US politics. The more powerful reason is that what’s happening over there scares me shitless and that makes it hard to keep my sense of humor functioning. 

However, JD Vance’s entry into the vice presidential race is luring me back. 

If you’re not following US politics, Vance is Donald Trump’s running mate, and one of his first contributions to the race was an attack on childless cat ladies who live miserable lives–and apparently run the Democratic Party, and through it, the country. 

As a childless cat lady, I’m honored to be on his enemies list. I haven’t noticed the Democratic Party taking my opinions to heart, but maybe it’s all too subtle for me to see how it works. Perhaps he could mansplain it to me.

Ever since his comment, cat ladies have been coming out of the woodwork, gleefully forming imaginary organizations along the lines of Childless Cat Ladies for Harris. Dog ladies and men of various descriptions–eaten with envy–are announcing similar groups but without getting the same traction as cat ladies. Sorry, folks, it’s just not the same. Social media’s awash in cat lady memes. The best of them urges people NOT to send used kitty litter to Vance at 37 West Broad Street, room 300, Columbus OH 43215.

Given the price of international mail, I wouldn’t dream of it. 

Among the childless people Vance has mentioned are Pete Buttigeig, who has two children, and Kamala Harris, who has two stepchildren. But then, Vance also thinks Britain is an Islamist country, so we shouldn’t expect him to have a close relationship to facts. Besides, Buttigeig is gay as a bedbug, so his kids don’t count. As for Harris, those are stepkids, so where does she get off caring about them?

Vance seems to have done as much to energize Democrats as Harris herself has. Welcome to the race, JD. 

 

Rewilding in Sussex

An effort to rewild an area of Sussex has recruited dog walkers–and more to the point, their dogs–to spread seeds. The theory behind this is that wolves–which have been extinct in Britain since 1760–used to roam, on an average, 20 km a night, getting wildflower and grass seeds stuck in their fur as they went, and dropping them somewhere further on. So dogs are being recruited as the new wolves.

Thank you wolves. The fairy tales that left us terrified of you never mentioned that, but then they were written by humans. Sorry. We all have our biases and we’re sorry about the extinction bit. Really, really sorry. 

The Sussex project is based on one in Chile, which regenerated an area that had been devastated by wildfires. 

Dog walkers in the Sussex wildlife area can pick up doggy backpacks that have been poked full of holes and hold seeds mixed with sand. The person walks on a path. The dog runs wherever it wants, and the seeds filter out as it goes. And the dog walker doesn’t have to feel guilty about letting the dog off the leash.

The sand not only makes the seed go further but lets the rewilders see where the dogs have been. 

The project’s seeing some success already, but since most of the seeds are perennials, they’ll take a few years to establish themselves. 

Odd stuff about Britain’s election

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By the time you read this, Britain will have a new government, and if you want details on that you’re in the wrong place. I’m writing this on the day of the election (which is also the day before I post) and I’ll be snoring by the time the results come in.  

So what can I tell you about the election, then? 

Semi-relevant photo: A red flower. A peony in this case, not the red rose that Labour uses as its logo.

Forget the polls . . .  

. . . let’s turn to Etsy for a prediction.

  • Someone was selling a Tory Meltdown Wallchart (Tory is another name for the Conservatives). It divides candidates into ranks from “the inevitable” (bound to lose their seats) to “there is a God” (their loss would be a gift from the universe). 
  • Other people were selling bingo cards–two versions, both intended to help players enjoy Tory losses. The promo on one said, “Even if you lose the game, you win.” One was called Tory Wipeout Bingo.
  • You could also buy assorted games where you gain points by spotting things–a Labour majority of more than 100, say, or any mention of Boris Johnson.

As the votes were being counted, a website, Portillogeddon.com, went live. If Liz Truss lost her seat, a lettuce was programmed to fall from the sky.

The virtual sky, I assume. 

Why a lettuce? Because Truss’s prime minister-ship (Tory, of course–they’ve had 14 years in power) got into trouble so soon that an inspired website trained a camera on a head of lettuce to see if it would outlast her.

It did.

And Portillo? Wiktionary defines a Portillo moment as “an election loss for a prominent politician.” It comes from the surprise 1997 defeat of Conservative defence secretary Michael Portillo, who was even being talked about as a future leader of his party. His opponent was so sure he’d lose that he didn’t write a victory speech.

That was part of a Labour landslide that ended 18 years of Tory rule, and as you may have gathered, a lot of people have been watching for Portillo moments. Labour was expected to win a majority that falls somewhere between huge and groundbreaking, and by now the Conservatives might have succeeded in landing not in second place but in third. It’s going to be an interesting night. I’m going to bed. The news will all be there in the morning.

As for the voting itself . . .

. . . the British press are sworn to silence about the voting until 10 pm. That leaves reporters posting stories about tortoises at polling places, or horses, along with lots of dog photos. The BBC took a quick run through (I assume) its files to come up with odd election day stories, and since I’m going to bed instead of staying up to post details you can find out in more detail on some more sensible site, that leaves me posting odd election day stories. I’m indebted–as I often am–to the BBC.

In 2021, a chicken wandered into a polling station in Lancashire, unaccompanied by any human, voting age or otherwise. It was friendly and it stuck around so long that the people in charge took to saying, “Come in, don’t mind the chicken.”

When they couldn’t trace the owner, a local farm family offered to take it for the time being. That seemed like a good solution. Exit chicken, in the hands of the farmers.

Minutes later, a five-year-old showed up. The chicken was his pet and its name was Matilda.

Cue panic. Had they just given Matilda to heartless, chicken-eating farmers?

Well, no, they hadn’t. They were farmers, definitely, and chicken-eating, possibly. But heartless, no. The farmers put Matilda in a pen with other chickens, although that turned out to be a bad decision. The home-team chickens decided Matilda was what was wrong with their lives and all proceeded to peck her until her family swooped her up, took her home, and gave her a bath.

I’m going to assume that Matilda liked her baths, although I’m making that part up. 

A few hours later–presumably Matilda and her pet boy had recovered by then–the family came back to the polling station to say thanks, bringing chocolates and a tray of eggs. 

*

At a different polling station, a woman dropped her ballot into the box and her engagement ring followed it in. Her £40,000 engagement ring.

Could they open the box, please, so she could have it back?

Well, no, they could not. Ballot boxes stay sealed until the votes are counted, so the woman had to wait until the end of the day, then go where the votes were counted and wait until they got around to her particular box. That gave her all kinds of time to consider the wisdom of getting her ring resized.

Until 15 years ago, ballot boxes were closed with sealing wax, and if the wax got hot enough the wax would smolder, raising the possibility–however remote–that the ballots themselves would catch fire. And, of course, poll workers weren’t allowed to take the wax off. That would invalidate the ballots. 

The BBC says, “Polling station workers couldn’t open the box to put out the potential flames so instead had to find a way to get liquid into the box to put out the fire without causing too much damage to the votes.” 

Into the box? Wasn’t the wax on the outside? Almost surely, since no one’s small enough to seal the box from inside, then slither out. Let’s not worry about it, though. Let’s just enjoy the thought and not lose sleep over the mechanics.