"We don't need no ....(blank)"

#15

Fill in the blank with the name of anything you don’t need. It has been a week for not needing things, for rejections. Even the tulips I bought last weekend one by one flopped over in the sorry way that only tulips can. Instead of browning or gradually loosing their petals like most other cut flowers, tulips manifest their demise by folding over the edge of the vase and pointing their heads at the floor. It’s a symbolic response, a poetic accusation. ‘Now look what you’ve done…’ It’s another form of rejection.

The “We don’t need no…” opening comes, of course, from Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’.[1] In the song, the blank supplied was ‘education’. Loverly. As an erstwhile teacher I have to insist that if you can begin a sentence with ‘we don’t need no’ then education is something that you do actually need. But then, because of the double negative, the sentiment expressed perhaps recognises that if “we” don’t need no education then, logically, “we” must need some education.

(Have a word, Dad, for pity’s sake. You’re boring even yourself now.)

Rejection, rejection, dejection. This has been the week when Scotland rejected the Labour Party and when England, Wales and Scotland all rejected the Liberal Democrats in general and Nick Clegg in particular. Oh, and everyone rejected the Alternative Vote system for parliamentary elections. I say everyone - of those eligible to vote in the referendum only 42% actually turned-out to make their mark. And of those, 68% voted NO and 32% voted YES. (Really? Were there no spoilt ballots? There are usually a few jokers…) And it was another ‘X marks the spot’ ballot. Someone suggested that more than two alternatives should have been put forward (Yes, No, Don’t Know, Don’t Care) so that voters could list them in order of preference…and the votes cast could then be re-distributed until someone has an overall…zzzzzzzz. Wake up at the back! But the No to AV campaign said preference-ranking was too complicated. What? Surely if a voter can find their way to the polling station on the correct day, we can assume they’ll be able to count up to three at least - using their fingers if necessary?

Curiously, the only constituencies where the Yes voters were in the majority were Cambridge (Yes = 54.32%, turnout 48.15%), Camden (Yes = 51.40%, turnout 37.28%), Edinburgh Central (Yes = 51.36%, turnout 55.38%), Glasgow Kelvin (Yes = 58.78%, turnout 40.49%), Hackney (Yes = 60.68%, turnout 34.11%), Haringey (Yes = 56.62%, turnout 35.62%), Islington (Yes = 56.92%, turnout 35.68%), Lambeth (Yes 54.69%, turnout 33.07%), Oxford (Yes = 54.11%, turnout 38.98%), Southwark (Yes = 52.73%, turnout 34.31%). The biggest No vote was 80% at Castle Point (Essex) on a turnout of 41.20%. In Lewisham, which had the lowest turnout anywhere (33.09%), the No votes exceeded the Yes votes by only 745.

"Fascinating," he yawned.

Apart from the presence of significant numbers of people able to count, the few constituencies returning a Yes majority appear to have no other common factor uniting them. Some are affluent, some have an unusually large number of students, some are ethnically diverse. What does it all mean? I hear you ask, stifling another yawn. Well, probably not a lot, other than that electoral reform is out the window for, say, 25 years at least. In several other countries this weekend people are being shot dead for wanting to vote. In the UK last Thursday, more than half the electorate (58%) simply couldn’t be arsed. Surely another resounding victory for the confederacy of apathy, that enduring coalition between the Don’t Knows and the Couldn’t Give a Tossers. That’s where the real power lies.

Talking of coalitions; (yawn) I had a polite rejection this week from the BBC Writersroom of my film script for a satirical drama depicting a coalition government coming apart at the seams. No topical interest there, it seems. When I get a rejection (and I’ve had plenty; from Agents, Publishers, Theatres, the Beeb etc etc) I’m never 100% sure if it’s because my manuscript is crap or if the unpaid intern they dumped it on for reading (the first ten pages at most) didn’t get my point. I try to think positive, telling myself that somebody turned down The Beatles and many also turned down J.K. Rowling before the ‘arry Potter franchise went global or viral or whatever it did. I tell myself that I may remain 49% successful. Perhaps I should move to Hackney where the Yes vote was biggest of all?

In Scotland, Alex Salmond’s Nationalists swept all before them and now contemplate a referendum on Scottish independence. Smart move; the Scots always know what they’re against – it’s the English, stupid. But after independence, what’s to reject then, Alex? Apart from your plump self, that is? Anyway, most of us already knew that Scots rule over England began with King James in 1603 and lasted at least until Brown & Blair. You would indeed be most welcome to bail-out in full your Royal Bank and your Bank of Scotland as soon as maybe, Alex. Come to think of it, if Cameron (Scot by name only) wanted to play the joker he could suggest an early referendum for the whole of the UK on getting rid of Scotland. I mean what have they ever done for us[2]? Golf? Tartan? Deep-fried Mars bars? Lulu? Bagpipes? Midges? The Gay Gordons? The Old Firm Derby? And now that their oil is running out….

Why, that’s it, Cleggy, eureka! If you’re still feeling sorely abused and rejected, dry your eyes, mate, there’s always nationalism – for all practical purposes the last refuge of the scoundrel[3]! It works for Salmond…

Next week: “We don’t need no thought-control”[4]

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[1] Pink Floyd ‘Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2’. Roger Waters 1979

[2] Reg, People’s Front of Judea (Official). Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979

[3] ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’. Samuel Johnson via Boswell, 1775

[4] Pink Floyd/ Waters. Op. Cit.