Lots of Circles

Well people, it's 5 more years of Blair.

As much as the country resents him for sending them to war, the voters still returned him for a 3rd term. Not so puzzling when you consider how wishy-washy and non-platformed the other two main candidates were.
Michael Howard for the Conservatives, and Charles Kennedy for the Liberal Democrats...see? I can't even say anything about them...

Interesting points:

The City and Westminster are still under Conservative hold. (Why are they twinned like that?) Of course, Kensington and Chelsea too. And Putney (with a female MP) - that's where Mr Howard went to resign his leadership of the Tories after losing the election. Note these are the parts of London with the high concentrations of affluence.

The Lib-Dems have the largest constituency since the 1920s. (Pardon me if I did not express that correctly.)

The first black Conservative MP has gained a seat in Parliament..........representing the royal town of Windsor, no less - that quiet tweedy, brass-buttons, rowing-on-the-river town, of which the Queen is also a resident. And he grew up in..........Peckham, of all places! To you western hemispherians, that's a bit like Harlem or maybe the Bronx.
BUT (big but) --- he is a self-made IT millionaire, half-white, and obviously resides snugly in Windsor because we news-watchers got to hear from the man who has been his tailor for the last 10 years...

And finally, 39% of the electorate did not vote. I count myself among them - forgot I could vote, didn't register, and furthermore couldn't pick up a thing any candidate said. To me they just stood at podiums being incoherent. I feel cheated.

Probably the rest non-voters felt the same way. Of the remaining voters, 22% went Labour, 20% Conservative, and 14% other.

The "Other" parties over here include:
1) The Green Party (the Greens) - I guess they're very environmental.
2) The UK Independence Party (UKIP) - Say NO to Europe.
3) Respect - started by a Scottish MP sacked by the Tories, who gathered a large constituency of Muslims in Bethnal Green (how?) and won a seat in Parliament for that borough.

There are more, but I can't think of them.


I wish Tony Blair well in the next 5 years. At the end, he will have been Prime Minister for 15 years. That's a large portion of anyone's life. The next generation of voters will have only known life with Blair at Number 10. I still remember Thatcher and Major. But still, in my lifetime I could have seen double the number.


Of course if we want to get pedantic, I could add that soon there will be nearly two generations who know only Elizabeth as queen. It is entirely possible that one day I will have seen 3 monarchs on the throne. E, C, W.

Did you know that Camilla...............................................oh alright, the Duchess of Cornwall's great-grandmother (Alice Frederica Edmonstone Keppel) was royal mistress to Edward VII? They're also 9th cousins once removed but I won't get into that. Most aristocrats are related somehow.

When Prince Charles and Camilla met at a polo match in the early 70s, she said to him, "My great-grandmother and your great-great grandfather were lovers. So how about it?"

Speaking of Keppels, another descendent of Alice, Judith Keppel, became the very first millionaire on the UK edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Final link: By law, the Queen had to get permission from the Prime Minister before her son could propose to Mrs P-B.

Camilla is also a Shand. Princess Diana's mother Frances left her husband Viscount Althorp (before he became the 8th Earl Spencer) for Peter Shand Kydd, when Diana was only 6. Shand Kydd was heir to a wallpaper fortune. We had that wallpaper in our house.

There, circle complete.

So...how did I get from Anthony Charles Linton Blair to Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor to Camilla to the Shand Kydds? From Prime Minister to Prince to mistress to wallpaper? I do not know.

Enough cirlcles already, I hear you screaming. Yes, time for bed.