The Labour stronghold of Stafford was overthrown last night (May 6) with a convincing win by Jeremy Lefroy securing victory for the Conservatives.
Labour candidate David Kidney had been in power since 1997, when he beat David Cameron.
Yet Mr Lefroy acknowledged Mr Kidney’s successful run over the past 13 years, saying in his acceptance speech: “I have got to earn the respect that David Kidney has earned.”
Mr Lefroy commended the amicable way in which all candidates had fought the election.
He said he was “very honoured” to have gained such a majority.
The Conservatives gained 22,047 votes, while Labour received 16,587.
Liberal Democrat candidate Barry Stamp received 8,211 votes, while UKIP’s Roy Goode polled 1,727. BNP candidate Thomas Hynd received 1,103 and the Green Party’s Mike Shone polled 564.
Turnout was up from 67% in 2005 to 71%, with 50,328 votes cast compared to 45,554 in 2005.
Mr Lefroy said: “The turnouts have been very good. I think people took a lot more interest, and I have noticed that a lot of young people have voted, which is good.”
He said he wanted to change the national perception of Stafford, following the recent controversy surrounding Stafford Hospital.
Some brand spanking new bird houses were nailed onto a couple of trees upon our arrival at the Heath back in December. Then a few days ago Poppa Pop (who travels under various guises, such as Our Heavenly Father and David - he lives on the motorway, don't-cha-know!) spotted a pair of blue tits swirling around one of them. And before he knew it, they flew straight inside! It's spring, so you know what that means... honeymoon period. Personally, I wouldn't have plumped for the crib these boobz chose. Our feathered friends have claimed this one...
If I was a bird on the wing, I would've settled home here...
But I guess the first is less clashing with the blue tit's blue. I must be more of a robin red breast.
The only problem is, the front doors are a bit of a squeeze. Poppa Pop is now worried that the mother blue tit is incapable of getting out. We've tried creeping around the perimeter, listening out for any clues that will reassure us that everything is A-OK ("Are they breathing...?"), and taking photos from a distance to see if that will give anything away. Poppa Pop swears he can see a "shade of blue" inside here...
No, me neither. But don't ruffle your feathers dear readers, I shall keep a close eye on this pair.
I always tend to be wary of things when they're considered popular. There's something inside me that ticks like a bomb, albeit one that is cushioned by a hundred used mattresses, or spun in bubble wrap and then discarded at the bottom of nobody's basement; but my body still tenses at that consistent, however muffled, ticking. It's as if I think no-one and no thing can be truly popular without some form of deception or cruelty or foul-play taking place. I don't judge myself to be naturally distrustful. I believe in many things, I suppose - what about you?
Upon waking to the news of the volcanic ash that's drifting ever closer, my immediate thought was of Don DeLillo's White Noise, and the airborne toxic event that he describes.
'...we saw a remarkable and startling sight. It appeared in the sky ahead of us and to the left, prompting us to lower ourselves in our seats, bend our heads for a clearer view, exclaim to each other in half finished phrases. It was the black billowing cloud, the airborne toxic event, lighted by the clear beams of seven army helicopters. They were tracking its windborne movement, keeping it in view. In every car, heads shifted, drivers blew their horns to alert others, faces appeared in side windows, expressions set in tones of outlandish wonderment.
The enormous dark mass moved like some death ship in a Norse legend, escorted across the night by armored creatures with spiral wings. We weren't sure how to react. It was a terrible thing to see, so close, so low, packed with chlorides, benzines, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content. But it was also spectacular, part of the grandness of a sweeping event, like the vivid scene in the switching yard or the people trudging across the snowy overpass with children, food, belongings, a tragic army of the dispossessed. Our fear was accompanied by a sense of awe that bordered on the religious. It is surely possible to be awed by the thing that threatens your life, to see it as a cosmic force, so much larger than yourself, more powerful, created by elemental and willful rhythms. This was a death made in the laboratory, defined and measurable, but we thought of it at the time in a simple and primitive way, as some seasonal perversity of the earth like a flood or tornado, something not subject to control. Our helplessness did not seem compatible with the idea of a man-made event.'
So, I guess I believe in fiction.
Banksy:'They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilisations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.'
I've always been a fan of Banksy's art, and not just the curious suspicion it evokes in modern-day principles, but the means in which Banksy as an artist operates. To work with the medium of graffiti should be problematic for an artist, what with the obvious time pressures and legal issues that abound, not to mention the notion of whether it should be deemed 'art' at all by many individuals ('People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access'). I'm sure Banksy doesn't call it art. And yet it is obviously the means itself with Banksy that imbues his pieces with something more pertinent. His work is raw and angry, terse but suggestive. They stand as venomous advertisements, motifs of disillusionment and quiet violence. By scrawling it across a battered tube train on the District Line, or the empty canvas of a forgotten white-washed wall in Bristol, Banksy is asking for our distrust to the same degree as all those big-buck businesses are crying out for our hand via their next advertising campaign. His role as a graffiti artist is as much about reclaiming the streets from the rodents as it is about letting them loose from the stinking sewers. Are the rats those corporate companies and politicians that run riot, or is it the ordinary man, left squatting in his own mess? Surely it can't be a coincidence that 'rat' is an anagram of 'art'?
Tonight I will be watching the first televised political debate between the three main parties. I don't know who to vote for. I've questioned whether to vote at all. Then I get angry at people who say they won't be voting because they don't know or understand enough, which basically translates as they haven't tried to know or understand enough. I get angry at people who say they won't be voting because they don't believe it will make any difference, which actually means they don't want things to be any different. Everyone is claiming that this is the most exciting election in a long time because the race is so narrow but, when you think about it, it's actually the most unexciting because people just don't care who wins. The state of things hasn't quite reached the level of an 'airborne toxic event' yet, but it's certainly more than a 'feathery plume'; I'd say it's at the stage of a 'black billowing cloud', but one that is getting progressively closer and darker.
Banksy:'Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet.'
Maths was never my forte. It always seemed a barrage of abstract symbols and numbers, and the only weapon I was able to arm myself with was a protractor. Who ate all the pi's? Not me. I understand how a select few might be that way inclined; how the thought of either being wrong or right is comforting. The idea of being held lovingly in the bosom of long division or a quadratic equation as a beacon of logical astuteness, the only way that could rationally and practically explain why x plus y equals... well I don't know, I said I was never very good at this. Obviously, I aligned myself with all those artsy-fartsy subjects, i.e. the ones potential employers don't really have any interest in.
There's an article in today's Daily Mail titled 'Why so many University Challenge champions fail to win in life'. Yes, I laughed too. Two quotes that have been emboldened during the course of this piece are even better. The first states, "I spend a lot of my time having to dumb myself down". The second: 'Winners tend to graduate to mediocrity'. Frankly, there's a simple equation that doesn't add up here: that intelligence should result in success.
It seems obvious enough. But is it? One contestant, John Burke, who helped the Open University to win the show in 1999, is now working as a postman. He says: "I'm certainly capable of a lot more than delivering papers. I've got a lot of other capabilities that I'm not really fulfilling." Another is Thor Halland, a participant of the winning Birkbeck Team of 2003, who 'experimented with cocaine, heroin and LSD in an attempt to 'fix' his brain'. Apparantly a sharp intellect needs 'fixing'. To be honest, I'm still transfixed by the fact that his first name is Thor. So why should intelligence equate success? The notion of being an intellect has always bugged me. People always refer to it as an intrinsically natural state, one that you're either predisposed to at birth or you're not. The fact that we now grow up having, oh I don't know, something termed 'an education' is skimmed over. And the argument that we're all either business-minded or creatively inclined...? That we're all habitually more adept with one side of our brain than the other...? No we're not. I've always said I'm proud to be a humanities student, but that doesn't mean I'm more artlessly gifted with verbs and adjectives than algebra and sums; I just decided at some point, in the grandly pointless narrative of my life, that I preferred abc to 123.
Halland goes on to say: "People like successful people, but they don't really like intelligent people. There's a little bit of jealousy." Really? Surely there has to be a marriage of the two, success and intelligence, at some point? You have to be intelligent to be a success at the end of the day, don't you? The problem occurs when people think that being academically gifted is going to reap bountiful years of indulgent success. You need to be smart across the board, in all sorts of frustratingly generalised areas - communicatively, technically, geographically, linguistically, pragmatically, etc - if you're going to stand out from the crowd. To expect that you will get ahead due to merely knowing about astrophysics is a little, well, stupid isn't it? Even Jeremy Paxman acknowledges that the kind of person University Challenge tends to attract is a particular character: "It is disturbing how many times students will confide, "It's been my lifetime ambition to get on to University Challenge." You want to scream: For heaven's sake, it's only a bloody quiz.""
If an intellectually bright individual 'fails to win in life', then surely the blame can only really be laid at the aforementioned person? So, not that bright then?
a: Você fala português? b: Eu entendo um pouco, mas não falo. a: De onde você é? b: Sou de Pop-sicle. a: De Pop-sicle? b: Sim, de Pop-sicle. a: O que você faz? b: Sou pop. a: Como? Não entendi direito. b: Sou pop. a: Fale mais devagar. b: Sou... pop? a: ... b: ... a: Onde é o banheiro? b: Não sei. a: ... b: O senhor pode me trazer mais pão? Obrigado!
My brother is presently trying to help me write this Pop post. The absence of recent posting has been due to a week of 'self-improvement', for lack of a better, cohesive term: internship interviews, radio shows, tearing my CV apart and building it up again. Today I'm attending a 'CV Clinic', if you can believe it. Quite whether my CV is so ill it needs to see a doctor is debatable to my mind, but we'll see. And the lack of posting is set to continue into next week, as I'm off to Portugal for 6 days (OBRIGADO!), so apologies for that too.
It was my brother's idea to write about my CV. "Write about," he says, "how we're in an academic sweatshop; we're having to be sold as a commodity. Working for 'The Man'? Who's the bloody man?!" Indeed.
The fact that everyone is so manufactured these days is a bit of a worry. 22, university degree, desire to succeed, GSOH... I feel like I'm playing the dating game, rather than at the start of a career. If this is the case, my CV is, without question, a slag. Do you realise how many times it has been whored out to prospective partners (i.e. 'The Man') in the past? To set it apart in the future, I will print it on good quality cream paper, send it out in A4 envelopes (so that it's not folded up and creased), and attach a super-smiley picture of myself, to add a more 'personal' touch. Yes, this slag is getting desperate.
And it's hard to not feel deterred at this stage of the game, which becomes even more frustrating when 'this stage of the game' is actually prior to the whole process of your career even beginning. And that word, 'career'. It's toxic. This moniker brings to mind etheral imaginings of sowing the educational bean, climbing that bewitched career ladder, and entering into the magical kingdom of Job.
Luckily, youthful optimism shines through. In my mind, and the minds of countless others, that magical kingdom still awaits. Except this fairytale is not made up of Prince Charming and the Princess, but the Tyrannical Corporate Capitalist and the Slag. But I think we all know which story will sell more copies. And they all lived happily ever after...?
Purchasing a CD has become, and I'm sure I speak for many, a bit of a rarity these days. The reason why was perfectly illustrated today, when I snatched myself a copy of Goldfrapp's new album Head First (Goldfrapp are of course an exception to the rule, being one of those bands where I have to own every one of their LPs). When I got home, I burnt the CD into my iTunes, so that I had the songs on my laptop. Then I connected my iPod up, so that I had the tracks on this all-important device too. And then I stored it on my family's central music system, so that all the many people who inhabit this house - a grand total of three - can listen to the album wherever they jolly well want to as well. Satisfied, I finally placed the CD on a shelf. Thank you decomposition, please take place quickly now.
And it's such a shame, don't you think? Everything is so crisp and untouched, and if Apple has anything to say it will continue to remain crisp and untouched. Everything about a CD in its physical form is a work of art. From the carefully conceived design of the packaging, to the liner notes full of lyrics and little thank you's and production credits, and then the perfectly circular disc that's held in place by those tiny plastic diamonds. Even the process of the CD spinning, and the stereo reading the music as it turns...? Spins my head right round like a record, baby.
A duo such as Goldfrapp, for all their progressive pop moves, make me pull back to listening to a CD as it was intended. This is an organic record through and through. No matter what sonic landscape they decide to create, it's still structured around soaring pop melodies and joyful harmonies - the simple things that are essential if a pop song is to be sincere. And if a pop song needs anything in abundance, it is sincerity. Head First embraces a gorgeously realised state of euphoria; 80s synths that shimmer and soft beats that fizzle with warmth. Alison Goldfrapp, if rumours are to be believed, is in love, and it shows. 'Believer' is drenched in optimism, a spritely feel-good anthem to the joys of keeping the faith; 'Alive' could be Olivia Newton-John having the best time of her life; and for those of you who enjoyed Supernature, 'Shiny And Warm' is the sloshed sister of 'Satin Chic', a splendidly dizzy romp with Allison basically getting off on the drive home to her lover. The album melts in hues of pink and blue, with a consistency in sound that I have not heard over the length of an album for a long time. And by clocking in at 39 minutes, its duration is sweetly on point.
Alison has commented that "'Head first' means to go into something without fear - head first in love. It's not trivial. I think it's more celebratory." And with this wave of deliriously dreamy sounds, what's not to celebrate?
