Pardon me, which decade are we in?

Maybe it's the fact the last time we had a winter like this I was still at school, maybe it's having gone last night to see "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll" - the Ian Dury biopic (very good, BTW- Andy Serkis is uncanny, even sings like the Man Himself) but it feels strangely like the Seventies. Rubbish is piling up on the streets of Edinburgh cos the binmen are on strike, Labour's in office, the economy's knacked, unemployment's up and it looks like the Tories will be elected come May.

Part of me wonders if that would be a total disaster for the country. Parties in power run out of steam and a change became both necessary and desirable. But my visceral reaction is not to see a Tory Govt as good. I grew up in a mining area and the Miners Strike covered my last years at secondary school. I won't vote Tory this side of the Parousia. As they say where I come from, "The only good Tory is a lavatory"! (And that's not true I know, I've know some very nice and Christian Tories).

Liberal? Until recently that was a no brainer. I joined the Libs at 18, was President of the Aberdeen Uni LD's and Senior Vice Convener of the Scottish Young Lib Dems. But I was mightily unamused by the dumping of both Charlie Kennedy and Ming Campbell, the current leader seems to be a bit of a David Cameron clone and I think the Scottish leadership were daft not to stay in Govt with the SNP and get more of our policies into effect. Voting Green isn't for me (partly because I think nuclear power is here to stay, so work to make it as safe as poss) and the SNP I disagree with because I think we need to be part of the UK.

I remeber the late George Henderson, Bishop of Argyll, Primus, Labour Lord Provost of Fort William and firm disliker of women's ordination and nasty new things like the Blue Bookie once describing himself to me at lunch in the Western Club in Glasgow as a "Prayer Book Communist" - maybe that's what I'll become!

(The cartoon just appealed to me and has no connection with anything much!)