The Earth Beneath Her Feet

To the surprise of no one, the new Mayor of London has already succeeded in annoying me. It's the first annoyance, so worth recording. :-) And it is this, from 1 June, Boris Johnson will ban the drinking of alcohol on public transport.

On the face of it, this sounds like a good idea. Drunk people are a nuisance and especially so in the enclosed spaces of public transport. However, this is again an example of a politician introducing a new policy where the old rules were perfectly adequate, if only someone would bloody well enforce them.

I would be delighted if there was a concerted move to chucking obnoxious drunks off the Tube, but this penalises well-behaved alcohol drinkers too. Maybe I lived in the Netherlands for too long, but I don't automatically start twitching when I see someone on the train with a beer in their hand.

Also, the Mayor was apparently in such haste to bring in the ban, that he neglected to consult with the transport staff who would have to enforce it. To be fair, I don't expect the transport unions to have that much love for Boris but this was asking for trouble.


On the "other side", the Labour home secretary has ignored her own experts' advice and will reclassify cannabis back from class C to class B, which includes drugs like speed. The sentencing guidelines for dealing class C and B drugs are pretty similar, by the way. It's stupid beyond belief.


I wonder how many people here mix their drink and drugs, and how much that contributes to bad behaviour. One New Year's, we helped someone who'd had some kind of a fit and it turned out that she'd been drinking and smoking. The Dutch people were full of "tsk". Wingnut theorised it's because they get a better education with regard to drugs.

If it were this sunny and warm in New Zealand, I'd be hiding in the shadows for most of the day, trying not to get fried. However, this being the UK with its famed weak and feeble sun, I went out at lunchtime to sit on the grass and read (and suffer over that SLA book).

This morning I woke up with a big red patch decorating the inside of each knee. I'd been sitting cross-legged...

Today I am wearing long trousers and sunscreen.

English is my native language but living in another English-speaking country is still a vocabulary-enhancing experience. Today was a bank holiday so the kids were home from school. Some of them decided to entertain themselves at my expensive with something known as "Knock Down Ginger".

UKians will realise that no violence was perpetrated on my person, these kids were merely playing the game of knock-on-someone's-door-then-run-away-and-laugh-before-they-open-it. Sadly, the real story behind the name is lost, though theories are rife.

Fortunately, I never mistook the term to mean redhead abuse, it was clear that it meant something else, whatever that something else might be. Unlike when English friends referred to themselves as having been "tired and emotional." I swear, for the longest time I thought this was a matter for sympathy. It turned out their pain was self-inflicted, they'd been drunk.

I decided to leave the kids to their game and went to the park with a book. Not Jasper Fforde this time, but a book on second language acquisition...

Imagine a party in South Kensington which is in, er, West London. It is midnight and a bunch of people are crowded around Wingnut who is scribbling election results (fed to him by his iPod radio) onto the lid of a pizza box. Wingnut starts shaking his head even before the second preference votes are in. Then it's confirmed, Boris Johnson is mayor. The group becomes rather subdued and the chocolate cake is passed round again.

On the way home, two of the night buses are late which means we have to take three buses to get home. It's all Boris's fault.

Vote vote vote like a baby stoat! Okay, that's another vote entirely, but I did have to place four X's to complete my ballot papers today: first and second preference for London Mayor, a party vote for the Greater London Assembly, and a constituency candidate vote for same.

Despite London swallowing up much of the media coverage, other parts of the UK are also holding local elections. So, if you're eligible, please don't forget to vote!

The polling station at my local primary school was doing steady business early this morning. There were two activists standing outside the gate, one for the Liberal Democrats and one for Boris Johnson (Conservative), which was the first I'd seen of either party in the neighbourhood. The Lib Dem was quite prepared to forgive me for not voting for them, as long as I hadn't voted for Respect. The latter party just pushed the Lib Dems into fourth place in this constituency in 2004, guess that still hurts.

The first time I voted in my borough of Tower Hamlets, I was taken aback by some of the content-free negative campaigning. This time I was prepared for the demonisation of young people and other lousy tactics. Or so I thought until the London Elects information leaflet with all the parties' ads landed on the doormat. My constituency of City and East has all the haters: British National Party, National Front, United Kingdom Independence Party, Christian Peoples Alliance and Christian Party, English Democrats, and Respect. Most, but not all, are no-hopers in the electoral sense.

It's anyone's guess who will win what. The results aren't expected in 'til Friday evening. The turnout is also of interest to me, of course. It was 36% in 2004 but looks to be higher this time because of the close race between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. However, bad weather has a dampening effect on turnout. Well, the experts are going to have fun deciding the impact of the weather this time. Looking out the window - it's raining, it's sunny, it's cloudy, #it's raaain again... And it will be rain here if that feckless individual Boris Johnson gets in, I can tell you.