UKIP if you want to ...

I see than the grinning Nigel Farage has been re-elected as UKIP leader. In a way, I don't trust Farage. He reminds me of the hail-fellow-well-met type you meet at social functions who clap you on the back and say things like "so tell me, Richard, what's your poison old boy, eh?" He is definitely of the blazer-wearing tendency, and I bet he secretly hankers after a Jaguar if he doesn't already own one. And drives it in a car coat and string-back gloves.

However, accidents and near-misses have a habit of endearing people to you, despite your reservations. I can never see Norman Tebbit without remembering the awful image of him being lifted out of the rubble of the Grand Hotel, Brighton in his pyjamas, caked in dust and with a look of anguish on his face. He was never Vlad the Impaler after that. And Farage's plane crash on election day has had the same effect. I feel rather fond of the old boy.

This comes at rather a good time. I had the strong feeling that the country I grew up in and loved had gone in a different and very wrong direction, and away from me, in the last 13 years of Labour. I had high hopes for the coalition, after their promises to roll back the database state and have a bonfire of unnecessary laws. And of course there was the 'cast-iron' guarantee of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Heh.

I do not have unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved and how quickly. I don't expect the coalition to bring back the Golden Age in the first 12 months of office. But there are depressing signs that things are perhaps not going to be done quite as I had hoped. A lot of quangos are to be axed, but an awful lot will be spared too. There is no sign of the Government tackling the spiteful bias of the BBC's news and current affairs output. Nothing was done before the announcement of the Spending Review, which allowed the BBC to colour the whole affair as 'the terrible cuts', and any action taken now won't repair the damage that the coverage did to the public's view of the events. Maybe they won't do anything. Call Me Dave seems to have kowtowed to the EU just as much as Blair and Brown, although with less visible enthusiasm.

I have always voted for the party that stands a realistic chance of effecting the kind of politics that I want, which is why I haven't ever voted for minority parties. Last May, the Conservatives seemed to be the party that was offering something close to what I wanted, and they had a good chance of forming a government and being able actually to do something. I'm not writing them off yet - for all their faults, they are a million miles better then the last lot of hucksters and criminals - but I am starting to feel a lot of disappointment at their lack of activity on certain things that I regard as vitally important, specifically

• cutting the BBC down to size and making it politically neutral once more
• standing up for British interests abroad, and especially with the EU
• starting to reform the law in favour of the law-abiding majority and not the terrorist and the criminal
• "That government is best which governs least".

Of course, many of the reforms that I would like to see are impossible while we are full members of the EU. So tackling that relationship - and being brave enough to take some bold and far-reaching steps - has to come at the top of the list. And I no longer have much confidence that Cameron is about to do anything remotely radical about it. He's looking more and more like Blair in a blue tie.

Farage talks a good talk, and isn't afraid to say what ordinary people are thinking, without the self-censorship that most politicians indulge in. I still hold out hope that the coalition will do some good things, and maybe even start working towards a Britain that I will recognise as my own. But their time is running out for me, and if they lose my confidence and support, UKIP is likely to be the beneficiary.

It's easy to look at small, single-issue parties and see the lack of proportion and paucity of talent. You may agree with everything the BNP says, for example, but would you want them in charge of the economy? Really? Of all the minor parties, UKIP seem the most coherent and competent. And, if Cameron can't or won't deliver what the country needs, how much worse would they be? At least we know what they stand for.

I haven't changed my voting intentions yet, but I can now see a time when I might.

Moron Wool Arse

This stupendous, bare-faced cheek from Harriet Harman:

Announcing Mr Woolas's suspension from the party, Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman said: "It is not part of Labour politics to try to win elections by saying things that are not true."

Oh, be still my aching sides.

Of course, Labour have never lied about anything during an election campaign. The smoking ban that would not apply to private members' clubs or pubs where food was not served? A promise of a referendum on the EU Constitution?

Labour. Honest as the day is long.

Justice

Just when you were beginning to think that nothing would ever happen to these Teflon shysters, along comes this news:

Two High Court judges have ordered a rerun of this year's General Election campaign in the Greater Manchester constituency of shadow immigration minister Phil Woolas.

Mr Woolas won the Oldham East and Saddleworth seat by 103 votes over Liberal Democrat rival Elwyn Watkins.

But he has been found guilty of knowingly making false statements about Mr Watkins in campaign literature, and faces a three year ban from the Commons.

So Woolas feared losing the election, and made statements about his opponent that were untrue, and which he knew to be untrue. Stripped of judge-speak, that says he lied repeatedly and deliberately to gain an advantage over an opponent. So far, so typical of New Labour. I am rather heartened by this news. After cash-for-honours and the rest, I had begun to despair that politicians would ever be brought to the kind of justice that the rest of us live under every day of our lives.

What intrigues me, though, is Woolas's response to the judgement:

In a statement, he said the judgement "raised fundamental issues about the freedom to question politicians ... It is vital to our democracy that those who make statements about the political character and conduct of election candidates are not deterred from speaking freely for fear that they may be found in breach of election laws."

This is arrant nonsense. The whole purpose of election law is to ensure that candidates cannot speak freely, but must strive to ensure that what they say is truthful and fair. What he is saying is that (presumably) he is in support of laws to make sure that elections are fair, as long as they don't apply to anyone.

I suppose you could argue that it is vital for criminals to be able to steal people's property without being deterred from doing so by the fear of being found in breach of the law against theft. It would make as much sense.

It says a lot about Ed Miliband's judgement that he appointed him to the Shadow Cabinet before the result of the Election Court was known. He must have thought the outcome was a formality. I am glad that Justices Teare and Williams thought otherwise.

Bangers and Mash

Guy Fawkes' Night, Bonfire Night, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot Night. I like it, always have. I like the turn in the weather and the darker evenings, which always seem to herald the start of winter. It's what is called in Yorkshire the "back end" (as in the oft-heard cry on the first cold morning of the autumn: "Ey up, it's reet back-endy today"). It's around the time of my birthday, too, so that always gave it an extra feelgood dimension.

For weeks before the big day, we would save up out pocket money and buy whatever fireworks we could afford. This was rarely anything expensive, like rockets, or babyish, like Snowstorms and Golden Rain (although a Snowstorm set off in a telephone box was an awesome sight). What we wanted was bangers, which we could set off in the days before to annoy the grown-ups, or throw at each other in innocent merriment. In them days, like, you could get a banger for 2d (tuppence, two old pence, 0.8p), which was short, slim and purposeful-looking, and came in an orange casing with a blue touchpaper at the end. The Standard Fireworks 'Cannon' was the preferred ordnance.



For a bigger bang and a slightly better effect, you could get threepenny bangers, which were slightly fatter and (I seem to remember) a paler orange colour. But they weren't 50% better, so I avoided them.

When throwing lighted bangers at each other grew tedious (and we approached something like man's estate), a friend who had just had central heating installed in his house, made and sold to us his 'banger guns'. These were a foot length of half-inch copper piping, crimped and hammered over at one end and fastened to a crude wooden pistol grip. A banger, lit and popped into the business end, would make a hell of a noise and travel anything up to fifty yards, although accuracy was poor.

The only other firework that any of us bothered with was the Air Bomb. This was (I think) a shilling, which meant that you couldn't buy many, and to have one was to forego six tuppeny bangers or four threepenny ones, but it was always necessary to have at least one every year. The Air Bomb was a real waste - you lit it, it hissed for a bit, went 'phut', and a bright ball shot out of the top, to a height of about 20ft. But then the ball exploded with the loudest crack you have ever heard. And that was it.



The richer kids used to buy something called an Air Bomb Repeater, whose function you can guess at, but these were an expensive rarity. The great thing to do with Air Bombs was to find the one member of the gang who wasn't allowed out that night, and plant one in his garden pointing at his bedroom window. They used to explode precisely at bedroom window height, almost as if they were designed for it.

We didn't recognise Hallowe'en. A few people had Hallowe'en parties, where they bobbed for apples and told ghost stories in the dark, but they were essentially for cissies. The popularity of Hallowe'en is very recent and is, I think, an American import, along with drum majorettes and hamburgers. What we had, in Yorkshire at least, was Mischief Night. This was always the night before Bonfire Night, and we got up to a lot of semi-sanctioned naughtiness. It was never malicious (at least, not to my knowledge), but we did daft stuff like take people's gates off their houses and pile them in the middle of the road, or go round ringing doorbells, or planting Air Bombs in the gardens of the Fotherington-Thomases of the neighbourhood. That was our version of Trick or Treat - no treats, but the tricks were very satisfying.

(One night, we did the gate thing and then realised, when we were several streets away, that we had targeted a street with a lot of old people. We sneaked back and replaced them. No one ever knew.)

Bonfire Night was usually a family occasion, with fireworks organised by someone's Dad, and food, and duffel coats, and general merriment, but it was a pale and uninteresting follow-up to Mischief Night as far as we were concerned.

Scam Alert 2

I wrote recently (here) about a company in India that tried a fake tech-support call to me and wanted me to log into a website so they could "fix my computer". I gave them the bum's rush, naturally.

Tonight, I found this page, which seems to confirm that it is a common problem. I'm glad to know it wasn't just me, although I would love to know how they got my (correct) name and phone number.

Readers of this blog will be far too savvy to fall for an obvious con like this, but perhaps it might be worth passing the message on to newbie friends, parents, grandparents and so on:

• Microsoft will never make an unsolicited call offering to fix your computer.
• Anyone who calls you out of the blue and says you have a virus on your computer is lying.
• If you allow anyone to access your computer remotely, you are entering a world of pain from which your computer and your credit card may never recover.

If you do decide to spead the word, however, please PLEASE don't send an email to everyone in your address book with a header like "Latest internet virus phishing scam!!!!! MUST READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do NOT ignore this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Those of your friends who are a little older and wiser than you will delete it unread, and block you so you can never email them again.

I thank you.