Wednesday whimsy: Welcome to the sideshow...

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"‘Scuse me sir, but how do you get to Westminster?"

I mean what a palaver – hours of debate, millions upon millions of frantic words, thousands of yards of film...for what? Would we, as a result of this great debate, answer the character question? Will we – or rather you – as ordinary folk stand a chance of being better served? Will you be able to get rid if you don’t want or are failed?

Sadly the great panjandrums of electoral reform don’t answer these questions preferring instead to wrap themselves in Cardhousian knots explaining how the reform will make everything fairer, more equal, shinier and closer to the people.

So beloved reader, I want you to sit back, gaze at the flowers, light your proverbial pipe and think for a few seconds. That’s right – think. In all these great thoughts did “let’s have a new electoral system that works just like the current system but not quite” enter you mind? In fact did “let’s have a new electoral system” enter your mind at all?

Of course not. You’ve more important things to consider such as:

...your children’s education, your Dad’s heart problems, the fact that the pub at the top of the road is shut, where the mortgage money is coming from this month, whether you’ll have a job next week, the amount of money it now takes to fill the car with petrol, why the council hasn’t filled in all the potholes caused by the recent freeze, if you’ll get a holiday this year, the need to buy the kids new uniforms for school, how the chocolate factory closing will affect your business, how you’re going to afford to pay into the pension this month, how much it will cost to remove the tree that’s blocking all the light from the front room, what sort of do to have for your husband’s 50th birthday, how you’re going to get little Wayne to football practice at the same time as Susan has to be a dance class, if the woman next door is having an affair with the butcher, what day is is that the recycling bins are put out, whether the jazz is on at the club tonight, how your teams chances of winning tonight look...

a thousand things will scuttle through your mind scuffling for the limited spaces at “front of mind”. Not one of them is electoral reform.

Parliament, with each passing year, becomes more powerless and less relevant. Our MPs have transformed from representatives applying their thoughts and ideas to better government into glorified caseworkers. Debating the way they get to Westminster is at about their level – the level of student debate.

It’s a sideshow.

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