The Guardian's writers never check their facts do they? The example of Richard Seymour

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Too much of our politics is dominated by the discussion of class – working-class, middle-class, upper-class and so on. These terms mean almost nothing – is the multi-millionaire builder working-class? How is all this defined? So my apologies for writing about the psephology of class in response to a rather poor article by some chap called Richard Seymour:

The relentless, long-term narrowing of the Tory base since the 60s – as it has become more explicitly the vehicle of financial and monopoly capital, and less willing to articulate popular working-class concerns – has seen Tory support recede from working-class areas.

Arrant nonsense – support for the Conservatives among C2DE social classes has risen since that time not fallen. Here are the facts for C2 voters from Ipsos MORI:

	Oct 1974	1979	1983	1987	1992	1997	2001	2005	2010
Con	26	41	40	40	39	27	29	33	37
Lab	49	41	32	36	40	50	49	40	29

And for DE voters:

	Oct 1974	1979	1983	1987	1992	1997	2001	2005	2010
Con	22	34	33	30	31	21	24	25	31
Lab	57	49	41	48	49	59	55	48	40

The truth is that the Conservative Party’s problem is with AB voters not working-class voters – the reason for the Party’s failure to win overall last year lay in getting just 39% of AB votes not in getting the votes of the working class English.

But that truth wouldn’t suit the Guardian, would it! The biggest demographic shifts in British politics have been the shifts of the skilled working class from Labour to Conservative and the loss of Tory AB votes to the Liberal Democrats.

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Idiots revisited (again)

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A while ago I wrote in praise of idiots about those ordinary people who don’t partake of politics:

The ancient Greeks used their word for ‘private’ as a derogatory term for someone who took no part in “public affairs”. That word ἴδιος (idios) is the root for our term for a stupid person – idiot. Today – in the Greek sense – most of us are idiots and I think this represents progress rather than a problem. That barely more that a third of Bingley Rural electors took the opportunity to vote last time I stood isn’t a disaster and those people are well aware of the purpose and value of voting - which I guess is why most of them don’t bother

I also made the point that these folk don’t take part because they don’t see the point. What exactly is going to change in their lives if one patronising besuited politician is replaced by a different patronising besuited politician wearing a different badge? Now not everyone agrees with me – here’s Dick Puddlecote:

As someone who engages with many everyday working people on a daily basis, both professionally and in my spare time, THE most oft-repeated phrase I hear is "I don't do politics".

They'll all advance their thoughts about the ills of the world, though. After all, it's human nature. Van drivers, bricklayers, checkout girls, roofers, teaching assistants, spark's mates, cabbies, labourers, nursery nurses, road workers, cleaners, and the unemployed - they all have opinions. And most of them feel totally ignored.

But then again, a lot of them say they 'don't do politics'.

Dick worries that this active disengagement results in politicians directing their efforts to a more reliable (so far as turning up is concerned) group of voters – and that group of voters will not do anything for the ‘poor’. I have some sympathy with that viewpoint – why else to we subsidise opera and not the club circuit and prioritise sports like rowing and sailing ahead of boxing or rugby league?

However, this recent election – the most tightly fought, attention-grabbing, important, change-making (select your own superlative) – reinforced what I said and, in its way, Dick’s concerns as well. Despite the leaders’ debates, despite a sense that there was a chance to change something, despite wall-to-wall media coverage of Cleggmania – despite all this the turnout at the election was still lower than at every election since 1945 bar 2001 and 2005.

Thirty-five out of every hundred electors didn’t make it to the polls – were either disinterested, disengaged, uninspired or simply not bothered. And this covers up staggering levels of non-registration – people who don’t even give themselves a chance to vote at all. Here’s the Electoral Commission report on the subject:

Evidence available from electoral statistics and surveys of levels of response to the annual canvass of electors suggests that there was a decline in registration levels from the late 1990s to 2006. The same evidence base suggests that the registers have stabilised since 2006, although it is likely that the completeness of the registers has declined since the last national estimate in 2000.

In the late 1990s around 10% of people weren’t registered – the Commission say the situation is now worse. In some places up to 20% of people are not registered to vote and concerns about false registration are making local authorities tighten up registration by removing non-respondents more quickly from the register. And, not surprisingly, the three groups most likely not to register are young people (over half of 17-26 year olds are not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and immigrant groups (31%).

So if 20% aren’t registered and only 65% of the remainder bother voting the real turnout in the election was just 52% - barely half the population bothering with the most closely-fought election in 30 years. Says it all really!

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Thoughts: some hope for the future and why you mustn't vote Labour

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It’s a grey, drizzly day here in Cullingworth – more October than May. But the birds are singing, the badgers have crapped all over the garden and the air still smells of spring. And, of course there’s an election on!

So what can we hope for? Not in the result of the election – that will be what is will be. I feel a clear winner would be good and I certainly don’t share Julian Dobson’s optimism about prospects for a hung parliament. And my pessimism comes from experience – from ten years of horse trading on a hung council. It doesn’t work – politicians are reduced to what I call veto politics. We can stop a policy being implemented but instigating and seeing through a new idea or a changed approach just doesn’t happen – too risky you see.

This polity leads to the triumph of the apparatchik – the politician who is only really interested in staying in a comfortable, well-remunerated post and will do nothing that might threaten that position. Indeed, such politicians will often work across party lines to stop the efforts of others. Everything is tactical, all sense of mission or vision is lost – we have government by a combination of inertia and the lowest common denominator.

I hold out little hope that we will see any change to the unwarranted and unjustified attack on the pleasures of ordinary people. We’ve seen smokers cast into the outer darkness on the basis of dodgy science, we’re now watching as ordinary drinkers stigmatised because of the antics of drunken louts or the illness of long-term alcoholics and the guns are being rolled out to attack the English breakfast and the American burger. Watch closely as other pleasures are identified – gambling, racing dogs or horses, holidays on the Costa – either for reasons of health or environment your judgmental masters will make these more expensive or worse effect a ban.

I hold out little hope that there will be the change we need – the rebirth of individual responsibility supported by the extension of personal freedom and choice. But I do hope that schools will be freed from the producer interests – the bureaucrats, the unions, the know-alls that have so damaged the lives of children from poorer communities these last 30 years. I do hope that more decisions will be passed down to local communities – that we can escape the “District Commissioner Approach” to community development where some educated, middle-class know-all lectures poor people about how they should behave (including – see above – an unjustified attack on their pleasures).

I hope for a government that’s a little less hectoring, a little less interfering and a little cheaper. I hope that the success that free schools will bring will direct us to freeing other services from stifling bureaucratic incompetence. And I hope we will see a government for which the first reaction to any problem is to propose a new law.

And I’m pretty sure that the only way to realise this hope – to have any chance of getting even a little bit closer to the future I want for my family – is to vote Conservative. And I shall do so – and urge you to do likewise. But if – for some reason of historical discomfort, a particular policy or dislike of the candidate – you can’t bring yourself to vote Conservative….

…please, please, please don’t vote Labour.

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Wednesday whimsy: Community (or Why Elections are Important)

Yesterday got me thinking about why elections are important. OK, I hear you – what a silly thing to think about – of course elections are important, we’re choosing a government, electing an MP, playing the liberating game of democracy!

Stop there a second and think about it, think about the election and what happens – about the extended period of campaigning, about the debates, the endless stream of leaflets and all the chattering excitement of the media. Is this just about choosing an MP or even choosing a government? Agreed that’s the obvious and ultimate purpose of the election – that’s what we get the day after we vote. But don't elections have a deeper purpose – a purpose beyond that of choosing some person to represent us in choosing a government?

After all, if all we wanted to do was make this choice we could get it all out of the way in a week – especially if we applied the technology available to us to manage voting. But we don’t, we stick with a clunky, old-fashioned system dating back to the 1872 Ballot Act and candidates run decidedly old media campaigns involving the same techniques as we used back in 1872 – giving out handbills, writing letters and identifying supporters through a canvass.

In one respect we stick with this system because it ‘ain’t broke’ – we’re familiar with its workings, there’s a sense of ‘doing our civic duty’ involved in wandering down the local school, church hall or (for the lucky residents of Leeming) the Lamb Inn! And we are comforted by the familiar noises of elections, the inevitable call that “this is the most important election in a generation” and the chuntering sound of politicians and media hacks playing the age old game of stats tennis.

And this is why elections are important. Elections are one of the few times of shared national community, one of the rare occasions when most of us do something together. Tomorrow, millions of people from the Scilly Isles to Shetland will cast a ballot for their favoured candidate – electing people who will sit in the same house and decide about our government. And this shared act is more important, more significant that the outcome of the election – it is a shared act we prepare for. For some the preparation is limited – perhaps just making sure the poll cards are ready by the door but for others it’s treated like first Holy Communion! Debates are watched, discussions are held, manifestos are read, leaflets are poured over and local candidates are asked pertinent questions that will guide our decision “on the day”.

So the important thing about the election isn’t really the result but the act of community that voting represents. The shared decision-making – however flawed the process may be – speaks of what we believe significant: that no man is more important than another, that the nation is a place to which we relate and that we, the people, retain the right to determine who rules that nation. These are hard won things, matters we are rightly proud of and the election reflects these rights and values not some petty scrap between different factions clambering up the greasy pole of government.

Of course I care who wins tomorrow but I also care – as a good Conservative – about the traditions of the election. And I know that this great act of national community is why the election is important.

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Why you should vote Conservative on May 6th

Yesterday’s Telegraph Magazine carried an extended profile of David Cameron that was a good read. However, the opening paragraphs included a quote from Cameron that, to me, was a clear exposition of conservatism:

'People who tell you too much about their utopia, I always get a bit worried that suddenly we’ll be forced to wear the same uniform. When you hear about someone’s vision to remake the world, you do need a bit of, “hmm, that’s interesting… How much freedom am I going to have in that one, and how much is that going to cost me?”

Conservatism is the philosophy of the doubter – rejecting the idea of ideological purity, the search for the City on the Hill, with a more practical, considered and flexible approach. An approach rooted in place and the histories of place. Conservatives embrace a philosophy of values rather than an ideological search for a perfected future – a rejection of utopias.

This ‘real’ Conservatism is different from the liberalism that lay at the heart of Thatcher’s repositioning of the party – which may explain partly the discomfort of some in the Party with Cameron’s rediscovery of the politics of place and community. These ideas – central to the traditional Conservative idea of government – were set aside by Thatcherism.

“Even so, the election of 1979 might have been little more than a psephological curiosity had it not been for something far more important than the statistical outcome. For the fact is that the Conservative party had been swept into office on a programme which seemed to mark a conscious change of direction, not merely from that charted by its political opponents, but from that followed by all British Governments since the war, including its own Conservative predecessors. Hence the seemingly self-contradictory notion of ‘The New Conservatism’.” (Nigel Lawson)

For the first time, British Conservatives were grasping at an ideological position – at least in the rhetoric of politics if not in the reality of government. And that ideological position owed more to Gladstone’s liberalism than it did to the pragmatism of Disraeli or the scepticism of Salisbury and Balfour. What Cameron has done is to set out again the ancient cause of the conservation – a cause defined by Lord Blake in his history of the party:

“There was a…belief that Britain, especially England, was usually in the right. There was a similar faith in the value of diversity, of independent institutions, of the rights of property; a similar distrust of centralizing officialdom, of the efficacy of government (except in the preservation of order and national defence), of Utopian panaceas and of ‘doctrinaire’ intellectuals; a similar dislike of abstract ideas, high philosophical principles and sweeping generalizations. There was a similar readiness to accept cautious empirical piecemeal reform, if a Conservative government said it was needed. There was a similar reluctance to look far ahead or worry too much about the future; a similar scepticism about human nature; a similar belief in original sin, and in the limitations of political and social amelioration; a similar scepticism about the notion of ‘equality’.”

I don’t agree with everything in the 150 page hardback book, nor do I like the outlook or views of every Tory standing for election. But if what we get is an end to government believing it can solve every problem – including problems specially invented for the purpose of solution – then I will proceed with a smile on my face. I don’t expect to stop being angry and annoyed at the stupidity, mendacity, busybodying and bulling of government and agents of government. But I do know that with a Conservative government I’ve more chance of being free to speak out, free to buy and sell and free to move around this great land of ours.

Vote for the politics of place and community. Vote for honest doubt about the ability of government to solve all the world’s problems. And vote for what Cameron said:

How much freedom am I going to have…and how much is that going to cost me?

With a Conservative government you’ll have more freedom and it will cost you less – and that alone is reason enough to Vote Conservative.

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A brief comment from the front - canvassing in Wilsden & Cottingley

Yesterday saw almost the final flurry of Phil Davies canvassing efforts – and where better to finish that part of the campaign than in my ward! Phil’s hardy canvassing team were joined by a few locals and we set off to knock of the doors of people who are out (one of the unmentioned truths of canvassing, this). And despite the weather we got through a fair old tranche of Wilsden and Cottingley folk.

Now at this point most reports on canvassing tell you how good it was, how the polls are all wrong and how the residents are very impressed by the candidate. Now this being Bingley Rural – where we like to be straight with you about stuff – let me tell you that the canvass was OK. Here are the main highlights, observations and comments:

1. There are a lot of undecided voters. This isn’t great as we don’t know how they’ll vote on the day. However, one quite common response was something like; “I don’t know but definitely not Labour” which does suit Phil as his main opponent is Labour.

2. Other than the occasional local issue just three concerns were raised on the doorstep – immigration, Europe and public finances (debt, deficit, cuts, etc.). May be different elsewhere but that’s been a consistent theme here throughout the election.

3. In the council houses in Wilsden we didn’t find many Tories. But we also didn’t find anyone who would admit to supporting Labour. And I was struck by more than one old Labour voter expressing, in one way or another, that they had “lost faith” or “been let down”.

4. Yet again, I was struck by just how many people had been in contact with Phil. And how every one spoke positively of what Phil had done. Even the man who was a keen supporter of extending the smoking ban was going to vote for Phil – despite them having a vigorous disagreement by e-mail!

So a mixed bag – mostly positive, some negatives but notably a vast swathe of “dunno”, “haven’t made my mind up”, “we’ll see” and – a classic this – “I’m too busy to talk right now!” However, I get the feeling that these undecided voters aren’t – in the main – going to plump for Labour come May 6th.

Now we move to getting folk out to vote (well the Tory ones anyway).

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Housing - an issue waiting to bite us all

Two stories I’ve run across today suggest that over coming months and years there’s a really big an important issue that will bite politicians – an issue that has barely merited a mention in the “great debates”, hasn’t registered at all in the frothy new media campaigning and yet concerns one of the true basics of people’s lives – housing.

The first story is a report from the New Statesman (that I found suitably fisked by JuliaM) on Margaret Hodge’s campaign in Barking:

“There are 11,695 families on Barking and Dagenham's housing list and local anger has been directed at the new faces they see down the street. As I follow Hodge canvassing, complaints about housing crop up again and again. We hear tales of families that have had to wait three, five or even more years to get a home. One man has spent eight years living in a one-bedroom flat with his wife and four children.”

Now Labour machine politicians like Hodge want to blame all this on right-to-buy – on the wicked Tories. But that’s only part of the story – yes right-to-buy had an impact on the stock of social housing. Yes, right-to-buy has led to an increase in private rented property on formerly mono-tenure estates. But local authorities like Barking have not replaced the shortfall and more importantly have created the situation where only people in “priority need” get access to social housing.

The result of this is precisely what the residents of Barking interviewed by the New Statesman were saying – houses in the area are simply not available for the working sons and daughters of current residents. Not because they’re white but because they aren’t in “priority need”. Which brings me to the second story where Victoria Derbyshire interviews a soldier wounded in Iraq and who cannot get a home (a pre-requisite for getting a job) because he is not in “priority need”.

In truth our housing system – I can’t credit it with the positive term “market” – is almost entirely dysfunctional. Constrained by stifling rules and regulations, battered by politicians and simply not delivering good homes for hard working people like it should. And, unless something changes, it will get worse – already in London so-call “affordable” rents are not really affordable for low paid workers and this will be the case in Leeds and other cities in the next few years.

As I said, be prepared for housing to become a really big issue some point soon.

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West Yorkshire - what opinion polls might mean in our marginals

I've been wasting a little time doing some psephology - trying to get a better handle on what the current opinion polling might affect the outcomes in West Yorkshire's cluster of marginal constituencies. My little model (and I won't bore you with the details except to say is applies the variation from 2005 actual results implicit in the current polling. So here are the results using Saturday's YouGov rolling poll:

Bradford East: Liberal Democrat Gain (maj.1118)

Bradford West: Conservative Gain (maj. 1369)

Calder Valley: Conservative Gain (maj. 3867)

Colne Valley: Conservative Gain (maj. 2922 over Lib Dems)

Dewsbury: Conservative Gain (maj. 241)

Elmet & Rothwell: Conservative Gain (maj. 333)

Halifax: Conservative Gain (maj. 1097)

Keighley: Conservative Gain (maj. 757)

Leeds NE: Labour Hold (maj. 1439)

Leeds NW: Lib Dem Hold (maj. 6450 over Conservatives)

Pudsey: Conservative Gain (maj. 567)

Shipley: Conservative Hold (maj. 5313)

I'm not going to update this every day but you get the gist I'm sure - most of the Tory key targets look likely to pretty close run affairs. There's no doubt that the effort on the ground - the 'get out the vote' effort, the canvassing, the knocking up, the local campaign will be important. Right now, the Conservatives and Lib Dems seem ahead - more leaflets, more posters, more positivity. Nevertheless there's all to play for in many of these places.

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Friday Fungus: "...I am picking mushrooms." - thoughts on the "Great debate"

The glaring omission from yesterday’s “Great Debate” was any discussion of mushrooms (the suggestion that the failure to consume certain mushrooms contributed to the debate’s dullness is, of course, not something your esteemed author can comment on). Critical questions were omitted such as the decline in home grown mushrooms and their substitution with different quality imported mushrooms some of which are not the clean, white colour we expect but brown!

And the shiny pair (plus the dishevelled looking chap) were not asked about their preferences – do they like their mushrooms adulterated with garlic? Or are they fans of lightly fried wild mushrooms with just a hint of herbs, salt and pepper? Maybe (please tell me this ain’t so) one or other of the “leaders” doesn’t like mushrooms? Surely it would be wrong to have a prime minister who didn’t eat mushrooms!

Gone are the days when mushrooms were matters of great diplomatic significance – when a twitch in the production stats for field mushrooms sent tremors through the markets. And the world is not a better place for this – for allowing mushrooms to fade from the agenda of power. Do these men not realise that mushrooms are good for you? That mushrooms can help save the planet? And that mushrooms can help all of us cope with living in a place where bureaucrats, politicians and other busybodies run riot with our freedoms?

Maybe in the next debate? Or may be we should all respond to politicians like Grigory Perelman:

“You are disturbing me, I am picking mushrooms”

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Nick "Crazy" Clegg loses the plot

I am stocking up the extensive cellars at Cooke Towers with essentials – canned foods, batteries, dried mushrooms, red wine and so on. I intend to be ready for the future that is facing us. The great sage, Nick Clegg has warned:

The Liberal Democrat leader said he feared "serious social strife" if an administration with minimal support raised taxes, laid off public sector workers and froze wages.

Taking his cue from St Vince “Jeremiah” Cable, young Nick is predicting riots, looting and thousands taking to the streets to protest.

Now I don’t know about you but this reads to me as the utterings of a man wholly unfit to be put in charge of anything – let alone someone who should be allowed anywhere near any sort of lever linked to even the remotest outpost of power.

If there are to be any riots – and I doubt this somehow – they’ll be because smug, euro-fanatical greenies like Nick Clegg have clobbered ordinary people once too often. It will be the price of petrol – or something similar – that will send people onto the streets not that a few thousand diversity managers, five-a-day co-ordinators and climate change policy officers have lost their jobs.

Sadly, Nick and Vince are so desperate to get jobs, big offices and fancy cars after the election that they’ve swallowed Labour’s hung parliament strategy hook, line and sinker. Don’t you understand Nick – Gordon knows Labour can’t win and wants a hung parliament so he can keep his mitts on the keys to Number Ten!

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Cancer: how the two-week target is a nonsense

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Various folk have reported – with differing degrees of indignation – on Labour’s targeting of cancer sufferers. And I’m sure others will ask the questions about data protection and the misuse of personal data (bearing in mind that you cannot use geodemographics to identify breast cancer sufferers*).

However, nobody questions the essential deception in labour’s “appointment within two weeks” offer.To explain this I’m going to give you a personal story.

At the end of last summer I went to the GP as I had a lump in my throat that wasn’t going away. The GP referred me for an ultrasound scan to establish more information (I joked at the time about her thinking my throat was pregnant). This was duly done and I visited the GP again who referred me to a specialist. All this took around six weeks – a long way outside the target of two weeks.

Except that I wasn’t referred to a “cancer specialist” but (quite rightly) to a thyroid specialist. Who referred me for more tests, two further ultrasound scans and some further tests. In the end, I had my throat cut in January and the (thankfully benign) lump removed. All this on the good old NHS – great doctoring, truly awful bureaucracy and appalling front-of-house service. Took about six moths beginning to end.

I’m not complaining about this process. It seemed entirely reasonable and sensible. I don’t feel hard done by at all. So why have a wholly arbitrary and unreferenced requirement of two weeks? Especially when the doctors can get round it by not describing something as “cancer”!

*Seems to me (as an expert on geodemographics) that Labour are lying on this one

I'm all right jack revisited....

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A comment Vilma McAdam, one of the “Telegraph Jury” struck me. Asked “What issue has made the impact in the campaign” this lady’s response was:

“Unfortunately the debate seems limited to the economy.”

What of earth is she on, you ask? All is revealed by Velma’s “job”:

“Retired local government official”

One of the new elite then!

Report from the Front - canvassing in Cullingworth

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Canvassing in Cullingworth today was – as it always is – a really pleasant experience. Met lots of my lovely neighbours, enjoyed chatting about their gardens, children and the state of our potholes – plus a bit of national politics thrown in where folk insisted! The morning concluded with Grant’s excellent pies and peas – what could set you up better for a further hour or two of doorknocking.

Main observations:

Really impressed by the number of people planning to vote for Phil Davies because he’s helped them out with some issue or other. One gent came up and shook his hand for responding very quickly to a query he’d e-mailed last weekend. As ever, good service matters

Also impressed by how many people are backing Phil because of his positive stance on personal liberty issues – the smoking ban, the unwarranted attack on drinking and the death of the pub.

It was also clear that even those who disagree with Phil respected his consistent, honest and principled stance on various issues

On a personal note, I like Phil even though he and I don’t agree on everything. The way he spoke with my neighbours, addressed a range of questions – general and specific – and was willing to take up the cudgels on behalf of residents was very impressive.

I’ve no idea whether the general response was good, bad or indifferent – although I can say that, if all the constituency gives the same positive feedback as Cullingworth did today, Phil will be back representing us in parliament with a more comfortable majority than the 422 his won by in 2005! Yes, there were Labour voters, there were one or two angry non-voters, a smattering of people planning to switch from Labour to Conservative, a couple of Lib Dems and even one voter switching to Labour because she likes Gordon Brown!

A good days work, I think.

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Gordon Brown Quote of the day...

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"I have made it absolutely clear what my views are: we cannot have people standing as candidates for the Labour Party who express these views...."

Gordon brown quoted in Daily Mail

Do social media campaigns fit the centralised, controlling, presidential party campaign strategies?

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The Institute of Direct Marketing (a fine body of men and women) have commented on the emerging social media campaigns at the election. The gist of the observation is firstly:

“Marketing Week reports social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter will be primarily used to attack the opposition in the run up to the May 6th polling day.”

And secondly – by way of warning:

“Ivan Ristic, director and co-founder at Diffusion, recently warned that political parties need to be careful in their use of social media during the campaign as there is much less "command and control" of the platform compared to political spin seen in previous eras.”

Which presents an interesting dilemma for the parties given the extent to which they have been trying to direct campaigning centrally. The traditional media demand a centralised campaign as local paper and broadcast media (outside London) has very little impact and the approach adopted by the parties suits this demand. But emerging alternative media – including social media, the world of blogging and specialist publishing – does not fit into this neat paradigm.

The election may – as Iain Dale has observed – have become more “presidential” in nature but alternative media are beginning to shred that cosy, London-centric model. Indeed, twitter, facebook and the blogs are more akin to the old-fashioned street corner soapbox hustings that to the sleek, besuited, controlled media message of the Mandelson-Campbell era in campaigning.

The fall out will be interesting to watch.

Wednesday Whimsy: The Elections - introducing the characters (with apologies to Gary Gygax)

The suggestion has been made that the General Election should be conducted in the style of a role-playing game rather than in the rather old and stale format we currently have (or rather “real time strategy”). I thought that I would provide some pen portraits of the main protagonists.

Gordo the Brown. An aged, half-ogre Priest of Himmelfarb, Gordo has used his powers to overthrow Bliar the Great, the fallen paladin who used to rule. His prime weapons are Nokkya, a powerful throwing block that stuns on impact and Trak Tor Statt, a mighty iron-bound book. Assisting Gordo is Man del Sunny, a half-fairy, half goblin rogue (who many suspect of having designs on Gordo’s job for himself) and the apprentice, Ed who can also wield Trak Tor Statt.


David of the Cameroons. A paladin trained at the school of Eytone, David is protected by the Coat of Bullingdon and arms himself with the great sword of Tone (seized from the hands of Bliar himself) and the Mace of the Baroness. Beside David are Gideon, an apprentice mage of great promise but little charm and Boris the Magnificent, the greatest scholar and illusionist ever (according to his own story).

Clegg O’Hallam. Known as young Nick to most around him, this tyro Priest of Libdemfocus has little skill with weapons but the assistance of a strange yellow bird. His main strength is St Vince, a powerful and holy monk renowned for his doom-laden prophecies and surprising skills as a dancer. St Vince is armed with Ey-tol-uso and Iwuzreyet, paired clubs that may only be wielded by the righteous and holy (or possibly the smug and self-important – the tomes are unclear on this point).

These are the main players but watch out for others – for Gryphin, the evil half-orc streetfighter, for La Lucas, the overweening elven druidess and for Lawd Farage, the chippy old rogue. On the fringes of the battle we might see the barbarian shaman, Salmon and a strange old witch called Esther as well as various supporters of Gordo, David and Clegg. All is set for a great battle indeed!

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