Apathy takes the prize in electoral shame

THE FRIDAY THING: WHILE self-congratulatory celebrations among Oldham’s Labour councillors were understandable and deserved in the wake of a victory that gave them 43 council seats — their best result since the 1970s — they were not the biggest winners on election night.

That accolade goes to the two-thirds of Oldhamers who couldn’t be bothered to leave the sofa and the TV set for the few minutes it would have taken to vote. Shameful when you think of the thousands of people all over the world who have given up their lives, not a few minutes of “EastEnders” but for the right to cast a vote.

The can’t-be-bothered party, whose total lack of civic responsibility led to turnouts of 24 per cent in St James, Failsworth East, Hollinwood and Chadderton South, must be a major concern to politicians of all parties.

Clearly two-thirds of Oldham folk are simply not engaging with politics right across the borough and that is a dangerous state of affairs. We should all have a stake in the borough that makes us care who runs it and how it is run. It really matters.

The only small comfort of election night was that it helped to wipe some of the smugness off the faces of Cameron and Clegg.

Nationally both the Tories and the Lib-Dems suffered massive losses as the great British public told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were not only barking up the wrong tree but barking up a tree that exists only in their own imaginations.

We are told that, as a result, Cameron will ditch his support for gay marriages and slow down his hopes of House of Lords reform and I am sure we are all heartily glad about that! It is reform of the political marriage between Cameron and Osborne that we all want to see.


I discovered an interesting titbit in the pages of the august Sunday Times this week.
Putting aside politics and the economy for a short breather, the ST tells us that while the economy is in crisis, one area of business that is booming is the sale of sex toys. And I don’t think it means naked Monopoly or strip poker, or even slap and tickle snap.

What we have here are electrical gadgets (battery operated for the most part, I imagine) that are owned by three-quarters of young women who are, according to the Times story, ahem, “buzzing”.

Counselling charity Relate predicts that sex toys will be as ubiquitous as smartphones, though I suspect they will not be put to use quite as much as are the phones for text. In fact a gadget that contained both facilities would surely be a time-saving boon for the busy young woman.

Apparently Fleet in Hampshire is where spending per person on these gadgets is 62p compared with, a much more modest 17p per head here in Oldham and only 10p per head in Sunderland. These figures are fascinating, putting Didcot in Oxfordshire (59p), Goldalming in Surrey (58p) and Basingstoke in Hampshire (58p) at the top of the sex-toy table and quite what it says about the men in these areas (if, indeed, they have any part to play at all in this game of solitaire) is not made clear.

But perhaps the fact that the women of Oldham spend only 17p on these devices speaks volumes about the qualities of local chaps, rendering mechanical devices unnecessary because of their abundant and satisfying charms. Or put it anaother way; dream on, lads.

The final word though to Debra Herbenick (no, really) who says that, in the use of sex toys: “There are similarities with the desire for instant gratification that has fuelled the fast-food industry.”

Perhaps a cocktail, a curry and a cuddle ticks all the boxes after all.


FINAL WORD: In a week when Ofsted said six in 10 state secondary schools are not good enough and Education Secretary Michael Gove has gone back on his commitment to unannounced visits to schools by inspectors, the news that teachers have joined the campaign to improve the quality of lessons in the classroom by backing plans to stop poor teachers receiving pay rises must be the only ‘A’ on the school report.

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