Election Anxiety

The main reason that I’m blogging is anxiety about the General Election. I have a tough decision to make today and the more I think about it the harder it seems to become.

I, like most of the people I know, watched the television debates (although I missed the Sky one as I don’t have satellite TV). Through these I found myself shouting at the candidates rather more than I’d like to admit and came to the absolute conclusion that I really detest David Cameron. There is something about him that just gives me the creeps every time I see him and, as a child of the eighties, who remembers the terrible Conservative years, I just can’t bring myself to even consider voting for them...although having said that, I don’t agree with their policies anyway and I certainly don’t agree with having my pay frozen as a public servant to pay for the debt Britain is currently in, when private sector businesses in general already receive much higher pay rises than a majority of public sector workers do. And if Simon Cowell believes they are the right choice for the country, then I know for sure that they are wrong.

Now if truth be told I’ve always been a bit of a Liberal. In fact, one of my earliest election memories was at Junior School, when I tried to convince my parents to vote Liberal. I have no idea whether they did, nor do I have any right to know how they voted – their choice is their own concern; but over the years a majority of the Lib Dems policies have seemed to me to make more sense than the so-called left and right wing parties.

Of course we have the problem of the voting system which means that, as is always touted at these times “a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote”, but I can’t help thinking that a vote for the Lib Dems proves that people don’t want to be stuck choosing between two parties, both of whom are as bad as each other.

So I guess my affinity lies with the Lib Dems and all things being equal I should vote for them and take pride in my allegiance. But here is where my anxiety comes in. What if my, and others votes for the Lib Dems means that the Conservatives get a majority? Then we’ll be stuck once more in a society that cares only for the wealthy and makes the lower paid poorer, with little hope of the voting system ever being changed and giving the country the chance to elect a government it actually wants.

The other option of course is that it would give Labour a majority and that, in some ways would be almost as bad as the Conservatives getting into power.

The ideal choice, I guess, would be a hung parliament – and of course a vote for the Lib Dems would possibly help towards that. Although I can’t see what a hung parliament is going to achieve in terms of sorting out the economy and bringing the country’s debt back to reasonable levels.

But of course, although I may want to vote for Nick Clegg, with his everyman approach and his generally sensible policies (although I am a little disappointed that in the third debate when the talk centred on taxing the banks he didn’t mention the Robin Hood Tax, which would be the perfect scheme to generate money, and would fit in with all his apparent ideals), in reality I am voting for my local MP, not the Prime Minister.

And once again this gives me anxiety. This year has seen a large number of parties vying for my vote: Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives, the UKIP, BNP, the English Democrats and the Green Party have all been kind enough to kill trees to produce highly interesting (not) leaflets, although not one has actually managed to make it to my doorstep to actually discuss with me what I want from my MP.

And this is where the problem lies.

Firstly I’d like to say that although I read their leaflets with interest, I at no time gave serious consideration to the UKIP, BNP, the English Democrats or the Green Party because they have nothing to say that I can get behind – although I have to give the BNP 10 out of 10 for comparing Nick Griffin to Winston Churchill (err, I don’t think so!)

The Conservative candidate is someone who I know, because she comes into the pub. I have had dealings with her in the past and she has always been pleasant and helpful. She involves herself directly in community projects and is always helping out with conservation etc. and she regularly sends newsletters keeping everyone up-to-date with what is going on in the area. But at the end of the day she is a Conservative and my inbred hatred of the party is enough to put me off her, for which I suppose I feel a little guilty (but not enough vote for her).

The Lib Dem candidate I have never heard of before, have never seen or heard anything about, nor have I received any other literature or news from the party other than the election blurb. In all honesty I would find it hard to vote for someone that I have no knowledge of, or understanding about what his personal feelings are with regards to the area that I live in (I’m not even sure he lives in the area). Having said that, he does, as Mrs H3 said, have the best name – but I’m not entirely sure that’s a good qualification for election as MP.

Finally, we have the Labour candidate, who has been our MP for the last five years at least. I know he lives in the area, because he mentions it in his leaflets and he does, very occasionally, send out a newsletter, although with nowhere near the frequency of the Conservatives. Whether he has worked hard for us or not is hard to prove, although it appears that our standard of life is no worse than anyone else’s, so he’s not made that much of a cock-up. As a (I suspect anti-Conservative) friend of mine said “Well, we’ve not had a problem with him, so no reason to change is there?” And he’s probably right. Except that when the government pushed through the widely reviled and highly criticised Digital Economy Bill (DEB), our MP wasn’t even at the House of Commons, let alone in a position to vote against it. As this was official MP business, what was he busy doing instead? More importantly, how many other important bills did he not sit in on or vote?

So you can see my quandary – vote for state, vote for local area? Vote for a party that are never going to win under the current rules, or run with a party I have no faith in because of fear of what happens if the others get in. And what if everyone else votes wrong? It’s all too much to think about.

Perhaps I should just close my eyes and take a stab at the paper and see where the cross lands.

Feeling a bit Crafty?

So, it’s been forever since I last blogged, and after promising that I wouldn’t go away for such a long time again too. I put the blame for this pretty much on Gary Numan, Pete Doherty and Johnny Bramwell for not doing any concerts, so Mrs H3 and I haven’t been out anywhere near as much as we had by this time last year, although some of the blame also has to go to my mortgage brokers, who completely fucked up my re-mortgage application and left me close to destitute for a few months, meaning that I couldn’t afford to go out anyway.

Of course it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The severe shortage of funds, not helped by the need to buy new glasses when mine died suddenly (another reason the re-mortgage fiasco was such a nightmare) left me alone and at home, surrounded by my never-lessening pile of crafting stash. With all manner of birthdays, anniversaries etc. on the horizon and inspired by reading Tim Holtz’s Compendium of Curiosities book, I felt it was time to get my arse in gear and actually use some of it, both in order to save money on cards/presents and to get my crafting mojo going again (and also to stop Mrs H suggesting, as she has several times, that I sell it as I never use it). There was also another UKS Cybercrop, which I actually only found out about the week before it happened.

And so I’ve spent the last few months, cutting and pasting, glittering and gluing and I’ve discovered a whole slew of things, which I guess I should have known before, but with the extended break from anything crafty had been pushed to the back of my mind.

The first thing I learnt, or maybe the last really, is that I’m far too much of a perfectionist to be a true artist. Not for me slapping a bit of this and that on wherever the fancy takes me and treating any errors as ‘interesting focal points’. The things I make have to be perfect – even the inking has to be precisionally placed.

Hand cutting can be tedious, really tedious: Now of course everyone already knows this, which is why lots of people have things like Cricut. But as a pauper who has stopped buying gadgets I don’t use (remember the Sizzix etc. – yep mine’s lounging in a cupboard somewhere), I had no choice but to hand cut – and not just once either. For the birthday cards I made I printed the messages in my chosen font, stuck them to card for strength, then cut them out. This was followed by covering in some of my favourite papers, which were then cut again. On the second card, which took three days to make, there were also flowers to cut and make. Oh, and once I’d made the flowers I didn’t like the papers I’d used for the letters so had to re-cover and cut them for a third time.

Fun foam doesn’t make a good base for something that is going to be heat embossed: Yep, pretty obvious I know, but I wasn’t really thinking sensibly and soon found that UTEE and foam don’t really mix, but I’d got so far by that point that I had no choice but to continue.

Hot UTEE is better handled with tools than with fingers: I know, I know…this one really is a no brainer. But in my impatience to create enamelled flowers I didn’t bother thinking about how I was going to handle them. Hurrah for cocktail sticks say I!

Distress Crackle Paint doesn’t always work: Actually, as it turned out I’m glad it didn’t or two days work would have been ruined as it wouldn’t have gone with my finished card at all. It may be that I just didn’t use it right, but according to the instructions you paint on a layer, then let it dry and it crackles of its own accord. Mine didn’t – did give a nice glossy sheen though...which isn’t what I want from a crackle paint.

Making Memories tweezers work back to front: These things are so annoying. Every time I tried to do anything I couldn’t. But I’ve lost my proper tweezers (along with just about everything else I needed) so had to make do. They’re almost as bad as the Provocraft Silent Setter, but that doesn’t actually work, whereas with a little concentrated thinking I can actually get the tweezers to pick things up, so these only come in as second worst crafting tool ever.

I need new scissors: No, I really do. I have a fabby pair of X-Cuts that I got at Bonanza, what seems like a million years ago now, and they’ve been great. But when you use them for cutting everything from paper to metal brad ends the blades get a bit dull. After a weekend of hacking at brads I realised my poor X-Cuts are just not cutting it (blah!) anymore. So I need a new pair of scissors and want the Tim Holtz (who else) Tonic scissors which apparently cut absolutely everything. Just need to get some money first.

Trying new techniques when you’re a perfectionist and on a short timescale is really not a good idea: Of course this is obvious too, but when I originally started Mrs H3’s “mini” book, three days before her birthday, I was expecting to paint a few beer mats, stick on a few pictures and decorate with primas, buttons and a few stickers and then hold them together with a few decorated book rings. As you’ll see from the photos, what started as a small project rapidly turned into one some forty odd pages long and it was only an hour before meeting Mrs H3 that I finally found a scrapbook big enough to put the decorated cards in (which I then, of course, had to decorate).

New techniques for me included creating my own decal transfers (hard when you don’t have the correct sealant – I only had glitter mod podge), painting strings of beads and (why, oh why) creating miniature plaques of the Hogwarts Houses and School Shield.

No glue sticks properly when you’re in a rush: I guess this is an obvious one too, but it seemed that for each mat I completed, I stuck everything onto it about ten times. Most frustrating when usually diamond glaze sticks absolutely anything. I even resorted to super glue at one point ... and that didn’t work either!

Primas can do absolutely anything! Yep, that really is a rendition of the Rose of England done in Primas on the page with Henry VIII. And bloody good it is too, if I do say so myself.

So I made some cards, and a mini book for Mrs H3, that turned out to be anything but mini and then finally even did some layouts for the Cybercrop, although I returned to my digital roots for that as it happened to coincide with the weekend that I returned to working at the pub. The results of my crafty sojourn are below, if you want to feast your eyes.