Say what you like about compulsory voting (and for the record I’m pro), but when less than half of the voters of London bother to vote for the person they want to govern seven million people with a multi-billion pound budget for the next four years then you can’t help but conclude that “I don’t give a fuck”, rather than Boris Johnson, was the winner on the day.

The Editor notes: A huge welcome back to jLo who is briefly returning from a long, self-imposed GrodsExile.
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I love to vote. Apparently, however, I need to stop doing it: my vote is a jinx that sees the forces of evil triumph. My 18th birthday party was significant not because I finally got to get legally drunk, but because it was the night John Howard came to power. 11 long years it took for him to be unseated, and I mourn the fact that I was not in the country to celebrate with my long-suffering friends the night it happened.

Now, I am dealt a further blow. Not only did I miss the greatest electoral night in Australia of my adult life to date, but my FIRST LONDON ELECTION has turned out to be a bitter disappointment. Commonweatlh residents of London are entitled to have their say in local council/Mayoral elections, and so I dutifully turned up at Shoreditch Town Hall yesterday morning to cast my vote (three jurisdictions in six months, in case anyone else but me has noticed). Tonight the counting is over and apparently Boris Johnson is my new Mayor.

What the fuck.

It’s my 18th birthday all over again.

You all know how I feel about this city. I love it to pieces, and can never explain exactly why. Well, my job just got harder, because of the measly 45% of my fellow Londoners who could be bothered turning up to vote, a staggering number of them thought that it would be a good idea for Boris Johnson to be the mayor. That racist, homophobic muppet with stupid hair is now in charge of one of the greatest cities in the world. You have got to be kidding.

It’s nights like this that make me lost my faith in democracy. What the fuck are you all thinking? Are you NUTS? I am very privileged in many ways, and I try to never lose sight of that. But when I see other adults make such FUCKED UP choices, my political minority status is very difficult to resolve.

End drunken rant. Goodnight.

PS. Perhaps I should refrain from voting in the US general election? God help us if my jinx continues.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s worth half a million pounds, but I actually kinda like it.

Go on… Somebody out there admit that they do too.

Anybody who has lived in London will be familiar with the sight of 10 million pasty white Britons taking the day off work and lying naked on the nearest patch of grass when the mercury nudges 25 degrees. With litres of sunscreen on standby and barely a 30 centimetre gap between them, Londoners deal with “heatwave” conditions in their own special way.

But this is hilarious:

[British] teachers yesterday demanded the right to walk out of hot classrooms during soaring temperatures, claiming “glasshouse” schools were putting children’s safety at risk.

[...]

But [the National Union of Teachers] insisted teachers “should not and cannot be expected to work in any classroom or other internal teaching space where the temperature exceeds 26C (79F) for anything other than very short periods”.

It is pressing the government to introduce laws requiring all schools to adhere to World Health Organisation recommendations for a maximum 24C (75F) limit for “comfortable” working conditions.

Bring it on. I would only have been required to work for about half a dozen days last term.