elections

Having a few days off to read and enjoy other blogs on the elections. Back soon.

Chapter One: The Borough

Let us start our tale proper, and take you to the overpriced plain by the river where our inner-city borough was located. Busy and bustling, but not at all spacious, this borough hosted the usual powderkeg demographics: There was the usual small number of grotesquely rich wankers who lived under the usual highly-coveted seige in heavily-guarded ritzy piles next to the river, the slightly largely number of insanely aspirational people who lived in reasonably well-appointed homes several streets back from the river, where they aspired to the grotesque riches, and the usual extremely large number of poverty-stricken people who rotted away in the cold and crappy flats that constituted the Council's fast-dwindling housing stock, hoping that their big moment was not as far away as it looked.

So, that was the borough. Next, there was the Town Hall - an enormous, piss-soaked, leggy concrete offence from which senior management could see and shoot. Within this appalling building, and focused entirely on their own lives and ambition, were the local councillors and their senior management team. The staff were also there, poor bastards. Life for the staff had become execrable in recent times, to say the very least. They had always been hounded and threatened by their more senior colleagues, because that's the way a Council hierarchy works, but now even the toadies felt oppressed.

Paranoia was the word. All levels of the organisation were afflicted. The problem was, of course, the upcoming local election. This particular borough had been ruled by the People's Party for almost 20 years. Unfortunately, it looked very much like this reign was about to come to a sticky end. Alas, the People's Party was now so unpopular at the national level that the electorate was very likely to make a pointed statement against it at the local elections.