The pen (along with the microphone and the camera) is perhaps mightier than the ballot box.

Well, it's all over bar the shouting. The 5th of May, polling day, has come and gone. 

For the first time in I don't know how long, possible the first time ever, we were unable to vote. We were concerned to apply for our postal vote for the referendum in June, knowing that we would be in Spain at that point. However, when we applied we were uncertain exactly when we would be setting off for Galicia. And so we asked for postal votes for anything that popped up between the start of May and September. And then our departure was delayed for various reasons. Our voting cards arrived for the 5th of May, followed shortly by another set of cards saying that our postal voting papers were being sent to Vigo and that we could not use the first lot of cards sent. The law of unforeseen consequences came into effect! 

But at least we shall be able to vote in the referendum in June. 

 And so lots of other people voted. All the pre-election stuff in the media went on and on and on about how Labour were unvotable-for. How, the mass media kept asking, would it be possible for anyone to vote for a party led by such a shambolic figure as Jeremy Corbyn? I was getting rather tired of hearing it. If you keep telling a child she is stupid and ugly, eventually he or she comes to believe it. And I began to think that the same kind of bullying brain-washing was taking place in the political sphere, pushing voters into thinking there was no point voting for Labour because, after all, it was unelectable! 

And in the end, some reports say Labour did better than expected. Others say it was a disaster. In Scotland they have certainly taken a drubbing. The Tory advance there is enough, I suppose, to justify some crowing on the part of the Conservatives. But it looks as though the Labour candidate is set to become Mayor of London, despite the workings of the dirty tricks department in the last few weeks. 

All is relative! 

My blood was set to boiling again as I listened to the radio news though. A UKIP member, successfully elected onto a local council somewhere, was being interviewed and talking delightedly of his success. And a little bit of me wanted to say that freedom of expression could go hang and UKIP should not be made to appear as a party as important and meaningful as the big players. I have felt for a long time that the column inches and air time given to them in the media have contributed to changing them from a sort of embarrassing joke party into a credible threat. 

The power of the press is formidable!