Post Election Comment and a very sad loss

Having let the dust settle for a week, I thought it is about time that I looked at what happened last Thursday and what it all means in a wider context.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the euphoria that surrounds victory and sometimes we say things in the heat of the moment that we regret later, so I thought it better to wait a few days and then make a sober assessment of the results.

There have been claims and counter claims from the various spin doctors that this party or that party won this set of elections, however if we look at the overall results, the only thing we can say for certain is that the Conservatives had a fantastic night, and the Liberal Democrats had a thoroughly good pasting.

Not only did we win convincingly in Mendip, and Sedgemoor, we took control of West Somerset from no overall control and very nearly pulled off a huge result in South Somerset where the former Lib Dem stronghold was reduced to a majority of one!!

Nationally we gained very nearly 100 seats, an amazing result when the pundits were predicting that we would lose up to 1000! I can't ever remember a party in government winning seats at local level 12 months into a parliament especially when you look at the cuts that have had to be made in the first year. These seats were on top of the record numbers won in 2007 when the conservatives won 1500 seats mainly from Labour, at a time when the Labour government were as popular as a rattle snake in a lucky dip!

There appears to have been a slight resurgence in Labour votes locally, I suspect mainly due to the fact that traditional Labour voters have returned home, after lending their votes to the Lib Dems in recent years in an attempt to beat the Conservatives. However if you look at the picture nationally, Labour gained ground from the Lib Dems in the North, especially the North West, but they failed spectacularly to win in Scotland, ceding power to the Nationalists, and gained nothing worth noting south of Birmingham. Mr Milliband will have to do much better than this if he is to survive until the next general election.

On the subject of saying things that you later regret, I see in this weeks' Journal that Mrs Hudson, leader of the local Lib Dems is quoted as saying "but I think we have to be clear, the Conservatives have not won this election". Wells Mrs Hudson, when I played cricket and someone walked back to the pavilion complaining about the umpire and saying that they were "not out", the usual comment was "look in the scorebook son, and I'll think you'll find that you are".

On a totally different subject, I would just like to comment on the death of Seve Ballesteros. When I started playing golf 25 years ago, Seve was in his pomp, playing shots that us mere mortals could only dream of. He single handedly dragged European golf up by its boostraps, and was a major force in building the European Tour into the global force that it is now. Without him I doubt that Faldo, Lyle, Woosnam, Westwood et al would have reached the zenith of the game, and without him I doubt the Ryder Cup would have become the global phenomenon that it is today.

I can remember watching Seve playing in the Masters at Augusta, late at night, live from the USA, the sound of that perfect strike echoing around the pine trees sent a chill up my spine then, and inspired me to take up the game. Seve was a magician and a gentleman, a fierce competitor but always with a twinkle in his eye, the world is a lesser place without him, RIP Seve we are certainly going to miss you.