Benjamin
Today, the 12th of May, is the day my elder brother was born. This isn’t your typical “Happy Birthday” post, and if you don’t want to read about my departed brother then I suggest not reading on. I’ve decided to share something I wrote on my LiveJournal shortly after joining the Benjamin Bunny fanlisting, which I have since adopted from Kate. (Thank you, dearest!)
♥
Today I joined the fanlisting for Benjamin Bunny and it made me want to share something dear to my heart that not a lot of people know.
A year and a half before I was born, roughly 11 months before I must have been conceived, my mother gave birth to a beautiful little boy called Benjamin. My mother once told me he was named after Benjamin Bunny because she’d always had a soft spot for the mischievous bunny. Whether this is the true reason for his name or not, I have always related the two in my mind.
(more…)
Rest In Peace, Dear Cardigan
A couple of years ago my Dad bought me a lovely cardigan. I adored it. I’ve worn it every day ever since, but I can no longer wear it outside of the house… Thanks to what I am forever referring to as The Pen Incident. Suffice to say, a rebellious pen made its way into the washing machine on a suicide mission to destroy my favourite cardigan. I am boycotting ink and only using pencils as a passive-aggressive form of revenge. No, I’m kidding.
There is black ink all up the back of the cardigan. 
Typically, the inside is untouched — if only I’d washed it inside out! (Or checked the pockets for a bloody pen, idiot.) Stain remover is helping a little, but leaving the fabric discoloured. I’ll have a better go at it when I manage to buy my own stain treatment instead of borrowing the in-laws! I’ve been wearing the (ruined ) cardigan in the house anyway; it’s just so comfortable.
The search for a new cardigan began a few hours after I got home, but it’s been a couple of weeks since then and I hadn’t found anything I could justify purchasing (I’m very cheap.) Until yesterday! I really liked the look of this cardigan: Chunky Knit Hooded Cardigan @ Very.co.uk but couldn’t justify spending £32.95 (£29 + postage) when we’re on a tight budget. Besides, this one was my first choice: Hooded Duffle Style Cardigan @ Very.co.uk (isn’t it lovely? Look at the toggles! And the hood! And the colour! Lush. My partner and I had decided that I could choose one to buy, but I’d have to wait until the end of the month.
Aaanyway. To make this increasingly long story quite short – I found the ‘second choice’ cardigan on eBay! It’s a catalogue return being sold by a reselling company — so it’s brand new with the tags still on. With postage included it’s £13.94, which is a saving of £19.04! 
It should be arriving in a few days. I’m actually excited. I really like big cardigans.
Election Fever!
… One of the stupid phrases used increasingly by the UK media over the last few days.
We’ve been waiting for a result for a few days now, and I’m getting more and more tense as time goes on. Yesterday there appeared to be an important shift towards the party I would like — I am a Liberal Democrat who would fully support a Progressive coalition, LibDem/Labour (plus a few other minority parties) — but I am not convinced that it wasn’t simply a bargaining tactic so the Lib Dems can get everything they want from the Conservatives. I wouldn’t mind a Lib Dem/Conservative agreement as long as Electoral Reform was on the table — and I don’t mean the Alternative Voting system; I mean Proportional Representation. Labour has already offered that, which only gives me another reason to back them.
All of the right-wing press in this country, and the right-wing politicians, have been talking about how Conservatives got the most votes (306 seats in Parliament, 10million votes) and saying that he “won”. Well, if he’d won, we wouldn’t be in this situation — you don’t win until you have 326 seats. They have what is known as a minority government and could rule the country as they are, but they would have too much opposition (Lib Dems and Labour combined hold 315 seats) too do anything the other parties didn’t agree with. A popular line is that “the people have spoken [in favour of a Conservative government]”
If we are to accept that Conservatives have won, with 10 million votes, then we must also accept that people have voted and spoken for a Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition – combined they received 16 million votes, but due to our current (unfair) voting system they only received 315 seats combined. This is the reason we need electoral reform — so that everybody’s vote counts. As it stands at the moment, everybody votes in their constituency (their local voting area) and whichever party gets the most in that particular constituency wins a seat in parliament. This means that all of the votes in that area for any parties which didn’t have the most votes are disregarded. Completely. They no longer count and those people no longer get their say. What do we do if two parties get the same amount of votes? Well, we recount until both parties accept the result, and then we flip a coin. Or draw cards (whoever draws the highest number wins) or something else with an unpredictable (not random) outcome. Thanks to the flip of a coin, everybody who voted for the loser now has no say in who runs the United Kingdom.
It’s something that makes me angry — how we have a democracy if we don’t listen to what most people have to say?