Warning: the following is a dry and sterile dissection of the proportional representation voting system we have here in Scotland. It is a cold and factual dissection of the how and the why and might be quite dull. Read on at your peril.
Damn, We are so close to getting a majority but I don't think we will.
The Good Lady said, looking at the latest results of the voting rolling into her phone.
I stole a look over her shoulder.
We have 63 seats, I thought we only needed 65 or something to get a majority. They have loads left to call. It will be a fucking doddle. We are laughing!
As if to emphasise my point I tipped back my head and let out a laugh that a Hyena who had just eaten the severed penis of an ostrich would be proud of.
No, Daddy-Bear. I am afraid not. Because the rest of the votes fall under the proportional representation rules, it is looking quite unlikely that we will get a majority even though we will win the general vote.
The Good Lady said this with all the certainty of someone with no job who has time to watch shows on TV discussing elections and how voting works.
Is it not just, who gets the most votes wins?
I said, my face going all squinty with puzzlement.
The Good Lady looked at me the same way I look at those people that keep turning up at my door asking if I want my gutters cleaned.
No no, Daddy-Bear. It works like this...
As she started warbling about lists and double votes and other absurdities I felt reality blink out around me and I found myself drifting into nothingness.
See the thing is, right. If we shit in our socks and throw the socks at the windows it has more chance of crashing through?
A man crouched on the ground in front of me, frantically tugging his socks off.
Come on then, what are you waiting for?
Sock-Man had completed pulling his socks off and was now squatting, trousers around his ankles, holding a sock to his pallid arse as if it were a trumpet and he hoped to tootle out a brown tune or two.
I beg your pardon? Shit in a sock? Why on earth would I shit in a sock?
I wasn't sure what was going on. Hadn't I just been talking to the Good Lady about voting? Yet, here I was, lurking in some undergrowth outside a big house in the fading light of dusk.
So you aren't going to shit in your sock?
Sock-Man appeared to have filled his first sock and it bulged obscenely in his hand like a nightmare meatball marinara.
No. Of course I'm not going to shit in my sock?!
Sock-Man wrinkled his face in disgust at me as he started fartily filling up number two.
You just going to shit in your hand then? That's fucking barbaric mate.
He screwed up his eyes as the second sock filled with a series of wet plorps and spup noises.
What, No?! I am not shitting in my hand, in fact, I am not shitting, full stop.
At this, Sock-Man reared back and glared at me suspiciously.
You pop up, out of nowhere and say you arent going to shit in a sock? Don't you know... We win together?
He crouched there, this strange Sock-Man, looking peculiarly Toad-like in the dim light, each hand burdened by a heavy sock full of his own shit.
You understand?
He hissed.
You understand now?
I blinked.
The Good Lady was poking at me with an accusing finger. Guiltily I looked around me to make sure that she hadn't caught me shitting in a sock.
Thats what proportional representation means. You understand now?
I looked at her and imagined that man in the woods shitting desperately into a sock so that he could throw it through a window.
Yes...
I nodded.
I think I do understand...
And there you have it. Proportional representation in a nutshell. You're welcome!