100 YEARS OLD AND STILL TALKING TO POLAR BEARS...

BEACHCOMBER and the Polar Bear: the conversation continues. The plot so far: As yesterday’s column reported, Beachcomber has been discussing the forthcoming general election with his polar bear. Now read on:

For the second morning in a row, I was startled to see my polar bear already at breakfast when I arrived at the table. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“No good will come of it,” I warned solemnly. “In my long experience, no decent thought has ever been accomplished before lunchtime.”

Ignoring my comment, he continued: “This general election thing,” he said. “You pointed out yesterday that fewer than one third of the seats change hands at an election, so why bother going to the trouble of having an election at all in the other two-thirds?”

“It preserves the illusion of democracy,” I said, and I wandered off to fill my plate with kippers.

“How much does a general election cost?” the bear asked when I returned.

“It has been estimated that the election this year will cost around £170million in all, including staffing costs, administrative costs, money spent on campaigning and even the post-election costs of moving MPs in and out of Westminster and such things as advertising, transport and shredding sensitive documents,” I said.

The bear looked startled. “What?” he exclaimed. “That’s almost £4 for everyone on the electoral roll, yet less than two-thirds of them bother to vote and we know the result beforehand in two-thirds of the constituencies.”

I nodded sadly in agreement, but the bear hadn’t finished. “If two-thirds of constituencies don’t change hands, I’d guess that at least two-thirds of voters never change their minds. So we could restrict the election to the third of people who might change their minds in a third of the constituencies. The entire election would then cost under £20million instead of £170million.”

“How lucky you are to be a polar bear and not affected by such things,” I said, rather unwisely as it turned out.

“What do you mean, not affected?” he snorted. “While you were getting your kippers, I consulted Hansard online and discovered that polar bears have been mentioned in the House of Commons only a dozen times since 2010 and the only truly serious mention was in 2012 when the Member for Luton North asked whether the Government would support the US and Russia in seeking an effective ban on the trade in polar bear hides.” “And what was the answer?” I asked. “Apparently we’re listening to other countries that take a contrary view,” he snorted again. “Five years later, we seem to be no closer to a ban.”

“You’re lucky to get a mention at all,” I said. “There are four times as many references to the deadly sin of sloth than there are to the animal. And the only mentions real sloths get are to accuse government departments of moving at the speed of an arthritic sloth or with the energy of a hibernating sloth.”

“No wonder so many people don’t vote,” the bear said, and he poured more tea for both of us.