is that it’s not enormously exciting. The royals aren’t very exciting either, but they at least do warm the cockles of a few old dears, and everyone likes a nice parade, so they seem to be more popular than the alternative - if only just because it’s easier to have a festival for something pointless than against something pointless. Anyway, every now and then a little glimmer of hope comes along, and this month is a vintage with two of them for our delectation. Abolitionist whingers like me can check out this and this and have a little self-satisfied smirk to yourself. Mean to laugh maybe, but as Mark Thomas apparently said (apropos something else entirely): “They’ve got our money and our land, but at least we can stop them having fun.”

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There’s been a lot of hot air of late about tactical voting, and how disaffected Labour supporters can use it to ‘give Blair a bloody nose’ by threatening the majorities of safe seat MPs, or cutting the overall majority. Very silly, and only really for those self-important whingers who that politics is more about the fun of navel-gazing than about making a difference to people who might need it.

That said, I am very much in favour of this new (well, new again this time) tactical voting initiative, www.tacticalvoter.net. It lets people in marginal seats swap votes with each other, so they won’t miss out on voting for the party they prefer and wasting their votes. It scores on both fronts:

1: it’s about keeping the Tories down and out, by getting the best result for Labour and LibDem. Real result - let Labour get on with Government for the people, whilst getting a LibDem opposition would mean some sensible scrutiny from a civil liberties standpoint.

2: if you want a whinge, it gets the protest vote in there too (and a sensible protest this time). By mucking with the electoral system, it’s helping make the case against first-past-the-post, and towards a way of voting which actually reflects the government people want.

So go check it out - very clever site for analysis of constituencies too. It only applies to a smaller number of seats, so not in safe ones. Doesn’t apply to me as I’ll be voting Labour with a very strong chance of an MP with a good majority, but if I were in a Tory/LibDem battleground, I’d certainly be doing this.

www.tacticalvoter.net