So, here I sit once more after another sleepless election night. My eyes are bleary, my brain hardly seems to be working and my father is listening to what can generously be considered to be SadFm. And I ask myself, was it worth it? Was it really worth it? And the answer is of course, no.
I feel tired and worn out and I'm still clueless about most of the results in the English local elections and the AV referendum. I have to wait till this evening for that. Nothing is surely worth that.
Only of course it was.
The moment at which Caroline Flint, Shadow Communities Secretary, started referring to the Liberal Democrats as the Conservative's human shields, I just knew it was going to be one of those nights.
MP after MP turning up to fling invective at each other while David Dimbleby tried to control them and get the viewer interested in the graphics Jeremy Vine was pulling in some blue screen encapsulated studio somewhere in the depths of BBC Television Centre. The problem was because so much vote counting was going on poor old David, Jeremy and co, had very little information with which to distract the various party representatives from verbally maiming each other.
And so the same things kept on being brought up. The fact that the Lib Dems were going to get destroyed in their key grassroots areas, the possibility that Labour was maybe not going to get as many seats as they thought they were going to and of course, the human shields.
Yes! It finally happened. After months of wasted opportunities at actually attacking the coalition in ways which might have furthered his parties course, giving up chances and chances for epic soundbites, Ed Miliband launched his secret weapon. Possibly inspired by rumours surrounding the capture of Osama Bin Laden. The man who looks not unlike Wallace. Sent a couple of female mps down to call the Conservatives terrorists. Now, I know that not everyone agrees with the coalition and that's understandable. But the idea of David Cameron picking up a screaming and cowering Nick Clegg and using him to shield himself from the fierce well placed bullets of the Labour Leader, seemed a little bit ridiculous.
Maybe it wouldn't have, if he hadn't repeatedly said things along the lines of "the fightback starts here" everytime he visited a Scottish Parliament seat. Most of which promptly turned SNP after previously being Labour safe seats. Therefore earning him a place in that pantheon of politicians who say one thing before and election and then having to say another afterwards. He should talk to Nick Clegg about that.
So the human shield thing did look a bit ridiculous when Miliband obviously thinks a fightback is best defined as: losing half of your safest seats in areas your party has held forever.
At some point Lembit Opik phoned the studio and said he was stuck on the M5 and sent them a picture of him changing a tyre by the side of the road. He really wants to be back in the jungle obviously.
But of course British Politics is mad and it amuses and interests me, if noone else. So I watched as a man who looks less like some Scottish folk hero than I do, pushed his country further down the path towards possible independence and noted all the while that its better than watching that dreadful show about Essex.
