I have a horrible feeling inside me that Labour will win the coming general election. The fear has lingered in the back of my head for a while now. Even when Labour were at their lowest, perhaps 18 months ago or thereabouts, the Conservatives’ poll lead was not a great deal to write home about.

Right now the polls say that the Conservatives are roughly eight points ahead of Labour. It’s not all that tight, but you would expect the Conservatives to be doing better given everything that has gone wrong under Labour’s watch.

It’s been clear for a while that voters dislike Labour, but they can’t bring themselves to be convinced by the Conservatives. As a result, the Conservatives are really just a small disaster away from being just a handful of points ahead. And thanks to the corrupt voting system in operation, even if the Conservatives lead by a handful of points, Labour will still win the election.

It’s a prospect that frightens me, because just imagine what Labour would imagine they could get away with if they could still be in government this summer. But I think it is an increasingly real prospect. 2010 is the new 1992.

This is because somehow, despite being one of the most hated people in the country, Gordon Brown always manages to end up on the good side in any story.

I can probably count the number of people that I know like Gordon Brown on the fingers of… one finger. You would think that if you had to conjure up a nothing story that painted a person of your choice in a bad light, the person you would choose is Gordon Brown. Yet, anyone who tries to do it just messes it up.

This bullying story reminds me very strongly of the story a few months back about a “disrespectful” letter that Gordon Brown sent to Jacqui Janes, the mother of a soldier who died while serving in Afghanistan.

The expectation was that everyone would be outraged by Gordon Brown’s callous disregard for British soldiers’ lives. I am sure Mrs Janes envisaged herself being the hero that bashed the final nail into Labour’s coffin, while The Sun was rubbing its hands with glee at the prospect of “wot wonning it” for the Tories again.

In the event, Mrs Janes and The Sun massively overplayed their hand. Instead of being outraged, peopled ended up just feeling sorry for a man who was trying his best, but was hindered by his notoriously poor handwriting and the decreasing quality of his eyesight.

Now, a genuine story about abuse in the workplace has ended up being all about the way a charity is run. Surely Labour cannot believe their luck in this respect. Christine Pratt, co-founder of the National Bullying Helpline, probably dreamt that she was being some kind of modern-day Nelson Mandela when she publicised information about users of the service that was supposedly confidential. Instead, she has faced criticism for this inability to engage brain before sticking the boot in.

You can only imagine that a child-like head rush goes through people who get an opportunity to criticise Gordon Brown like this. It is a shimmering open goal — a massive bullseye target on the world’s biggest bahookie. It is understandable why someone might get a bit too excited at this prospect.

It is a bit like a child riding a roundabout. The kid thinks it would be really great to ride the roundabout as fast as humanly possible. Not only will it be immense fun, but everyone will think you are a hero for managing to go so fast on the roundabout. Instead, what happens is that you end up being sick on yourself, and looking a bit stupid.

There is still a story about Gordon Brown, but only a little bit. The fact is, the revelations about the Prime Minister’s behaviour are not exactly surprising. Mr Brown’s strange behaviour, temper tantrums, and penchant for being violent towards inanimate objects, have been a fairly open secret for a while now.

The macho, bullying culture has been just about the only consistent thread that has run through New Labour since its inception (that is, after all, why Malcolm Tucker has been such a successful character). If these “revelations” about bullying were truly damaging information, the damage would have been done already.

And in fairness, if you were asked to guess which person in the country gets the most angry in his job, you would probably say the Prime Minister, wouldn’t you? It would be a shock if the manager of your local Tesco bawled at his employees on a regular basis. But you’d think anyone working for the political leader of the country would sign up in the full expectation that tensions might be heightened from time to time.

The key reason why this is playing into Gordon Brown’s hands? It is not despite the fact that he’s hated so much. It’s because he’s hated so much. It’s just not cool to kick a man when he’s down. It is, after all, a bit like bullying.

This is the accompanying article / transcript to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion, a humorous lefty / skeptical podcast. You can listen to the full podcast below.

This year’s party conference season has now finished, and attention turns to the General Election that will held some time between now and June. What that really means is that everyone’s thoughts are turning towards the prospect of the Conservatives being in power.

Many people now seem to be treating a Conservative election win as more-or-less a foregone conclusion. This is despite the fact that they still have slightly underwhelming opinion poll ratings. The Conservatives are not exactly getting an enthusiastic reception. It’s just that the other parties are disliked even more.

Something that the Tories have going for them at the moment is the announcement a couple of weeks ago that The Sun will be endorsing them at the next General Election. Truth be told, I was surprised on the one hand that they hadn’t already announced it. On the other hand, I was surprised at how early they had announced it. After all, it gives them plenty of time to change their minds between now and the election.

The Sun tends to back a winner, even though it is probably more of a case of being a weather vane rather than any sinister string-pulling from Rupert Murdoch. A few people I have spoken to think that it’s out of order for The Sun to be advising its readers how to vote. Maybe so, but the freedom of the press is vital to our democracy and they should be allowed to put it in their paper if they wish.

Some people note that people who buy The Sun are probably not buying it for sober and authoritative political analysis. That is true. But I actually think the Conservatives are a perfect match for The Sun. David Cameron and George Osborne would look great on Page 3. They are, after all, a massive pair of tits.

Putting aside whether a tabloid endorsement is something for an aspiring government to be proud about, what should we make of a potential Conservative government? Some on the left contend that no matter how bad Labour are, the Conservatives will always be worse. I do not quite agree with that.

If you ask me, the one thing scarier than a potential Conservative victory is a potential Labour victory. After all, given the turmoil of the past few years, just imagine what Labour would think if they could get away with it all. They would probably literally think that they could get away with actual murder. The thing is that they probably would get away with a lot — more than the Conservatives would anyway.

It has become common for people to say that Labour and the Conservatives have become similar to each other as far as policy goes. I don’t really agree with that. They are quite similar, but with Labour you get bonus ID cards and biometric anal probes. All-in-all, I doubt that a Conservative government would automatically be worse than another Labour one.

The most disconcerting thing about the Tories is not that they seem particularly nasty, but that they seem pretty vacuous at the moment. It may be a cliché to say that most people don’t know what David Cameron stands for. But you do get the sense that their manifesto will resemble some backs of envelopes and cigarette packets stuck together with Sellotape.

During all the talk recently about televised leaders’ debates, David Cameron seems to be the more eager between him and Gordon Brown to appear. But you wonder quite what he will find to say. With the lack of policies, I can half imagine him responding every time he is asked a question by saying, “that’s what she said!” It will probably make about as much sense.

For a lot of people, the Tories are the enemy because they are posh. Cameron and Osborne are the notable posh figures in Westminster, though Boris Johnson also comes in for a fair bit of stick on this front.

Some Conservative politicians are indeed quite ludicrously posh. For some people, this prevents them from representing the voters of Britain adequately because they lack empathy with the man on the street. But for me, a politician’s background is irrelevant. What matters is their capability for the job.

I have to confess to having a bit of a soft spot for Boris Johnson. I need to watch what I say here. I have been told off before for having an opinion on Boris Johnson because I am not a Londoner, so in fairness it is none of my damn business.

But I did once have the opportunity to vote for Boris Johnson. That was when he attempted to become Rector of Edinburgh University when I was a student a few years ago. He was the early favourite, but an intensely negative campaign from the student politics establishment played heavily on his posh image. This ensured that Boris Johnson not only failed to win the election, but he actually came third out of four candidates.

I should point out that Boris was not my first choice in the election. My preferred option was the former Scotsman editor Magnus Linklater, who finished second.

So who did we get as Rector instead? A man called Mark Ballard. I know what you’re probably thinking: who on earth is Mark Ballard? At the time, he was a Green Member of the Scottish Parliament. However, the general population was not quite so enamoured of him as the student population was and he has since lost his seat in the Scottish Parliament.

I have actually met Mr Ballard a couple of times and I can certainly say that he is a very pleasant chap. But ultimately he is a bit of a nobody, certainly in comparison to somebody like Boris Johnson. I mean, at Edinburgh University we could have had London’s Mayor as our university’s figurehead. As it was, we got someone who was rather worthy, but rather anonymous and a bit dull.

I don’t suppose there is necessarily anything wrong with that. But the mantra of “anyone but the Tories” surely isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Sweet summer night and I’m stripped to my sheets

Forehead is leaking, my AC squeaks and

A voice from the clock says, “You’re not gonna get tired”

My bed is a pool and the walls are on fire

So begins the new single by Animal Collective, ‘Summertime Clothes’. Their solution to being unable to sleep in the oppressive heat is to go out and walk through the city (only to be confronted by the smell of trash).

I used to do that when I was younger. I’d slip out of the house and wander around as dawn broke. It’s quite a strange experience to walk around at 4am, when it’s broad daylight and there is no-one around. It’s good, but it doesn’t help you get to sleep. But if you stay in bed, by the time it cools down sufficiently (if it ever does) the sun is ready to rise again and you face the other problem of sleeping at summer — it’s too damn bright.

Longer days. I used to like that aspect of summer. This year I am not so sure. Several times I have woken up convinced that it must be morning, so intense is the sunlight. I raise my head only to look at the clock and see that it is something like 4:30am and I have had barely had two hours of sleep. Back to sleep I go, waking up every so often because of the brightness. I hide my head under my blanket, but that only makes the overbearing heat worse.

This isn’t the first time I have struggled with the summer climate. Three years ago I wrote a short and simple article entitled “I hate summer“. It got a bit of reaction at first. Later on it sporadically attracted further comments. There would perhaps be a small trickle during our winter, when wilting Antipodeans would vent. When it becomes summer in the northern hemisphere more people join in.

Now it seems to have turned into a bit of a self-organising support group — a collection of like-minded people who are united only by the fact that presumably they all one day turned to Google and said “I hate summer“. There are now a few regulars that leave comments on that post, which recently passed the 100 comments mark. It’s been one of those unexpected successes of this website.

It’s good to know that you’re not the only one who dislikes the summer. Many like the sun and the heat. In fact, it’s normally taken as a given that hot weather is a good thing. Not for me.

To my fragile Scottish complexion, the sun is just like a giant death ray in the sky. There is the small fact that it provides almost all of the energy on our planet. But I’d never guess it, given that it seems to sap all of the energy out of me.

Then again, I don’t mind sunlight so much. A bit of sun can’t be bad. It keeps those vitamin D levels in check. On a pleasant day I like to walk in the sun. A cool, sunny winter day can’t be beaten.

The real problem with summer is the intensity of the sun and the heat that comes with it. In fact, the sun could be away completely and it will be even worse. Is there anything worse than an overcast, cloudy, rainy, muggy, humid day? It is unbearably bad.

It’s not just the high temperatures, which might be bearable for a period. It’s the fact that once you get too hot, you reach some kind of tipping point, and it’s impossible to escape it for the rest of the day. A cool drink, for instance, provides only transient relief.

Some people say that winter is just as bad because it is too cold. That may be so in a way, but there is something evil about summer’s heat in that it is truly impossible to escape it. After all, if it’s too cold during winter, it’s not a problem — just throw another layer of clothes on. If it’s too warm during summer, there is not much you can do about it without getting arrested.

Moreover, my nose turns into a tap. It is not just the hay fever, which I am not sure if I have. But I certainly suffer a lot from Achoo Syndrome. I get that during winter too, if it’s sunny enough. But when it’s cooler, sneezing is something you can shake off fairly easily. During summer you cannot have a sneezing fit without having to reach for a towel as a result of the perspiration it causes.

More nose-related woe comes when you consider the summery stench. The smell of rubbish has already been alluded to by Animal Collective. But more than that, you cannot take a simple trip to the supermarket without your nostrils being assaulted by the BO of some middle-aged fat man who thinks it is the done thing to walk around with his top off. The sight is equally bad, especially when so many people walk around thinking nothing of the fact that they’ve turned the colour of the Forth Bridge.

And for the sake of taste and decency, I am not even going to go into the problems I encounter down there.

As if to prove that the world really has it in for me, I am convinced that my room is by far the hottest in the whole house. I can leave the window open all night and you’d never guess. But if I go for a walk around the house, it feels positively breezy, even in rooms where the window is clamped shut.

The really worrying thing is the fact that all of this summer malarkey adversely affects me so much despite the fact that I live quite far north in a relatively cool country. Indeed, I live on the coast of a peninsula of an island. Here I sit writing this a mere ten minute walk away from the North Sea, struggling to cope with a temperature that is apparently not higher than the teens. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I lived closer to the equator or far inland. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

A fun diversion during the season is to enter a Fantasy Formula 1 competition. When I was at school I actually used to run one for a couple of years. It was a bit too ambitious though. By the end I was getting people to design their liveries and even choose sponsors for points. I definitely overdid it there.

Anyway, it is years since I entered a Fantasy F1 competition. I was looking around for competitions to enter when a Sidepodcast league was announced. The league now contains an astonishing 84 entrants, with a few familiar names to the F1 blogosphere in the mix.

I have also decided to join in Linksheaven’s Fantasy F1 competition. The rules are a bit weird because you get a point for each lap a driver completes. I’m not sure if I have taken the right approach with this one. Apparently a lot of people have chosen Sutil on the basis that he is cheap and he will rack up the points by completing loads of laps. I’ve just gone for a general mid-grid selection, in the hope they’ll pick up some actual points now and again.

The other competition I am indulging in this season is Formula 1 Picks, a Facebook Application. Last year F1 Picks entailed predicting the top three finishers, but this year has seen a tweak to the rules. Drivers are now separated into three groups — Ferrari / McLaren drivers and Alonso; the midfield; the no-hopers. You score the Championship points of your three picks.

This is a simple approach, and the three tier selection system has mixed it up a bit. However, I am perplexed at some of the choices made by the application’s developers. Mark Webber is in the second group while David Coulthard is in the third group. It’s not clear to my why DC should be regarded as so much worse, especially since with the new gearbox rules Webber is sure to retire from several races!

I would choose Coulthard from the third group because it seems like an opportunity to pick up an ‘undervalued’ driver. But Kazuki Nakajima is also in this third group! I realise that Nakajima is a rookie, but the Williams is going to knock everyone’s block off this year, and Nakajima was handy in the Brazilian Grand Prix (pitstop mishap aside).

What other decent Fantasy F1 competitions are there? I have noticed competitions run by Virgin Media (goodness knows why), Times Online / The Sun and everyone’s favourite, ITV-F1.

But entering these competitions involves giving away quite a lot of personal information, and who knows, maybe even selling your soul. I suppose that is the price you pay for entering a competition that actually has a prize. But that’s not what it’s about surely?

Also, what do you think is a good strategy? When I ran my competition at school I sadly undervalued Michael Schumacher just in time for him to have one of his most dominant seasons (I think that must have been 2002), so everyone who bought Michael Schumacher and had even the crappest chassis and engine just ran away with the competition.

Is the “great driver / poor chassis” combination the best? I tend to go for an all-round middling team in the hope of grabbing a few points here and there, rather than going to the expense of buying, say, Räikkönen. I am out of practice in this Fantasy F1 malarkey though. Time will tell.

On Sunday when I wrote about the racist crowd members at the Barcelona test, I said that part of the problem was the media’s debased, distorted coverage of Formula 1. Sadly, their coverage of the racism issue itself does not make me confident that the situation will get any better. The News International stable in particular should be hanging its head in shame — although of course it won’t be.

The Sun has taken the opportunity to drive traffic to its website by buying Google Ads on Formula 1 websites — including this one. As I pointed out in the comments yesterday, the language used is rather inflammatory:

Lewis Hamilton in racism storm. Spanish yobs vile attack on F1 ace

Granted, subtlety has never been a strong suit of The Sun, being as it is a bastion of demagoguery. Read the article itself and things don’t get much better. There are some rather thinly-veiled racist comments in here as well including:

Spanish fans — notorious for racism at football matches…

Not a word of course about English football fans who have been notorious for their hooliganism, as peterg pointed out in the comments.

Too many people have been trying to make it out as though Spain in particular has a problem with racism. One person commenting on The Sun’s website called the racism incident “Typical Spanish attitude” without a hint of irony.

As Pink Peril said in the comments yesterday, wherever you go, sooner or later racism will rear its ugly head. The only reason this has become a “Spanish” problem is because Hamilton happens to have a rivalry with someone who happens to be Spanish.

If Hamilton had had a rivalry with a driver of a different nationality, he would still be at the receiving end of racist taunts. And even if a British driver had a rivalry with a non-British black driver, British racists would soon enough be out in force.

Besides, the last place anyone should go to learn about issues surrounding race is The Sun. This is the paper that once ran a spoof Mr Men strip featuring such culturally-sensitive characters as “Mr Asylum Seeker” who wants everything for free, “Mr Albanian Gangster” who invites people to visit his friends’ sisters and “Mr Yardie”, a gun-wielding, joint-smoking Rastafarian.

When did The Sun run this insightful story? The 1970s? The 1980s? No, it was 2003.

We all know that the only reason The Sun is even paying attention to this story is because Lewis Hamilton is British. They wouldn’t give two hoots if the racism was directed at somebody else.

And this is the thing. The Sun’s nationalism is a symptom of the same problem that the racists in the Barcelona grandstands have. The media here bases its entire Formula 1 coverage on the notion that you should support Lewis Hamilton because he is British and vilify Fernando Alonso because he isn’t British.

The Sun says you should support drivers on the basis of where they come from. Racists taunt drivers on the basis of where they come from. They are both the same thing.

Meanwhile, The Sun’s sister paper, The Times, has written a story today blasting, “Spanish media chose to overlook latest incident” (via F1Fanatic). This is despite the fact that we probably wouldn’t even be aware of many of the incidents were it not for the reporting of Spanish newspapers such as Marca. In addition, El País, El Mundo and ABC have all reported on the issue (via Samuel at F1Fanatic).

The distorted perspectives from gutter newspapers like The Sun and The Times will do nothing to prevent racism. In fact, I am convinced that these newspapers are using the opportunity to tap into the racist attitudes of their readers by making yet more anti-Spanish comments and telling yet more lies about the situation.