tolerance

In celebration of frankien's thesis submission we decided to drink Leeds, last night. And as a result I am mildly tender this afternoon (slept off the morning). However as I age the body's coping strategies are a-changing. In youth there would be no hangovers - just utter sickness on the night of over-indulgence. A few years on brought increased tolerance and therefore no sickness, but pounding heads on the subsequent day. Contemporary drinking produces one of two extreme behaviours: I am now familiar with personal limits and am, on the whole, sensible and so do not cross them. Thus no hangover (today is an example. Tiredness is exempt). If however limits are crossed the hangovers now last 2 days, which, although drinking until unconscious is not wise, is too much of a punishment in my opinion. Maybe this is nature's way of saying "oi, Moon, you've had your fun. But now you're getting older. Stop getting so pissed".

The other issue of tolerance that has come to my attention lately is a political one (sorry for combining two separate topics under the same posting. But (1) I couldn't be arsed to post twice and (2) it's a shallow attempt at a comment-tally-booster. Thursday's local elections produced a vastly different pattern of voting behaviours to the general elections, i.e. Labour performed appallingly and the Tories very well. The Liberals were reliably unchanging. Now, although Labour's reputation hasn't been pristine of late (Clarke and Prescott, not to mention the revelation of Cherie Blair's £7700 spending over the last general election campaign on hair styling) I would hope that voters are not fickle enough to allow such slanders to radically alter their political leanings. Which got me thinking... It seems that the public may vote more honestly for their local councillors because they probably feel that the elected will have less of an impact overall on the major issues. So, voting Tory may be OK whereas one may find that difficult to justify in a general election, as it would make you an official right wing bint on a grander scale. After discussions with friends over general elections some have admitted to voting for whom they feel they should vote for, in a moral rather than a tactical sense. I find this quite concerning if there are at least 40% of people living in the country who are "honestly" Tory. Clearly the argument could be reversed so that people are more apathetic in local elections and more careful in generals, however I find that less convincing in terms of reflecting true opinions. Any thoughts?

Moon. xxx