It’s a fact that ever since I achieved voting age, not a single one of my votes over the years has been for the winning candidate. Not one over forty-seven years. Even though I’ve moved to another country, the situation remains unchanged.

In Ontario, Canada, we have a Provincial Government that is run by the Conservative Party. That’s right of centre, anti-welfare, anti-social programs and pro-tax cuts for the already wealthy. To add insult to injury, the Premier Doug Ford is mired in corruption, seemingly getting his friends some advantageous business and property deals in the quest to push through a new road that doesn’t really have the support of the people of this Province. So, when a couple of by-elections went to Ford yesterday, with big majorities, you can see how I might be tearing my hair out, although at least they were in areas that were not mine, so couldn’t vote.

One of the Ridings was adjacent to mine, though, and as has been pointed out, it’s solid farm country and the people of this area will vote Conservative, no matter what. Indeed, the UK voting ward that I’m still registered in, although can no longer vote, is exactly the same. In both cases I wonder if the voters ever look up and see what’s going on.

Back in Canada, the Liberal Party will take a bit of a pasting right now because our Federal Prime Minister is very unpopular, so it’ll be a case of a vote for anyone except the Liberals. The fact that Trudeau is actually a very successful Prime Minister and has achieved a huge amount during his tenure has been swamped by populist rhetoric, lies in fact, about things that Trudeau is responsible for. Inflation, housing, drugs issues, crime are the things he’s blamed for, even though none of those things are under his control. But I guess it’s easy to pin your woes on someone like that and not bother to stop and question whether your reasoning is sound or not.

Come the next general election here in Canada in 2025, I will cast my vote for (probably) the Liberals, not least because I can’t stand to hear the lies that are propagated, and the willingness of people to believe them. My local candidate won’t win because here you could put a blue rosette on chimpanzee and people would still vote for it. Federally I suspect that the Conservatives will take power, largely because of the unpopularity I mentioned before. I wonder how long it will be before people are saying that maybe Trudeau wasn’t as bad as they’d thought, because the candidate to be the Prime Minister is already looking like a disaster. And my vote will have gone to the losing side, again.