Be Careful What You Wish For

In the absence of any grown-up behaviour from the mainstream parties, the Bristol Blogger has unveiled a cunning plan: plucky lone Green Charlie Bolton for Council Leader.

Now, the Blogger's been less than complimentary about us Greens in the past. But everybody's allowed to change their mind, and it's not hard to find reasons why the old curmudgeon might have come round to our way of thinking. Could it have been our radical 10 point manifesto for Bristol? Our snazzy dress sense? Or our wicked sense of humour?

No matter. Life's a journey, not a destination (as Aerosmith once sang), and we welcome all comers. Or, as LBJ put it rather more prosaically, 'It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.'

But I couldn't help but wonder whether the Blogger had really thought the consequences of his campaign through to their logical conclusion. Sure, a Bolton-led Bristol would a happier, greener, friendlier place, where Home Care would remain unprivatised, children would skip merrily to school munching on unusual varieties of apple, and City and Rovers would meet in the Champions League final every year.


But life's not just a bowl of locally grown cherries. What about the potential drawbacks of a Bolton administration?

• Southville to be rolled out across the city. The more observant will already have noticed this happening by stealth in parts of Bedminster and Windmill Hill. With Bolton in charge, no part of the city will be safe from affluent buggies and the £5 fried breakfast.

• All mentions of the Nazis to be expunged from the school history syllabus in favour of a thorough exploration of the life and works of Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno, leader of the original "Green Army".
  

• Car use to be eroded to the point where 'car lanes' are built to protect vehicles from the cycling hordes, and an annual Drive Your Car To Work Day has to be instituted to keep the quaint tradition alive.

Like Zinoviev and Kamenev, I'm experiencing some last minute jitters before the revolution. I hope I avoid sharing their fate.