Right, I’m writing this post partly so that my last post (entitled “Breast Pumps”) isn’t the post casual visitors will land on, since it would then also likely be the LAST of my posts they ever see.

So I’m going to talk about the word ‘posh’.

During the recent elections for London Mayor (that’s London, England for some US readers out there) there were two main characters: (i) Ken Livingston, an uncompromising 80s-style left-leaning politician trying to get back into the job of London Mayor, and (ii) Boris Johnson, or simply ‘Boris’, who was at school (Eton) with the UK’s Prime Minister, David Cameron (you know, the one who looks like a waxed cock.)

Anyway, one highly anti-Boris commentator was railing against him saying how useless Boris is, how he was too rich to care about (or understand) the needs of the poor, and how he was posh.

It got me thinking. Now, Boris isn’t my favourite human being in the whole world (though I suppose he’s now one of my favourite Tories) but what has his ‘poshness’ got to do with anything? I mean posh is defined as “elegant or stylishly luxurious”, and I can’t see anything about that which would preclude him from running London - as long as he’s not using public money for his own ends of course. Actually, I’m not sure anyone could really accuse Boris of being “elegant”.

Some of you may not be convinced. Let’s look at this another way then. Take the opposite of the definition and we get something like, “gauche or unstylishly poor or spartan”. Hello Ken!

So there’s the real problem: it’s not about policies, it’s about with whom you identify. If you value the values of the posh then you vote Boris (even if he does look like nanny forgot to comb his hair this morning); if you value a spartan, prosaic approach to life, you vote Ken. 

But should someone being ‘posh’ (or not) be a reason for not voting for them? Really? To me, it doesn’t matter where someone’s come from, it matters where they’re going and what they can do.

Still, I looked into Boris’ background and was amazed to find that he isn’t a feckless idiot at all; he’s an extremely intelligent Oxford scholar (seriously!) who got there on merit (so much so, he was awarded two scholarships). He’s had a few relationship issues (he’s a Tory then) and he says crass things sometimes. But he’s a lot better than I expected.

So ‘thank you’ whoever it was who used ‘posh’ as a reason for not voting for Boris, I have learned a lot.