On election day five chaps and a chump assembled at my home for lunch before settling down to watch the proceedings on television.
Of the chaps, one was a law firm top dog, the others hard headed commercial types and the chump, a medical specialist mate, namely Ian Coutts.
Well lo and behold, over lunch and at that stage perfectly sober, Ian boldly declared Trump would win in a landslide.
Silence fell. From long experience I recognised the vibes in the air from the hard-headed lot; namely the powerful whiff of free money.
One of them tentatively probed. “You’d put money on that Ian?” he enquired lightly.
“I would, I would; I’m happy to accommodate the lot of you at a grand apiece,” Ian declared.
Now a grand is neither here nor there for that lot but when it’s being dished out willynilly as opposed to being earned, it takes on a special lustre, so they all happily accepted.
It was at this juncture I had a life-long flash-back about my experiences with the medical profession. On occasions they’ve saved my life, albeit interspersed with frequent acts of highly damaging negligence for which I bear the scars. So what to do?
Being innately charitable thanks to Jacinda’s Be Kind hammering, I intervened. There was no point trying to explain to Ian why Trump was an abomination and would lose as I knew both propositions would be in vain. Instead I persuaded him to reduce the bets to $50 and then threw in a lesson, I still being imbued in Jacinda’s Be Kind dictate.
So I put to Ian a generous proposition, namely how to make a fail-safe free $10. How? he asked.
“Give me $40 now and I’ll cancel the bet,” I offered, needless to say in vain. So he blew a free $10.
The lesson in this tale for readers is should you ever find yourself in desperate financial straits, make an appointment to see Ian. But be creative.
For example, offer to give him $10 million in return for his $100 bet that next week Wednesday will follow Tuesday. Trust me, he’ll ignore the salient issue and succumb to the odds and you’ll have a free $100.
He’s waiting for your calls and as you will have discerned from the above, is saturated with Jacinda’s Be Kind edict.
I’M A GENIUS
Last week pre-election, I picked (on this site) the Democrats to capture from the Republicans, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, all Republican states. Biden got the lot.
I also picked Biden to win the overall vote by circa 5 million votes. To date, at time of writing, he’s about 4.5 million ahead, so overall, not a bad prediction.
That said, the election was a close-run thing.
Silly nonsense has been written about a badly divided America. In fact, as with all western democracies it revealed a 50/50 divide between left and right.
Indeed, it’s reasonable to assume that had Trump not been so abominable with his lying, insulting behavior, astonishing ignorance and a general awfulness, as with the global trends, the prevailing mood favours the political right of centre over the left.