The X Factor election.

Continual electronic convergence is coalescing our numerous gadgets into one multifunctional pocket sized record player, radio, phone, TV, map of the world, encyclopaedia and restaurant bill calculator. Interesting that such human ingenuity can’t then divide £44.44 by 4. It’s even likely we will soon be able to whip out our handheld electronic matter transporter, dial the postcode for a restaurant in San Francisco and still get chased out by the waiter for getting the tip wrong. There is no end to convergence. And not only in electronics. Once popular music was made by a disparate array of motley crews making sounds as different as Beach Boys from Dylan. Now as band names move from disparate to the distinctly desperate the music has converged to minor variations of overproduced mush. And cars. Remember the Austin Metropolitan? You may have needed to be so visually impaired as to be unworthy of a driving licence to appreciate it but there was no arguing it was different. So as all things converge it shouldn’t be surprising that the X Factor and the forthcoming general election bear a striking similarity. Can you slide a fag paper between Gordon Brown and Susan Boyle or Cameron/Osborne and Jedward? No. Except that the former hasn’t resorted to Camborne or the rather unsettling Osberon. Yet. Brown/Boyle have faces like over cellulited bums and wouldn’t look out of place if painted into the foreground of ‘Monarch of the Glen’, and the twin twins popularity is squarely based on the fact that their naive incompetent unawareness flatters 99% of the public in comparison. I wouldn’t trust Osborne with my kid’s dinner money, even if I were a staunch conservative. Soon the Queen, aerodynamically restyled, will resemble a Renault Scenic and sound like Lady Ga Ga, and no doubt smell like a multi fragranced Glade air freshener. You will be like me and the understanding of the divine will come to pass, that we are all one.