I spent election night with two University friends, a couple who live round the corner from me in the safe Labour seat of Hackney South. You would be hard pushed to find three more staunch, traditional, labour voters than us. I was interested to see, as we discussed it all in the pub prior to retiring to their house to watch the (truly excellent) TV coverage, over a (equally excellent) takeaway thali from Massala on Stoke Newington Church Street, the way our opinions collided and diverged. Last election she voted Socialist Alliance to send a message to Labour, but neither he nor I could bring ourselves to vote against them. This time he and I both had difficulty doing so, but voted Lib Dem because we couldn’t sanction that horrible sneering man having a third term. And she voted Labour because she wanted to see a return to the old Labour values which we all share.

My thinking process during the whole election ran something like that on sitting down at a restaurant where you have a favourite dish. You peruse the menu and decide that instead of the carbonara, you are going to go for a zucchini fettuccine. The bonuses of the new dish are clear, you have made your mind up, but when the waiter comes to take your order, you find yourself asking for the same old thing.

In the polling booth, I took two deep breaths, and put my cross next to Hugh Bayliss, Lib Dem, noting as I did so that he lives a couple of minutes away from me on a road on which I would very much like to buy a house. I surprised myself when my hand didn’t inadvertently wander to the Labour box, and I felt enormously pleased with myself for voting for the party which I feel most closely represents my beliefs and convictions.

Back to the pub. Where he is saying to her ‘I can’t believe you voted for that awful man’, and she is beginning to doubt what she has done. But as the evening wears on and we see the first seats won by Labour, but with a swing to the Tories, both he and I begin to wonder what we have done… Was Tony’s warning not to split the left vote bizarrely prescient, rather than a mere trickery to guilt left wing voters into voting for a party that has betrayed them? I leave after four seats are declared, with her shouts of ‘What have you two done? It’s all going to be your fault’ ringing in my guilty guilty ears.

I get into bed, still glued to the telly, and fall asleep to the news that Mr George ‘Human Rights for Iraqi despots’ Galloway has almost certainly won Bethnal Green and Bow.

Wake up this morning and lie in bed for fifteen minutes before summoning up the courage to even think about it. Wander into the kitchen, where Bloke and Blonde are having a cup of coffee. I ask for news, and she says ‘I am too nervous to check’. Back into bedroom, telly on, and its clear that Labour have won a majority pretty much on a par with both the expectations of the pundits, and the exit polls, but that the Liberal Democrats haven’t gained as much as was expected, or as I had hoped. Huge sigh of relief as I look on Ceefax for Hackney figures, to see that Labour dropped about 2500 votes from last time, almost all of which were accounted for by Lib Dem gains, and little change in the Conservative figures. Also pleased to see Green coming in fourth.

My stomach does a churning lurch that can’t just be down to the excess of Leffe drunk last night, as Tony Blair talks of having been given a mandate from the people for a third term in office. Almost pleased to see that idiot Ferry staging his feeble protest. If one more person says ‘secures an historic third term’ or mentions the fact that it is the smug bastard’s birthday today, I may not be able to control the churning any longer. Bring on the taciturn Scot, I think to myself.

Grumpy (Bethnal Green and Bow) texts me to say ‘By George. Have RESPECT. Bye bye Oona.’ I start to plan my strategy of derision and mockery for having such a rubbish MP. He voted for the Green party candidate because he fancies him.

When I heard about Paul Wolfowitz’s appointment by Bush as head of the World Bank on Wednesday, the main things which sprung to mind about him were that he was one of the main proponents of the Iraq war, having been amongst the most vociferously adamant that Saddam Hussein had vast weapons arsenals, and is regarded as the archetypal neo-con. Anxious to make my mind up further about him, I decided to do some research, and, being exhausted after a night of insomnia, chose the lazy way, and dug out my ‘Bush Cards‘ (carefully stacked deck) to see what they had to say about the man.

In the interests of writing a balanced character assassination, I fought off my intellectual torpor to look for what those who favour him have to say. The Washington Post journalist, David Ignatius, described him as “the Bush administration’s idealist in chief,” a man who “bleeds for (the Arab world’s) oppression and dreams of liberating it.” I discussed this blog entry with my friend The Rogue, and he reminded me that while Wolfowitz’s champions remember his writing on the importance of reducing global poverty during his time as Ambassador to Indonesia for Ronald Reagan, what is often overlooked by these people is that Wolfowitz was supporting Suharto, described in an article by Noam Chomsky as ‘one of the last century’s worst mass murderers and aggressors.’

Journalists and international bodies have brought up the fact that the World Bank appointment process is flawed: there is a tradition that of Washington’s two multilateral financial bodies, one of them must be headed by an American. As the IMF has a European leader, Bono (who was purported to be another contender for the World Bank post) was never really in the running. The Commission for Africa has expressed concerns that the selection is based on nationality rather than suitability. And Oxfam condemned the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ which sees the US picking the president, arguing that the candidate should be chosen on merit.

The worrying thing, of course, is that the World Bank makes decisions which affect the lives of the hundreds of millions of people living in extreme life-threatening poverty world-wide. The outgoing head, James Wolfensohn, was lauded for his attempts to eradicate debt in the developing nations, and for making this the primary concern of the institution. With the recent press coverage generated by the likes of Bob Geldof and Bono, and the Make Poverty History campaign, there are few people who do not know that the aid dependency problem needs addressing urgently. Not just to help the poor, but to create a world which is sustainable for those who live in the richer nations.

America recently rejected Gordon Brown’s ‘richest nations’ debt relief plan, which proposes not only a write-off of African debt, but also a borrowing scheme for African countries, which would be underwritten by richer nations. The American Government’s own, recently revealed, debt relief proposals have been criticised as they could undermine the World Bank’s own development objectives, and possibly even eventually collapse the International Development Agency. In the light of these American stances, and of Wolfowitz’s political history, it looks likely that the World Bank will be turned into another global puppet looking after America’s interests.