I had voted for the Authoritarian Female Party, led by Caroline Flynt ... It had seemed like a good idea, at the time.
My name is David Smith. And I live in Canford, south London.
I was an eighteen-year-old school leaver, and because I hadn't paid the kind of attention I should have, in school, I finished my education with poor grades. What can I say? I just wasn't much of a student. I just wanted to fool around, have a few laughs.
Which was the main reason I hadn't found a job, after almost six months on the dole.
Not from lack of trying. But, after almost six months of job searching; of writing to employers, e-mailing them, knocking on their doors, and despite telling them that I was prepared to do anything, and prepared to work for minimum wage, for the privilege, I still couldn't find work.
Job vacancies were thin on the ground as it was, and the job seekers out there chasing them surely had better CVs than I had. The phrase, 'Not worth the paper it's written on', just about covers it.
My job prospects bleak, to seemingly non-existent, I was almost in despair.
* * *
My parents, to whom I was the youngest of their four children, and the only one of the four siblings to be still living at home, weren't exactly over the moon either.
After all, they'd been telling me for years to buck up my ideas. Telling me for years, to do better at school; to apply myself and strive for improved exam results. In short: to knuckle down to learning.
Just like my brother John, nineteen, and my two sisters, Alison and Denise, twenty-one and twenty-three, respectively, had done. And, who all had good, well-paid jobs now, as a result of their knuckling down.
John worked as a chef on the North Sea oil rigs. He was away from home a lot, but the money was great, he said. When he visited home, cash was practically spilling out of his pockets -- and his pockets were deep.
And Alison and Denise both held well-paid, and highly responsible positions, working for Canford's most eminent firm of solicitors, Black, Brown, and Grey.
While, I ... All too late, I found myself wishing that I'd listened to my parents. Wishing that I'd paid more attention to what my teachers had been trying to drum into my head, for all of those wasted school years ... Wishing, that I had knuckled down.
But, I was where I was. And I just had to get on with it.
Then, in early May, came the general election ... and then things really started to get interesting.
* * *
The long suffering tax-payers of Britain wanted change, and were demanding change. A change from inept, incompetent governments.
Above all, hard-working, hard-pressed citizens were crying out for a major crackdown against the idle, malingering, sponging ne'er-do-wells of the long-term unemployed. In particular, the hard core, parasitic 'career claimants'.
Britain's Social Security bill was astronomical, and the 'career claimants' were largely to blame. Making a career out of claiming for this, for that, and for something else -- anything and everything they possibly could -- they were bleeding the country dry.
It was, and had long been, an outrageous waste of the tax-payers' money.
Caroline Flynt, leader of the Authoritarian Female Party, said that it had to stop. And it had to stop now.
*
Caroline Flynt was a rising star in British politics, and the general mood in the country seemed to be right behind the highly charismatic leader, and her up-and-coming, all-female member Party. A party of no-nonsense, highly capable, and very ambitious women.
And ... according to some rumours I'd heard, a party of ultra-feminist, man-hating ball-breakers. But, I thought, that had to be a load of tosh ... Didn't it?
In the Authoritarian Female Party's manifesto pledges, Caroline Flynt was promising to eradicate male unemployment. Vowing, to make joblessness a thing of the past. In future, she said, there would be no such thing as male idleness.
All of the opposition parties had laughed derisively. It couldn't be done, they had jeered. The A.F.P.'s promise was unattainable, it simply couldn't be achieved. Full employment, said the opposing parties, was a pipe dream. The stuff of fantasy.
For Britain's females, voting for Caroline Flynt and the Authoritarian Female Party was a no-brainer. Females knew they were onto a winner, with the A.F.P. For them, it was win, win, win, all the way.
But the A.F.P. managed to raise a lot of support from the country's male population, too ... Including myself.
Because I wanted to work, and the A.F.P. were promising to put me to work.
But, I was short-sighted. Blinkered. I was a one-issue voter. I didn't pay much heed to all of the other, female-friendly, not-in-my-interest policies that the A.F.P. were proposing.
Having said that, I hadn't seen anything that should have raised a red flag, as it were, because I certainly had no gripe with females getting a better deal. But, little did I know, that this was just the thin end of a very thick wedge.
*
And so it was to this background, this groundswell of nationwide support, for the A.F.P., that Caroline Flynt and her all-female member party were swept to power. Swept to power in an all-time record, landslide victory.
The streets of Britain's towns and cities were filled to overflowing with joyful, celebrating crowds. Thousands of A.F.P. flags, banners and placards with their distinctive party colours of blue, green, red and yellow quarters fluttered and waved in a frenzy of happiness and new-found optimism ... mine, among them.
Celebrations and revelry carried on late into the night. All over Britain the mood was positive and upbeat. A bright new future was dawning. A new, golden era.
