Home to match

Last year on the Isle of Wight I saw this bird box for sale at the end of a house driveway. The doors to the house were open but there was no-one about so I left the money in the doorway. Island life - so trusting. 

With no chain and vacant possession, our first time buyers are a pair of Great Tits; well, no longer a pair since they're busy feeding a brood. If you look at the picture you may notice that there's something not quite right about it. Any thoughts? 

I've been thinking some more, not on great tits, but on the new political landscape in the UK (if we can still call it that). It seems to me that if you look at the parties as they are now they have all shuffled  sideways in to the shoes of the old parties. P J O'Rourke said today that UKIP was against modernity. Isn't that what we used to think of as conservatism? So if Ukippers are what we used to call conservatives, maybe the centre right Cameronians are closer to what we recognised as New Labour, leaving Labour under Miliband more like old Labour. No wonder the Lib Dems lost out, because it was no longer clear what they stood for except something vague called liberalism. So where on the political spectrum is the SNP? I'm thinking neo-Jacobite, perhaps. Funnily enough the original Cameronians were Presbyterians and formed the core of what came to be known as the Cameronian regiment in the British Army. There's certainly something romantic about the SNP in an over-the-water dewy-eyed sort of way.

Of course, with a slim majority it will be interesting to see whether Mr Cameron will succeed, if indeed that's his wish, in maintaining centre-right  policies. I dare say the 1922 committee will have plenty to say on that. While the loonier far right fringe defected to UKIP, there are still plenty of right wingers and anti-Europeans in the party.

In the medium term, one problem (ironically) for the SNP is its very success that has left it with little organised opposition within Scotland. Who will give a voice to the shy unionists? They are, after all, still in the majority and that should not be overlooked.