Chalk and cheese

Let's hear it for Rotherham in Yorkshire!

It is sometimes thought that a place of birth/early life makes you what you are. Indeed, it does have a powerful influence. However what it does not do is to force you to be stupid, inarticulate or a bully.

Take these two "Rotherham lads" (as the one on the left recently referred to them, in connection with the No2AV campaign).

Labour's John Prescott is well known for mangling the English language, often acting or speaking in a stupid manner, and was certainly a bully on several levels during his time within the Labour government. There is no end of anecdotes, often with documents to back it up, that show all of that.

Now take Conservative William Hague, also from Rotherham, who is really just a pussy-cat and would harm no-one, also very intelligent and perceptive, and one of the very best orators in the UK Parliament (and one of the wittiest and most nimble).

Perhaps, in opposing the move to the Alternative Vote electoral system, it will need to be as Prescott has said (and got wrong, grammatically): "Us Rotherham lads should stick together!" but I suggest they don't travel and speak in public together. Prescott might sound more "Yorkshire" than Hague does, but Yorkshire folk must find him acutely embarrassing and the rest of the country would also plump for Hague when hearing the two of them at the same event.

It really is a case of chalk and cheese, or perhaps even chalk and caviar!