Cod Almighty | Diary

Who on earth voted for him?

12 December 2019

Domestic Diary writes: It is polling day, and our regular reminder of just how limited is the scope of our democracy. In so many of the things that are closest to us - in work, at home, in the community - we have neither control ourselves, nor even a say in who does have control. We can vote for who we want to be our MP. We can't vote for who we want to run our football club.

That is if anyone is running our football club. Tomorrow it will be four weeks since Michael Jolley left Town "by mutual consent." Not only do we not have a replacement manager, we don't even know how, or even if, the board is going about replacing him. Perhaps they are holding on until tomorrow in the hope that Melanie Onn, Jo Swinson or Dominic Raab might suddenly be available.

In a previous series of Who wants to be a Grimsby Town manager? the club responded to requests for news with a sniffy "we won't be providing a running commentary." This time, far from running, the commentary is entirely static. It might be from a Chekhov play: "It is 27 days since Misha Jolley died [long, enigmatic pause]... and nothing has changed." Or perhaps we will have a non-representational statue inspired by Henry Moore, with a hole where the strategy should be.

There's news, but nothing that would have passed for news before the internet. Ticket sales for the Scunny game and a colourful biography of academy coach Colin Walker. Nothing to distract you from doing your democratic duty. See you on the other side.