Choosing a government is as random as ....

...choosing a girlfriend or boyfriend.

This is the caption to a photograph of a boy and girl kissing, that is embedded in a comment article in today's Times. The article is by Frank Skinner and is a comment on the beginning of the election campaign in this country. The caption has been extracted from the last paragraph of Frank Skinner's article:

Choosing a government is as random as choosing a girlfriend or boyfriend. Some small, probably irrelevant or misunderstood thing can draw you in or drive you away. They put on their best front and hide all the bad stuff until they’ve won you over and you stay with them until the opportunity for change comes along.

Now we have to take some account of Frank Skinner's profession as a comedian, and perhaps not take the comparison between our engagement in politics and our love lives too seriously. But I have an awful feeling that there is more truth in the notion of "randomness" when it comes to how many of us choose our girlfriend or boyfriend than we would really like to admit. Or is it more accurately termed a "casualness"? Why else would Frank Skinner have chosen to make this comparison?

That Frank Skinner makes this particular comparison raises an interesting question. Do we need to take our friendships a lot more seriously? This is, after all, for most of us much more important than politics.