In this week's Not The Election Issue of Shift Control: "Now that the abattoir bosses have revealed that the real cause of the E. coli outbreak is because cows are covered in faeces, how can we waste time voting? We could save the life of a little old lady simply by hosing down a cow." - Nick Green on alternative ways to spend May Day "Nobody minds people's personal sexual foibles, but it'd be the decent thing if old Piers Merchant had campaigned for the rights of sex workers. Or if Sir Michael Hirst had voted for lowering the age of homosexual consent. Being too apathetic to register my vote even for Reader's Digest free prize draws, I have failed to grill my local party candidates on this particular hot sausage. In fact, my only political contact is the landlord of the pub next to my mother's house, who is the chairman of the Monster Raving Loony Party." - Kate Spicer tries to decide how - or if - she should vote "The Monarch will preferably be of the warrior mentality, with a smart, non-people-based army. Say, for example, 10 battalions of cloned and chip-implanted SAS geezers plus a lot of anti-personnel surveillance gear embedded in any interactive mass media - telephones, computers, televisions. This way the King can not only know and rule his people, he can direct market to them as well." - Robin Hunt assesses alternatives to the liberal democratic system Also this week: Our quiz asks how wild you are about sleaze, our consumer section explains how to eat a liberal, Leo Hickman provides his fantasy Cabinet, plus more antics from Freebee, the rock 'n' roll insect with ants in his pants. Shift Control: incorruptible as ever, waiting for you at http://www.shiftcontrol.com Shift Control is produced by the Guardian's New Media Lab with help from Boddingtons and Stella Artois Dry To unsubscribe from this mailing list send e-mail to shiftcontrol-request@nml.guardian.co.uk with the following text in the body of the mail message: unsubscribe