(FORTUNE Magazine) – Keeping Up's senior policy analyst was on assignment in Britain during that country's recent titanic election and occasionally made entries in his diary. Like these, for example: -- June 6 (in Edinburgh): The good news is that since 1981 Britain's inflation rate has fallen from 24% to 3.5%, its productivity has risen by over 30%, and total output is up over 15%. The bad news is that it is hard to get a decent price on Thatcher. The Ladbrokes betting shop just off the Royal Mile offers a miserable 1 to 7 (you put up (pounds)7 to win (pounds)1) if you wish to bet on a Conservative majority in Parliament. Which is doubtless why the Scotspersons hanging around the place, eerily indistinguishable from OTB lowlifes in New York, were observed to be sticking to the steeds and greyhounds. -- June 8 (in London): We had thought Britain was a democratic country, but vestiges of the old order keep turning up. The chairman of the Tote (the government-run on-track totalizator system that competes with the bookies) is an amiable aristocrat named Lord Wyatt, who got the job despite having authored a book called The Exploits of Mr. Saucy Squirrel, which we are charitably assuming to be for children. Wyatt is trying to get Sunday racing for his countrymen; however, he is quoted in the Sporting Life as opining that this will not be easy, ''as there are a number of bishops in the House of Lords.'' Folks who have tried to shepherd a casino bill through the Florida legislature will know just what he means. -- June 9: Evidence abounds of Britain's new competitiveness. While Ladbrokes shops are still at 1-7 for those wishing to bet the Tories, William Hills is 2-13, and Coral is 1-6. Also on view is a resurgent risk-taking spirit. It says in the Sporting Life that a tall, well-dressed man who for some reason did not wish to give his name walked into a Coral betting parlor in Bournemouth, put down a bankers draft for (pounds)100,000, and walked away with a ticket on Maggie. -- June 10: The Tories are beginning to look invincible in the polls, and William Hills has stopped taking bets on them at any price. (''The time has come to cry enough,'' said a Hills spokesman.) However, it turns out that there is a way to get a pretty good price on Maggie: You guess the size of her , majority. For example, Ladbrokes is offering 12 to 1 if you want to bet that she has a majority between 55 and 60. We decided to go for broke and made four big bets covering a majority between 127 and 150; the payoffs in that zone ranged from 33 to 1 to 40 to 1. -- June 11 (election day). Amazing country, Britain. Fuller than we'd realized of refugees from Monty Python skits. For example, the Official Monster Raving Loony party is running candidates in five constituencies. On the other hand, the Gremloid party is running only one candidate, a fellow calling himself Lord Buckethead. (He walks around with a bucket on his head and is an extreme long shot to take Maggie's seat in Finchley.) Then there is the Fancy Dress party, with a candidate in Dartford. The Times reports that somebody bet on this person at 10,000 to 1. Slightly less daring were the plungers who have been betting on a majority for the Social Democrat-Liberal Party Alliance, alleged to be the thinking man's party. Ladbrokes is giving such thinkers 1,000 to 1. -- June 12: Back to reality. The Alliance finished a dismal third, 292 seats short of a majority. Lord Buckethead was edged by Thatcher, 21,603 to 131. Your correspondent lost his long-shot bet, as Maggie's parliamentary majority proved to be only 101. The fellow who bet (pounds)100,000 on her won his bet but his profits will be taxed, as will those of quite a few others. It seems that a recent British tax reform proclaimed that there would be no income tax on race-track winnings and other sporting events. Until election day it was widely assumed that you could also avoid the tax on election bets if you made them with a bookie at the track. Yesterday, after half of Britain (our estimate) had bet on the election at the track, the Customs and Excise department suddenly ruled that elections ''are not sporting events,'' so the winners pay taxes. Ah, well, nobody ever said reality would be fair.