So far it looks like Nick Clegg wins on points again - the only real points he seems to have got a bit stuck on are immigration and the euro.

This could make avery interesting poll - I was going to vote concervative for the first time in 30 years because I quite like David Cameron, and I'm not too struck on the liberal candidate in our area but so far on these dabates I have to say that I'm not that impressed.

Trouble is we have a great candidate for Mebyon Kernow (Cornish Nationalists) in our area and I'm now SERIOUSLY tempted to switch from the rather lack lustre conservative woman to him - he also has a fine beard! which is always a vote winner for a chap with me!

Nick Clegg is all presentation and absolutely no real substance.   He can promise the Earth as he would require about sixty percent in the polls to get a commons majority.  Also, the liberals have some most left wing policies of all three of the parties.

I also wish that he would stop calling the Conservatives and Labour 'old parties'. The basis of the Liberal Democratics is the the Whig Party which was formed in 1838, seventy years before the labour party!

I also think the three debates have turned the election from a battle of 600 and odd constituencies to a Presidential race.  We don't have a president in the UK, we have a cabinet government.

Far too much of a political Britain's Got Talent.

The Liberal candidate in my neck of the woods is a bearded sandal wearing hippy and comes nowhere near the image Nick Clegg is trying to present his party as.

The only thing the Liberal Democrats are out to get is PR so that they are always the power brokers and kingmakers.   This would be a disaster for Britain and would probably result in the complete financial meltdown of the UK.   Mind you whoever gets into power will be faced with a financial tsunami.  Just look at the comments made by the Chair of the Bank of England and the institute of Fiscal studies.

When the argue about halfing the deficit, the are only talking about halfing annual government debt.   No one has addressed the total debt of 1.8 trillion that Labour has spent over the last decade.

Quote from: Pippa on April 29, 2010, 03:58:54 PM
The Liberal candidate in my neck of the woods is a bearded sandal wearing hippy and comes nowhere near the image Nick Clegg is trying to present his party as.

He sounds just like my type - have you got his phone number? and is he single - if so I'll be round...  

Nick Clegg is all presentation and absolutely no real substance.

Boy is Nick running in the wrong country, I could at least get him governor of California like that.

Dunno, if you read the manifestoes, the lib dem one comes on as very competent seeming, with a number of practical ideas and a whole bunch of nutty ones - like the other manifestoes really.

funny thing is that no matter what happens nick clegg is gonna end up being the guy who holds the cards cos the way the polls always seem to be going of late is a hung parlament. his inevitable choice to back one of the other parties is when the real result is revealed.
For the debates hes been the winner overall but he didnt have much to lose either. camerons seemed on and off over the 3 and gorden brown simply seems too petty to me, prefering to attack the others on the same thing over and over.

Today on the overseas news on the radio there was a report that a couple of Labour MP's had described Gordon Brown as the worst PM in Britain's history.  Did this happen? And will it have any effect, or get any reaction from him?

It's a pity you don't have the Preferential  voting system in the UK.
The Lib-Dems would have done a deal with one of the other parties up-front and in public to give them their second preference votes if they didn't win a 3 way contested seat outright.  It saves a lot of confusion.

No risk of a minority government, the extremists get votes but never ( well, hardly ever) get in, and the result is known almost as quickly as first-past-the-post voting. Also a hell of a lot quicker than any proportional system. 

I understand some States in the US use our system.  I can't understand why more countries don't.  Then again, we have compulsory voting too, which means you can't be prevented  or pressured not to vote.  I can imagine a lot of Black people in the US, in years past, would have loved to have been required to vote!

Knowing about Gordon Brown I would say very possibly yes, it probably did happen.

Will it affect the outcome - no probably not. We are pretty used to the idea.

The real problem we have in our country is that we don't have a preference system of voting. That's one of the good things that labour was pledged to provide if they got into power at the next election. But sadly we will probably never get it because the majority of brits are too politically naive and tribal to cope with such an idea.

Oddly enough, if you talk to the man in the street then most of them are quite happy with a system when someone can get elected by having say just 30% of the total vote simply because the remaining 80% of the vote was split evenly between the remaining 4 candidates none of whom polled higher.

To me that is a disgrace because if you look at our voting figures it almost certainly ALWAYS produces a government that somewhere between 51% and 60% of the country absolutely did not want and did not vote for.

Yes, it did happen.   What gets me is that about 30 % of people want a parliament where no single party has a majority.   For those in the states, the UK has three main political parties and lots of smaller ones like the Scottish Nationalists.

This willo mean that at the height of Britain's debt problems, polititians will be doing back room deals as to who runs the country.   It is even possible that Labour will come third in the election and still provide the prime minister and most of the cabinet ministers.

It's like Turkeys voting for Christmas.   The financial institutions will run a mile and Britain won't be allowed to borrow a penny let alone trhe billions of pounds needed to keep things running as the deficit is slowly reduced.   

Might be a good time to emigrate!

That happend!! Hot on the heals of another attempt a couple of months ago, when several prominant Labour MPs tried to force a leadership contest. (Akin to trying to change the bus driver when the bus is driving at full speed down a freeway!).

The knives have been out for Brown for some time and those holding them have little to lose.

There are essentially two wings in the Labour Party at the moment.

The Blairite wing. This group accepts the realities of the free market. But seeks to modify it with what they decide is social justice. It worked surprisingly well, despite the rantings of the Torys, for a number of years. Sadly, for them, Blair blotted his copy book somewhat by lying to Parliment and taking Britain into two illegal wars which have resulted in millions of innocent deaths, the destruction of two ancient societies and the consequences for British foreign policy for the next 50 years.

(This puts me in mind of a satirical play I saw in the 60s, where a group wanted to put a former Gestapo officer up for election. The comment was made, Imagine a heavy German accent, 'There remians the problem of 3 million Jews').

On the other side is what might be described as the minority justice wing.

This group believes that the priority is to champion oppressed minorities. To do this they must first identify a minority, make it aware that it is oppressed, then rattle it enough to cause a division between it and the rest of society.

We recently had a group attempting to rant about the special problems of black voters. But the best example of this happened in the 70s when, while Britain was asking for money from the IMF and there were cuts being made everywhere, special interest groups could set themselves up and ask for government grants. One of these was, (I think I've got the name right), Black Disabled Lesbians in Hackney. I kid you not.

Quote from: Pippa on May 05, 2010, 02:29:59 AM
Yes, it did happen.   What gets me is that about 30 % of people want a parliament where no single party has a majority.   For those in the states, the UK has three main political parties and lots of smaller ones like the Scottish Nationalists.

This willo mean that at the height of Britain's debt problems, polititians will be doing back room deals as to who runs the country.   It is even possible that Labour will come third in the election and still provide the prime minister and most of the cabinet ministers.

It's like Turkeys voting for Christmas.   The financial institutions will run a mile and Britain won't be allowed to borrow a penny let alone trhe billions of pounds needed to keep things running as the deficit is slowly reduced.   

Might be a good time to emigrate!

LOL - you and I are sooooo on opposite sides of that one Pippa. I'm praying for an end to the cosy little one winner takes all undemocratic system.

I think pretty well 100.0% of the supposed consequences that you foresee is basically a scare story put about by powerful people in the media, and a few rich souls who have done very well out of having a single party (at any time) in government that they can control by the back door.

Of course they don't want a coalition, it would far more difficult and expensive to control and get their dirty little deals done and we might actaully get some decent government for a change instead of the lunacy that we have had over almost ALL of the post war period! Madness perpetrated in the name of strong but frankly AWFUL government from both sides which has all but brought the country to it's knees on several ocassions.

A coalition would of course mean that things would have to be debated to the point of consensus before action is taken. Yes it would be slower government but no it would not be weaker, because the laws that it passed would be ones that the majority supported... unlike now where a lot of legislation gets passed which simply does NOT command majority support in the country.

So we'll have to agree to disagree on this one I fear.

I'm a floating and tactical voter. I support hung parilaments!

I so agree with Justmeinoz. I was amazed coming to Aus from the UK that voting was compulsory but I quickly found that I agreed with it. It's not compulsory to vote, but you have to put in a vote, it can be spoiled or blank for example. But in a Democracy I think voting has to be compulsory to protect the ideals of the people. That said we get more turkeys than eagles.

Has there been much backlash from the rorts affair? Or was it so widespread everyone is covered in s**t?

Do all parties agree on getting rid of the House of Lords?

Cindy

I wonder if we can get to vote for the Monster Raving Loony party tomorrow

Monster Raving Loony Party Manifesto 2010 features the following:
(1) Force all members of Parliament to stand on one leg whenever they talk
(2) Paint every third house purple
(3) Convert pubs/bars into milk bars

I don't know who to vote for, myself, I don;t watch these political campaigns because they never do what they say theyll do so whats the point in being impressed by anyones seech or poll victory? Whats the point in this dramatisation of politics when nothing really changes?

In history, it has always been the campaigns of the people who have ever gotten anything to change, for example, the black people, the gay/trans people and the women have all gotten themselves their own rights and have made any beneficial changes to our society.. Where were the party leaders pushing for legality of homosexuality back in the sixties parliamentary election campaigns?

Where I live it's so blue, it's sometimes hard to believe there is an election on... 

No banners, no candidates knocking on doors, no interest, just a bit of junk mail through the letter box.

Coalition sounds like a great result for democracy to me !



...Oh and I checked out the 4 Major UK TV channels coverage for tomorrow night at 10pm..

BBC1 ~ Election 2010.... ITV1 ~ Election 2010.....Channel 4 ~ Channel 4's Alternative Election ...BBC2 ~ Movie "Kinky Boots"

OK...so at least C4 is trying....but BBC2 wins by a "leg".... 

Chrissty

I want to see the election, but I want to see kinky boots - which one is better...there is only one way to find out

Monstor Ravinh Loony have a number of excellent proposals.

One which I particularly like is the introduction of the 99p coin, to save on change.

Quote from: spacial on May 05, 2010, 06:38:49 PMOne which I particularly like is the introduction of the 99p coin, to save on change.

That is the most ingenius proposal ive ever heard! <3 Is it possible to vote them tomorrow?

Quote from: Little Dragon on May 05, 2010, 07:13:18 PM
That is the most ingenius proposal ive ever heard! <3 Is it possible to vote them tomorrow?

Depends where you live.

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list of candidates

John Cartwright (Croydon Central)
Colin Dale (Buckingham)
Alan Powell (Ludlow)
Alan 'Howling Laud' Hope (Witney)
Crucial Chris (Barking)
Tony Davies (Blackpool North)
George Ridgeon (Tewkesbury)
Martin Hogbin (Surrey East)
Mark Beech (Cardiff Central)
Napoleon Dynamite (Old Bexley & Sidcup)
R.U. Seerius (Derbyshire Mid)
Ken Hanks (Cheltenham)
Monkey Drummer (Kingston & Surbiton)
Top Cat Owen (Wokingham)
Flying Brick (Derbuyshire Dales)
Chinners (Esher & Walton)
Mike Young (Sittingbourne & Sheppey)
Norman Davidson (Faversham & Mid Kent)
Toby Jug (Huntingdon)
Matt Fensome (Milton Keynes North)
Lord Offa (Brecon & Radnor)
Roger Monksummers (Dorset North)
Knigel Knapp (Hackney North & Stoke Newington)
Sam Thing (Amber Valley)
Baron Von Thunderclap (Mid Sussex)
Eddie 'Elvis' Vee (York)
Mark 'Zammo' Adshead (Sheffield Hallam against Nick Clegg)

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Post Merge: May 05, 2010, 10:35:43 PM

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If you live in Wales you could vote for the New Millenium Bean Party - run by Captain Beany from the Planet Beanus.

If you lived in Westminster you could vote for a university colleague of mine who is dressing up as a pirate and promising to teach kids swordplay 'because they already know how to wield a knife'.

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Post Merge: May 05, 2010, 11:38:27 PM

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Post Merge: May 06, 2010, 12:40:10 AM

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARjHBukWON8&feature=player_embedded#

i want that hat!
Arrrrrrr!

Quote from: CindyJames on May 05, 2010, 03:30:57 AM
I so agree with Justmeinoz. I was amazed coming to Aus from the UK that voting was compulsory but I quickly found that I agreed with it. It's not compulsory to vote, but you have to put in a vote, it can be spoiled or blank for example. But in a Democracy I think voting has to be compulsory to protect the ideals of the people. That said we get more turkeys than eagles.

I agree with it too, and coming to Aus from America I thought it was a great idea. At least it avoids situations where low voter turnout means the religious wing nutters who always show up at the polls anyway actually have a chance at winning anything. And I rather like Kevin Rudd, all things considered. But I have to admit Tony Abbot has a nice bod, the way he runs around all the time in his speedo and all lol