Current Events

[inulro]

I didn't stay up all night to watch the election results - I prefer to go to bed and wake up to whatever semblance of a Brave New World we get. Plus, I'm coming down with a cold so last night was a straight to bed after work night.

I didn't vote yesterday - I am a lazy postal voter and voted last week.

I haven't been posting about the election, but I have been thinking about it, and don't like most of my half-baked conclusions. If ever an election made me want to leave the country, this is it.

I got supremely pissed-off about the fear-mongering on the part of all the parties. If the best thing you can say about yourself is "if you vote for the other guy we're doomed", then you can't have much to offer.

Hung parliament/coaliation: If MPs aren't able to work together to do constructive things in a difficult time, then, quite frankly, we deserve to become a third-world backwater.

Then there's proportional representation. I've a few thoughts:
-"it's too complicated" - so voters in every other European country are really that much smarter than we are?
-"it would give seats to the BNP". Yep, it would. In a mature democracy, this would mean that the mainstream parties would have to face the BNP head-on and have mature, reasoned debate about immigration, Europe etc rather than just saying "we know best/because we said so". PR would give a voice to other interests that don't get a look-in now. For example, I don't want to live in a country with a Green government, but I'd like to live in one where there's more of a Green voice in the decision-making process.

In short, I have more faith in people than the political parties or the media do.

I have no idea how it took me this long to realise just how little scope there is for change in the first-past-the-post system, probably because I grew up in one as well (though one that varies from being a 1-party to a 5-party state).

The elephant in the room - the budget deficit. UK PLC is broke, people. Stop whining and accept that there's going to be a lot of belt-tightening. (This is the where I can't get past being Canadian - the idea that Deficits Are Bad mmm-kay was beaten into me from birth). If you can't afford it, you can't afford it, whether you're a country or a person.

The icing on the cake: I wake up finding that people were turned away from the polling stations because of long queues, and all I can think is "what is this, Zimbabwe?"

Comments

[melston.livejournal.com]

It was interesting Mandelson (aka the Dark Lord) made some quite positive comments about proportional representation during one of the BBC commentaries last night. I guess he's already steering Labour's political machinery in the Lib Dem's direction. Here's hoping it actually results in some changes.

Still, it also makes me wonder how and why Mandelson still wields so much power - he's the antithesis of a good politician. Corrupt, un-elected (he's been chucked out of power for sleaze so often there's no way he could get a constituency), smarmy, and even worse, he seems to think he's lord of all he surveys!

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Maybe he gets by on sheer merit and the reflected glory of his competence and past successes?

...or maybe he just has the negatives of Tony Blair with a goat.

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

I don't know about that budget defecit. Don't the government also own some very profitable banks?

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I suspect you and I are the only people who've made that connection.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

What's not profitable, not a bank, and not (yet) owned by the government?

Presbyterian Mutual, a not-a-bank into which a whole bunch of the loyal voters of Country Antrim were encouraged to put their pensions, and which has since almost-folded. It's not enough of a bank or building society that deposits with it have any legal protection. It's not (apparently!) close enough to the church that the church is interested in baling it out (despite sermons encouraging the flock to store up treasure on earth within its coffers).

So if you're in Westminster and you want to buy a _big_ favour from the DUP, putting London's money into baling out this mess would buy you a whole bunch of new friends. Watch out for it soon.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

The icing on the cake: I wake up finding that people were turned away from the polling stations because of long queues, and all I can think is "what is this, Zimbabwe?

Yeah, this.