UK General Election - May 7th, 2015

[Ketchup]

I've already dispatched my vote (postal vote) - although I do go along with this quote, by a neighbour of mine:

"If voting changed anything they'd abolish it"

[bindeweede]

I'll be voting Labour through gritted teeth. Not that it will make a difference here. My MP is ...

Peter Lilley, with a 15,000+ majority. What will interest me is the results for the LDs. They came second here in the last 2 General Elections, and have come second in very many local elections, but last May, in the District Council election for my ward, they came fifth out of five candidates.

General Elections are something else, of course, but IF the opinion polls are anywhere near right, the LDs will be lucky to retain 30 of their current 57 (I think) MPs.

[Dubious Dick]

Rather proudly just returned from polling station after taking my eldest daughter along for her first vote. While may not agree with her political views, just glad that she was excited about participating, and has not fallen for the Russell Brand crap about not voting. She has been calling all her pals to make sure they vote too.

[Zep]

Rather proudly just returned from polling station after taking my eldest daughter along for her first vote. While may not agree with her political views, just glad that she was excited about participating, and has not fallen for the Russell Brand crap about not voting. She has been calling all her pals to make sure they vote too.

Excellent! Hopefully that will instill in them permanently the idea that having their say IS important in the political run of things.

[Zep]

Why no mention on the forum? Folks got bored with it a while ago, I expect. Inconclusive result expected. But this made me smile.

(To switch to full screen, click the Full screen icon in the bottom corner of the video player.

To exit out of full screen, press Esc on your keyboard or click the Full screen icon again.)

Noice!

[Dubious Dick]

Well, guess it will take a while for the results to sink in. The damn Tories are putting out a one nation message all over the place, which really irks. Funny that having been muzzled during the campaign, Duncan Smith and Gove have both popped up on BBC this morning peddling that nonsense. Sure, one nation if that nation is the City of London!

The relatively thin majority will undoubtedly prove interesting as time goes by. I suspect Cameron is going to be forced to pander to the total looney ward of his party asylum, while at the same time having to fend off the shrill voice of Salmond (sorry, Sturgeon) and that radical outfit, the SNP, who are so radical they have their tongue well up the Murdoch rectum.

I also believe that the substantial decline for the Lib Dems is a sad and bad thing in British politics, and the fact that it was clearly based on the one issue of student fees really does show the electorate to be simplistic in their judgement.

[smudge]

I also believe that the substantial decline for the Lib Dems is a sad and bad thing in British politics, and the fact that it was clearly based on the one issue of student fees really does show the electorate to be simplistic in their judgement.

I would have thought that the "one issue" it was based on was the propping up of a rather unpleasant right wing Government having been elected by many people who thought they were voting for a centre/centre left party.

I also think it's a good thing that if people feel deceived and let down by those they voted for they respond accordingly and change their vote.

Damn depressing (and barely believable) that the Tories sneaked a majority. It will be fascinating to see what the enquiry into the clearly inaccurate polling reveals (if anything). My feeling is that the rise of nationalism north of the border caused anxiety and nationalist feelings elsewhere. This was an effective scare tactic used by the Tories to their advantage. At least that's my best guess, though I'm baffled as to why no polls revealed this would have such an impact (if it actually did).

[bindeweede]

I'm wondering if anyone knows when Paddy Ashdown is going to eat his hat, which he said he would do if the Exit Poll proved to be correct, which it did.


ETA.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/paddy- ... at-5658572

[Abdul Alhazred]

SNP as spoiler for Labour?

[Zep]

The Grauniad says it was a walkover for the Tories. What say the people on the ground?

[bindeweede]

The Grauniad says it was a walkover for the Tories. What say the people on the ground?

The result went against just about all of the opinion polls published before the election, so it surprised many. Not sure about "walkover" though. The Conservative/LibDem coalition had a majority of over 70. The Conservatives now have a majority of 12, which is pretty small. However, if needed they might be able to rely on the 10 votes of the 2 Unionist parties from Northern Ireland (DUP and UUP), plus the single UKIP MP. There is also an Independent MP from Northern Ireland - Lady Hermon, but I don't know anything about her, apart from the fact she used to be a member of the UUP, but resigned.

(One third of the electorate chose not to vote.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32633008

[Abdul Alhazred]

One third of the electorate chose not to vote.

Do you think mostly laziness, or a tend toward a definite rejection of voting?

[bindeweede]

One third of the electorate chose not to vote.

Do you think mostly laziness, or a tend toward a definite rejection of voting?

I honestly have no idea, AA. But I think this will have played a significant part.

If the votes of the two most adversely affected parties (UKIP and the Green Party) are combined, they picked up over 5 million votes in 2015 (16.4% of the total) but got only two seats (0.3% of the total). Anyone who tries to claim that this is a fair representation of the wishes of the public must be utterly delusional.

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk ... s-now.html

[Ketchup]

I'm wondering if anyone knows when Paddy Ashdown is going to eat his hat, which he said he would do if the Exit Poll proved to be correct, which it did.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 37838.html

But when Lord Ashdown was handed a marzipan hat during a later BBC interview, he said he would only eat it if former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell ate a kilt alongside him.

Mr Campbell had made a similar pledge on election night, and said: “I won't eat my hat, but I will eat my kilt if they (the SNP) get 58 seats”.

And the BBC certainly didn’t forget his suggestion. Lord Ashdown was handed a chocolate cake on BBC One, while Mr Campbell received a kilt.

[Croydon13013]

So many different things to comment on...

First: Polls being wrong.
Not surprising; they're usually wrong and have been far more wrong in the past. In 1992 they were predicting a Labour victory and the actual result was Tory 42% Labour 35%. This one was much harder to call with a volatile electorate shifting between six different parties. Small changes to % made big differences to actual MP numbers. There also seems to have been interference from "experts" in interpreting the results. I was saying long ago that the polls were predicting that the LibDumbs would be down to 8 or 10 seats. "Experts" thought that they would hang on to a personality vote in the seats that they held and would get 25+ seats. I assumed that this was based on some actual canvassing within these seats, but it turns out that it wasn't. It was just wishful thinking by idiots which was passed off as analysis. I was talking to two ex-LibDumbs from Twickenham on Election Day - they were certain that Vince Cable was going to get well beaten and delighted about it as they considered him a traitor. Our TV and polling company experts were astonished by this result.

Secondly: Conservative "Victory".
They got 36.9% of the vote. A percentage that would have lost most of the GEs of the last 100 years by a considerable margin of seats. They only won because the opposition was split so many different ways. They have no mandate to privatise the NHS, pull us out of the UCHR, or any of the other things that they will attempt in the next few years. I should add that obviously I'm not suggesting that Labour did well.

Thirdly: Labour were too left-wing.
Bollocks. Did Labour lose 40 seats in Scotland because they were too left wing? Did they end up one MP down in Wales (from 26 to 25) because they were too left wing? And they gained 12 (I think?) seats in England, er, because they were too left wing? And if this nonsense was true, so what? If people wanted a right-wing party they could vote UKIP, Tory or LibDumb; why add a 4th right-wing option? The fact that that is pretty much all that Labour were offering to us has more to do with their failure than being too far to the left. Across Europe we have seen historically socialist parties that have shifted to the right fail badly while radical new socialist parties win gains.

There's so much more buzzing around in my head but I'll pause for now.