So I changed my mind at the last minute and tactically-voted for the SNP pimarily because it's one vote less for labour and voting conservative makes no diff up here right now
Poll
Who are you voting for?
| Conservative | 26% | 26% - 18 | ||||
| Labour | 13% | 13% - 9 | ||||
| Liberal Democrats | 25% | 25% - 17 | ||||
| Greens | 4% | 4% - 3 | ||||
| Ukip | 2% | 2% - 2 | ||||
| Bnp | 20% | 20% - 14 | ||||
| Other | 5% | 5% - 4 | ||||
| Total: 67 | ||||||
What time do the polls close? I'm hungover and don't really want to get dressed right now.
10:00pm
yeah, no rush, im going to the gym after work first, then gunna go home shower, eat and then go vote
quality piece of canvasing "how many of yiz are robbers??"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ … 681.stm?ls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ … 681.stm?ls
Anyone voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party?
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Nobody from them was running in this constituency lelJohnG@lt wrote:
Anyone voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party?
they're based in my constituency in london. see the founding-van around every now and then
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on them todayMekstizzle wrote:
Nobody from them was running in this constituency lelJohnG@lt wrote:
Anyone voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party?
In the Longest-Running Joke in Politics, Life Comes to Imitate Farce
"Britain needs change" is the refrain of the hotly contested election taking place today. But should that mean changing the name of the Isle of Man to "the Isle of Men, Women, Children and Some Animals"?
That's just one of the questions posed by the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a running lampoon of the British political scene for nearly three decades. While the big parties cross swords over deficits and immigration, Loony proposals include knighthood for Ozzy Osbourne, adding the Lochness Monster to the endangered species list, and creating a 99-pence coin (to end the nuisance of carrying pennies).
Founded in the early 1980s by '60s-era shock rocker David "Screaming Lord" Sutch, the Loonies are in the proud tradition of British eccentricity. Their mission is to point up the absurdity of mainstream politics, and in some ways, business has never been better. The party has 27 candidates in Thursday's election. All are required to sport a loony nickname and a faux cabinet post ("The Ministry of Blatant Lies and Big Fibs").
Membership director Baron von Thunderclap, also known as 49-year-old engineer Pete Berry, says applications to join have gone from two a month to 40 a week. The party is getting a lift from the same disillusionment with real politics that has given the mainstream Liberal Democrats a chance of cracking Britain's Labour-Conservative duopoly on power. The interest has fed a notion within the party that, after 30 years of joking around, some people are starting to take the Loonies seriously.
"We don't need to win the seat," says Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, a 67-year-old retiree who took charge after Screaming Lord Sutch committed suicide in 1999. "All we need is 2,000 to 3,000 votes to make the other parties sit up and wonder where they are going wrong."
But there is trouble in Loonyland. Beneath the veneer of wackiness, the party has fallen prey to the same ills of internal squabbling and unseemly financing that it mocks in the mainstream.
"We have had terrible differences over the years," says Nick "The Flying Brick" Delves, the 44-year-old Loony treasurer. He is campaigning on an anti-gravity platform, having broken his pelvis paragliding. "The party has had all sorts of splits."
Publicly, the Loonies place irreverence above all. On Tuesday, Howling Laud Hope canvassed the streets of Witney, the Oxfordshire district where his opponent is Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who may well be the U.K.'s next prime minister. With him was a ragtag band of Loonies, including a fellow candidate wearing a banana on his head.
In London's Hackney borough, 49-year-old Nigel Barrow campaigned as most Loonies do, by sitting in a pub. Mr. Barrow, a Christmas-pudding chef who goes by the name Knigel Knapp Knight of the UnKnown, is waging a fight against "the bendy bus," articulated buses that have replaced some double-deckers in London.
"I'm quite good on transport, I think," Mr. Barrow said, nursing a Guinness. On crime, he wants to punish juvenile delinquents by sticking them together with superglue.
Initially, the party coalesced around Screaming Lord Sutch, an Alice Cooper-style rocker who recorded with the likes of Jimmy Page and Keith Moon and later became a feature of British elections by appearing on stage alongside major U.K. politicians when they made televised speeches. His crowning moment came in 1990, when he outpolled Social Democratic Party candidate Jack Holmes in the by-election in Bootle, thus hammering the final nail in the SDP's coffin.
Problems surfaced as early as the late 1980s, when a member named Stuart Hughes split off to start the Raving Loony Green Giant Party. Mr. Hughes was frustrated when the party failed to take seriously his green agenda. He quit when party leaders attended the start of a charity walk but then drove to the destination in Screaming Lord Sutch's Rolls Royce. Mr. Hughes is now a Tory.
Things worsened after Screaming Lord Sutch died. Some Loonies talked about letting the party go with him. Chris "Screwy" Driver formed a splinter group, the Rock N Roll Loony Party, and claims he took rights to the Loony name with him, along with the campaign buttons. He later went on to become mayor of Queenborough in Kent. He, too, is now a Tory.
The latest major rift occurred when deputy leader Melodie "Boney Maroney" Staniforth quit about two years ago. Ms. Staniforth, a longtime friend of Screaming Lord Sutch, was a rising Loony star until she set out to "modernize" the party, proposing, for example, that leaders be limited to five-year terms rather than indefinite tenures. She said she was shot down by Mr. Hope.
"He refused point blank and said he was going to be there until he died," said Boney Maroney, 53, in an interview from Yorkshire, during which she also recalled her days performing on stage dressed as a grim reaper
Mr. Hope says the party constitution stipulated that he would be leader for life. His idea for embracing the future is to bring on a celebrity—perhaps Bob Geldof or Robin Williams—to become honorary leader while he moves to a broader supervisory role.
This year, the ranks have been roiled by a sponsorship deal Mr. Hope struck with betting house William Hill PLC. The gambling company will pay a Loony candidate's £500 ($759) registration fee, if the candidate lists himself on the ballot as a member of the Official Monster Raving Loony William Hill Party and gets a certain number of votes.
John Cartwright, running as a Loony in Croydon, refused to include the bookie's name on his ballot. "I am a serious politician. I don't want to be a mercenary or an advert for a commercial operation," said Mr. Cartwright, a member of the Loony Left. "It's not about getting laughs, it is about enlightening the masses, and getting support for our policies so we can build a better world." Among his campaign promises: free chocolate, and vegan alternatives, for pensioners, students and the unemployed.
Many are yearning for the days of Lord Sutch. At Christmas, Mr. Hughes, one of the defectors, dug out a collection of old videos and waxed nostalgic as he watched himself, Lord Sutch and others in elections gone by.
"The Loony Party's not the same, there are so many splits now," he lamented. "Just like the other parties."
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Yeah, 10 years which saw the best economic growth the country has ever seen.Dilbert_X wrote:
Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, plenty long enough to see his chickens come home.Uzique wrote:
you must have a really poor knowledge of (macro)economics if you think that the state of the economy is attributable to brown in any 'major' sense.
the guy kept the boat from capsizing, and as bertster pointed out -these arent the sort of measures/changes that show yields within one term
you can't 'fix' a meltdown in the banking sector within 12 months. the markets don't respond like that.
exactly. people think they can blame brown because he was chancellor before. the crisis originated in america. the american institutions and american watch-dogs fucked up, and brown had to deal with the shock-waves in the (relatively stable) and growing economy that he had helped to create. he didn't fuck anything up. you all need an economics class. give the strategies he implemented 5 years to come around. even northern rock is turning around now. you simply cannot measure the long-term efficacy of his policies in the space of a year or two. macroeconomics doesn't respond like that.Bertster7 wrote:
Yeah, 10 years which saw the best economic growth the country has ever seen.Dilbert_X wrote:
Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, plenty long enough to see his chickens come home.Uzique wrote:
you must have a really poor knowledge of (macro)economics if you think that the state of the economy is attributable to brown in any 'major' sense.
the guy kept the boat from capsizing, and as bertster pointed out -these arent the sort of measures/changes that show yields within one term
you can't 'fix' a meltdown in the banking sector within 12 months. the markets don't respond like that.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
is brown on his way out?
Tu Stultus Es
Probably....eleven bravo wrote:
is brown on his way out?
Very, very hard to call. Most people don't seem to realise how well he has actually dealt with the economy while he was in office.
Whereas when the Tories were last in office, stupid decisions by the government led to interest rates hitting about 20% at one point due to overcommitment to the ERM and poor reading of the markets. Post Thatcher, the Tories made a complete balls up of governing.
One word, Bubble. Of which he wasn't solely responsible for (which means he also cant claim he solely was responsible for the growth), but bubble none the less.Bertster7 wrote:
Yeah, 10 years which saw the best economic growth the country has ever seen.Dilbert_X wrote:
Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, plenty long enough to see his chickens come home.Uzique wrote:
you must have a really poor knowledge of (macro)economics if you think that the state of the economy is attributable to brown in any 'major' sense.
the guy kept the boat from capsizing, and as bertster pointed out -these arent the sort of measures/changes that show yields within one term
you can't 'fix' a meltdown in the banking sector within 12 months. the markets don't respond like that.
And your still ignoring the fact that the budget was larger than our country can afford, hence our national debt of £800 billion and our budget deficit of £170 billion.
Last edited by Vilham (2010-05-06 13:24:55)
Voting Conservatives. Tally Ho and bring back Thatcher!
The U.K. and America aren't that different after all, it seems.IG-Calibre wrote:
quality piece of canvasing "how many of yiz are robbers??"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ … 681.stm?ls
people complaining at not being able to vote must be a first... serves them right for turning up at half 9 anyway
can any of our irish help me understand the politics over here. thank fuck i'm registered to vote back in cheshire, this all seems like a political mindfield of who to choose
Small hourglass island
Always raining and foggy
Use an umbrella
Always raining and foggy
Use an umbrella
So, it looks like the Conservatives will have the most seats, but not enough to avoid a hung Parliament.
Will Brown resign? Does he have a chance to assemble a workable coalition government?
Will Brown resign? Does he have a chance to assemble a workable coalition government?
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
Most likely to happen imo.FEOS wrote:
Will Brown resign? Does he have a chance to assemble a workable coalition government?
The whole British voting system needs a fine tuning.
I honestly do not have any comprehension of how it works.
The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
~ Richard Feynman
~ Richard Feynman
A party needs 326 seats in parliament to form a majority government. By the time all of the votes are in, no party will have these seats, resulting in a hung parliament. In this case it is possible that two parties could form a coalition to take them above the 326 seats required.Spark wrote:
I honestly do not have any comprehension of how it works.
The system needs a major overhaul if you ask me.
Something like that anyway.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
But a currently sitting Government has the first right to form the new Government, after election results come in, and even if they only win 33% of the vote, they can gain most seats in Parliament and are able choose to form Government before the others.
It's really designed for a two party system, so the Lib Democrats have made it more of a contest.
And at the moment Clegg has a lot of power to choose which of the two parties to form a coalition with, if he wants to. The results don't favour Brown, but at the same time the Lib Dems are less likely to line up with the Conservatives ideologies.
Best news so far is how badly the BNP have done.
It's really designed for a two party system, so the Lib Democrats have made it more of a contest.
And at the moment Clegg has a lot of power to choose which of the two parties to form a coalition with, if he wants to. The results don't favour Brown, but at the same time the Lib Dems are less likely to line up with the Conservatives ideologies.
Best news so far is how badly the BNP have done.
Last edited by AussieReaper (2010-05-07 04:11:56)
Not surprised by Conservatives gains, they eventually won in this constituency. Surprised by Lib Dems epic failure, I was expecting around 70-90 seats for them. Labour held on decently I guess.
Good news then. Often in hard times the simplistic masses will go for the loudest, most obtuse and populist voice they can find.Best news so far is how badly the BNP have done.
The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
~ Richard Feynman
~ Richard Feynman