I love the eccentricities of a British General Election. I love watching the results being read as there is always the candidate that’s dressed as the Mad Hatter or one with a colander or some weird and wonderful construction on his (or very occasionally her) head. The Returning Officer manages to keep a straight face while reading out the names of the parties, such as Give Me Back Elmo Party; Vapers in Power, whose candidate Billy Marsden got 103 votes in Barnsley East; Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol Party, who fielded 32 candidates, all of whom lost their deposits. Quelle surprise!
It was lovely to see that 113 people voted for the deceased candidate Ronnie Carroll. A Eurovision Song Contest winner for Britain back in 50s, he was running as a ‘Eurovisionary’ but unfortunately died before the election, but too late to have his name taken from the ballot paper. Even dead he polled more than his rival Robin Ellis of U Party, who, although alive, came last with 77 votes.
At 84, Doris Osen was the oldest candidate. She stood at Ilford North for EPIC (Elderly Persons Independence Party) and got just over one vote for each of her years, polling a grand total of 87.
I was very pleased to see BNP almost obliterated with a 99.7% drop in their vote. I suspect a large number of those abandoning them went to UKIP.
Why didn’t the Left have a problem with Murdoch when he supported Blair?
Have Nicola Sturgeon and every Scot that’s been interviewed on TV saying words to the effect ‘It’s time for Scotland’s voice to be heard at Westminster’ been asleep for the last twenty years?
I fully agree with Scotland having its own tax-raising powers and taking control of its own welfare system. Totally.
My desire for an England separate from the rest of UK has become even stronger.
The first-past-the-post system is unfair. In 2011 we were given the opportunity to vote to change this and we rejected that option. That is why SNP has 56 MPs and the Greens and UKIP have only one each.
I don’t see any difference in hating someone for the colour of their skin and hating someone for the school they went to. Hate is hate.
Perhaps having a load of 14-year-old girls following him on Twitter appealed to his vanity and caused Ed Miliband to lose the plot. How else can the Russell Brand interview be explained? Was I the only person to see the irony in a multimillionaire motormouth summoning the Leader of the Labour Party to his luxury flat in East London to totally humiliate himself?
And the tablet of stone? What was that all about? Surely a moment to equal William Hague in a turned-around baseball cap.
I wasn’t all that surprised by the result. A close friend, the son of immigrants, a very hard-working father of four, intelligent, politically savvy, a former Labour Party member and activist told me he was voting Conservative. And like him, thousands more.
Not everyone who voted UKIP is a racist. Many working-class people, life-long Labour supporters turned to UKIP because they are living daily with the fallout and adverse, knock-on consequences of the Labour government’s desire to ‘rub the Right’s face in diversity’.
I hope TV and the press have learned from their ‘Match of the Day’ syndrome. Endless hours of speculating and talking about what they think the results will be only to find they were totally wrong and then spend the next three days blaming the voters for surprising them. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Ignorance,brainwashing, scaremongering and bigotry abound on both sides of the political divide.
Some people who hate David Cameron because he went to Eton have fawned all over the birth of a daughter to another Eton Old Boy this week; one that nobody voted in and one that has a far greater wealth than most people could ever dream of yet will live off the public purse all his life.
You do not get people to vote for you again if you leave behind notes saying’There’s no money left!’, do you, Liam Byrne?
You do not get people to vote for you again when a previous election slogan was ‘Education, education, education,’ and then you introduced university fees.
You do not get people to join your cause or vote for you by patronising, bullying or insulting them.
Most people do not like to be told what they should be thinking. Especially by an actor. Why would I change the way I think just because someone who worked in a film I once saw says I should?
Just endlessly repeating ‘The Tories are going to destroy the NHS’ isn’t enough to convince most people not to vote for them.
I find it offensive in the extreme that those who dare to claim they have exclusive rights on caring and compassion are capable of such vile insults, abuse and hate. What sort of person carries such nastiness in their hearts? I am blessed with some dear, lovely friends whose political ideas are different from mine. I might think they are misguided, but I could no more hurl hatred and abuse at them than I could poke out my own eyes. It’s all about RESPECT. And I don’t mean George Galloway. I was pleased to see he went.
Through their throw-the-toys-out-the-pram-because-we-didn’t-get-the-result-we-wanted demonstration in Central London this VE Anniversary weekend, the Far Left , up against those glorious WWII veterans, people who knew true suffering and austerity, really shot themselves in the foot. My parents – both life-long Labour supporters and activists, trade-unionists and shop-stewards – were part of that generation. I am so grateful they encouraged me to think for myself and I hope I have passed that onto my own daughter.
Before shouting people down as ‘selfish, brainwashed, racist, frightened morons’ – and I have seen so much worse – perhaps people should stop and ask themselves whether they, in their little, narrow, political bubbles, might be the misguided ones. Those who think they are right should convince people by attraction; by sharing their policies and ideas and not simply by insulting, berating and abusing.
Supporting a political party has turned into the very worst aspects of football hooliganism. GE15 was the Premiership.
And, really, tweeting ‘RT if you think Cameron’s a c###’? Not worthy of a twelve-year-old.
