tremor77 wrote:I listen to the BBC Canada aka CBC, I'm in the US but thats what I listen to on the radio... so I've been following some of the UK Election, how first ever Televised debates.. and 3 party race.. think you could clear up the parties for me though and what they stand for? I've heard of the Liberal Democrats and a name that sounds like Nick Kleg (sp?) have really thrown a monkey wrench in things. And that the Conservative Party and the LDP have to create like a unity governement in order to elect a prime minister... am I way off on all that.. it sounds pretty funky listening about it on the radio because.. in US, the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats have absolutely nothing in common except for their extreme opinions and complete dislike for the other.
It's kind of complicated !
But as regards the parties;
Lib Dems: want to reduce the tax on the lowest paid so no tax on the first £10,000, give an amnesty to all the ilegal immos (bad idea), want voting reforms so that you have the same number of voters in each constituency and to bring in proportional representation - good idea - but largely unworkable, many of their policies don't stand up to scrutiny. You where almost there it's Nick Clegg
Conservatives (Torries): are the party of the rich! they will increase taxes on the poor or at least give more tax breaks to the rich, tighten up immigration (good idea), bring in savage cuts in public spending, privatise as much government agencies as they possibly can, though David Cameron "wants to make a difference and help the country" this coming from a guy who has ~£5million in the bank and still draws his MPs salary plus expenses ! if he didn't collect his salary or give it directly to charity then he would be a little bit more believable, not give any more powers to Europe and possibly claw back some that have been given away (very good idea!), in short they will be very bad for most of the people, they also want to take money out of the recovery thus stifiling it !
Labour: the working class party who are all about social inclusion and helping those less well off. Yes they will make cuts in public services - no choice due to the recession but are the only ones with any real grasp on the situation, have brought in a points based sytem for immos outwith the EU so only the needed and highly skilled have a hope of gettin in (good move), bad thing about them is they are too ready to appease the muslim pressure groups (suppose it goes witht eh social inclusion) they really need to be tougher on them. In short they are the best of a bad bunch.
All of the partys have come up way short in their funding plans by between about £40 - £60 billion, so none of them are telling the truth as to the cuts they will have to introduce, honesty in politics - yeah and there are flying pigs and two suns in the sky !
The debates where a good idea but they excluded other parties e.g. SNP (Scottish National Party) which is the government in Scotland, though they don't have powers over tax, defense and a few other BIG things, but the debates where televised throughout the whole of the country, and no matter the outcome of the election the SNP would still be in power in Scotland - even though we vote in the general election, there are seperate elections for the Scottish government!
Also they only fielded questions that where pre-selected from the audiance, and the audicance where not allowed to interact - e.g. follow up questions or even clap or cheer ! There where seperate debates between the parties in Scotland (and Wales) where audiance participation was not only allowed but encouraged - though none of the 3 main party leaders took part in them - is short over all the debates where not fully democratic - but at least they where a step in the right directon!
As it stands Gordon Brown (our current PM) can stay in office as there is no party with an overall majority ! it would just mean that they could never get any policies through so now the "horse trading" starts and we will end up with a minority government who will have difficulty getting anything passed even if the LibDems and the Torries join forces. The pemutations of who joins with who to form a government are large as a lot of smaller parties also have MPs and can support or bring down the minority government then you have 5 MPs who don't count as such from N.Ireland (Sien Fienn) the Irish nationalist as they wont pledge alligience to the Queen they are barred from entering the house of commons and thus joing with another party or even voting on legislation.
One thing for sure is that we will have another general election within about 18 months as the minority government will not last and be brought down by the other parties at a time that suits them, so we will be pretty unstable here as far as government is concerend for the next couple of years!
As I said it is kind of complicated
Hope that cleared up some of your questions, feel free to ask more if it's still a little "up in the air" for you, believe me it is over here as well !
One other thing a few folk didn't get to vote either ! Under election law here, voting is only between 7am and 10pm and due to the high turn out and people leaving it to the last minute they could not be accomodated, the returning officer have to close the polling stations and the ballot boxes at 10pm no matter what, I blame the folk who didn't turn up till late! In one or two places the voters role that the polling stations had had not been updated so there where names missing from it that should have been on it - again these people did not get to vote and in I think 2 stations they ran out of ballot papers ! - this should never have happened!
Makes a mockery of democracy and to think we monitor elections in other countries, the electoral commison here are looking in to what happened though ! But then again we are using a voting system that is over 1oo years old and wasn't designed as such for the amount of people who have the vote, all men where only given the vote from 1918 and women only got the right to vote from 1928 so it was an accident waiting to happen.
