THE ELECTION (part 1)

I am the first to admit that I am not interested in politics yet over this past year, I’ve found myself leaning towards it more and more. It all started with Obama to be honest so I’ll blame him for now :P

So the UK election. Would you believe this is the first time we have had televised debates before an election. How behind the times are we? Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were the parties involved in the three TV debates and this caused a little upset between some of the smaller parties (i.e. the Scottish national party) and went to court to try and stop the debates from taking place. Needless to say the debates went ahead and Nick Clegg (Leader of the Lib Dems) came out on top in the first debate as oppose to David Cameron (Conservatives) who everyone thought would outshine them all. He did in the end manage to regain first position for the last two debates.

The televised debates

Labour's spoof results

The Conservative's spoof results

Some of the spoofs are pretty funny.

The election campaign this year has certainly been interesting! Labour managed to get celebrity endorsements from David Tennant (Yea!), Eddie Izzard, Conservatives got Michael Caine and the Lib Dems got Colin Firth. The TV election broadcasts were an interesting watch. You can watch the broadcasts for Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats by clickling on the links.

However it wasn’t all smiles and there were some difficulties at times, for example David Cameron being completely slated by this Bradford woman (LOL!) and Gordon Brown with his 'bigoted woman' gaffe (Poor Gordon!).

I find the party rivalry perfectly summed up by this little excerpt from Bremmer, Bird and Fortune ...

Cameron: ‘Please vote for change. Vote for a fresh young face to represent UK politics’

Public: ‘Ok we chose him’ *pointing at Clegg*

Cameron: ‘Nooooooo, not him!’

These few days and the parties have been going into over drive, campaigning as much as they can in these last few days. It has been suggested that a lot of people (unlike previous elections) are undecided on who to vote for and I am definitely one of those people. I think we must live of those areas that are still undecided as we have been bombarded with personal letters, leaflets, phone calls and door to door visits from each of the party leaders. I remember the day the general election was announced; we had a Labour party member knocking on our door the very next day. With no explanation of their policies etc, his first line was;

Man: ‘Hello, can we count on your vote for Labour?

Me: Err…

Man: Well, we want to keep the BNP out now, don’t we?

Me: *laughing* well then you’ve definitely got my mum and dad’s vote!

Man: And you?

Me: Err… I’m not sure. I haven’t decided yet. Sorry.

I hate that I apologised, I mean what was I apologising for?! Also the man had really weird teeth which did not help matters as I couldn’t concentrate.

I also saw a clear divide on Facebook with my family and friends taking sides all of a sudden.

The student union encouraging people to vote, definitely a good thing.

The picture on my sociology teacher's Facebook wall.

My old high school teachers (Yes, my old high school teacher for sociology and business studies are my friends on FB!) seemed to side with Labour, stating that we were too young to remember Thatcher’s spell as PM and how bad it was. Voting Conservative would only bring all that back again! I found quite a few family members were for Labour (despite their mistakes) or the Lib Dems (the hopeful party). However there were a few exceptions, some of these family members recently had a rally to demand that a high school should be built in their area. David Cameron was present and I guess that sealed the deal!

So everyone is being reminded to vote and I’m not sure whether it’s the popularity of social networking sites or the extensive coverage of the changes that this election will bring about, but everyone and I mean EVERYONE is talking about it. I suppose it’s reassuring to know that people do care about what will happen to the country and are taking an interest in some politics.

The BBC iPlayer packed with political broadcasts

 

Tomorrow is Election Day and I still can’t make up my mind about who to vote for. I used votematch.org.uk and after answering a series of 30 statements and whether I agree with them or not. The statements were basically lines taken from each party’s policy manifesto and at the end we were asked to rank which topics were most important to least important. My result came up as 68% conservative followed by Labour and then Lib Dems. That definitely shocked me, lol. And yet I still can’t decide… there are negative points for each party and at the end of the day, aren’t all politicians the same? Early polls have suggested we may be heading for a hung parliament (Yea, I didn’t know what that was either, lol!). Argh, I am so confused!

I did however find some light hearted articles such as this ‘What not to do in a polling station’. Questions answered included; Can I use music to inspire me on who to vote for? (err, no), Is voting in my PJ’s ok? (Apparently this fine, but which self respecting person would wander about in their PJ’s in public? Weird!)

This also made me laugh… a baby was registered to vote. I know people are concerned about their future but that is perhaps taking it a tad too far?

So anyway, the big day is coming up fast! The things that will be at the forefront of my mind when I’m going to cast my vote will be the NHS, education and the economy. Labour have had a rough ride, made a few mistakes and people do feel a little betrayed but at the same time how do we know if the others will do any better? They might even worse than the current ones we have! I can’t bad mouth the other parties or tell people who to vote for but I personally have a pretty good idea on who I SHOULDN’T vote for, lol.

So I hope it all goes well/ to plan? Lol, I’m not sure what to expect but good things please. Thank you :)