I think they are trying to get all the other stuff done before they start on the AV vote counting

(Polls say "no" won)

God, that is awful. Thankfully there was no BNP on my ballot paper. The big 3 and UKIP.

Need 65 seats for a majority.

 

And I seriously doubt Scotland would actually vote in favour of independence, which is a shame :(

I thought it was a fairly poor choice

do you want to switch to an even shitter system than the current shit system?

It's not shitter though.

Urgh.

We've stayed Conservative, like we always do :(

I voted against our Lib Dem candidate too, but for no other reason than I hate their their spinelessness and lack of commitment to their manifesto in their so called "Government" with the Tories.

Fuck 'em.

yes it is

I would like to move away from FPTP as I think it's stupid someone can win with over 70% of those who bothered to vote voting against them

but this AV thing just means a wierd compromise just about every time

I think it should be changed, but not to AV

Like Xen said, I suspect that any independence would be at the cost of the Tories ensuring that Scotland ends up even more economically badgered than now. Especially the way the banks are.

Wonder why salmond hasn't been going on about how we could be just like Iceland and Ireland this time round :'D

I suggest you start lobbying then.

I voted yes, though I don't think AV is that much of an improvement. I don't really see why coalition governments, compromises and actually talking stuff over is such a bad thing. It's a lot closer to what I would like from government that simple "One Party Rules".

I kind of think it /should/ be difficult to govern and stuff /should/ take a while to happen. The problem (as I see it) is that government is so directly ingratiated with so many aspects of running the country that this means stuff doesn't get done. If government were to extricate itself slightly from the actual day to day running then things could tick over whilst parliament was actually sorting out the higher level, important stuff.

Then again, that kind of thing is never really going to happen I suppose.

It's funny really, I think that if I were American I would kind of have to be Republican (in the purest sense of the term) as I would be for more local government. In fact, I really think Scotland etc. /should/ be fully devolved, though not necessarily independent.

I fucken hate politics sometimes (fail)

Apparently we were Labour in '96 ;-)

 

But very annoying trying to vote yesterday. Someone had pinned up a 'No to AV' leaflet by the instructions on how to vote IN THE POLLING STATION. I didn't think that was allowed?

 

Add to that, that my only choices for councillors on one of the sheets was Conservative, Labour, or BNP - what sort of choice is that??!

No it's not allowed. You should have complained.

The lack of choice was the crappiest thing about it all. They should have had an abstain option on the voting papers if they were only going to give us 3 to choose from.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news-in-pictures/news-briefly/scotland-takes-historic-step-towards-finding-out-how-poor-it-is-201105063784/

 

 

The Lib Dems aren't a left-wing party though, so that was never going to happen. They're more centrist than the Tories, sure, but definitely not a left-wing party. Their policies are clearly centre-right for the most part, and much less authoritarian than either the Conservatives or Labour.

And if you read any Conservative forums such as ConservativeHome on a regular basis as I do, you'd see that most "real" Tories do think the Lib Dems have moved the coalition too far to the left. Of course most of them don't consider Cameron to be a "real" Tory either, but that's a whole other issue. There was an analysis by University College London recently that found that 75% of the Lib Dem manifesto has been implemented by the coalition, and only 60% of the Conservative manifesto. I'd say that's pretty damn good for a junior partner. I think the real problem is people's perception of the Lib Dems - thinking they are lefties, when they're not.

Can someone explain why local council election results are considered some sort of indictment of the national party leaders? Are Miliband, Clegg, Cameron also leaders of the local council variations of their respective parties?

 

I know next to nothing about local councils and how they work - but aren't they basically just the equivalent of municipal elections here in Canada? We don't use parties at the municipal level in Canada, so the closest comparison i'd have here would be provincial elections, and no one would ever consider the success or failure of, say the New Brunswick NDP party as a reflection of the federal NDP party. They're separate entities that campaign on different platforms - one geared to federal issues, the other addressing provincial issues.

 

I just find it really bizarre that losing council seats would somehow be seen as a measure of success or failure of the national leaders. I mean, do council candidates campaign on the national party's manifesto or something? It's just rather confusing.

Well there's a degree to which left/right aren't meaingful any more, of course, since all 3 major parties are free market capitalist parties.

I believe the lib dems are more left wing at heart than their current leadership implies. All the prominent lib dems are yellow-book libs but I think the base is more orange-book.

Anyway, even the yellow-book libs are, I would say, significantly to the left of both the tories and labour, being generally in favour of more and more progressive taxation, lower defence spending, free tertiary education and so on. While of course they're not socialists, social liberals are the closest we currently have to a left-wing.

Depends very much what you choose to mean by left/right though, yeah. The sorts of things I hoped they'd stop the tories doing include: Privatising the NHS (or taking the first steps toward that, at least), increasing tuition fees, cutting arts spending and so on.

They're not separate parties, there are no local variations of each party, just the parties themselves.

So if you vote Labour in general elections you'll generally vote Labour in council elections too (not always, some people will believe x is better at running the country while y is better at running the city or whatever, but it's usually how it goes). So local elections are usually a pretty good indication of how people would vote in a general election.

What 'Drew said really.

 

People tend to still support one party irrelevant of whether it's local or national. And unless you're a hardcore constant supporter of that party then you'll vote based on your current opinion of the performance of the parties.

 

So currently any floating voters that voted LibDem or Con during the General Election will probably decide they're shit now and vote for another party.

 

I voted LibDem at the General last year for various reasons but I went back to voting Labour this time in the locals and will most likely vote Labour in anything over the next few years.

But aren't councils basically rather impotent bodies? Meaning that most of their funding, program decisions etc., come from Westminster? The best the councils can do is decide how to spend the money they get (or reorganize spending when funding is cut) or how to implement a program locally? Or do they have more power than that? If it's the former, why bother with parties at that level? Seems a bit pointless.

As far as i know*, in Canada, only the Montreal and Vancouver have political parties at the municipal level and they're not "real" parties - meaning, they're parties that exist only at the city level, not offshoots of any federal or provincial party.



*There could be others - i don't follow municipal politics at all, not even in the city i live in, so i have no clue what happens in other provinces. I used to live in Montreal which is why i know they have "parties".