Also: THIS IS YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!  :-O~~~

He's catching me up.

That is a really good post. Thanks. For what little it's worth!

I voted.

A friend of mine, however, hasn't been able to. He registered to vote and got a confirmation email but no polling card. Went to the polling station and he's not on the list.
Rang the council and his application was put to some department that "on the basis of information he gave in his application" was denied.
He's not got a criminal record and through admin errors has served jury duty twice.
So you can decide who is a murderer or not but still might not be allowed to vote!

I've told him to get in touch with the papers. Especially as they couldn't even give a reason as to why he's not been put on the list.

Nah - I'm just some sort of slack-jawed commie liberal. I think I need to stop thinking about this stuff for a while and be a bit more positive. 

The BBC has always been split which means that the Play for Today dramatists found a home at the same time as the News Service was supporting the status quo and music editors were banning records. I do feel quite sad about the collapse of any sort of strong independent, investigative journalism in the BBC. They really have merged into a kind of Times/Telegraph flavour with a bitter seasoning of Kuenssberg bile. Perhaps I'll stick to re-runs of Cheers.

Incidentally, while I write this I'm watching the election night programme on ITV (we're flipping around) and Gerry Adams is being interviewed. They've totally screwed the video feed so his voice is several seconds out of sync leading to the hilarious effect that his words are still being voiced by an actor.
 

Actually that was very well put. Anyhoo the Guardian says exit polls are pointing to a hung parliament -- presumably meaning too close to call. Well, that was unexpected!

There seems to have been several of these fuck-ups. The Newcastle-under-Lyme result isn't in yet but it's a marginal and at least 50 voters have turned up with voter registration cards who aren't on the lists. Same in Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport where the council not only screwed up the voting lists but also postal votes and the current Tory majority is 523.

I'm always on tenterhooks about these things and I can't trust myself to believe good news. I won't relax until the results are all in.

That said, I have my fingers crossed for Hastings just along the coast from me where my son lives. It's the Home Secretary's constituency and she appears to have called for a recount - which means she must have lost the first count. Apparently the local Labour party are very happy which suggests we aren't looking at 1 or 2 votes difference.

She held, but only by 346. That would have been a huge loss.

Our constituency held as Tory, but by about 365 votes.

I was very very surprised this morning!

Well, I didn't see that one coming!

Yes, I think the messages coming out of the count were wrong. I think the recount was probably ordered by the returning officer because the numbers were so close. I suspect Rudd was ahead on the first count. Very disappointing.

Commiserations. 

I think it's fairly clear that Labour managed to get out loads of new and infrequent voters and attracted back its share of UKIP voters (I imagine these are working-class voters who see Labour as their natural home in spite of their actual views). Unfortunately many Scottish/UKIP/Stupid voters swung back to the Tories as well with the result being a more two-party kind of election across the UK than we've been used to in the last few years.

I hope that the Labour euphoria at getting a better-than-expected result doesn't get out of hand. When these supposed new voters find that in spite of making the effort to leave the house, walk down the road, and vote, we aren't going to get an end to austerity, nationalised railways, a publicly owned utility service alongside the private ones, reinvestment in housing and healthcare, etc. and that quite to the contrary, Theresa May will press ahead with her agenda, quietly dropping the difficult bits, will they stay energised of drop off to sleep again?

The worst possible outcome is the prospect of May resigning and Boris Johnson taking over. 

I don't see May resigning, and I don't see Johnson being made PM if she does, in the wake of his serial, public idiocies.

The worst outcome I can see is fumbling the Brexit negotiations by whichever lame duck PM, while a polarized UK is riven by political infighting, further terrorist acts inciting a rightward drift (which amazingly did not happen in the election, so who knows).

Also: this election (and the US') shows that the influence of the news media is rapidly waning in the facebook era.

You may be right about Johnson - he certainly has deadly enemies within the Tory party. On the other hand I'm reminded of simple facts such as his relatively comfortable win as London Mayor, a post for which he was patently unsuited, his appointment as Head of Foreign and Commonwealth, and his continuing public popularity.

I can see that he's a posh-boy bully and thug masquerading as a well-meaning eccentric. Most people I know can see it as well. But the H L Mencken effect is well and truly working in his favour as it did, albeit in different circumstances for Rob Ford who continued to win landslide victories in spite of his prodigious drug and alcohol habit and numerous public indiscretions. I don't think we can rely on ill-health saving us from Boris.

Once upon a time, a public disgrace such as discussing assaulting a journalist with a friend, or being caught falsifying information for news stories, or using racist language, would merit a resignation and retirement from public life. Today Johnson holds a major public office. And he's not alone. Liam Fox, for example, is International Trade Minister in spite of being up to his neck in the expenses scandal (he was the single highest claimant while also regularly condemning the 'waste' of public money on the poor and sick). Fox also had to resign as Secretary of State for Defence when it emerged that he allowed a friend, uncleared or subject to any security vetting, who had no job with the MOD or any branch of government or public service, to simply attend top secret defence meetings and even to fly abroad for similar meetings at public expense. No doubt this helped his friend's lobbying business greatly. I worked for the Ministry of Defence many years ago. I suspect I would have spent some time in one of Her Majesty's fine prisons had I tried anything similar.

So I can't rely on Boris being out of the picture.

 

How are party leaders selected: straight up party membership vote, MP's, or convention delegates chosen by backroom boys?

Different rules for each party. I think this is right...

The Conservatives have rounds of voting between MPs to shortlist the 2 MPs to go to the vote of the party members. MPs nominate themselves for leadership. In the case of Theresa May, she was in the final 2 but her opponent withdrew so May won by default.

For Labour, MPs nominate themselves for the leadership contest but they need votes of sitting Labour MPs to appear on the ballot. Once they reach the threshold they are one of the nominated. Then the vote goes to the MPs, party members and unions. Can't remember the proportions of which groups hold more sway.

The DUP sounds like a real piece of work.