politicians are weird, really creepy things that shuffle away in the dark, doing things to “represent our views” that we can’t really find out about unless they want us to know. But once in a while, someone who is supposed to be in charge is told to say “lets have an election”. and then we have to spend months listening to them tell us why we should vote for them and not the other party. and of course a vote for the lib dems would be wasted because this is clearly “a two horse race”
but recently, this two horse race Idea fell down, because someone suggested a television debate. Someone, Somewhere decided that a discussion, in public, with PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION wouldn’t be a bad Idea. At first, the leaders said no and sort of shuffled around a bit, and the pressure mounted as more people said it would be a good idea. eventually, they said yes, and now we know what they were so scared of.
you see, with an equal amount of time for everyone and no shouting down or talking over people. with regulation and rules and a shouty man, Nick Cleg showed Gordon and dave up a bit.
where as Dave and Gordon set about trying to win votes and make each other look bad with a stream of promises and anecdotes and bad jokes (Gordon, I’m looking at you), Nick Cleg used reason, explained HOW he would do things, and actually asked that they could put their ideas together to SOLVE problems. I’m not saying I particularly agree with his policies because I don’t know what they are, but I like the way his head works.
so realy, this was the first impression moment for Nick Cleg, and I think he cracked it, judging by what I’ve seen and heard. The opinion poles look good for him, as do the people they interviewed on ITV after the debate.
In the last couple of days, the other parties (labour and conservative, incase you’ve forgotten by now) are getting a bit worried. they’ve started to take the lib dems as proper opposition and they’ve changed their election stratageys. David Cameron has even made a speech warning of the danger of voting lib dem, because, as the daily mail can tell you, VOTING LIB DEM CAUSES CANCER!
not so much of a two horse race any more is it. I wonder how the bbc’s swingometer will cope?
‘government’ is about decisions, but the politicians we have are born evil – their alma mater local party politics and the national representative democracy are both fundamentally flawed imo, nurturing inconsistent and senseless decison making
…that said, nick clegg /seems/ like a reasonable bloke, and at very least he would be the first prime minister since callaghan that has some recognisable speck of sanity, judging by his openly declared atheism
when tony blair resigned he told us all about how he kept his faith secret, and how god spoke to him in times of crisis. would we have elected him if we knew this?
…one of his staff wrote a book about that, saying that was his reason for going to war alongside george bush.
i just saw this website anyway:
http://www.voterpower.org.uk/
apparently “In the 2005 election, more than half of all voters voted against their winning MP.”