Thursday 7 May 2015

The View From The Polling Station


I spent a few hours today standing outside a polling station wearing the rosette of a political party whose identity I'm sure will not surprise regular readers of this blog. The atmosphere was friendly - I saw several parents taking their children with them into the voting booth to show them what democracy looks like. There were a few gripes, and a few "I'm not voting for your lot"s, but they mostly fair enough. The representatives of various parties took turns to hold the leads of the many dogs whose owners took them to the polling station with them, and otherwise chatted quite naturally. Regardless of all the nonsense some of the political parties put out, the UK is still a very healthy democracy - the ongoing sentiment of rolling-crisis is a mirage. Whatever the results of this election - and they are likely to be somewhat messy - the UK will muddle through much as it always has done.

2 comments:

KingTubby said...

The whole of the SNP is laughing at you southerners.

BTW. Where did the Labour Party unearth Milliband and his tablet of promises. Definitely barking mad.

KT

Gilman Grundy said...

"The whole of the SNP is laughing at you southerners."

Joke's on them: turns out that wiping out Labour north of the border and telling the rest of the UK that you'll call the shots in a coalition with Labour isn't the best way of helping the Labour party into power. Vote SNP, get Tory was never more true.

"Where did the Labour Party unearth Milliband and his tablet of promises. Definitely barking mad."

Basically they picked him based on him being the leader who challenged them the least and told them what they wanted to hear the most. As the grand wizard of Labour politics himself put it, the outcome was an election "in which a traditional Left-wing party competes with a traditional Right-wing party, with the traditional result".