I can not believe the situation we are in, Not that we have the Lib Dems flippflapping around to fine the highest offer, or that it would appear that we are about the get a government excluding the most popular party – both of these are no surprise. What I can not believe is that there are so many things I am looking to blog about I can not workout where to start or how to proceed. I think the only way to do this is to just write a few bits and then add more as it comes to me.
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a particular bug bear of mine, Why? As I am a Liberal, I believe in the Freedom of the individual I believe in a society of individuals treated like adults and responding likewise. The Lib Dems do not. I also believe in Democracy (After all my Thesis at Uni was Democracy: Ancient Greece to Post War Europe, so I have slightly more than a passing interest.) However I do not believe that PR fully represents democratic tendencies, more on that in a Minute. So I dislike the Liberal Democrats as I find them neither Liberal nor Democratic. To me the Liberal Democrats are similar to turning up at a shop called “The Kiddies Book Shop” but finding it full of Adult Movies – The Name has no link to the reality, and what you think may be nice and sweet is really just a lot of people getting F..Screwed.
However what has got me about the Lib Dem’s this time round is that I am yet to find anyone who voted Lib Dem who can give me a reason, The worst one I had was “My Friends Told Me too” and the best so far has been “I Don’t like Labour and Conservatives” if the best thing I can get out of people is that they are a protest vote then why do they get to hold the balance of power?
Proportional Representation
Why do I not like PR? I understand that on the face of it, it would appear to be the fairest form of voting. However I do believe that it drastically reduces the links between voter and representative and currently with the low standing of politicians in our society these are links we need to strengthen not weaken. In a PR system the only thing that matters to a career politician is how high up their parties list they are, their first responsibility is to the party not to the electorate. After all how many of us know who our Euro MP is? I have to admit I do but that is because I was standing for County during the election last year. But most people struggle to name their Councillor or MP placing PR into the mix would place a buffer between the MP’s and the Electorate which will never be a good thing for democracy. Also if you want to know the dangers of PR just have a look at the current negotiations, PR would make it highly unlikely that we would have a majority government again and so we would be handing over our country to Mr. Clegg and his merry band of backroom dealers.
Unelected PM
Now as I have mentioned I am a Conservative Party Member, so it may be shocking that I am going to support Mr. Brown. Whilst I do not like his politics I must admit that he has earned a slight bit of sympathy to me, firstly on the point of him being an Unelected Prime Minister. Whilst I would say that the recent election gives David Cameron a mandate to rule the country there is still a point that if he becomes MP he would still be unelected by anyone outside of Witney. After all when I walked into the polling booth I was presented by a list of names, David Cameron was not one of them, I voted for Henry Smith, I voted for Henry Smith as I believe that he was the best MP that Crawley was offered. I believe that he knows Crawley and will put
The point of defence I would give to Gordon Brown is that I do not see that he has much of a choice in staying in Number 10 until someone else is ready to take over, He could not just have vacated the seat of power on Friday morning leaving the country with no one on the rudder. I agree with most commentators (And the price of my shares) that this has gone on far to long, however I do not blame Gordon Brown but Nick Clegg, it is Clegg who has drawn out this process and enjoyed the “King Maker” role (How different to his words during the election.)
Presidential Style Elections
I think there is a real case to be made for electoral reform. I like our current system and I am personally happy with how it operates however the issue is that we do not have an elected President despite the fact that the Public and the Media believe we do, obviously as you can see from all the Unelected PM comments spoken about above the people want to vote for their PM. Perhaps it would generally be easier instead of trying to inform the public of the difference between our system and the American system to have instead a directly elected prime minister; this would then also hopefully free MP Wannabes to be able to state their own case rather than being at the mercy of the Televised Debates.
Dodgy Electioneering
The last thing that has wound me up recently are the negative election campaign tactics used by Labour, from trying to scare the elderly to Eddie Izzard saying in a party political broadcast that the conservatives would bring back the feudal system it has been quite frankly disgusting. I was also amazed to find out that party literature is exempt from the Advertising Standards Agencies rulings that advertising must be Fair, Accurate and Truthful. How ridiculous is this when if there was one section of literature that should have to be honest it should be the leaflets asking for your vote. After all you can’t say that a Milky Way will not spoil your appetite but you can say that 300,000 people are looking to enslave people as modern day serfs (I must have missed that section on the website.) I once heard a Labour Councillor (In fact the Labour Councillor who recently won my seat of me) claim that it was pompous to follow your manifesto once elected – It is not Pompous it is the primary function of any politician to carry out the mandate they were elected on.
Anyway, This is probably enough ranting for one day, I am sure there will be some more as the day continues.
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