NationStates Jolt Archive

I am just curious after seeing the council results show a landslide shift towards the conservatives and liberal democrats away from Labor. I just want to see if the nationwide result would be different.

A Lib Dem victory? Nice as it would be, I feel it's unlikely.

Yay Lib Dems!

Go Lib Dems! They won Cardiff from Labour in the council electons!

GO UKIP!

I think Labour is certainly going to win the next General election. They may not win 2/3 of the seats again but are going to win a reliable majority (above 50% of the seats).

I really don't like Labour but I'm appalled at the prospect of a return to Conservative rule. I'm also very concerned at the rise of UKIP and the BNP. I've no real objection to a party being anti-EU but it's the underlying suspicion of all things foreign that these parties hold - that worries me.

Lib Dems are getting there but, to be honest, I'm not a fan of them either. Politics, eh? In't it grand...

Yay Lib Dems!

ditto

I'd vote LibDem simply because the alternative in my area is the Conservatives, and while I happen to agree with Howard on most things I just don't trust them.

I just voted for the first time in the Euro elections for the Lib Dems as they were the most pro european party on the list. However, in a general election I would vote for the new party born out of the stop the war coalition, Respect: The Unity Coalition, due to my left wing and anti-war views. I believe they have more to say to a young voter like me, as I do not feel the Lib Dems do enough to stand up to the unethical practices of many major corporations.

I really am not sure as to who I would vote (I can legally vote next year). I would probably, though, vote Lib Dems.

Yay Lib Dems!

ditto
me three.

Go BNP!

All you lib dem lovers...
The Tories were the real winners...

It is of course important to make your choice to some extent based on who could win in certain regions

For example in my home of mendip i got someone trying to persuade me to vote labour, which is just laughable given they got about 5000 or so votes last time round. (the choice is liberal/conseratve and the cons won by about 500 votes)

but on the rise of the lib-dems, it may not be the meteoric rise some hope for but if memmory serves for the last two general elections (the ones i can remember) thier has allways been a small increase in the lib-dem vote.

For my own preference - national lib-dem

eurpoean - green
local - green

Lib Dems - let 'em have a go. They can't do any worse than the conservatives or labour :D

And Charles Kennedy is such a cutie :wink:

Lib Dems - let 'em have a go. They can't do any worse than the conservatives or labour :D

And Charles Kennedy is such a cutie :wink:
I prefer Simon Hughes. Whatta hunk *swoons*

I'd vote Liberal Democrat, because Labour and the Conservatives are both conservative. They both believe in harassing unemployed people half to death or even completely to death (they nearly killed me) as well as privatisation.

At the recent elections I voted as follows -

Mayor of London - 1. Darren Johnson (Green) 2. Simon Hughes (Lib Dem)

GLA local vote - Lib Dem

GLA Londonwide/top up vote - Green

European Parliament - Green

Of these votes, I got what I wanted in the GLA Londonwide/top up vote, as well as the European Parliament vote, so I'm fairly happy. :D

If Labour keeps Blair I suspect we'll see a LibLab coalition after the next election. If the replace Blair with Brown I think Labour will get a majority.

I doubt many people will vote UKIP in a general election - small parties have great difficulty persuading people it's not a wasted vote, splitting the left/right - look how long it took the LibDems to get where they are now.

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

If Labour keeps Blair I suspect we'll see a LibLab coalition after the next election. If the replace Blair with Brown I think Labour will get a majority.

I doubt many people will vote UKIP in a general election - small parties have great difficulty persuading people it's not a wasted vote, splitting the left/right - look how long it took the LibDems to get where they are now.

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

I like that idea. I always thing he should wear a big robbe and silly moustache, like Ming THe Merciless. Or maybe we should campaign- Menzies for King!
I'm such a poet. But yes, Vive La Menzies!

for but if memmory serves for the last two general elections (the ones i can remember) thier has allways been a small increase in the lib-dem vote.

Up from 12% to 19% during the last general election (and if the polling organisations can be believed, most of that 7% changed their mind *during* the election campaign).

If Labour keeps Blair I suspect we'll see a LibLab coalition after the next election. If the replace Blair with Brown I think Labour will get a majority.

I doubt many people will vote UKIP in a general election - small parties have great difficulty persuading people it's not a wasted vote, splitting the left/right - look how long it took the LibDems to get where they are now.

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

If we ever get a republic then my vote is for good old Ming Campbell to be president. :D

Noting that people tend to ignore issues until they have a charity pop concert, I propose 'Sing for Menzies'. :wink:

[Note: in case anyone has been confused by the last four posts, remember the Menzies is pronounce 'ming' (or sometimes 'ming-ez')]

Noting that people tend to ignore issues until they have a charity pop concert, I propose 'Sing for Menzies'. :wink:

[Note: in case anyone has been confused by the last four posts, remember the Menzies is pronounce 'ming' (or sometimes 'ming-ez')]

Or sometimes Ming-E-Uz. But never Menzies. Because we're British and irritating like that.

Noting that people tend to ignore issues until they have a charity pop concert, I propose 'Sing for Menzies'. :wink:

[Note: in case anyone has been confused by the last four posts, remember the Menzies is pronounce 'ming' (or sometimes 'ming-ez')]

Or sometimes Ming-E-Uz. But never Menzies. Because we're British and irritating like that.

I don't know who wrote this, but it's great to get foreigners to read aloud:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

Yeah! Why not? He is one of the few politicians who seems to speak sense and doesn't seem to be out to 'say the right thing'.

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

Yeah! Why not? He is one of the few politicians who seems to speak sense and doesn't seem to be out to 'say the right thing'.

That's why I like them. They don't have Tory quick fixes, they don't have extremist principles. They have a principle that seems right. If something comes along and proves it wrong, they are pragmatic enough to change their principles. People say this makes them lily livered, but I'd prefer to have a lily livered government that delivered than a principled government that fails. I see them as the scienitific party, as opposed to the almost religious fixed principles of the others.

At the recent elections I voted as follows -

Sorry to say I did not vote. I've been voting most of my electorally-relevant life, but the postal-only ballot in my area (suppposedly making it easier to vote) had me sitting there on the evening of the 10th realising I hadn't gotten around to even getting a "Yes, they are who they say they are" signtaure on the "proof of identity" form.

(Last elections, I chose to vote by touch-tone phone, among all the myriad choices available to us in that experiment, that was simple enough to do and I might have done it again if the option was available.)

In a general election, I'm not sure what I'd do, even if I was anti-labour in attitude. My MP is the home-secretary, so if my vote counted against Labour and was individually instrumental in reducing the number of seats they had, it would effectively also force a reshuffle and/or look like a vote against Blunkett's policies (to which I am ambivalent), which isn't something I'm keen on being part of. (Local council elections are of course the perfect way to protest against the government's current direction for people who who want to make such a point but are otherwise loath to let the opposition into national power. You will almost always find that the incumbent government's success in local elections to be markedly less than their success would be in a general election under the same conditions...)

My party politics, in alphabetical order:

BNP: No matter what they say, they the front to the racist hoards like Sinn Fein is (allegedly, and perhaps not so much now) the front to the IRA. I want to able to reclaim the Union Flag and the St George's Cross from such people. Luckily, the white rose of Yorkshire doesn't appear to cause offence to anyone except those Red-Rose Lancastrians and some really strange 'indignant on behalf of someone else (who probably isn't actually too bothered)' people in positions of power...

Communist Party of Great Britain - Like BNP on the left, not my thang... But I do come from a left-wing Labour district (see later) so it wasn't that far away from the 'centre-ground' politics of that area.

Conservatives - I grew up under the reign of Queen Maggie. That, and the image of Michael Howard puts me of them (and some of the policies, but not so much as the aforementioned).

Green - nice ideas, but would rather a multi-policy party also pursue green issues than vote Green...

Independant - Except in a "Martin Bell" situation, or unless there is a very definite link between the candidate's policies and my own, not really my thing (I'd not vote at all, normally, if none of the other parties managed to float my boat).

Labour (New or otherwise) - Always lived in a Labour area, and originally one where King Arthur (Scargill) was a significant figure, so mild rebelling in youth against the more left-wing ideals. Now a mild rebelling against New Labour's right-wing policies. Not sure if they have ever been sitting in just the right spot of the politcical spectrum for my liking, even.

Liberal Democrats - Innofensive, possibly also activating my "everyone loves an underdog" emotional switch. I'd love to have Charles Kennedy as my MP. Paddy Ashdown was a fun guy too, and it would be nice to see how they handle real power as a majority party, but no idea where they would lead us in the space of four or five years... Do they have the skills to deal with victory?

Monster Raving Loony Party - I've waited and waited and waited for a candidate from this party to show up on my ballot forms. I'd happily vote them into one of the HoC seats (were it in my sole power to do so, and see my above reservatons about chucking Blunkett out), at least for as long as they decided to stay prior to resigning and prompting a by-election... :)

Natural Law (and equivalents with Yogic flying, etc.) - Like the MRLP, but less attractively oddball.

UKIP - I feel more British than European, more English than British, more Northern than English as a whole, more Yorkshireman than anything else and so it goes on. In the other direction I feel more European than "member of the world", but I think "member of the English-speaking world" trumps "European" and "Western civilisation" (whatever that is) sits somewhere inbetween. But, having said that, my support for the European Union is only more diluted than my Britishness is, not less significant, so they're not really the party for me (unless they weren't effectively single-policy and their others were attractive to me, of course). Rahter support a party who had sensinle European policies (so far, Lib-Dems seem to be the best of a bad lot, considering more than just an "Anti-EU" and "Pro-EU" line, but more a 3D representation of "How much we ought to be involved", "How much should we get out of it" and "Where do EU directives end and sinsible local ones start". Either that, or become an "in the EU but mostly ignore the inconvenient directives" nation, like some we could name.
(BTW, against an alien invasion, rest assured that I'd be on the human side... Probably..!)

I bet I've missed some.

Anway, go LibDems! Menzies Campbell for prime minister! (Well, can you really imagine Charles Kennedy as prime minister?)

Yeah! Why not? He is one of the few politicians who seems to speak sense and doesn't seem to be out to 'say the right thing'.

The thing is, he doesn't handle interviews that well. He avoids getting tied in knots like most politicians, but generally seems to get a little confused. On the other hand, Menzies Campbell has a wicked intellect and destroys arguments against him (usually with copious amounts of quoting precedence). It's great watching Paxman fail to make an impression on him.

Great poem, Safalra. Reminds me of some of the more eccentric pronunciations of aristocratic names. For example:

Menzies St John Cholmondley-Featherstonehaugh

is pronounced......

Ming Sinjun Chumley-Fanshaw!

Genius.

Oh, yeah, back on topic - I was in London, so got multiple votes. Four for the Greens, plus a second choice for Ken as mayor. First time I've voted, to my shame (I'm 25). It felt good.

The vote is something that people/governments (Governments start wars not people) have fought to preserve for some time. However. Voting for someone on the basis of single issues is foolish.
As another entry on your poll you might have suggested "Would LIKE to vote but no party is close to representing my views as an individual." Is this not democracy?
The British establishment does not represent nearly enough people. Not voting is becoming the "new rock and roll". This is sad. If you can not find someone you wholeheartedly agree with the vote against the ones you hate the most. At least vote to keep the fools out.

The British establishment does not represent nearly enough people.

Well, at least it's not America - two parties and they're almost identical... :roll:

The BNP and UKIP are pointless... but at least they split the right.

The BNP and UKIP are pointless... but at least they split the right.

But there's also a host of tiny parties splitting the left. Maybe we're heading to European-style coalition government.

The BNP and UKIP are pointless... but at least they split the right.

But there's also a host of tiny parties splitting the left. Maybe we're heading to European-style coalition government.

The left has always been hopelessly split. Why unite behind common goals when you can bicker and bitch about the finer points of Marxist theory?

Being a leftie is crap sometimes.

The left has always been hopelessly split. Why unite behind common goals when you can bicker and bitch about the finer points of Marxist theory?

I meant the more mainstream left - Greens, LibDems, Respect, and the like.

The left has always been hopelessly split. Why unite behind common goals when you can bicker and bitch about the finer points of Marxist theory?

I meant the more mainstream left - Greens, LibDems, Respect, and the like.

I was referring to the mainstream left. I'd say that the Greens and Respect falling out is a perfect example (though that's mainly Respect being arsey). I don't regard the Lib Dems as being on the left. There's a slight drift to the centre-left but that's all. The Greens and the Libs have substantially different views on how things should be done, way beyond the finer points of ideology.

I think Labour is certainly going to win the next General election. They may not win 2/3 of the seats again but are going to win a reliable majority (above 50% of the seats).

There's no doubt about it. The Conservatives are the only realistic opposition and they find themselves in the same position Labour found themselves in under Neil Kinnock... Support increasing but not enough people who would trust them to form a government.

All you lib Dem lovers...
The Tories were the real winners...
I would vote Conservative, they go with my anti-Europe views and my right wing views. But Lib Dem's would make the nation nicer. But I will be dead before I vote Labor.