Pickwick's Papers - Cutting off your nose to spite your face

Previous | Next

Cutting off your nose to spite your face

Jun. 7th, 2009 at 11:45 PM

Britain has a BNP MEP. This country is screwed...hope the protest voters are happy now. Sigh. From what I've heard, they increase vote rather than their total number of votes, which means that it was people not voting who let them in. No matter how much you're annoyed by the expenses row, the BNP really aren't a better option. Fiddling your expenses isn't quite on the same level as massive racism. (And apparently they can't even try to play the "We're not racist, honest" card - the elected member is a former member of the National Front.

Argh. How depressing.

I'm even more determined that a general election now would be a terrible idea - clearly the British public can't be trusted to have any sort of sense of proportion.

On the other hand, the Apprentice final was good, and it looks like Scotland has kept the same party mix of MEPs (2 Lab, 2 SNP, 1 Con, 1 Lib Dem) even though the vote shares have changed - there was a bit of a worry that UKIP could beat the Lib Dems to a seat. We won't get the final result till tomorrow night for Scotland, though - the Western Isles are refusing to count the votes on a Sunday.

Tags:

politics

Comments

( 26 comments — Comment )

dermfitz wrote:

Jun. 7th, 2009 11:39 pm (UTC)

Did you vote? I went to Hillhead Primary and the only person outside there was a lonely man from the Greens. Where the hell was everyone else?

Also: 90% of Yorkshire didn't vote BNP. It's shit but it's not anything like "the country is screwed".

In Central London the Greens got 2 times that of the BNP. A good thing.

Link | Reply | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 7th, 2009 11:46 pm (UTC)

Yep - I was the only person in my polling station (that school at the end of Brand St) and there were NO leafleteers. It was 9am, mind you.

I know - the BNP didn't even improve their number of votes, just the proportion. And I'm not blaming Yorkshire! But they're gonna get two MEPs, and UKIP are getting a whole bunch, probably. That's quite screwed.

Yay for London, though.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

endless_psych wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 01:18 am (UTC)

By that assessment declining voter turnouts and general election apathy would indicate we have been screwed for quite some time.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 01:39 am (UTC)

Depends if you're judging by intentions or results, I guess. But yes, the political system is very broken and has been for a long time. The one good thing about the expenses thing is that there's a slight chance we'll get PR out of it.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

endless_psych wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 01:44 am (UTC)

Well it is the system thats just let the BNP in to Europe remember...

Proporotional representation likely isn't the magic bullet people seem to think it is... At least IMO.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 02:00 am (UTC)

Yeah, I know. It's got drawbacks, notably that a lot of people are fascist idiots ;) Still better than FPTP, though.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

dibsy wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 10:06 pm (UTC)

Not as good as Single Transferable Vote, I think. STV does a very close job of approximating the real will of the people but without handing huge amounts of power to toadying party loyalists and fringe parties in coalitions.

Apparently.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 10:53 pm (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the list system. I used to know more about all the PR options; must go look them up again...

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

dave_t_lurker wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:17 am (UTC)

"The BNP didn't even improve their number of votes, just the proportion"

I fear we are going to hear this a lot in the next few weeks, and true as it may be, it is just going to look like sour grapes to anyone that even thought of voting BNP.

I didn't even consider voting for them, but I can see how they will try and spin this with everyone insinuating that it wasn't a real victory and they only won anything because of voter apathy.

I think if we're not careful and try and take a condescending view of what they achieved, it is likely to piss off more people and drive more votes towards them - people like an underdog.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:43 pm (UTC)

I'm not sure if I care enough about how the BNP will spin things to avoid stating facts. In fact, I know that I don't want to be silenced by them.

I know what you're saying about being condescending and so on, but I think people are actually more consoling themselves about the result than trying to put the BNP down. And if anyone is pushed to voting BNP by something as petty as that, then something else was going to push them to it before the next election anyway.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

dave_t_lurker wrote:

Jun. 9th, 2009 08:11 am (UTC)

I'm definitely not saying anyone should be silenced by them.

There needs to be more engagement from the other parties on the subjects the public want to talk about, immigration being one of them. At the moment it is effectively ignored, or we're told it's for out own good, now stop being racist. We know best.

There was a rather good example of this on the BBC breakfast news this morning. A talking head was brought in to discuss the election results, and an emailed question regarding immigration was put to him. He ducked the question entirely and attacked Nick Griffin.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

bopeepsheep wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:25 am (UTC)

90% of Yorkshire didn't vote BNP
~60% of Yorkshire didn't vote. Argh.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:44 pm (UTC)

Which means that about 96% of Yorkshire didn't vote BNP. Hurray?

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

bopeepsheep wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:51 pm (UTC)

I guess. But the 60+% who didn't vote should sit down and have a long hard think about the consequences of their actions. </end Mummy voice>

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:53 pm (UTC)

Yup. I know too many otherwise smart people who didn't vote :S

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pmoodie wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 10:32 am (UTC)

A very depressing result indeed.

Yeah, I dread to think what kind of shit we'd find ourselves in if there was a general election now.

Link | Reply | Thread

laserboy wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 01:55 pm (UTC)

A brand new Tory dystopia, most likely. :-(

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:45 pm (UTC)

It would be nuts. As far as I can tell, about 60% of seats would change hands - it'd be mainly an anti-incumbent vote rather than a positive vote.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

dibsy wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 10:14 pm (UTC)

True, but then going and voting labour or lib-dem, or even conservative just so that the BNP don't get isn't a positive vote either. I think that in this election the only real positive votes were for the Greens, the BNP and UKIP. OK, maybe the bloody tories a bit as well, but not all of it.

The British are disenchanted with politicians but are whining about how the politicians should sort it out. No one has any new ideas, but something new would require people to change,s o who cares anyway, right?

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 10:56 pm (UTC)

I...more or less voted positively for the Lib Dems, I think. Although there was a bit of making sure they kept the 6th seat and it didn't go to UKIP, they are closest to my position on Europe too!

Pretty much. People just seem to want some kind of magic wand waved and Something Done, they don't really care what. Cameron's looking good because he's saying decisive things, which he can get away with because he doesn't have to do them.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

bunnyk wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 05:54 pm (UTC)

Erk, scary. I did the postal vote thing so that I wouldn't forget!

Link | Reply | Thread

pentane wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 06:27 pm (UTC)

I'm extraordinarily confused by the whole sense of proportion comment. If the current government is screwing up that badly, they deserve a massive beating, which will become instutional memory to NOT SCREW UP AGAIN.

Someday America will have an opposition party again, and they will have learned from the lessons they are about to be taught.

Link | Reply | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:52 pm (UTC)

Well, the trouble is it's not just the party in government that's screwing up, it's pretty much all the politicians, so punishing the government is a bit unfair. But more to the point, they've done bad things, but I don't think fiddling expenses is bad enough to justify voting for people who'd "voluntarily repatriate" all black people, either!

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pentane wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 09:06 pm (UTC)

Well, I'm not disagreeing that it's probably excessive, but if all the politicians are the problem, you're going to see fringe people being voted it. One hopes that the message will get across, since it's a strong one.

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

pickwick wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 09:08 pm (UTC)

From what I saw on the news tonight, they're reacting by trying to appeal to the people who voted BNP, by talking tough on immigration etc. Which means if it was a protest vote about expenses, it hasn't worked!

Link | Reply | Parent | Thread

arborophile wrote:

Jun. 10th, 2009 11:51 pm (UTC)

It really pisses me off that more people didnt vote..its in my region, but only 32.5% of people voted, I should had postal vote as disabled, cocked it up but still got there..it was like a scene where you expect tumbleweed to start blowing across Polling station floor!
32.5%! He got a 10% share of vote..makes me sick! :(

Link | Reply | Thread

( 26 comments — Comment )