Lame Duck Democracy

For those who somehow didn’t notice, and maybe I can’t blame you since it was so uneventful, the UK had parliamentary elections a few days ago. I’ll not keep you in suspense… labour won. Again. And again. I mean they got less votes, but when you live in a one-party country you can still win with a bad turn out. (sorry Lib Dems, Conservatives, “others” you just don’t count) You thought the situation was bleak in the US, Tony Blair could have gone on television shown his ass, and declared it a campaign — he still would have won. Hooray for democracy.

But wait, it’s not a total sham. I myself stayed up til 3am watching the returns on the BBC. Two major things kept me glued to the telly….

1 – Jeremy Paxman, the very blunt and bold BBC guy, ridiculing Cabinet Member Jack Straw for pretending everything was great when his party had just done pretty poorly.

The best was watching the returns per region. I loved hearing the Welsh language announcements and I kept thinking of Eddy Izzard doing his Welsh accent. I also loved hearing the Scottish accents, and generally the random little parties that get like 30 votes being announced. Reminded me of the Monty Python skit… oh.. better save that for the podcast.

Generally speaking, the only silver lining is that it was very obvious that people were voting their disapproval at having been lied to about the need to invade Iraq. The only trouble is that not enough of them did it, and as usual – there is no real alternative to vote for.

Tomorrow on the podcast, bring a pen, we’re learning about the European Constitution and my first hand experience as an EU citizen. The gloves are coming off, Im tired of all the fallacies and half-truths.