Saturday, May 08, 2010

A round up of election thoughts

The good things:
The Tories didn't win by a landslide.
We have our first Green MP
The BNP didn't get any seats
The gay tory vote dropped from 39% to 6%, because in the days before the election the twitterverse was alive with reports of homophobic Conservative candidates.  However the Murdoch press refused to cover the topic.  (See Cruithen's comment on this Shakesville post.)
Phillip Stroud, who has tried to cure gay people of their sexuality using prayer, didn't win her seat.
My local MP is public about how she's a feminist.
A Lib/Con coalition would mean the LibDems could prevent the Tories most right wing policies going through.
A Lib/Lab coalition would ensure some hint of leftwingedness and progression in the Commons.
There are now approximately 21.5% of women MPs in the Commons, up from 19.5%.
The Lib Dems could use this opportunity to force a change of electoral system.
The Tories only got one seat in Scotland.

The bad things:
The Tories got more seats than Labour.
My local MP is a Tory, despite calling herself a feminist.
A Con/Lib coalition would give the Tories power.
Blind voters and Ddeaf voters were disenfranchised and excluded from this election.
The BNP consistently got more votes than the Greens in a large number of seats (although not in my area).
The seats won are grossly disproportional to the votes cast.
The turnout was only 65.1%
Lots of people weren't allowed to vote because the polling stations didn't have enough staff on.
A hung parliament is going to cause all sorts of trouble.

Anything I've missed?

2 comments:

Anj said...

I will say upfront that, as an American, I don't know if I absolutely understand all the implications here.

But I had to post here saying how impressed I was with your coverage of this election here ... the 'live' posting, the commentary, the passion.

Very impressed.

Saranga said...

well thank you. I'm quite frankly astounded that what I typed was mostly legible. I've watched each general election since 2001 (which makes 3) and I watched the last US election. I am a bit of a politics geek.