I doubt theres been much coverage of the UK election in the US press (unlike here where you couldn’t take a piss without someone telling you about Bush and Kerry) but yesterday, Thursday the 5th, the UK had its general election.

The way the election works here is that the country is divided up into Constituencies . Each Constiuency has its own MP (Member of Parliment), basically a Constituency is a literal “seat” in Parliment. Basically, the theory is that when you vote in the UK, you vote for the person you want to represent your Constiuency. Each political party in the UK has a candidate to become the MP of that region. Just to point out, there are more than the 3 parties that are always in the news, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative), but those are the 3 big ones. Others include the Scottish National Party, the Green Party and the Monster Raving Looney Party. The actual Government is worked out by who wins the most Constituencys, aka, seats in Parliment. So Labour has won the last 2 elections because its Candidates won the elections in most Constiuencies.

Like I said, the theory is that you vote for the candidate in your Constiuency that you want to represent the Constiuency in Parliment. At the end of the day though, most people just end up voting for the person who works for the person they want to become Prime Minister (Tony Blair for Labour, Michael Howard for Conservatives, and Charles Kennedy for the Liberal Democrats).

So now that I’ve told you this I can tell you that I voted for the Liberal Democrats. If it wasn’t for them, it’s probably Labour.

Basically because Labour have buggered up the Country and just do what America wants all the time. Theres also the issue with the Iraq war. Oddly enough I think we should have gone to war, but Tony Blair should not have lied about the reasons. If everyone had said “Yeah Saddam Hussein is a twat, we’re gonna kick him out” fair enough. But no, somebody has to fucking lie about WMD’s to justify the fact that America has been pissing itself about Terrorism since 9/11. Then there is the issue of Student Top Up Fees which I can’t be arsed to go into right now.

The Conservatives I won’t be going for. They seem to be blaming Labour a lot for the state of the NHS at the moment, when it was THEM that fucked it up in the first place. Privatising things like the cleaning services that are under no obligation to actually do the work, this is one of the reasons you keep seeing MRSA popping up in the news everynow and then. Plus the fact that they pretty much fucked up the economy and beat up and workers that didn’t do what they said. Some people admire Margaret Thatchter for being the first Woman Prime Minister, SHE WAS A HORRIBLE SNOBBY BITCH WHO HATED ANYTHING NEW. Theres also the fact that they have admitted that in Labours position over the war on Iraq, they would have done the same thing.

The Liberals however, will abolish the Student Top Up Fees, attempt to do something decent with the NHS. However, they do have this thing about wanting lighter sentences for Prison, which I’m not too keen on. However, thats not actually up to them at the end of the day as its the Judges that decide this. Mind you if they were in power they can put new Judges in, but they would still have to pass this through Parliment, but they would need a majority Government, or for the other parties to agree with them on it, neither of which would happen this election.

Do I think the Liberal Democrats will win the election? Probably not. So why am I voting for them? Because I feel they are the lesser of 3 evils. Lets face it, apart from differences on certain issues, all politicians are the same at the end of the day, and the public is very rarely happy with whoever is in charge after their 2nd term. And after all, the only way to waste my vote is to not use it.

Edit: Labour won again. Number of people surprised? Three.