UK Election - What a mess!

The election in the UK has made Britain look like a third world banana republic. Not content with the leaders of the parties showing their ignorance and un-preparedness on television, showing serious lacks of judgement, social skills, leaving their microphones on, and concentrating on the smearing of the other candidates rather than the key issues, but there seem to have been the sort of dirty underhand tricks that we have read about in places were democracy is considered a dirty word.

In what seems like the desperate attempts of a desperate man to cling to power there have been allegations of thousands of fraudulent postal votes in key marginal seats that is being investigated by the police. No one has dared to accuse anyone just yet but that is just the British way. That sort of thing does not go on here, or does it? I am just waiting for the cover up that will probably show it was all to do with Asian betting rings or maybe they will try and pin it on Nick Griffin and his fascist BNP.

Probably more significant is the massive of numbers of people who were stopped from voting because they found themselves locked out of polling stations. There were problems in parts of London, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and Surrey where as the polls closed many people who had been queuing for three hours were unable to cast their vote.

Not only were voters denied their right to cast a vote by the inability of staff to cope with the high percentage that turned out, but several polling stations ran out of ballot papers and there is simply no excuse for this.

Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites were a hotbed of discontent from those denied their democratic right. Videos and photographs of the reaction of crowds of angry people outside polling stations showed how close we came to the sort of thing we have been seeing in Greece. The British stiff upper lip was quivering.

In Hackney, in east London, angry would-be voters staged a sit-in and police were called to a polling station in Lewisham, south London, where about 300 people had still to vote by 10 pm. In Sheffield Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg apologised to voters that had waited for three hours.

While British politicians may be content to wait a few weeks for the dust to die down and let everyone forget it the Electoral Commission has said it will hold an inquiry, a terrible slight on a country that considers itself the bastion of democracy.

Gordon Brown is said to “Be concerned” and David Cameron is reported as saying "An early task for a new government is to get to the bottom of what has happened and make sure that it never happens again,".

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC suggested on the ITV News that people who were unable to vote might like to sue. The European Convention says that by law people have a right to a vote. When asked how much a denied voter might be likely to get he said "They will get at least 750 pounds (1,100 U.S. dollars)”. The vultures are circling the carcass already. If legal challenges are made then we could see candidates having to fight by-elections in those areas where there were problems.

The desperate man is still holding desperately on to power and refusing to concede defeat. The man who was never elected to the office of Prime minister but inherited it from his predecessor is sticking to his guns by saying he has the right to form a government even when the other side won. It may well be his constitutional right to do so, because it is not a majority, but it is clearly morally wrong. What is it that these politicians do not understand? They confess to playing by the rules but bend those rules to line their own pockets and maintain their power whatever the cost to the people that elected them.

What we wanted in Britain was what we got, a hung parliament, but not in the way we wanted it. There is scaffolding up around Westminster we should use it; it would bring a new meaning to the swingometer. I think it is time for Gordon Brown to do the honourable thing and fall on his sword. How many people would pay to see that?

I do not think it matters what your political persuasion is Britain needs a strong and stable government lead by a charismatic and honest man and Brown ticks none of the boxes. If Labour wants to will over the UK voters they need to get rid of Brown and start to come good on their broken promises. The Tories have someone at the helm who is much easier on the eye but who needs to be kept better informed. You need to be decisive and firm when you are questioned by the public and often during debate he came across as out of touch, not that the opposition were any better. If the Tories had come up with some real policies instead of just promising change the whole outcome might have been better for them. The Liberal Democrats came out well in public debate but a lot of their policies are ill-conceived, not because they are bad ideas but because people in Britain despise change. It was the reason the Conservatives campaign backfired; all they spoke about was change, change, change. We do not want change, we want stability and constant change for change sake never did anyone any good.

The change issue is also the one that stops people voting for the fringe parties too; that and the fact that only the deluded seriously believes they are not wasting their vote. In most cases a vote for one of the smaller parties is a protest vote, something the Liberal Democrats have relied upon for years. These protest votes are divisive and are one reason that maybe we should change how we do politics so that we narrow down the choices somehow. I am not sure that proportional representation would be the right way to do it either. We would end up with an unstable government every time and even the lunatic fringe would have a platform from which to disrupt the running of the country.

The worst thing about this mess is that the whole thing is going to drag on. Government should be like a small child, seen and but not heard very often. Instead it is a screaming brat that demands more attention than it deserves. Every now and the UK press exposes their wrong doing and for a while they sit on the naughty stair, what is needed is for someone to give them a good spanking and send them to bed without their tea from time to time. Although talking of politicians they might enjoy the spanking bit and I would be worried what they were getting up to in the bedroom.

In a perfect world it would not matter that there was no clear winner to this election because all parties would be working together for the good of the people that elected them instead of bitching and fighting with each other, but it is not a perfect world.

I often think that maybe we might be better off with a dictatorship than a democracy as without all the hot air it would be so much easier to get things done. So when can I take over? Actually that would not be a good idea because the heads on stakes outside the houses of parliament might drive the tourists away.