They think it's all over...

Well! What can I say? Quite an eventful 24 hours.

I for one stayed awake until around 7am before retiring for a couple of hours sleep.
It started much better than expected, with neither the tories or the lib dems gaining that early boost they expected. I'm not going to give you a narrative of the night's proceedings, I'm hoping you already know.
And all this Tory talk of the 'moral right' of the conservatives to form a government is complete and utter crap. You don't work on what you think is morally right, you go by what the law says - and our constitution is very clear, that the incumbent PM is given the first chance to form a government. There's no beating around the bush, it's that simple.

Anyway, a run down of what happens next:

David Cameron tries to get a majority. 

• Allying with the Democratic Unionist Party - gives Cameron 313 seats

• Allying with the Liberal Democrats (coalition unlikely) - gives Cameron 362 seats

Gordon Brown tries to form a government. Only way this can happen is...

• Form a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats - gives Brown 315 seats

• He will still require the support of smaller parties:

          - Social Democratic & Labour Party - gives Brown 318 seats (likely)
          - + Green Party - gives Brown 319 seats (likely)
          - + Alliance Party - gives Brown 320 seats (quite likely)
          - + Plaid Cymru - gives Brown 323 seats (unlikely but possible)
          - (and or) Scottish National Party - gives Brown 329 / 326 seats (unlikely but possible)



So don't be goaded into thinking it's all over. There's still Brown, There's still hope.

Today this could be....

I cast my vote today, along with people across Britain.
But as I did so, I felt the gut wrenching feeling that tomorrow, I could open my eyes to a Tory government.

I'd prefer the role of optimist, and I am hoping beyond any hope that the slip in Liberal Democrat vote recorded in this morning's polls will push onto Labour the votes it needs.
It destroys me inside the sheer ignorance of some voters. They aren't like the superficial voters I wrote about in my last post, no. These voters are what I call 'memory loss voters'.

I call them this because they appear to have forgotten the 18 years of Tory government that proceeded Blair's '97 win. These voters are the worst kind, they were there, they grew up under that government, but have some how magically forgotten what actually happened.
For those who haven't cottoned on to what I mean, I'm talking about things like:

Ireland
It was already in a terrible state when Thatcher took power, but at least attempts were being made by the last Labour government to make peace in Ireland.
That woman stood by and watched as the conflict in Ireland reached it's worse. She stood by as men, women and children were shot down in the street not by the IRA, but by the soldiers she sent over to stop that happening. She sent over veteran soldiers to Ireland and expected somehow these killers would grow a heart and be able to oversee peace talks. No. Wrong.
She refused to even talk to the groups that represented the Irish people, the IRA and Sinn Fein for example. She declared them terrorists and refused to acknowledge that Irish Catholics perhaps had no other choice seeing as how they were completely persecuted.

Cameron - has already stirred up things in Ireland by making a deal extreme protestant groups in Ireland (the kind that sat and watched as it's supporters attacked and killed catholic families) such as the DUP.
Cameron could oversee an end to 13 years of peace in Ireland under Labour, and turn it back into terrorism and bombings.

Mining
Thatcher treated people as commodities. She treated government like a business.
This meant that if she had to cut 1,000 jobs today in order to create 2,000 in 2 years time - she would. And she did. Except she did this on a much larger scale. Try 3 million people. Try North-East England (reliant on coal mining) being ripped apart, as almost everyone lost their jobs, living in poverty.
Of course under Labour we have a strong welfare system to support such a massive job loss...Thatcher hated the welfare system. If you didn't manage to make yourself rich with no help, then you didn't deserve to be given any money. Industry was torn apart, think about all the shipyards and how vital they were to some areas (again, particularly the North-East).

Cameron - has already revealed the biggest cuts in spending will come in the North-East. Suprise suprise.

Memory loss voters cannot possibly fathom what we could be in for.

Beauty Contest

When browsing through news websites I came across this; http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/01/constituencymarginality.pdf

It's pure gold!

Look at the sets of polls in the bottom right, it asks the participants who they think understands world problems more, then who would be best in a crisis and finally who they believe is more capable.
On each question, Gordon Brown comes out top. An indicator, you would think, of a clear Labour win, because one would assume that in a developed and established western democracy people would actually care about their own futures and that of their family and friends.
But when asked who they 'like more' Gordon loses dramatically to Clegg.

For me, this is concrete evidence of how completely, and utterly ridiculous these 'superficial voters' are. That's what I'm going to call them. After the election, when we find out how many voted, I'll take the average turnout for the general election from the past fifty years and couple it with the anticipated drop in turnout this year (before the leaders debate) and then whatever the percentage above that (it will undoubtedly correlate with the increase in lib-dem votes) I will minus and those voters will hence forth be known as 'Superficial Voters'.

And this, readers, is why sometimes, I am ashamed of being British.

Let's remind ourselves why we fight the good fight

May I remind you all that we had 18 years of a Tory government STEALING money, STEALING people's livelihoods, STEALING rural and northern communities by pushing them into poverty.

The only way to help Britain was to spend spend spend. The money wasn't there to fix everything, because they'd done so much damage. So they spent more. We went into debt because the country needed every penny to make things work again.
People complain about Brown selling our gold, but he was trying to HELP get rid of the debt - they try and do the right thing and people kick off, the hypocrites.

In 18 years they built no new schools, no new hospitals. They let the country shrivel up and die - which is OK as long as their banker buddies are making a shit load isn't it?

Liberal-Labourcrats

So, as we've seen the Lib-Dem's have received a massive boost in support and critical acclaim from even across seas. Indeed, even yours truly finds himself enticed by their opposition to the Digital Economy Bill and the pledge on reform in the House of Lords. But I'm repelled by their complete lack of policy cohesion and a manifesto of numbers that can't add up.

But what's interesting is that Labour are doing exactly what they need to do: kissing Liberal Democrat arse.
Now of course I want Labour to win the coming election, but like so many I recognise the importance of Labour forming a government rather than winning the election. We know that the more likely scenario is a a hung parliament, and both the Tories as well as Labour are making their alliances with much smaller parties and independents. Clegg's Liberal Democrats were already set to be in a powerful position, but with the first leader debate we see a large swing his way, with many of those first time voters that Cameron has been so keen capture realising that actually, cutting public services and overall spending to the degree the Tories propose isn't something that's in everyone's best interest.
That's right, Nick Clegg has snapped 'the mob' out of it's infatuation with a perfect Tory Britain where
everything is just gosh darn hunky dory. So I applaud him.
But back to the point. Alongside Gordon Brown courting Tory favour last night, Lord Adonis (the transport secretary and ex-liberal democrat) announced he would not tell voters whether to back Labour in Lib Dem-Tory marginals. Some might say it's a little bit like the left-wing consensus in the 1997 election where Liberal Democrats voted Labour purely to unhinge the Tory government. Adonis even went as far as to continually emphasise similarities on key issues such as democratic reform (ie. electoral reform, power of recall and parliamentary reform) as well as tax and how to treat the economy to ensure a swift and safe recovery. During the leaders debate the similarities between Liberal Democrats and Labour was again very astounding.