On the hustings
Election fever! I love it!
I’m glued to the BBC and Euronews.
Am I the only one rooting for underdog Gordon? This has nothing to do with policies or even with politics. It’s entirely frivolous, but I can afford to be that because they’re not electing my prime minister.
The other two just seem too earnest and plastic. Their faces aren’t lived-in and they don’t crack self-deprecating jokes. Having lunch with them would be like having lunch with a couple of bankers (now, bankers, please don’t all take offence at once).
I’ve decided – entirely capriciously, of course – that they’re band-box boring. They come across as the sort of men who would talk AT one at parties. And their eyes never seem to twinkle – a very bad sign, ladies. But we know that, don’t we?
And I CAN’T STAND the way they’ve both moderated their accents until they sound just like car tyre salesmen (now the car tyre salesmen don’t like me either), and yet the brainless British media still describe those accents as ‘posh’.
They sound about as posh as a car tyre salesman. You’ll hear the really posh accents in the UK Independence Party (UKIP) – cue Nigel Farage, braying all over the European Parliament.
Gordon Brown, on the other hand – now he comes across as a real person who might even have some amusing jokes up those less-than-natty sleeves. And he has a Scottish accent.
Those other two – well, I don’t know.
But I must say that it’s exciting seeing the return of the Whigs as an electoral force to be reckoned with.
The horror – the BNP are using MARMITE to sell themselves. How dare they. My morning toast isn’t going to taste the same. And anyway, Marmite might be one of the greatest and most iconic British brands, but it is black.
You just have to love British politics: a man dressed up as a Crusader has just ridden across my television screen to promote the UKIP. And now people wearing pig masks are dissing the BNP.
And there’s something about the familiar sight of unarmed British bobbies in their funny hats, chasing protesters wearing wacky costumes, a scene that seems to have remained unchanged since the 1960s, that never fails to warm the cockles of one’s heart.
What fun it is, getting involved without being involved.
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If only we could raise Robin Cook from the dead….
I can’t watch Gordon Brown drop his jaw every 5 seconds any longer… and his Scottish accent is very faint.
That habit of jaw-dropping annoys me also. I think it shows that he surprises himself with what he says…
Like this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7enLKrxLrI
I think it’s more of a trick he uses to pause his mouth until he has thought his words through. Otherwise he’s get into more trouble than the latest ‘bigot’ mishap. Unlike me, a public person cannot afford the luxuries of speaking his mind!
I like Monbiot. He raises some interesting issues with New Labour, some of which I agree with. He veers towards Clegg.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/03/parasite-new-labour-fear-hope
I cannot forgive Labour for the two wars. As you said, Brown seems authentic but I cannot stand a party that votes against its principles for three elections in a row.
He drops his jaw when he takes a breath. It is a case of his breathing disrupting (visually anyway) the flow of his speech. The pauses in speech have to occur somewhere, and sometimes they are for breathing; other times pauses can be for rhetorical effect.
Ah, more classic political debate. How about having a go at him for having only one eye and limited sight in that as well.
The dropping of his jaw is a side effect of surgery to remove a paretic tumour. The surgery affects people in different ways. I went through it but luck was on my side as it was benign and left no side effects on me. Gordon, like one of our former ministers wasn’t so lucky.
The man went through a hell of a time as far back as his school days. There was the playground accident where he completely lost one eye and damaged the other. In 2001 his wife gave birth to a premature baby who died two months later after suffering a brain haemorrhage. In 2006 one of his sons was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
He served for a decade as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but longed to be prime minister. When he finally got the job, he faced economic crisis, a divided party, public disgust with politicians — and now the likelihood of being booted out today.
I wish to see him reaching a compromise with Nick Clegg to form a coalition government. Probably he would.
Charles J. Buttigieg.
To be fair, I thought you would be giving an elogy about Mr. Brown’s successes, not his weaknesses. You made some revelations which I had no idea about, like his vision impairment and his tumour surgery, and I can assure you any joking about Mr. Brown is not malicious.
You say “How about having a go at him for having only one eye and limited sight in that as well.” Let us be frank: his vision for Britain seems to have failed miserably. If it were not so, Labour wouldn’t be risking being the third party in British politics, and Mr. Brown is also seriously risking being one of the few of Britain’s Prime Ministers to never be elected to that post in an election.
[Daphne – I wouldn’t run Brown down. The exit polls show he’s put up some very stiff competition to Cameron. I can’t forget watching the exit polls come in when Tony Blair swept out the Conservatives in 1997. It was a phenomenal clean sweep – nothing like Cameron is doing today to Labour.]
Daphne, you are right about the landslide of 1997. However, please remember that the Conservatives had been in power for almost 2 decades, and John Major was not a great Prime Minister, even though he managed to win his first election in 1992 against all odds.
[Daphne – Labour has been in power for 13 years. The received wisdom is that Gordon Brown is a terrible prime minister liked by no one, and yet….]
The Conservatives had probably stretched it too far in 1992. To remember also that the first half of the 1990s was plagued by a long recession which led to the crises of the Sterling in 1993 among other events.
[Daphne – I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Tony Blair captured the spirit of the times, that’s all – what the Germans calls the Zeitgeist. He made it fashionable for smart people to vote Labour. David Cameron, on the other hand, has not made it fashionable for the non-smart to vote Conservative, though he has almost certainly recaptured the ‘smart’ vote from Labour.]
To me, what was more striking was that in 2001, Tony Blair achieved almost the same result of 1987, with the Tories gaining no ground at all.
As for Gordon Brown, we still have to see the results. The first seats are showing a larger swing towards the Conservatives than the exit poll.
Sorry, I meant “…2001, Tony Blair achieved almost the same result of 1997, ” – a difference of a decade.
They’re not just plastic. You cannot pass a cigarette paper between their politics. As the UKIP billboard goes: SOD THE LOT: http://www.westbournemouthukip.com/content/images/sod-the-lot-vote-ukip.png
Brown of course is in a class of his own. Who can forget the apparatchik’s ‘world governance’ speeches and his loyalty to the globalist overlords?
I say, if Brown is the colour, Gordon is the nose.
And “who can forget” his promise that gone are the days of “from boom to bust.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU_fzCpwrNc
Daphne, you say Gordon cracks self-deprecating jokes. I hope you are not referring to the “bigot” remark here!
I suffer from UK election fever also. In fact, I cannot sleep because of it tonight, so tomorrow it will be worse!
Yet, being a pro-Conservative, I really believe Britain will have a Conservative government on Friday. And we will see the back of Gordon Brown.
The polls are once again giving the Conservatives a lead of up to 9%.
I liked this one (watch till the end):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z0PP1xRkWk
And by the way, it is not surprising that David and Nick sound like car tyre salesmen. Gordon is leaving the British economy with all four tyres flat.
After an all-nighter studying (ahem… watching news) this is by far the best election-related comment I’ve come across in the past days!
Certainly Brown has left the British economy flat and in part contributed to the banking mess when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the plain truth is that the other two have no idea as how to go about recovery, something on the lines of let’s get to number 10 and then we’ll see. Not very promising!
The reality of it all.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/
Daphne – don’t forget Sky News.
What I don’t understand is how certain polls predicted Labour and Lib-Dems with the same percentage of votes. But Labour would get about 258 seats and the Lib-Dems about 75.
Seems something is wrong with their election system.
[Daphne – They don’t have proportional representation (our system) but first past the post. There are arguments in favour and against both systems. Proportional representation gives fairer representation in parliament, but then you also have that horrible situation in which candidates of the same party work against each other, compete with each other and stab each other in the back for your vote. So instead of focussing on competing against the party opposition, they focus on competing against each other and doing each other damage for the five years between elections. With first past the post, each party puts just one candidate on its ticket for a constituency. So you choose between the parties, not between different candidates of the same party as well as between parties.]
I believe in small (microscopic) countries like ours, ours is the fairest system, because we are in fact nothing but a small town next to other countries.
In larger countries, like, well, practically the rest of Europe, the first past the post is fairest because it ensures no areas of the country are neglected!
My opinion of course!
Are you saying that there is no fair system to represent both candidates and voters?
And just as importantly it almost always ensures governability, with one party obtaining a parliamentary majority. This has two benefits – firstly it avoids a small party holding the balance of power and thus punching way above its weight and popular representation and best of all it allows the electorate to kick out a government when it has had enough.
We deserve to be governed by a public school multimillionaire and his chums: it’s our heritage and their birthright. If you think New Labour made a mess then wait until the toffs get stuck in. Last one to leave turn out the lights.
B I G O T – Brown Is Gone On Thursday!
@ciccio2010
At least you are an honest Nationalist. Like with like.
What about the Raving Loonies?
Please, the UK election affects me! Gordon Brown may have been a good chancellor but he showed his incompetence in the PM seat from the very beginning. He should have realised his shortcomings and resigned six months into the job.
There must be something wrong in an electoral system where, if all three main parties get 33% of the vote, Labour gets apprx 300 seats, Tories get apprx 250 and the LibDems get 100. I know, I know, it’s called ‘first past the post’ but it does look highly unrepresentative of the people’s votes.
This system gives you strong government if you get a mandate from the masses, which meant something when Britain was a world power.
Now it’s a has-been that is sinking under the weight of its own mediocrity. If only genuine leaders took up politics. Look at the choices on offer. Pathetic.
it is quite acceptable for someone like yourself, whose perception of politics is only limited to that dished out by the mainstream media, trying so vividly to ridicule the BNP and UKIP. but in reality, these parties are the only political forces who are representing the aspirations of the people!
the majority of the brits want their country out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Lib-lab-con are promising more wars, while UKIP and BNP want the immediate pullout.
71% of the brits want a referendum on their country’s EU membership. Whilst the lib-lab-con promise more servitude to the EU, the BNP and UKIP will carry on such membership according the wants of the people.
And another major concern for the British is without any doubt immigration and again the lib-lab-con are only pledging more open door policy and amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Both BNP and the UKIP will simply shut the door!
These are only 3 of the major issues concerning the people of a once Great Britain, however the established media helps out the mainstream parties in selling to the sleeplike minded idiots brits have turned themselves into and make them believe that those are the only choices. For example, there was a complete media blackout at the news that another 3 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan only days ago!
Tomorrow we might have Cameron as the next Prime Minister, who of course is running a campaign on the usual ‘Change’ slogan. unfortunately for these people change translate itself into a mere transition period!
I would think that if the BNP and UKIP are truly offering what the people want, the people would vote for them. But then, the trouble with these parties is that they only focus on one or two topics without addressing or offering credible solutions for the myriad other issues that matter.
Quite true Sandra, but then again just mention one politician (worldwide) who kept his pre-election promises without sacrificing the standard of living of the masses.
Vonmises,
Unfortunately for the British, they live on an island but it’s not Sacred like ours so they don’t have the privilege of voting for Lowell.
Great fun! I have really enjoyed watching Nick’s popularity rising over the last few weeks…I’d have dinner with him any day!
As for Bigotgate, what’s so damaging for Brown isn’t the comment itself, but the stark contrast between his public and private persona. Of course we all say different things in public, but not all of us are trying to win an election and not all of us get caught being true to ourselves in private!
More pensioners die of the cold; more fat cat payouts; more teenage knife crime; cuts in public spending; perks for the rich: yes that’ll make a change.
Still, life in the UK has its perks … smooth roads, courteous driving, good manners, pretty environments, lush gardens, lots of things to do, fantastic shopping, good quality goods and workmanship, reliable (uninterrupted) utility services, respect for the individual, less corruption at all levels, a civil service that works – a well organised country. Perhaps everything we lack in Malta …
@ Sandra Peters
‘a well organised country’ … so well organised that some polling stations were caught short of ballot papers and electors turned away before they voted. I thought that this could only happen in Malta.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Electoral-Commission-Investigation-Launched-As-Voters-Turned-Away-At-Polling-Stations-Across-UK/Article/201005115626857?lpos=Politics_First_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15626857_Electoral_Commission_Investigation_Launched_As_Voters_Turned_Away_At_Polling_Stations_Across_UK_
I have to add however that if these incidents have to happen in Malta, the voters will certainly not maintain that calm British stiff upper lip.
@Brian – yes, of course, there are exceptions, and the people responsible usually pay the price, but generally institutions in the UK are well oiled and highly organised. We in Malta can learn a lot from the British work ethic and the way they do things.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100506/local/politician-of-maltese-descent-vying-for-uk-parliament-seat
SKY News has very good coverage. Slightly biased though.
UK election victory is a double-edged sword. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, was reported as saying that whoever gets in today will not be elected for another decade after this election due to the deep and painful public spending cuts to be made asap.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100504/local/against-the-law
Something frivolous as a timewaster until the results start flowing in from the hustings later on tonight.
Plastic politicians-when only a tie makes all the difference:
http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2010/05/04/grossbritannien-parlamentswahl/so-spannend-war-die-wahl-auf-der-insel-noch-nie.html
I’m with Gordon.
Daphne mentions UKIP’s Nigel Farage for the very first time and the following day he survives a plane crash.
Exit pols are out. I think we will soon not hear Gordon Brown again.