What a shambles

[Ancient Brewer]

Unfortunately the Tory's could of done a better job of clearing out dross like David Heathcoat Amory, who due to Manuregate, lost the Tory's the safe seat of Wells in Sommerset.

Instead the Constituency now has a LD called Tessa Munt who is a dreadful, ban the bomb, vegetarian lefty type

This creates an interesting possibility in the future.

EDF's proposed 2x1600MW EPR (Hinkley C) will be in Ms Munt's constituency. Now will she in true politician style make an exception and support this development with 1000's of high quality jobs being created for her constituents? Or will she be chained up with Billi, Desperate, and Martin in protest as the bulldozers roll in?

Historically local communities have predominantly supported nuclear developments (Sellafield & Sizewell come to mind) whilst most the oppostion comes from outside - holiday home owners / rent a mob crowd.

I shall watch with interest.

[martin]

"1000s of jobs"............ how nice of you being so open-minded enough to countenance all those foreign workers coming in and working and living in our midst.......

[Ancient Brewer]

Normally with PR the main parties will put up  one candidate for each  available seat in a multi  seat constituency.   Where I used to live there were five seats and originally five candidates from the two main parties. In recent years they dropped to four because the elections were very close.   When the votes are being counted there is a good oportunity to see how individual candidates  do in each area.   Voters are recommended to vote all the way down the list so the last few places are like a negative vote.   

One of the signs that the administration  in the UK is  in need of improvement is the way the election was run.    Not having sufficient voting capacity in many of the inner city polling booths with long queues  is an indication that  there is very little respect for voters.     When I voted for the first time here  it was in what was then the smallest polling station, something like twenty four registered voters.      

This is just indicative of the instant demand / gratification society we have created. The polls were open since 7am and if you dont want to run the risk of queuing apply for a postal vote.

I have worked as a presiding officer on several occasions (many moons ago) and invariably we would get fookwits who hadn't registered (the Council will have a document trail showing the attempts to get the household to register) demanding to vote. Also idiots turning up at 9.59.59 when the poll closes at 22.00 - by law no exceptions.

If we extended voting times - how long untill it suits everyone? There is a cost to running an election and bear in mind poll station staff will have arrived at 6am that morning and effectively worked without a break and would finish untill 11pm.

[martin]

totally overlooking that many of the polling stations didn't even have sufficient ballot papers- blithering incompetence, not laziness on the part of the voters.....

[Ancient Brewer]

"1000s of jobs"............ how nice of you being so open-minded enough to countenance all those foreign workers coming in and working and living in our midst.......

Fair point.

In the days when our Yooni's & technical colleges taught outdated anachronistic courses like electrical, mechanical, chemical and civil engineering, quantity surveying, metallugy, chemistry, physics, and trades such as welding then I suppose our workforce would have been home grown.

On the other hand where we would use our contemporary graduates with modern qualifcations such as BA's in African contemporary dance and womens issues, 17th Century Mongolian Yoghurt weaving,or Social work in a Paleoeskimo setting is a challenging  task indeed!

[Ancient Brewer]

totally overlooking that many of the polling stations didn't even have sufficient ballot papers- blithering incompetence, not laziness on the part of the voters.....

I agree entirely and the idiot Presiding Officers in those cases should be prosecuted. He / she will have been issued with all the paper work at least 18 hours in advance and had ample opportunity to check.

In the days when local government employed proper people to do proper jobs this wouldnt happen. Now its just infested with yoghurt weavers and astro turfers - no attention to detail when it counts.

[Brian H]

Just wondering about the effects of PR and what would have been the effect in Scotland

By my reckoning

Lab       42%   41 seats becomes 25
Lib Dem 18.9% 11 seats becomes 12
SNP      19.9%   6 seats becomes 12
Cons     16.7%   1 seat  becomes 10

[Amy]

Unfortunately the Tory's could of done a better job of clearing out dross like David Heathcoat Amory, who due to Manuregate, lost the Tory's the safe seat of Wells in Sommerset.

Instead the Constituency now has a LD called Tessa Munt who is a dreadful, ban the bomb, vegetarian lefty type

She sounds as useful as the labour MP for west wales 10 years ago who was promoted to Welsh Argiculture secretary, and the laugh was that she was a vegan, So im sure no farmer could count on her support to their businesses of rearing animals for slaughter.

Might as well put a paedo in charge of a kids home, ..............oh yeah, they used to do that too.

[Billy]

I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that England was the only one left as NI, Wales and Scotland already had PR.

Billy.