As for the election result. I was very pleased to see my local seat finally gained by the Conservatives, and this time by a healthy majority of over 4000.

It was also great to see the Conservatives gain 97 seats and Labour lose 91. I understand this is the biggest gain, and biggest lose in something like 80 years. It really does show how differently the population feel towards Labour compared to the last general elections.

The seats won by the Lib Dems was very surprising as everyone, press included, really thought they were going to do well. In the end they actually lost 5 seats.

However, it is disappointing that the conservatives could not reach the target 326 seats needed for a clear majority in the house of commons to automatically have the right to form a government. They did however get over 300 and a clear majority over Labours 258 seats, so I believe they should have the right to form the next government. If they can agree to a deal with the Lib Dems, as was mentioned today in Cameron's speech, and covered in the news that they are still in talks, then that will be great.

But if Brown somehow manages to retain power, even though they are 48 seats behind the conservatives and the fact that the conservatives gained so many seats in this election, then the population are not going to be happy. They voted in this election clearly against Brown and the state he has left the country in and want a change of leader and party to try and get a fresh perspective on how to move forward.

Brown wants to borrow and spend even more money in the coming year, driving the UK into even more debt. Cameron wants to stop borrowing and reduce spending, which is the only way we can ever hope to start reducing the huge deficit the Labour party have got us into. Borrow and spending more and more money you don't have is, as everyone knows, a sure route to bankruptcy, as can be seen by current events in Greece. I really hope the Conservatives can reach the agreement and form the next government.
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Although I voted for the Liberal Democrats, I thought the Conservatives would win.

I voted for the Conservatives in the local election, but Labour won.

There was an article in the Yorkshire Post yesterday about how many hundreds of people where not allowed to vote, because they waited for hours in queues, only to be turned away at 10 O'Clock. I was quite surprised by this. I went in at 8:45am and there was one person in front of me.
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It clearly states on voting cards that the polls close at 10pm, and by law they have to shut at that time so the process of counting can begin. Their were reports of Students turning up just before 10pm and without their voting cards, which meant it slowed everything down for everyone else in the queues. It also seemed from the interviews the media had with some who were turned away that they also didn't arrive to vote until just before 10pm.

How stupid are people? The polling stations were open from 7am in the morning, right through to 10pm, and yet they couldn't get there till just before it closed and then started getting mad that they couldn't get in.
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How dare you ask that question. You should know by now that the only person you can rely upon not to be stupid is yourself and even then he's not 100% reliable either.

I've got a feeling that people went to vote late for 3 reasons. 1) All the billions of hours of election coverage started about 9 so there was bugger all on TV. b) people who hadn't voted saw the later exit polls and either wanted a conservative landslide so went out to vote tory or were disappointed at the Lib Dem figures so wanted to do some late votes for them. iii) it was a facebook/myspace/twitter thing. And finally it's the first time the students voted so they didn't know the rules and besides the pubs don't get interested until around 9 so there's no point going out before then.

The good news is that if things can't get sorted out between the parties we may have to go through all this again towards the end of the year.

My quote of the day was from a checkout girl whilst I was out shopping.
Says it all really.
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What is the purpose of the Poll Card?

I handed mine to the lady at the desk and she looked at the name and address, found my name and address on her long list, asked me if my name was Stephen Coates (surely that was obvious) then crossed me off the list.

Could I not just have told her my name and address?
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You could and you can if you have a photo I.D. with you but the poll card also has a number on it which is what they are checking when they cross you off the list. Lets face it security in polling stations is pretty pathetic but there are and have been far easier ways of committing electoral fraud and with there being so much voter apathy the biggest signal that a fraud is being committed would be that more than half the people that were able to vote did actually bother.
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Democracy just doesn't work as it allows the intellectually challenged to vote and have an opinion(?). If they could really be trusted to vote, then they wouldn't all be copying the dress sense of their friends, family and neighbours; keeping gold chain, shell suit and car body kit companies in business, or just voting for the party their families always have.

They have no idea what their voting power means, or what each party or their policies mean to them or the country as a whole. It drives me mad.

I do not support full democratic process. The only real way to get a result based on reasoned voting, is to force everyone to take IQ tests and only allow those over a certain result allowed to vote. I can't see many people actually agreeing to that though as you could view it as a bit dictatorial I suppose.

The whole point is meant to be so only with a valid voting card can you vote. And once voted and your name crossed off the list, no one else can then vote using you name. It is a very primitive system, but sometimes I think simple is much better than advanced. While not perfect, it is a lot harder to tamper with than a computer based system for example. Look at the mess in the US elections.

Not sure about postal voting though. That is too easy to tamper with.
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Hmm. Interesting idea creating a sort of eugenic democracy. The only problem with that is what do we do with all the 'tards who are too dumb to vote? Move them all to their natural habitats of Essex and Liverpool? (Let's see how much hate mail that gets me)
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Or even better. Utilise our other main island to store them!
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I agree and thats why ive never voted to this day. My political knowledge is prbly zero.

Consevatives= bad, Libdem= Laughable and Labour= gordon Brown whos a bit funny looking with shifty eyes and scottish.thats as far as my pollitical knowledge goes so to vote would be excedingly unwise.
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