May 07, 2015

Election whimsy

I do have to say I'm enjoying reading the list of all the parties participating in the UK election today. With partial results (199 seats reporting out of 650) we have something called "Plaid Cymru" which has managed to bag 3 seats with 153,513 votes. Scotland? I assume so.

But it's further down the list where it gets fun:

"Class War" party currently has 59 votes.
"Monster Raving Loony Party" has 358. (Wasn't this one in Monty Python?)
"Yorkshire First" has 647.
"Cannabis is Safer Than Alcohol" has 4,121. (Gotta be Cambridge!!!)

Man, we Americans miss out on the fun.

Actually, not totally. A couple of years ago there was the "Rent is Too Damned High" party in NYC.

The British party I'm rooting for is UKIP, who currently have 863,441 votes but no seats yet. Anyone who hates the EU can't be all bad.

UPDATE: Oh, brother. Monster Raving Loony Party has a website!

UPDATE: Plaid Cymru is in Wales, it turns out.

UPDATE: The Conservatives have an absolute majority in Parliament and can form a government without any coalition partner. Which is a shock. Labour lost 23 seats; the LibDems lost 48, leaving only 8. The Conservatives gained 23 seats.

UKIP only has one seat, but it got 3.9 million votes, coming in third.

If you want a morning grin, check out Metafilter's response as the results come in. Start here.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 07:42 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 235 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Yes, Cymru is Wales.  I only know that because of Doctor Who and Torchwood.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 07, 2015 10:35 PM (PiXy!)

2 I could tell Plaid Cymru was the Welsh nationalist party, only because it was occasionally mentioned by Andrew Breen back in the days when I read the sci.military.naval USENET group.

Posted by: cxt217 at May 08, 2015 09:04 AM (1QyNw)

3 "The British party I'm rooting for is UKIP"
According to the British guy I know, who, for the sake of this comment I'll call "the average Brit", UKIP are all a bunch of nasty racists, presumably without any redeeming features.  In spite of the fact that about all you hear of them outside the UK is that they're a bunch of racists, somehow, they just are, because the news is censored or just not reported on or something.  Or so I'm told.
So you and I are probably bad people for liking them.

Posted by: RickC at May 08, 2015 11:27 AM (ECH2/)

4 I tend to like UKIP too, although they have no track record of governing, but the logic of "enemy of those awful guys must be good" leaves a lot to be desired. Look no further than the unsavory characters who overthrew the previous government of Ukraine and declared their opposition to Putin. We also weaseled around this dilemma in the Middle East before W. declared that we aren't friends of awful dictators just because they pretend not to like Iran. In short, I need to look at the true character of UKIP, especially their stance on basic freedoms, before I declare support.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 08, 2015 11:33 AM (RqRa5)

5

Another reason I'm rooting for the UKIP is that progressives accuse them of being racist.

Modern usage of that word has long since lost any resemblance to the traditional meaning it once held. The current joke is that a "racist" is anyone winning an argument with a progressive. (And a "sexist" is any man winning an argument with a progressive woman.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 08, 2015 11:47 AM (+rSRq)

6

I am inclined to favor UKIP, but with a certain degree of caution - a few of their members were noticed working with Russians and European fellow travelers spreading pro-Putin/anti-West propaganda in Brussels last year.  I do not think it is a good idea to ally with Putin's government even if they are the enemy of the EU.

Posted by: cxt217 at May 08, 2015 03:34 PM (5G4zh)

7 Hmm. I wonder how crazy the Metas would get if someone were to mention that the sudden rise of UKIP in spite of the lack of parliamentary seats mirrors the 1930 electoral results for the National Socialist German Workers' party. 
It technically doesn't; the Nazis placed second instead of third, and got no seats until the Reichstag elections two years later. But when have the facts ever stopped the Metafilter community from freaking out?

Posted by: Tatterdemalian at May 08, 2015 04:22 PM (4njWT)

8 Oh dear. They just described the BBC as part of the right wing plutocrat press.  Suddenly...everything tastes purple.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at May 09, 2015 04:12 PM (ohzj1)

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