That is daft! There will be some safe seats overturned in this election - yours could be one. Even if you don't manage to unseat him/her, your vote will will dilute the overall vote of that party. It might give the incumbent a kick up the backside, thus securing better representation during the next parliament. The only wasted votes are those that aren't used. Get off your arse and cast your vote! For me it will involve ticking a box and posting an envelope on the way to work on or around April 27th. If a walk to the local polling station is too arduous for you too, it may not be too late for you to sign up for a postal vote also.
0.088. North West Cambs. Been Shailesh Vara for a while, I guess it will be this time. I am still voting, I don't think previous trends are going to have the same impact this time round.
Mine is 0.14 of a vote. Seems odd though as although the site mentions it as a safe labour seat (and it does have a 19% majority) Both Lib dems and SNP reckon they have a chance to take the seat.
What I don't really understand, and perhaps someone could explain this to me, is why the vast majority of people have a vote equivalent to less than 1 - like me (0.818), even though I'm apparently in a 'very marginal' constituency which is ranked 38 out of 650. Surely the average should be 1, or is that an incorrect assumption?
It's more a relic of when parties weren't the main force behind voting. You'd just choose your local MP and he'd represent the intrests of your area in Parliment. Whish we had a seperate parliment and Priminister election kind of like america. I agree with most of the policies of the Tory MP in my area (he stands for small goverment and personal freedom) but disagree with Tory parties policies and so don't vote for him.
Your vote still has a million times more influence than one who doesn't vote. I'm helping out the Labour party in my constituency even though we've got very, very little chance of winning (Tories have an 8% lead over the Lib Dems to start with).
I'm in a similar position, the standing MP in my area is actually a bloody good MP in terms of representing the constituents. But when it comes to voting in parliament, he just follows the Labour party line which most of the time, I disagree with these days. So I shall not be voting for him.
The reason we don't vote for the prime minister is that he doesn't actually have that much direct power as prime minister. This is different to a president who has a great deal of personal power, in the political hierarchy a president is more like an elected monarch than a prime minister. The prime minister only has power as the leader of his political party which is why you have whips and why back benchers have more power than you might think. It's also why we didn't have an election when blair stepped down. If you look at republics like France they have both a prime minister and a president with the prime minister as head of government and the president as head of state. Moriquendi
This was correct until President Blair arrived on the scene and started bypassing parliament at every available opportunity. The benefit of a Tory win or a hung parliament would be that back-benchers will regain their more important role in government. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1365275/Blair-will-bypass-Lords-over-EU-arrest-warrants.html http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2006/02/bypassing-parliament.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/the_blair_years/article1767988.ece http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/wmdintelligenceinquiry/Blair-under-fire-over-bypassing.2545885.jp
Yes you're right about that though he shouldn't have been able to bypass parliament and he probably wouldn't have been able to if he hadn't had a vast majority. I don't think a hung parliament would benefit anybody really. Moriquendi
Then vote for either the Tories or for Brown - only two parties for which majority governments are realistically possible. Certainly don't vote for the Lib Dems, UKIP or any other party or candidate that supports proprtional representation - although it has many advantages over FPTP, the key disadvantage of this is the likelihood of hung parliaments and fragile coalition governments.
The more I think about it, the less I think this General Election actually affects anyone but the English. The three main parties are mainly campaigning on the usual policies of health, policing, education etc, which are all devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and N.I Assembly. In Scotland, Labour, Conservative and Lib Dems all released seperate Scottish manifestos on these issues. However, as they are devolved issues, the Scottish MPs have no say in it whatsoever, it is solely up to Holyrood and the MSPs to decide. In terms of the general election, the only issues that affect me are: defence, finance regulations, civil liberties and parliament itself. For example, Trident renewal, the West Lothian question, ID cards and economic stimulus are really what affects me personally. Any talk of justice, NHS, class sizes etc is wasted north of the border and these are all issues that the main parties are campaigning on up here, falsely.
Trident, West Lothian Question, ID cards, the economy... all seem like meaty enough issues to be concerned with... What about European integration, defence spending and the two current wars, our relationship with the US, the Terrorism Act.... plenty more that affects the devolved countries.
And mostly all are issues that aren't being campaigned about or are agreed between the parties. Labour and Tory now agree there won't be a EU referendum after the Czechs agreed to it. Both want ID Cards in some way. Both want Trident renewed. Both want a special relationship with US. The economy: Tories don't have enough information (they haven't been in government for 13 years and don't have access to the figures that Labour do) and I don't like Labour's National Insurance increase plus Labour haven't put in a proper economic stimulus package like the other G20 countries. Tories would be unlikely to change the Terrorism Act and if they did will probably make it worse. Tory want to end Scottish MPs voting on English issues, I agree with that but Labour would lose their majority in this case and won't do that. Basically unless the Lib Dems are voted in, I honestly don't think anything will really change up here as the issues that differentiate the Tories from Labour now are all devolved. The only thing I can see is that if Tories take power, they will use Scotland as their test centre again like they did with the Poll Tax. Personally I don't feel that Westminster serves my interests anymore. Any policy or law that I have agreed with in the past 10 years have came from the Scottish Parliament. The policies that I am interested in are all SNP or Lib Dem policies and neither of them are likely to have any real say in Westminster decisions.
