Tag: liberal democrats

News in Briefs 06/05/12

It was an eventful week in politics as the people of Britain took to the polls once again, even though it was a rather pathetic 32% turnout in the large majority of places. The football season in sport is coming to an end, and we have more idiocy and stupidity from America.

Oh and I enjoyed my trip in Brighton, if anyone was wondering.

Political Oops of the Week

I could go for the easy option and just rip into the fact that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives were soundly beaten in these local elections, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to rip into the fact that the Liberal Democrats were beaten in the Edinburgh local elections by a penguin standing six feet tall from Planet Pipe.

His name was Professor Pongoo and he entered the local elections as an independent candidate. But the Liberal Democrats were humiliated when the penguin polled more votes than their party. In fact, Professor Pongoo polled 444 votes, the Lib Dems polled 370, and the Green Party polled 322. Nick Clegg and friends have really fallen from a great height since they entered power in Westminster.

Professor Pongoo
The new face of British politics.

In other news, something utterly hilarious happened as whilst Labour leader Ed Miliband was walking around Southampton, in order to brag how well he has been doing, he was hit on the shoulder by an egg that splattered over his nice new suit. Clearly the message is that you just can’t win when it comes to politics.

The Painful…

This section is brought to us by Italian football this week. Fiorentina manager Delio Rossi was sacked after he beat the living hell out of one of his players.

The incident occurred when he took the Serbian player Adem Ljajic off after 22 minutes. But Adem wasn’t too happy about the Fiorentina manager bringing him off so early so as he walked off he performed an ironic round of applause for his boss’s tactical mastery.

Not going to take this from some scumbag from the former Yugoslavian nation, the Fiorentina manager fell into the bench area and decided to teach him a lesson in pain. Adem was lucky because when his boss was pulled away it looked like he was lining up a punch, and it didn’t look like it was going to be a weak one. But he gained the final victory as the manager was sacked and the Italian press turned in his favour.

…And the Pointless

Have you ever loved a car or motorbike so much that you wanted to have sex with something right after driving it? On a personal note, the answer is never, but for other people I’m not too sure anymore because American Henry Wolf is attempting to sue BMW over this sort of problem.

BMW Bike
Is this the cure for erectile dysfunction?

He’s claiming that a permanent erection has been caused by a motorbike ride through San Francisco, California, which lasted four hours. His main ‘consequence’ according to him is that he is now unable to engage in sexual activity. Now this is quite strange because I would have thought that if you had a permanent erection you would be the perfect person to have regular sexual activity.

For once, the man would be able to outlast the woman!

The so Outrageous that it’s Borderline Hilarious

My first question has to be: “Why is it always the Americans?”

And it really is always the Americans when it comes to crazy, religious, anti-gay nut jobs. The latest anti-gay nut job is a pastor from North Carolina, who preaches at the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville. Sean Harris recently made headlines when he suggested in a sermon that parents should beat their children for “looking gay”

This anti-gay nut job then went even further by claiming that he was similar to Jesus. Last time I checked, Jesus wasn’t a nice person all the time, but he didn’t preach hatred towards gay people. And I don’t even recall him preaching hatred towards anyone really. He turned a few tables in the temples, but he didn’t really hate them. He was the preacher of love, good, and all of that other wonderful stuff.

Yahweh (God), on the other hand, was the vengeful one. However, I suppose that this is just something that will blow over after a while. This sort of thing never stands up for long. Sean Harris seems like a Westboro Baptist Church wannabe really.

A Positive Outlook for the Week

Do you remember when current French president Nicolas Sarkozy acted like a total douche bag to David Cameron when it came to Europe? And do you also remember the rule of what goes around comes around? I do, and it seems to be true as this time next week he could be out of office. It’s quite funny how arrogant he was with his supermodel girl and his power over all of France, and now the world is watching him squirm.

Nicolas Sarkozy
Bahahahahahahahahahaha...

In other news, the Iranian president Ahmadinejad is apparently falling out of favour in his own country. So could we be looking at the end of another tyrant? Although, you shouldn’t get your hopes up as his replacement will probably be one of those cases where everything gets much worse and we all end up craving for his return.

So maybe next week won’t be so bleak and irritating after all…

Why Britain is Not a Democracy

Democracy is viewed by many people as a positive political system. Many also believe that Britain upholds our democracy. But what exactly is democracy? And is Britain really up to the high standards that democracy demands?

Democracy is most commonly seen as a government in which the people have the supreme power. This is usually applied through their elected agents, otherwise known as MPs, under a free electoral system. But this definition is vague and questionable, despite being highly praised with positive connotations. Indeed, it has been speculated that democracy is not bound to any one definition. This was pointed out by George Orwell, who was quoted as saying, “The defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”

It can even be argued that ‘democracy’ is just used in place of ‘free’ when describing a country’s status; countries which aren’t free are ‘undemocratic’, although ‘undemocratic’ is vague in itself as something which is undemocratic could simply be another political system. The question of whether these ‘undemocratic’ countries have a fair political system never comes into play. After all, how could it possibly be fair when it’s not democratic?

This stems from the idea that democracy is having a vote, not whether your vote makes a difference. In other words, an elected dictatorship. Walter Winchell agreed with this, saying, “too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it”. If holding elections were what constituted a working democracy, then Britain would be just that. But this can be compared to China’s political system in which there are eight parties (other than the CPC) that you can vote for but, essentially, they all stand for the same points.

But if democracy is more about the freedom of the people and whether their vote matters at all in the long-run, then it can be argued that the UK is falling below the democratic standards with almost four in ten voters choosing to abstain as they feel they don’t have a say.

Democracies, in theory at least, should have parties which represent groups of people who stand for different ideas. At the moment, there exists only the three main parties; the Labour party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. If you were to vote for any of the smaller, more obscure parties, it’s highly likely that nothing will come of your vote.

We will forget for a moment what each of the leaders of these three parties say what they stand for and instead look at what they have actually stood for. The Liberal Democrats, during the 2010 elections, promised that they would scrap University fees across Britain. In fact, that was one of their biggest points on their manifesto. But they didn’t do that. They did the opposite and agreed with the Conservative policy of raising tuition fees. Another example would be the Conservative cuts to public spending. This is an expected Conservative move (they have done so on numerous occasions during past recessions, including the Wall Street Crash) but Ed Balls, Shadow Chancellor, stated, “We cannot make any commitments now that the next labour government will reverse rises or spending cuts.” Ed Miliband, leader for the Labour Party, agreed, saying the Labour government would continue to make cuts. Elections which lack any competing agenda are pointless.

Leading on from this is one of the biggest moves from the coalition government when they first came into power in 2010. They set up the Your Freedom website in the hopes that people would vote on controversial topics and hear what they wanted directly, rather than through their elected agents. But this proved to be useless as the public decided they wanted a review of the smoking ban and were ignored entirely. The Coalition stated they “had no plans” to review it.

If there is no real difference between the ideologies of the main political parties, no difference as to what party you vote for, can Britain really call itself a democracy?