Well, it's over. So what the hell happens now? Is Cameron going to force Brown out? Hmmm, that didn't sound right...
I haven't sat and watched so many politicians and tv political pundits since 1997 when a grinning bloke from Edinburgh victoriously took to the stage.
After making the polling station at quarter to ten I arrived home, sat and watched at least two and a half hours worth, flicking between the BBC channels, the STV channel and Channel 4's alternative election night. The BBC had the two main channels dedicated with Jackie Bird craning her neck at us as usual and on One David Dimbleby, the BBC's head teacher, and the English broadcasters on Two. A rather lovely replacement to Peter Snow, Emily Maitlis, used a fantastic, full height iPad to illustrate what was going on with the latest results, using her touch screen to zap maps, graphs and stats up in various colourful guises. Jeremy Vine jumped about a digital map of Britain like a weatherman in Tron and then played a game of virtual dominoes, each piece representing a fallen MP. What a fantastic job it must be to help liven up these programmes. How to make political elections understandable to the masses - use virtual dominoes and giant iPads! All this while Jeremy Paxman shouted at MPs around his table up in the box like balcony of the studio, like a solo Statler and Waldorf.
Some of the television panelists were also outraged and raving about how disgraceful and disorganised it all was. Crowds of disgruntled folk being turned away from polling stations as they had turned up too late in the day or obvioulsy could not have got out of bed early enough. The commentators made it sound like all hell was breaking loose, with reports of the police being called in, people tearing their hair out, polling stations forcing their doors locked, jamming complaining voters' flailing arms or toes in the process, angry mobs shouting what for (literally). The view would then switch from the studio to a gloomy looking street in Sheffield where a long line of bored looking people stood morosely wondering why they were being filmed. A bloke in the background holding up a piece of card scibbled in felt pen, 'Hello Mum'. Then switching his card to another which read, 'I decided against the libs'.
Friday, 7 May 2010
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1 comment:
haha I sat and watched BBC one til about 12, then started to fall asleep. I do feel sorry for those people who where not able to vote. I don't think it was a case of being too lazy. I think it was a case of their not being enough ballot papers!.. also one lady who was interviewed said she'd arrived after work to vote, there were long queues, so she went home came back an hour later presented with long queues, an hour later same thing, and eventually she thought she better get in the queue.. did so and didn't manage to vote because they closed the polling station. It's not always easy to get from work to the polling station you are at. There would have been no way I could have voted during work hours.
I do wonder if those lost votes would have impacted on the final results, especially in places where the vote was tightly matched.
People do have a right to vote also. One of the few democratic "rights" we have. Personally I think all those places where people couldn't vote they should either be allowed to vote or the whole area should cast votes again.
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