Sunday 2 May 2010

How about the others?

So the election is next Thursday, and we all know about the three main parties and what they want to do (or at least we do if we’ve watched the televised debates, which we should have done), but what about the other parties? Politics is dominated by the big three, but at the last election 8% of people voted for other parties, which accounted for 29 seats. Granted most of these were in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where specifically Irish, Scottish and Welsh parties have a large degree of support, but I don’t really care about them because they’re just not silly enough. So here’s a rundown of some of the more extreme and just bonkers parties that you might have the opportunity of voting for on 6th may.

The Greens
Ok, not that extreme or bonkers, just very left wing and environmentally conscious. They are trying to stress however that they are not just about tree hugging; they are trying to be serious politicians who deal with all the issues. From looking at their policies however, I can only conclude that they live in some strange dream world where there hasn’t just been a global financial crisis and we don’t have a huge budget deficit. It’s spend, spend, spend and I can’t help but wonder where the hell they plan on getting all that money from. It’s not like it grows on trees of anything.

The BNP
Because every civilised country needs its fair share of racist bigots who want to throw out all the immigrants and ban minarets. At least we’ve not elected them like Switzerland has. Basically they’re nutters who are trying to make themselves look respectable by having some almost reasonable policies mixed in with all the racist bigotry and ignorance. As you can see here, they almost sound reasonable when they’re not mentioning foreigners. Don’t be fooled though, as I’ve said before, the BNP are built upon a false premise of Britishness.

The Communist Party
As well as having a party of bigoted fascists, we also have a party of mad commies. I don’t think I really need to spell out what they want to do, if you’re unsure I’ll give you a hint – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Their manifest can be found here if you really want to know, but it’s not all that interesting, better to read the Communist Manifesto, as in the original, and assume that they essentially want to do that.

The Libertarian Party
A party that is actually quite close to my heart. They’re all for freedom, as in absolute freedom, both economically and socially. That is to say they want to all but dissolve government and leave it as little more than a police force, a military and a jury. Their end goal is to create a society in which there is no government as such, which they are trying to achieve by getting elected into government.

The Pirate Party
I really wanted this party to be all about Britain regaining control of the high seas by challenging the Somali monopoly on piracy, but no, it’s all about bootlegging (so that’s a misnomer right there). Essentially they want to make it legal to do things we all do already, like put music from CDs onto MP3 players, or recoding a program. They also have some great ideas about frees speech and privacy, but it’s still not a lot to run an election in.

The Christian Party
These guys actually have some interesting policies. However they seem to think that this is a Christian nation, not a secular one, a bit like the BNP. Ok that’s unfair, they’re not like the BNP, but they do want to impose Christian education on schools and impose Christian values on society. They’re not all bad, but the fact is church and State should be separate.

The Monster Raving Loony Party
Sorry, the Monster Raving William Hill Party, because they’re being sponsored by William Hill, the online betting site, William Hill. These guys are exactly what they say on the tin, absolutely bad-shit loco. See? Entertaining. They hold the UK monopoly on weird for the election, which is a shame because it would be great to have more parties to laugh with rather than at.

This is far from an exhaustive list of all the slightly bad parties running in this election. A full list can be found here. Even if you do vote for one of these weird and wonderful parties, do at least vote. No matter how bad our electoral system, or how pointless it would be voting for anyone but the main three parties, at least exercise your democratic right. You could even go into the ballot box and spoil your ballot of you wish, people have died for less.

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