Tag Archives: scottish elections

Pot of tea

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The SNP victory in the Scottish elections can be taken in several ways:

  • A kick in the teeth for Scottish Labour (one long in coming, an election overdue);
  • A slap in the face for the Lib Dems (a protest to the shenanigans of the Lib Dems in Westminster);
  • A door slammed on the face of the Tories (not enough to boot them out in the last few elections, but now a fence is being erected to keep them at bay);
  • Resulting in the SNP being welcomed in for a seat by the fire with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (dare I say, an indication that conditions are becoming favorable for a true divorce from the Union).

With the Tories mucking up the whole country in their usual heavy-handed way, the Lib Dems lending a hand, and Labour mewing pitifully in the corner, the SNP have mopped up all the dissatisfied and disenfranchised votes.

Now, if only the SNP could do something about the new Home Office limits on the number of academic visas, I’d brew them a whole pot of tea.

More votes for Scots

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“Either we re-run the election or the returning officer contacts these 10,000 people who had their ballot treated as spoiled to ascertain their actual preference.“We need to do that, otherwise democracy is in crisis in Scotland.” (via)

Sure. And open the process to bribery of said 10,000 people? I think not.

If there was a re-election, perhaps folk will finally cast their TRUE vote. Methinks that in the future, Scotland should hold practice runs.

Scottish (Muckadidoodah) Elections 2007

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What a dickadeedoodah the elections have been this year! I’ve missed out on all the fun. Followed doctorvee‘s twittering and subsequent indignation at the mess made by the decision makers:

Some people wonder what the Scotland Office is for these days. Obviously they are looking for stuff to do, so have been busybodying with this e-counting stuff. The e-counting systems might have been desirable for the local councils, but they did not need to be used for the Scottish Parliament elections.

I was feeling a small amount of sympathy for the poor electorate, expected to cope with oh-so-many ballot papers, until I saw a photo of the ballot sheet (or rather a photo of the poster explaining the ballot sheet). Honestly, it’s not that difficult.* Maybe they could have hired some expensive design agency to make the parliament ballot a little clearer (maybe some dozy-brains didn’t register the split arrow), but that poster is education enough not to screw up.If you’ve made the effort to go out and vote, surely you’re invested enough in the process to make the even smaller effort to read the instructions. I don’t think the blame can be laid on the Westminster or Scottish Parliaments (maybe apart from the decision to have both local and Holyrood elections on the same day). More and earlier voter education? Maybe not. A redesign of the ballot sheets? Ach, I hope they’re going to have a good look at the spoiled ballots and work out what went wrong or there’s no point in suffrage and we’ll have to start testing voters for mental competency before elections.** Ha.

*I would be interested to learn how many of those were true protest votes or if anyone scribbled stuff like “anyone but labour” or crap like that. Don’t waste your vote, dammit. At least vote for some small crappy party if you don’t like the major ones.

**Disclaimer. Joking, OK? Not proposing this or calling the electorate stupid. Maybe a little bit lazy or dozy or confused, but not stupid. I pretty much agree with what was said here.

Mair on the sorry tale. I like this interpretation :

Electoral systems suffer the same problems as bad software – they are dominated by geeks with no understanding that users have to be able to understand the system you are designing and bolt on a shoddy interface as an afterthought – and by marketing departments/politicians who have a very different agenda from the rest of the industry and force bad design decisions from the word go. (via)

The revelation that the Scotland Office were advised not to hold both elections on the same day is no surprise to me. A department controlled by a party that started its first few years in government spinning and managing the media will take any little advantage they can get to stay in power. Another example of disgusting NuLab behaviour.

Do you want to be the Great Grand Overlord of the British Isles?

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Feeling bad. Not giving dog enough attention, not taking good care of P, not calling home enough, not IMing the bro for months, not sorting out the BnB website problem, not writing enough manuscripts for the lab, not producing enough data for the great and glorious leader, not doing my part for the environment by incapacitating every Humvee in sight (and that’s plenty round here), using too many plastic bags to pick up doggy poo, not keeping abreast of current affairs, not giving our governors hell over climate change and their bloody stupid self-defeating “war on terror”, and worst of all, not following the run-up to the upcoming SCOTTISH ELECTIONS.

One small thought on it though: Gordon Brown1 must be pissing his pants. If the Nationalists get their way (unlikely for the foreseeable future, but I’m no Sybill Trelawney), Westminster would have to reciprocate by kicking out the Scots. That would damn well screw his chances of being Great Grand Overlord of the British Isles, wouldn’t it? Unless he wanted to be English.

1Am currently fascinated with this Where’s Gordon? map.