h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had a leaflet yesterday for, I think, our local Green Party rep..it said "Actions speak louder than words" and then it was just a load of photos of him doing various things in the community. I just thought "Yeah, and your action of not bothering to tell me your policies speaks volumes".

I still have no idea to vote, beyond my current mantra of "Theresa May, No Way!" and that's mainly down to the fox hunting

Deb

Some things never seem to change no matter what policies are adopted. Would it be so terrible to select some candidate based on good character and good judgment, and let the candidate (if elected) proceed from there? Things are bound to change after the election, with issues that no one had policies on.

Well here we go, last day.

I went in at 7:30am to get it out of the way and done. Fingers crossed there will at least be a decent turnout, whatever the result.

Am I the only person in this country who thinks "stuff the turnout - I just hope my lot win"

My lot are more likely to win if the turnout is higher than usual... so I suppose my comment is rather two-edged.

At least y'all don't have wide spread voter suppression to contend with.

Yes, there is that, it's true.

Someone was telling me about the local election monitors - those guys who sit outside the polling stations in garden chairs and ask you for your polling number. The Tories are reportedly very good at managing their core vote. If there's any sign that there's a low turnout of their known supporters, they'll be sending the minibuses to wheel the old biddies out of the nursing homes.

I'm thinking the way to counter this is to not show them your card, but to say the polling number of a known Tory voter.

The Tories will win, based on my Facebook friends. All the rabid "round 'em up and send 'em home" people I can't avoid due to family/politeness issues are voting conservative because of their current stance on toughening up on immigration.

Personally I'm voting on behalf of the foxes.

Deb

You'd have thought that May was banking on taking those Ukip votes when she decided to call the election. I'm sure she will take quite a few, you're right, though it gets interesting in the northern towns, where many kippers were formerly Labour supporters.

I'm hoping on the Isle of Wight a lot of the former UKIP vote will swing Green. Yes, they're opposite ends of the spectrum, but a large number of people who voted UKIP were voting against the mainstream political parties rather than for right wing policies.

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Does h2g2 have political smileys?
= Labour
= Lib Dems
= Green

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Possible alternatives (from view of an outsider).

Tory , , ,
Labor , +
Lib Dems
Green , ,
UKIP ,

Tories.

PP.

I had a brief moment of doubt this morning.

As I walked into the polling station I started thinking about the swing towards Labour that seems to be going on and I thought 'I wonder if I should.....'

But then realised that in a blue constituency with a majority of 20,000 and turn out of 55,000 last time, this must be one of the safest blue seats in the country. So I remained yellow. And yet again, won't have my views represented by my rubber stamped-in MP.

PR anybody?

PP.

You might want to look into progressive alliance politics for the next election, PP. They're responsible for multi-party alliances in my constituency (SW Surrey) and on the Isle of Wight too.

This was something I thought might happen after Brexit, and it's good to see it's starting to happen. It's a new politics - you form the PR-like alliances to support the best anti-Tory candidate before the electorate vote. Maybe in the future if we get a sizeable number of progressive MPs, we might get proper PR.

In my neck of the woods, PR stands for Public relations. Is that what you mean by PR?

Proportional Representation, rather than First Past the Post.

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Agreea there PR would be better but it would need a lot of compromise to enable then to rule

Is it true that exit polls indicate no majority?

Yes and they got it right.

So Theresa May has just made a massive misjudgement. Can anybody now believe that she is an appropriate person to carry on as Prime Minister? Are we going to see a Gordon Brown-like refusal to face up to the result or can we look forward to PM Johnson? Or PM Gove?

PP.