UK Politics

Time for a bit of political fun.

I’ve persuaded my youngest son (13) who plans to be an artist to create some political cartoons and captions.

His first attempt at a political cartoon is below.

Political Cartoon Gordon Brown and George Osborne in Daycare

He wanted to add his own caption/joke, but I persuaded him to leave it blank so others can create their own caption as a comment either below or at Political Cartoon Gordon Brown and George Osborne in Daycare.

Dear Conservative Shadow Cabinet and Conservative Blue Blog Moderator

Earlier this month I made a comment at the Conservative Blue blog, specifically in response to this blog post:http://blog.conservatives.com/index.php/2010/02/02/ask-me-your-questions-on-the-economy/

I think you’ll agree a blog post titled “Ask me your questions on the economy” by George Osborne (Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative General Election Campaign Coordinator) invites questions on the economy from the British public (such as myself).

I asked a variety of questions in my comment which I include below:

As a Labour voter I know the Conservatives are almost certainly going to be in government after the general election, not happy about it, but that’s politics. Created this site http://www.general-election-2010.co.uk/ as Conservatives in government again concerns me so much!

The UK general election is expected on May 6 2010, where around 45 million eligible voters will place a single X against the political party/candidate they want to represent them for up to 5 years.

With our current first past the post electoral vote system only the candidate with the most votes in each of the 650 constituency seats will be MPs despite the majority of those who become MPs not receiving at least 50% of the vote from their constituency (only 34% of MPs received 50% electoral support in the 2005 general election!).

In the 2005 general election, 19 million eligible voters cast ineffective votes (they did not get the candidate they voted for), that is ~70% of those who voted!

At the up coming UK general election there’s a realistic possibility of a hung parliament. All serious polls point to a Conservative election win, but with UKIP’s strong showing in the 2009 EU elections and the Tories appearing to be turning their back on Euroscepticism, could Eurosceptic UKIP split the Conservative vote (Eurosceptic Conservative MPs created UKIP after all) in key seats and prevent the Tories a clear majority over the Labour party?

If something like this happens, it’s probably the Liberal Democrats who will benefit from a hung parliament with the possibility of a coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats or the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.

Watched Question Time the other night and a young man in the audience said:

“The longer we can avoid David Cameron the better.”

And there was a big applause, think the biggest of the program, see around 3 minutes 30 seconds of the Question Time clip below:

There was also a very funny joke by Ken Clarke (around 2 mins 10 seconds).

I’m a Labour voter, but I was very surprised at the response and had pretty much given up any hope Labour could win the next general election, at best was hoping for a hung parliament with a coalition government between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

I’m not a big football fan, I normally only watch events like the World Cup, still I’d hate to see the beautiful game of Football damaged by the BNP Immigration policy.

The BNP Immigration Policy states: “Stop all new immigration except for exceptional cases”

Unless Football players are “exceptional cases” this means British Football teams will no longer be able to employ foreign football players.

We have some really good football players in Britain, but if British football teams are only allowed to employ British born or foreign football players who have settled in Britain (and don’t take the generous repatriation payments to leave) won’t this put them at a distinct disadvantage over foreign football teams who can employ the best football players from around the world?

The National Minimum Wage was legislated for by the Labour government ~10 years ago. At the time the Conservative party argued against the national minimum wage on the grounds it would cost the country jobs, businesses would stop investing in Britain because labor costs would be so high.

To date we’ve not seen great job losses (we saw some job loses) due to the national minimum wage and foreign investors and business are still investing in Britain.

I consider the national minimum wage a Labour party success story and I am concerned how the national minimum wage would fair under a Conservative government. Would the conservatives continue to increase the national minimum wage in line with inflation or break the link and overtime make the national minimum wage an irrelevance.