Election update: other parties

Only 6 days until the election! The focus has been on the 3 main parties, but they are by no means the only parties at play in this general election. And if there's a hung parliament some of the smaller parties might form a coalition of power. Here are some of the other parties, all of whom are vying for seats in parliament.

• UK Independence Party (abbreviated as UKIP)--they're basically against the UK's involvement in the European Union
• Green Party (led by a woman: Caroline Lucas)--it's like it sounds: about ecology and promoting a sustainable society
• British National Party--Some of their policies are extreme. For example, until a few years ago, their party had a whites-only policy. (I wish I were joking.)
• Sinn Fein is Northern Ireland's biggest party; they're unionists, which means they don't think N.Ireland should be part of the UK but part of Ireland instead. Their 5 Members of the UK Parliament don't pledge allegiance to the Queen, so they can't vote in parliament. Also, they don't draw a salary because they don't actually come to Westminster to represent their constituency.
• Scottish National Party--Yes, they think Scotland should have independence from the UK.
• Plaid Cymru is the main Welsh party
• Respect Party--Anti-war party (especially anti-Iraq, but the UK has withdrawn its troops from Iraq); it's actually an acronym: Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community & Trade unionism

PM gaffe

The Prime Minister has made the first big gaffe of the campaign. In this clip he responds to it, and you can also hear what he originally said (that a certain voter was "a bigoted woman").

Shakespeare's birthday

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd get to spend one of Shakespeare's birthdays in his actual birthplace! Today we went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear. It was an incredible performance, and I've long been drawn to some of the themes of the play. I also love that Shakespeare wrote a play where women drive the events.In the spirit of full disclosure, no one knows Shakespeare's real birthday, and most think it was probably yesterday. All we know is that he was christened on the 26th. And Stratford celebrated today with parades and festivities. Below Jacob is standing in front of the house where Shakespeare was born (which we've toured before).

Election: candidate stories

I've recently come across some fascinating stories about the PM candidates. All verifiable, I assure you.

When Nick Clegg was 16 and an exchange student in Munich (did you know this guy speaks 5 languages?), he drunkenly set fire to a rare collection of cacti and had to do community service for the infraction. He also had to spend lots of money replacing the rare cacti.
.


In a school rugby match Gordon Brown got kicked in the head and was blinded in his left eye. After being accepted to the University of Edinburgh at the young age of 16, he started to notice the same symptoms in his other eye, which was saved by experimental surgery.

Warning: the David Cameron story is sad. He and his wife lost a son last year, who was born with a rare disease. He was 7 when he passed away. In happier news, it's been reported that the Camerons are expecting their 4th child in September this year.

[Interesting connection: Gordon Brown and his wife also lost a child (an infant) in 2002.]

I think it's significant to learn about a person as a person, not just as a political figure. I've noticed very little (if any) personal mudslinging in this campaign. Things are kept fairly polite, and attacks are generally against the opposition party, not the candidate himself. I like it.

Election projections: hung parliament?

Courtesy of BBC's polling efforts, here are some visuals of the situation. The first graph is the result of the 2005 election (a Labour victory) just to show you what ground each party has to cover and what a clear victory looks like.

(blue=Tories; red=Labour; yellow=LibDems; grey=all other parties)

The next graph is what the BBC calls the "poll of polls" where they combine all polls for the day (18 April) to represent what would happen if people voted this way on May 6.

Since no one would have a clear majority, they'd have what they call a hung parliament. It's an absolutely fascinating situation, and I'd be on the edge of my seat to see how it's handled. There are basically 2 or 3 options. First, the incumbent PM would stay in power, but he obviously doesn't have enough power in Parliament to pass anything. Or the party with the most votes can try to come up with a coalition government by making deals and concessions with smaller parties.

The other option is that Parliament would again be dissolved and another election held. But that's unlikely to result in a different outcome than this election.

Election update: debate follow-up

I failed to give a decent explanation of how unprecedented the Prime Minister debates are. Because these candidates aren't really running for the office of Prime Minister--they're simply running for reelection in their own constituency--the UK has never actually held debates with the top PM candidates. Until now. See, unless you live in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Scotland), Witney in Oxfordshire or Sheffield, you won't have any of these 3 on your ballot. And even then, you'd only have 1. So basically they're making the case for their party's candidate wherever you live.


As I mentioned, Nick Clegg appeared to be the winner of the debate, but his party can only hope to pick up a few additional seats, not to gain overall control of Parliament. The day after the debate, BBC remarked that "Despite all appearances of the 'prime ministerial debate', this isn't after all a presidential election. It's very hard for an American-style candidate to break through and overturn the loaded parliamentary arithmetic. "


The New York Times reported about the televised debate too. Get this: "Long after the United States, and even after Iran, Afghanistan and Mongolia, politics in Britain is moving into the television age." Come on, be nice. Grow a little cultural sensitivity, people!

Election coverage: manifestos and debate

I absolutely love this. Each party releases an election manifesto, which specifically outlines the party's views on each issue and details what the party intends to do with their power if they win. So no voter has to rely on the media's skewed coverage of what candidates and parties believe--they can go directly to this source.

• Labour's manifesto (released Monday) is called "A future fair for all."
• The Tories' manifesto (released Tuesday) is called "Invitation to join the government of Britain."
• The Liberal Democrats have "4 steps to a fairer Britain," released Wednesday.

Thursday night was the first debate, and it involved Gordon Brown (incumbent PM), David Cameron (opposition leader) and Nick Clegg. They're calling these Thursday debates "American-style" because it's not something they've traditionally done. There was a lot of love between Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg, both going against Cameron and putting him on the defensive. He is, after all, leading in the polls, so both of his opponents want to take him down a bit.

Here's a video of David Cameron defending what some say is fuzzy math on his part--he claims he can lower the deficit and lower taxes at the same time.



It's widely agreed that Clegg doesn't have a prayer of winning, but he was the clear winner in the debate. He had clear, progressive opinions, which he articulated well. Here's his response to a question about a scandal rocked Parliament this past year (MPs abusing their expense allowances).


And finally, here's the Prime Minister talking about why British troops are in Afghanistan. (You can totally see the jaw-dropping thing I referred to in this post.)

Amsterdam

While in the Netherlands we did visit Amsterdam. It was such a mixed bag!

First we visited the Anne Frank House (above) where we got to walk through the actual secret annex where her family hid. It was hard to believe we were actually in that very place where she kept the famous diary. One thing I loved about the museum is that they didn't give any 3rd-person explanations. Everything was explained using quotes from Anne Frank's diary.

Then it was off to the red light district. Yes, the lights are actually red. And yes, the ladies are selling their services from windows along the streets. It was one of the most disturbing things I could imagine. Now, I unfortunately don't have to imagine it anymore. And because of the following photo, neither do you...

credit to Becky for this photo

We also saw many "coffee shops," which don't actually serve coffee. I'll just say that we couldn't escape the smell of what they were serving.

Above is an example of a block of Amsterdam houses (this one happens to be the back of the Anne Frank block).

And a word about the food... We had the most amazing spare ribs in the universe. We loved them so much we went to the same restaurant the next night. No photos of that, but here's a photo of a gorgeous pastry and a photo of the famous Holland cheese.

Going Dutch

After Jacob spent the week near Frankfurt for a work conference I flew to meet him and we went to the Netherlands with his coworkers Irena (the boss), Becky and Marcia. We had such a fun time in a unique, lovely country! The windmills are beautiful and plentiful. We went to one location with 19 ancient windmills. And just so you know, there was a constant, strong wind the entire time we were in the Netherlands, so we understand why they harness the wind's power.

We went to a clog-making shop and saw an amazing demonstration about how they make the iconic wooden shoes. Here's a photo of Jacob browsing the wall of clogs; and a photo of me trying some on. Jacob tried on a pair too and found them surprisingly comfortable! To the left is something extraordinary--a clog for horses. No joke. We also experienced some of the famous Holland tulips. We went to a huge garden where we saw many breathtaking flowers. Some were outside, some were in huge greenhouses. All were beautiful!

Election coverage: Parties and Candidates

(This is obviously a vast over-simplification of a very complex election, so forgive the gaps...)

Labour--Gordon Brown is the incumbent, and not a popular one. He does this strange jaw thing when he's giving speeches. (There's even a facebook group called "The way Gordon Brown drops his jaw after a sentence.") You can sort of see it in the below video.

The Labour Party grew out of the trade union movement, and they still advocate workers' rights. Here are some excerpts from their party manifesto: "...by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone...a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few..." Sounds pretty good to me!

Conservatives (aka Tory Party)--David Cameron is their leader, and he's a well-spoken, charismatic guy. He's also the 'elite' guy: Eton, Oxford, descendant of King William IV. The party has been pretty divided over things like immigration and European Union involvement. They're in favour of lower taxes than the others but still see the benefit of taxation to fund programs. They're pro-military and pro-defence of the union (with Scotland and Wales and N. Ireland).

As the Leader of the Opposition he goes against the Prime Minister in the Prime Minister's Questions every Wednesday where Gordon Brown has to answer questions from Members of Parliament (I like the accountability aspect!). I know you're hungry for a taste. This video is from 2007 when Gordon Brown was going to hold an election but called it off. What really matters in this video isn't what they're talking about; it's the input from the crowd and the argumentative format. It's so much fun, and it happens every Wednesday!




Liberal Democrats--Nick Clegg is the leader of the party that stands for civil liberties, higher taxes to fund social programs and environmentalism. Foreign policy-wise they're the most in favour of the European Union and multilateral approaches in general.

There are many other parties, which is vastly different from the 2-party US system. But these 3 are really the only ones with enough support to sway the balance of power.

Mikado

This ad is so hilariously scandalous, we laugh every single time we see it. We hesitated to post it because we haven't sampled the product (I'm guessing they're like Pocky). But we just have to share the ad. Enjoy!

Election coverage: UK elections 101

If you know me, you know I love politics. That's why I'm planning to cover the UK General Election in a few posts over the next month. Hopefully you'll find it even a small fraction of how interesting I find it. Plus I think Americans should follow UK elections like the British follow US elections--there is a mutual interest, after all. (See above photo. Apparently there's also mutual necktie-choosing.)

We just found out for sure today that there will be a general election in the UK on May 6. Yep, that's right--there's only a month for the candidates to campaign and for the population to decide their votes.


Prime Minister Gordon Brown (above) is the one who decided on the May 6 date. General elections have to take place at least every 5 years, but election dates are fluid, set by the Prime Minister. PMs usually try to time the elections during periods of greatest popularity for their party. In Brown's case his government has been so unpopular that he's waited until the last possible second--the last election was in May 2005.

So after the PM sets the election date, Parliament will DISSOLVE (on April 12), and every single member of the House of Commons (650) has to be re-elected in order to retain her/his seat. Interesting note: the dissolution of Parliament is one of the Queen's actual powers/duties.


The PM isn't directly elected by the public. Gordon Brown, for example, was elected by the people as the Member of Parliament for his constituency (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland), and the Labour Party chose him as their leader (when Tony Blair resigned, you'll remember). So the party that wins a majority of seats on May 6 gets to appoint a Prime Minister. Fascinating, huh?


More to come on the candidates and parties and issues and debates and all the other fun stuff!

(*sigh*) ... scaffolding

Over the past couple of years, I've been disappointed by scaffolding more than once. (Here is a notable example...) I've been planning this Bridge(s) of Sighs post for a while and looked forward to writing it after our Venice trip. Now it's a bit of a let-down--because of scaffolding. :(

When we have visitors we love to punt the Cam in Cambridge and tell the story of the Bridge of Sighs, named after the bridge of the same name in Venice. In Venice the bridge showed convicts their last view of Venice before being shown to their cells. Lord Byron gave the bridge its name because he imagined that prisoners would sigh as they beheld the gorgeous city for the last time.

The one in Cambridge is jokingly called the same name because it's where university students at St. John's college have to walk to get their exam results. The sighs are apparently nervous ones.

We also recently saw the Bridge of Sighs in Barcelona (above)--beautiful!

And as we visited Venice recently, I was super-excited to see the original Bridge of Sighs there. Are you ready for the ultra-disappointing shot? (first, the way we saw it; second, the way we SHOULD have seen it)

*sigh*

(Sorry to be so negative. we loved Venice. Just read here and here to verify that!)

Hedgehogs

Since they're nocturnal, we only see them if we're out late at night, but they're widespread in England. Last night we saw this one, but since it was dark the photos aren't great. But hedgehogs really are pretty cute.

My information source is Wikipedia here, so believe it if you want...

"In 2006, McDonald's changed the design of their McFlurry containers to be more hedgehog-friendly. Previously, hedgehogs would get their heads stuck in the container as they tried to lick the remaining food from inside the cup. Then, being unable to get out, they would starve to death."

And if that wasn't bizarre enough, it goes on:

"Domesticated hedgehogs display this behavior by getting their head stuck in tubes (commonly, lavatory paper tubes) and walking around with the tube on their head. Hedgehog owners often refer to this as "tubing" and promote the behavior by supplying clean tubes. Most owners are considerate enough, however, to cut the tubes lengthwise so as to prevent the hedgehog from remaining trapped against their will. Curiously though, some will still knowingly get themselves stuck for a few hours."

the Easter place

As Easter has approached, we've thought back on our trip to Israel last year when we got to visit places of significance to the Easter story. The Garden Tomb (above) was peaceful and beautiful and profound. I'm in awe of what happened there and grateful for the season we have to commemorate it. Happy Easter!