UK local elections
I'm keeping an eye on the Guardian map of which counties are winning which councillors. It's fairly interesting; there's the expected band of red lighting up across the North, the expected blue scattering beginning to come through in the south, and the usual multi-coloured patchwork of Wales.
I know stuff is still coming through and it's not finalised yet, but I've been quite surprised (or maybe not?) to see that Scotland has gone from an SNP powerhouse to mostly grey, non-majority counties. I was not expecting the Lib Dems to make a comeback, not after what they've done to the place (tuition fees, anyone?), but I was expecting their to be a bigger show for the SNP. Even Fife, which is usually a Lib Dem stronghold, is up on the map as grey and with an unusually high number of Labour seats. Maybe it'll change in a few hours.
Thankfully, Liverpool has so far shown up with very, very few seats to the creepy Nationalist parties. I was worrying a bit after I found out from hathy_col that there was even an EDL candidate running. *shudders* This is a subject that touches close to the bone for me, because my hometown of Bradford has a very nasty habit of giving a few seats to the BNP. It's nice to see them not gaining any ground. The official tallies for what parties got how many seats aren't official yet, but that's fairly promising.
The Guardian isn't reporting much out of the ordinary from Bradford. The police had to be called in for the final hours of campaigning, "with police receiving reports of harassment, intimidation and violence from all sides". Yup. That sounds like home. Apparently, the 'Respect' campaigners are (unsurprisingly) not being friendly to a bunch of people, although they claim that it's all down to the Lib Dems.
Incidentally, does anyone know what this Galloway muppet's 'Respect' party is even about? I've heard him wax lyrical about the failures of other parties, but he doesn't actually have anything in the way of policy and he just keeps banging on about how he's famous because he was on Celebrity Big Brother that one time. Can anyone tell me what he's actually standing for? Frankly I don't trust him; in style and rhetoric, they sound alarmingly like the BNP.
Also, there's apparently a candidate in Bradford running for the Democratic Nationalist Party, which appears to be distinct from the Nation Democratic Party. Anybody heard of them?
I know stuff is still coming through and it's not finalised yet, but I've been quite surprised (or maybe not?) to see that Scotland has gone from an SNP powerhouse to mostly grey, non-majority counties. I was not expecting the Lib Dems to make a comeback, not after what they've done to the place (tuition fees, anyone?), but I was expecting their to be a bigger show for the SNP. Even Fife, which is usually a Lib Dem stronghold, is up on the map as grey and with an unusually high number of Labour seats. Maybe it'll change in a few hours.
Thankfully, Liverpool has so far shown up with very, very few seats to the creepy Nationalist parties. I was worrying a bit after I found out from hathy_col that there was even an EDL candidate running. *shudders* This is a subject that touches close to the bone for me, because my hometown of Bradford has a very nasty habit of giving a few seats to the BNP. It's nice to see them not gaining any ground. The official tallies for what parties got how many seats aren't official yet, but that's fairly promising.
The Guardian isn't reporting much out of the ordinary from Bradford. The police had to be called in for the final hours of campaigning, "with police receiving reports of harassment, intimidation and violence from all sides". Yup. That sounds like home. Apparently, the 'Respect' campaigners are (unsurprisingly) not being friendly to a bunch of people, although they claim that it's all down to the Lib Dems.
Incidentally, does anyone know what this Galloway muppet's 'Respect' party is even about? I've heard him wax lyrical about the failures of other parties, but he doesn't actually have anything in the way of policy and he just keeps banging on about how he's famous because he was on Celebrity Big Brother that one time. Can anyone tell me what he's actually standing for? Frankly I don't trust him; in style and rhetoric, they sound alarmingly like the BNP.
Also, there's apparently a candidate in Bradford running for the Democratic Nationalist Party, which appears to be distinct from the Nation Democratic Party. Anybody heard of them?