Sorry, I couldn’t resist a political post here on the weblog! Worse still, this is far too late, but it is interesting.
I’ve been complaining about the media coverage in the run up to the election and the fact that there is very little information about the policies of the parties, but more emphasis on the characters of the party leaders and what they are all up to rather than what they would do for us. I was quite looking forward to having a politician knock on the door as part of their campaign so that I could explain our personal situation as a family and see how their policies would affect us, but no one came calling.
I did however find a site called ‘Vote for Policies‘ that presents the policies of the major parties on various topics without telling you whose they are. You pick the policies you like and afterwards it tells you what the parties were. You start by telling it which topics interest you and work through from there. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to include Plaid Cymru so in our constituency it isn’t very accurate as the two main parties were Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats, but despite this the results make interesting reading.
Based on my choices on policies related to Crime, Health, Education, Environment and Immigration my results were as follows.
- Green Party 33.33%
- Labour 33.33%
- Conservatives 16.67%
- Lib Dems 16.67%
More interesting is that from the 232 people who have taken the survey in our constituency, the results are as follows
- Green Party 32.11%
- Lib Dems 19.93%
- Labour 19.00%
- Conservatives 12.54%
- UKIP 9.10%
- BNP 7.31%
Based on policies alone the Green Party are way ahead in this small survey, but it was the Lib Dems that won the seat. Of course, the number of people that have carried out the survey is small. The nationwide stats make interesting reading too. With almost 300,000 surveys completed the results were:
- Green Party 23.66%
- Labour 20.34%
- Lib Dems 17.84%
- Conservatives 15.66%
- UKIP 12.04%
- BNP 10.45%
Once again the Green Party was up there at the top. It does make you wonder what would happen if the media concentrated more on policies rather than personalities. Of course, it’s easy to write policies that the majority of voters will like, actually being able to follow through and implement them is what really matters. Most people would want lower taxes, better health and education, less crime etc. but doing it all just isn’t possible.
This survey is good and gives you an idea of which parties policies you mainly agree with but you are cherry picking the best policies without seeing the whole picture. You may find that you agree with more policies from one party but have really strong negative feelings about one of their policies that would make you not vote for them. This survey doesn’t allow you to see that.
Sorry this is too late, but did you vote for the right party?
Snowy Road
I like the snow, and I even, to a certain extent, like the disruption it causes here in the UK. It may be a little convenient for a while, but things soon get back to normal and it’s good to know that the Forces-of-Nature can best us now and then.
Lots of people complain about the disruption and the fact that local councils aren’t prepared. They always go on about the fact that it isn’t like this in Finland or Slovenia or Canada and that they cope with much heavier snowfalls without any problems. But there’s a good reason for that. Yes, plenty of other countries get much more snow than us and cope without any issues, but they are used to it, they expect it and therefore they spend time and money preparing for it.
The snow we’ve had this year in the UK is unusual. It isn’t unprecedented and we do get heavy snowfalls every now and then, but being ready for unusual conditions would be a complete waste of money most years. Buying and storing grit costs money, buying, maintaining and storing machinery such as gritters and snow ploughs costs lots of money too and I’m sure such things need replacing fairly regularly. The money to pay for such things comes from the taxes we pay and I for one wouldn’t want to think that my taxes were being spent on machinery that only gets used in earnest for a few days once every ten years or so.
In my opinion it would be much better to spend that money on something that is used all the time such as schools and hospitals and occasionally put up with a little disruption due to the snow. Even the snow we’ve just had didn’t last that long and within a week or so it will all be forgotten and things will be back to normal.
Stop moaning and trying to find someone to blame. It’s not anyone’s fault, its just the weather. It looks nice out there, so enjoy the scenery while you can and endure the inconvenience it causes.
I haven’t done much geocaching lately, but need to get out and maintain some of my geocaches that need attention… Hopefully this weekend if time permits.
Meanwhile, one of my geocoins has been continuing on its mission to visit as many UK counties as possible and notched up a new one, West Sussex, yesterday. A geocoin is a little traveling token with a unique identifying number that allows you to keep track of it. Gecoachers move it from geocache to geocache whenever they come across it and I can track it’s movements online.
My ‘Dressel Dragon Geocoin‘ has the mission to visit all of the counties of the UK. It has quite a few to go yet though.
Counties it has visited so far
