Politics Politics What a Load of Bolliticks

There is much speculation, amongst those who speculate about such things, that our esteemed leader, Gordon of Brown will shortly call a snap General Election.

Apparently key people have been recruited - some being asked if they can start as soon as next Monday - to head up an election campaign. Pundits are poised on the edge of their seats, waiting with bated breath and so on and so on. All of which fills me with a deepening gloom.

I suppose that on the plus side, any election campaign would be relatively short - three or four weeks at best. And to be fair, living out here in the sticks means we don't get much in the way of canvassing. But I grow very quickly tired of the endless headless chicken political debate on the telly during an election. And the foot-shooting stupidity of the main opposition doesn't help.

The last time Labour held a snap election was in May 2001. During the height of the Foot and Mouth crisis. I remember at the time thinking how incredibly cynical the timing was. The entire British countryside - not Labour's natural voters - was effectively shut down. Still, it worked for Mr Blair.

Now, we're in the grip of another Foot and Mouth outbreak, though thankfully not the debacle of last time. And on top of that we have Blue Tongue as well. You could be forgiven for not realising it, since the press has got bored of the story already, but large sections of the British countryside are again closed. Livestock farmers are facing bankruptcy as movements of animals are seriously limited and foreign exports have been stopped.

So I guess in Mr Brown's eyes, now is the perfect time to go to the nation.

Oh joy.

Comments

angie said…
Um, what's Blue Tongue? Yeah, okay, critter disease, but I've never heard of it. And it's always interesting to hear how other countries do that political elections thing. Very different than here in the U.S.
JamesO said…
Sorry about that, Angie. I should have made a link. Blue Tongue is a nasty disease spread by midges from animal to animal. It can wipe out up to 70% of a sheep flock and at the moment there's no vaccine available. You can imagine why farmers are worried.

As for the election thing, I can see the benefit of the US system, but there's also a downside. You have lame duck presidents in their second term, and the election campaigns seem to start anything up to two years before polling day. At least if Mr Brown calls a snap election we'll only have a few weeks of the usual nastiness.
angie said…
Oh, eww. Midges...

As for poli-systems, I guess each one has its down-side. And yes, the extended dance-remix elections frenzy in the U.S. gets more annoying as the season wears on.

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