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BBC News reports that the Conservatives have defied pre-election polls and all the exit polls to win an overall majority in the House of Commons. The race was thought to be much closer than the final results have shown, with many predicting either another coalition government or possibly a minority Conservative government being formed.
The Conservatives made gains in England and Wales and are forecast by the BBC to secure 331 seats in the Commons, giving them a slender majority. Sources say [Labour leader] Ed Miliband is expected to stand down after Labour was all but wiped out by the [Scottish National Party] in Scotland. [Liberal Democrat] leader Nick Clegg has already said he will quit, with his party set to be reduced from 57 to eight MPs. [United Kingdom Independence Party] leader Nigel Farage is also quitting after he failed to win Thanet South, losing by nearly 2,800 votes to the Conservatives.
The Conservatives have taken 331 of the 650 seats available. However, when Sinn Fein's continued boycott of Westminster is taken into account, along with the four seats they current hold, 324 is enough for a practical majority. An overall turnout of 66% is expected, marginally up on the previous general election in 2010.
Shortly after the results of the exit polls were revealed, Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated in a live interview on the BBC that he would "eat his hat" if the predicted losses for the Liberal Democrats came true. The poll showed the Lib Dems losing 45 seats - in the end they lost 47. Lord Ashdown mentioned shortly after he made the statement that he had received through Twitter ten offers of hats if he didn't have one of his own.
For those of us not familiar with UK politics, what are the views of the Conservatives we should be concerned about (if any)? How will their viewpoints affect the world political stage and/or the technology world?
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:13PM
Well how big do you think Belgium is then? :)
Sorry for going into James May/“auto-correction” mode but in Europe (Great) Britain isn't that small, as far as I know (and it's an unfair comparison to begin with) there are not even any republics, okrugs, or oblasts in the European part of Russia (a federation) of the same individual size as Great Britain, or maybe you were thinking about Russan Federal districts which are larger combinations (I don't think any other country has anything similar to that additional Russian political/organizational level, Russia is huge). There are much bigger ones in Asian Russia but it's still not particularly meaningful to compare it. In the rest of Europe all the subdivisions on the province level are smaller and usually much smaller. However if you go down to the size of Scotland or Wales then there are plenty of roughly the same size all over Europe including in European Russia. Remember that Germany is a federation and Spain is a kingdom of several autonomous entities, everything in France is smaller (hah!), and so on.
The UK already is four countries divided into Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England [wikipedia.org] so that wouldn't be anything new on its own.
Anyway yes Salmond's answer is a non-answer and he knows it or he's being daft. The only ones that can fully understand Scotland's problems as well as advantages and strengths are those living in Scotland. Either that is adequately allowed for in the UK or it isn't and here we are: a lot of people think it isn't.
One interesting thing about all of this is that UKIP got more votes than SNP, While SNP is third largest in parliament UKIP is actually the third largest party in terms of voters. Imagine the outrage if they all moved to Scotland and dispersed themselves evenly for the next election :D
I wish Mock The Week was running now, I'd love to hear Dara Ó Briain and/or Ed Byrne and all the rest mocking the election (they could even Get Frankie Boyle back!), hopefully they'll be back in a month or so :3
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(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:38PM
Anyway yes Salmond's answer is a non-answer and he knows it or he's being daft.
No, he was using a metaphor. He was trying to explain that London is too far away from Scotland politically, and that Scotland is closer in terms of politics to continental Europe.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday May 10 2015, @04:42AM
Oh, I completely missed the point there (guess I'm the daft one), thank you for clarifying what he meant. At least this way the statement makes much more sense from his perspective on things.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))