Final election round up: Smash the system in their stupid faces.

So, it's almost time. Not that it's going to really end for a while as the leader's of the main parties have stubbornly refused to accept that it's going to be a hung parliament and have been busy drawing 'red lines' all over the place, insulting all the others leaders & Scotland, meaning that a formal coalition is very unlikely, and even getting enough MPs to back a government will be tricky.

In the final weeks candidates have been doing and saying stupid things, leading to them being suspended. Yet they will still appear on the ballots. For example, the Lib Dem candidate challenging Jeremy Hunt has been suspended, meaning the NHA party (http://nhap.org/candidates/) could have a chance to cause an upset, but people will still be able to vote for him despite it really being a wasted vote. It's against the law to even tell people at the polling station that he's no longer standing, the ballot papers can't be altered.

FPTP obviously doesn't work anymore. When the views of 20% of the population are likely to be represented in parliament by 3 or 4 MPs, something has to change. Might as well make have an elected House of Lords while we're at it. Hell, why not get rid of Lordships and the like altogether, this is 2015 after all.
But we're stuck with it tomorrow, so vote for what you believe in, even if it's a lost cause. The closer we've got, the more people (Russell Brand, Owen Jones, etc) have started to say that you should vote for the party you'd rather protest against. Since when did we actively vote for what we want to protest against? Nonsense. Plus, if a sizeable chunk of votes move away from the smaller parties to Labour, it'll make it harder to force change as Labour will be able to point at the results and say 'If people really wanted change, why didn't they vote for it?' Read Armando Iannucci's excellent article: here. Then go read everything else he's written in the last few weeks, most of it is brilliant.

The Tories have been desperately trying to convince the country that a government with the backing of most MPs will be illegitimate unless it's theirs. Just plain bullshit. If you have the backing of a majority of MPs, you get to govern. It's how the system works.

There will be major cuts to welfare whoever is in charge, thanks to Labour voting through the Tory bill that legally limits the spending (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/05/revealed-coalition-plans-to-slash-welfare-for-sick-poor-young-and-disabled). The Tories haven't worked out where they'll make their cuts yet, but ask us to look at their track record of finding things to cut and trust that they'll be able to do it. I do trust their record. I trust that they'll screw over the most vunerable again. Read The Austerity Delusion by Paul Krugman

Labour keep talking about being best for 'hard working people'. What about those who can't work? The sick, the young, the old? Don't you care about them anymore?

Everyone seems to think that millions more apprentices are the answer to everything.Working for a year at £2.73 an hour doesn't sound like an answer to much to me. They will 'encourage' employers to pay a living wage, instead of just making the minimum wage the minimum that you can actually live on. £8/hour minimum wage by 2019 or 2020(depending on party)? The current living wage is £7.85, so £8 in 4 or 5 more years of rising living costs is just not good enough.

No surprise that the rental market is so screwed up when you realise that almost 1 in 4 MPs make money from it (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/06/number-of-mps-who-earn-from-renting-out-property-rises-by-a-third) Some are even renting out homes that were part subsidised by parliamentary expenses. I think I can see where to make an easy budget cut.

The one issue that affects all others is the environment, and it's been completely ignored. UKIP deny climate change, the 'greenest government ever' favours fracking over renewables and Labour just don't seem to give enough of a shit to commit to anything. More reading: here, George Monbiot article: here

Tomorrow, go vote. Vote for what you believe in. And then prepare to fight for those beliefs over the next 5 years because trying to change everything once every 5 years isn't enough, the pressure needs to be constant. Smash the system in their stupid faces.