British election: a Eurovision Song Contest for poorly dressed white men
As British voters consider Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg, most will be voting to keep a party out, not to welcome one in. It’s rather like staying married to someone you hate just to stop them from going off and finding happiness with someone else.
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The only positive voting is likely to be for the fringe parties – or “the nutters” as most of us like to call them. There is a real possibility this time around that one or two seats could be won by either the neofascist British National Party (BNP) or the right-wing UK Independence party (UKIP), known mainly for its hatred of all things European and also for its occasional inability to spell the word “Independence” in its own literature.
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And of course there are always those who grab the whole event as an excuse to drum up business for themselves. One of the more inventive is a restaurant in Northern Ireland that recently sent an e-mail to its customers with the following promise:
“Whoever wins, you win for the rest of May
•Conservative win – 25 percent off food and drink
•Labour win – 30 percent off food and drink
•Liberal Democrat win – 40 percent off food and drink
•UKIP/Green Party/Other win – 50 percent off food and drink
•A hung Parliament – 33 percent off food and drink
•BNP win – 100 percent discount. You own the restaurant. We’re outta here!”
Whoever wins on Thursday (if anyone actually does), he will wish very quickly that he hadn’t. It’s a poisoned chalice. With our broken economy, broken society, and the MPs’ broken reputation, any new leader will have to use some kind of political superglue to start to mend it all – and where can you get that on a Thursday night?
The good news is that, if we do get a winner, he will no longer be burdened by trying to please Eurovision Song Contest voters, so he can afford to make the hard choices that will put Britain back on track.
Jasmine Birtles runs Moneymagpie.com, a website that shows you how to save money and make money day to day. Her latest book is “Beat the Banks!”
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