Another year, another election, and another overwhelming feeling that I’ve completely wasted my time making the effort to vote, despite the staff at the polling station being unnaturally cheerful. At the time of writing, the whole thing’s an obnoxiously confusing toss-up — the latest details can be seen over at the BBC News site — with the Conservatives having the most votes overall, but due to our extremely bizarre and convoluted system, that’s not actually enough to win overall and seize power; right now, it’s squabbling and power games as the big three — or, should I say, the big two and the little yellow one that wishes it was big — plot against each other and discuss alliances. Typical politics, really.

What annoys me is the short-sightedness and general lack of intelligence that the voting majority seems to display; my fleeting faith in my country has been once again dashed against the rocks as the familiar voting tropes emerge once again. The depressingly droll predictability as Ireland primarily votes for the Irish party and much of Wales votes for the Welsh party, Scotland seem to have their heads on straight with a remarkable amount of yellow on the map (though it counts for little due to few constituencies) and — of course — there’s a fair chunk of support for the Scottish party. I’m not even going to fault Ireland, Wales and Scotland for voting for their own parties, but it seems like in the end results, it’s missing the big picture; that being the mouth-breathing general public of England, which makes the vast majority of the overall result for UK elections.

And then we see the tedium of voting tropes: There’s the “stuck in their ways” short-sighted toolboxes who blindly vote for the same party year after year — whether it’s red, blue, yellow, or another — with no regard to situation and policies on the table. There’s the kind of people who voted Labour the last time because the Conservatives fucked up before, and consequently voted Conservatives this year because Labour fucked up before; the short-sighted flip-flopping between the two, I think, accounts for a depressing amount of the final result. I feel foolish for even thinking that the Liberal Democrats — the little party that could — would actually have a chance for once, after the general public are largely disillusioned with the monumental fuck-ups of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, though apparently we as a people are unable to look back more than a few years, and thus forget just how much of a colossal mess the Conservative Party have made in the past, and their unashamed favour towards the rich and powerful elite minority. Still, even despite my dislike for the Tories, Gordon Brown isn’t exactly someone I’d trust to watch my back while I was sleeping in a knife factory, if you know what I mean.

Now, I’m not saying that the Lib Dems are a shining jewel of democracy and the last best hope for civilization, able to stop both the impending cyborg apocalypse and the underground ninja rebellion, but if they had managed to get in, it’d show both that the voting public are capable of remembering further back than about two years, and that there’s a chance that future elections would have a chance of more than a toss-up between the lesser of two evils, being that the two major parties are both deeply flawed in their own ways — it doesn’t help that New Labour are almost as right-wing as the Tories these days. More importantly, I think, Nick Clegg is likely the only one of the big three who has any vested interest in pushing forward proportional representation, something I support whole-heartedly over the ridiculous system we have in place today. I can’t speak for all voters, but I feel it’s likely many supporters of the Lib Dems this year are in the same shoes as myself — choosing the third option, because both of the “main” two seem like poor choices at best, and because it’s the only hope for anything even resembling left-wing.

Final thoughts, though: It pleases me to see that both the UK Independence Party and the British National Party — better known as idiots for the former and fascists for the latter — won a grand total of zero seats in parliament, while the adorably quixotic Green Party won what I believe is their first ever seat, perhaps proof that sheer determination and persistence do eventually pay off. Still, once again Britain does not fail to disappoint, and whatever the results of the political wrangling and backstabbing alliances, we’re sure to see another five years of poor leadership and unbalanced farce politics. Business as usual, I suppose; but at least the BNP didn’t win any seats, so there is still some small hope for the country.

I think @sp4nner sums it up better than I ever could, though: “Britain you stupid fucking cunts. All you had to do was not vote Cameron, and what did you fucking do? Also, who the fuck votes BNP?! :C”

Edit @ 6:20pm: Why is our voting system so ridiculous? I think this Twitter post from @hang_em sums it up nicely: “It took 35,021 votes to elect each Conservative MP; 33,338 for each Labour, and 119,397 to elect each Lib Dem MP.” Now look me in the eye and tell me our political system isn’t a farce.