Despite getting off to a bad/poor start (in listening in to the United Kingdom's much-anticipated General Election results pour in last Friday, December 12th (midday on) New Zealand time)...
...by hook or by crook I somehow-or-other managed to stumble upon arguably *the TV channel to watch...as the historic results increased from a mere trickle to a steady stream to a raging torrent...
...and Britons (whether English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish) watched in a mixture of joy and jubilation through to stunned bemusement and amazement through to absolute horror and dismay...
...as Britain's governing Conservative Party romped home to an unexpected, all but unprecedented (**English/Welsh) landslide, utterly routing the Labour Party - and from its staunchest strongholds - in the process...
*I.e. Sky News LIVE (c/o the ****ubiquitous world wide web)...
**Whilst the Brexit-abhorring ***Scottish National Party themselves stormed home in their home patch, and in Northern Ireland, a plague-on-both-your-houses sentiment gave a slap-in-the-face to both (pro-Brexit) Ulster Unionists and (anti-Brexit) Irish Nationalists alike...
***Ironically those increasingly urging - for perfectly understandable reasons - a transformation of the United Kingdom's first-past-the-post electoral system to one more fully representative of the proportion of the vote garnered by each and every (at least significant) political party running in the elections, beheld a very mixed result insofar as how far this particular claim could be sustained...
...for yes, the Conservatives scooped up 365 (=6/11; = 54% of) *****seats, though obtaining just 43.6% of the vote...
the Labour Party managed ******only 203-odd (4/13; = ?32?% of) seats, while gaining 32.2% of the vote...
the SNP gained 48 (7.5% of) seats, though garnering just 3.9% of total votes (cast nationwide)...
whilst the Liberal Democrats - an even bigger loser than Labour - got just 11 (= 1.66% of) seats, while receiving 11% of the vote...-which ought to have delivered the 'LibDems' a whopping 72 seats!
UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party) - and its tiny offshoot - received 2.8% of the vote, though obtained no seats at all...- whereas under *******MMP/STV etc, would've gotten 17 electorates.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point...
****Whilst reviewing this word's meaning, wouldn't it be only too appropriate that, for the first time I can ever recollect, I (just now) stumble upon the word 'Tynwald'...meaning? 'The parliament of the Isle of Man', according to my ever trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary...
I noticed upon Election Night that this was (part of) an electorate retained by the Conservative Party, so obviously it retains only partial sovereignty (like Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland)...
Evidently, according to an 'ole gardening customer - herself a writer/author of no mean repute - said isle's parliament is full of independents, a 'status' attributed to Yours Truly upon his own rather unsuccessful attempt at becoming a member of Aotearoa-New Zealand's own House of Representatives (back in 2008), though I did get a 'nice number' of votes, i.e. 222 (.6% of the total).
*****Or, in the British context, perhaps 'constituencies' is the more apposite word.
******Curiously almost exactly their actual percentage of the overall votes!
*******Shorthand (respectively) for Mixed Member Proportional and Single Transferable Vote, two proportionally-determined electoral systems used (respectively) by God's Own/Godzone (i.e. New Zealand) and Oz (Australia), among numerous others (such nations) no doubt...
********As an ardent Brexit-supporter myself, I nevertheless in all honesty would have to concede that Brexit-supporting parties (i.e. the Conservatives, UKIP, its tiny offshoot - ?Deliver Brexit? - and the 'DUP', i.e. the Democratic Unionists of Northern Ireland) only garnered 46.5/47.5% or so of the total vote, whereas anti-Brexit/Brexit-wary parties such as the Scottish Nationalists, Liberal Democrats and Green Party (and Sinn Fein) through to Labour, obtained around 52.5/53.5% of total votes cast...
...any ambiguity (on my part) being due to the large number (and exceedingly wide variety!) of 'Other parties' whose votes altogether came to about 1-2% of all those cast throughout the United Kingdom...and whose relative positions upon the same (Brexit) doubtless straddled the entire continuum of possibilities...
But then one could conceivably argue - and many, including the writer, long has - that Britons already long since had delivered their own verdict upon that particular matter...and thus and so a Brexit-delivering Government, as has - apparently - just been voted in bigtime, is 'just what the good doctor ordered'...
Part Two: "The Ayes have it, the ayes have it!" - "the Noes have it, the noes have it!"...I mean, John Bercow has it...and has he what!
...by hook or by crook I somehow-or-other managed to stumble upon arguably *the TV channel to watch...as the historic results increased from a mere trickle to a steady stream to a raging torrent...
...and Britons (whether English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish) watched in a mixture of joy and jubilation through to stunned bemusement and amazement through to absolute horror and dismay...
...as Britain's governing Conservative Party romped home to an unexpected, all but unprecedented (**English/Welsh) landslide, utterly routing the Labour Party - and from its staunchest strongholds - in the process...
*I.e. Sky News LIVE (c/o the ****ubiquitous world wide web)...
**Whilst the Brexit-abhorring ***Scottish National Party themselves stormed home in their home patch, and in Northern Ireland, a plague-on-both-your-houses sentiment gave a slap-in-the-face to both (pro-Brexit) Ulster Unionists and (anti-Brexit) Irish Nationalists alike...
***Ironically those increasingly urging - for perfectly understandable reasons - a transformation of the United Kingdom's first-past-the-post electoral system to one more fully representative of the proportion of the vote garnered by each and every (at least significant) political party running in the elections, beheld a very mixed result insofar as how far this particular claim could be sustained...
...for yes, the Conservatives scooped up 365 (=6/11; = 54% of) *****seats, though obtaining just 43.6% of the vote...
the Labour Party managed ******only 203-odd (4/13; = ?32?% of) seats, while gaining 32.2% of the vote...
the SNP gained 48 (7.5% of) seats, though garnering just 3.9% of total votes (cast nationwide)...
whilst the Liberal Democrats - an even bigger loser than Labour - got just 11 (= 1.66% of) seats, while receiving 11% of the vote...-which ought to have delivered the 'LibDems' a whopping 72 seats!
UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party) - and its tiny offshoot - received 2.8% of the vote, though obtained no seats at all...- whereas under *******MMP/STV etc, would've gotten 17 electorates.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point...
****Whilst reviewing this word's meaning, wouldn't it be only too appropriate that, for the first time I can ever recollect, I (just now) stumble upon the word 'Tynwald'...meaning? 'The parliament of the Isle of Man', according to my ever trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary...
I noticed upon Election Night that this was (part of) an electorate retained by the Conservative Party, so obviously it retains only partial sovereignty (like Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland)...
Evidently, according to an 'ole gardening customer - herself a writer/author of no mean repute - said isle's parliament is full of independents, a 'status' attributed to Yours Truly upon his own rather unsuccessful attempt at becoming a member of Aotearoa-New Zealand's own House of Representatives (back in 2008), though I did get a 'nice number' of votes, i.e. 222 (.6% of the total).
*****Or, in the British context, perhaps 'constituencies' is the more apposite word.
******Curiously almost exactly their actual percentage of the overall votes!
*******Shorthand (respectively) for Mixed Member Proportional and Single Transferable Vote, two proportionally-determined electoral systems used (respectively) by God's Own/Godzone (i.e. New Zealand) and Oz (Australia), among numerous others (such nations) no doubt...
********As an ardent Brexit-supporter myself, I nevertheless in all honesty would have to concede that Brexit-supporting parties (i.e. the Conservatives, UKIP, its tiny offshoot - ?Deliver Brexit? - and the 'DUP', i.e. the Democratic Unionists of Northern Ireland) only garnered 46.5/47.5% or so of the total vote, whereas anti-Brexit/Brexit-wary parties such as the Scottish Nationalists, Liberal Democrats and Green Party (and Sinn Fein) through to Labour, obtained around 52.5/53.5% of total votes cast...
...any ambiguity (on my part) being due to the large number (and exceedingly wide variety!) of 'Other parties' whose votes altogether came to about 1-2% of all those cast throughout the United Kingdom...and whose relative positions upon the same (Brexit) doubtless straddled the entire continuum of possibilities...
But then one could conceivably argue - and many, including the writer, long has - that Britons already long since had delivered their own verdict upon that particular matter...and thus and so a Brexit-delivering Government, as has - apparently - just been voted in bigtime, is 'just what the good doctor ordered'...
Part Two: "The Ayes have it, the ayes have it!" - "the Noes have it, the noes have it!"...I mean, John Bercow has it...and has he what!
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