The UK 2017 Pre-Election autopsy: Info on what to know when trying to Vote in the UK

The United Kingdom general election of 2017 is scheduled to take place on the 8th of June 2017, so yeah in a day or so. So what do you need to know in the lead up to it? Well I guess the why we are having it, who you can vote for, and heck lets cut the bull and admit something no one person or article is ever written without bias so proberbly a fair bit of my oppinion as well but I will try to at least hold this back till the end. I am sure that just about everyone has spouted a little golden nugget surrounding politics and you might ask why should you listen to me why should you take anything said on this blog with any weight, well I actually do have a qualification related to politics, and I also freely admit that I dont know everything, the whole thing is a complex mess and to a degree I believe the world of politics is intentionally this way what I am largly hoping to do here is simplify things a touch.

So why are we having an election now when it wasnt actually due until 7 May 2020? Well basically because the Prime Minister Theresa May called for a Snap election now, I am sure if asked she would give a whole pile of reasons for why but lets just cut through the rubbish and admit the truth of something here, no matter who is in power the only reason they would ever call for a snap election is because they either believe or have been led to believe by there advisors that if there was an election now they would win it, where as they are not as likly to win one latter. Should this have any bearing on how you vote? I am not sure on the one hand you do wonder why the election was called now but on the other hand if you thought you could easily do something now or struggle to do it later wouldnt you pick now, so surly its just common sense right?

So what are your options in the election voting wise, who can you go for well there are The Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Green Party, the SNP (Scottish National Party), Plaid Cymru, then there are also those who are standing as independents and other what would be considerd minor parties including the Christian Peoples Alliance, the Yorkshire Party, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, the British National Party, the Pirate Party , the English Democrats, the Women's Equality Party, the Social Democratic Party, the National Health Action Party and the Workers Revolutionary Part. Now it might sound like you as a member of the voting puplic have an absolutly huge variety of choice when it comes down to it but its more of a case of having the illusion of choice. The Conservative Party and the Labour Party have been the two biggest parties since 1922, and have supplied all Prime Ministers since 1935, realisitcally all we are ever likly to get in power is either one of of these two parties either on there own or as the core important part of a coalition (Like when we had with the Conseverative Liberal Democrats coalition). This is why you will hear people say things like a vote for anyone other than the Consservatives or Labour is a wasted vote as no one else will ever get in or people telling you that you should vote tactically.

So should you vote tactically? Well and I kind of hate to say this but I would have to say that yes you proberbly are best voting tactically, after all think of it this way if you really love the National Health Action Party and there policies and Manifestio (A Manifesto is basiclly a big document laying out what a party wants to do if it gets in to power) but you know not enough people will vote for them, that they have almost zero chance of ever getting in to power but you really for example hate the conservatives because of something they have said they are going to do, well then you might vote for Labour not because you love them but because you just hate the Conservatives and there policys more and know your best bet to try and keep them out is to vote for the only other party that has a reasonable chance of winning. Should you do this? Well it depends if you care more about supporting someone you believe in or if you care about trying to do whatever you can to make the next four years of your life as close to how you want it to be as you can.

So you might have heard the term issues raised, so if you dont know what are the sort of issues being raised in this election. Well to quickly sum them up the issues at hand are Brexit, hard soft or not at all, Terrorism and what to do about it, the Internet if and how it could be policied, social care, disability and the possibility of future Scottish Independance. The problem is what we often get from politicians is a lot of spin they try to say little bits of stuf, small little nuggets that people can get a hold of. The real truth is that proberbly 90% of the voting public dont really know what each party believes, a lot of this is because most people do not read all of the Manifestos, heck I like my polotics and the most I have really done is skimmed through the top 5 political parties manifestos. If you dont want to read piles and piles of manifestos I would recomend you skim read the ones of anyone you are considering voting for.

Ok I dont want to spend a whole bunch of time trying to persuade anyone to vote for any particular party, I would like people to read and read a lot and come up with the right choice for them, after all we all vote alone and we dont have to disclose who we have voted for if we dont want to. so if you want to go away right now and do that then I would be very happy, but well if you want to know a bit of what I think well I will have a quick rant below feel free to ignore that if you like.

I am going to be voting for Labour, I could give a hundred reasons but the most important reason is the fact that I feel the Conservatives will take far to much away from us the people, most importantly the NHS. As this is a blog though I think there is an important point I should raise about the Conservative manifesto. This manifesto proposes that there should be more government control and regulation of the internet, including forcing internet companies to restrict access to extremist and adult content, including pornography. For a start many rights groups and experts on radicalisation have already set in to this and essentially called it crap so I guess what I am going to say doesnt matter too much but lets stop and think about what this could all really mean. When you talk about goverments restricting access to the internet your talking about them blocking people from seeing things they dont want them to see and look where that leads it leads to the kinds of situations you have in North Korea where most of the population live in fear of a dictator monitoring them and who are largly ignorant when it comes to the truth. Yes they will push that they just want to catch members of ISIS and such but its a slippery slope, its a case of us the people giving up our freedom one step at a time. If you push oppinions out of the light you dont get rid of them you will just make an intelectual black market so it wont stop radicalisation but it will take us one step closer to being a facist society and I am not ready to bow down to either terrorists or a future Führera