swingers

This British election has my mind all in a tangle.
I don't really know how it works over there;
thought I did;
don't.

I thought, there are three candidates for Prime Minister; one will get the most votes (popular? or electoral college, like ours? ) -- and one candidate out of the three would win, based on votes.

But if you read this article from May 7 New York Times, entitled, "British Voters Swing to Tories, but Majority is in Doubt" you realize they've got a whole system there that's more complicated than ours -- apparently they count up how many votes for each of the parties -- Conservatives ("Tories"), Labour, and Liberal Democrats -- and then they somehow ARGUE about who is going to be Prime Minister.

I can't explain it because I don't understand it; read the article.

Also -- learned the voting isn't only in England -- it's in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. That's another thing I was unclear on -- those are all four separate countries, and yet they do stuff together -- think, the four together are "Great Britain."

Man, I'm ignorant. Gotta find out.

They only campaign for a month.
And -- no paid advertising on TV, just an amount of time set aside for each party to use, to present their message to the viewing public.
(This would seem to have the clear result of much less Influence on government by Big Money and Special Interests -- I'd bet insurance companies, for one example, have considerably less clout with their Parliament than they do with Our Congress.)

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."
--(Bob Dylan)

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