Can you wait at least one more week? I'm out of the country this weekend and I don't want to miss the party:

On the first Saturday after Margaret Thatcher dies, Class War is calling a mass party to start at 6pm, in Trafalgar Square, scene of the most famous riot against her policies!

Whether or not you want to remenicse about the good old days of rioting against the poll tax, to toast old friends who fought Thatcherism, or just want to celebrate the death of the most reviled woman in Britain, we hope to see you there.

Bring your champagne, fireworks, party clothes and yourselves!

London Class War

Remember to check Is Thatcher dead yet? and pop one of these in the post when you hear confirmation (found via Allan Cavanagh):

Residents of Democracy Village, a protest camp in Parliament Square, were evicted in the early hours of this morning.

What is it with the Police doing this sort of thing in the middle of the night?

Original photo sourced from telegraph.co.uk

Just got back from doing my little bit for democracy (for today, anyway). I was pleasantly surprised to find a queue on my arrival and so I had a friendly little chat with two of my Hasidic Jew neighbours while we waited to cast our votes. I'm only mentioning their ethnicity because a few weeks ago one of the prospective Labour councillors came canvassing. During his sales pitch he asked me to vote tactically in the local election as the Greens and Liberals poll badly in this ward, while the Jewish population tend to vote to en masse to the right of centre. The fellows I talked to seemed keen on UKIP but didn't sound too impressed with the Conservatives. We spoke about Nigel Farage's plane crash and the riots in Greece, the three of us remarking that Britain might not be so far from a similar situation before heading to the booths.

I voted for the Liberal Democrats in the nationals despite this probably being a "wasted vote" as this borough is pretty much a safe seat for Labour. But as my MP is Diane Abbott I'd be fairly happy if she was reelected and so my vote goes a little way to shore up the popular vote for the Liberal Democrats.

In the local elections my vote went to two of the three Labour candidates, the gentleman who came a-canvassing and his female counterpart because I'm all about equality/special treatment for women. The last vote went to the only Green candidate because she's got such a delightful name - Precious Martini-Brown. Well, that and the Greens have done some good work here in the 7 or so years I've been living in Hackney.

The final vote was for the Mayor of Hackney. My first choice was for the Liberal Democrat candidate, second choice went to Monty Goldman, finally fulfilling a childhood wish to vote for the Communist Party.

As I left the polling station the queue was even longer, meaning it's likely I've lost the money I put on a bet of a low turnout a few months back. So a bad day for my wallet but hopefully a good day for democracy.

I'm trying to find a decent drinking game for tonight's festivities. So far I've found this one by Army of Dave:

Drinking One Finger:

• When a seat’s result is announced. Now, there are – I think – 649 seats so this might be A Very Bad Thing. Alternatively, you can drink a finger whenever a seat changes from one party to another. Mind you – the way things are going – this could also be dangerous.  
• “Thirteen Years”
• “The BNP are twats”
• “Shiny”
• “Michael Gove must be sad that his work experience placement is over”.
• “Hopes & Fears”
• Any other album by Keane is mentioned.
• George Osbourne is allowed to say ANYTHING AT ALL.
• Jeremy Vine’s big shiny machine does something it’s not meant to do. (That is NOT a euphemism)
• Anyone accidentally calls Nick Clegg “Nick Griffin” (Though, if it’s someone from a Murdoch publication, this may be deliberate)
• Anyone accidentally calls Nick Griffin “a massive c*nt”. Sorry. I don’t mean ‘accidentally’.
• An argument breaks out (Extra finger if there is actual violence)
• You utter the phrase “What the fuck’s he/she doing on this?” or “I thought he/she was dead.”
• You laugh at something the Monster Raving Loony Party or similar do or say (You also need to go and take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror)
• You involuntarily cringe at anything.
• You can lip read someone saying a swearword behind the Returning Officer when the vote doesn’t go their way.
• Sleep deprivation causes David Dimbleby to announce “I’M DAVID BUMBLEBEE!” and attempt to drink nectar from Michael Portillo’s face.

There's also this contribution from Danger Man on Cooked & Bombed:

• 1 sip of alcohol for every Lib Dem gain.
• 1 sip for every reference to 1974 or 1983.
• 1 big glug for every 'Portillo moment'.
• 1 shot of tequila when Jeremy Vine is on.
• A bottle of scotch if LfBarfe wins his seat.
• Down a case of 1945 Chateau Rothschild if the Libs win a majority.

I'm going to try and compile bits of the above and other ideas into a little system we might use at our shindig tonight.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

A quick, dirty and downright lazy response to the front page of tomorrow's Sun.

Edit: thanks for the retweets guys! Now I wish I'd made a better funny. If anyone is interested in the font, I used Arial Black and slightly reduced the width. Now to try and think of something funnier involving DOPE/NOPE/etc.

Edit#2: Star Wars themed. And now bed.

I have voted Liberal Democrats at the national level in every election I've been eligible to take part in. Local votes have been split between the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats, with no real thought behind them. I've voted once for Labour when it came down to the London Mayoral elections as despite some reservations with him (particularly when he rejoined Labour), I thought Ken Livingstone was the best man for the job - he's also on my list of Fantasy Dinner Party Guests.

In case that doesn't make it clear, I'm a massive lefty liberal.

Yet I now want the Conservatives to "win" the 2010 General Election.

Before people start lighting the torches and looking for the nearest collection of pitchforks, I should clarify that. Ideally I'd like the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party to form a tag-team government, work out the best of each of their policies and implement them after finding a huge wodge of cash down the back of the sofa in Number 10.

Obviously this will never happen, so I'm having to look for more likely outcomes instead.

The reality of the situation is that the UK is a bit shafted. The purse is empty and we're going to be facing severe cuts across the public sector and a rise in taxation. If we're to believe Mervyn King and various other economists and civil servants, the measures required to sort out Britain's budget deficit will be so severe that whoever has to do them will suffer such a backlash that they'll be out of power for a generation. I don't want that to happen to the Liberal Democrats or even Labour, so I guess that means I want the Tories to "win".

So for me, the least worst outcome is:

• The Conservatives win the popular vote, gaining seats from Labour and losing some to the Liberal Democrats and fail to pull off their planned coup.
• The Liberal Democrats come second in the popular vote, gaining seats from Labour and the Conservatives. They'll still end up with ~100 at the most, highlighting the problems with FPTP and somehow manage to demand constitutional reform involving fixed term Parliaments and a Proportional Representation system (preferably something like mixed member proportional representation).
• Labour come third in the popular vote but manage to hold onto enough seats to thwart a Conservative majority.
• The Green Party gets its first MP.

Whoever wins this election loses out overall - and that's why I want the Conservatives to just scrape through. Just don't remind me of this once the BBC is neutered so Murdoch's empire can take over, the NHS is ripped apart, tax-funded faith schools spread like the plague, the welfare safety net is removed and anything that hasn't already been privatised is flogged to one of Cameron's mates for a knockdown price and then has to be subsidised anyway.

Does it show that I'm a pessimist?

I'd have preferred to have put these on my tumblr but tumblr doesn't like more than 8 uploads in one post and I'm too anal to spread them across entries. They really ought to improve their multiple upload process, it's far too Web 1.0.

None of these are my work, they were all found in the delightful UK LF thread on SomethingAwful. It's currently titled "Helicopters: I Met Some Dead Gay Young Boys In The Bath" in response to all the shitty anecdotes brought up in the Leaders' Debates.