Friday, May 06, 2005

The only thing that could get me blogging again...

... another election. What is it with me and elections? I sit glued to my computer, watching as the results come in one constituency at a time. At least twenty times a night, I update my estimates of each party's final seat tally. Indian elections, that's natural. American elections, that's reasonable given that I'm currently in Illinois. But British elections? The actions of the Prime Minister are unlikely to have a huge impact on me in the near future. Still, I reload the results page every half hour, not trusting the auto-refresh that runs every two minutes. The BBC's fantastic online election coverage - much better than that of any American network during the presidential elections here - completely destroyed any resolutions I made about uninterrupted study.

Anyway, congratulations to Tony Blair, though the sharply reduced Labour majority might indicate that he won't serve a full term. The Conservatives did fairly well, gaining over 30 seats for a total of 197. The commentators who kept predicting 209 Tory seats must have been smoking something; it seemed fairly clear after the first couple of hours that they'd be lucky to reach 200. The big surprise of the night was the Lib Dem haul; they did much better than expected, winning a total of 62 seats.

Ordinarily I wouldn't mind wasting an election night, but this is a bad time. I have a Complexity exam tomorrow, and really should have been studying. (For that matter, I shouldn't be blogging now, but I can't help myself.) This whole week has been kind of crazy; more on that later, though. There've been times I've itched to post about something, but I just haven't had the time. After tomorrow's exam, I should have a short breathing spell, so expect a couple of posts then.

We now return to the PCP theorem.

3 comments:

m. said...

it was reassuring to see the anti war demonstrations in uk and the honest criticism of blair's policies during the war... what happened to all that? what message does blairs re-election send about respect for human rights??
if you ask me, the world was let down once when bush was re elected, this is the second time.

Nitish said...

The Iraq issue actually affected the results significantly. A lot of the Labour votes were for Gordon Brown, not Blair. The preferred outcome for many traditional Labour supporters was a significantly reduced Labour majority, with Blair resigning to make way for Brown. At this point, it looks like they'll get what they wanted; Blair seems to have been punished for his handling of Iraq.

The Tobacconist said...

you shd've watched this televised debate they had before the elections. The audience tore Blair apart.
Everyone knew he wasn't going to do well in the end. I think it is pretty much similar to the situation here. The alternative just ain't good enough. I still respect Blair more than I do our man here.
I guess it is good in a way. Lets see if he can pop another kid while he is at it. Maybe go for a record or something. :)