{"id":1548,"date":"2007-05-03T07:37:54","date_gmt":"2007-05-03T07:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/05\/03\/uk-local-elections-today\/"},"modified":"2007-05-03T18:15:41","modified_gmt":"2007-05-03T18:15:41","slug":"uk-local-elections-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/05\/uk-local-elections-today\/","title":{"rendered":"UK local elections today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please note: LOCAL<\/a>. Pissed off with Tony Blair? Think David Cameron’s a nob? Don’t like the way the Lib Dems got rid of Charles Kennedy? Against the Iraq war? Fine. Don’t take it out on your local councillors – unless they deserve it.<\/p>\n

For non-Brits, you may have missed the whole “the United Kingdom could come to an end” scare story that’s been one of the major space-fillers for journos in the run-up to this election – because it looks like the Scottish National Party may become the largest in the Scottish Parliament, which could lead to an end of the Union, a little bit over 300 years after Scotland and England became (legally) as one.<\/p>\n

A scare story is all it is. There’s no way the SNP will be able to get a Scottish “independence” referendum bill through the parliament, and it’s highly doubtful the Scottish people would be silly enough to vote for it even if they did – not even all supporters of the SNP are after full “independence”, after all.<\/p>\n

Still, it makes for nice “what if?” type articles – some based on a Mel Gibson-style<\/a> view of the land of Sir Walter Scott, others a little more objective<\/a>, some comparing it to local issues<\/a>, yet others blatantly party political<\/a>, and others making the case for maintaining the Union<\/a> – something increasing numbers of English people are, apparently, not overly keen on what with the perceived over-representation of Scottish MPs in Westminster, tales of \u00c2\u00a310 billion per year subsidies for the land north of the border, etc. etc.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’d be quite happy with a UK-wide referendum on independence – not Scottish, though: for Northern Ireland. A bloody chain around our ankle for far too long, that one – and anywhere about to be run via a power-share between a raving psycho<\/a> and a known terrorist<\/a> sounds to me like the sort of place it’s best to have very little to do with. Scotland, on the other hand, is great – it may be my Scottish ancestry (my great-gandmother being a Colquhoun<\/a>, and great-grandfather a Kirkpatrick<\/a>), but haggis and good single malt remain two of my favourite things. It’d be a shame if they went independent, but meh. The joy of the EU is that it’d probably mean that I’d be able to get whisky cheaper here in the south…<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> From the comments, this strikes me as the best election day ever<\/a>. I am quite insanely envious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please note: LOCAL. Pissed off with Tony Blair? Think David Cameron’s a nob? Don’t like the way the Lib Dems got rid of Charles Kennedy? Against the Iraq war? Fine. Don’t take it out on your local councillors – unless … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}