at time of writing, the election votes are still being tallied. i finally voted, for the first time ever! although the experience was not exactly life-changing, it was still exciting to experience being part of a democracy.

(hmm... i was a bit confused with the voting - 2 votes were made, one for the MP of Cambridge, and a "Parlimentary" one, with four names but not Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy, etc...)

i admit it is a bit dated now, but i checked out this site, recommended by Geoff and my results were:

	Labour 24
Conservative -6
	Liberal Democrat 27
UKIP -18
	Green 21

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

incidentally, according to the times online, although half of the people in this survey said that they expected to be told to vote Labour or Conservative, the results gave only 12 percent recommendations for Labour, 11 percent for Conservative and a whopping 43 percent for Lib Dems. so, are the questions asked merely biased? or are people's perceptions of their alignment with their respective parties incorrect? there are so many different policies that each party need to consider and i would guess that more often than not, a voter will not be able to find the party which matches perfectly with his/her ideal. just a few examples here where people found that they were not thinking what they thought their party was thinking.

another interesting thing to note is the political orientation of each party, which you can check out at Political Compass - the Labour party started out on the left but has now since joined the ranks of the Conservatives on the right.

here, the more to the right you are, the more liberal your economic policies are... there is also another scale which judges social policies. taking this quiz, i have found my self to be in the center on economic policies, and much more liberal in social policies, putting me squarely between the Greens and Lib Dems. to look at the different policies in detail, check this out or FT's rundown.

never thought UK politics would be so fascinating huh? neither did i...*

*okok, i promise not to bore people about more politics next time!

Update: Liberal Democrats take over Cambridge! David Howarth 44% Anne Campbell 34%