Election Madness

Here's an attempt to make sense of the seeming madness that happened last night and carries on today, it's a strange old result. This could well carry on for weeks before we're certain about what's going to happen but this is how it looks at the moment.

With only a few seats left to come in we have a hung parliament, no-one has enough seats to lead a majority government, but the Tory's have come closest. Now it's time for them all to work out who can put together the most stable government. Obviously, it was a good night for the Conservative's, but not nearly as good as they would have liked or perhaps even should have done. Within recent times they had over a 20% lead and yet they can't even win the election after 13 years in opposition and a massive financial crisis. Clearly people aren't over enthused about David Cameron and his party. Labour had a very bad night but they're still in with a big role in government which they might not have expected. Maybe the biggest news of the night was the very strange story of the Lib Dem's. They did appallingly compared to the high hopes that they had and everyone was expecting for them, yet they still have a lot of power in deciding the PM. So, who will work with who?

The easiest way for either Labour or Conservative to get power would be to woo Nick Clegg, if they can give him enough then they might be able to form a coalition or at least have a working majority with Lib Dem support. Brown has already said that he will give way on voting reform and that they agree on many areas including the speed of cuts. Cameron has made an offer on some areas but more importantly, he left out major Lib Dem demands, no budge on the EU, defence, the speed of cuts or voting reform.

So this is what I think will happen, let's see how much I get right over the next few weeks. David Cameron will be the next PM, he'll have a minority government that just has a confidence and supply agreement with Clegg. (That means that the Lib Dem's will vote with Tory's to get Cameron as PM and on budgets but won't guarantee any other support) Brown will resign and be replaced as leader by David Miliband.

This isn't what I hope happens, I like Brown, I think people greatly underestimate him and I was hoping for a Lib-Lab pact but it doesn't look like Lib Dem's did well enough to make it stable enough. I can only hope that the time in opposition makes Labour come back stronger and people will realise just what a disastrous mistake they made in voting for Tory austerity. I also wouldn't be at all surprised to see Cameron call a new general election before the end of 2011, by that time maybe people will have got bored of his slick salesman approach to governing with no real substance. Feel free to mock my opinion and give me yours :)

P.s. You've got love Jeremy Vine's numerous cool gadgets on the BBC.

101 Things To Do.

I'm going to save my super politics spectacular for tomorrow when the results are out and there'll be something of interest to say about it. I think it's plain to see where my loyalties lie though :) (If in any doubt see poster thatta way > and all previous posts)

I decided to write a list of stuff I want to get done before I turn 40, I'd already come up with a few ideas that me and a couple of people wanted to do but I saw someone else's list and decided to do a proper one with nice pictures. So here's the final product - My Bucket List.

It pretty much speaks for itself so there isn't much else to write, I really want to get all of those done. I've tried to make sure they're all possible so that I don't have any excuses. Everest was going to go on but I figured that was just past the realms of reality if I wanted to have a good career and all the other things on that list as well. Climbing Everest would take a bit too much dedication for me. The rest are still pretty tricky though, there's no easy passes so it should be fun :)

Obesity: A waddling time bomb.

No, I'm not going to abuse fat people, this is more about the general state of our country's health as more and more children and adults are becoming obese. Everyone complains when the NHS can't pay for the latest cancer drug, or they have to wait a few weeks for an operation, but why can't it afford these things? Because so much money has to be ploughed into schemes and treatments for people who have illnesses of their own making; smoking, excessive drinking, obesity, lack of exercise. No-ones perfect, very few live a completely healthy lifestyle, but when it starts affecting your health, surely then you know there's a problem.

There was something written on BBC not long ago by a specialist who looked at how much money it would actually cost to solve the problem. Obesity leads to a whole host of other problems which are costly and time-consuming work, time and money which could be used elsewhere. Just to treat the morbidly obese (which is around 2% of the population!) it would cost £9.1bn for the initial surgeries, followed by another £1.6bn over the next 10 years for the follow-up treatment. Even that doesn't include any cosmetic surgery to get rid of excess skin after weight loss or potential problems that could come up after. And then there's the other 60% of people who could do with losing weight because they're already overweight or obese. This problem has grown spectacularly and along with the ageing population is going to put a massive strain on health services over the next few decades. All these overweight people, without treatment, will take up time and money with the various illnesses that being overweight will lead to.

People need to stop talking about a future problem and admit that we have an epidemic already. We can't just focus on prevention, we blew our chance and now not only do we need prevention but we need a cure. There needs to be a  more organised system whereby GP's and other doctors have a clearly identifiable scheme that can help people lose weight and keep it off. They also need to look at which groups will most benefit from surgery and get it done where it would be cost efficient. It seems cold to keep talking about money, but its naive to pretend it's not a major factor when the NHS budget is already stretched.

If we want to stop the bullying of children and the later health problems they will get, we need to face up to this and come up with a serious solution as a country. Rant over.

Virtual Me

So, I've have returned to Manchester after an elongated stay home because of the fun of Sunday. While I was back something occurred to me, I'm more reliant on technology than I realised. I decided to leave my laptop at uni while I went home and also foolishly decided to leave my phone charger as I thought it would have enough charge left to do me until I got back. So for the past two days without a computer, phone or iPod (which made the train journey about 5 times longer) I've appreciated how much I need these things.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't been going mad without them, but after two days I was already wondering how many things I'd have missed. Without them I couldn't:

• Wake up in the morning. (My phone is my alarm)
• Organise meeting people without difficulty.
• Reply to various invites.
• Check the football scores. (A massive problem!)
• Check when I was supposed to be in university.
• Return calls, meaning I must have seemed pretty ignorant.
• Pass the time on boring journeys.

I've only had this damn laptop a few months and already its an important thing in my life which is inconvenient not to have around. And before you judge me for my reliance on technology, think about it, you're on a computer of some description where you spend enough time to bother reading my blog (not that I'm complaining!) and you probably have your phone within arm's reach.

Basically, we'd all be fucked on a desert island.

We are Blackpool, we are Blackpool, we are football kings!!

Wow. That was amazing, but scary as hell at the time. The Blackpool match today varied between cheering wildly, having my head in my hands and any time left over checking the Swansea score praying that they hadn't got a goal. It was all worth it though, the play-offs for the Premiership await, how the hell have Blackpool managed to pull this one off?

We finally got a full house for the match, 12,000 might not be much by normal championship standards but its an epic attendance for Blackpool and at the start with all the cards held up the stadium was pure tangerine.

But after the initial excitement the rest of the match was painfully tense, especially seeing as on the day the result might have been enough but we played pretty poorly. Not that I cared the slightest at the end, getting into sixth place was all that mattered. A huge cheer went round the stadium right near the end, everyone assumed it meant that Swansea had lost or drawn and joined in. I realised later that they hadn't actually finished, so we were lucky that they didn't get a last minute winner or we'd have been royally screwed. There was some frantic checking of phones I can tell you that!

It's been a weird season, Blackpool have been doing brilliantly for the most part, yet it was the first season in 5 where I didn't have a season ticket with being away at uni. Whenever I did go to watch we invariably lost, which almost resulted in my permanent banning from all games. Then we went on a horrible run around January which looked to finish our season but somehow recently its all come back together. My jinx lifted and we managed to sneak into 6th with one game to go.

This means another trip home next week to watch us against Forest, and then up to Nottingham on the Wednesday. All going to plan, Wembley here we come!! :)

P.s. In other football news, the perfect day continued, Chelsea won at Anfield which should hopefully keep the United scum away from the League title, and Preston lost 4-1, which was just a nice cherry on top for the whole day really.