That's bloody stunning, and a little bit scary when you look at enough pictures of it. It's also quite amusing how the entire country has come to complete standstill panic about it - anything that goes wrong today can and will be blamed on the big ash cloud of doom. My money for the blame is on the aliens, and its about bloody time they turned up.
And speaking of portents of doom, today is a historical day for Britain. For the first time, the leaders of the political parties will take part in a live-TV debate, in order to sway voters for the election. There has been a LOT of ho-hah over this, mainly beause its so... American. This is undeniable, its an American thing. We're being given three blokes on a pedestal to choose for leader of our country. The problem here is that we're not meant to be choosing a bloke. We're meant to be choosing a party, a cabinet, a government. At least, thats what we're supposed to be doing. The fact of the matter is the role of Prime Minister has been becoming increasingly Presidential since the Thatcher years, and we might as well roll along with it.
Don't worry, I'll keep this brief. I'm sure everyone has had enough of these three in the past few weeks anyway.
So is a live-TV debate a good idea? Well, yeah it is. The entire way in which we look at these three men is probably going to change quite a bit after this, and some are predicting that the election will be won on their performances. Brown has to make sure not to loose his temper and make a fool of himself, Cameron has to not seem like a smug posh git, and Clegg... well actually it can't really go badly for Clegg either way. He stands to win most out of this debate, if only because attention for the Liberal Democrats can only go up, and frankly he's not going to win the election anyway. Sorry Cleggy.
The sad thing is that while I and many others will be watching, this isn't going to change the general apathy across the country for this election. There is no golden choice here, its a dire situation of choose your own preference of less-evil. Democracy in action eh?
So at the end of the day, for Britain in 2010 we have these three outcomes:
- We get Cameron, and we don't like him.
- We keep Brown, and we still don't like him.
- We get Clegg, and the ash cloud comes back with the aliens and enslaves us all.
I'd like to be proved wrong, (and in the case of Clegg, right. Just so I can say I told you so.) but this is pretty much the status quo for British politics at the moment. Maybe I'm still pissed off about the expenses and the digital economy bill and all the other shining examples of duty our elected have shown to their voters, but I don't see a government that does what its supposed to coming round the corner.
