Elections make me cynical...

I am sorry but having witnessed the release of the three main parties (and the Green Party's) election manifesto's and watched the leaders debate on ITV all I can say is, they will never listen to us.

The debate between the leaders, to be fair, did involve a certain amount of back and forth, most of which was between Brown and Cameron. Clegg will be reported to have won the debate but frankly, he just looked like the geeky kid who hadn't been asked to dance. He gave valid, good responses and did well to attack Cameron without chumming up to Brown, but Cameron just shrugged him off time and time again which perfectly showed how little he mattered. He is not going to Prime Minister and was only on the stage to appease people - they gave the baby their bottle, it just had no milk in it.

My main problem with the debate was not the debate itself, but everything that has and will surround it. For instance, the results of the debate are just ridiculously misleading...ITV instant results said that Nick Clegg got 46%, David Cameron got 26% and Gordon Brown got 20%. Now I am wondering what happened to the other 8% but that’s beside the point. The point is, as I said above, Nick Clegg is not going to be the next Prime Minister. Who ever took those polls will be horribly wrong.

Even in this ‘digital election’ era we cannot see the correct answer appear in any polls. The amazingly fun and addictive website Slapometer (which allows you to vote by slapping the three party leaders in the face during the debates) has even failed provide the correct answer. The final results on Slapometer for Debate One were Clegg 12%, Brown 38% and Cameron 50% (a number he almost certainly will not reach in the actual election). In this perfect and pure form of direct democracy Clegg is down as winner again! I am sorry but this just goes to show us the flaw in democracy. Just like these results were wrong, so were the many people commenting on #leadersdebate; the twitter link created so people could bitch about what was being said in the debates. They were not wrong in their opinions; they were just wrong that people cared.

One of the main things that have made me most cynical about this election is the increasing idea that social media will give voice to the people, it won't. The Labour manifesto even claimed that they would put bills online for public scrutiny. People shall scrutinise, they shall not listen. The perfect example was the much debated (everywhere except the House of Commons) Digital Economy Bill. Twitter ran rampant with debate about this, did they listen...nope, the Bill passed! And this evening Twitter saw much of the same activity...thousands of people rushing to comment on the debates...most of whom hated either Brown or Cameron and could not say a bad word about Lib Dems’ Mr. Clegg...sadly the world won't listen...he won't win.