European elections
Here the elections are coming up. How is it in other countries? Any idea who to vote for? >_< I'm still waiting for European political parties rather than just national ones aspiring to take a seat at the EU table (apparently that looks great on their resumes >_<) Voting on June 4th.

I will be voting on 4 June for the North West Region the results of which will be chosen apparently by the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation. Currently we nine Euro MPs in our area which are a representative mix of the UK parliamentary parties (Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats) plus an independent Euro MP and a UKIP joker. This time round there is one independent candidate and the following parties have candidates: British National (racists... or should I say, nationalists) Christian Party (pro-life, homophobic, euro sceptics) Conservative English Democrats (another UK independence party with connections to the BNP) Green Jury Team (independent candidates chosen by text messages from the public) Labour Liberal Democrat Pro-Democracy: Libertas.eu (affiliated to the European-wide Libertas party) Socialist Labour (more left-wing than Labour) NO2EU (a motley alliance of left-wing parties) UK Independence (the largest nationlist movement in the UK) The pathetic NO2EU party is fielding Roger Bannister who is famous for breaking the four-minute mile at the Iffley running track in Oxford in 1954. He's 80 years old so goodness knows what good he will do. I shall be running a mile away from his party.

I get to vote and I have absolutely zero idea about any of it. Hmmmm I'll have to either brush up a bit, follow DG or abstain.

There's these websites up about it, like the ones with the Waterschap elections, we should give those a go.

Yeah, I think I'll do that. It's kinda sad though, that I have to base my vote on a little political quiz. Not that I have time or feel like browsing through all the websites etc. >_< Yeah, I saw ads of No to EU and of Libertas.eu. I'm pretty sure I won't vote for the first and probably won't vote for the latter either. I don't like their way of advertizing.

Well, I use them to get some idea, but then check up my more likely options to see if there's not something truly dreadful hidden. Hey, this one is available in English. http://www.kieskompas.nl/ Have fun. :) And for Dutch readers, this one has a whole list of options further down. I haven't checked them all, but possibly some have European counterparts. http://www.uheefthetvoorhetzeggen.nl/op_wie_kunt_u_stemmen/

Oh, thankee very mug. I'll try and do some researching this weekend.

Well, I now know who I'll vote for. Has anyone ever heard of the 'New Liberal Party' by the way?

No, is anything new in politics?

Well, apparently I switched political preferences. Which is probably because the Chrisitan party is so darned weak and have horribly quaint points in their platform. There are a few Europe-wide parties now though. The Liberal Democratic Party is one of them.

I'd prefer to vote for some EU-wide party instead of or our local parties which end up in voting blocks with all sorts of characters. Haven't looked at anything at all yet. Don't vote for the christian parties, they're bound to end up alongside the most rabid anti-gay and anti-abortion people the EU can scrape together, even if they themselves have seen the light. Heck, CU and SGP work together in this case and end up in the ID faction http://indemgroup.org/ VVD and D66 end up together in the ALDE faction http://www.alde.eu/ Apparently there's only a limited number of factions http://www.europarl.europa.eu/groups/default_nl.htm anyway. I kinda knew this, but the reality of it is a bit confusing at times.

Well, out of principle I would never vote for the SGP (though I think they have several great common sensical points (as long as they don't start going on about gays and whatever) compared to a lot of other parties), but I'd expected more of the CDA. Their platform for this election isn't worth the amount of space it uses though. It's a lot of sentences to cover up that basically they have no points whatsoever.