Good morning! 2am today. BED ERROR.

Actually, I have a marginally good reason for it this time – I was waiting up to see if there was a response from a PR representative for an article I was writing. This is something I’ve not had to do before. I probably didn’t need to wait up quite so late as I did (and play a bit of Game Room) but, well what are you going to do? (The PR rep did respond in the end, incidentally.)

So… what to talk about this time? How about the election, seeing as how it’s on everyone’s lips and Twitter feeds at the moment. Unless you’re not British, in which case you probably couldn’t give a damn what feckless idiot steps up to the plate to run our country further into the ground.

It’s going to be a strange election this time around. The government we’ve had in for the last God-knows-how long (“Labour”, for the non-British readers out there, a party traditionally associated with socialism but which has seen something of a drift towards the middle as time has gone on) has disillusioned rather a lot of people. The fact our leader is one of the most uncharismatic, doublespeak-speaking arses in British politics at the moment (not to mention the fact that we didn’t elect him) has, amongst other things, pissed off a lot of people who are ready for a change.

But the alternatives… we have the Conservative party (traditionally the “other side” to Labour, but which has again drifted rather towards the middle as time has passed) fronted by Captain Middle Class, also known as David Cameron. To give him credit where it’s due, Cameron is a better public speaker than Gordon Brown, but he is unashamedly and completely middle-class which I can’t help feeling is going to count against him. While there are a lot of middle-class people in this country, there are also a lot of working class people who think he’s nothing but a posh git. Hell, there are plenty of middle-class people who think he’s a posh git, too. Smarmy, overly-Photoshopped advertising campaigns haven’t helped, either.

Then there’s the Liberal Democrats, aka “the ones that never get in”. Traditionally, people have voted LibDem when they don’t like the other two. There’s going to be a lot of that this time around, with Labour having disillusioned a lot of people with the failures of the last thirteen years and the Conservatives alienating entire socioeconomic groups by being incredibly white and middle class. It, sadly, wouldn’t be surprising to see more radical parties like the BNP (aka “the racist ones”) get more of a foothold in Parliament.

Of course, I’m stating all this without any great understanding of the whole proceedings. This is just my opinion. But early buzz seems to suggest that we may well end up with a “hung Parliament” this time around, with no party holding a clear majority. I have no idea what that means for the country. It might actually make this election interesting for once, though.

Pity none of our politicians have the charisma of Obama. Whatever you may think of the President’s policies, you can’t argue with the fact that the man knows how to speak to a crowd.