Yay for viusal aids!

So after weeks of posturing, live TV debates and canvassing the UK has ended up with a hung Parliament. In all honesty this is nothing strange for a democratic country so all the ho-ha is slightly over dramatic (as is the picture I chose). However it seems that everyone knew this would be the outcome before we did.

The markets had speculated and prepared for it and the polls up to and including the exit poll were pointing to it as well. What will be interesting to see now is who will form a coalition with whom. You’d imagine that Labour and Lib Dem would form a coalition as the Lib Dems came about as a fork away from Labour. However some believe the Conservatives will be able to woo the Lib Dems into backing them. Personally I’m not sure, if anything the Lib Dems will be disappointed with their performance considering all the positive press Nick Clegg got after the first TV debate. If anything I predict that while we’ll get a coalition for a while it will likely lead to another General Election sooner rather than later.

It sounds strange to say this but I’m actually quite excited to see where this goes. What will be the major concern for the coalition if we get one. Will it be electoral reform in preparation for another election or will they continue to concentrate on the economy and sort that before moving forward with anything else? I’m hoping the latter as, right now, we need to make sure we come out of this recession before making plans and I’m hopeful that is the way this will go. It’ll also be interesting to see who does form a coalition and, if rumour is to be believed, will it be Labour and Lib Dem but only if Brown resigns? I doubt we’ll hear much if anything till after the weekend so for now we’ll just have to put up with the press making all sorts of claims especially the Murdoch lead press. In the end though I think any coalition will be fragile and we’ll end up going to the polls again.

My rights are non-conditional.

My right to life is non-conditional, ergo my right to free speech is
non-conditional.

Therefore, I can say and draw whatever I want about who ever I want, even if it
offends Muslims!

Hmm this is quite a tough one to respond and is quite topical at the moment. So please, anyone who reads my response, don’t take offence to my response or the question asked. In short I agree that our freedom of speech is non-conditional I don’t think that’s the issue here. What I believe to be the issue is the fact that there was no thought to the feelings of the Muslim community; this is all about respect to the Muslim religion (Islam).

Say a Muslim paper produced a cartoon mocking the Holocaust or September 11th bombings, what would happen? I can guess; there’d be racial beatings, the Americans would probably start saying we should bomb them or something and we’d be generally offended by it. Producing a cartoon of their prophet Muhammed linking him with terrorism (the cartoon apparantly depicited him with a bomb in his turban) is pretty much the same and I do think it’s trying to say all Muslims are terrorists even if its very subtle.

The outcry and protests by the Muslim community is, I think, justified as we have insulted their religion. Their reaction may be over the top and I don’t agree with all this flag burning etc. However as someone on one of the forums I frequent said “It’s not about imposing views, it’s about respecting peoples belief system.”

Overall I’m sick of religion in the sense that it’s caused more wars/atrocities than anything else and to be honest its getting boring. I think we really have to start respecting other peoples beliefs, views and attitudes and perhaps following what my parents always used to say to me ‘Think before you act!’ and let us be honest, the Danish paper didn’t. Yes a lot of what these protesters are doing are hypocritical e.g. saying that the cartoon will make people fear Islam and then they go off and burn a flag or two and tell us all our 9/11 is on its way. I’m just getting sick and tired of all of this, how about we all forget about religion and have a nice cup ‘o tea?