Thanks to clayboy (Doug Chaplin) for the link to this quiz. In the light of his recent past attacks on the Liberal Democrats I was surprised to see that he came out as a recommended Lib Dem voter. I was less surprised to find the same for myself. The following are my results as copied from their site:
Take the Who Should You Vote For? England quiz
You expected: LIB
Your recommendation: Liberal Democrat
Click here for more details about these results
Update 2: Solved the formatting problem, I think, by replacing the problematic HTML with an image.
That doesn’t seem to show up properly in my browser, Peter. Each block is about 20 cm tall!
Apologies for the formatting problem. I am trying to work on it, but don’t have time now until this evening. My results should show up OK with this link.
I fixed the formatting problem by replacing the HTML table with part of a screenshot from the linked site.
Perhaps there are some tech wizards out there who can help with the problem. The horizontal bars in the tables were supposed to be made up by stretching images originally 1 pixel wide and 15 pixels high, with something like <img … width=”230″ height=”15″> for the first bar (with “46” beside it). What happened when viewed in context in my blog (same result in Firefox, Chrome and IE) was that the image was stretched to 230 pixels wide and probably 15×230 pixels high. But the display was OK in the Google Reader version of the post, taken from the RSS or Atom feed.
I can only think that for some reason the height attribute was overridden because something was forcing the aspect ratio to be preserved. Could this be something in the CSS of my theme? For most images it make sense to preserve the aspect ratio – but not for this one. So does anyone know, is there a way of overriding this CSS setting for a particular image?
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your thoughts here on the General Election. I live in Northern Ireland and so our party choices don’t really rotate around the three big guns of Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem. As I’ve been reading some of your blog about next week’s vote, a question arises in my mind about how to square the liberal values of a party like the Lib Dems (some of which are no doubt shared by the blues and reds) with Christian principle. Please don’t misunderstand the nature of my question – this isn’t intended as an implicit or underhand criticism of your political views, but an honest curiosity about how to balance both sets of values. I’m thinking particularly of life issues like assisted suicide and abortion.
I know that these are highly charged areas of discussion and will fully understand it if you’d prefer not to publish this comment or reply to it: it could undoubtedly attract and lot of unhelpful invective.
I’m enjoying reading along with you blog. I suspect that we differ quite a bit theologically, but it is refreshing to read things from you angle, phrased as they are with clarity and good thought.
Blessings,
Andrew
Andrew, thank you for asking.
I suppose the short answer is that “life issues like assisted suicide and abortion” are not issues in this election. I don’t think any of the main parties have clear policies to make any changes on these matters. I accept that I do not agree with the majority of Lib Dem and Labour candidates on these matters, and would probably find more Conservative candidates who agreed with my Christian position. However I don’t think the result of this election will affect what happens on these matters in the next parliament – which will most likely be nothing much. So I am instead choosing who to vote for on the basis of the actual policies which separate the parties, matters on which the result of this election could make major differences to the future of our country.
I could also argue that it is not the duty of government to legislate concerning private morality; rather this is the concern of the Church. Now I accept that taking life is more than a matter of private morality, and so that arguably applies also to these two issues. So maybe this is not such a strong argument.
And then I would also argue that there are other important Christian values, such as matters of social justice for the poor, including: our own British poor who need good health care and education; asylum seekers who have been forced to leave their possessions as well as their countries and should be welcomed into ours; and the poor of the Third World who need not so much aid as a fair world economic system. Which party has the most “Christian” policies on these matters? Probably not the same as is most “Christian” on abortion and assisted suicide.
I appear to be a bit extremist stretching between 111 Green and minus 58 Tories with Labour the UK Independent (whoever they are) way down in the negatives too. Lib Dem came out at 87 and I’ll have to vote them because I haven’t a Green candidate. It’s interesting how conservative the Labour party is. I knew it was, I just didn’t realise how much. I think our NZ National Party is more left wing than your Labour and our Labour Party is closer to Lib Dem. Our Green Party is much much stronger at home. I never hear boo from them here unfortuanately.
‘unfortunately’
Thanks, Steph. As my results show, I also have a lot of agreement with Green Party policies – although not with what they have sometimes said about the European Union. But, although we do have a Green candidate for the election, we have heard nothing from her, and clearly a vote for her (on our present electoral system) would be wasted.
Are you in the UK now? Your blog reading seems to be still on NZ time. But did you enjoy our English daffodils this year? All finished now, sadly, but plenty of other flowers to take their place.
Thanks for your response Peter, and sorry for not acknowledging it sooner – I’ve been away from the computer all day. I appreciate the tone and balance of what you share here, and am grateful for you opening up on what is an essentially personal decision. The social justice issues you highlight are massive, and ought obviously to influence how we vote and think. I suppose from a Northern Ireland perspective where an attempt was made from Westminster during the last parliament to legalise abortion in the Province there is a twitchiness about voting for a party who take a very different line on issues of that nature than Scripture. That’s an academic thing for us here, though, as we can’t vote for Labour or Lib Dem, and can only vote Conservative by proxy through a Unionist party.
Once again, thank you for explaining your motives for following Lib Dems at this election – you didn’t have to, but I’m glad you did.
Blessings,
Andrew
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I hate to say this, but that should really be “For whom should I vote?” (Questions expecting the answer “hiM” should have “whoM”. Questions phrased “who” should get answers “he”. And prepositions don’t go at the end.)
Wat Tyler, leader of the peasants’ revolt.
Which Tyler, leader of the pedants’ revolt.
John, why should we follow rules dreamed up by some 18th century Latinist rather than what people actually say? Prepositions at the end of sentences are in fact deeply embedded in the Germanic languages (compare German separable verbs) and the ban on them has nothing to do with English grammar.
But then I didn’t write the sentence.