As you know, I'm a waiverer.

Life I'm tired and angry and, well, all the emotions I usually feel after an election in this country. Sensing the temperature and not wanting to lose a day's holiday from my typical employment, I stayed away from my usual work as a poll clerk yesterday. Sure enough, as expected Lib Dem Paul Clein was booted from our Lib Dem seat by Labour's Laura Robertson-Collins whose campaign literature largely stressed Westminster issues which seems to have been the winning strategy employed across the country.  Thankfully his wife, Jan, is still an incumbent for a little bit longer so we may yet see the potholes around Sefton Park repaired, a topic for which we receive near weekly update letters and we have to listen to taxi drivers vitriol about whenever they're in the area.

The Daily Post's David Bartlett has an excellent summary of the local picture. A shorter version would be that the Lib Dems have gone from being the heroes who brought about the regeneration of Liverpool and attracted the Capital of Culture year to zeros thanks to some bizarre behaviour from some members of the local party and the PR disaster area that is the national party.  As you know, I'm a waiverer.  I still voted Lib Dem locally to make the point that local and national politics are separate but it's still going to take a lot to convince me to return to the Westminster party.  Whilst I can see some of the benefits, some of the cuts which are being waved through especially in the arts are still very poorly thought through and don't seem very "liberal" to me in that it seems to be the smallest outlay, greatest benefit systems which have been hit hardest.

The result of the referendum was a foregone conclusion though it's still disappointing that yet again the population, or rather the percentage of the population who bothered to go out and vote, didn't have the foresight or even the ability to understand what was being offered to them and the consequences of saying no.  Fear,  ignorance and short term thinking have won through again  Well thanks everyone (not you of course, I mean everyone else).  You've condemned us to another generation of the main two parties dictating political discourse in the kind of situation the monopolies commission would stamp right out if it was between two commercial companies even more so now that the Tories have effectively done to the Lib Dems what Arriva and Stagecoach have done to smaller bus companies.  Absorb and annihilate.