Bristol

Inside the other No 10 Downing Street

Forget what you see on television as world leaders enter a black painted door with a London policeman outside, the other No 10 Downing Street is in Halesowedn, a small town in the West Midlands.

There, the door is white, with a frosted window pane, and the current occupant of the residence not of the UK Prime Minister is Michelle Barrett and her 18-year-old daughter Molly.

The mum is tired talking about politics and is well-used to media types hanging about her front doorstep and taking photographs.

Young Molly – she’s a first-time voter and will be voting Labour.

Time for a big clean up on election day

Elections are all about cleaning house, sweeping aside the old, brushing away the past.

Ironic then that Thursday, May 7, is also the day scheduled for a national clean-up on all of Britain’s beaches.

It’s the fourth year in succession the event will be held – the last time, volunteers picked up an average of 2,457 pieces of litter for every kilometre of UK beach.




After the polls close, timing is everything

Traditionally, the first seats to declare a result come from one of three constituencies in Sunderland, an industrial city and Labour stronghold in northeast England.

Labour MP Bridget Phillipson was elected in 2010 with 50.3 per cent of votes in the constituency of Houghton and Sunderland South. She was the first MP elected then and will likely be the first again in the new parliament. Labour 1, Conservatives 0.

The last, but not the least

During the 2010 count, the constituency of St. Ives in Cornwall was the last to complete its count. It’s at the very west of England, in Cornwall, near Land’s End.

It has been held by Andrew George since 1997 and he looks likely to retain his – barring a complete meltdown of Liberal-Democrat support. The party, who were the junior coalition partners in David Cameron’s outgoing government, have 9 per cent of the vote nationally, according to opinion polls.

George should be in for another long night – and morning. The seat wasn’t declared in 2010 until lunchtime on the day after the polls closed.

May 7 and that sinking feeling

Elections are always historic events in any nation. And with the election results too close to call and considered to be the tightest in 40 years, some are looking for signs from the past on events that happened on May 7.

During the First World War, the RMS Lusitania, then the world’s largest passenger ship, was sunk by a German U-boat off Ireland a hundred years ago. Nearly 1,200 people lost their lives and the sinking was one of the events that caused the United States to later enter the war.

Which political leader now has that sinking feeling?