I’ve spent most of the afternoon watching the repeat of the European election results show on BBC Parliament. I was left a bit disappointed by the result for this region. The Conservatives lost 1 of their seats; Gains for Labour and the Greens – But at least UKIP didn’t gain any additional seats.
But the weekend started on Friday with the University of Gloucestershire Radio Production Awards – the awards ceremony which officially celebrated the end of my university career. An event for which I had to wear a tie…
It was an enjoyable evening – and a great way to celebrate the end of uni. Naturally, I spent quite a lot of time discussing with my lecturers and coursemates my plans to ‘do politics’ a bit more (as well as mentioning my 6 weeks in Greece a few times, and talking radio a bit).
Saturday saw me returning to Cirencester, then traveling up to London with the rest of my family to stay a night with my Grandparents. I was camping on the floor of their conservatory. It’s quite comforable sleeping in there on the blow up air bed… what I hadn’t considered was that by 05:30am the room was floodeed with bright sunshine. Bloody Summer!
On Sunday evening, after driving in to London itself to visit my Aunt, we returned to Gloucestershire – where on arriving at the Tone Radio studio, my housemates were on air. For the first time in three years, we did an actual zoo format radio show, with four of us in the studio for a few hours – rising to about nine when Matt and Phil came in. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on Tone Radio – and I strangely enjoyed taking part in the “B******t News” feature, and being allowed to swear on the radio (which is rather fun, even if saying “S**t” or “F**k” on live radio does give me a mini heart attack. That’s why I don’t normally say those words).
Then today: it’s all been about the European Elections results. I am not surprised that UKIP have done really rather well. My prediction of the other day was completely off. I really was expecting 3 UKIP, 3 Conservative – what we got was 2 Conservative, 2 UKIP, 1 Labour, 1 Green. At least I wasn’t wrong on Sir Graham Watson losing his seat.
I was also disappointed to hear that Marina Yannakoudakis (Conservative) lost her seat in London (I follow her on Twitter, and enjoy being able to say her name properly when reading news bulletins) – but I was pleased that the other Conservative MEPs I particularly wanted to see re-elected were re-elected – including Ashley Fox, Julie Girling (both South West England & Gibraltar), Dan Hannan (South East England), Geoffrey Van Orden (East of England) and Syed Kamall (London).
Following the election results seen in the last week, and after discussion with some of the people I go to uni with, I can confirm that I have written a letter to Mr. Cameron – basically giving my opinion on what needs to be done to deal with the ‘UKIP problem’. I will be going in to uni tomorrow to print it off (don’t have a printer here), and then when my Tesco order arrives tomorrow at lunchtime, I’ll have envelopes and stamps so I can send it.
Back to the Internet now to continue reading the analysis of the election results.
Bye for now…
FH.
