phinnia posted a link to a blog post by the amazing writer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot to her friends and to so many fellow knitters) in which she clearly and correctly explains how Canadian politics works (and so how politics in the UK works because ours is, from what I understand of British politics (which may be pretty flawed, I know, and I wish someone would write a British equivalent of this primer blog post) very similar with only slightly different political-party names, for example). This also explains pretty well how many of us UKians and Canadians just cannot understand how most/many USians consider their political system to be a democracy. I know, I know, it is just a different TYPE of democracy. Okay. If that feels better! ;-p

Anyway, if any of you are still interested in reading about how us UKians and Canadians do politics, here is the link:
"What is happening in Canada" by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Comments disabled to prevent any political discussion or argument. I am feeling too ill right now to handle that but thought I would post this link because many of my USian LJFriends have expressed interest in how we do it this side of the pond - along with how same-gender non-religeous (civil) marriage has been legal in the UK since 2005 (my own hetero- marriage was civil-only and it is the civil part of marriage over here that bestows the legal rights, not the religious blessing portion).

*uses USian instead of American because the US is not the only America*
*needs a UKian icon for when us permie accounts get 50 more icons soon*

One of my LJFriends made a post about the 14 points of fascism and the Bush administration which I found interesting.Our own government (the UK) can tick a few of these as well which I was not expecting because they are the Labour party and so supposedly on the opposite side to fascism - Labour were originally pretty Socialist!
She also pointed me to this page/link for more information/links.
I have learned a lot about politics during this USian election season...

I am going back to my usual policy of just bottling up my political thoughts and not posting/sharing them on my LJ. It hurts too much when people I care about start to fight on the comments threads.

An open letter to the Canadian PM from a writer and yarncrafter/atist. I knew that she could write well but this is a beautifully written piece that says exactly what she feels/thinks!

<rant>

I have kept pretty quiet on this journal about what I think of the US politics scene right now because I have people who read me (and who I consider friends) on both sides of the fence. Apart from a meme or two, maybe. Until now.

SEXUALITY IS NOT A CHOICE OR A LIFESTYLE!
Linked writer says it better than I ever could.
Thanks to rm for the link.

Cue the flame wars, but I am entitled to my opinion as much as you are. This is not opinion, though. It is a biological fact. We cannot CHOOSE our sexuality. We can suppress it and become mentally ill or we can live as $deity-or-nature intended - as our true sexuality.

Yes, I am heterosexual. I know that many of you are not. I feel so worried for those of you in the US that are not vanilla-hetero in case the GOP ticket wins and hope, for your sake, that Obama / the Democrats win(s).

There you go - I have said my piece.

</rant>