I don’t set out to alienateany readers, certainly not half of them, and it’s my view that people of differing opinions should be able to express those opinions and engage in dialogue and debate without making the other party feel ostricised in any way.

I make every effort to read both right and left wing rhetoric, news and opinion and then form my own judegments based on my personal beliefs. True, I tend to gravitate more towards blogs or commentators with a left wing bias but just because someone might espouse views I don’t necessarily agree with, doesn’t mean I feel alienated by it.

It’s also true that I am a UK resident but there are certain actions that take place in parts of the world that affect me as well as residents of the country in question. You’d have to be the most insular and US-centric individual to think that the US election doesn’t affect almost every person on the planet, in the same way that the Isreali elections, the Iranian elections, the French elections et cetera, also affect many more people outside of the country in which they are taking place. Just two examples:

Uk troops are fighting in two wars instigated by the current administration and I have friends in the army who may, or may not, come back from Iraq and Afghanistan

The current UK economy is nose-diving almost as fast as the US economy. As a homeowner with savings, this directly affects me. Put simply, what happens in America affects the rest of the world with profound and far-reaching circumstances. That is my stake in the election.