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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 31, 2019 8:19:51 GMT
I like Boris, good scholar of political history and the results, liberal with a small "l", understands which way the wind is blowing in the country and that this whole Brexit shambles needs to be moved through so we can start to re-build our relationship with the EU. His personal life is a disaster though.
Given Corbyn is unelectable for a myriad of reasons and Swinson just wants to drag us back into more years of the shit we've had for the last 3 I probably won't vote - my constituency is Labour and will always be Labour.
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Post by johnc on Oct 31, 2019 8:51:31 GMT
There was a time in British politics when you could look at almost all the parties and see lots of men and women of stature, character, conviction and intelligence: people you felt you could trust to some degree, people who wouldn't cross certain lines of stupidity. I look across all the parties now and all I see are snivelling wee parasites that you wouldn't turn your back on for a second. They only have self interest in mind and I trust none of them to take a middle path which is in the best interests of the whole country even though it won't appeal to everyone. Corbyn is backed by the left/extreme left of the labour party including the Unions who seem hell bent on returning the UK to a bankrupt nation with high taxes, an attack on those with rental properties and wealth and the socialist ideology of nationalising everything at huge cost and damage to the country: it took 15 years of stagnation/inflation and 10 years of Maggie Thatcher to sort it out last time.
I really don't know what to think about the Tories with so many of the moderate and well known faces leaving politics on the back of what they see as an assault from those with much more right wing tendencies. Whether it is or not, I don't know, but it smacks of racism and intolerance of anyone with differing views which, in the words of a well known politician, is not the broad church that I knew the Tory party to be in the past.
The LibDems appear to mean well but I feel they are well out their depth when it comes to running the country now that the old guard is completely gone. However I like Jo Swinson whom I have corresponded with on many occasions and she does deliver what she promises and she does listen.
In Scotland, I think the SNP are led by a very clever politician who can wrap most around her little finger. However the SNP are a one trick pony with independence being their only real goal and a bit like the Brexiteers the goal has become more important that what you do after you have got it, when the reality is that what happens afterwards is much more important, impossible to predict and massively risky/destructive. When I hear of some of the things they say in private such as agreeing that the increases in stamp duty will stagnate the property market and will bring in less tax but it has to be done to show their core voters that they are not favouring the rich - they give the same reasons for increasing income tax and not increasing the threshold for higher rate tax. These are policies that are detrimental to the country, divisive and are merely for party political purposes.
I reckon all this mess is going to take 10 years at least to sort out and I just hope that in the meantime we have some stability because if not things will remain broken for even longer.
All the above is my own personal opinion of course.
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Post by Tim on Oct 31, 2019 9:53:58 GMT
I agree with all of that John.
I really don't currently see what a GE is going to achieve apart from more division. I expect the campaigning to be fairly nasty and it will just entrench people in their current positions rather than bring them closer together.
The 'old' days of centrist politics seem a long time ago even though I'd say it was as recent as 2016. As I've said before I could consider voting for a Blairite New Labour or a Cameron led Conservative party but certainly not for either of the iterations of the main parties I see before me now.
Labour are a complete joke and the Tories are in some sort of denial about where they're headed. For example one of the cabinet (maybe Matt Hancock) said they don't have any Brexit party supporters in their membership and immediately followed that up by saying the membership had risen by 30,000 recently. Surely that's the same as happened to Labour 3 years ago?
The LimpDems probably have a good heart but come across as quite amateurish and the other parties are regional.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is a hung parliament and some sort of change to the electoral system? I know it won't fly in Westminster but I think the Scottish system has worked quite well?
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 9:58:12 GMT
For example one of the cabinet (maybe Matt Hancock) said they don't have any Brexit party supporters in their membership and immediately followed that up by saying the membership had risen by 30,000 recently. Surely that's the same as happened to Labour 3 years ago? Ian Duncan Smith is in the papers today crowing that the Tories have become the Brexit Party.
Make of that what you will.
But the Rudds and Morgans of this world are simply following the many moderate Tory voters like me who have already abandoned the party and won't be back for the foreseeable future.
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Post by johnc on Oct 31, 2019 10:18:54 GMT
Perhaps the best we can hope for is a hung parliament and some sort of change to the electoral system? I know it won't fly in Westminster but I think the Scottish system has worked quite well? I think that PR is the only way our current politics and politicians can properly be called to account because they will have to compromise and we will have to have coalitions. It would be a massive learning curve for our political system with its adversarial ways but with the two main parties heading off in diametrically opposed directions our current system has the makings of a perfect storm. The current system also regularly produces a majority Government who have only polled about 35% of the votes making it a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. Time to take back control should really be the call of the people over the Politicians.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 31, 2019 11:08:27 GMT
Perhaps the best we can hope for is a hung parliament and some sort of change to the electoral system? I know it won't fly in Westminster but I think the Scottish system has worked quite well? I think that PR is the only way our current politics and politicians can properly be called to account because they will have to compromise and we will have to have coalitions. It would be a massive learning curve for our political system with its adversarial ways but with the two main parties heading off in diametrically opposed directions our current system has the makings of a perfect storm. The current system also regularly produces a majority Government who have only polled about 35% of the votes making it a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. Time to take back control should really be the call of the people over the Politicians. When I was a student we went to a lot of discussion groups about PR and it seemed like a good idea. Time has changed my mind as it generally gives smaller parties too much influence in relation to their relatively low polling numbers.
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Post by johnc on Oct 31, 2019 11:47:03 GMT
When I was a student we went to a lot of discussion groups about PR and it seemed like a good idea. Time has changed my mind as it generally gives smaller parties too much influence in relation to their relatively low polling numbers. But surely it just means that you have to be very careful who you make friends with. PR should mean that the number of MPs in parliament for each party reflect the nation's voting. Coalitions would then be between parties who could work with each other and voters could vote for whom they want and not for a party they don't want just to keep someone they want even less, out. Our system is broken and somehow, it needs to be fixed - I am not sure it is a self healing mechanism.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 31, 2019 11:57:22 GMT
When I was a student we went to a lot of discussion groups about PR and it seemed like a good idea. Time has changed my mind as it generally gives smaller parties too much influence in relation to their relatively low polling numbers. But surely it just means that you have to be very careful who you make friends with. PR should mean that the number of MPs in parliament for each party reflect the nation's voting. Coalitions would then be between parties who could work with each other and voters could vote for whom they want and not for a party they don't want just to keep someone they want even less, out. Our system is broken and somehow, it needs to be fixed - I am not sure it is a self healing mechanism. I think you just end up with a load of DUPs that want bribing off to support you.
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Post by michael on Oct 31, 2019 12:15:08 GMT
I think PR would be worse as you must have cases where constituencies aren't properly represented or people who don't represent constituencies at all so MPs are then only accountable to their party. It's often pointed out that we had a leave vote and a remain parliament, if people now vote to boot out those who didn't represent their wishes then that is democracy working.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 12:28:29 GMT
Not sure if PR would be the answer but then there does not seem to a party that are trustworthy enough to do the job of governing the country. We do need a contract that states the members are there to represent the people of their constituency rather than do what they want, work solely for the party or their friends and acquaintances.
The tory's appear to be as divided as they ever have been, laboured are a shambles and the limpdampwetwimps have tied their strategy to the the remain voters, they hope. As for the others, well, what?
What we really need to do is prevent business 'interests' and outside jobs. Perhaps raise the pay a bit. End the commons bar etc and turn the house into a place of work. There are other changes needed but bringing in a culture of doing the job rather than getting in the way of it will probably mean starting all over with a clean sheet. None of the current crop seem to be worth pocket money let alone what they get now.
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 12:57:00 GMT
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 31, 2019 13:04:08 GMT
He does seem to have the right ideas.
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 13:25:50 GMT
I am under-convinced. This is another long but interesting piece: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/09/dominic-cummings-machiavel-downing-streetIt ends by saying this: " Many MPs, political editors, and Remain voters cannot fathom what Dominic Cummings is doing. Yes, they seem to think, you should try to win an election, but first you must be decent, and fair, and tell the truth. Winning an election is the game, but there are rules. The problem for those outraged by Cummings is that they may be wrong. What appear to be rules are in fact only conventions, and cannot be enforced. If voters want to elect liars, democracy empowers them to.
During the 2016 referendum, Cummings understood this. As Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s former head of communications, tells me, as an insurgent he could “take free hits at the establishment and then run away”. As Cameron’s consigliere, Oliver watched Cummings break the rulebook. That was no surprise; Cummings thinks rules are there to be broken. It is one of the six pieces of advice he gives to followers. He also thinks those in Westminster lack imagination. “They can’t imagine something like Stalin… deliberately murdering millions,” he writes, just as they could not imagine Donald Trump as president or Brexit. They do not, he thinks, realise that they are viewing the world through their own very particular perspective. The challenge is to escape the tiny leaf on which they all stand, and see the forest that surrounds them.
That, thinks Cummings, is what scientific geniuses do. “Newton looked up from his leaf, looked far away from today, and created a new perspective – a new model of reality,” he writes. Once discovered, that model, calculus, allowed, “billions of people who are far from being geniuses [to] use this new perspective”.
This is what Cummings hopes to do for politics. He wishes to discover an equivalent to calculus, to “create something new that could scale very fast”. He wants to build an operating system for government: to be a Steve Jobs for politics, delivering “huge long-term value for humanity”.
Through his system, as yet unexplained – “I will go into what I think this vision could be and how to do it another day” – he will turn a nation of average people into one of the most successful countries in the world. He will sweep away the suffocating postwar mainframes of politics, and build something capable of withstanding the unknown crises ahead. Or so he would wish. In truth, he may be little more than a survivalist in the woods, soldering wires together in the belief he is saving us all.
Is Dominic Cummings a visionary or a fool? The remarkable fact is that the Conservative Party has risked its future, and the country’s, on which one Cummings turns out to be."
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Post by Tim on Oct 31, 2019 13:35:47 GMT
I think PR would be worse as you must have cases where constituencies aren't properly represented or people who don't represent constituencies at all so MPs are then only accountable to their party. Multiply that up and you get the situation we already have (and have had for a number of different Governments) with the country governed by parties that have gained only 35% of the vote. The Scottish system is a mix of PR and traditional, maybe it'd be worth at least having a look at?
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Post by michael on Oct 31, 2019 13:48:16 GMT
I think PR would be worse as you must have cases where constituencies aren't properly represented or people who don't represent constituencies at all so MPs are then only accountable to their party. Multiply that up and you get the situation we already have (and have had for a number of different Governments) with the country governed by parties that have gained only 35% of the vote. The Scottish system is a mix of PR and traditional, maybe it'd be worth at least having a look at? As I see it, in 2017 the majority of MPs stood on election manifestos where they said they would do one thing and they instead did another so it is they who have failed and not the system. This election is a test to see if people will vote them out because of that. The Scottish parliament was set up to try to make it impossible to get an overall majority and it didn't work. I think that trying to create a system that gives a result that suits some and not others is gerrymandering and nothing more. FPTP gives representation to a constituency of people and I don't think you can get more fair than that assuming each constituency is broadly the same size (which they aren't). We had a referendum on the alternative vote and there was no appetite to change matters.
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Post by Tim on Oct 31, 2019 13:50:15 GMT
I'm talking in general terms rather than on the specific Brexit issue of the last election.
I think PR would work because it would have to promote compromise - something that is increasingly lacking in the wider world outwith politics.
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 13:55:06 GMT
Multiply that up and you get the situation we already have (and have had for a number of different Governments) with the country governed by parties that have gained only 35% of the vote. The Scottish system is a mix of PR and traditional, maybe it'd be worth at least having a look at?
We had a referendum on the alternative vote and there was no appetite to change matters.
We did indeed. But it is also worth noting that both the major parties campaigned heavily against it, and precious few people understood what the question really was and therefore didn't really know whether they cared or not.
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Post by michael on Oct 31, 2019 13:56:06 GMT
I'm not sure it would. It just gives a platform to the likes of UKIP, the BNP and a likely majority for the Brexit Party.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Oct 31, 2019 13:56:43 GMT
We had a referendum on the alternative vote and there was no appetite to change matters.
We did indeed. But it is also worth noting that both the major parties campaigned heavily against it, and precious few people understood what the question really was and therefore didn't really know whether they cared or not.Are we back on Brexit then?
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 13:57:45 GMT
We did indeed. But it is also worth noting that both the major parties campaigned heavily against it, and precious few people understood what the question really was and therefore didn't really know whether they cared or not.Are we back on Brexit then? Ha ha. No.
If it was Brexit you'd at the very least need to substitute the word "why" for the word "whether"....
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 14:32:46 GMT
The "Whether", it is pretty shitty at the moment. On a like topic, she has been far too quiet of late. Is she in hiding or something?
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 31, 2019 15:05:32 GMT
The "Whether", it is pretty shitty at the moment. On a like topic, she has been far too quiet of late. Is she in hiding or something? The cat's mother!?!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 16:11:22 GMT
Perhaps I should have spelled that with an 'i'....... Might very well be a cat's mother.
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Post by Tim on Nov 1, 2019 14:42:00 GMT
Farage has now popped up calling on the Tories to enter into a Leave alliance. Kind words from the orange buffoon in Washington must've awoken him as he's been way too quiet recently. Funny how he isn't demanding Trump keep his nose out of our domestic politics while he did when Obama dared offer an opinion.
I really hope the Tories don't go for it, Farage doesn't deserve a place in domestic politics.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 14:57:48 GMT
Perhaps we could export Farage to the septics? He can mess their politics all he likes until some good ol' boy introduces him to the right to bear arms, where he would come straight back, sadly.
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Post by racingteatray on Nov 1, 2019 16:08:10 GMT
Perhaps we could export Farage to the septics? He can mess their politics all he likes until some good ol' boy introduces him to the right to bear arms, where he would come straight back, sadly. In a wooden box with brass fittings hopefully...
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 16:13:32 GMT
Brass? Careful with the budget after all. String handles is more like it. Perhaps one of those eco things would be appropriate?
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Post by racingteatray on Nov 1, 2019 17:10:56 GMT
Brass? Careful with the budget after all. String handles is more like it. Perhaps one of those eco things would be appropriate? Oh yes! Because that would annoy him!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 20:49:16 GMT
The Lib Dems need to take another look at the second part of their party name and what that is supposed to mean.
That cunt Corbyn, who was a Eurosceptic up until the point he hung his coat on the remain hook trying to win some votes, should be their leader. He's just as good at promising to deliver the impossible as they are. I wonder if he'll get his Muslim pals to rig the voting in his party's favour again like in the last two Peterborough elections?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 21:30:47 GMT
They are quite likely to try.
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