WayneMorse
Banned
The current government? You know the one where they promised to have a budget surplus and full employment and no rise in VAT and net migration under 100,000 by now?
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May 7th | UK General Election 2015 OT - Please go vote!
- Thread starter Volotaire
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The current government? You know the one where they promised to have a budget surplus and full employment and no rise in VAT and net migration under 100,000 by now?
CyclopsRock
Member
Yeah but it's literally the opposite though, isn't it? The parties in government *didn't* get a majority and *are* governing.
WayneMorse
Banned
Jezbollah
Member
That's not nice of him wanting to do that to your President, is it?
Anyway, FiveThirtyEight with another good article: A Glossary of UK Politics
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-glossary-of-uk-politics-from-ashcroft-to-whips/
(worthy putting in this, and the UKPoliGaf OTs IMO)
Anyway, FiveThirtyEight with another good article: A Glossary of UK Politics
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-glossary-of-uk-politics-from-ashcroft-to-whips/
(worthy putting in this, and the UKPoliGaf OTs IMO)
WadiumArcadium
Member
I swear UKIP's members are trying to one-up each on other on how stupid they can act.
Osborne doing a masterclass in avoiding answering a question on C4 News there even when peppered by his own logic. At this point I'm hoping for an alien invasion, they'd be more human than our current politicians and I for one welcome our new overlords.
He also basically said Hunts £8 billion NHS promise was bullshit, by refusing to say whether he'd guarantee it.
He also basically said Hunts £8 billion NHS promise was bullshit, by refusing to say whether he'd guarantee it.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Another trap is being set for Ed Miliband. George refuses to rule out NHS cuts for a week or so, Ed challenges Dave on the NHS in the debate and Dave confirms 2.5% real terms annual NHS spending rises with the Tories. Labour walked into it with the VAT stuff, let's see if they aren't as stupid as they look and avoid this one.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
It's a bloody annoying thing to do. Ignoring partisanship, the whole point of an opposition is to be able to hold a government to account by highlighting key policies they think are harmful. Having the government go 'lel, didn't really mean it, jokes on you!' is really harmful firstly because it prevents the opposition doing their job and secondly because it can only work in an atmosphere of ambiguity, which is deeply undemocratic in the run up to an election where the public ought to know exact policy stances by now. It was awful when Blair did it, but Osborne has taken it to a whole new level and it really shouldn't be encouraged. Just tell us what your policies actually are.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I wonder if Labour will play this game with the welfare cuts.
Promise not to tax disability benefit and force the Tories to either match it or confirm that's part of their plans.
At least we can all agree that his opinion on Obama has nothing to do with Obama's race. Because UKIP doesn't attract racists.
CyclopsRock
Member
Are you talking about Hussein Obama?
I caught it too, he nearly got stuck in his own Miliband loop about the "voters face a stark choice" everytime Cathy came out with some new facts.
Marc
Member
They're all mental, Labour and Tories have learned to hide it somewhat with double-speak and spin men. You'd have to be to become a politician it seems like, how many normal people with jobs want to be an MP?
Still, the smaller parties don't have blood on their hands and are actually shit at lying so at least you know what you get. That is the main positive left in this election... fucks sake.
"Speaker: The speaker is the only MP who ceases to be involved in party politics. He or she is chosen by a secret ballot, after which he or she sits in the House of Commons to chair debates ..."
Is this guide from an alternate universe where last Thursday went a bit differently?
The initial vote is secret but re-elections aren't because reasons. There's actually some ambiguity whether there would actually be a re-election of the speaker following an general election, while there is meant to be one, according to some of the journalists last week by convention the father of the house is meant to weigh the mood of the Commons to decide if it's necessary although the standing order seems to make it mandatory.
The entire place is mental and needs to be tore down and replaced with something which isn't essentially a feudal golf club.
QuicheFontaine
Member
It's going to fall down soon on it's own anyway isn't it? Might be a good time to replace it, plus you'd save money on renovations!
Nicktendo86
Member
Da fuck?
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Meh, subsample.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
That's got to be a bizarre outlier. It'd take 10 years and drift to the left to get anywhere near those numbers
Wrestlemania
Banned
Could you actually start posting links or references for your posts like this? It's really annoying when you don't and you keep doing it.
CyclopsRock
Member
I believe they're from tweets, in which case he has as much information as you do.
It was a sample of 70 people. 70 fucking people. That's some shit polling.
Yougov has both cons and labour on 35% tonight. Which looks about right. It seems the television debate did little to move either side. Which is pretty much what happened in the last election. We are still heading for a hung parliament with very few seats between either party, it may even be as little as one or two. Of course this benefits labour with the whole SNP thing (they won't be in a coalition but will vote through labour budgets and confidence motions in exchange for other things.) If they do agree such a thing with the SNP then the lib dems will be chomping at the bit to still work their way into government with labour.
Wrestlemania
Banned
Well then maybe it would be good for the thread to have a ban on unsourced figures or quotes like.
CyclopsRock
Member
It was a subsample, but it does mean there are at least 16 people in Scotland voting Tory. Sixteen!!
CyclopsRock
Member
I don't see how anyone benefits from that.
Wrestlemania
Banned
Because it's pointless discussing something which could be completely made up or, in this case, such a poor sample to be a completely meaningless set of data.
Nicktendo86
Member
Saw something on twitter that a few people had posted, was in a hurry so thought it would be interesting to copy in here. What's the problem? Think it isn't worthy of discussion, ignore it. I allways post links when possible.
Edit:
Here is the uk polling report site anyways, confirms that Scottish thing was a tiiiiiny subsample of 70. Still, was so crazy had to post it.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/
ITV had a seat prediction tonight, based on that comes poll:
Con 305
Lab 260
SNP 42
LibDem 18
UKIP 2
CyclopsRock
Member
There's a reason the polls often get posted in here at this time - because the pollsters can't release the poll results until after the newspaper print deadline. But quite often they don't post the relevant methodology/data til the next day. What do you want us to do, sit here whistling, pretending we don't know it's there? Like I said, it was clearly labelled as being ComRes; if you're worried someone's lying it's not a great burden for you to do your own Googling rather than expect the people contributing to the thread to do it for you.
The reason there isn't an election for the speaker at the start of every parliament is because the government of the day would just fill the position with their stooge.
On parliament falling down, my opinion is that it should be moved from London. Maybe to somewhere like Nottingham.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
I'd move it to Strasbourg. There's a big nearly empty building there.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Don't worry about that. I'm sure that Ed Miliband would be convinced by his "junior" coalition partner Alex Salmond to move the UK parliament somewhere more appropriate. Like Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Marc
Member
This is just fucked as a system. Showing seat % (rounded) by theirs seats of the 650 total and then comparing poll average currently:
Con 305 - 47%/33%
Lab 260 - 40%/34%
SNP 42 - 6.5%/3.2%
LibDem 18 - 2.8%/8%
UKIP 2 - 0.3%/14%
Greens 1? - 0-0.15%/5%
So the greens/UKIP/libdems make up 27% of the UK voting population and get maybe if they are lucky 21 seats or 3.2% of the seats. That is fucking shameful, SNP get over double the seats with 1/8th of the voting populous. That is a ridiculous amount of underrepresented people, meanwhile 5% more of the vote gets you 284 more seats.
And the rhetoric in the media is the UK people don't want PR because we rejected that shit sandwich of AV. I hold lib dems in way lower standing on that issue than university fees which there was little choice.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Hmm, predicting that the current Con/Lib coalition gets the exaaact number of seats it needs to continue (323)? It could happen I guess, but it reads like someone's wishful thinking to me.
Totally agreed. I wonder if in future generations FPTP will be viewed as perverse as rotten and pocket boroughs are now. FPTP may have strengths under a two party system (though it's still a shitty system), but in a multi-party democracy like the one we're in now, it's a travesty.
This is why I vote Looney or spoil my ballot at general elections (my constituency is an extremely safe seat and has been since it was created)
It's a horrible system open to gerrymandering, and one of the few systems where parties could lose the popular vote by miles and still theoretically win in a landslide. The sooner it dies the better.
benjipwns
Banned
FPTP was an easier system to manage in ye olden days. Especially, like you said when there were mostly two parties and maybe one independent wacko running.
I personally like a mixed system so you have a geographical representative to bitch to about regional issues and then PR allocated seats for national issues.
Just for ease, say you did half FPTP and half PR for the number of seats and used Marc's numbers, you'd wind up with:
Tories - 259 (41.2% of seats)
Labour - 240 (38.2% of seats)
UKIP - 47 (7.5% of seats)
Liberals - 35 (5.6% of seats)
SNP - 31 (4.9% of seats)
Green - 16 (2.5% of seats)
And the Tory/Labour share would drop overtime as people became more accustomed to the other parties being viable.
anonymous_abc
Member
Yes but but stable majority.
[/s]
Like the German System. One FPTP MP per constituency and the rest of the parliament is filled up according to proportional vote.
CyclopsRock
Member
I've mentioned this before in, I guess, UKPoligaf, but since we're discussing it...
I heard an idea for a system which, at first, sounds ridiculous but the more I think about it, the less problems there are.
You have individual candidates standing for election in the same constituencies as now. Everyone casts one vote. So far, the same. BUT then instead of counting them up, you have a person pick one vote out of the (presumably very large) hat and the vote chosen is the winner. This way you get the benefits of a) small constituencies with local represenatives in parliament but b) it should be roughly - not totally, but roughly - proportional around the country. If UKIP get 10% of a voteshare in any given constiuency, they have a 1/10 chance of representing the seat. Spread out across the country, this'll give a relatively PR result.
There'll be the odd funny result like an MRLP candidate getting in somewhere, but hey, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
I heard an idea for a system which, at first, sounds ridiculous but the more I think about it, the less problems there are.
You have individual candidates standing for election in the same constituencies as now. Everyone casts one vote. So far, the same. BUT then instead of counting them up, you have a person pick one vote out of the (presumably very large) hat and the vote chosen is the winner. This way you get the benefits of a) small constituencies with local represenatives in parliament but b) it should be roughly - not totally, but roughly - proportional around the country. If UKIP get 10% of a voteshare in any given constiuency, they have a 1/10 chance of representing the seat. Spread out across the country, this'll give a relatively PR result.
There'll be the odd funny result like an MRLP candidate getting in somewhere, but hey, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
anonymous_abc
Member
?But why add random chance to the system instead of just implementing a proper democratic system?
benjipwns
Banned
Yeah, though I think their exact system has some issues, and I'm not a huge fan of setting 5% or 10% thresholds for parties, what's wrong with 1 nut sometimes getting in.
German Ballot:
New Zealand does it too:
CyclopsRock
Member
But why add random chance to the system instead of just implementing a proper democratic system?
Because it's the least amount of change that brings about the majority of the benefits.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Well, that sounds like a blooming marvellous system!
At one stroke you (a) keep constituency representation (b) achieve rough proportionality (c) remove the political party stranglehold on candidate selection (d) remove any supposed moral "mandate" a government might claim to ride roughshod over a section of the populace.
Gosh.
QuicheFontaine
Member
How would you do the draw out of the hat? Use one of those national lottery machines?
benjipwns
Banned
The way the U.S. used to vote was that everyone gathered in the town square and the candidates supplied copious amounts of liquor, everyone got wasted and voted.
I'm imagining something similar where the drunkest person in the riding pulls the name out.
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