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May 7th | UK General Election 2015 OT - Please go vote!
- Thread starter Volotaire
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I'm pretty sure they offered PR to the Conservatives but they had to compromise to AV. I can't remember what it was in exchange for.
I genuinely feel that you're not on the right bus. The hyperbole is off the charts.
AHA-Lambda
Member
It's great news for myself, makes up for the damn SNP result.
I'm not sure, most long term voters I know switched to Green or Labour, and it looks like a lot of the protest vote crowd went UKIP
They are also dead in Scotland.
I was charged with the allegation that I aligned my views with a party that don't care about the criminalisation of disabled people. I don't know how much more clear I could've made it.
I personally don't think you can go down to 8 seats and ever be relevant again, many will disagree with me, but one thing we know, they can not command a presence at any debates etc anymore
Sir_Crocodile
Member
I think there's room for a real left wing party. Miliband didn't even try though - he wouldn't even go in for renationalisation of the rail network - which even tory voters support!
Dirtyshubb
Member
I think a better way to put it is that a lot of people feel they are moving more towards the left while simultaneously voting for parties and policies that are actually moving towards the right.
More Fun To Compute
Member
There are people with a wide variety of political positions in a party as large as the Tories and they disagree a fair amount. You get people who call themselves libertarians, cameron who has identified as a "compasionate conservative" and then you have outright closet facists who think that hitler was right all along. Paxman is a one nation Tory which is totally not like a national socialist.
They were always the third party but now we have so many other options it's hard to see them ever coming back. Clegg destroyed their youth base.
Party affiliations aside, you steer very close to moral bankruptcy with comments such as these.
How you target the poor ahead of so many other considerations in society with the veneer of legitimacy is contemptible.
I'd rather my tax pounds were invested in the poor than leave them hungry.
Long term strategies to get them out of the poverty trap is so much more socially responsible than this almost psychopathic - by that I mean totally lacking empathy - striking at the little money that most of the less well off in our society get.
As I said, the Labour party failed to offer a compelling alternative.
But I mean, just because all parties sign up to austerity doesn't at all mean that the press (that is, if we are to maintain the delusion that they are unbiased and ought to report the truth) should just blindly report on it as though it's a sensible strategy; especially when, as I say, it had virtually no support from any genuine economists.
The BBC's failure to critique the strategy is particularly egregious, since they're hypothetically impartial and should be responsible for at least asking questions. But they don't: they just report that George Osborne said that austerity is working, and that Ed Balls thinks that it's not working hard enough.
The BBC bias tends to favour whoever's in power. That's been true since forever. And it was reinforced during Blair's years when they were punished for daring to question the government re: WMDs and the sexed up dossier. Nevermind that the BBC were in the right and it was an important piece of investigative journalism--they were punished for questioning the government's line.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
I don't think so. They've had an absolute shocker.
Red Liquorice
Member
Wow, it's a bloodbath for Labour and Lib Dems this morning. The Tories must be french kissing each other in joy.
I can't help but feel now without the Lib Dems whining over their shoulder the Tories are going to take their gloves off. :/
I can't help but feel now without the Lib Dems whining over their shoulder the Tories are going to take their gloves off. :/
linkandzelda
Member
Bennett was never expected to win.
Charles Brandon
Member
what I did find amusing was how the various MPs we saw across the night conformed to stereotypes.
Tories - largely RP speaking members of the upper, upper middle and upper classes. Slick hair, elitism personified.
Labour - Normal, everyday type people from the middle and working classes. The sort of people most of us are, whatever our allegiances.
Lib dems - As above, but more middle class and with slightly less gravitas/
SNP - A load of jakey nutters who wouldn't look out of place in the dole queue or swearing at their kids in a harvester. Not all of them but there were definitely a few .
Tories - largely RP speaking members of the upper, upper middle and upper classes. Slick hair, elitism personified.
Labour - Normal, everyday type people from the middle and working classes. The sort of people most of us are, whatever our allegiances.
Lib dems - As above, but more middle class and with slightly less gravitas/
SNP - A load of jakey nutters who wouldn't look out of place in the dole queue or swearing at their kids in a harvester. Not all of them but there were definitely a few .
The welfare budget does need cutting. Last year it was £734bn. We have the challenge of optimising it. Getting more out of it. Stopping abuse and exploitation. It's unsustainable. We can't afford it.
If we can't optimise it, then we can't cut it. And if we can't afford it, we need more internal revenue. Closing tax avoidance loopholes would be a good start.
Charles Brandon
Member
So gaf - do you reckon we're out of Europe?
I doubt it, my predictions for my constituency and surrounding were pretty much on. Newcastle's a pretty studenty City and it's the North East so very safe Labour seats. Last time there was a good amount of LD voting, unsurprisingly numbers for Green and Labour went up this time. I don't see how the Lib Dems could come back from this, it'll need a real shake up in leadership.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Cameron will campaign to stay in, but the times, sun, mail, express, ukip and half the tory party want out
tough call
he was never going to, he always believed a Tory-Light/centre left party was the way to go
he needed to be a real choice
Renegade Yeti
Neo Member
Couldn't agree more, although I can't see it changing anytime soon, the curren system favours Tory and labour and neither is going to change that whilst either are in parliament
That's the biggest issue, big Dave can't campaign to stay in too hard so it will depend a lot on Labour and Lib Dems (assuming on the latter) new leaders.
Cob32
Member
I don't think so but looking at the gains for UKIP mep during the European election and also the vote gains during this election, it's going to be interesting.
No. I think the Conservatives will be forced to allow a free vote on the issue and the front-bench of the party will side with the IN campaign on the grounds that while it's not particularly exciting, it is really important that we stay in.
RedSparrows
Member
Quite. The 'welfare is unsustainable' idea is only remotely accurate in any kind of just society if you look at the vast majority of said budget: pensions.
What is more, most of the housing benefit subsidises landlords. Sort the housing crisis out and perhaps it may drop. Fraud is miniscule, and yes, of course must be punished - nobody disagrees on this. The fact the argument revolves around fraud and exploitation is absurd: NOBODY wants that to happen.
He wont even hold a referendum trust me.
On another note i believe Labour shot themselves in the foot by having Ed as leader over his brother. My dad has been saying that was a massive mistake from day one thanks to the unions power over the party. Hes been a Labour member all his life.
They held the balance of power yet still let themselves get fucked on the issues that really mattered.
The Tories played them like a fiddle.
Only if he gets the changes he want, Cameron has been giving a gun by the british people
pro EU people should now be worried, as he is about to ride into Brussels with a full mandate to say, meet these demands or we are off...he said on the record he would only say 'stay in' if he got all the changes he wanted, which includes restricting free movement....
to coin a phrase from braveheart
"We've come to pick a fight"
More Fun To Compute
Member
I guess that lab+snp+tory europhiles means a mandate for staying in Europe with no referendum needed.
PipefishUK
Banned
'abuse and exploitation' is a tiny tiny proportion of the welfare budget. More is lost through admin errors and it's absolutely insignificant compared to tax fraud / avoidance / evasion.
Edit: http://www.cas.org.uk/features/myth-busting-real-figures-benefit-fraud
There are scores of other sites with much more detail - but I'm off to bed now!
Sir_Crocodile
Member
He can, he's not fighting another election. He should also work with people like ken clarke, charlie kennedy, alan johnson and others who people actually like, and try to make sure that people like blair, brown and clegg keep quiet.
Tory majority
I wonder if there's some route to radically rework the party to be a more economically right wing but heavily libertarian route. That plays well with younger Conservative voters - small state types.
But it's going to be at a level of essentially starting again. And there's every chance their base won't go for it, so the party will be dead.
It took a long time to beat the party into something electable in a way the Greens are fifteen years away from, so the anti-authoritarian left in England is completely fucked - and to be very clear, that's Nick Clegg's fault and he will be hated for it for a very long time.
Apologies, I cited the total public spending figure there. Yes, this is correct. But it's undeniable that it's still incredibly high and incredibly unoptimised.
Charles Brandon
Member
The system isn't designed for the current political landscape. SNP have absolutely battered it because the opposition was divided. Do we know what their share of the vote in Scotland actually was?
If we went towards PR you can expect SNP to lose out but UKIP would absolutely smash it.
If you're a Labour supporter, it couldn't be worse. Tory majority, SNP rampant, Balls lost his seat, Miliband resigning later.
I won't lie. It's bad.
Android18a
Member
I'm not massive on politics, but I'd have definitely preferred Labour to win this. Hopefully it won't affect those of us on lower incomes too much.
so that is fucking bad. as pensions are not to be touched, DIsabled people and housing benefit is about to take it really bad
-Plasma Reus-
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The Liberal Democrats are also dead, so electoral reform died with them. Worst night for the British left in decades.
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