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UK General Election - 8th June 2017 |OT| - The Red Wedding

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M

MLH

Member
phisheep said:
Conversation with a UKIP/Leave voter ...

Her: I've changed my mind, I'm going to vote for Theresa May

Me: I thought you said you'd never vote Conservative

Her: Not bloody likely! I told you, I'm voting for Theresa May

Me: She's the Prime Minister. She'a a Conservative

Her: But ... I had this Labour leaflet through the door, and it kept going on about Theresa May, I assumed she was one of theirs
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She'll be pretty confused come voting day when Theresa May's name cannot be found on the ballot paper (unless you're in Maidenhead). Though she may recognize the nice little party logos a pick the red rose she saw on the leaflet...
 
T

tomtom94

Member
MLH said:
She'll be pretty confused come voting day when Theresa May's name cannot be found on the ballot paper (unless you're in Maidenhead). Though she may recognize the nice little party logos a pick the red rose she saw on the leaflet...
Click to expand...

One of the improvements to the voting system I've heard suggested is there should be a box to tick for who you want to be PM and for who you want to be your MP. I'd object to that specific formulation since it would essentially create a new presidential election but I can't say I object to the idea in practice.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
M_Night said:
I was waiting for the tram today (in Japan) and was pondering how public transport services here stack up to the services back in the UK. The charge is 120 yen (like 90p) and that's a flatrate coverage across the entire city (with the longest route taking 1 hour 15 minutes.

Back in the UK my daily commute to work would set me back £6 fucking 70p because it's run by Stagecoach.

Privatized public transport services, another great thing to thank our strong and stable Conservative Government for.
Click to expand...

It's not like Stagecoach are creaming off £5.80 in profit from your journey, though. If the railways were nationalised and the prices reduced to 90p, it would have to be massively, massively subsidised (to a larger extent than they are now) which means people who never take trains (perhaps they can't) end up paying less so that the people - like you, and like me - can use them cheaper. I'm not convinced that's preferable. I'm also not sure the effect that would have on people's habits (IE way more people using them) given the limits we have on our infrastructure.

A lot of the problems we face with trains in the UK are a result of us being the first country to industrialise and we're paying now for decisions made 150 years ago when they couldn't possibly have known how Trains would be used in 2017.
 
A

avaya

Member
CyclopsRock said:
It's not like Stagecoach are creaming off £5.80 in profit from your journey, though. If the railways were nationalised and the prices reduced to 90p, it would have to be massively, massively subsidised (to a larger extent than they are now) which means people who never take trains (perhaps they can't) end up paying less so that the people - like you, and like me - can use them cheaper. I'm not convinced that's preferable. I'm also not sure the effect that would have on people's habits (IE way more people using them) given the limits we have on our infrastructure.

A lot of the problems we face with trains in the UK are a result of us being the first country to industrialise and we're paying now for decisions made 150 years ago when they couldn't possibly have known how Trains would be used in 2017.
Click to expand...

Moreover the reason the Japanese prices can be so much cheaper is because the volumes of actual ticket sales are far higher. In a predominantly high fixed cost operation like public transport, scale matters.
 
P

Pandy

Member
Crab said:
sigh

Waiting for this election is horrible. It's like getting a handwritten letter each and every day telling you that everyone hates you and is going to kick you in the balls, but the worst part is they're not even going to do it now, they're going wait for a month to really give you the time to dwell on how awful your situation is.

Just kick us in the balls already and move on, damn it.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling.
I actually had the thought earlier to google image search for that photoshop of Theresa May as the High Chancellor from V for Vendetta... not because I wanted to post it today, but so that I'd have it handy after her speech on June the 9th.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
avaya said:
Moreover the reason the Japanese prices can be so much cheaper is because the volumes of actual ticket sales are far higher. In a predominantly high fixed cost operation like public transport, scale matters.
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And they typically have a high population density.

I'm not saying getting firebombed in world war two is a good thing, but it *does* have it's upsides...
 
K

killer_clank

Member
I think the privatisation of bus services was the far more heinous tory one - Train services are still heavily regulated and in many cases fare increases are controlled by govt. Whereas bus services they just totally removed all regulation and let privatised bus companies run their services into the ground and increase the costs, then using their own incompetence to withdraw their own services in the guise of "decreased passenger numbers".

also trains tend to be used more by the middle classes so they get all the attention when lifeline bus services are literally cut to the bone
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
C-7qsjGWAAIeJIA.jpg
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...
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Xando said:
Do you guys have some threshold? (For example in germany a party needs atleast 5% to enter parliament)
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Every constituency has its own first past the post vote. Any one can enter but only one person can win each contest. There are 650 such contests but the FPTP voting system means that the number of seats and number of votes are rarely the same and you can theoretically end up with Trump-Electoral-College like results.
 
H

HaloRose

Banned
Wish their was a party i could vote for who planning to change the vote system. Anyway what happening with Canada i hear they was thinking changing it did they go through with it.
 
CharmingCharlie

CharmingCharlie

Member
Blue Lou said:
There was little appetite to change in 2011.
Click to expand...

Now now that isn't fair. In 2011 it was made clear to us that if we voted for the Alternative Voting system then little Baby Becky would die from heart failure cos we wouldn't be able to afford a new cardiac centre and AV. Not to mention the fact that Steven the Soldier would've been shot to a bloody pulp because we wouldn't have been able to afford bulletproof vests and AV.

Say what you will but when it matters people put Baby Cardiac centres and bulletproof vests before anything else. Having said that AV was a pretty shitty system anyway, not all that much better than what we already had.
 
Q

QuicheFontaine

Member
Enjoy voting in the local elections today everyone!

Mrs Quiche has gone off to do some poll clerking. With today and 8th June we should make a tidy sum - Theresa May has basically bought us some quite nice garden furniture :)
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Fernando Fernandez said:
YouGov is the Murdoch used poll right? I always take it with a pinch of salt.

Thought Tim did really well tbf, dealt with that lunatic in a polite manner.
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They are a member of the British Polling Council which basically means they're obligated to release their data and "working out" to the public. Obviously you can disagree with their interpretation of the data if you're very smart and understand such things but the data is all there for you to reinterpret however you like. The fact The Sun uses them is irrelevant, I think.
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
Such lovely peace and quiet on the news. We should have one day a week where we're banned from hearing about politics during the whole election period. Makes such a nice change.
 
K

kmag

Member
CyclopsRock said:
They are a member of the British Polling Council which basically means they're obligated to release their data and "working out" to the public. Obviously you can disagree with their interpretation of the data if you're very smart and understand such things but the data is all there for you to reinterpret however you like. The fact The Sun uses them is irrelevant, I think.
Click to expand...

My longstanding issue with YouGov is that by it's very nature, people who join their polling cohort are self-selecting. Even if you screen on demographics, everyone may be part of a standard demo, but they're all also folk who signed up to an online consumer poll.

Doesn't invalidate the numbers but it's always struck me as slightly problematic.

It's like having a perfectly demographically balance poll but everyone in it likes marmite or their favourite colour is blue. It might be meaningless but just feels off.
 
3

31GhostsIV

Banned
kmag said:
My longstanding issue with YouGov is that by it's very nature, people who join their polling cohort are self-selecting. Even if you screen on demographics, everyone may be part of a standard demo, but they're all also folk who signed up to an online consumer poll.

Doesn't invalidate the numbers but it's always struck me as slightly problematic.

It's like having a perfectly demographically balance poll but everyone in it likes marmite or their favourite colour is blue. It might be meaningless but just feels off.
Click to expand...

My issue with the polls is that in my 37 years of existence, I've never been polled and never met anyone who's been polled. Given that new polls seem to emerge about various topics daily, I find that odd.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
CyclopsRock said:
It's not like Stagecoach are creaming off £5.80 in profit from your journey, though. If the railways were nationalised and the prices reduced to 90p, it would have to be massively, massively subsidised (to a larger extent than they are now) which means people who never take trains (perhaps they can't) end up paying less so that the people - like you, and like me - can use them cheaper. I'm not convinced that's preferable. I'm also not sure the effect that would have on people's habits (IE way more people using them) given the limits we have on our infrastructure.
Click to expand...

This is a semi-plausible excuse for trains, but it's rubbish for buses. Stagecoach are enormously profitable. They had a 14.2% profit margin in 2010 (apologies, can't find anything more recent). A tender market is rarely considered competitive unless profit margins are in the realm of 3-6%, so you could conceivably cut 10% off the price of every ticket, which is absolutely nothing to sniff at, and that's not even taking into account the chronic underinvestment in the stock of buses that drives prices up in the first place and Stagecoach do nothing about.
 
M

Meadows

Banned
PJV3 said:
It's been a while since I lived there, is it that bad now that Make Manchester modern is a slogan?

Vote for me-Running water and shit
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haha, nah that was a bit weird. The city is doing great, we have the 2nd largest economy in the UK (see below image) and investment is rising all the time. There's a really big rough sleeping problem but it looks like either new mayor's main task is to sort that so we should see some improvement.

cfc_2.png
 
Theonik

Theonik

Member
Crab said:
This is a semi-plausible excuse for trains, but it's rubbish for buses. Stagecoach are enormously profitable. They had a 14.2% profit margin in 2010 (apologies, can't find anything more recent). A tender market is rarely considered competitive unless profit margins are in the realm of 3-6%, so you could conceivably cut 10% off the price of every ticket, which is absolutely nothing to sniff at, and that's not even taking into account the chronic underinvestment in the stock of buses that drives prices up in the first place and Stagecoach do nothing about.
Click to expand...
More-over, the current arrangement with trains is grossly inefficient with some lines having higher subsidies for carriers than they originally cost to run.
 
K

killer_clank

Member
HaloRose said:
Wish their was a party i could vote for who planning to change the vote system. Anyway what happening with Canada i hear they was thinking changing it did they go through with it.
Click to expand...

That was what the Trudeau govt said pre election but as is standard with govts with large FPTP majorities they bottled it and scrapped the plans.
 
M

Meadows

Banned
Anyone else voting in Manchester today? I'll be going for Burnham, but Antsee the Conservative looks like a good candidate too.
 
Halph n Halph

Halph n Halph

Member
Meadows said:
Anyone else voting in Manchester today? I'll be going for Burnham, but Antsee the Conservative looks like a good candidate too.
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I'm going for Burnham, more for his cabinet experience than party affiliation. He should have more sway in the Westminster corridors of power than any other candidates.
 
M

Mr. Sam

Member
31GhostsIV said:
My issue with the polls is that in my 37 years of existence, I've never been polled and never met anyone who's been polled. Given that new polls seem to emerge about various topics daily, I find that odd.
Click to expand...

I was polled once, in 2010. Nice to you meet you.
 
G

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
8bit said:
I worked for the council 20 years ago, you could drink in the corruption entering the doors of that place.
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Goes for every council as far as I can tell, I don't think most people realise just how little local councils do that isn't influenced or completely controlled by some personal business interest or another.
 
M

Maledict

Member
Ghost said:
Goes for every council as far as I can tell, I don't think most people realise just how little local councils do that isn't influenced or completely controlled by some personal business interest or another.
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Nah, it's very much dependent on how long a party has been in power. In councils which regularly switch party control they are generally accountable and low on corruption. The problem is those councils where one party has been in place for decades - in some boroughs literally every councillor is from the same party. That's where you get long standing corruption, be it in the Home Counties where is conservative politicians routing money to their private business friends and interests, or inner London where it's the same dodgy community groups getting from labour.
 
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