Your replies have been cloudy and vague all night.
UK General Election - 12th December 2019 | Con 365, Lab 203, LD 11, SNP 48, Other 23 - Tory Majority of 80
- Thread starter esmufc07
- Start date
- Status
In hindsight at least one full stop was probably warranted somewhere in there. But you could hardly say my underlying point is without merit. The fact that he had to be coerced into agreeing a general election amongst other things doesn't exactly fill you with confidence that he has any desire to be Prime Minister and that's the absurdity of the current situation. We've got a choice between a liar who's oft-repeated primary credential validating his competence is a claim that was already unequivocally refuted on the Andrew Marr show several weeks ago: that he was good for London, and another who clearly doesn't want the role and should he actually get it would campaign against the very deal he himself secures in a second referendum.
Don't resort to that nonsense.
ignore the clickbait title, this was decent:
I wouldn’t believe everything you read and hear. It’s a known Conservative tactic to manipulate polls in their favour so people wanting to avoid deadlock would just vote with who they think has the best chance of winning outright. When it comes to polls the devil is ij the details!
It’s easy to talk shite when all you can say is Brexit and you don’t have to worry about alienating potential voters. Best case scenario they keep their deposits.
I'm not the one being sarcy here. Come on, you know as well as I do that Corbyn can't be so clear cut as Nigel fecking Farage. He'd alienate far too many people.I think you need to familiarise yourself with them.
That aside, in your reply to fergieisold you also mentioned looking into the 'systemic issues' for particular behaviours. Does that include the systemic reasons for why people from poorer areas/backgrounds don't engage in them?
Which confirms just how poor Corbyn was given his inability to make that stick.
Obviously. However, the point was that at least he's still playing the game and it works for him. He is exactly who he is. Whereas with Corbyn, it's not really hard to see why he's painted as being on the fence and weak, when right here tonight he allowed Boris to carry on about the one thing we all knew he would.
You should read my posts again if you think they are cloudy and vague, I'm pretty sure they are very clear on Corbyn and Labour right now. Whereas you want more of the same, I want some real fight and a chance to change things. Moral high ground isn't going to win you an election or make the country better for us all. So laugh all you want, but burying your head in the sand and blaming it all on moderators, media and everything else is going to leave us even more fecked than we are right now.
They were clearly not for loving Corbyn aye. I was kidding anyway. You seem like you're out for a fight tonight.
It's called being frustrated. I'm not after a fight with people who should be on the same side, I'm just bemused at how it just continually resorts to endless excuses.
But hey, we both have our positions on it. I guess all we can do now is wait and see. After all, it's the Labour way.
Corbyn blew it. Appeared exactly as his detractors paint him. Time is running out and had a few decent chances tonight. Its looking like an.majority for Boris unless something big changes. Swinson is really unlikable, more Tory than liberal.
Last edited:
In fairness I don't think I've argued that Corbyn is better or secretly a brilliant orator and that its all the media fault. I view Corbyn as a nice bloke who is a socialist but that's really it(Although yes this is a massive massive improvement on former British heads of state.).
I get your frustration with tonights performance, Corbyn didn't mentioned the recent floods and Boris reaction to it or the green new deal for example. And as I said before I thought everyone involved in the debate was a bit rubbish.
So yes tonight wasn't great at all.
Again the bumbling fool is what a large part of the British public want. Boris is similar to Trump in this respect, showing Britain that Boris is an idiot will not change anything. There are real reasons why people like the tories and Johnston(Just one example - https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-problem-with-old-people.html)and few zingers in a hour debate won't change that.
You have to tell me why this is the case, which so far you haven't. So ?
The fact is Labour are the biggest social democratic party in Europe, the manifesto if put into action will be the biggest fundamental change to Britain since Thatcher, Labour have moved the debate in this country to the left - It was only in 2015 Labour were talking about immigration mugs and now Labour conference pass a motion to not only keep freedom of movement but to extent it, The Green New Deal will be the first step in taking on climate change, christ we are talking about a 4 day week!
So far I would say Labour campaign has been pretty good - attacking billionaires and free broadband, todays debate was a blip(Although so far the polling afterwards has been fine)
Again Labour are trying to fundamentally change the structure of the UK economy. As for just wanting to be in opposition - A man literally drove into a crowd of people with the intent of killing Corbyn and
Sadiq Khan, John Mcdonnell has talked about the press taking planes journey in order to spy on his in laws and Diane Abbott get daily racist abuse and needs police protection when going to events. They aren't doing this for the pay check.
RedcafeFactCheckTruth.net said:
That was bizzare
Snap polls aren't great. Is the 80 year old Granny on twitter taking a snap poll? No. Will she vote Conservative? Yes.
I'm finding this election a bit like the last US one, in that if the Democrats had fielded a semi electable candidate they would've won. Labour wouldn't need an electoral genius to win this one, a Neil Kinnock or Gordon Brown would've done.
I'm surprised to see people thinking Corbyn should have called out all of Johnson's lies, they only had 20 seconds or so for each response he'd have had to dedicate it all to being a fact checking servic such is the volume of them.
He actually called out the biggest one on hospitals and it was hard hitting. Still it's an amusing thought that they might be anyone out there who isn't already aware that Johnson is just lying.
He actually called out the biggest one on hospitals and it was hard hitting. Still it's an amusing thought that they might be anyone out there who isn't already aware that Johnson is just lying.
Tories have rebranded their Twitter account factcheckUK - or was it fatcheckUK?
Exactly. When will people get it that the electorate in this country does care about the issues Labour raise, but it plainly doesn't think we have to resort to Marxism to fix them.
I thought that. It seemed the posters on here wanted him to descend into tit for tat bickering. I don't think it would have looked good. In such a format he just needed to get across what Labour are offering fundamentally. On the issue of antisemitism, if he'd gone after the Tories on Islamophobia it would have come across as him deflecting and hiding from Labours own issues.
I do think he could have promoted the idea of Labour being a party of hope and optimism a lot more though. I also think the 4 day week is an own goal. It instinctively seems like a crazy and absurd idea to most people and just confirms their preconceived notions of the Labour left not living in the real world.
Tories have been in power for nearly a decade and can't point to a single positive thing that they've done in that time. They have just chipped away at the institutions that our society relies on (education, health, housing, etc). Working people are having to use food banks to feed their families. Head teachers are cleaning toilets and sending begging letters to parents so they can provide the basics for their children's education. Elderly people are regularly waiting on trolleys for hours in corridors in hospitals. The numbers of police, firemen, nurses, GPs- all cut.
Meanwhile, the debt has increased massively. How? If you haven't been spending it on doctors, nurses, police, teachers, housing, social care, pensions, wages, etc... Where the hell has the money gone?
But Corbyn is a communist. Get Brexit done. Our laws, our borders, points based system. Wonky glasses. Oven ready. 20,000 more police. I like paying for broadband. WTO terms. Blah blah blah.
Turkeys voting for Christmas. The mind boggles.
Meanwhile, the debt has increased massively. How? If you haven't been spending it on doctors, nurses, police, teachers, housing, social care, pensions, wages, etc... Where the hell has the money gone?
But Corbyn is a communist. Get Brexit done. Our laws, our borders, points based system. Wonky glasses. Oven ready. 20,000 more police. I like paying for broadband. WTO terms. Blah blah blah.
Turkeys voting for Christmas. The mind boggles.
The bulk of that is a far more effective closing statement than the one Corbyn gave. Such a wasted opportunity to throw a spotlight on a decade of failure.
As far as your last sentence goes my other half went out for a friend's birthday meal at the weekend. Every one of them said they were voting Tory and one of them is a teacher. feck it.
Aye he massively failed on that question. McDonnel has been defending it on the airways all week perfectly by saying it's an ambition that will come about in the next decade due to automation and increased productivity not an enforced idea.
He also failed on the green question in my view. Labour have a big distinction there in actually promising funding to tackle it but perhaps he was thrown by the "oh here we go" guy.
Believe me I'm in manufacturing and have been all my life and they said exactly that when the first computer controlled machines started to be introduced in the 1980's. All the talk was 'what on earth were we all going to do with our extra spare time'. The same happened when robotic assembly lines sprang up in the 90's and when AI started to gain ground in the 00's. I have been waiting 40 years for this so-called 4 day week. I do not see it happening for at least another 40, if at all.
Rafa has taken over Tories twitter account.
A 4 day week is much better than the current system which has high unemployment and high rewards for businesses who can replace workers with automation.
I think he played it in such a way as to cover his own weakness. Corbyn is simply not the kind of guy who can come up with a single line response that quickly cuts to the heart of an issue in a debate context. And in that TV format, where responses were being cut off overly quickly by the presenter, it would have looked worse, he'd have just been sloganeering over Boris the way that Boris was to him.
But a better orator/thinker would have been able to cut through Boris' BS. The opportunity was there, its just that Corbyn wasn't equipped to take advantage and so did the next best thing and played it safe.
It reminded me a match where you're away from home against a much better team, you manage a draw, but you needed to win. Better than expected, but still not good enough,.
The cats out of the bag now, but Labour really shouldn't have brought this up at this point. This isnt about the merits of the policy, its the fact that we're in a General Election and there just isnt the bandwidth to have a nuanced conversation about anything. As you say, the whole concept is counter intuitive, people need to get to grips with the concepts underpinning it all before they can make a judgment. Corbyn's response didnt help, he said words along the lines of how we'll get as much work done in four days as five, which isn't even really the argument in favour of a national four day week. Someone working in a factory, or in a cafe or as a security guard will hear that and it wont ring true, because for them it isnt. Given that we wouldnt even see meaningful progress towards that aim in the entire next Parliament, they should have waited until after they'd won and started chipping away over the next few years.
I'm not sure it's comparable as its now beyond manufacturing. I work in finance and our roll out of robotics and AI has shut down whole departments. Of course some resource gets reallocated so it's not all job losses but a continued roll out will have impact.
It's not that it's going to save a days man effort but a reduction in hours makes it more likely employees can do their hours in 4 days. Other countries have this flexibility more prevalent but my wife now does 4 days and i have a few colleagues who have decided to do 4 as well. I think it's unlikely that we've happened to stumble on our lowest effective working hours and it'll never change.
Sturgeon is as close to Farage as you'll get in terms of delivering a message. He's a sneaky little shit and I detest him, but, he is very, very clear.
The issue is there’s always a convenient scapegoat or strawman the Tories can fall back on - NHS crumbling? Blame the immigrants (ignoring the fact that their local GP is likely Indian or the carer that looks after their elderly parents is from sub-Sahara Africa or Eastern Europe), austerity destroying the essential services ordinary people rely on? Blame labour’s spending a decade ago, less police on the streets - blame Sadiq Khan somehow...you get the idea. And you know what, they get away with it thanks the the cartel of the right wing media towing their narrative.
There’s the argument that this should be Labours election to lose and it’s Corbyn’s fault they’re throwing it away, but again Ed Milliband was essentially crucified over a Bacon sarnie. It’s no coincidence the last Labour prime minister was a Murdoch Scrooge.
Agreed totally. There is a suite of popular Labour policies like NHS spending, railway/water nationalisation, and maybe even the govt broadband and employee stock dividends, which should be front and centre. From a socialist PoV, those (at least the first two) are more important than the distant future of a 4-day week. Keep those front and centre.
Don't get the high unemployment bit. I can't get staff for love nor money.
Not a bad summary. Ultimately Corbyn did far better, but not enough to sway many people, and didn't land as many punches as some would like, although wasn't given the opportunity to really.
At the end of the day, he needs to have ideas for a better country and be able to implement them, not be great at landing punches in a debate. Anyone with sense should realise that, but then there's a shortage of that. It's not like he crumbled or anything.
I think some have just made their mind up on Corbyn a long time ago and focus on the negatives.
My view entirely, especially against someone who thinks that the truth is an optional extra.
I thought that Boris showed his true self. More lies which just flow from his mouth as if people will believe them if he keeps repeating them.
- Status