You stop and think and then you realise that one of these names is going to be PM regardless of whether you think they are suitable or not.
As the saying goes....pick the best of a bad bunch. At least voting gives you that option.
UK General Election 2015 | Conservatives win with an overall majority
- Thread starter langster
- Start date
As the saying goes....pick the best of a bad bunch. At least voting gives you that option.
Do people really believe that Labour was responsible for the economic crash? How is Cameron getting away with that?
Do you live in Doncaster?
Only a minority of idiots think Labour were responsible for the crash. Most people who aren't voting Labour think their policies created a fragile economy that was unnecessarily vulnerable when the inevitable economic crash occurred.
Nope. If you're referring to my bit about one of the names becoming PM it should read that one of the names will most likely belong to the party that eventually wins the election.
Aye, was only messing with ya.
Anyone care to expand on the difference it would have made to the post collapse economy if Labour had spent slightly less leading up to the crash?
The tories would have still got in and cut public services just as hard, we still would have pumped money into the economy (financial assets) via quantitate easing, and our debt would still have increased.
Id agree on not recognising the regulation issues but I don't imagine any party would have recognised or changed these structural issues. Only baby steps have been taken since and they've been difficult to implement and not very effective.
Firstly, the claim 9 million voters are disenfranchised is a bit spurious. In my experience party supporters who don't bother to turn out is a far bigger problem than swing voters who don't connect with any of the parties. Plenty of people keep an open mind til voting time for sure, but in terms of being so wholly disenfranchised that they want to vote but find that none of the 5 parties represent their views? Comparatively rare from my experience in an admittedly very safe seat.
Secondly, think also about the first point I made. No-one know who the spoiled votes represent. That's crucial, and its the reason that spoiling your vote is different from voting for a minority party. In essence you're hiding with a group of people who may all have different points of view. Non-voters are easy to find, they didn't get marked off in the first place. People who vote for a party have their views represented in the totality of the vote for each party. Spoilers have neither of these. Hell, spoilers don't even know if other spoilers agree with them.
Which leaves two options for the main parties or the electoral commission to try and figure out what you mean with your spoiled vote. There's random sampling, but polling an unknown quantity is exceedingly hard when we're talking about an appreciable proportion of the country's population who voted. To all intents and purposes you have to canvass a significant proportion of all voters just to pin down some of the people who spoiled. Even then you have one hell of a piece of work mapping out demographics and reasons for spoiler voting, since we're talking about 10s or maybe 100s of 1000s of people to make the study significant.
The other option is to assume that the spoilers are just typically representative of the area in which they spoiled. ie white middle class people spoiled their votes in white middle class areas, and so on. That brings an obvious problem. If you find that, say, 10% of voters in Chipping Norton are spoiling their ballot, you would assume that those 10% are largely part of the Chipping Norton set, who may have beef with the Tories at the mo, but would jump off a cliff sooner than vote Labour. Likewise the Tories will assume that spoilers in Scotland are not potential Tory voters. A spoiled vote says nothing. However if the Greens added 10% to their vote in Chipping Norton, that would be one hell of a message.
On the other hand if potential spoilers all vote for a party that's close to their political tendencies then we don't have all of that jazz, its much clearer where you're going. I see little value in playing hard to get, when its so hard to get. If, say, UKIP hit 15% of the national vote in this election, then the Tories will sure as hell be adjusting their policies to take account of them.
Spoiling your vote leaves you hoping that the other spoilers feel the same as you, and hoping that the main parties take the effort to try and figure out who you are & why you spoiled. Voting for a minority party makes it clear as day how you feel & where your views lie, and makes it easy you to figure our whether your view is matched by others.
There was an article on the beeb the other day which was a very senior civil servant taking partial responsibility for not predicting the crash. Frankly when you have esteemed Whitehall economists giving poor advice to politicians who by and large will not have degrees in economics you're inevitably going to go wrong at some point.
In any case, relying on money brought in by a notoriously variable industry like finance seems obviously flawed to anyone with half a brain. The Tories would do well to remember that it was them under Thatcher who made our economy so reliant on the financial sector in the first place. Labour just carried it on and got unlucky that it blew up at exactly the wrong time for them electorally.
edit - to clarify, i'm not defending Labour.
In any case, relying on money brought in by a notoriously variable industry like finance seems obviously flawed to anyone with half a brain. The Tories would do well to remember that it was them under Thatcher who made our economy so reliant on the financial sector in the first place. Labour just carried it on and got unlucky that it blew up at exactly the wrong time for them electorally.
edit - to clarify, i'm not defending Labour.
It's not something that is isolated to Labour. All political parties voted for several policies and investment strategies that would have had the Country similarly fragile. However the political party in power are the ones who take ultimate responsibility. Labour have rightfully paid for their poor judgement, even though they were backed by the Tories.
As I've said before I want to see a budget surplus in the form of a UK sovereign wealth fund by the time our next recession hits. Unfortunately even with the most promising forecasts our debt will still be over £1 trillion by 2025. We have gotten ourselves in a situation where even 10 years of economic growth, coupled with only modest spending increases has us hugely in debt. Our current philosophy of racking up debts is also causing each recession to hit harder and harder and each recovery to be slower and slower.
I want to see a country where the second a downturn hits we can hit the cash injection button and pump some serious growth into the economy, without it costing us more than our defence budget and half of our education budget every year just to service. I want to see a country where my taxes aren't paying for the pensions of my grandparents, but are being invested to pay for my own pension in 30 years time. In the Construction industry particularly our current modus operandi is actually hurting companies who have to rapidly expand to cope with increased work from both the private and public sector in the good times, but then often go bust when a recession hits because private contracts dry up at the same time as public contracts. If public contracts could replace private contracts in the bad times, then the sector would be infinitely more stable, as would the economy. Unfortunately to do that the Government have to hold off on large scale building until the economy starts to take a turn for the worst, which they won't do as it's an easy vote winner.
This is a complete fantasy in our Country, whereas in a Country like Norway it's a reality. They have a budget surplus that is the equivalent to well over a years GDP. Each UK citizen is roughly £15,000 in debt the second they're born; each Norwegian citizen is born in credit.
"The lesson we should learn from the city (of London) is that deregulation is the key to success" D Cameron.
Quoted (from 2006 IIRC) on BBC Radio 5 this morning.
After having said that and promising to match Labour spending around the same time the basis of his criticism should ring a little hollow to people but it doesn't seem to.
This is a good analysis of it, it's like protest as white noise that will get tuned out.
Also, this made me chuckle, from Guardian's live blog -
I was thinking recently this might be the case, but wasn't sure what with all the SNP and Lib Dem shenanigans.
And I see that Cameron is preparing the ground for the Tory-manufactured constitutional crisis this Friday by claiming Labour wouldn't be a legitimate government if they had less seats than the Tories. They'll be going balls deep for it from about 10PM Thursday I guess.
His assumptions about UKIP votes are probably wrong. They are pulling many votes from Labour and the hard core UKIPers 2nd preferences would be BNP.
Norway are the worlds 9th biggest exporter of oil and 3rd biggest exporter of gas. So yeah, they have a bit of a cash surplus. You can't seriously compare the UK to them.
But we have more sheep.
Yep, as much as I like Norway, they're an oil rich micro-state and pretty irrelevant in discussions of the UK economy.
Scotland obviously used them as a comparison in the independence debate, but even that was a huge stretch.
Whereas the UK has had no Oil reserves over the last few decades? The difference is that we somewhat squandered the money whilst they saved it for a rainy day.
They export two and a half times more oil than us, export eight times more gas than us, but only have a population one tenth the size of ours. So, no, the two cannot be compared.
This is a fair point. We're not in their league in terms of natural resources (I think over 95% of their domestic power production is hydroelectric as well) but they've certainly been much smarter with it generally.
Although on the topic of similarities to Norway, their government is currently a minority coalition of the 2nd and 3rd parties...
UKIP has had to suspend a candidate for racist remarks. Seriously, if you're thinking of voting UKIP, please watch this video: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/robert-blay-ukip-suspends-parliamentary-5641537
Terrifying. This is what lies beneath the party facade.
Terrifying. This is what lies beneath the party facade.
I think you are underestimating the levels of oil and gas extracted in the UK over the last half century.
Also add in our financial services revenue and there's no reason we shouldn't have a very large sovereign wealth fund.
Jesus christ. I'm pretty sure there are grounds for arrest there, let alone suspension.
It concerns me how someone like that can not only go through normal life without being found out but also be a member of the tory party at one point
He was previously Chairman of the local Consevative association.
Anyone can become a member of any party by filling in a form so you'll find lunatics in all the memberships. The concern should be as to how he became a candidate for parliament for a relatively popular party..
Oh, that's pretty fecked up then.
You're just pulling random arguments out of the air without even checking if they're relevant. If you can't be bothered to undertake even the most basic research I won't waste any more time beyond pointing this out, the GDP of both countries per capita, which of course factors in our financial services industry & everything else.
At no point since oil production was considered in the 60s has the UK had a similar level of financial strength, particularly since the boom in the 80s. We did at least avoid falling too behind for a while; by the late 90s they were "only" about 30% richer than we were. But when our oil started to diminish at the same time as their gas production went through the roof in the 2000s, the relative GDPs of the countries diverged rapidly.
Argument in the comment section:
Morgoth • an hour ago
Men like this are the reason I will be voting UKIP and urge all other Englishmen to do the same.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
Urge all you like. Thankfully we have the intelligence to ignore you.
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
But not the intelligence to understand what being an ethnic minority will mean for your children and grandchildren.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
What will it mean?
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
Persecution and mass rape, racism and hatred. We know so, the Liberal Left have told us relentlessly how hard life is for an ethnic minority.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
Interesting theory. With us currently not being the ethnical minority, I assume we are those currently responsible for the persecution and mass rape, racism and hatred of ethnical minorities...
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
We must be, judging by the amount of ''Anti Racism'' laws passed by the Government.
SRW Morgoth • 41 minutes ago
Thanks for confirming.
Morgoth SRW • 37 minutes ago
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that we are being brow beaten into accepting our impending minority status, could it.
SRW Morgoth • 34 minutes ago
If you genuinely think that the white British 92.12% of the population are at risk of becoming an ethnical minority, I really have nothing to say to you.
Morgoth SRW • 30 minutes ago
''Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that if immigration remains at a long-term rate of around 180,000 a year the proportion of the white British-born population will fall from 80 per cent to 59 per cent by 2051.''
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
And it's being done against our will. The truth is you simply have nothing to say
Men like this are the reason I will be voting UKIP and urge all other Englishmen to do the same.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
Urge all you like. Thankfully we have the intelligence to ignore you.
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
But not the intelligence to understand what being an ethnic minority will mean for your children and grandchildren.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
What will it mean?
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
Persecution and mass rape, racism and hatred. We know so, the Liberal Left have told us relentlessly how hard life is for an ethnic minority.
SRW Morgoth • an hour ago
Interesting theory. With us currently not being the ethnical minority, I assume we are those currently responsible for the persecution and mass rape, racism and hatred of ethnical minorities...
Morgoth SRW • an hour ago
We must be, judging by the amount of ''Anti Racism'' laws passed by the Government.
SRW Morgoth • 41 minutes ago
Thanks for confirming.
Morgoth SRW • 37 minutes ago
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that we are being brow beaten into accepting our impending minority status, could it.
SRW Morgoth • 34 minutes ago
If you genuinely think that the white British 92.12% of the population are at risk of becoming an ethnical minority, I really have nothing to say to you.
Morgoth SRW • 30 minutes ago
''Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that if immigration remains at a long-term rate of around 180,000 a year the proportion of the white British-born population will fall from 80 per cent to 59 per cent by 2051.''
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
And it's being done against our will. The truth is you simply have nothing to say
Comparing it per capita doesn't even close to tell the full story though, so if I was arguing the countries were identical, your argument is equally misleading. Norway has a much, much lower population density which means that their expenditure per capita must be much higher to match. However I am in no way saying the countries are identical or that we could be sitting here with £3 trillion in a bank account (we have roughly 6 times the GDP versus their £500m budget surplus). It was never meant as a direct comparison, only a philosophical comparison.
They had a lot of Oil and Gas and have reinvested a lot of the proceeds into a wealth fund as security for the next generation, as well as giving their country investment income right now. We had a lot of Oil and Gas and instead of using this clear non-renewable source of income as a buffer for the future, we spent it the second we had it. Now not only have we spent all the money it generated and more, but as the revenues from our natural resources dry up we're having to replace that income with some other form of income, making it a double whammy of negligence.
Whereas we've acted like a spoiled teenager with a big inheritance, splurging it until it's gone and then wondering why we have to tighten our belts later on; Norway have acted responsibly, are living off some of the investment income and have put aside some for their children.
Finneh has an ongoing problem with logic and spurious analogues in this and other arguments.
You forgot maths.
It seems all the campaigning has been a waste of time
The polls are pretty static and the result looks pretty certain to be the hung parliament predicted at the start.
At least the deals and backstabbing to be done post election may be interesting?
The polls are pretty static and the result looks pretty certain to be the hung parliament predicted at the start.
At least the deals and backstabbing to be done post election may be interesting?
UKIP Candidate Suspended With Immediate Effect
Robert Blay, the UKIP candidate for North East Hampshire, has been suspended with immediate effect, the party has confirmed.
It comes after the Daily Mirror published a video of Mr Blay threatening to shoot his Conservative rival for the seat, Ranil Jayawardena.
Sky's Robert Nisbet said the footage, which was secretly recorded at a party event in Kent on Saturday, was a "serious headache" for the party.
UKIP said in a statement Mr Blay's views were "abhorrent" and he was suspended "as soon as they were brought to our attention".
In it, Mr Blay said: "I think he could be our first Asian MP. If he is I will personally put a bullet between his eyes."
When asked how he felt at the prospect of Mr Jayawardena getting elected in what is considered a safe Tory seat, Mr Blay said: "It makes me quite sick.
"But I've always said in my constituency you could put a monkey out there with a blue rosette on and it would win."
UKIP said his views "have absolutely no place in British politics or public life" and apologised to Mr Jayawardena for any distress caused.
The party added in its statement that such views were not confined solely to its ranks: "UKIP acts immediately in circumstances such as these.
"Unfortunately, as every party has found over the past few months, internal vetting systems are not perfect, which is reflected in the fact that since January of this year, 300 Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Conservative Party candidates across the country have found themselves suspended, expelled, or even jailed for foul behaviour of all kinds.
"We are also deeply concerned that Mr Blay had a long career in the Conservative Party, including being his local association chairman - which goes to prove that issues with candidates such as these are not limited to UKIP."
Robert Blay, the UKIP candidate for North East Hampshire, has been suspended with immediate effect, the party has confirmed.
It comes after the Daily Mirror published a video of Mr Blay threatening to shoot his Conservative rival for the seat, Ranil Jayawardena.
Sky's Robert Nisbet said the footage, which was secretly recorded at a party event in Kent on Saturday, was a "serious headache" for the party.
UKIP said in a statement Mr Blay's views were "abhorrent" and he was suspended "as soon as they were brought to our attention".
In it, Mr Blay said: "I think he could be our first Asian MP. If he is I will personally put a bullet between his eyes."
When asked how he felt at the prospect of Mr Jayawardena getting elected in what is considered a safe Tory seat, Mr Blay said: "It makes me quite sick.
"But I've always said in my constituency you could put a monkey out there with a blue rosette on and it would win."
UKIP said his views "have absolutely no place in British politics or public life" and apologised to Mr Jayawardena for any distress caused.
The party added in its statement that such views were not confined solely to its ranks: "UKIP acts immediately in circumstances such as these.
"Unfortunately, as every party has found over the past few months, internal vetting systems are not perfect, which is reflected in the fact that since January of this year, 300 Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Conservative Party candidates across the country have found themselves suspended, expelled, or even jailed for foul behaviour of all kinds.
"We are also deeply concerned that Mr Blay had a long career in the Conservative Party, including being his local association chairman - which goes to prove that issues with candidates such as these are not limited to UKIP."
If the Tories get ~285 it's going to be an absolute bloodbath all round. As the numbers creep in either direction of that it gets a bit calmer with a more clear-cut result, but still pretty dicey in public opinion and stability terms. Likely that the main Tory plan B right now is to get the most seats, claim Labour are the losers and try to get another election soon which the Lib Dems and Labour wouldn't be able to afford.
Genuinely very uncomfortable to watch.. Makes my skin crawl. They can spin the "every party has their nutters" shite if they want, how many Labour, Lib Dem, SNP or Green candidates have been caught saying things like this?
Not something I've ever looked into or noticed, but I never realised how right wing the UK papers are. Guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but just looking at some of the front pages tomorrow, a lot of them are looking desperate.
During an LBC interview at the weekend, Farage claimed that the other Westminster parties have had to suspend 300 officials since the start of 2015 alone. Presumably there is some form of public record or press monitoring, but it sounded like a pretty large figure to me.
And then there was this survey out recently :: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/23/ukip-is-officially-the-most-racist-party_n_6733996.html
UKIP can be an easy target and deservedly so; however, it would be foolish to suppose that hateful beliefs are a blight confined to the fringes.
Asked if he believed that he done more to stop racism that anyone else in Britain, Mr Farage added: "I hope so. I genuinely hope so." (Mail)
I can never tell when you're serious. Please tell me that's one of your Steve-isms?