Great stuff. The House of Lords have stepped up recently and taken the role of progressive adults. It’s bizarre but great to see.
Westminster Politics
- Thread starter altodevil
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Great stuff. The House of Lords have stepped up recently and taken the role of progressive adults. It’s bizarre but great to see.
Don't know where to put this so it's going here.
Nicola Sturgeon wanting to ban 2 for 1 food deals. What is it with politicians getting involved in absolute bollocks that affects little more than the common man's slight enjoyment of something?
I couldn't care less about the ban because I don't think I've ever even had a 2 for 1 (or seen that many. Is there more in Scotland?), but politicians being dicks annoys me.
If you really wanna affect obesity positively then educate, subsidise healthy food for young people, subsidise gym memberships or workshops or something.
Too long term, might cost a bit, and not as satisfying for a politician though.
Nicola Sturgeon wanting to ban 2 for 1 food deals. What is it with politicians getting involved in absolute bollocks that affects little more than the common man's slight enjoyment of something?
I couldn't care less about the ban because I don't think I've ever even had a 2 for 1 (or seen that many. Is there more in Scotland?), but politicians being dicks annoys me.
If you really wanna affect obesity positively then educate, subsidise healthy food for young people, subsidise gym memberships or workshops or something.
Too long term, might cost a bit, and not as satisfying for a politician though.
Not seen many 2 for 1s? You must not shop in Morrisons, Asda or Tesco then.
I hate 2 for 1s, they encourage waste, and that can't be good. For example, in Morrisons you can buy two packs of bacon knowing that even if you throw half of the second one away it won't have cost you any more. Not good.
I think this is applying to takeaways and sit-downs, but could be that too.
As for the shop deals, I imagine they're often put on to get stuff out because there's too much? More chance of it not being wasted in someone's fridge than on a shelf in the supermarket and you can freeze most stuff.
Nah, it's a permanent thing for bacon, meat, orange juice, loads of things.
Fair enough. Can still be frozen though. I'd rather they look at solving things without it affecting the pocket of the public who haven't done anything wrong for once, which I think is almost always possible. Solving obesity definitely is.
The amount of abuse MP's get(Especially MP's of colour) is something that really isn't talked about enough.
True, and it really should be discussed more. I just absolutely abhor racism, it is vile.
Diane Abbott gets some truly disgusting abuse.
Yet it’s mostly dismissed as abit of ‘banter’.
Her treatment in the last general election wasn nothing short of disgraceful.
Yeah I mostly admire Sturgeon's effort to target health problems and largely support the new MUP policy, but banning certain food deals - especially 2 for 1's that aren't particularly extreme - strikes me as going a bit too far.
Huffington Post said:
She does. But in current social climate it's not surprising, she's black and a woman. There's a big racist/mennist venn diagram.
That said she is bloody awful though. Absolutely nothing to do with her race or gender she just always seems out of her depth whatever the subject and has an annoying habit on TV of answering questions as if the person she's responding to is hearing English for the very first time. Richard Burgon is another one from the Labour front bench who comes across like someone who only became a politician because on the day he applied every other candidate died unexpectedly.
The journalist probably knew(t) it was a spoof story, chiefo.
What a complete non-story.
"Will you vote to abolish the House of Lords?"
- Will it make it more likely you give me a peerage of I say yes?
"Yes"
- Then of course I will
"Here's the peerage"
....
"So um...you've been in there for a while haven't voted to abolish the House of Lords yet?"
- Sorry, could you speak up, I'm a trifle deaf in one ear
It's sad in the current political climate that 'party leader will seek to impose whip on party members during Parliamentary vote' is actually being sold as something radical. Every single Labour member in Parliament is supposed to vote with the leader. Many times they defy the whip. The idea you address this by asking them nicely not to before they go in is honestly too pathetic to even warrant the attention I've given to it in this post. What will this pledge be based on? Scouts honour? Pinkie promise? Crossing their heart and hope to die?
Ugh. Horrendous this is what the Labour party are reduced to, especially in the current climate. Whats worse is someone inside the party/camp is actually releasing this thinking it's a great story for the party. Presumably hoping people don't realise that revoking a peerage if they don't vote the way you want them to isn't a thing.
What next? Corbyn's 'radical' new plan to avoid ever losing a vote in Parliament, get all his MPs to promise not to vote against him. Fool proof!
Again: fecking hell.
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Drug ministers husband is the biggest weed dealer in Europe. Election fraud minister works with election fraudsters. PM's husband sells bombs to the Saudi's so they can bomb Yemen. Foreign minister takes hundreds of thousands of pounds from Russian friends of Putin. But Dennis Skinner gets kicked out of the commons for calling them dodgy.
She's quite fit for an MP.
Yeah but Skinner did say it in a rather loud tone. You would think they would able to hide the corruption a bit better, the sheer lack of effort put in is almost as insulting.
Honestly when I saw this on twitter the first thing that pop into my head wasn't the fraud but the chance you might find her attractive. I'm not sure what this forum has done to me.
Yeah but Skinner did say it in a rather loud tone. You would think they would able to hide the corruption a bit better, the sheer lack of effort put in is almost as insulting.
Honestly when I saw this on twitter the first thing that pop into my head wasn't the fraud but the chance you might find her attractive. I'm not sure what this forum has done to me.
We always focus on the important things.Bah, all that's missing is Gordon the Gopher.
The truly absurd thing about all of this is that after 8 years of tory maltreatment a large part of the voters are still scared that a labour government would be incompetent... All these pain inducing cuts will not save half the money the tories threw out the window by having a national referendum to secure the party's leadership position.
It's a weird situation.
Under normal circumstances, the Tories should be looking at a wilderness. It's upsetting tbh. People tell us to refrain from calling the electorate stupid. I can't find any other description.
Yes it is upsetting, I couldn't describe it better. Personally I've come to the conclusion that enough of the electorate decides their vote on something other than policy that the policy itself has somehow become irrelevant, it's depressing. I know it's little consolation but it seems to be the case everywhere (not just the UK), or at least everywhere I look
.Any government with this one's track record would ordinarily be staring into the abyss. The fact they're not I don't think is unrelated to the fact Labour now seem to celebrate losing elections and viewing within-margin-of-error polling leads to be a massive positive.
Yes it is upsetting, I couldn't describe it better. Personally I've come to the conclusion that enough of the electorate decides their vote on something other than policy that the policy itself has somehow become irrelevant, it's depressing. I know it's little consolation but it seems to be the case everywhere (not just the UK), or at least everywhere I look
I don't think it's really that difficult to diagnose.
Whether the electorate like the Conservatives or not, and some will do as Brexit fanatics, it appears that huge chunks of the population are simply unconvinced that Labour are a safe pair of hands with the economy, and that Labour incompetence will do more harm than Tory malice.
People will have reached those conclusions for a whole variety of reasons – some fair and some unfair – but there's a genuine distrust of Corbyn's Labour party, and whilst they're currently supporting the most ruinous Tory policy of them all I can't blame them.
Corbyn has been polling third behind 'Don't Know' in a two horse race of 'who will make the best PM?' since October (and has only been ahead of May once since she became PM), given how spectacularly bad a job almost everyone agrees she's doing (I seriously am yet to speak to a single Conservative voter that rates her, although admittedly I do not know many), that's a pretty damning indictment of the publics perception of Corbyn's ability to successfully lead.
I agree with this. The reaction to the last election was disappointing. Yes the result wasn't as bad as feared, but Labour still lost, the Tories still won. But there was no introspection, no looking inwards. Regardless of how much worse it was predicted to be I'll never be comfortable with the idea that a Tory can walk into Number 10 and Labour's (or specifically, the Labour leader's) supporters being almost in celebratory mode. There is a mistrust of Corbyn like you say but we're dealing with a party now that largely doesn't seem to care if it wins elections so it's not surprising they don't much seem to care about why Corbyn doesn't connect with the electorate.
So they decide their vote on their perception of the party leader's ability to lead... Which pretty much is my point, why is that more important than NHS cuts etc. ? I can understand it being one relevant factor in ones choice, but why the dominating one?
And aside from all that May has proven herself to be a terrible leader while Corbyn is just suspected to be terrible...
He may be 200 years old but he's not wrong
“The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.” — Karl Marx, 1852
“The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.” — Karl Marx, 1852
May is a proven terrible leader, but my guess is that people see her as more moderate than Corbyn. Might sound ridiculous but short of 'black magic', we're running out of plausible reasons why we are where we are. Arguably Corbyn is a more polarising figure and within the party there has been huge hostility towards anyone who isn't fully on-board, which alienates a lot of the electorate watching it from afar. And lot has to do with the ridiculous idea that you can be leader of a political party and not care about PR and media management. The cognitive dissonance that exists between insisting that you can ignore the right wing media and then complain that you're not doing well because of the right wing media, is another absurdity that nobody seems interested in addressing either.
He also disappears for days on end it seems. Leaders of the opposition, especially at a time when government is in crisis, are usually on TV, radio and the press 24/7. Corbyn's pretty much a part-time leader.
Almost everyone agrees the Conservatives have been bad for the NHS, but – as I said – there's a fear that Labour will manage to stuff it up even more by being even more incompetent. Whether that's an irrational fear or not, after all this Conservative party are fantastically incompetent too, is besides the point almost, because Corbyn's failure to persuade people that he could do better than this is itself an indictment on him, his leadership, and the Labour party.
I agree with every possible negative adjective you could use to describe this manifestation of the Conservative party and real fail to see how Labour could do worse, but I'm also sympathetic to those of the viewpoint that feel that they could, and the fact that it's not clear cut between them leads people to conclude that they might be better off with the devil they know.
Whether Labour would or would not actually be better than the Conservatives if they took power is more or less besides the point right now, what's important is convincing the electorate that they could be, and they're clearly (and I include 2017 as well in this) failing to make that case.
I think it was a celebratory moment, given how far back Labour were, given how the election was framed, and given how much it weakened May's position.
The problem was that, rather than building on it, Labour appear to have slipped back, despite the fact that the realities of Brexit are starting to hit home, and despite the fact that the Conservatives are tearing themselves apart.
You can, and I suspect some will, excuse that by pointing towards the usual external factors that go against Corbyn, but it can not be a good thing that in order for Labour to win an election under him they'd need a similar hail mary of an election result, and nor is it a good thing that all the while Labour are failing to provide basic opposition to the biggest fecking issue facing this country.
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