UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post Reply
User avatar
Tyrannical
Posts: 6326
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 4:59 am
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Tyrannical » Sun Dec 15, 2019 2:47 pm

I look forward to Boris making nice buddy buddy with Trump as they hammer out a mutually beneficial Brexit trade agreement.
A rational skeptic should be able to discuss and debate anything, no matter how much they may personally disagree with that point of view. Discussing a subject is not agreeing with it, but understanding it.

User avatar
Brian Peacock
Tipping cows since 1946
Posts: 37953
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:44 am
About me: Ablate me:
Location: Location: Location:
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Dec 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Alan B wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 2:13 pm
Make Britain Great Again? Britain was only ever 'Great' when all the other nations it invaded were weaker. That is now no longer the case...

I think one of the problems with Labour is the extreme left unions playing politics and assuming the Labour Party was 'their party' to run as they thought fit. I found that disturbing and very uncomfortable. I voted for my Labour MP (not for Corbyn. What choice did I have?). My constituency is now fucking Tory. He did nothing to deserve that fate.
I think you're forgetting that the Labour party was founded by the labour and union movement to represent the interests of working people and the poor. Ask yourself why we have a two day weekend rather than one or a 36 hour working week rather than a 60 hr week? The Labour party was the party of the unions, 'their party', but in that regard it was also 'our party' too - the party that didn't represent the interests of landlords, bankers, and mill owners etc.
Alan B wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 2:13 pm
At the other extreme, with the Tories, the 'Tax-dodgers' knew that the Tory Party was theirs to do with as they will. They bought it wholesale.

Edit:
I think we should have a temporary military takeover to enforce mandatory voting with proportional representation... [/wishful thinking mode] :whistle:
I don't think we need to go straight to the military option. Let's just argue for and promote proportionate voting systems and compulsory voting and discuss their merits over a nice cup of tea. :tea:
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
.

User avatar
Alan B
Posts: 976
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:53 pm
Location: Birmingham, UK.
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Alan B » Sun Dec 15, 2019 6:46 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 3:13 pm
Alan B wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 2:13 pm
Make Britain Great Again? Britain was only ever 'Great' when all the other nations it invaded were weaker. That is now no longer the case...

I think one of the problems with Labour is the extreme left unions playing politics and assuming the Labour Party was 'their party' to run as they thought fit. I found that disturbing and very uncomfortable. I voted for my Labour MP (not for Corbyn. What choice did I have?). My constituency is now fucking Tory. He did nothing to deserve that fate.
I think you're forgetting that the Labour party was founded by the labour and union movement to represent the interests of working people and the poor. Ask yourself why we have a two day weekend rather than one or a 36 hour working week rather than a 60 hr week? The Labour party was the party of the unions, 'their party', but in that regard it was also 'our party' too - the party that didn't represent the interests of landlords, bankers, and mill owners etc.
No, I'm not forgetting what the unions of the past have achieved. What I find disquieting now is the almost 'Leninist' POVs some unions have (including Corbyn) which I would think is no longer necessary or relevant in today's politics. The Guardian
Alan B wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 2:13 pm
At the other extreme, with the Tories, the 'Tax-dodgers' knew that the Tory Party was theirs to do with as they will. They bought it wholesale.

Edit:
I think we should have a temporary military takeover to enforce mandatory voting with proportional representation... [/wishful thinking mode] :whistle:
Brian Peacock wrote:I don't think we need to go straight to the military option. Let's just argue for and promote proportionate voting systems and compulsory voting and discuss their merits over a nice cup of tea. :tea:
Nice idea to 'sit round the table' and have a friendly argument and discussion, but FPTP is what the two main parties thrive on (well, Labour not so much at the moment :( ). PR will reduce their power and they could become 'one of the many' - not a bad thing in my opinion. If PR and mandatory voting is to become an actuality in the UK, it may only be under duress.
The Guardian
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power - Eric Hoffer.
I have NO BELIEF in the existence of a God or gods. I do not have to offer proof nor do I have to determine absence of proof because I do not ASSERT that a God does or does not or gods do or do not exist.

User avatar
Brian Peacock
Tipping cows since 1946
Posts: 37953
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:44 am
About me: Ablate me:
Location: Location: Location:
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Dec 16, 2019 10:35 am

Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
.

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:07 pm
About me: Dijkbeschermer
Location: 's-Gravenhage, Nederland
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Scot Dutchy » Mon Dec 16, 2019 11:29 am

PR is a totally different ball game. You cant compare it to the corrupted UK system. When a party wins with 45% of the vote and makes a "landslide" of a majority then something is seriously wrong. On this side of the ditch it is about percentages and 45% does not cut it. If that result had happened here Labour and the LibDems would be round the table negotiating a coalition government. The tories could jump and down but percentages are hard.
Look at the percentages that MP's won their seats; not a majority to be seen. Even the Irish system with STV does end up with MP's chosen by the majority of the votes.
It is really the worst system ever thought up and we wont talk about the HoL.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

PsychoSerenity
"I" Self-Perceive Recursively
Posts: 7824
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:57 am
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by PsychoSerenity » Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:13 pm



Honestly, I'm not as hopeful as Monbiot that there is a solution, but I definitely think he's got the real problem identified here.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]

User avatar
Brian Peacock
Tipping cows since 1946
Posts: 37953
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:44 am
About me: Ablate me:
Location: Location: Location:
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Dec 23, 2019 12:38 am

There's also this...



... and ...
Johnson visit to Lebedev party after victory odd move for 'people's PM'

It was the equivalent of a V-sign cheerfully flashed at his critics. The day after his landslide election victory, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds dropped into a caviar-fuelled Christmas party in London hosted by former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny.

During the campaign Johnson had stubbornly refused to publish the Russia report, written by the last parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

Its contents have still not been revealed. But it is understood to examine the extent of Moscow influence on British politics – and the way in which the Russian elite has established a powerful lobby in the UK through lavish expenditure and networking.

The Lebedev family insist that they are merely entrepreneurs and media proprietors. Nonetheless, the party – held to celebrate Alexander’s 60th birthday – was a practical demonstration of how extensive their connections are, stretching all the way to Downing Street.
Johnson was one of several top politicians who turned up to the event, held at the Lebedev family’s £6m stuccoed mansion overlooking Regent’s Park. Guests included David and Samantha Cameron and George Osborne, now a Lebedev employee as Evening Standard editor. From the Blairite left, Peter Mandelson and Tristram Hunt were also in attendance.
Others invited to the vodka and caviar birthday party included Mick Jagger, Princess Eugenie, the actors Matt Smith and Rosamund Pike, and the model Lily Cole. Comedians Eddie Izzard and David Baddiel, the artist Grayson Perry and sculptor Antony Gormley were also there. Missing this year was the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard
Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here.

.

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
.

User avatar
pErvinalia
On the good stuff
Posts: 59295
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:08 pm
About me: Spelling 'were' 'where'
Location: dystopia
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Dec 23, 2019 2:57 am

It's not illegal to help celebrate ex-KGB spy's birthday.
Sent from my penis using wankertalk.
"The Western world is fucking awesome because of mostly white men" - DaveDodo007.
"Socialized medicine is just exactly as morally defensible as gassing and cooking Jews" - Seth. Yes, he really did say that..
"Seth you are a boon to this community" - Cunt.
"I am seriously thinking of going on a spree killing" - Svartalf.

User avatar
JimC
The sentimental bloke
Posts: 73014
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 7:58 am
About me: To be serious about gin requires years of dedicated research.
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by JimC » Mon Dec 23, 2019 5:59 am

It's virtually commonplace in Melbourne... :tea:
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:07 pm
About me: Dijkbeschermer
Location: 's-Gravenhage, Nederland
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Scot Dutchy » Mon Dec 23, 2019 7:58 am

PsychoSerenity wrote:
Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:13 pm


Honestly, I'm not as hopeful as Monbiot that there is a solution, but I definitely think he's got the real problem identified here.
He is partially right. I dont agree 100%. The countries who have serious political problems all have "systems" of indirect elections which are exactly the types open to corruption and manipulation. Any system based on geographic division is very open to manipulation by gerrymandering.
If you have a straight PR system without any bells and whistle the numbers are far to high to manipulate. The second point of protection is the forming of coalitions. With straight PR without thresholds any party who can get 5% of the vote gets a seat. This allows fringe parties to get in, which is a reason given for FPTP, but allowing them in isolates them. Even extremist parties who gain 30% of the vote can be isolated which is exactly what happened to Wilders and would be the true amount the tories achieved this election. Coalitions cancel extremists.
Johnson would have never got into power if all parties would needed the the same vote for each seat which is far from true. A good example is the SNP who got 48 seats with 1,2 million votes and the Greens who only got 1 with 870,000.
If you have a representative voting system the chances of external influences is minimum because manipulation is impossible due to the numbers required. Remember Trump lost the popular vote by over two million votes.

First Past the Post
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

User avatar
Hermit
Posts: 25806
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:44 am
About me: Cantankerous grump
Location: Ignore lithpt
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Hermit » Tue Dec 24, 2019 3:36 am

PsychoSerenity wrote:
Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:13 pm


Honestly, I'm not as hopeful as Monbiot that there is a solution, but I definitely think he's got the real problem identified here.
Agreed. Monbiot's analysis of what is wrong is far better than Jonathan Pie's choleric explanation. The latter is right, of course, in so far as you don't catch flies with vinegar, but who is he trying to kid with the implied solution: If we're nice to Tory/Lib-Dem/UKIP voters our arguments that they should vote for Labour will succeed.

No fucking way. The media have those voters terminally hoodwinked. There is no reasoning with them. If there were, they would have figured out all on their own that funding cuts to education, health and other social services in order to cut corporate tax rates and income tax rates at the upper end of the scale goes against their interests.

Image


What buttresses the insistence on unreason is xenophobia and outright racism. The chief reason for supporting Brexit by most of the ruling classes is of course that it makes it easier to feather their own nests and exploit the workers, but most popular support comes from the motivation, euphemistically expressed by the slogan to "Take Back Control". Of course, when asked by survey takers, almost nobody will admit to being a xenophobe or a racist. Support will be expressed in economic terms. The Pakis take our jobs and drain social welfare funds at our expense. The chinks buy our houses, driving real estate prices to levels we cannot afford to pay. And so on. But basically, the demand to keep Great Britain ethnically Caucasian and preferably "British" is the barely concealed underlying desire. Brexit leaders have been playing on those emotions right from the start,

Image

and though there really is no need for it, there's no letup in the gutter press with the racist dogwhistling.

So what about Monbiot's solution? "a rewilding, a system that is run and owned by the people" (6:06). Um, yeah, and how one go about doing that when the reactionary gutter-press has captured the hearts and mind of the people? "We're beginning to see very powerful examples of genuine, people-owned grassroots politics developing around the world" says Monbiot (6:11). Powerful? Not. Loud, maybe, but that's all. And they won't last.

Not many of us are old enough to remember the popular leftist agitations all over Europe and North America culminating in the 1969 Paris riots? They looked massive, but only in comparison to the two somnabulant decades that preceded them. In reality the massive majority of wage-slaves kept doing what it always has: demurely clock on at the factory, consume, die.

For younger people: Remember the Occupy movement? ... Greta Thunberg's crusade, admirable, virtuous, just and rational as it is, will go the same way. When conditions get bad enough, the ruling classes will hijack the environmental movement and steer it towards its own interests. As usual, the plebs will be made to tighten their belts, while it's business as usual for the upper crust. No more privately owned internal combustion engine for you, comrade, and we can't afford to build enough plants that produce a sufficient amount of electricity from renewable sources either, so no privately owned EVs for you either. Now, excuse me. I must fly off to Davos. They need me at that conference that will find all solutions to global problems.

So, should we do a laklak? Pig's arse, we should. As inevitable as death is, we try to stay alive for as long as we can, don't we? Our resistance is hopeless, but we resist just the same. That's on the individual level. I see no reason to not do the same on a collective basis. I have no desire to expire as a selfish or a stupid cunt.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:07 pm
About me: Dijkbeschermer
Location: 's-Gravenhage, Nederland
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Scot Dutchy » Tue Dec 24, 2019 5:51 am

You just need the correct election system and that is one that cannot be manipulated. You dont need revolutions and violence. What you also need is true education.
Finland is the most progressive political country at the moment, why it is is simple; education and add to that an incorruptible election system. Where are the happiest first world countries? Not the USA or UK.
The Anglo-Saxon mind set is clearly to be seen above and previous posts. We in Europe have other thoughts. Our inequality does not verge on third world levels and we have fairly strong and stable election systems which are seldom corrupted to the state of the USA and UK.
Please put away the big tar brush of greed.
What we in Europe are doing is protecting ourselves from these misguided and corrupt influences blowing in from the west and we will succeed and maybe turn the wind around for all our sakes.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

User avatar
Hermit
Posts: 25806
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:44 am
About me: Cantankerous grump
Location: Ignore lithpt
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Hermit » Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:27 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 5:51 am
You just need the correct election system and that is one that cannot be manipulated.
Oh, if only people voted for the party that most closely reflects their interests.

Between March 1996 and may 2019 we've had 9 general elections in Australia. In all but one of them the winner also received the overall majority of the popular votes after distribution of preferences. 6 were decided in favour of the conservatives.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:07 pm
About me: Dijkbeschermer
Location: 's-Gravenhage, Nederland
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Scot Dutchy » Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:40 am

Hermit wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:27 am
Scot Dutchy wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 5:51 am
You just need the correct election system and that is one that cannot be manipulated.
Oh, if only people voted for the party that most closely reflects their interests.

Between March 1996 and may 2019 we've had 9 general elections in Australia. In all but one of them the winner also received the overall majority of the popular votes after distribution of preferences. 6 were decided in favour of the conservatives.
If you had true PR they would as there would be a party that suited them but soon as you introduce so called tactical voting then logic disappears. We had 33 parties in our last GE. Only 6 ended up in parliament. We dont have any threshold but you need in practice 5% to get a seat. All votes are equal which is absolutely not the case in the UK.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

User avatar
Hermit
Posts: 25806
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:44 am
About me: Cantankerous grump
Location: Ignore lithpt
Contact:

Re: UK General Election, 12 Dec 2019

Post by Hermit » Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:47 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:40 am
Hermit wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:27 am
Scot Dutchy wrote:
Tue Dec 24, 2019 5:51 am
You just need the correct election system and that is one that cannot be manipulated.
Oh, if only people voted for the party that most closely reflects their interests.

Between March 1996 and may 2019 we've had 9 general elections in Australia. In all but one of them the winner also received the overall majority of the popular votes after distribution of preferences. 6 were decided in favour of the conservatives.
If you had true PR they would as there would be a party that suited them but soon as you introduce so called tactical voting then logic disappears.
Which part of "the winner also received the overall majority of the popular votes after distribution of preferences" do you have difficulties comprehending?
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests