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I've always been a fan of replacing the house of lords with a chamber chosen by sortition; but that would require radical constitutional reform of the type that's never ever going to happen.
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Nov 1, 2014 05:14
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The BBC are never going to show anything exciting or new when they have Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, and ITV are showing the X Factor. Anything they put on would probably get the worst viewing figures, so they may as well put on something that doesn't cost them much!
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Nov 1, 2014 15:08
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Jippa posted:I some how missed all of this. isn't this the thing that led to Frankie Boyle calling Farage a oval office last week; or was that something else involving Farage and a right-wing comedian?
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Nov 6, 2014 12:27
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tbh I've always thought that Frankie Boyle was a bit of a twat but its a very different form of twattishness than the type exuded by Farage and UKIP. He wrote a Guardian article which is surprisingly good and worth a read if you care what Scottish comedians think about Farage...
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Nov 6, 2014 12:56
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Tower Hamlets update: turns out that Mr Rahmann more than likely committed proper serious electoral fraud including changing Labour votes to votes for him and including other candidates votes in his bundles to make sure that they added up to the right number. Its a bit discouraging that something that blatant can happen in an election in the United Kingdom... (its the torygraph I know, but it sort of fits with what every other source is saying about his election and it would surprise me more if the thing wasn't rigged tbh) e: hahaha Rahmann accuses the government lawyer of "witness intimidation" even though he was in Birmingham at the time, while at the same time Rahmann's supporters are going round having "little chats" to large numbers of the prosecution witnesses... IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 02:57
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Junior G-man posted:Did anyone watch the 'Police under Pressure' doc on BBC2 yesterday? It was about child sexual abuse in Rotherham, made before the real shitstorm hit, and already you could see that the department was struggling to pursue these and other major cases due to budget constraints. But cut away. but why should we give more of our taxpayers money to people who let paedos attack children without remorse!!!!! The sad thing is that I bet someone somewhere is arguing that seriously... Regardless of what you think about the police generally, those who's primary job is chasing down paedophiles do a pretty important and hard. I watched some old BBC documentary about the Met's paedophile unit on youtube at some point for some reason that I can't quite remember, and one of the jobs that they do is looking at all of the poo poo that they find in these people's houses to try and identify both victims and abusers, which is something that's probably up there as one of the most harrowing jobs that you could possibly do...
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Nov 10, 2014 11:19
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I still think that UKIP will struggle to get much over three MPs at the next election - I'm assuming that they hold Clacton, take Rochester and Strood at the by-election and hold it next year and that Farage wins whatever seat he stands in. They most likely won't get into double figures, despite all of their bluster about targeting 100 seats or whatever. This is assuming that they don't get any more Tory defectors - if anyone jumps over and gets reelected in a by-election then I'd say that they're pretty safe, provided the Tories don't stand a very good candidate against them or they don't split the votes and let Labour or the Lib Dems in through the middle. The time to defect has gone by now though; if anyone jumps ship now they'd probably conveniently schedule a by-election for the seat after the time they plan to dissolve parliament to avoid the hassle and the expense. It really is hard to say, all of the election forcasting stuff that exists doesn't cater for a party going from 2% to 20% in one election. It would surely put PR back on the table though, since the three main parties (and funnily enough especially the Lib Dems) would struggle to explain away an electoral system that can give a party over ten times the seats of another on a third of the popular vote... The Greens are likely to hold Brighton (although depends on local factors there) and have a very outside chance in Norwich South (they're miles behind but there's a very soft Lib Dem vote there and there's a chance of a fair bit of that going to the Greens). IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Nov 11, 2014 |
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Nov 11, 2014 14:35
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Cerv posted:Clacton not Clapham. I'm not quite sure why, but I always type "clacton" as "clapham"...
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Nov 11, 2014 15:34
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Looking at the crossbreaks, it seems that women dislike Brand less than men (41% or 51%) which is completely opposite what I would have expected, which is pretty interesting... Its based off around 1000 people for each group as well, so it isn't a completely useless number! I think that Brand is a total cock, but cocks can be right about some issues. The problem is that from what I've seen of him, he says a load of words that sound radical and revolutionary, but don't really seem to mean anything. I do think that its funny that a large number of Americans think that he's some amazing person who can do no wrong, which is obviously ridiculous... Something I never thought that I'd say: ITV spent half an hour looking at various feminist groups in a very positive way. Perhaps its something that they felt that they had to do after the events of the past week, but its always nice to see. Nothing particularly radical admittedly, but the idea that feminism = gender equality is radical for a worryingly large number of people, so perhaps I'm wrong...
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Nov 13, 2014 21:02
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So it turns out that I'm going to Brussels for a week in December on an EU-funded tour of the various European institutions, all because I decided to pick a course on "Politics of the European Union" module this year because the things that I wanted to do had been filled. Y'know, the EU isn't THAT bad...
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Nov 14, 2014 23:35
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One of the other people going is from Bulgaria as well 
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Nov 14, 2014 23:43
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To be fair, its 20 of us (from around 70 doing the two EU first semester courses that Glasgow Uni offers), and it seems to have been initiated by a Scottish Labour MEP, who have the right to use EU money to do stuff like this. Sucks to be someone studying somewhere with a bunch of UKIP MEPs that wouldn't do this sort of thing though...
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Nov 14, 2014 23:55
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haakman posted:History of Medicine is still compulsory That sounds absolutely terrible, but perhaps that's because I'm not particularly interested in it and I feel that nothing really should be a mandatory of the history course... I ended up doing history right up to Advanced Higher and did it for the first year of uni; probably because I had a really good history teacher for most of high school which is always good. It would have been nice to have had a little better mix of things - I swear that everyone doing Intermedate 2/Higher History does appeasement, the Making of Modern Britain (which is actually pretty interesting, a significant part of it was covering all of the ways in which Britain evolved to a democracy from 1832 to 1945; and the evolution of the Lloyd George and Attlee welfare reforms that led to the welfare state) and the American civil rights movement. I'd liked to have done the cold war or the Russian revolution or something; but I suppose they can't do what everyone wants to do and a fair few people would have liked something a little more historical... This is all now irrelevant now though, because they're changing all of the history courses to fit the curriculum for excellence, and although the new National 5 or whatever it is called course is pretty similar to the old intermediate courses, they now mandate that you do one thing from Scottish, British and European/World history rather than do something that would be a little more flexible.
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Nov 18, 2014 09:32
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(Central) Scotland is the video game capital of the UK. Also apparently people who play video games are very left wing; and one of their interests is "sitting doing as little as possible". So pretty much they're talking about goons...
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Nov 18, 2014 17:12
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the only bills that aren't whipped are generally stuff that are seen as matters of conscience. Things like Abortion, Euthanasia, and Marriage Equality (I'm sure the Lib Dems whipped on this, but they were the only ones) are seen as issues that should be free votes. Even the silly little non-binding motions like "That this house has considered the economy" after general opposition debates are sometimes whipped if it would embarrass the government...
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Nov 20, 2014 12:35
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That's one of the many problems with FPTP in a modern context: who do you vote for if you really want a Labour government (or for most people really don't want a Tory government, its the same thing in most of the UK) but your local Labour candidate is some lovely Blairite that wouldn't represent your community in parliament? For Westminster there really isn't a reason to vote for a candidate rather than a party unless you live in Bolsover or one of the small number of seats with a good Labour (or Lib Dem, there are a few) candidate. I can understand the whole Candidate over party thing for Local elections - last time we had local elections I had an amazing choice of four candidates for three seats, I voted SNP but I ranked the Tory over the Labour candidate because I'd worked with him on some stuff the year before and he was a hell of a lot better than any of the Labour councillors that we spoke to, and it turned out that the Labour candidate in my ward didn't even live in the Council area. It didn't really matter: the SNP, Labour and Tory candidates got above the quota in the first count and we got a fantastic Labour-Tory coalition... Its also why I like MMP as an electoral system; since you still have the "good local MP" thing, but the more important vote is the List Vote since that dictates who gets the most seats. If I was in charge of changing the electoral system for westminster, it'd either be that or STV... e: Floor Crossing = Resignation isn't even a convention; of the 30 SDP defectors in the 80s only one resigned to force a by-election, the others stayed in until the 1983 General Election. Crawl and Reckless resigned in order to get media coverage for UKIP and also because Carswell at least was guaranteed to win: if there was a significant change that they'd lose they wouldn't have resigned. IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 14:07
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I was going to stay up for this, but I have no desire to sit and listen to IDS witter on the BBC for three hours...
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Nov 21, 2014 01:32
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According to Twitter; Reckless's majority is likely to be small (around 3% which probably puts it below 1,000) which is completely different to Carswell's in Clacton and probably makes it pretty likely that it goes back to the Tories next year. Lots of anti-UKIP tactical voting as well...Darth Walrus posted:The flag guy got interviewed on the Telegraph live-feed. All of you who said 'racist', grab a cookie. flag guy posted:"I will continue to fly the flags - I don't care who it pisses off. I know there is a lot of ethnic minorities that don't like it. They have been up since the World Cup." loving hell... There should be nothing inherently wrong with having a flag out by itself, but you have the problem where many would perceive it in a bad way because the St Georges Cross has been used in England by people like the EDL so it may make people perceive you in a bad light (which is a little dumb to be honest). I perhaps can't really talk because I'm Scottish and have never lived in England; and the Saltire generally is seen as more of a universal national symbol and it doesn't have the unfortunate stigma that many people have for the English flag. The big problem with that thing is that it just looks tacky: it'd look lovely no matter what flag you used... e: the BBC said that the declaration ETA was around 3am, but that's not always right...
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Nov 21, 2014 02:03
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Guavanaut posted:I used to have a beat up Toyota Hilux. Does that make me a white van man or a terrorist? i dunno, was it white and do you have an england flag at your window? ReV VAdAUL posted:It is depressing how effective propaganda is. David Cameron poses with people in blackface and it is deemed "tradition", a random MP takes a number of photos of a place she is in and one of them is contrived to be "disgusting". Ed Miliband forgets to mention the deficit in one speech and it is a clear sign of incompetence, Cameron doesn't realise he has a £1.7 billion bill to pay and it is somehow the EU's fault. Nigel Farage is recorded stating he wants to privatise the NHS and Mark Reckless says he wants to deport people already here legally and it is accepted they mispoke but Miliband is awful because he didn't donate to a beggar correctly. Cameron gave a speech about austerity while wearing robes and sitting in a golden throne but Miliband is out of touch because he ate a sandwich wrong. This is probably one of the better posts in any UKMT thread
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Nov 21, 2014 15:23
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I've always wondered that the reason was behind Scottish Nationalism being generally inclusive and supporting a more left-wing party (the SNP probably could be described as "Center-Left" while Labour definately cannot) while English Nationalism seems to have developed into this more negative force. Someone said something earlier in the thread about nationalism in a significant world power being exceptionalist while nationalism in smaller countries being more "hey, we're pretty good" and therefore more willing to accept people originally from other places. i disagree with that as a rule (I'm doing my dissertation on the ways in which minorities within the baltic states have tried to act politically since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and nationalism in Estonia and Latvia led to very interesting citizenship policies that excluded Russian-speakers from the political process) but perhaps it may be true within the UK? e: Isn't the process of prosecuting someone for possession of Child Pornography one of the ways in which the police learn where its being distributed from? I wouldn't support decriminalising the possession of Child Pornography since that would still leave a market for its creation; but perhaps we could encourage rehabilitation and therapy for those who haven't actually abused children and have only been convicted of possession of the above stuff? You'd still need to go through the legal system to make it a binding thing in my opinion; since those people could potentially be a danger. Those who've actually abused children are scum that should be pursued vigorously - I found out second hand that a friend of mine was abused by her dad when she was a kid and it hosed her right up for a while - she's gay and she spent a long, long time thinking that she "became that way" because of what happened when she was younger. She never went to the police about it which is understandable: going through a long, protracted legal battle would be hard enough but especially against your father... IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 23:53
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The problem with the Liberal Democrats wasn't that they didn't do everything that they promised: it was that they spent the entire 2010 campaign saying that "WE WILL NEVER EVER VOTE FOR RAISING TUITION FEES" and then voted to triple them. When you vote to ignore the policy that was the most important thing in your election campaign as soon as you get a sniff of power, then people are naturally going to think that you're talking poo poo about everything. Its not "waa waa the lib dems had to compromise"; its "the Lib Dems don't seem to have done anything to dilute Tory policies: they even gave up the tuition fees thing".
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Nov 24, 2014 14:34
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Did anyone see this Express Article about LABOUR BEING IN THIRD PLACE BEHIND UKIP and a bunch of rubbish about the flag thing from last week? Turns out Yougov did an opinion poll with normal figures (34% Labour 33% Conservative 15% UKIP 8% Lib Dem 5% Green) but had an expanded crossbreak of 400 for Sun Readers which had the Tories on 38% ten points clear of UKIP and Labour on 25%. The Express took that crossbreak and reported in as a national opinion poll by Yougov, completely failing to mention the thing about Sun readers or Labour having a small lead in the headline voting intention section. I know that you get media manipulation of these things all of the time; but poo poo like that is as blatant as you can get and obviously ridiculous. e: it wasn't just some random article; it was mention on their front page... IceAgeComing fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Nov 24, 2014 |
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Nov 24, 2014 16:01
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LemonDrizzle posted:Ashcroft did some all-England polling and it turns out that Labour's currently cruising to an English majority thanks to the Tory-UKIP deathmatch: http://www1.politicalbetting.com/in...pse-in-england/ There was an argument that I heard somewhere that Labour's collapse in Scotland may have reduced their national voting intentions by a fair amount, which may have hidden a rise in their popular support in England. Labour getting 28% of the vote UK-wide with 41% of the vote in Scotland means that a large amount of that vote is "wasted" running up large Labour majorities in safe seats; while them having 35% nationally in recent polls while being down around 20-25% in Scotland means that they'll lose a large number of Scottish seats to the SNP (nowhere near as much as the UNS projections say IMO, but you can't really tell what will happen with the swing being around 20-30% from Labour to the SNP across Scotland - they might get wiped out, they might hold 20 seats. The only sure thing in Scotland IMO is the number of Lib Dem seats: they'll definitely have three since they'll never lose Orkney, Kennedy is still popular in Ross, Skye and Lochaber and I believe that Caithness still likes John Thurso - Inverness depends on Danny Alexander saying more dumb things and whether Salmond stands against him, but you never know with Liberal incumbents in the North of Scotland. That massive decline in Scotland could reduce the Labour share by a few points across the UK, which means that they're performing better in England and Wales than past form suggests - they don't have their vote inflated by Scotland anymore, but greatly depressed. Whether that balances out Labour losses in Scotland or not is unsure: but since the Labour losses in Scotland are to the SNP and not the Tories, it doesn't hurt their chances of forming government as much since the SNP have said that they wouldn't back a Tory government while they might be inclined to support a Labour minority government. The 22% that UKIP are getting is worryingly close to the point that they'd jump from getting a couple of FPTP seats to holding a significant number though. TBH part of me thinks that UKIP getting lots of votes and not that many seats might be good to some extent: they'd pull the "its unfair that we got a fifth of England votes but no real representation!" and who could really argue against that? It might lead to PR getting onto the political agenda (since UKIP currently allegedly support electoral reform) and the passing of that would lead to a better political system that actually would give proper left wing parties: at least the Greens and potentially a "Left Unity" list (lol) the chance to have a significant voting bloc in parliament. Its not going to happen that way since either UKIP will end up with a billion seats or would be ignored, but one could wish.
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Nov 25, 2014 01:42
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I spent a month learning Lithuanian at a university in Klaipeda.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:10
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 04:31 |
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Prince John posted:The government has officially decided what our British Values (pdf) are. Isn't this just "democratic values"; just with a nationalistic name?
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Nov 29, 2014 01:25
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