UK General Election 2017

[LittleGrizzly]

Ahh so leaving was a good idea we should have just made sure everyone else in Europe was ready to jump ship at the same time?

Alternatively we'll continue to make a hash of it and force the rest of you even closer together....

[Fragony]

Ahh so leaving was a good idea we should have just made sure everyone else in Europe was ready to jump ship at the same time?

Alternatively we'll continue to make a hash of it and force the rest of you even closer together....

offs Europe is not your terrrotory there is no reason to be in it, all the EU does is restringting trade for a country like the UK, intertnantional trade outside the EU is heavily punshid. The EU is not your friend

[Pannonian]

offs Europe is not your terrrotory there is no reason to be in it, all the EU does is restringting trade for a country like the UK, intertnantional trade outside the EU is heavily punshid. The EU is not your friend

The EU is our market though. I can live without the EU being our friend. I'll have difficulty living without the EU being our market.

[Fragony]

The EU is our market though. I can live without the EU being our friend. I'll have difficulty living without the EU being our market.

Europe really isn't your hub, the UK could never compete. The EU is a horrible thing

[Pannonian]

Europe really isn't your hub, the UK could never compete. The EU is a horrible thing

50% of our exports go there. It's the nearest coherent market, with attending lower transportation costs. Do you recommend we teleport our goods to the other side of the planet instead? At least that would be a positive recommendation, unlike everything else you've said on the subject.

[Pannonian]

It may seem insensitively timed, but I hope that, even if we do leave the EU in its entirety, with part of the argument being to free up UK businesses from red tape and regulations, we will still regulate our services according to the higher standards, whether it be EU or UK legislated.

[Fragony]

50% of our exports go there. It's the nearest coherent market, with attending lower transportation costs. Do you recommend we teleport our goods to the other side of the planet instead? At least that would be a positive recommendation, unlike everything else you've said on the subject.

That market isn't going to disapear just because you guys hurted some ego's. You don't seem to understand that you have the best cards and eurocrates are scared because it's going to become obvious that they are of no use whatsoever, everything worked fine and they know that

[Pannonian]

That market isn't going to disapear just because you guys hurted some ego's. You don't seem to understand that you have the best cards and eurocrates are scared because it's going to become obvious that they are of no use whatsoever, everything worked fine and they know that

Thus says someone living a world away in Dutchland. Meanwhile, I live in the UK, where I shop on the high street and see prices going noticeably up. When are you moving over here to share the wonderful extra-EU experience of the brave British?

[Fragony]

Thus says someone living a world away in Dutchland. Meanwhile, I live in the UK, where I shop on the high street and see prices going noticeably up. When are you moving over here to share the wonderful extra-EU experience of the brave British?

You don't have to actually pay that it'sl bluff that you must

[Sir Moody]

You don't have to actually pay that it'sl bluff that you must

we do if we want a trade agreement - this idea we can not pay at least something and still find Europe receptive to a trade agreement is a poor joke...

[Husar]

You're old, you might not live to see another election - what motivates you to vote? Self Interest? Is that really likely?

Older people can become very selfish, begin to think up more and more entitlements and things the rest of society owes them etc.
So quite likely, yes. Trying to sink the ship may go a bit far, but they may want to make the best of the years they have left and not even make the connection to the future of their children. Don't fall for the romanticized image of the wise old Hollywood grandpa. There may be some of them around, but that ain't make them a majority.

[Greyblades]

I really am scratching my head how any of you are able to ascertain the motivations of the elderly, selfish or otherwise.

[LittleGrizzly]

we do if we want a trade agreement - this idea we can not pay at least something and still find Europe receptive to a trade agreement is a poor joke...

I think the general idea is to have the British national anthem roaring in the background whilst footage of the battle of Britain plays on a large screen, then Churchill's voice booms out declaring that we will fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender!

Presumably at this point Johnny Foreigner would back down and cede to our demands.

[Husar]

I really am scratching my head how any of you are able to ascertain the motivations of the elderly, selfish or otherwise.

Maybe one day you will learn.

[Greyblades]

@Montmorency: My apologies for taking so long to reply, I have been feeling drained recently and have been putting the more challenging subjects aside until I felt I was in a better mindset to approach them. I have been doing that a lot recently and it shames me to admit I have allowed some to be forgotten.

You conceive of political power only in terms of ability to pass a given piece of legislation through a legislature in the near-term, which misunderstands power in democracies. The existence and size of opposition parties limits the actions the governing Party can take, because this isn't about what someone "lets" anyone else have or do. Parliament is not about turn-taking. Parliament is a political institution dependent on the electorate and not a machine for churning out legislature that one actor can hold and wield in denial of others. Every action must run in some way through the approval and vetting of minority parties, to the extent that the less minority support a course of action or legislation has, the more of its power the majority or governing group must expend to secure it - and governments do not have unlimited quantities of this power, either in sheer extent or in some duration of time. Hence, priorities and expedience, i.e. politics.

Yes they can take indirect actions that can disrupt the 51% block's cohesion or posture to increase their chances of growing into the next 51% block, but that is all a minority party is able to do. A minority party that cannot disrupt the majority block and build it's own block it is powerless no matter if it's size is 1% or 49%- that combined by my belief that labour is one of these powerless is my point.

When you note something like

you have to grasp that this is the basis for your political system, it's the expectation and what all the participants are organized about. If it were not the case, all governments would translate to one-party states.

Insert a "meet the new boss same as the old boss" joke about the state of american and british politics here.

Multi party democracies are fully capable of being dominated by a single party for periods of time; it is the possibility of regime change in election that defines a multi party democracy from single party, there is no required inevitability of such change.

You took it that Corbyn's bad leadership is directly responsible for Labor's lack of a majority in this election. Corbyn could well be a bad leader, or even an acceptable but otherwise inconvenient leader, but you didn't have license to associate leadership from Corbyn, poor or otherwise, with overall election results. At least some of the issue is related to a fundamental misunderstanding, a zero-sum one, of how democracies work, which led you to perceive the election outcome for Labor as a bad one in the first place. What do you make of the proposition that it is categorically impossible for a party like the Liberal Democrats to not have bad leadership?

Why would it be impossible?

Just because I blame Labour's lack of success in this election on Jeremy Corbyn does not mean I believe success is impossible without good leadership, an idea that is completely untenable when considering the performance of the conservatives.

My assertions in this causality is not produced from thin air, merely that I have not presented the reasons in my recent posts. I would not be averse to discussing what brings me to the conclusion, in a time when I am not as time constrained my internet access as I am now.

Maybe one day you will learn.

What is there some sort of mass telepathy granting second puberty that occurs when you reach thirty I have been kept in the dark about until now?

[Montmorency]

Back in the early days of Blair, it was noted that the Conservative Party was extraordinarily elderly, and it was estimated that the Conservative member base would die off within a decade or so. A couple of decades on, the Tories are in government, and the same age group trends noted by Churchill are still there. The trend has been there throughout my lifetime, and goes back before my lifetime. Why should I assume that things are going to be different when the evidence says otherwise?

The point being that this isn't the correct trend to notice; even its impression extends only to the past several generations and may be better explained as a function than as a pure function of aging.

For instance, in 1979, 1983, and 1987 the Conservative ascendancy saw 18-34 voters favor Tories over Labor in their proportion of the vote This only flipped under Blair, and that's when Labor had a huge lead among youth. This lead then disappeared in 2010. So while Tory biases at various times are larger in older groups, and Labor biases smaller, much of the results we see can be better linked to period-specific political circumstances and generational (as opposed to age) differences.

What you need to do to get a better grip on the relationship of age to politics is to compare generations rather than age brackets at one point in time. How do political beliefs and voting habits of those born in the 1930s and 1940s compare to those born in the 50s, then the 60s and 70s... and how do these change over time within that cohort, all of that. If one cohort is simply more left-oriented than their immediate successors and always have been, as seems to be the case for the oldest voting bloc in the UK, then we should look beyond some kind of 'senescence turning point' on a spectrum. That's not to say that absolute aging can't have an effect on political attitudes, but that this has to be supported and contextualized and not merely assumed as is commonly done.

[Montmorency]

Greyblades, what both majority and minority parties do beyond passing legislation is develop policies with their interest groups and target demographics, bargain individually and corporately with their opponents, and work locally or behind the scenes to prime the electorate for the next contest. Parties are actively engaged in governing even if they don't on paper have the front seat (unless they are just very small). Democracies are set up exactly to prevent minority groups (parties here) from being powerless, although different setups can grant more or less power.

Single-party rule in a democracy in itself weakens other parties because they do not have the chance to develop national infrastructure to a meaningful extent, and because there is less leverage with which to modify the ruling party's agenda. Look at the slippery-banana-peel performance of Japan's DPJ 2008-2012, to the point that the whole party in recent years had to be dissolved/merged (yet again) with others to maintain an opposition to the classic LDP hegemony over postwar Japan. A similar effect exists with very small or niche parties, in connection with the first paragraph. As an aside, parties like DUP are a weird kind of exception because they have otherwise been empowered, status quo parties in their own right.

I'm only saying here that it is incorrect to characterize a non-majority result as an unqualifiable failure for a party. Parties play for keeps, or they disappear.

[Beskar]

Hey Beskar, why don't you redirect some of that partisan anti-Tory feeling towards ALL politicians? Including, I might add, recently resigned Tim Farron and soon-to-be-elected leaders Vince Cable.

Hmm?

Well, I would, but unfortunately the Lib Dems are too busy burying themselves within their own grave...

Tim Farron disappointed me in Brexit and the General Election. To be fair, it could be the Media bias against the Lib Dems which makes them virtually invisible to the public eye and UKIP very visible with no MPs.

As for his Christian beliefs and progressive party nonsense, that was irritating. There is a fundamental difference between the Church and the Secular State. If he felt Homosexuality was a sin, he can say "According to my faith, sodomy is a sin. However, I don't deprive people the choice to engage in activities more in line with their own separate views and belief systems." There, problem solved. He would have nothing to justify to the creator either because it says "Judge others like you would like to be judged yourself", ie be judged and ruled fairly.

[Pannonian]

May makes for some gruesome watching. It's almost as though there's a manual for how to be a prime minister, with counterpoints of what not to do, and she's following every one of the latter points.

[Beskar]

Theresa May chased from church as angry crowd brands Prime Minister a 'coward'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...rime-minister/

Prime Minister sneaking outside the back, avoiding the plebs, as they brand her a coward as she throws the entire London met police between her and the car, all 5 of them (after cuts) as she makes her escape.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well, I would, but unfortunately the Lib Dems are too busy burying themselves within their own grave...

Tim Farron disappointed me in Brexit and the General Election. To be fair, it could be the Media bias against the Lib Dems which makes them virtually invisible to the public eye and UKIP very visible with no MPs.

As for his Christian beliefs and progressive party nonsense, that was irritating. There is a fundamental difference between the Church and the Secular State. If he felt Homosexuality was a sin, he can say "According to my faith, sodomy is a sin. However, I don't deprive people the choice to engage in activities more in line with their own separate views and belief systems." There, problem solved. He would have nothing to justify to the creator either because it says "Judge others like you would like to be judged yourself", ie be judged and ruled fairly.

Actually, it's "judge not, lest ye be judged."

I.e. you are not entitled to make moral judgements, because judged by the same standards you apply to others you will doubtless me found wanting.

In any case, in the UK there is no clear division between Church and State - we live in a sort of "soft Theocracy".

Maybe it was the need to apply moral judgement to others that got him down. He wasn't all that impressive anyway, and now Clegg is out of Parliament Cable will be next up, which means Lib Dems lurching to the Left and cuddling up to Corbyn's Labour.

[Pannonian]

Actually, it's "judge not, lest ye be judged."

I.e. you are not entitled to make moral judgements, because judged by the same standards you apply to others you will doubtless me found wanting.

In any case, in the UK there is no clear division between Church and State - we live in a sort of "soft Theocracy".

Maybe it was the need to apply moral judgement to others that got him down. He wasn't all that impressive anyway, and now Clegg is out of Parliament Cable will be next up, which means Lib Dems lurching to the Left and cuddling up to Corbyn's Labour.

The judgement comes from the media and especially the press, a relic of the days when people genuinely cared about character, as opposed to pretending that they do. There is no substantial way in which the CofE or religion in general affects everyday life, barring perhaps the shorter and limited working day on Sunday (nowadays a break from work rather than a religiously observed sabbath)

[a completely inoffensive name]

STRONG AND STABLE

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Theresa May chased from church as angry crowd brands Prime Minister a 'coward'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...rime-minister/

Prime Minister sneaking outside the back, avoiding the plebs, as they brand her a coward as she throws the entire London met police between her and the car, all 5 of them (after cuts) as she makes her escape.

Oh, really?

So they didn't look like they were trying to rip her apart? Then?

Except they did, didn't they?

[Montmorency]

Oh, really?

So they didn't look like they were trying to rip her apart? Then?

Except they did, didn't they?

security concerns

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Given the vicious nature of the crowd her Police escort would have insisted she be extracted - not least given the recent terrorist attacks.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Given the vicious nature of the crowd her Police escort would have insisted she be extracted - not least given the recent terrorist attacks.

It's not good optics. In her position, she might as well have risked it.

[Beskar]

[Pannonian]

Bugger Jonathan Pie.

[Beskar]

Bugger Jonathan Pie.

Too much dose of raw truth?