Another Person posted:

Labour have a lot more resources than Plaid does to get better coverage in Wales. I also feel like the insistence on strongly supporting the Welsh language, to the point that most election materials are presented in Welsh then English, when Welsh is very much a minority language even in Wales, might not be doing a lot to help them. Yes, they should be supporting the continued survival of Welsh, but the common tongue of Wales is English and they should be reaching out in that tongue first to convince people why Welsh should survive. Welsh media is also not very strong, so Wales receives most of the same newspaper circulation as England.

Labour has typically controlled a lot of Wales for a loooong time, so it is also hard to unseat them. Incumbency effect.

V. Illych L. posted:

that he wouldn't be as New Labour as his brother

coffeetable posted:

does anyone know what ed promised the unions in exchange for backing his leadership bid

Sanford posted:

Productivity in my office has just dropped to zero as people enjoy this website. What constituency was this in?

AMooseDoesStuff posted:

Welsh is my first language and I'm still not voting Plaid. that devo post above was interesting but Wales really has no nationalism. They're trying pretty hard this time at least? My sister mentioned maybe considering them once.

a pipe smoking dog posted:

It's worth pointing out that Leanne Wood can't actually speak welsh.

kecske posted:

coffeetable posted:

does anyone know what ed promised the unions in exchange for backing his leadership bid

the worst stewie posted:

Come and join the cool goon election chat, most of us are getting drunk as gently caress later

server: irc.synirc.net
channel: #UKelection

That goes for all of yiz!!! You can use mibbit or something if you were one of the kids who spent the 90s playing outside.

WMain00 posted:

I'm in Edinburgh! Scotland goon meet!

Another Person posted:

but I am not sure they have done it well enough.

coffeetable posted:

does anyone know what ed promised the unions in exchange for backing his leadership bid

coffeetable posted:

does anyone know what ed promised the unions in exchange for backing his leadership bid

quote:

Ed Miliband has pledged to govern Britain with the conviction shown by Margaret Thatcher as he outlined plans to give ordinary people more control of public services.
The Labour leader signalled his admiration for Baroness Thatcher’s approach to politics and power, saying that her “sense of purpose” was essential to effective government.
Mr Miliband, often derided as “Red Ed” by Conservative critics, spoke positively about the former Conservative premier and her “mission” in a major speech in London.

thehustler posted:

Lets do this I've lived here a year and I love it. Better than loving Preston, anyway.

The Supreme Court posted:

Cyanide pills, probably:

quote:

Unlike Mr Cameron, I am a One Nation politician.

And One Nation is about governing for the whole country.

To do this we are going have to build a new kind of Labour party.

A new relationship with individual trade union members.

Some people ask: what's wrong with the current system?

Let me tell them: we have three million working men and women affiliated to our party.

But the vast majority play no role in our party.

They are affiliated in name only.

That wasn't the vision of the founders of our party.

I don't think it's your vision either.

And it's certainly not my vision.

That's why I want to make each and every affiliated trade union member a real part of their local party.

Making a real choice to be a part of our party.

So they can have a real voice in it.

And why is that such an exciting idea?

Because it means we could become a Labour party not of two hundred thousand people, but 500,000, or many more.

A party rooted every kind of workplace in the country.

A party rooted in every community in the country.

A genuine living, breathing movement.

Of course, it is a massive challenge.

It will be a massive challenge Labour Party to reach out to your members in a way that we have not done for many years and persuade them to be part of what we do.

And like anything that is hard it is a risk.

But the bigger risk is just saying let's do it as we have always done it.

It is you who have been telling me year after year about a politics that is detached from the lives of working people.

That's why we have the courage to change.

I respect those who worry about change.

I understand.

But I disagree.

It is the right thing to do.

We can change.

We must change.

And I am absolutely determined this change will happen.

quote:

If we were in government now, we would be saying to every young person out of work for more than a year, we will offer a compulsory jobs guarantee, funded by a tax on the bankers' bonuses, for a job with proper training, paying at least the minimum wage.

quote:

Now I recognise, as do you, that both workers and businesses need flexibility.

It is how you unions and employers worked together to keep people working even during the most difficult moments of the recession.

Putting jobs above pay rises.

Working fewer hours in order to protect employment.

Flexibility yes.

Exploitation no.

And nowhere is that more true than when it comes to zero hours contracts.

Of course, there are some kinds of these contracts which are useful.

For locum doctors.

Or supply teachers at schools.

Or sometimes, young people working in bars.

But you and I know that zero hours contracts have been terribly misused.

I had the privilege last week of speaking to some people working on zero hours contracts.

One in particular in the care sector who said 'You can't build your life on what you get from a zero hours contract'.

Another told me of her experience: 23 years on a proper, regular contract and now had the nightmare of 2 years on a zero hours contract.

As she said, just imagine if you didn't know from one week to the next whether your wages were going to halve.

That is the reality for so many people on zero hours contracts.

They don't know how many hours they're going to do from one week to the next.

They don't know how much they're going to be paid.

They have no security.

All of the risks in the economy which we used to believe should be fairly shared between employers and working people.

Now placed on the individual worker alone.

That's why the worst of these practices owe more to the Victorian era than they do to the kind of workplace we should have in the 21st century.

It's wrong.

And the next Labour government will put things right.

We'll ban zero hours contracts which require workers to work exclusively for one business.

We'll stop zero hours contracts which require workers to be on call all day without any guarantee of work.

And we'll end zero hours contracts where workers are working regular hours but are denied a regular contract.

ronya posted:

for those curious, Ed doubled down on the New Labour philosophy of continuing to sever affiliations to trade unions in the name of building affiliations to individual union members in their capacity as members of the public

in fact he went to the TUC and said this to their face

https://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/congress/congress-2013/ed-miliband-speech-congress-2013


in return, he went after issues relevant to union members in this capacity, i.e., zero hours contracts (which he promised a ban) and a compulsory jobs guarantee



I dunno about the status of those promises now though

notaspy posted:

My friend lives in the USA. If he had registered to vote which constituency would he have voted in as an overseas vote?

Bozza posted:

Glasgow Post Election Goon Meet - confirmed? I work on George Square so wherever you fancy really!

Who is the least Scottish - me or Coohoolin?

Bozza posted:

Glasgow Post Election Goon Meet - confirmed? I work on George Square so wherever you fancy really!

Who is the least Scottish - me or Coohoolin?

Pesmerga posted:

Well, he has been pretty consistent in promising an end to zero-hour contracts - if you're employed on them for more than 12 weeks, they're obliged to give you a regular contract.

Brown Moses posted:

So what's the law when it comes to taking photos in a voting booth of your vote and posting it online?

Brown Moses posted:

So what's the law when it comes to taking photos in a voting booth of your vote and posting it online?

Coohoolin posted:

We can recite Burns at each other until one of us passes out.

Pesmerga posted:

Well, he has been pretty consistent in promising an end to zero-hour contracts - if you're employed on them for more than 12 weeks, they're obliged to give you a regular contract.

Coohoolin posted:

lol so employers just string you along for 11 weeks, then can you.

That actually makes it even worse, it'll be like the agency workers in Italy who end up beating each other up over the vague promise of possibly, maybe, in the future, if it goes well, getting a fulltime job.

minema posted:

This election is good timing, I'm on night shifts this weekend and would be staying up all night anyway. My boyfriend is also planning on staying up but I'm betting he'll be asleep by 4am at the earliest. Also does anyone know much about Left Unity? They had a candidate in the local election but I'd not heard much about them before.

minema posted:

Also does anyone know much about Left Unity? They had a candidate in the local election but I'd not heard much about them before.

Coohoolin posted:

lol so employers just string you along for 11 weeks, then can you.

That actually makes it even worse, it'll be like the agency workers in Italy who end up beating each other up over the vague promise of possibly, maybe, in the future, if it goes well, getting a fulltime job.

a pipe smoking dog posted:

The last thing I head about left unity was that they had split into two competing factions (seriously).

OwlFancier posted:

Also does anyone know why there was a weird looking woman asking people exiting the polling station what their register number was?

I assume it's some weird third party turnout monitor but I dunno.

a pipe smoking dog posted:

The last thing I head about left unity was that they had split into two competing factions (seriously).