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jiggerypokery posted:Because when I broke my leg in 2002 I actually got treated when I went to a hospital. If we'd just given Tony 20 more years in charge he'd have had time to reverse the massive expansion of PFI that happened under the leadership of... oh e: 
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Jul 28, 2022 18:06
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Re lesser evil voting: I completely get being revolted at the current state of Labour and would not begrudge anyone the right do do as they see fit as a result. I do think it's important to be honest about what not voting will actually achieve, though. All this talk of forcing Labour left by not voting is sheer fantasy. What will instead happen is they will work harder to capture the votes of those who *do* participate and everyone who doesn't vote gets hosed. The only hope of achieving proper leftist representation is through a change in the voting system, and that will only ever happen under someone other than the Tories. That's just how it is.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:10
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I predict a significant uptick in Green and TUSC-alike votes. I also predict it doesn't turn into much.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:13
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Looke posted:https://twitter.com/BristolCouncil/status/1552619092070305792?s=20&t=BbbBtEPHCaFkKGCSiUCFjw  Dario has a strong opinion 
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Jul 28, 2022 18:17
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God it's tragic how much damage these people can do with blocks of wood for brains
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Jul 28, 2022 18:25
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I refuse to believe that the universe could be without a creator, and hey it just so happens that all of the rules of that creator were left in a collection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek notes about Levantine society from the space of a few centuries in the bronze and iron ages but only the bits that I agree with like when in Deuteronomy they obsess about genitals a whole lot but not in Matthew where some hippie douche is like "lol people are all different for all kinds of reasons, let whoever is able to receive this message receive it" so anyway I think these people should just act in my definition of normal because I'm not allowed to kill them all. fuckin' tradcaths man
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Jul 28, 2022 18:26
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e: gently caress it. It's impossible to talk counterfactuals because of iraq. I'm still gonna vote though. I'm sure I'll change my mind on labour or not a hundred more times before a GE jiggerypokery fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 18:26
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jiggerypokery posted:e: gently caress it. It's impossible to talk counterfactuals because of iraq. Some people look at the system we live in, and ignore the global cost, they just want a bigger cut. A few % here or there.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:35
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Chinese Gordon posted:Re lesser evil voting: You probably should at least bother voting, just don't vote for what you don't want. Voting for tiny lovely left wing parties at least registers somewhere that you and people like you support these ideas and would vote for them. Not that that actually materially matters since currently Labour is actively hostile to left wing ideas anyway, theyr not going to suddenly become good because there's votes in it, we've seen that over and over. But if you vote for Labour despite not being a thatcherite... Well what message is that meant to send them? Tactical voting is an obvious fraud if you think about it for five seconds, but it's important nobody does otherwise we don't look very democratic
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Jul 28, 2022 18:36
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Chinese Gordon posted:Re lesser evil voting: Increasing the power of unions is a more likely (but still unlikely) path to dragging Labour left and there are people in this thread working on doing just that and encouraging others to do the same. I disagree that Labour will work to capture all non-Labour voters. Their response to local elections that saw a big drop in Tory votes and an uptick in Green votes was not to move left to capture those votes. It was to continue trying to outflank the Tories on the right. I agree that trying to send a message at the ballot box is futile; in public they'll only ever argue that they need to move further to the right. The best we can hope for is that by demonstrating that the left will not, by default, vote for Labour, we might present an opportunity for another party to court those votes. I don't think this is very likely either, fwiw. I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the Tories are the only party that would not countenance a change in voting system. The PLP is deeply wedded to first past the post, not least because all these lesser-evilism arguments and the idea that left-wing voters have nowhere else to go fall apart under a more proportional system
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Jul 28, 2022 18:38
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A party that wins via fptp isn't gonna get rid of it. New Labour pledged a referundum on it in 1997 and then just didn't do it iirc The idea of voting for Starmer, as a lefty, to make things better is just as much pointless cope as wishing for a revolution imo Theyr both just that, vote for who you want and don't think it's so drat important, theyr just gonna drag us all to hell regardless or they'll hit some reality threshold and be deposed. I don't think that's always the case, but it is with our options right now. But to some people the idea of both of our whole TWO parties being poo poo and harmful for an election cycle or five is inconceivable. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 18:45
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This might be absolutist but I’ll bite: Unless you think life will be better under the Tories, you do have a moral obligation to vote Labour (or LibDem / SNP where those are the next biggest parties). This is not an endorsement of Labour under Keir as a good party.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:52
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RE: earlier vote starmer chat, lol just lol if you're not spoiling your ballot.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:54
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gently caress the tories, gently caress Labour. imho
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Jul 28, 2022 18:54
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Ouroboros posted:Ask the Americans how well that 'vote blue no matter who' bullshit worked out for them. Hi, I live in America, and I'm pretty loving delighted that Trump lost thank you very much, and if you'd prefer that Trump had won I would invite you to go gently caress yourself because you're a fascist oval office.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:55
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forkboy84 posted:The accelerationist point of view is straightforward. The lesser evil is still evil. The choice is between things getting worse sooner & things getting worse a bit slower, with the point being the end goal is the same, a return to feudalism with capitalist characteristics. Do we not owe it to future generations at least try and leave things better than they were when we arrived? And like I said, 'Things getting worse sooner' necessitates the deaths of people under the hammer right now, and the summised accelerationist viewpoint of 'ah those people will die anyway' is some straight up marvel villain poo poo. Not voting doesn't send a message. If turnout is low (especially among a particular demographic), the public are lazy. If turnout is high for a leftist it's shameless populism. If it's high turnout for a centrist it's a validation of their platform. You cannot send a message to someone who is not only not listening, but rewording everything you say and then signal boosting the lie far wider than you possibly could. All you're doing is removing what little agency you do have under that system. I mean yes, voting does not make the world better, you have to look at the parallel structures and look outside of westminster, fine. But like Jiggerypokery said, you can also vote. You don't have to campaign, you don't have to pretend they're good, you can just put a tick in a box for the least bad option if there's nothing good. I think though this is the point around which we diverge. Labour are under the control of capitalism, moreso than ever under Starmer. Neoliberalism will always be an infestation that's impossible to clean out thanks to Blair. Even if the party collapses and the centrists abandon ship for the lib dems, and the party reforms itself under a leftist NEC, Blair has poisoned the well because a certain segment of the population and membership will look back on the 90s and Blair as the 'real' Labour party. Labour is poo poo despite the brief glimpse of hope that was 2015 - 2019. I just cannot believe that anyone can look at the evils perpetrated by the tories in the last ten years and think 'yep, exactly the same as labour.'
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Jul 28, 2022 18:58
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ijyt posted:RE: earlier vote starmer chat, lol just lol if you're not spoiling your ballot.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:58
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Right but how does accelerationism achieve a better world? I refuse to believe that trying to make things worse in the hope people will rebel and create something better is smart political thinking and not the results of a head injury; especially given how bad the circumstances are all around us right now and the conservatives 40% base is still absolutely untouched. Nobody is trying to make things worse, they're trying to make people realise that Labour have no intention of making things better.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:59
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A Labour majority government would be unlikely to pass PR, I agree (Still more likely than the 0% chance a Tory govt will ever pass it). Fortunately, said majority is very, very difficult to achieve under the present geographical voting split. A Labour-led coalition or C&S minority government is both considerably more likely to happen, and considerably more likely to pass PR.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:01
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jiggerypokery posted:I really struggle with all these pseudo-accelerationist arguments. I'd take 30 years of Blairism over all the poo poo that followed 100 times over. You're not going to get 30 years of Blairism from Starmer. You're going to get four or five more years of Thatcherite neo-liberalism at best, followed by another 15 to 20 years of Tory hegemony - assuming they don't just go full fascist on the spot and use Starmerite Labour as a permanent controlled opposition to create the illusion of democracy. Five more years of Tories will be poo poo, it will kill a great many people, but they're already utterly bankrupt in both talent and ideas. There will be riots in the streets before it's over and they won't be able to avoid it.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:02
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Chinese Gordon posted:
A change in the voting system, in itself, only changes the process by which the thing you want doesn’t happen. Instead of not voting, you vote for something that loses. If many or most people want what you want, then you still have a set of other obstacles to overcome. But you are in the game.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:02
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Unkempt posted:Hi, I live in America, and I'm pretty loving delighted that Trump lost thank you very much, and if you'd prefer that Trump had won I would invite you to go gently caress yourself because you're a fascist oval office. You have the same policies as before but you don't have to worry about what rude thing Trump tweeted. Good for you. Good luck in 2024 btw, the next Republican will be smarter.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:03
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Brendan Rodgers posted:You have the same policies as before but you don't have to worry about what rude thing Trump tweeted. Good for you. Good luck in 2024 btw, the next Republican will be smarter. Not to get too off topic, but this is bollocks. The Dems may be poo poo, but they at least do not want to actively and explicitly destroy democracy.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:06
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Yeah, the Democrats are trying their hardest to stop the Republicans, I'm sure that's a real thing that's happening, let's leave it there.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:07
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This is the next evolution of British politics, we'll absorb it from America eventually. We will have the "left" ostensibly in power, and constantly loving whining about how the right wing are still able to do whatever the gently caress they want at every stage.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:12
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Chinese Gordon posted:A Labour majority government would be unlikely to pass PR, I agree (Still more likely than the 0% chance a Tory govt will ever pass it). Fortunately, said majority is very, very difficult to achieve under the present geographical voting split. A Labour-led coalition or C&S minority government is both considerably more likely to happen, and considerably more likely to pass PR. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/01/labour-never-strike-deal-snp-keir-starmer-pledge https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/18/starmer-rules-out-even-informal-post-election-deal-with-lib-dems So who's gonna be in this coalition/minority government?
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Jul 28, 2022 19:15
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Just going to point out that unlike Labour, the Democrats didn't kick Sanders and most of the people who voted for him out of the party and then throw the primary system into the bin so that a leftist could never be on the ballot ever again. Also, the GOP are significantly worse than the tories in the sense that the next time they get in will probably be the last time there's a real election. In that setting it actually does make sense to vote for the slow Biden death over the fast Trump death, because that way there's at least a sliver of hope for 2024.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:16
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pumpinglemma posted:Just going to point out that unlike Labour, the Democrats didn't kick Sanders and most of the people who voted for him out of the party and then throw the primary system into the bin so that a leftist could never be on the ballot ever again. Also, the GOP are significantly worse than the tories in the sense that the next time they get in will probably be the last time there's a real election. In that setting it actually does make sense to vote for the slow Biden death over the fast Trump death, because that way there's at least a sliver of hope for 2024. Yeah imagine if Trump had been voted in, maybe abortion would have been banned, maybe gerrymandering would continue unstopped, maybe americans would still have no healthcare, maybe the drilling for oil would have continued, maybe
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Jul 28, 2022 19:19
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pumpinglemma posted:Just going to point out that unlike Labour, the Democrats didn't kick Sanders and most of the people who voted for him out of the party and then throw the primary system into the bin so that a leftist could never be on the ballot ever again. Also, the GOP are significantly worse than the tories in the sense that the next time they get in will probably be the last time there's a real election. In that setting it actually does make sense to vote for the slow Biden death over the fast Trump death, because that way there's at least a sliver of hope for 2024. Sanders was purely a democrat when going for the nomination and left after failing to do so
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Jul 28, 2022 19:23
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Chinese Gordon posted:Not to get too off topic, but this is bollocks. The Dems may be poo poo, but they at least do not want to actively and explicitly destroy democracy. i love the democrats are “for democracy” argument when this happened only two years ago
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Jul 28, 2022 19:25
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Looke posted:Sanders was purely a democrat when going for the nomination and left after failing to do so I mean yes, but he caucuses with the Dems. Well aware that this is USPOL and this a stupid derail. Probe me, probe everyone else itt imo
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Jul 28, 2022 19:26
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Imagine a queue millions of people long, waiting to get their wallets inspected.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:27
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Failed Imagineer posted:Probe me, probe everyone else itt imo 
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Jul 28, 2022 19:27
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Yeah imagine if Trump had been voted in, maybe abortion would have been banned, maybe gerrymandering would continue unstopped, maybe americans would still have no healthcare, maybe the drilling for oil would have continued, maybe Maybe elections would be suppressed, maybe gay marriage would be banned, maybe 'sodomy' would be banned, maybe racial discrimination would be not just legal but encouraged, maybe there would be no hope for any of this being reversed because the fascists would be in charge. And abortion was not banned; the decision was that individual states could ban it, and several have. This happened because the Democrats did not win in 2016. I would prefer they had won, so abortion would still be federally legal. Good job people didn't 'vote blue no matter who' there. People are (rightly) complaining in this thread that there is not much difference between the Tories and Starmer's 'Labour'. That's true. If you think there's not much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans you're completely delusional.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:34
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e: nvm I've already grieved this all
Brendan Rodgers fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 19:36
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Please do not turn this thread into USPol
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Jul 28, 2022 19:37
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pumpinglemma posted:Just going to point out that unlike Labour, the Democrats didn't kick Sanders and most of the people who voted for him out of the party and then throw the primary system into the bin so that a leftist could never be on the ballot ever again. Also, the GOP are significantly worse than the tories in the sense that the next time they get in will probably be the last time there's a real election. In that setting it actually does make sense to vote for the slow Biden death over the fast Trump death, because that way there's at least a sliver of hope for 2024. The Tories are redrawing the constituency boundaries soon right? And also want to bring in voter ID for voter suppression... and for all intents and purposes they 100% control the media. To what extent do you think that next election in the UK will be a "real" election? Left wing ideas are consistently popular in the UK when polled but they have zero real political representation. The UK is not a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term.
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Jul 28, 2022 19:39
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Tesseraction posted:Okay that's adorable. And here's what it looks like! https://twitter.com/HerkkoHietanen/status/1515959827545137158 This one's stuck at the crosswalk because it's April and they haven't cleaned the gravel from roads after winter yet so it can't see the zebra markings. https://twitter.com/JanneOivio/status/1516844666443943941 Ultimately they will turn suicidal and turn against car traffic like this one. Or maybe it didn't understand the road work signs. 
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Jul 28, 2022 19:39
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WhatEvil posted:The Tories are redrawing the constituency boundaries soon right? And also want to bring in voter ID for voter suppression... and they control the media. I vote for the sad-faced spokesperson of capital, not the happy-faced one. Is it treat time?
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Jul 28, 2022 19:44
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do truss or rishi even have as evil a past as starmer? rishi is a sachs man which is pretty loving bad but i dunno if it quite matches up. starmer made his whole career out of solemnly saying the tories didnt do crimes then apologising when it became clear they had, punctuated by cracking down on protestors, being outflanked on the left by theresa may while trying to get an autistic guy put in US supermax and helping MI6 cover up genital torture he's REALLY not the kind of person you want as PM he'd be very dangerous, i think you can see where he stands as a lawyer with his complete non-opposition to the spycops bill that trashed the rule of law and made crimes legal for cops hes the avatar of the authoritarian current in labour which has been very bad for the UK and leaves us in a much worse position every time the tories take back power
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Jul 28, 2022 19:45
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