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Hbomberguy posted:What does this thread think about All Women Shortlists? Personally, I think they have problems, but for the complete opposite reason than most people give for them; their institution has led to a sexist culture within some parts of the Labour Party where women running for open selection are effectively told "don't you have an AWS to stand in?" The system also brings little diversity other than to get more white middle-class straight women into politics. It's a problem most Labour women recognise but Labour men often engage in doublethink. Without AWSes, Labour doesn't have a record that stands out on female participation: 22% of open selections in the Labour party in 2010 were won by women, compared to 24% for the Conservatives and 21% for the Lib Dems.
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May 1, 2014 22:23
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Halal doesn't bother me, really. When it comes to buying meat most of the time, you're buying meat that's been unethically treated anyway (either through battery farming or non-stunned killing).
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May 2, 2014 00:58
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Renaissance Robot posted:Don't you worry about the magic turning you Muslim? I used to get KFC every Sunday from their Halifax branch (one of the first Halal KFCs) and I didn't get turned Muslim then, so...
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May 2, 2014 01:02
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As someone chemically castrating herself, it's too good for rapists. 
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May 3, 2014 00:15
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Pasco posted:Postal vote for the EU election came today. I'm trying to figure out where you've put the English Democrats there; the top of the list here in Yorkshire is a former BNP member.
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May 4, 2014 02:33
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at An Independance from Europe "UK Independence Now" sitting at the top of the ballot with UKIP proper towards the bottom.
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Anyone talking about how Royal Mail aren't allowed to send faeces to UKIP clearly hasn't been watching Love for Sale.
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May 6, 2014 01:05
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Fluo posted:Because Postmen clearly don't want to be carrying around boxes of badly sealed poo poo? You clearly haven't been watching Love for Sale.
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May 6, 2014 08:19
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LemonDrizzle posted:Labour made a thing. Started out being funny then I realised "Oh  " when they kept listing things that Labour either tried to push through or wanted to anyway.Answers Me posted:This is so terrible, i wish parties wouldn't so this poo poo. I was thinking voting Green but since I've seen this I might have second thoughts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDsV8YumePk The Farage impression is perfect, though. And yes, political parties – and referendum campaigns – can send leaflets to anyone on the electoral roll. They're also exempt from the TPS. It's one of the reasons the Yes vote in the AV referendum failed so badly is that they refused to use the Freepost allowance. TinTower fucked around with this message at 06:16 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 06:12
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May 9, 2014 09:23
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Mr Cuddles posted:This is the latest thing to get the racists on facebook riled up As far as I'm aware, anyone can apply for an Islamic Account, can't they?
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May 10, 2014 15:11
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SybilVimes posted:10 options here, AIFE, BNP, Con, English Democrats, Greens, Labour, Lib Dems, NO2EU, UKIP and Yorkshire First You guys actually voted the ED #1 pick as a BNP councillor to the city council so y'all can't complain. e: Christ, I've seen who your Labour candidate in your ward is. I'd rather the Morley Independents win than Mark "loving" Sewards. TinTower fucked around with this message at 00:00 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 23:56
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Scottish Tories do exist. They're called the Labour Party.
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May 11, 2014 13:43
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That's an awful bar chart, and I've seen some horrible Lib Dem ones. Anyway, I was hoping that the thread could help me out on something:  Even if you accept that Labour mean "since VAT went up", how does this add up? The two biggest expenses I can think of, food and housing, aren't VATable, to my recollection, and you'd still have to spend £125/week on VATable stuff. I'm wondering how you'd be able to do that?
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May 12, 2014 18:19
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Drone_Fragger posted:Reminder that Labour actually put a giant child database in place to check the last time that a child was seen by a teacher or social worker to stop kids dropping off the map like baby P and the first thing the tories did was dismantle it because apparantly they believe that kids dying due to parents abysmal abuse is a small price to pay for a tick being put in a box stating "this child is not dead" on the national database for their kids. I don't particularly trust a government to remove a child from the database when they come of age, or not to leave a copy of the database on a train or in a service station.
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May 17, 2014 16:23
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Spangly A posted:I'd say that actually is a small price to pay if it helps child security. Even from a point of view of child protection, the government's attitude to sensitive data in the past has been… lacklustre. That, and the fact that just last month Labour and the Tories voted against neutrality because of a nonce scare put out by the IWF, you can pretty much use the "child protection" angle to justify anything.
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May 18, 2014 00:13
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Spangly A posted:For sure. But if we have a database keeping track of vulnerable children and it's actually helping, you're using that exact same FUD about the tories to say we shouldn't have one. Not just the Tories; the BBC have a handy list of data security breaches by the government from Nov. 2007–May 2009. If there's one thing that turned me off the Labour party when I was a teenager, it wasn't their milquetoast "insanely relaxed" capitalism, it was stuff like ID cards and data security.
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May 18, 2014 00:24
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There are council elections on Thursday too. In Liverpool, a Lib/Lab marginal is beset by accusations of homophobia. This time, it's the Labour Party:Campaigner may face the axe from Labour party over ‘gimp in basement’ accusations posted:A Labour party member and campaigner could be thrown out of his party after suggesting a Liberal Party rival kept a “gimp” in his cellar. At least this time the guilty party is facing expulsion. Seven years ago, Miranda Grell was disqualified from holding the Leyton council seat she was elected to a year before due to making allegations of paedophilia against her Lib Dem opponent. Her appeal was funded by the party and several prominent activists, including the current Shadow Business Secretary, publicly supported her.
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May 19, 2014 19:21
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JFairfax posted:Was she standing against Cyril Smith? Nah, a sitting councillor, I believe.
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May 19, 2014 20:40
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Whitefish posted:I will vote Green in the South East (or 'Southern', whatever it's called - East Anglia) to try and help Rupert Read keep his seat. I know more about his work in philosophy than his politics, but I'm sure he's a decent enough fellow (even though his twitter feed is a bit cringey and I find his writing style in philosophy papers to be unnecessarily pompous and aggressive). But Green is definitely the best option. Definitely vote for Zoe, and I'm also hoping Sarah Brown stays in Petersfield; they're both really cool and nice people and could do with a bit of canvassing over the next two days if you can hold your nose long enough. e: Also, Zoe and Sarah are two of only seven out trans people running for election, and probably the only two with a decent chance of winning. TinTower fucked around with this message at 22:48 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 22:43
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The Greens are also in the danger of repeating the dangers of Cleggmania; the Lib Dems were on 31% after the first debate in 2010, I recall. They might pick up, say, Yorkshire and the Humber from the BNP, where I'm guessing the balance will end up 2 Labour, 2 UKIP, 1 Lib Dem, 1 Green, but I doubt they'll pick up in, say, East England.Nemo Iudex posted:Well 7 candidates would be 0.9% of the 747 candidates standing this year in the Euro elections which would seem to reflect the population at large. The Equality and Human Rights Commission gives a figure of 300,000-500,000 for the trans population which would be 0.8% of the UK population overall so at least in this respect they are well-represented. Everyone but Sinclaire is running in council elections, of which I believe there are 4,000, which will put the number of candidates at nigh on 15,000.
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May 20, 2014 23:47
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Alecto posted:I'd be ASTOUNDED if Lib Dems and the Greens got a seat but not the Tories. Too much traditionally Tory countryside for them to not get a seat, i'd have thought, despite the UKIP appeal. It'll almost definitely be down to whether the Greens maintain their mid-May poll bump into Thursday that'd make the difference between the Greens and the Lib Dems. There also looked for a while like there was a chance of UKIP or Labour squeezing them both out for a third seat, but they've both dipped a bit recently. Crap, I did forget the Tories, didn't I? Yeah, it's going to be 2/1/1/1/1, then, with Labour taking the second Tory seat; the Tories won't come first, or even second. McMillan-Scott is going to keep his seat, though; he's been adamantly pro-Europe since the 80s, which for a Tory candidate in Opposition to Blair, would've been suicide otherwise.
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May 21, 2014 01:34
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Don't vote Labour in the Euros; they have a tendency to be Tory-lite there much more than the Commons. Hell, they even voted against net neutrality, the only PES MEPs to do so. I'd honestly suggest Green or LD for the Euros, against the Tories and UKIP in the locals.
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May 22, 2014 12:10
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Alecto posted:TinTower's right though, Labour MEPs have pretty bad voting records. Like, if you want me to vote for a party that only introduces LGBT rights when forced to by Europe or for electoral advantage, you can gently caress right off, y'know? I trust ALDE and the Verts more than the EPP or PES to promote continental LGBT equality. Same goes for stuff like net neutrality, digital freedom, etc. Especially when their shadow culture secretary proposes draconian measures on the internet that would pretty much hit LGBT people the hardest.
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May 22, 2014 12:41
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EU elections are non-transferrable PR, so there's still a level of tactical voting involved if your preferred party can't reach half of the quota (Labour and the Tories won't probably support STV as it would mean more minor party winners like the Greens, Lib Dems, even a socialist or two)
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May 22, 2014 13:18
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Alecto posted:Most PR systems still only give you one vote, but calculations are done with the vote totals such that minor parties are far more likely to win seats. The system that we use, the D'Hondt system, is biased slightly towards larger parties. It should be Saint-Laguë, which biases towards smaller parties.
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May 22, 2014 13:38
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Kegluneq posted:And I thought I was bad at voting... To be fair, I personally know both of candidates he's talking about and they're both amazing people, despite being Lib Dems.
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May 22, 2014 14:29
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Vote Labour.
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May 22, 2014 18:15
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Reminder that Robin Wales is an outright fascist who established his own police force until the actual Police threatened to arrest them en masse. You see this a lot in safe Labour met councils (and their parliamentary candidates): they're very often crypto-tory or even crypto-fascist.
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May 22, 2014 18:33
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SybilVimes posted:Yorkshire, 1985 or 1986. After our GCSEs there was supposedly a "chav v. emo" fight. At a state grammar school. 
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May 22, 2014 18:39
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Kaislioc posted:I assume having pricks milling about outside is uncomfortable but acceptable, but I forget, are they actually allowed to leave their little "Vote X!" cards inside the actual polling booths? Tellers aren't allowed to enter polling stations (except to cast their own vote). TinTower fucked around with this message at 18:53 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 18:51
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winegums posted:I can't figure this card out at all. Is it saying "vote us locally, and vote for whoever at the EU election"? What sort of propaganda says to vote for whoever? The Lib Dems are effectively trying to do the opposite.
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May 22, 2014 19:31
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Broniki posted:The situation with the Greens lately reminds me of the Lib Dems at the general election. Every young adult with an internet connection was apparently voting for them but LOL no they got nowt, what happened. Yeah, they're gonna get hit with the Cleggmania effect hard. Coming from a Lib Dem background, I often don't get how the Tory and Labour conferences work. Do they actually have policy debates, or is it basically just five days of self-congratulation? Smaller parties like the Lib Dems and Greens are incredibly more democratically run and willing to fight the hierarchy.
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May 22, 2014 20:55
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Seaside Loafer posted:Tis true, im a member although i havent been for a while there are frequent debates and stuff and there was seeming to be a growing core of people arguing against the nuclear policy etc One of my major issues with voting Green is their HS2 opposition, actually. The science and nuclear policy, I can have confidence will eventually come around to acceptability. I fear that the HS2 policy will stay because of the power of the North London liberal intelligensia.
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May 22, 2014 20:59
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Cerv posted:given the Greens won't be in power after then 2015 election, hopefully HS2 will have passed the point of no return before they ever do. I'm concerned that there'll be so much aggravation over Phase 2 that a "responsive and responsible" government would cancel it. ThomasPaine posted:I'm all for the idea of a high-speed rail linking London with the north but HS2 is just terrible. It goes ALL THE WAY TO LEEDS!!! I mean come on, you'd think they'd at least connect London to Edinburgh but as it stands it barely covers half the country. I'm also seriously sceptical about putting a ton of money into something like that while local rail networks on the periphery (Wales, the North-East etc) are so woefully inadquate. Just screams to me 'London's getting a big new showpiece/toy for the rich' more than anything else. HS2 will have services that use the W/ECML, though: three per hour after Phase 2 is completed, cutting up to an hour off journey times that use HS2. And trust me, I'm more angry at London getting the infinite pot of money for infrastructure that only benefits them (Thameslink, Crossrail, Crossrail 2, Northern line extension, ELL extension, etc), while it takes a rape on the platform to get the worst-maintained station in the country some new lights. SybilVimes posted:Yeah, because 'voted for TUSC & Yorkshire First' is going to be the decider on my file, not the fact that I'm disabled, diabetic, 'genetically inferior', mentally broken, or trans. Yorkshire First is pretty much a split from the Lib Dems; Stewart Arnold was the second on the Lib Dem list in 2009 and quit when he was passed over when his wife, Diana Wallis, resigned as an MEP. TinTower fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 21:18
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Seaside Loafer posted:After which they just became gimps to the Tories. By the way, why is this pseudo-homophobia against the Lib Dems so popular? I mean, for gently caress's sake, I've had LGBT Labour members actually defend making immature homophobic jokes against Clegg, and one of my friends at Lib Dem Conference was subject to homophobic and transphobic abuse from the anti-austerity march. I mean, attack the bloke all you want, but don't resort to "hurr hurr dave's bum boy handcuffs and blindfolds" stuff.
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May 22, 2014 21:45
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Spangly A posted:do you honestly believe people are espousing homophobia when calling people gimps? People associate the gimp scene with violent homosexual anal rape, so, yeah, I think that the vast majority of people do associate gimps with gay people.
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May 22, 2014 21:58
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If every invocation of "straight fight" since 1983 is homophobic, then all the gimp/anal sex jokes since 2010 definitely are. Remember that the Guardian literally published slash fiction after the Rose Garden press conference.
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May 22, 2014 22:01
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Pissflaps posted:I don't think either Zed or Marcellus Wallace were gay though. Why did Zed and Maynard keep a loving gimp, then?
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May 22, 2014 22:02
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ThomasPaine posted:I guess the thinking was 'refuse a coalition, there'll be a quick second election and the tories will get a majority' vs. 'form a coalition and at least we can temper the worst poo poo they come up with'. Clearly he hasn't found himself in a position to do that, whether through incompetence or impotence. Still, I don't think Clegg's a bad bloke, it was just a very poorly judged decision and he'd have done better to sacrifice the little power he has to maintain the integrity of the party. He's obviously now just more or less broken and hovering around Westminster like a ghost. It was basically the fact that the numbers wouldn't add up without involving the DUP (and Labour were actually backchannelling with them during the negotiations) and was liable to collapse at any point because of the inherent problems with having a coalition of "everyone but the Tories" that has a working majority of 20. And believe me, we wouldn't have even got rid of the gay blood ban with Peter Robinson anywhere near the Cabinet table, let alone same-sex marriage.
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May 22, 2014 22:34
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Alecto posted:The disconnect between people's reaction to casual, subtle and otherwise disguised racism, and their reaction to similar homophobia or misogyny really bloody confuses me. I don't have an opinion on whether the gimp stuff is homophobia, but there have been an awful lot of 'hah, gay therefore bad' jokes about Cameron and Clegg, including by supposedly left-wing people, that's gone completely un-challenged. And as I said, some of this has even come from members of LGBT Labour. You know, the ones in perpetual outrage over Bermondsey (while completely overlooking any homophobia from the NEC-backed John O'Grady campaign).
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May 22, 2014 22:37
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