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What is the best flav... you all know what this question is: This poll is closed. |
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| Labour |
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907 | 49.92% |
| Theresa May Team (Conservative) |
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48 | 2.64% |
| Liberal Democrats |
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31 | 1.71% |
| UKIP |
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13 | 0.72% |
| Plaid Cymru |
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25 | 1.38% |
| Green |
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22 | 1.21% |
| Scottish Socialist Party |
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12 | 0.66% |
| Scottish Conservative Party |
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1 | 0.06% |
| Scottish National Party |
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59 | 3.25% |
| Some Kind of Irish Unionist |
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4 | 0.22% |
| Alliance / Irish Nonsectarian |
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3 | 0.17% |
| Some Kind of Irish Nationalist |
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36 | 1.98% |
| Misc. Far Left Trots |
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35 | 1.93% |
| Misc. Far Right Fash |
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8 | 0.44% |
| Monster Raving Loony |
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49 | 2.70% |
| Space Navies Party |
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39 | 2.15% |
| Independent / Single Issue |
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2 | 0.11% |
| Can't Vote |
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188 | 10.35% |
| Won't Vote |
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8 | 0.44% |
| Spoiled Ballot |
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15 | 0.83% |
| Pissflaps |
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312 | 17.17% |
| Total: | 1817 votes | ||
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If May loses this election it's going to be the most enjoyable piece of schadenfreude in years. Never mind getting a left wing government, it's going to be like when Tony Abbott got ousted in Australia: the enormously enjoyable humiliation of a self-entitled fascist, their hubris punished, their ambitions in shreds.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:36
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| # ¿ May 1, 2024 11:27 |
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spectralent posted:We don't do experts. “I think the people in this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms, saying they know what’s best and consistently getting it wrong.” Michael Gove Justice Secretary Sky News, 3 June 2016* *When told that the leaders of the US, China, India, Australia, the bank of England, the IMF, the IFS, the CBI, five former NATO Secretary-Generals, the chief executive of the NHS and most of Britain’s trade unions opposed Britain leaving the EU.
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Jun 1, 2017 12:42
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Anybody putting the theoretical question to Corbyn about whether he'd press the button had better be prepared to back up whatever fanciful scenario it's taking place in. That Yorkshire bloke who cited North Korea, what kind of loving Call of Duty bullshit is that? Do these people still think Britain is a superpower that would be anywhere near the top of North Korea's hit list? Ditto Iran which doesn't have even have nukes. Why would Iran be interested in nuking Britain rather than - just to pick a county totally at random - Israel, for example?
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Jun 3, 2017 09:33
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BoneMonkey posted:I know what I'm fighting against, but not so much what I'm fighting for. You don't even need to look at Scandinavia or whatever always gets cited. Just look at the UK in the 70s.
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Jun 4, 2017 12:03
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Why is the election on a weekday? I've actually lived in the UK and voted in an election before but I could have sworn that was on a weekend.
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Jun 6, 2017 00:42
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Righto. Is there a specific reason it's Thursday? I remember the US having Tuesday for some specific 19th century reason about farmer's market days being on Saturday.
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Jun 6, 2017 00:50
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I was watching the BBC this morning and it still boggles my mind that ordinary people could possibly think the Tories are anything other than a party of "up the rich, gently caress everyone else." I mean that's the case in pretty much the entire Western world but it's just so amazingly blatant and brazen in the UK. In the US/Canada/Australia you at least don't get right-wing party cabinet ministers who all went to the same school and have double-barrelled surnames and own country estates and somehow still convince the man on the Clapham omnibus that they have his best interests at heart. I read a thing a while ago which talked about a "culture of deference" (to your betters) in England which is the only thing that I think could account for it. I acknowledge the savagely right-wing press but feel that's counterbalanced by the TV news impartiality rules. There's something in English people's bones which makes them suspect, even after all these years, that the people with toffy accents know what's best and the Labour party is a disruptive organisation of callow upstarts. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, obviously Labour's been in power plenty of times, but it's just baffling to me to look at the state of Britain after a devastating recession and think that most citizens are happy that the top 1% are literally in power - not just pulling the strings like they do in America or Australia, but literally sitting on the frontbench.
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Jun 6, 2017 12:00
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In the United States the answer to any social problem you care to name is "racism" which I don't think is true of Britain
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Jun 6, 2017 12:04
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I don't think that article is gospel or anything but bear in mind it's written by John Lanchester and watered down for an American audience. The point stands that compared to the rest of the English-speaking world Britain has quite an authoritarian political culture.
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Jun 6, 2017 12:31
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I like the kneejerk nationalist response that the arrogant American must surely have been wrong and all her complaints must have been based on classist whingeing edit: this is the journo, just to clarify, whose photo is in the "background" section of the Wikipedia article of the expenses scandal because it resulted from her freedom of information campaigning - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal freebooter fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 12:40
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ultrabindu posted:https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/872054232286887937 I know that hope is a lie and that if you can't fix what's broken you'll go insane, but working class populist anger was the poll-upsetter in both Brexit and Trump's election, although even as I'm typing that I remembered shy Toryism was the poll-upsetter in 2015, so gently caress, I don't know edit - wait, no, it was working class populist desire for change, that was it, maybe Corbyn not being stridently anti-Brexit will turn out for the best after all freebooter fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 13:40
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TheRat posted:Have an american hot take: "Fewer checks on power" mmm yes Trump would absolutely manage to become to the leader of a Westminster party
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Jun 8, 2017 00:33
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:I still don't see how a bad poll makes you not vote. That's some pretty incredible levels of conformity. It can go the other way though - complacency for the leading party's supporters rather than despair. Prince John posted:Apparently Labour voters are statistically more likely to stay at home when it rains as well. And it's raining tomorrow here. The slimy, amphibious skin of Tory voters means they're more comfortable in the drizzle. (Also the good news is, rain affecting turnout is an urban myth - http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40172917)
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Jun 8, 2017 00:38
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Prince John posted:Heh, huzzah! Perhaps my local party were just using it as a motivating tactic Say what you will about mandatory voting but at the very least I bet it makes campaigns a lot easier to run
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Jun 8, 2017 00:54
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If this ends up being very close, it will be amusing to me how closely it will have mirrored the 2016 election in Australia: an arrogant Tory incumbent calling an early election to smash the opposition, the chattering classes hailing it as a political masterstroke, and then the surprise result on election night when your comfortable majority drops to a razor-thin gap and you find yourself giving a hectoring, belligerent lecture from the podium which Twitter wags then set to the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme.
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Jun 8, 2017 01:03
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Prince John posted:Yeah, that's a huge number of man hours not needed for 'get out the vote' efforts on the day. I can see homeless not voting, but in practice we don't have anything like minorities/poor/youth not voting. Turnout is always 90%+. I was talking to a coworker in the UK about it and she said, "yeah, I suppose you'd just vote rather than get the fine." Which had never really occurred to me: since you know voting is compulsory, and everybody votes, it's just the done thing. The idea of not voting is weird. I imagine for most people it's thought of more as an unavoidable errand than a civic duty, but whatever works. (Also having an elected upper house and preferential voting means that your vote matters way more than in the UK, where the majority of the population is effectively disenfranchised by their local demographics.)
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Jun 8, 2017 01:09
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Chakan posted:Alright, I've read the past couple pages but I need to get ready for work because I'm in the US, so please help me out. May is hosed, her own party will knife her. But to maintain government they need to be able to form either an official or unofficial coalition with another party, which will probably be the DUP, because the DUP will never ally with Labour and they have enough MPs to get them over the line. It doesn't necessarily mean the DUP will join cabinet or support everything the Tories do - they could have an agreement on confidence and supply, which means they'll vote for the absolutely vital stuff like the Budget and back the Tory PM in any vote of no confidence, and every other piece of legislation has to be considered on its merits. (There could theoretically be legislation the DUP doesn't like but the Lib Dems and some independents do, for example, so it still gets through.) This is what's called minority government, rather than coalition government. It is 100% going to be an absolutely fractious nightmare for the Tories and yes, will probably result in another election before the next five-year date. Expect Corbyn to hound them mercilessly, paint them as chaotic, and demand an early election at every turn. (I'm basing this off what happened in Australia in 2010, but with the parties reversed - Labour got a minority govt with the Greens and some independents, the Tory opposition went absolutely batshit for three years.)
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Jun 9, 2017 12:29
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jaete posted:You tell them. The law says you have to keep them informed. In practice if you forget or can't be bothered or whatever I don't think there's any penalty, unless you try to apply for some "I live far away from work" benefits or such and get caught with fraud. I can't speak for everybody but coming from an English common law system, that actually sounds creepy and Orwellian.
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Jun 12, 2017 08:41
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His Divine Shadow posted:Yet the UK is far more 1984-ish and filled with CCTVs everywhere than Finland is. I think CCTV coverage of public places and a national citizenry database are apples and oranges. 99% of people are going to have a driver's license anyway, but the idea of the government mandating that every single citizen must keep their details registered is just a bit too much for me.
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Jun 12, 2017 08:53
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Cerebral Bore posted:The idea that the government gets to know where you live is too much for you? Like, seriously? The idea that your are required to update your address at a central government register, via the police, and will be penalised if you don't? Yes. There's a reason we don't do that in English common law countries. edit - like I said before, we all effectively live on the grid anyway, and it's not like I think Finland, Germany etc are monstrous totalitarian states. I just don't see why it's necessary.
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Jun 12, 2017 09:04
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Wolfsbane posted:Could be worse. In Germany they have basically the same system, except you register with the police. Yep this is what I was actually thinking of, I lived in Germany for a bit. I actually found it quite surprising that a country which is mostly pretty good on the "let's all remember how awful a nationalist dictatorship was" would stick with a law like that.
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Jun 12, 2017 09:08
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goddamnedtwisto posted:It's still perfectly possible to live without ever driving a car in quite a few areas of the UK - and unfortunately of course there's a lot of people who can't afford a car living in areas where it's not actually possible, as well. Ah true - I remember trying to open a bank account in the UK without a driver's license and they said "just get a utility bill" and then stared at me blankly when I said I rented, as though I was the first person in London's history to a) not have a car, and b) rent Cerebral Bore posted:It's not done via the police, it's done via the civil magistrates. And you're still saying that it's super terrible that the government gets to know where you live, for some still unexplaned reason. I didn't say it was super terrible I said it was creepy and Orwellian, although on a creepy and Orwellian scale of 1 to 10 I'd rank it a 1. I just never liked it in Germany and I'd vote against it if they tried to implement it here. It's unnecessary. (And I live in a country with mandatory voting).
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Jun 12, 2017 09:14
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VitalSigns posted:
You can opt out of driving and voting. You can't opt out of living.
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Jun 12, 2017 09:18
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coffeetable posted:can you opt out of council tax too? That's my landlord's problem 
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Jun 12, 2017 09:23
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big scary monsters posted:Turns out it's common in a lot of European countries and I also found it really weird. I didn't even tell the government when I left the UK, or when I moved back. Just got on a plane. I've always found it really bizarre when I leave Australia and the customs declaration card asks me how long I plan to be away from Australia from. Uh, none of your loving business?
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Jun 12, 2017 12:52
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Bardeh posted:I thought this was a joke, but it's actually real. I was about to say this is loving stupid, but actually, anything which pushes pople towards realising that parliament is a forum for legislative debate and you don't immediately need a Big Strong Leader as though we're on the Mongol khanates is probably a good thing
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Jun 12, 2017 13:26
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ThomasPaine posted:I have found it kind of strange how positive the BBC and certain other parts of the MSM have been towards Labour after the election. Everything seems to be focused on May's collapse. It's s hell of a sea change and I'm not certain where it's coming from given the previously widespread ideological opposition. Corbyn's looking more like a PM in waiting every day. If this trend keeps going I think it's probably inevitable he ends up in number 10 within the next few months or years. Is this just a case of people seeing the writing on the wall and trying to build up brownie points? Never use Nick Cohen as an example of anything but his own snivelling gormlessness
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Jun 12, 2017 13:43
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Maybe in 1605 or whatever but in 2017 I'm pretty sure government proceedings are going to be duplicated in enough places they'll never die
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Jun 12, 2017 13:50
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