| General Election Thread 17:46 - May 22 with 123645 views | loftboy |
This will be the first election that I have no idea who to vote for, will never vote Tory again after the lies during covid where my dad lost his life, don’t trust starmer, would never vote for a bunch of racists like reform , anyone give me a clue?
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| General Election Thread on 18:56 - May 29 with 1952 views | SheffieldHoop |
| General Election Thread on 18:14 - May 29 by baz_qpr |
I dont think there is any speculation to it.
You have a demographic problem. The post war baby boomers have a disproportionate number, they are ageing, they use more healthcare services and will not be economically productive. The younger generations passed wealth to the boomers through asset price rises namely property. In addition additional costs were added in the terms of education costs. The rise in the property market which makes many many things more expensive from rents to childcare to anything that needs land, has led to people having children much later in life and less of them.
In short you dont have enough people economically active to support the cost of a large ageing population living longer. You either drastically increase productivity, have people of working age come into the country, or be economically poorer.
You can encourage people to have more babies but that takes 25 years to flow through.
AI might impact productivity in a positive way but then you have to redistribute the wealth.
We've known this for 30 years and the same has happened at other points in history all over the world as well.
The problem is politicians are too scared to tell people the truth, and its all to easy for populists to sell the lie that immigrants are taking away when in truth they are maintaining our wealth |
Debt maintains your wealth. Not immigration. |  |
| "Someone despises me. That's their problem." Marcus Aurelius |
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| General Election Thread on 18:59 - May 29 with 1971 views | dmm |
| General Election Thread on 17:38 - May 29 by baz_qpr |
Real Politik though,
To win an election in your party you have to carry the left if you want to get elected, and then win over the centre right (because you have to win seats from the other side) to win a general election,
The opposite is the same for the Tories.
If you get elected to leader playing to your party activists and then continue that to the country you dont get elected.
Examples for Labour
Foot
Kinnock
Milliband
Corbyn
For the Tories
Hague
Duncan Smith
Howard
Sunak
Blair won leaning right but with some left populist meat (minimum wage, education etc) and the government moved left over time especially economically
Boris won through a combo of Brexit, Farage standing his party down and leaning left economically
Cameron won leaning left socially |
I think Real Politik is turning a lot of people off. They're tired of it and want a far more genuine and principled approach to governing this country.
And do remember, Corbin came very close in 2017. It could be argued that if the Labour party even back then had supported him more, he'd have won. |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 19:19 - May 29 with 1933 views | derbyhoop |
| General Election Thread on 18:59 - May 29 by dmm |
I think Real Politik is turning a lot of people off. They're tired of it and want a far more genuine and principled approach to governing this country.
And do remember, Corbin came very close in 2017. It could be argued that if the Labour party even back then had supported him more, he'd have won. |
Unlikely but possible. It's history, now.
As a rule elections are won from the centre. Centre right or centre left. 2019 was made into virtually a single issue election.
Tories seem to have moved a long way right, leaving the centre to Labour. Explains why they are roughly 20% higher in the polls. |  |
| Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one’s lifetime. (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop |
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| General Election Thread on 19:42 - May 29 with 1903 views | QPR_Jim |
| General Election Thread on 17:21 - May 29 by Clive_Anderson |
The EU was blamed for some stuff it shouldn't have been and Brexit is blamed for a lot that it shouldn't be as well, for example poor GDP growth when the UK has done better than most large countries in the EU. Where is this economic disaster happening exactly? All European countries are suffering at the moment.
The political class seem determined to have as high immigration as they possibly can regardless of who votes for what. The Tories got in after promising to reduce immigration to 10k and have had net immigration of 700k in one year! Same in Italy the "far right" got in purely to cut immigration and then immediately changed their minds once they were in and decided they wanted to increase it suddenly. Seems to be happening all over the Western world not just here, we can all speculate as to why. |
Politicians generally make promises that they think are popular to get votes, I imagine that they would probably like to follow through with it if it was viable to make the next election easier. Fundamentally reducing immigration isn't the job of a moment, you need to keep public services running and try to avoid damaging the economy with inflation. Both of those risks would be a concern if you quickly stopped immigration. So once elected on these promises they are faced with the reality that if they follow through with it they'll have a load more problems and definitely won't get re-elected. So there best bet is to backtrack on the promises to cut immigration, no great mystery. |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 19:49 - May 29 with 1883 views | Gus_iom |
| General Election Thread on 19:42 - May 29 by QPR_Jim |
Politicians generally make promises that they think are popular to get votes, I imagine that they would probably like to follow through with it if it was viable to make the next election easier. Fundamentally reducing immigration isn't the job of a moment, you need to keep public services running and try to avoid damaging the economy with inflation. Both of those risks would be a concern if you quickly stopped immigration. So once elected on these promises they are faced with the reality that if they follow through with it they'll have a load more problems and definitely won't get re-elected. So there best bet is to backtrack on the promises to cut immigration, no great mystery. |
If you look at how many of the new migrants actually work within the public services, its fair to say that you could pledge to cut migration hugely and still maintain the level of service. |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 19:58 - May 29 with 1870 views | Esox_Lucius |
| General Election Thread on 09:05 - May 29 by loftboy |
Diane Abbott banned from standing by labour due to her comments last year on race. [Post edited 29 May 9:06]
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A mark of the man. Breaking news, Starmer tried to hold back the result of the enquiry against Abbott until such a time it would be too late for her to stand as an independent. Someone inside leaked it to the media and now he is furious and ordering staffers to hand over their phones. He is a lying genocide enabler and I wouldn't be in the least surprised if somewhere down the line it transpires that he was parachuted into the Labour Party by the good folks inside 55 Tufton Street with a remit to purge the Labour Party of all aspects of socialism to make it appeal to traditional Tory supporters as the current Tories have made themselves unelectable and need a placeholder while they regroup. [Post edited 30 May 8:50]
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| The grass is always greener. |
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| General Election Thread on 21:43 - May 29 with 1737 views | Wegerles_Stairs |
| General Election Thread on 19:58 - May 29 by Esox_Lucius |
A mark of the man. Breaking news, Starmer tried to hold back the result of the enquiry against Abbott until such a time it would be too late for her to stand as an independent. Someone inside leaked it to the media and now he is furious and ordering staffers to hand over their phones. He is a lying genocide enabler and I wouldn't be in the least surprised if somewhere down the line it transpires that he was parachuted into the Labour Party by the good folks inside 55 Tufton Street with a remit to purge the Labour Party of all aspects of socialism to make it appeal to traditional Tory supporters as the current Tories have made themselves unelectable and need a placeholder while they regroup. [Post edited 30 May 8:50]
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Yes, he really is a c*nt. I don't know how anyone who is notionally on the left can vote for them. He's not even good at being duplicitous like Blair was, at least in the mid-90s. Just a charisma-free void who'll say anything (even blatantly contradicting things he's already said) to gain power. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 22:12 - May 29 with 1691 views | JamesB1979 |
Diane Abbott looked to be shaking quite a bit at times. Is she ok? Or is she just getting old? I didn’t realise she was 70. I admit I’ve never agreed with much of her policies but respect her a lot for what’s she achieved. She should be treated better but I also do think that at 70, why not just step down and take it easy. | | | |
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| General Election Thread on 22:15 - May 29 with 1680 views | dmm |
| General Election Thread on 22:12 - May 29 by JamesB1979 |
Diane Abbott looked to be shaking quite a bit at times. Is she ok? Or is she just getting old? I didn’t realise she was 70. I admit I’ve never agreed with much of her policies but respect her a lot for what’s she achieved. She should be treated better but I also do think that at 70, why not just step down and take it easy. |
I also noticed her shaking. Earlier this evening I read she hasn't been well but I've no idea what it is. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 22:30 - May 29 with 1649 views | baz_qpr |
| General Election Thread on 18:59 - May 29 by dmm |
I think Real Politik is turning a lot of people off. They're tired of it and want a far more genuine and principled approach to governing this country.
And do remember, Corbin came very close in 2017. It could be argued that if the Labour party even back then had supported him more, he'd have won. |
I think that is fanciful, in this electoral system. Bottom line is you have to win over 50% of the seats there are no winners made by increasing your vote in your own safe seats you have to win in constiuencies that the other side holds. People dont radically change FPP is won or lost in the centre in a hundred or so constituencies. The two main parties have to be broad coalitions to win but activists are always to the left or right of the public by nature. That means compromise and having to suck up things you might not agree with to get in power to do some of the things you do.
If you want purity of representation then you need PR and multi parties but then in order to have a functioning government you need a coalition and that will also involve compromise.
It is true that you can shift the centre in politics but through cultural shift but that happens slowly over time normally.
Also important to remember that 2017 was as much a Brexit election Hard v Soft as 2019 was and the "bedroom tax" blew up in the Tories face in the campaign. |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 22:37 - May 29 with 1621 views | Rangersw12 |
😎 | | | |
| General Election Thread on 23:52 - May 29 with 1497 views | PunteR |
Going for a draw. |  |
| Occasional providers of half decent House music. |
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| General Election Thread on 00:25 - May 30 with 1472 views | kensalriser |
| General Election Thread on 23:52 - May 29 by PunteR |
Going for a draw. |
Happy puffing. |  |
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| General Election Thread on 02:15 - May 30 with 1432 views | SydneyRs |
| General Election Thread on 09:22 - May 29 by nix |
Even worse is getting your politics from social media.
I thnk there's an awful lot of sustained campaigning disguised as normal conversation. I also follow a predominantly female forum and nearly every day at the moment there's a political post shoe-horned into a completely irrelevant subject area. For example, someone talking about cheeky f*ckers and there's a post about Cheri Blair getting freebies. It doesn't happen outside of an election, so I really think it's a thing.
It worked really well for Brexit or anti-vaxxing - you just repeat a made up fact ad nauseum and eventually normal people start repeating it as the truth. It's very dispiriting All those people who want to appear in the know or who want to believe they are 'independent thinkers' - for that read conspiracy theorists - lap up all this stuff. |
100%. This is becoming really dangerous. It was rampant a few years ago and with some big elections this year I'd expect it to increase again. The amount of twitter accounts for example that suddenly appeared (supporting both sides) during the last US election and then vanished once it was over was incredible. There have been token efforts to control it but its very much still there.
Facebook started out as just re-connecting with people, sharing holiday photos etc but got super political around the time of the brexit referendum and Trump becoming president. I've seen people on there that were fairly mellow turn into raging fanatics and it has to be down to being on too many pages that are echo chambers. Some seem to spend their lives raging about things online, a pretty miserable existence.
Even local groups usually used for things like recommending trades people and mundane stuff are targeted, sometimes obviously but also in very subtle ways.
There's a place for all political arguments if they are based on reason, a genuine belief and conviction about bettering society. But too much these days is blatant dishonesty allowed a free pass by an increasingly compliant media that will publish anything that gets clicks and therefore makes them money. Politicians have picked that up and run with it and the waters are murkier than ever. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 08:49 - May 30 with 1244 views | plasmahoop |
The reason we have mass immigration is that there are millions of brits not working and claiming incapacity benefit. Neither party has faced up to this issue. There has to be a good percentage that arent genuine. There are quite a few in my local area. Thete is undoubtedly a lot of people struggling, but a lot of those on benefits dont seem to be doing too badly | | | |
| General Election Thread on 08:53 - May 30 with 1222 views | BazzaInTheLoft |
| General Election Thread on 08:49 - May 30 by plasmahoop |
The reason we have mass immigration is that there are millions of brits not working and claiming incapacity benefit. Neither party has faced up to this issue. There has to be a good percentage that arent genuine. There are quite a few in my local area. Thete is undoubtedly a lot of people struggling, but a lot of those on benefits dont seem to be doing too badly |
Isn’t it £120 a week or something?
I don’t think people are living like the Kardashians on £120 a week. |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 08:54 - May 30 with 1201 views | Gus_iom |
| General Election Thread on 08:49 - May 30 by plasmahoop |
The reason we have mass immigration is that there are millions of brits not working and claiming incapacity benefit. Neither party has faced up to this issue. There has to be a good percentage that arent genuine. There are quite a few in my local area. Thete is undoubtedly a lot of people struggling, but a lot of those on benefits dont seem to be doing too badly |
I live on a council estate, and I see a fair bit of it, really pisses me off. At the moment I'm off with a knee injury, self-employed and so get sweet fa in terms of sick benefit, have a big tax/ni bill hanging over me, and yesterday my neighbours were on the piss, no worries, nothing to contribute.....😠 | | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:01 - May 30 with 1179 views | Gus_iom |
| General Election Thread on 08:54 - May 30 by Gus_iom |
I live on a council estate, and I see a fair bit of it, really pisses me off. At the moment I'm off with a knee injury, self-employed and so get sweet fa in terms of sick benefit, have a big tax/ni bill hanging over me, and yesterday my neighbours were on the piss, no worries, nothing to contribute.....😠 |
However....if I look at care work, local authorities are duty-bound to provide a service and , for all their profligacy, do not have the funds to pay care workers well, so you can understand why they use new migrants to do that work.
The migrant issue is huge, it's complex, and we aren't a serious country anymore, and we don't have serious politicians. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:02 - May 30 with 1174 views | Gus_iom |
| General Election Thread on 08:53 - May 30 by BazzaInTheLoft |
Isn’t it £120 a week or something?
I don’t think people are living like the Kardashians on £120 a week. |
Mate, if you know how to play the system, there are work-arounds. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:06 - May 30 with 1141 views | BazzaInTheLoft |
| General Election Thread on 09:02 - May 30 by Gus_iom |
Mate, if you know how to play the system, there are work-arounds. |
That’s very vague.
I doff my hat to anyone who can turn £600 a month into a Champagne lifestyle. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:36 - May 30 with 1069 views | Clive_Anderson |
| General Election Thread on 08:53 - May 30 by BazzaInTheLoft |
Isn’t it £120 a week or something?
I don’t think people are living like the Kardashians on £120 a week. |
It's more than that though, you get housing benefit to pay your housing costs, council tax paid, PIP payments if you qualify, if you have children you can get child benefits and a huge number of those have SEN payments which are about another £500 a month each. Also winter fuel payments and lots other things you can apply for .
Altogether if you have a couple of kids and play the game right you are far better off than working a minimum wage job and have all your time to yourself to do what you want.
I don't blame them at all, if I lost my job I'll be doing exactly the same thing (especially during a Labour government) rather than working all hours to be worse off at the end of it. What's the point?
The system is completely broken and the numbers off work claiming incapacity is going up rapidly because of this. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:49 - May 30 with 1047 views | GloryHunter |
| General Election Thread on 09:02 - May 30 by Gus_iom |
Mate, if you know how to play the system, there are work-arounds. |
Sounds shocking. Better vote Conservative to stop this flagrant abuse of the benefits system. Oh -- hang on . . . . |  | | |
| General Election Thread on 09:59 - May 30 with 1018 views | BazzaInTheLoft |
| General Election Thread on 09:36 - May 30 by Clive_Anderson |
It's more than that though, you get housing benefit to pay your housing costs, council tax paid, PIP payments if you qualify, if you have children you can get child benefits and a huge number of those have SEN payments which are about another £500 a month each. Also winter fuel payments and lots other things you can apply for .
Altogether if you have a couple of kids and play the game right you are far better off than working a minimum wage job and have all your time to yourself to do what you want.
I don't blame them at all, if I lost my job I'll be doing exactly the same thing (especially during a Labour government) rather than working all hours to be worse off at the end of it. What's the point?
The system is completely broken and the numbers off work claiming incapacity is going up rapidly because of this. |
I dunno, the numbers still don’t add up to the party life and even if they did, I do wonder what % of the population is claiming a combination of all those things, especially when you consider that they won’t all be fraudulent. | | | |
| General Election Thread on 10:06 - May 30 with 987 views | ted_hendrix |
| General Election Thread on 08:54 - May 30 by Gus_iom |
I live on a council estate, and I see a fair bit of it, really pisses me off. At the moment I'm off with a knee injury, self-employed and so get sweet fa in terms of sick benefit, have a big tax/ni bill hanging over me, and yesterday my neighbours were on the piss, no worries, nothing to contribute.....😠 |
I hope things work out for you Mate. |  |
| My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic. |
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| General Election Thread on 10:13 - May 30 with 961 views | Clive_Anderson |
| General Election Thread on 09:59 - May 30 by BazzaInTheLoft |
I dunno, the numbers still don’t add up to the party life and even if they did, I do wonder what % of the population is claiming a combination of all those things, especially when you consider that they won’t all be fraudulent. |
It doesn't have to add up to the party life does it?
It just has to be better than working a minimum wage job which would be the alternative for a lot of people who then think "fck that" and then you have mass immigration to fill the jobs that aren't worth doing for the locals.
Also benefits are inflation linked and most jobs are not, so more and more people are being dragged into "why bother" zone every year which makes this problem even worse.
A job has to pay significantly better than benefits to be worth doing, because the costs associated with working (work clothes, commuting costs, lunch out etc.) need to be deducted and more importantly 50 hours of your week doing something you probably don't like need to be rewarded. | | | |
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