General Election 2010

[Renton 22007]

The third however, said that she wasn't voting as she never has done because she doesn't "give a shit". She further qualified this by saying she hoped to be like her grandmother, who at 85 years old was proud of the fact never to have voted.

 

Bet she finds the time and money to vote for X factor and the myriad of other 'talent' shows that abound though. That reminds me, Simon Cowell has endorsed the Conservatives today, so if CT hasn't convinced you yet, I'm sure that fact will.

[Renton 22007]

I'm still unsure about whether it's worth my time voting given that I live in an ultra-safe constituency for a candidate who won't take up his seat in parliament and even if that wasn't the situation, none of the candidates can make any sort of difference in Westminster, so really, what's the point?

 

Point of principle?

[luckyluke 2]

I've got a friend, my age, who's never voted or registered to vote and has a long and well-reasoned argument for doing so. Which we've been through many times after a few drinks. I may not agree with him, but at least I respect the fact that he's thought about it and come to a conclusion that works for him. I just can't be doing with people who dismiss going to vote through sheer apathy or because "politics is shit/boring" without further consideration.

 

Tony Benn said that whenever he met someone who said they never voted he replied with 'oh good, that means I don't have to listen to a word you say'.

 

I paraphrased this to my friend, saying that because she doesn't vote she has no say whatsoever if the NHS and her working practice is changed in any way. She still wasn't bothered, saying "I'm almost certainly not going to vote", completely unaware of the requirement to register.

 

Some people....

[ewerk 31223]

I'm still unsure about whether it's worth my time voting given that I live in an ultra-safe constituency for a candidate who won't take up his seat in parliament and even if that wasn't the situation, none of the candidates can make any sort of difference in Westminster, so really, what's the point?

 

Point of principle?

 

It's the only reason I can think of sadly. I do feel genuinely disenfranchised by the list of useless cunts standing in my area.

[maggiespaws 0]

Yeah it was shit, so I ordered it deleted.

 

 

Can you not delete CT as well?

 

No, he's like the Ying to your political Yang

[maggiespaws 0]

I'm still unsure about whether it's worth my time voting given that I live in an ultra-safe constituency for a candidate who won't take up his seat in parliament and even if that wasn't the situation, none of the candidates can make any sort of difference in Westminster, so really, what's the point?

 

Point of principle?

 

It's the only reason I can think of sadly. I do feel genuinely disenfranchised by the list of useless cunts standing in my area.

 

Vote, seriously. If for no other reason than you can justifiably complain about what happens next It irritates me when people complain about politics, MP's, decisions etc then say but they didnt vote anyway because they couldn't be arsed / didnt see the point etc.

[Sonatine 11571]

BRITAIN PASSES POINT OF NO RETURN AS IMPORTANCE ATTACHED TO COWELL OPINION

 

BRITAIN finally hurtled beyond the point of no return last night as the political opinions of Simon Cowell were regarded as important.

 

 

Around the world dozens of nations have expelled British diplomats, closed embassies and commandeered British businesses after the voting intention of the inventor of Shit Factor and Britain Must be Stopped was the lead story in the country's biggest newspaper the day before a general election.

 

The prominence given to Cowell's thoughts has left the pound teetering on the brink of total and irreversible collapse as the White House made an urgent call for Britain to be suspended from Nato and the country's permanent seat on the UN Security Council handed to Robert Mugabe.

 

In Columbia, the leaders of the world's biggest drug cartels said British people were no longer good enough to buy their cocaine, while Osama Bin Laden insisted that he would not waste perfectly decent bombers on the British but stressed that if we continue to attach importance to any of Mr Cowell's opinions we will all be dead by the end of May anyway.

 

Ali-Al Mukhtar, the Pirate King of Somalia, added: "Like everyone else we have a franchised version of Shit Factor, but that doesn't mean I want his opinion about who should be prime minister. Jesus Christ."

 

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: "Britain is basically finished as a nation. As far as the rest of the world is concerned we are nothing more than a stinking pile of human refuse.

 

"We are a puke-filled gutter, we are a bucket of piss, we are a used condom in a sandwich made of mouldy bread and rotting chicken gizzards - we are less worthy of respect than our own steaming faeces."

 

He added: "Only the Australians seemed to be impressed, so obviously I'll be killing myself with this crossbow."

 

Edited May 5, 2010 by Sonatine

[PaddockLad 17694]

The Torys can only effect the public sector jobs, which will have no effect on the private sector. They have said they want to force the banks to lend to small businesses, which will create jobs. There are thousands of entrepreneurs waiting to create jobs.

 

Whereas Labour have said they are going to raise National Insurance, a direct tax that will cost businesses and anyone earning over £20k. Sheer madness - businesses are struggling and more taxes will slow down hiring.

 

Talking of myths it looks like you've swallowed that one.

 

I'm not sure if theres been a boardroom meeting ever where,when a company has a huge new order on the table,or has a chance to move into a new market,to expand and develop, the chairman has turned round and said "but NI contributions are too high for the x amount of extra staff we'll have to employ,lets not bother eh?"

 

Its a bare faced lie peddled by the business community in an attempt to gain favour with a potential new tory government.

 

 

 

As businessmen we know that stopping the national insurance rise will protect jobs and support the recovery.

 

Signed by 60 business leaders from some of the countrys top boardrooms such as M&S, Glaxosmithkline, Sainsburys, Virgin, Next etc etc etc

 

Oh and you beleive them as well? Well done mate

 

They're about as trustworthy as the politicians they're attempting to manipulate and control.

[Park Life 71]

Yeah blame the people for low turnouts....

[Renton 22007]

Yeah blame the people for low turnouts....

 

Random, but all the same, it seems reasonable to blame the people for the people not turning out.

[ewerk 31223]

I'm still unsure about whether it's worth my time voting given that I live in an ultra-safe constituency for a candidate who won't take up his seat in parliament and even if that wasn't the situation, none of the candidates can make any sort of difference in Westminster, so really, what's the point?

 

Point of principle?

 

It's the only reason I can think of sadly. I do feel genuinely disenfranchised by the list of useless cunts standing in my area.

 

Vote, seriously. If for no other reason than you can justifiably complain about what happens next It irritates me when people complain about politics, MP's, decisions etc then say but they didnt vote anyway because they couldn't be arsed / didnt see the point etc.

 

Well that's the thing, living in N. Ireland I don't have a Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem candidate to vote for so they've no influence on decisions anyway.

 

I will be voting, if only to narrow the winning margin for the idiot incumbent.

[Park Life 71]

Yeah blame the people for low turnouts....

 

Random, but all the same, it seems reasonable to blame the people for the people not turning out.

 

I suppose there was a low turnout when we marched against the Iraq war? I suppose there was a geunine fear that there would be a lack of interest in a referendum regarding Lisbon and that's why we weren't given one? I take your point. The fact is the intellectual elite ruling class (on both sides) don't give a fuck what people want.

[ChezGiven 0]

John Kay in the FT today on 3rd way social and economic philosophy.

 

What became of the “third way”?

 

After New Labour’s sweeping election victory in Britain in 1997, there was a euphoric moment in which Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, then US president, seemed to offer not just the most charismatic political leadership in the western world, but the prospect of an intellectual revolution in political thought.

 

In the 1980s, market fundamentalism had gained the ascendancy; the case for socialism had collapsed in the face of the practical failures of socialist regimes. Was there a “third way”, a politics which reconciled the market economy with the values of compassion and fairness that had traditionally motivated the political left? When was government interference with the operation of free markets justified, even necessary, and when did such intervention reduce choice and welfare?

 

The third way died in vacuity and derision. Mr Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes destroyed his opportunity to offer intellectual leadership. New Labour’s capacity for new economic thinking was constrained by its courtship of business and – especially – finance. But the opportunity to define a coherent third way was also damaged by the feud between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, and the implicit concordat between the two men that left economic policy in the chancellor’s hands.

 

Mr Brown did attempt to lay out an economic philosophy for the left after socialism, most notably in a 2003 speech to the Social Market Foundation. The model described there is one of redistributive market liberalism. This doctrine largely accepts the claims of market fundamentalism – greed is a dominant human motivation, private companies are usually more effective than the public sector, markets (including financial markets) are generally efficient. The economic role of government should be limited and confined to a short list of issues described as market failures. Redistributive market liberals believe, however, in a big role for the state in reviewing the distribution and redistribution of income.

 

That philosophy has always had considerable appeal for socially concerned economists – you can find substantial elements of that thinking in the writings of distinguished contributors to this paper, such as Samuel Brittan and Martin Wolf. The idea was certainly espoused by some of Mr Brown’s close advisers, and has been for at least two decades the dominant economic philosophy in the British Treasury. Redistributive market liberalism has, however, never had much attraction for people who are not professional economists. You can detect a lack of conviction even in Mr Brown’s Social Market Foundation speech, notably in the passages in which he tries, unsuccessfully, to reconcile his political commitment to a state-funded National Health Service with a belief in the efficiency of private market outcomes.

 

Mr Brown’s instincts are very different: he is a natural centraliser, notoriously a micro-manager. His temperament does not really fit with the idea that government should basically set the rules of the game and then leave the players to get on with it. Mr Brown’s biographies – both critical and hagiographic – describe the education of a man with a very different perspective. Like many on today’s political left, he is a socialist mugged by reality. Their practical socialism began from the assumption that economic activity should normally be subordinated to political control. But given the manifest fact that this system did not work very well, either in the collectivised economies of eastern Europe or the planned economies of social democracies, political control is to be watered down and applied by stealth. This is not an inspiring doctrine, and it has not inspired.

 

The crisis of 2007-08 revealed starkly the limits of redistributive market liberalism. The range of market failures was a good deal wider than the limited list defined by market fundamentalists would allow. Both socialists and social democrats have re-emerged from the shadows. For socialists the crisis renewed hopes that Marx’s promise of the collapse of capitalism under the weight of its own internal contradictions would finally be fulfilled. For social democrats, forever in Utopian search of stability and harmony, salvation lay in the creation of a new global financial order, although no one seems to have much specific idea of the nature of that global financial order.

 

The search for a practical political philosophy for the left in Europe has, in short, moved backwards since 1997. Market fundamentalism is out of favour, the failings of socialism are still not forgotten. Social democracy seems inevitably associated with high taxes and obstructive and overbearing public sector trade unions. This intellectual vacuum is also a problem – although a less pressing one – for the European political right: without the glue of resistance to socialism, there is little to hold the disparate components of rightwing parties together.

 

Mr Blair, with more natural political talent than most of his rivals, did sense some of the elements of a third way. That markets operate successfully only when they were embedded in communities; that trust and co-operation are not antithetic to a market economy, but essential to it; that the driving force of innovation is pluralism and experiment, not greed and monopoly; that corporations acquire legitimacy only from the contribution they make to the societies in which they operate. In a column after the British election I will elaborate that philosophy.

 

Whatever you think about Labour, they are the party who tried to articulate a philosophy that sits between socialism and capitalism. Unlike the Tories who dont have one and the lib-dems who should have one.

[Dr Gloom 22185]

the lib dems are getting my vote. the main reasons being that they're not plowing a fortune into renewing trident when there's a massive hole in the public finances and that they didn't back the war in iraq.

 

it's a shame their bounce in the polls after the first televised leaders debate faded but ulitmately i think their policy on immigration will lose too many middle england votes for them to be a genuine threat. but they're looking like being the kingmakers in a hung parliament and if that can result in electoral reform then my vote won't have been a wasted one.

[Park Life 71]

@Chz

 

Constructed correctly there shouldn't really be a conflict between socialism and capitalism, at the end of the day society is rewarded by one thing and one thing alone and that is the work and ideation of its people...Nothing else. Both modern day revolutions were run by middle class intellectual/idealists the French one and the Russian one. These weren't people who worked down coalmines and whatnot, they were well educated thinkers.

Edited May 5, 2010 by Park Life

[NJS 4411]

but they're looking like being the kingmakers in a hung parliament and if that can result in electoral reform then my vote won't have been a wasted one.

 

I know this may not be rational but even the possibility of them forming a coalition with the Tories, even if that is a "fair" result of the actual votes means I won't vote for them.

[Park Life 71]

One thing that needs changing is that you shouldn't be allowed to be an MP for more than 10 years. That IMO would sort out a lot of the internal shennanigans.

[Ketsbaia 0]

the lib dems are getting my vote. the main reasons being that they're not plowing a fortune into renewing trident when there's a massive hole in the public finances and that they didn't back the war in iraq.

 

it's a shame their bounce in the polls after the first televised leaders debate faded but ulitmately i think their policy on immigration will lose too many middle england votes for them to be a genuine threat. but they're looking like being the kingmakers in a hung parliament and if that can result in electoral reform then my vote won't have been a wasted one.

 

True. Thing is though their immigration policy actually makes sense when you listen to what they plan to do but it's a similar issue to drug use. Hysteria is more of a vote winner than common sense.

[ChezGiven 0]

@Chz

 

Constructed correctly there shouldn't really be a conflict between socialism and capitalism, at the end of the day society is rewarded by one thing and one thing alone and that is the work and ideation of its people...Nothing else. Both modern day revolutions were run by middle class intellectual/idealists the French one and the Russian one. These weren't people who worked down coalmines and whatnot, they were well educated thinkers.

 

Arent socialism and capitalism just sociological expressions of man's psyche?

[ewerk 31223]

One thing that needs changing is that you shouldn't be allowed to be an MP for more than 10 years. That IMO would sort out a lot of the internal shennanigans.

 

Really? I think that'd mean a lot of MPs who know that they're not going to be accountable to the electorate for their final term.

[Park Life 71]

One thing that needs changing is that you shouldn't be allowed to be an MP for more than 10 years. That IMO would sort out a lot of the internal shennanigans.

 

Really? I think that'd mean a lot of MPs who know that they're not going to be accountable to the electorate for their final term.

 

Like they are now you mean?

[ewerk 31223]

Theoretically anyway.

[Park Life 71]

@Chz

 

Constructed correctly there shouldn't really be a conflict between socialism and capitalism, at the end of the day society is rewarded by one thing and one thing alone and that is the work and ideation of its people...Nothing else. Both modern day revolutions were run by middle class intellectual/idealists the French one and the Russian one. These weren't people who worked down coalmines and whatnot, they were well educated thinkers.

 

Arent socialism and capitalism just sociological expressions of man's psyche?

 

Depends what you do if there are only two choc puddings left in the fridge.

[Park Life 71]

The other thing that needs changing is voting along party lines in debates, where whips are used with threats to get MP's to tow the line. This is archaic and counter-intuitive. All votes in the Commons should be free votes and MP's should vote without pressure from the party heirachy.

[Park Life 71]

There should also be a common constitution which all parties should sign alligence to and it should inc basic human rights, access to healthcare and education and other basic democratic criteria which all parties when in power should move toward/protect. This would balance out the swings in policy and direction we often get in Britain which wastes a lot of money and talent and lets the infrastructure degrade by lack of clear direction.