UK Election Rant thread

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  • Tubbs wrote: »
    Well, more they are allowing their feelings about Corbyn to get in the way of what should be their main priority - stopping Brexit.

    I think once their position moved to 'Revoke' rather than PV, it was fairly obvious that actually Remaining was secondary to their positioning post Brexit as the 'Liberal party of being in the EU'.

    Realistically a reasonable result to aim for in order to actually have a PV vote would be a somewhat improved position to last time (given Labour's deficit of MP numbers in England, the fact that the SNP are going to continue to win in Scotland and Wales is a mixed bag), with Labour more or less holding, and the Libdems winning back in the South West and a coalition government as a result.

    It's clear that Swinson has dropped this and decided to punt on improving the LDs overall numbers instead - even if that makes a Tory government a near certainty. This seems to be down to a mixture of inexperience, hubris and a belief that the long 90s are not yet over.
  • And Swinson leans to the right.
  • I'm not sure it's their feelings about Corbyn, in the sense of emotions. They are anti-left. Look at Swinson's voting record.

    If you know Berger's political history you realise that it's practically an article of faith for her that people more left wing than her are anti-Semitic, so her political anti-socialism and emotional reaction to perceived anti-Semitism are not necessarily separable.
  • But for Berger, anti-semitism = critical of Israel, doesn't it?
  • But for Berger, anti-semitism = critical of Israel, doesn't it?

    Pretty much anyone to the left of her (and really quite a few people to her right) has some concern about human rights and is therefore critical of Israel. Distinction without a difference.
  • But Labour probably has a number of people vehemently critical of Israel, and the Z word. I don't see them as anti-semitic, but I know a man who does.
  • But Labour probably has a number of people vehemently critical of Israel, and the Z word. I don't see them as anti-semitic, but I know a man who does.

    New orthodoxy appears to be that Zionist is code for Jew and therefore anyone saying they're opposed to it is an anti-Semite.

    Mudfrog was saying as much here years ago.
  • Yes, some kind of strange metonymy. Israel is for Jews, you criticize one, you criticize the other.
  • Yes, some kind of strange metonymy. Israel is for Jews, you criticize one, you criticize the other.

    Ah but it's also anti-semitic to link Jews to Israel.

    Berger has been playing this game for getting on for 20 years. About 15 years ago she through her toys out the pram at NUS over accusations of anti-semitism. It's so weird for me, having been on the fringe of student politics when Berger and Streeting and the rest were part of the NOLS/UJS alliance while others, allies of Jeremy Corbyn, were part of SBL. It history repeating itself, except here it's the first time as farce, the second as tragedy.
  • Check (verb): to stop someone from doing or saying something, or to prevent something from increasing or continuing.

    As in "FactCheckUK" aka The Conservative Party Press Office.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    That fact-check thing struck me as terribly underhand, and I couldn't help thinking it had Cummings's fingerprints all over it. But he's a civil servant, and they're not allowed to do party-political things in the run-up to an election, are they? :/
  • What I want to know is how yougov managed to post their snap post debate poll at 6:50pm before the debate started.
  • There was a pre-debate poll as well, so it might be that.
    (depending on stuff it then shows that 7% changed their minds, although it also shows that the average don't knows is equal to the maximum...)
    On the other hand, there clearly were dubious facts around.

    __
    What I want to know on the polls is how they are going to deal with an explicitly split country wrt brexit party voters.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    That fact-check thing struck me as terribly underhand, and I couldn't help thinking it had Cummings's fingerprints all over it. But he's a civil servant, and they're not allowed to do party-political things in the run-up to an election, are they? :/

    He's a SpAd - paid for by the party - and not a civil servant.
  • Are you sure? I was wondering about that and found this in the Wikipedia article on Spads:
    Special advisers are paid by central government and are styled as so-called "temporary civil servants" appointed under Article 3 of the Civil Service Order in Council 1995.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    edited November 2019
    Fact checking the government started before the election. It could be an idea that has Been around a while but has been put into action now.
  • I have always been of the belief that SpAds weren't civil servants.

    Who says the ship isn't educational?
  • When contemplating SpAds just keep in mind that on the railways SPAD means Signal Passed At Danger ...
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Thanks for all the information, gentlemen.
  • Looks like the ‘take back control’ and ‘get brexit done’ slogans have worked.

    God, we live in a thick country :rage:
  • Boogie wrote: »
    Looks like the ‘take back control’ and ‘get brexit done’ slogans have worked.

    God, we live in a thick country :rage:

    I try to remember that those of us not inducted into the Brexit death cult are merely fortunate not to have been seduced by the relentless anti-EU propaganda of the last 30-40 years. The layers of it have accreted so thickly that you peel away lie after lie and it's just lies all the way down.
  • I don't get any of this. How can it be that it's OK for Scotland and Wales to have national parties which will be given extra power in the event of a narrow vote, but there is none to vote for who represent England?

    Are we going back to hard borders between us all if some are in and some are out of the EU in the future? Are we really saying that the UK is no more?

    Has 'I'm Alright Jack' taken over? Will everyone vote for what they are being told they will get, rather than voting for the best future for the UK?
  • Raptor Eye wrote: »
    I don't get any of this. How can it be that it's OK for Scotland and Wales to have national parties which will be given extra power in the event of a narrow vote, but there is none to vote for who represent England?
    The Tories are, and have been for a very long time, the English National Party.
    Are we going back to hard borders between us all if some are in and some are out of the EU in the future? Are we really saying that the UK is no more?
    Yes, and if Brexit happens, yes.
    Has 'I'm Alright Jack' taken over? Will everyone vote for what they are being told they will get, rather than voting for the best future for the UK?
    Yes, and yes.
  • The Tories seem to have lost interest in unionism, partly because of Brexit, and the accompanying English nationalism. But for years there have been derogatory comments about Scotland, and N. Ireland is often seen as a basket case. Mrs May talked of the precious union, but today Brexit dominates right wing thinking.
  • I know what let's do! Let's get that nice Mr Potus to build us a big, beautiful, Trumpian wall all round England (including all the way along the coasts)!

    That'll keep the Horrid Brown People Not Like Us off our sacred soil, and allow us (the peasants, at any rate) to grow proper English vegetables, all in funny shapes!

    Well, that's the Will Of The People, isn't it?
    :scream:
  • Given the state of sea defences in many places...
  • There's a thought... SAVE ENGLAND! BUILD THE TRUMPIAN WALL!

    After all, most of the evil-minded sea that threatens to invade our Sceptred Isle is foreign, anyway.

    And just think of all the jobs it would create - ALL to be taken on by those pure white English artisans and craftsmen currently being denied employment by the Horrid Brown People etc.

    Hail Potus! Hail Boris!
  • Boris fhtagn!
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited November 2019
    Ia! Ia!
    :lol: :scream:
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Raptor Eye wrote: »
    Are we going back to hard borders between us all if some are in and some are out of the EU in the future? Are we really saying that the UK is no more?
    Yes, and if Brexit happens, yes.
    Has 'I'm Alright Jack' taken over? Will everyone vote for what they are being told they will get, rather than voting for the best future for the UK?
    Yes, and yes.

    What a shame. I recognise my own naivety, but I held higher hopes.
  • I've got a nasty taste in my mouth from everything about this election: its as if we're a lot of puppy dogs begging for treats and being deliberately distracted by the ball being thrown this way or that.

    Where is the vision for the future any of them is trying to sell us? The one we're all to work towards, together? Please, if you spot one, tell me!
  • Given his inability to take responsibility for his own fecking children, you'd think Johnson might think twice about castigating single mothers.

    Apparently not.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-boris-johnson-articles-women-women-journalist-spectator-labour-a9221036.html
  • Blahblah wrote: »
    Given his inability to take responsibility for his own fecking children, you'd think Johnson might think twice about castigating single mothers.

    Apparently not.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-boris-johnson-articles-women-women-journalist-spectator-labour-a9221036.html

    Laced with explicit sexism too, not to mention the implicit sexism that it's OK for the Johnson males of this world to spread their wild oats but not women to bear their offspring.
  • Latest youguv* survey suggests Tories are heading for a comfortable win. For the sake of the nhs alone, never mind anything else, how can anyone vote for these people? A&E waiting times missed over and over again, cancer waiting times missed, really, really sick children not getting CAMHS appts because they’re not quite sick enough. How?
    All that bullshit about new nurses, and new doctors, they’ve been in charge for 9 feckin’ years and haven’t done it, and the number of nurses has dropped off a precipice since Brexit anyway, why should I believe they actually care about staffing and waiting times and the decent humanity of sick people being looked after in a timely and safe way?

    Dear sweet Jesus on a bicycle, it’s depressing.

    *As the Now Show joke had it, you want to respond to youguv with “yes, squire?”
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    What can I add? It is ridiculous
  • Just depressing. I know that I will carry on day to day, and life will probably seem normal, but as said above, after 9 years of these fuckers, austerity, rising poverty, decrepit NHS, it's too much to face another 5 years.
  • I agree, but there is still a faint - VERY faint - hope that Johnson will lose, possibly only just, but still...
  • I agree, but there is still a faint - VERY faint - hope that Johnson will lose, possibly only just, but still...

    I will laugh long and hard if he loses his own seat.
  • Dream on. Our best hope is that he makes such a balls up of it that we get another GE within a couple of years.

    We've got a situation where we've got one party whose leader, whatever else his faults, has always been against racism, prejudice and violence, cast as the inheritors of the Blackshirts, clearing the way for a thoroughly unpleasant bullying misogynist, bouyed by the support of a professional Pub Bore. You couldn't fucking make it up. Were I of more suspicious mind I'd be more and more inclined towards the belief that we entered a parallel universe in 2016 when it all went wrong.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    thoroughly unpleasant bullying misogynist

    and racist enabler of actual anti-Semites. Who - lets not forget - heads a party that deported British citizens, often in poor health, based on their ethnicity - a policy which continues to trundle on to this day, and whose chief architects were never held to account.
  • The data on which the mrp yougov poll is based shows the Tory lead dropping daily since the manifestos were launched - if this continues on trend for 7 day it’ll predict we are on course for a hung parliament, if it continues for 14 days ...

    Do not despair, there’s everything to fight for.
  • Meanwhile May unveiled a statue today to the virulently anti-Semitic Nancy Astor.

  • Meanwhile May unveiled a statue today to the virulently anti-Semitic Nancy Astor.

    Gee whizz, she sounds like a piece of work.
  • Who? May or Astor?
    :wink:
  • Astor. Just been reading her parliamentary speeches and reports of what she said about Jews. Thoroughly unpleasant.
  • Not even the first female mp, however - inconveniently - the first female mp was for Sein Fein.
  • First female MP to take up her seat.
  • I know, and also a rabid anti-Catholic and anti-Semite.
  • She had a good line in making speeches deploring people calling her a fascist whilst simultaneously being incredibly anti-Semitic.

    Sound like anyone else we know?
This discussion has been closed.