The 2015 General Election

[meregreen]

 

 

  biting off your nose to spite your face.

 

That's nigh on impossible, isn't it?

 

I've heard of cutting one's nose off, but biting it off? You'd need some superbly over extendable lower jaw to pull that off!

 

Or get someone else to do it for you 

[chrisp65]

 

 

 

After reading the last few pages I'm going to extend my run of never voting in an election.

 

**** them all.

If you don't vote, you don't matter. Why do you think Osborne is falling over himself to help pensioners. It's because proportionally, they vote in large numbers. The opposite, sadly, seems to be the case for young people. It's part of the reason they are getting such a raw deal.Not voting is biting off your nose to spite your face. It's self indulgent at best, sheer idiocy at worst.

 

 

How so?

 

Politicians don't legislate for us individually. Demographic grouping matters to them. It stands to reason they will chase the votes of those they think will vote. Thats not to say they wont be legislating for all of us in some way or other, just that if they perceive that a certain group of people profess to have little or no interest in voting, then they will prioritize those that will.They shouldn't, but they most certainly will. Vote, it's in your own best interests to do so.

 

 

Are you suggesting that protected pensions, winter heating allowances, free TV licenses and enhanced savings interest rates for old people whilst making the young pay for their state education is somehow linked to what the politicians think they can get away?

Yep.

[tonyh29]

 

 

 

After reading the last few pages I'm going to extend my run of never voting in an election.

 

**** them all.

If you don't vote, you don't matter. Why do you think Osborne is falling over himself to help pensioners. It's because proportionally, they vote in large numbers. The opposite, sadly, seems to be the case for young people. It's part of the reason they are getting such a raw deal.Not voting is biting off your nose to spite your face. It's self indulgent at best, sheer idiocy at worst.

 

 

How so?

 

You're asking him for a list?  

 

Just off the top of my head, he could go with:

 

Tuition fees

Zero Hours Contracts

 

 

less students is a positive thing surely

[snowychap]

lots of people have sacrificed quite a lot to get us the vote

Lots of people have sacrificed quite a lot to give us the ability to vote.

That is the option to vote (or not); the option to stick an 'x' on the ballot against someone whose policies they may not even know or care about (just because they're not the other lot or they're the lot they've always voted for); the option to elect 'the least bad', and the option to say to oneself that this time, as with most other times, no one standing is worth voting for but that someone else in the future may be and when they turn up I'll go and vote for them.

[lapal_fan]

Yea, you should vote, but everyone seems like a huge dickhead.

 

I wouldn't trust any politician, from any sides of the spectrum, so who'd you vote for?

 

The Greens don't know what they're doing

 

Labour just seem to change their minds on key points whenever they look at opinion polls, + Ed **** Milliband is NOT PM material - well done Labour for even putting him forward.

 

Conservatives just try and buddy up with businesses and screw over the 90% of the working population.

 

Lib Dems? ROFLCOPTER.

 

UKIP? **** those ignorant arseholes

 

Bez from the Happy Mondays?  Seems more likely now I've just written this down, ffs.

 

So if - as a 28 (nearly) year old man - I was going to vote for one of the parties, I just don't know which one.

 

My vote spectrum test always comes out at Greens, but as I've said, they're just incompetent, and I do have a few beliefs that side with the Tory side of things, I.e. you get and deserve what you work for.  And finally, I think socialism would work if there weren't so many **** scroungers around, giving the people who actually need social help a bad name - thanks newspapers for shoving their worthless faces into my eyeballs every morning..

 

This country man, we don't know what the **** we're doing, where we want to go, what we want to be and how we want ourselves to be portrayed.

[chrisp65]

which is why I'd support a 'none of the above' box at the bottom of the ballot paper

takes away one valid excuse for not voting and allows a legitimate registered quantifiable protest against the whole sorry lot of them

[meregreen]

 

lots of people have sacrificed quite a lot to get us the vote

Lots of people have sacrificed quite a lot to give us the ability to vote.

That is the option to vote (or not); the option to stick an 'x' on the ballot against someone whose policies they may not even know or care about (just because they're not the other lot or they're the lot they've always voted for); the option to elect 'the least bad', and the option to say to oneself that this time, as with most other times, no one standing is worth voting for but that someone else in the future may be and when they turn up I'll go and vote for them.

 

You don't matter then. It's a bit like the chicken and egg question. You have to exercise your vote, for them to chase it. If you don't vote, and large numbers like you follow suit, then you may have a long wait.

[Condimentalist]

Lapal - why do you find voting for the Lib Dems such a ridiculous idea? I've never understood why everyone just decides to lampoon them instead of engaging with what they're actually doing or saying - it's a ridiculous discourse which the Tories have somehow been able to play off in this coalition and everyone just goes along with it because it's 'the done thing'. 

[MakemineVanilla]

 

 

 

After reading the last few pages I'm going to extend my run of never voting in an election.

 

**** them all.

If you don't vote, you don't matter. Why do you think Osborne is falling over himself to help pensioners. It's because proportionally, they vote in large numbers. The opposite, sadly, seems to be the case for young people. It's part of the reason they are getting such a raw deal.Not voting is biting off your nose to spite your face. It's self indulgent at best, sheer idiocy at worst.

 

 

How so?

 

You're asking him for a list?  

 

Just off the top of my head, he could go with:

 

Tuition fees

Zero Hours Contracts

 

 

I don't see it that way myself.

 

I just see tuition fees as the cost of making university an option for most kids, which is better than in the old days of having no fees but absolutely no option of going to university for most people.

 

I don't think zero hours are the exclusive problem of the young and really see it as a problem for all low-skill workers, who all recent governments have attacked with a vengeance, with their policies of open-door immigration (fixing the labour market in employers' favour), privatisation, and the general deregulation of the labour market to worsen working conditions for low-skill workers of all ages.

 

Young people definitely consume far more goods and services than they did even thirty years ago, so they are better off than their parents were materially.

 

Recent governments have definitely favoured a certain demograph but that demograph has been 'hard-working' families with debts and at the cost of both the old and the young and childless.

[Awol]

Interesting question this Greenie craze and the vote chasing actions of all parties.

On the face of it the greens environmental arguments alone are a no brainer. One planet, finite stuff, delicate atmosphere/biosphere, **** it all up and that's the end if the world.

BUT they are asking voters of their own free will to vote to lower their own living standards and those of their children. So as long as we have a system where those offering the most people the cushiest life get into power, greenism is stuffed.

That leaves 3 options:

1) some environmental catastrophe of such magnitude occurs that people change their entire belief system, force the abandonment of capitalism and all pray it's not too late. Yeah, right.

2) some global plague brings down the population to a level that doesn't have such a huge environment impact and those remaining crack on, eventually using and developing greener technologies. Possible but pretty disastrous for the majority who are therefore dead.

3) global totalitarian government prepared to force a programme of deindustrialisation and reverse the process of urbanisation, forcing us out of offices and into the turnip fields.

If there is a 4th, less crap option (that doesn't involve some Harry Potteresque spontaneous shift of global consciousness) I'd love to hear it.

[Wainy316]

I don't care for any of them and won't be voting for someone, I'll be tactically voting against the Tories.

[lapal_fan]

Lapal - why do you find voting for the Lib Dems such a ridiculous idea? I've never understood why everyone just decides to lampoon them instead of engaging with what they're actually doing or saying - it's a ridiculous discourse which the Tories have somehow been able to play off in this coalition and everyone just goes along with it because it's 'the done thing'. 

 

Valid question, I didn't give them much "post-time" did I?

 

If they're the middle ground between Left/Right, and they can flip a switch on their belief system in order to go into a coalition with the tories, then how can anyone give them any credit?

 

For what it's worth, they're not awful, but by the same token they're not exactly doing much to win any of the "not sure" voters like me in, I don't think.

[snowychap]

You don't matter then.

I think you could do with rephrasing that to make it sound less like you believe that it's a straight split between voters mattering and non-voters not.

You say 'you don't matter then' as though it differentiates me from probably the vast majority of those that do vote.

I think you've put yourself in a confused position as you acknowledge that people are not legislated for individually (unless you're of significant import, maybe), yet you are criticizing an individual for not voting and saying that this makes them not matter when, in reality, not belonging to a sufficiently homogenous group of voters is the thing that makes them not matter.

Speaking solely for myself, my politics means that I would be exceedingly unlikely to ever belong to such a group. That doesn't mean that I will never vote but it does mean that my vote will likely never matter (though that is not my reason for not voting).

You have to exercise your vote, for them to chase it.

That's wrong.

You have to be likely to exercise your vote in the forthcoming election for them to chase it (or at least willing to vote) and, then, your vote has to be important and mean something to that individual/party for them to do it (or at least do something more about it than knock on a door and spout the party spiel or deliver a leaflet).

That's why parties target marginals (see the Tory target seats campaign in 2010, for example) and that's why parties target swing voters.

Edited February 25, 2015 by snowychap

[snowychap]

which is why I'd support a 'none of the above' box at the bottom of the ballot paper

takes away one valid excuse for not voting and allows a legitimate registered quantifiable protest against the whole sorry lot of them

It would get written off in the same way that people and politicians currently write off non-voting practices or disenchantment, surely?

Okay, there might be a few months of post election politics wonk debrief (and pre-election wibble) but it would largely be, as most politics actually is now, an area of interest for a small few.

There would have to be some sort of (adverse) consequence for a sufficiently high turnout of 'none of the above' voters for it to have any impact.

*Thinking out loud and not even semi-seriously*:

Reduced pay/smaller expense budget for that constituency's MP; a voiding of the vote for a sufficiently low turnout of actual voters (a 'Boris Johnson' quorum); limiting the number of votes the MP could make in the house if there were sufficient numbers of 'none of the above' votes...

[lapal_fan]

FWIW:

 

[Xann]

If there is a 4th, less crap option (that doesn't involve some Harry Potteresque spontaneous shift of global consciousness) I'd love to hear it.

 

Wars over dwindling resources?

 

Oh no, that's crap too.

[chrisp65]

Interesting question this Greenie craze and the vote chasing actions of all parties.

On the face of it the greens environmental arguments alone are a no brainer. One planet, finite stuff, delicate atmosphere/biosphere, **** it all up and that's the end if the world.

BUT they are asking voters of their own free will to vote to lower their own living standards and those of their children. So as long as we have a system where those offering the most people the cushiest life get into power, greenism is stuffed.

That leaves 3 options:

1) some environmental catastrophe of such magnitude occurs that people change their entire belief system, force the abandonment of capitalism and all pray it's not too late. Yeah, right.

2) some global plague brings down the population to a level that doesn't have such a huge environment impact and those remaining crack on, eventually using and developing greener technologies. Possible but pretty disastrous for the majority who are therefore dead.

3) global totalitarian government prepared to force a programme of deindustrialisation and reverse the process of urbanisation, forcing us out of offices and into the turnip fields.

If there is a 4th, less crap option (that doesn't involve some Harry Potteresque spontaneous shift of global consciousness) I'd love to hear it.

 

worldwide access to free at point of use education, health and contraception*

 

 

 

not free at the place where contraception is actually used, you know what I mean...

[Wainy316]

I'm a woolly it seems.

 

[tonyh29]

he He  ... I'm a Green  , who'd have thunk it

 

Edited February 25, 2015 by tonyh29

[lapal_fan]

So based on the 3 surveys to see what political alignment I am today, at the minute I'm either voting Labour, Green or Conservative..

 

Which hasn't helped me decide at all

he He  ... I'm a Green  , who'd have thunk it

 

So you're not going to vote Tory?!!

 

Your nickname of Tony the Tory will have to be reassessed!