The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[Seat68]

13 minutes ago, bickster said:

Nah most of the time, they are just bunging leaflets through doors without talking to anyone

I get a lot of leaflets through, all binned. Never saw anyone representing any political party on my doorstep. Last general election though I had a campaign bod from labour call me up. He got shitty when I asked him how he got my number. 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

I get a lot of leaflets through, all binned. Never saw anyone representing any political party on my doorstep. Last general election though I had a campaign bod from labour call me up. He got shitty when I asked him how he got my number. 

Once, just once, I got a knock on the front door and a leaflet pushed through. I was watching cricket at the time. Got up, opened the door and an obvious Tory was standing there so I shut the door straight away, picked the leaflet up to take to the recycling bin. On it was a picture of the bloke I’d just slammed the door on, the MP. So I put it in the bin, then ran up the street to harangue him about various dumb stuff the baby eaters had done.

Usually the other parties don’t even bother putting leaflets through doors here, it’s a kind of self fulfilling safe seat thing I guess. Labour and the others probably think why waste time and money in a seat we can’t win? so that only worsens the situation and Labour voters here think why bother voting?

[darrenm]

8 hours ago, a m ole said:

I think that was probably true in the past, I don’t think leaflets make the slightest bit of difference anymore. I’d advise members to stop bothering.

I'm inclined to agree. Even more so with canvassing. But I remember @chrisp65 (sample of one I know) saying that he felt very unloved by Labour when they didn't even drop a leaflet through the door. And that if they couldn't even be bothered to drop a leaflet, why should he vote for them?

And if this is correct that leafleting, canvassing and grassroots activism is dead, then it supports my assertion that politics has completely changed over the last few years to be an instant hit populist heavy game that can only be won with radical thinking, not trying to chase the ever diminishing 'middle'. I don't remember getting a lot of support for that view.

[HanoiVillan]

This conversation about leafletting reminds me a bit about that story of the executive who says he knows 50% of his marketing budget is wasted, but that he doesn't know which 50%.

I completely hear the points people are making about it being wasted, about leaflets going in the bin, etc. But a thing that happened in both of the last two elections is that Labour's position increased significantly during the campaign. There might be many possible reasons for that - fairer media coverage, social media spending (which is less regulated as well), Corbyn enjoying and so doing a lot of stump speeches, loads of things really - but the effect was (very) positive, so the party should be careful about changing their approach.

[blandy]

12 minutes ago, darrenm said:

And if this is correct that leafleting, canvassing and grassroots activism is dead, then it supports my assertion that politics has completely changed over the last few years to be an instant hit populist heavy game that can only be won with radical thinking, not trying to chase the ever diminishing 'middle'. I don't remember getting a lot of support for that view.

I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s simpler - like newspapers are now replaced for most people by Facebook and online and Twitter? It’s just that again with the physical leaflets where they are just posted through letterboxes. Door knocking I guess and actually talking still has value mind.

I don’t think the middle can or will ever diminish because if the extremes get wider this has the effect of turning off a lot of people from those extremes and people feeling homeless politically. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

politics has completely changed over the last few years to be an instant hit populist heavy game that can only be won with radical thinking, not trying to chase the ever diminishing 'middle'.

Sorry to quote this again, but another thought has occurred. It's this: basically if you ask most people what they want from Government it's kind of "I want the potholes filled in, I want the trains and buses to run on time, I want hospitals and schools to work, I want the bins emptied, I want the local park to be free of litter and druggies, I want the police and fire service to be effective and I want big business to pay its fair share of taxes..." and so on. None of that is actually radical at all. People want stuff to work.

Of course you could say stuff in in such a mess that things working would be a radical change, but by and large "radical" is a misused word in politics. In a small number of cases it's kind of valid, but "we need to completely dismantle the system and fundamentally recreate the way we do stuff" is not in my perception what people mostly want or will vote for. This comment isn't about my personal view on whether we should, but on my perception of what the general populace will accept. I think the use of the term "radical" by politicians and commentators is a massive turn off for voters, generally.

[darrenm]

20 minutes ago, blandy said:

Sorry to quote this again, but another thought has occurred. It's this: basically if you ask most people what they want from Government it's kind of "I want the potholes filled in, I want the trains and buses to run on time, I want hospitals and schools to work, I want the bins emptied, I want the local park to be free of litter and druggies, I want the police and fire service to be effective and I want big business to pay its fair share of taxes..." and so on. None of that is actually radical at all. People want stuff to work.

Of course you could say stuff in in such a mess that things working would be a radical change, but by and large "radical" is a misused word in politics. In a small number of cases it's kind of valid, but "we need to completely dismantle the system and fundamentally recreate the way we do stuff" is not in my perception what people mostly want or will vote for. This comment isn't about my personal view on whether we should, but on my perception of what the general populace will accept. I think the use of the term "radical" by politicians and commentators is a massive turn off for voters, generally.

Yeah interesting thoughts. I'm not sure I agree that most people would say that. Most people I know would say we need to do whatever it takes to stop the climate crisis. They would say we need to reduce homelessness. They'd say food bank use is horrific and something should be done.

Perhaps if you show these people what's actually required to sort those things, they might decide it needs too many 'radical' changes. Like to address the climate emergency, we need to dramatically alter our consumerist lifestyles. Perhaps the problem is, nobody with a large enough platform is being honest enough to give it to people straight.

Personally, I think the scale of the problems that have been allowed to fester are so great that only doing things what people would see as radical is enough. e.g. perfect example a few pages back; we need to plant 2 billions trees over 20 years. 'can't be done!', 'scoff', 'where are we going to find people to do it?'. People seem to have the best intentions about what we should fix but the baulk at the requirements.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, darrenm said:

People seem to have the best intentions about what we should fix but the baulk at the requirements.

Exactly my point, really. Even those motivated by the issues you mentioned "people I know would say...." want to be convinced the proposed solution is credible. Like on the plant trees thing, my comments weren't against planting trees, they were about the non-credibility of the figure for the number of trees we must plant in a specific time period - about a "promise" of "we will do this" - my response (opinion) was in essence "no you **** won't, it's not actually possible, stop lying, stop making ludicrous claims".

Or more widely on climate change, say, take electric cars. The reasons why people don't take them up are in significant part around 2 things  - cost and recharging  infrastructure. This is where practical government is really necessary. Both those issues can be best resolved through government action. Legislation to require charging points (electric or hydrogen?) to be installed (e.g all new buildings of various types, car parks, petrol stations, workplaces, whatever...), increasing new car tax on petrol vehicles or on petrol  and diesel and using the revenue to reduced the cost of electric cars further... but better still is better public transport and fewer cars overall.

It's a difficult sell even then and courage is severely lacking in the current set of politicians, by and large.

[HanoiVillan]

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

Like on the plant trees thing, my comments weren't against planting trees, they were about the non-credibility of the figure for the number of trees we must plant in a specific time period - about a "promise" of "we will do this" - my response (opinion) was in essence "no you **** won't, it's not actually possible, stop lying, stop making ludicrous claims".

Yeah, but you're just wrong about that though It's the implicit claim that there would be zero technological progress in the speed of tree planting over the next 19 (21 at the time) years that is actually insupportable.

I do agree with your wider point that most people are not actually interested in 'radically' changing their lifestyles to tackle climate change though. The flipside of that of course is it's even more important that governments do things that don't directly impact people's lifestyles; your example of electric charging stations is one where the change can be positive sum, so it should be easy enough for governments to pursue.

 

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

It's the implicit claim that there would be zero technological progress in the speed of tree planting over the next 19 (21 at the time) years that is actually insupportable.

That's the wrong way round, surely.

It's like (not really like) me saying "I will travel from land's End to John O'Groats on land in 4 hours in 20 years time" - the onus is on mem making the claim, to justify how, or give my assumption, not on you as a sceptic to document that there will be zero technological progress. The onus is on the person making the claim.

As it happens, I think I did outline some pragmatic reasons why the tree claim was not credible - these included (I think) the weather and suitable times of the year from planting - it's not an all year activity, watering the saplings in remote locations, sourcing 2 billion saplings, ensuring they are disease free and don't have unwanted critters and bugs on them, moving them to some potentially remote locations, finding workers to do the work and so on. I mean perhaps there are solid answers to all those (and more) questions, but I suspect not. Onus on person (party) making these claims to show they stand up to scrutiny and are genuinely viable.

Labour (or anyone else)  making manifesto pledges and all the rest have to be seen to be credible. We know the Tories are liars, and if the other parties go down the same route, then we're just goosed completely. In a world full of disinformation and alternative facts and all the rest,  trustworthiness is key (yeah, and if you can fake that, you've got it made).

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's the wrong way round, surely.

It's like (not really like) me saying "I will travel from land's End to John O'Groats on land in 4 hours in 20 years time" - the onus is on mem making the claim, to justify how, or give my assumption, not on you as a sceptic to document that there will be zero technological progress. The onus is on the person making the claim.

As it happens, I think I did outline some pragmatic reasons why the tree claim was not credible - these included (I think) the weather and suitable times of the year from planting - it's not an all year activity, watering the saplings in remote locations, sourcing 2 billion saplings, ensuring they are disease free and don't have unwanted critters and bugs on them, moving them to some potentially remote locations, finding workers to do the work and so on. I mean perhaps there are solid answers to all those (and more) questions, but I suspect not. Onus on person (party) making these claims to show they stand up to scrutiny and are genuinely viable.

Labour (or anyone else)  making manifesto pledges and all the rest have to be seen to be credible. We know the Tories are liars, and if the other parties go down the same route, then we're just goosed completely. In a world full of disinformation and alternative facts and all the rest,  trustworthiness is key (yeah, and if you can fake that, you've got it made).

I don't propose to go over the details of the tree thing again - it's an amount of work that *could* be done by training a couple of thousand tree planters and then having them plant trees at a normal rate for six months a year for the next 20 years, but I recognise that we simply aren't going to agree - but on the point about presuming technological progress, we do this *all the time*, and lots of things about business and politics would not make sense without us doing so. The reason technology companies trade on much higher multiples of their earnings than other companies is because markets factor in expectations of future technology development, and the profits that development will generate. Similarly, most analyses about the feasibility of meeting Paris climate targets swing on the rollout of carbon capture technology that has not been widely rolled out yet (or demonstrated its efficacy at scale). In the case of tree planting, it is the work of a few minutes of research to discover that there are a variety of startups who have developed drone technology that can plant trees much faster than men with shovels; there is also plenty of reason to assume that developments in both AI and drone technology will improve the efficacy of these systems further. It is the media's choice to portray the calculations as being about the speed that men with shovels can work; they did not have to choose to pretend that technology is irrelevant to this topic (they talk about future technology all the time in other contexts) but nevertheless that was the choice they made.

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

It is the media's choice to portray the calculations as being about the speed that men with shovels can work; they did not have to choose to pretend that technology is irrelevant to this topic (they talk about future technology all the time in other contexts) but nevertheless that was the choice they made.

To stay on topic and sort of develop the point(s), if Labour (any party) makes a manifesto type pledge, it's highly likely the media will analyse the credibility of that pledge. If you or I feel the pledge is more about headline grabbing than actually doing the thing pledged then that's a bad look. I think the tree discussion started because Maitliss had tweeted that the Tory hospital pledge and the Labour tree pledge were (in her view, it seemed) more about stating attention grabbing numbers than anything else - a kind of trading of figures for this that and the other that most likely would never come to pass when looked back on.

The Tory hospital pledge was dismissed by whichever poster as non credible, when the actual possibility of doing it is kind of valid (though the tories won't meet it because they're liars) and the tree one was somehow deemed by some posters as totes realistic, when the challenges are perhaps larger in some people's view, even if the intent to actually do it was there.

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, blandy said:

To stay on topic and sort of develop the point(s), if Labour (any party) makes a manifesto type pledge, it's highly likely the media will analyse the credibility of that pledge. If you or I feel the pledge is more about headline grabbing than actually doing the thing pledged then that's a bad look. I think the tree discussion started because Maitliss had tweeted that the Tory hospital pledge and the Labour tree pledge were (in her view, it seemed) more about stating attention grabbing numbers than anything else - a kind of trading of figures for this that and the other that most likely would never come to pass when looked back on.

The Tory hospital pledge was dismissed by whichever poster as non credible, when the actual possibility of doing it is kind of valid (though the tories won't meet it because they're liars) and the tree one was somehow deemed by some posters as totes realistic, when the challenges are perhaps larger in some people's view, even if the intent to actually do it was there.

Yes, the Tory nurses-and-hospitals pledge was also completely realistic; both pledges were possible. What annoyed people, understandably, was the comparison of the two when the obvious difference was that the Tories didn't have any intention of carrying out their pledge.

[chrisp65]

5 hours ago, darrenm said:

I'm inclined to agree. Even more so with canvassing. But I remember @chrisp65 (sample of one I know) saying that he felt very unloved by Labour when they didn't even drop a leaflet through the door. And that if they couldn't even be bothered to drop a leaflet, why should he vote for them?

And if this is correct that leafleting, canvassing and grassroots activism is dead, then it supports my assertion that politics has completely changed over the last few years to be an instant hit populist heavy game that can only be won with radical thinking, not trying to chase the ever diminishing 'middle'. I don't remember getting a lot of support for that view.

2017

A cast of thousands stood for election and even The Pirate Party had a leaflet. Everyone except Labour.

They were castigated by the other candidates for not even bothering with a leaflet. 

As for it being switched to social media, do we have the stats on the age of voters vs the age of Insta users?

2017 was a bit of a special case anyway, the local Labour Party decided to throw the election and not having a local candidate anyone had heard of, coupled with not having a leafleting campaign actually worked really well. In that they did manage to throw the election.

For the vast majority of people, canvassing and leaflets don’t make a jot of difference. For a small number, they are an indicator. When its a marginal constituency that is actually within a margin of winability, why would you not? 

What’s interesting to me, and highly likely not in the slightest bit interesting to you lot. Is the difference between Labour nationally, and Labour UK. Nationally they have a good machine and they win elections and use their experience in power and their track record to continue to win elections, and even have power sharing arrangements with other parties as and when it suits them, both with Plaid and with the LibDems. Drakeford is considerably more popular than Johnson, by a mile. Labour UK are a divided mess that appears to be unsolvable. Why would it be quite so impossible for Labour UK when they have a current successful working model within their borders? 

 

 

[bickster]

50 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

2017

A cast of thousands stood for election and even The Pirate Party had a leaflet. Everyone except Labour.

They were castigated by the other candidates for not even bothering with a leaflet. 

As for it being switched to social media, do we have the stats on the age of voters vs the age of Insta users?

2017 was a bit of a special case anyway, the local Labour Party decided to throw the election and not having a local candidate anyone had heard of, coupled with not having a leafleting campaign actually worked really well. In that they did manage to throw the election.

For the vast majority of people, canvassing and leaflets don’t make a jot of difference. For a small number, they are an indicator. When its a marginal constituency that is actually within a margin of winability, why would you not? 

What’s interesting to me, and highly likely not in the slightest bit interesting to you lot. Is the difference between Labour nationally, and Labour UK. Nationally they have a good machine and they win elections and use their experience in power and their track record to continue to win elections, and even have power sharing arrangements with other parties as and when it suits them, both with Plaid and with the LibDems. Drakeford is considerably more popular than Johnson, by a mile. Labour UK are a divided mess that appears to be unsolvable. Why would it be quite so impossible for Labour UK when they have a current successful working model within their borders? 

The leafleting I'm talking about hasn't got anything to do with elections, I think elections are a slightly different. I'm talking about the year round deforestation of huge swathes of forest in order to print all the crap they chuck through the doors that goes straight in the bin

Shit like this

No election in sight. I mean I get the need, Wavertree is only the 5th safest Labour seat in the city but the 13th safest Labour seat in the country 72.5% of the vote. Clearly they need to be trying harder because the 4 local seats above them are the top 4 in the area and the top 4 in the country. And the councillor himself, doesn't even live or represent a ward in that constituency

It really is just a gross waste of time and resources for a game of oneupmanship

[chrisp65]

Ah ok, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a political leaflet outside of election time, by any party.

 

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Ah ok, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life seen a political leaflet outside of election time, by any party.

 

 

Liberals used to be quite bad for it in Great Barr / Hamstead with their Liberal Focus leaflets, which they used to regurgitate shite that happened at the council

At this time, there were two Primary schools, with playing fields that were only separated by a road called Brookside Close and the fences surrounding the close were the local authorities responsibility

Liberal Focus Team. "We have reported the broken fences around Brookside Close as the residents have complained that their properties are insecure due to the poor condition of the council owned school boundary fences"

Yep, thats the kind of brainless thing they posted through everyone's doors in the 70s, it hasn't changed, Labour do the exact same thing

(Yes Brookside Close was then subject to a rather large spate of Burglaries)

[HanoiVillan]

Not strongly invested in this opinion, but -

One thing that political parties - especially Labour - have been accused of a lot in recent years has been 'taking x for granted', where x is an area they used to dominate but now don't, like 'the Derbyshire coalfields' or 'all of Scotland'. If you dominate the local government of x, but don't want to 'take x for granted', one thing you might try to do is to publicise the things you are doing locally that you think might be popular, and try to get feedback from local residents by going and talking to them, possibly at home where they spend a lot of their time. I'm not saying it's the *best* tactic, but it seems pretty understandable why a party might want to do this stuff.

[blandy]

On 02/09/2021 at 17:13, darrenm said:

And it's what Starmer's doing. While diving in the polls.

Just quoted you because of the mention of diving in the polls. I think polls reflect much more, at the moment, on the government than on the other parties, because of COVID and vaccines, Brexit effects and Afghanistan. But anyway this week Labour are climbing, as are the Greens.

[Wainy316]

The Tories are about to present Labour with a few open goals that I'm sure they will respond to in their usual manner...