General Election 2017

[hippo]

55 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Part of me wants Labour to get destroyed in this election so they break up form a new party, a new party of hope and REAL choice for the people. as the two main parties are complete and utter shite  

You might get Labour destroyed.

But the 2nd part will never happen. You've got a hardcore labour vote that will always vote labour no matter how poor they are - thats a base to build from. Any new party doesn't have that. As we have seen from the SDP  in the 80's and perhaps now UKIP - when its all rosy those parties have a honeymoon of popular support - but because they have no core vote - as soon as they hit trouble they fizzle out into nothing.

I can see no reason why a centre right party (or centre left) would enjoy significant and sustained support over and above the labour party. You would have to get a new party up and running and pretty quickly be getting 35% potential vote ? - in effect all you would be doing is making it much easier to re elect the Tories.

 

 

[Demitri_C]

2 minutes ago, hippo said:

You might get Labour destroyed.

But the 2nd part will never happen. You've got a hardcore labour vote that will always vote labour no matter how poor they are - thats a base to build from. Any new party doesn't have that. As we have seen from the SDP  in the 80's and perhaps now UKIP - when its all rosy those parties have a honeymoon of popular support - but because they have no core vote - as soon as they hit trouble they fizzle out into nothing.

I can see no reason why a centre right party (or centre left) would enjoy significant and sustained support over and above the labour party. You would have to get a new party up and running and pretty quickly be getting 35% potential vote ? - in effect all you would be doing is making it much easier to re elect the Tories.

 

 

All good points and I guess that comes back to the key issue, reform which isn't likely to happen.

 

 

[hippo]

25 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Well there's that, but the answers he gives to those are not going to be the type of answers that play to the crowd. These things work with short clear answers. The moment he has to explain things, or give a more nuanced answer, he's ****. And I'll bet the answers he gives to those questions are not short and clear.

Yep.

The likes of Trump , Farage present simple answers to complex problems.  In reality though there aren't any easy answers - if they were it would have been done. 

Corbyn has a point with foreign policy - but its not a the total solution - if a total solution exists.

 

[Demitri_C]

This is my issue with the two parties both lying to the public

 

Quote

 

Tories and Labour not being honest with voters: IFS

By Chris JohnstonBBC News

ES

Neither the Conservatives nor Labour are being honest with voters about the economic consequences of their policy proposals, an influential think tank has warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the Tories had very few tax or spending commitments in their manifesto.

Labour, in contrast, was proposing very big increases in tax and spending.

However, the IFS said Labour's plans for paying for its proposed expansion in state activity would not work.

If the party wanted the advantages of a bigger state, "they should be willing to candidly set out the consequences - higher taxation affecting broad segments of the population," the think tank said.

Paul Johnson, IFS director, said a bigger state as Labour had proposed was perfectly feasible, but added that the party "should not pretend that such a step-change could be funded entirely by a small minority at the very top.

"In particular, the large increase in company taxation that they propose would undoubtedly affect a far broader group than that."

The IFS said that the Conservatives' additional funding vows for the NHS and schools largely confirmed proposals made in the Budget in March.

"These plans imply at least another five years of austerity, with the continuation of planned welfare cuts and serious pressures on the public services including on the NHS," it said.

Mr Johnson, who said that neither main party was "being really honest with the public", commented: "It is likely that the Conservatives would either have to resort to tax or borrowing increases to bail out public services under increasing pressure, or would risk presiding over a decline in the quality of some of those services, including the NHS."

The IFS said Labour's calculations that £49bn a year could be raised from the wealthier and companies "includes some factual mistakes with regard to part of their tax avoidance package, optimistic assumptions and unspecified tax increases".

The proposals could be expected to raise £40bn at most in the short term, and less in the long term.The Conservatives' plan to impose what the IFS called "very big cuts" to working-age welfare benefits would save £11bn annually by 2021-22, but would significantly cut the incomes of the poorest working age households.

"Labour's manifesto in fact commits it to cancelling only a small minority of these cuts... changing this would require finding several billion pounds extra from somewhere," the IFS said.

The Conservative commitments to replace the "triple lock" on the state pension with a "double lock" from April 2020 and means-test winter fuel allowance payments represent a "very modest change", according to the think tank.

However, Labour's proposal to maintain the triple lock and to start paying state pensions no later than the age of 66 would be "immensely expensive in the long run - up to £50bn a year in 50 years time" compared with raising the state pension age in line with life expectancy and increasing the pension in line with earnings.

 

 

 

Clicky

Edited May 26, 2017 by Demitri_C

[hippo]

2 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

All good points and I guess that comes back to the key issue, reform which isn't likely to happen.

 

 

Don't know if its even that. The idea most likley to produce chance is to change the labour party into something thats has wider appeal.

Thats not banging the drum for labour - I would say the same if you were unhappy with a labour gov't - but the tories weren't viable - you best course of action is to make the tories viable.

I think you also have to be realistic - any party you vote for, will have elements you're not keen on - for example I will probably vote labour - but I am not a massive fan of re nationalisation on a massive scale.  

[Xann]

Here's a bloke that doesn't like guns and bombs, that goes to people that use guns and bombs, to suggest that everyone not use guns and bombs.

He gets flogged for it.

Let's nail him to a cross now and perhaps he'll rise in time for a stunning election win?

[peterms]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

There's a strong and obvious argument that invading Iraq (bloody Tory government) contributed to radicalisation, it's also one that ignores the Islamic terror attacks that pre-dated it.

If it's all about foreign policy why are we seeing Islamic terror attacks from Nigeria to Indonesia and the Philipines? 

Closer to home what about Germany, or Sweden, or Belgium? Staying out of Iraq and Libya hasn't stopped Islamic terrorists launching attacks in those countries, has it? 

Pretending that if we'd only change our foreign policy everything would be okay is a comfort blanket that suggests the power to stop these attacks is in our hands, it's our choices making these people do this. It denies the agency of the terrorists themselves, regarding them as Pavlovian idiots simply reacting to external stimuli. 

Maybe, just maybe these people actually mean the things they say about hating western civilisation and the need to destroy and replace it with Sharia law? 

That would be uncomfortable to think, but might at least get us beyond the denial phase we're currently locked in to. 

I don't think anyone argues that foreign policy is the only factor involved.  However, it's often necessary to emphasise how much of a factor it is, because so many politicians and media outlets pretend it isn't.  The reaction to terror events frequently denies that there could be any cogent reason behind it, and any attempts to explore possible reasons are ridiculed and attacked as trying to "excuse" terror.  This happens despite people like Stella Rimington and Eliza Manningham-Butler, both former heads of MI5, explaining that there is a clear and strong causal connection between our activity in the Middle East, specifically Iraq, and terrorism at home.

The "denial", in other words, is more usually denial that any of our actions in invading other countries, funding and training terrorists in Syria and elsewhere, allowing them (eg in the case of the Libyan network in Manchester) to move freely between here and countries where we believe them to be fighting people we don't like (Gaddafi), can have consequences.

There's a fairly long and balanced discussion here which recognises both the political context and the importance of individual factors in specific incidences of terrorism:

Quote

...So what is it that pushes someone from this confluence of depression, alienation, and ‘social defeat’ into violence? In the case of ISIS, the research to date shows that most people who join up or sympathise are attracted to the group’s promise of meaning — a twisted, but seductive theology of heroic salvation.

People who join Islamist extremist groups, for the most part, are not grounded in religious observance. Instead, usually (though not exclusively) their first major encounter with Islam is through contact with an extremist preacher or recruiter outside the traditional mosque circuit, or by finding extremist literature — often online.

According to Charles Farr, former Director General of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) in the Home Office (now chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee), “violent radicalisation in mosques or other religious institutions comprises no more than 1% or 2% of the total cases of radicalisation.” (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 2012)

Extremist propaganda has thus shifted from the public space to more private spaces, like homes, clubs, laptops and mobile phones.

For some, this can lead to a longer process which ISIS has invested considerably in fine-tuning. They convince their prey that the cause of their alienation and depression is outside of them, in the society in which they find themselves, ‘the West’. And they combine this with powerful audiovisual propaganda highlighting ‘the West’s’ evil destruction of Muslim life in Iraq, Syria and beyond.

A recent study in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice looked at a range of ISIS videos produced by their al-Hayat Media Centre.

The authors found that the videos specifically targeted “potential Western recruits and sympathisers by portraying life in the IS [Islamic State] as spiritually and existentially fulfilling, while simultaneously decrying the West as secular, immoral, and criminal. By utilising well-produced propaganda videos that tap into the dissatisfactions of Western Muslims, al-Hayat was shown to deliver a sophisticated and ‘legitimate’ message that may play a role in the larger radicalisation process.”

Theological illiteracy is actually a useful precondition for the prospective recruit, from ISIS’ perspective. It permits them to effectively promote these ideas in such a way that they push a person into accepting the ISIS worldview. Because the prospective recruit lacks the theological resources and grounding to see ISIS ideology for what it is — a flagrant bastardisation of Islam...

 

[dAVe80]

24 minutes ago, Xann said:

Here's a bloke that doesn't like guns and bombs, that goes to people that use guns and bombs, to suggest that everyone not use guns and bombs.

He gets flogged for it.

Let's nail him to a cross now and perhaps he'll rise in time for a stunning election win?

He does have the initials, JC, and he has a beard.

Edited May 26, 2017 by dAVe80

[villaglint]

Not strictly relevant to GE thread but seems relevant to this discussion. Report came out yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mosul-us-air-strike-civilian-deaths-pentagon-latest-toll-a7755866.html

Quote

 

US Airstrike in Mosul kills at least 105 civilians Pentagon confirms. 

This strike is one of the largest incidents of civilians deaths since the US air campaign against ISIS began in 2014

 

 

[markavfc40]

I notice the Corbyn slayers are already again out in force. The Tories have gone for him as expected, so have the right wing media and the one I am most disappointed in Tim Farron. Criticism ranging from saying he is opportunistic to it is disgraceful.

The only people being opportunistic here are those criticising Corbyn. As things stand today there is no bigger issue in this country. Everyone is talking about why these attacks are happening, are we doing enough to prevent them, what do we need to do going forward. It is hardly a surprise is it that we have the leader of the Labour party with an election in under two weeks addressing these issues.

Maybe if there wasn't an election you could say he doesn't need to be doing this. There is an election though and due to this atrocity it will now be on the top of many peoples priorities in terms of wanting to know how it is going to be addressed. We need to hear every parties views on this and already proven to be bollocks strong and stable rhetoric or it is too soon won't wash here.

Edited May 26, 2017 by markavfc40

[Dr_Pangloss]

3 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Part of me wants Labour to get destroyed in this election so they break up form a new party, a new party of hope and REAL choice for the people. as the two main parties are complete and utter shite  

It was tried before (1981?) and it failed miserably, they had a big media machine behind it too. No one in the Labour party thinks a split is feasible and they are right to think that. 

[StefanAVFC]

2 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I notice the Corbyn slayers are already again out in force. The Tories have gone for him as expected, so have the right wing media and the one I am most disappointed in Tim Farron. Criticism ranging from saying he is opportunistic to it is disgraceful.

I still think they'd jump into a coalition with Labour though. As a Lib Dem, I'm a bit unsure on Farron's tactics here. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

We all knew what Corbyn was going to say and it was obviously going to destroy any momentum he had. Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that the 'war on terror isn't working', at the same time he seems to be propagating the standard knee-jerk left stuff of 'if weren't at war with them we wouldn't have this problem'. 

[markavfc40]

3 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

I still think they'd jump into a coalition with Labour though. As a Lib Dem, I'm a bit unsure on Farron's tactics here. 

I don't know what his game is. The only thing I can assume is that he thinks a bit of Corbyn bashing will help the Lib Dems. That is playing politics though and I'd have hoped he wouldn't have played those games. Totally expected from the Tories but not from Farron and like I said I am disappointed in him.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Xann said:

Here's a bloke that doesn't like guns and bombs, that goes to people that use guns and bombs, to suggest that everyone not use guns and bombs.

He gets flogged for it.

Let's nail him to a cross now and perhaps he'll rise in time for a stunning election win?

There's a bit of a difficulty with that analysis. I know it was a long time ago and all that, but Corbyn (and a few of his chums) din't just talk to the nasty men to get them to stop being nasty. They (peacefully) supported their cause. Making out that Jezza and Diane only talked to the IRA and Sinn Fein because they wanted to bring about peace is absolute rubbish. It's rewriting history. His repeated refusal, even now, to condemn the IRA echoes that history.

His speech today ( I read the transcript) was very good but with one sentence kind of being the exception that will (perhaps rightly) be used against him and what is a mostly decent argument.

[blandy]

10 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

We all knew what Corbyn was going to say and it was obviously going to destroy any momentum he had. Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that the 'war on terror isn't working', at the same time he seems to be propagating the standard knee-jerk left stuff of 'if weren't at war with them we wouldn't have this problem'. 

Aye. Being slightly facetious, part of his message seems to be saying that Iraq is a contributory factor. Now as Iraq was down to Labour, he's campaigning to stop a Labour government getting back in, and thus making things worse

It''d be like May campaigning to stop the NHS being ****ed with.

[Dodgyknees]

15 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I don't know what his game is. The only thing I can assume is that he thinks a bit of Corbyn bashing will help the Lib Dems. That is playing politics though and I'd have hoped he wouldn't have played those games. Totally expected from the Tories but not from Farron and like I said I am disappointed in him.

It just keeps the Tories in power, that is the only thing that can be gained. Maybe he fancies himself a shot at a coalition and a shot to his finances for the role he gets.

[Davkaus]

 

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

Aye. Being slightly facetious, part of his message seems to be saying that Iraq is a contributory factor. Now as Iraq was down to Labour, he's campaigning to stop a Labour government getting back in, and thus making things worse

I think you're being more than slightly facetious.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10426/theresa_may/maidenhead/votes

How Theresa May voted on Foreign Policy and Defence #

• Almost always voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseasShow votes9 votes for, 2 votes against, between 2003–2015
• Consistently voted for the Iraq warShow votes5 votes for, 0 votes against, 1 absence, between 2002–2003

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10133/jeremy_corbyn/islington_north/votes

How Jeremy Corbyn voted on Foreign Policy and Defence #

• Consistently voted against use of UK military forces in combat operations overseasShow votes1 vote for, 8 votes against, 1 absence, between 2002–2015
• Consistently voted against the Iraq warShow votes0 votes for, 6 votes against, between 2002–2003

[magnkarl]

40 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I notice the Corbyn slayers are already again out in force. The Tories have gone for him as expected, so have the right wing media and the one I am most disappointed in Tim Farron. Criticism ranging from saying he is opportunistic to it is disgraceful.

The only people being opportunistic here are those criticising Corbyn. As things stand today there is no bigger issue in this country. Everyone is talking about why these attacks are happening, are we doing enough to prevent them, what do we need to do going forward. It is hardly a surprise is it that we have the leader of the Labour party with an election in under two weeks addressing these issues.

Maybe if there wasn't an election you could say he doesn't need to be doing this. There is an election though and due to this atrocity it will now be on the top of many peoples priorities in terms of wanting to know how it is going to be addressed. We need to hear every parties views on this and already proven to be bollocks strong and stable rhetoric or it is too soon won't wash here.

I think you're spot on about a lot of this. However Corbyn's "solution" to Islamic terrorism isn't a solution at all. Blaming one factor (war in ME) on something that also affects all other parts of the world, even countries that didn't bomb Iraq and Syria is too easy. He needs to stop being so apologetic of being British when Iraq was invaded and rather look at ways to deal with the problem. Problems aren't always solved by being a pacifist, I do agree that it helps sometimes, however when you are attacked you need to act. For example even JC couldn't not go to war if one of our NATO allies got attacked - he has no other answer than "let's stop going to war". Even the most peaceful countries in the world prepare for war in peacetime, Corbyn should be under no illusion that we're any different.

Some areas of the world is being torn to shreds, in Corbyn's view we should just turtle back to our island and let it happen. That is quintessentially VERY unbritish of him.

[StefanAVFC]

Just now, magnkarl said:

I think you're spot on about a lot of this. However Corbyn's "solution" to Islamic terrorism isn't a solution at all. Blaming one factor (war in ME) on something that also affects all other parts of the world, even countries that didn't bomb Iraq and Syria is too easy. 

He didn't say it was the one factor.