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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Twats.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
There's really nothing that can be said with regards to the UKIP situation.
As to the post before it, it's worth remembering that Peter Mandelson has an even worse reputation than Tony Blair.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
A procrastination in of itself
I wouldn't say worse, he's more regarded as evil and malevolent, but he's hated less.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
I mentioned reputation, not hate. The reaction to Mandelson is much less passionate than towards Blair, but the scope of what he stands for in the minds of people is very much greater than Blair's.
edited 17th Nov '17 5:10:36 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Actually, there is more to say about UKIP.
Yeah, there's already been evidence of UKIP abusing EU funds and having some election fraud, too.
edited 17th Nov '17 5:10:56 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
BBC Parliament shows Steve Richards' Leadership Reflections for Wilson, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08f4k5c/leadership-reflections-series-1-6-david-cameron
What's that? You mean Brexit isn't free? Leave would never lie!
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39042876
Labour HOLD Stoke Central
Seems like the Labour vote mostly held up, but importantly so did the Conservative rather than defecting to UKIP. A combined UKIP and Tory candidate would have easily swamped Labour here.
Basically a classic election where AV might have made things very interesting... as it is FPTP gives it to Labour.
Conservative GAIN Copeland from Labour
This on the other hand good news for Ms May. Turnout pretty good at 51%. Would be interesting to see where... this seat appears to have a classic Urban Labour / Rural Tory split.
Hot take though here appears more to be UKIP voters returning to the Tories. Labour lost about 4%... but UKIP lost 9% compared to the general. Need to do the maths but I don't think the Labour losses on their own cost Labour the seat.
edited 23rd Feb '17 7:11:17 PM by singularityshot
Oh, bother.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, at least UKIP apparently got shafted.
Turnout in Copeland was 12.5% down on the 2015 election. A turnout of 51.4% is an historic low compared to all the general election results. The previous lowest turnout was 62.3% in 2005.
Copeland has been a tight seat between Labour and the Tories ever since its formation in 1983. In 1997, the Tory vote collapsed, leaving Labour with the double the vote of the Tories. The turnout was 76.3%, which (at the time) was the lowest turnout for that constituency (78.2% in 1983, 81.3% in 1987. 83.5% in 1992).
Since 2001, Copeland has generally trended away from Labour and towards the Tories. In the 2015 general election, UKIP gained at the expense of all three main parties (a swing to UKIP from Tories, Labour and Lib Dems of 13.2%). In yesterday's election, their vote collapsed (a swing away from them of 9%). The Tories have hoovered up most of that (a gain of 8.5%) and that's why they've taken the seat.
The Lib Dems have made a small come-back (a 3.8% swing in their favour), which appears to have mostly come from Labour (a swing away of 4.9%) and perhaps they've regained some of the votes they lost to UKIP in 2015.
On a side note, the Greens (who gained in the 2015 election), have also seen a collapse in their vote. They always had a tiny presence so don't get much coverage, but their trend mirrors UKIP - they gain when UKIP does and collapse when UKIP does.
Looking at total number of votes, the Tory by-election result is fairly normal. Labour total votes unusually low, however. Gains by Lib Dems and Tories don't fully explain the swing against Labour, especially when factoring in the fact that the Tories appear to have hoovered up UKIP's votes and that there's a loss in Green votes as well. Given the very low election turnout (51.4% is historically low compared to the election turnouts which have never dropped below 62%), it's possible that there's a stay-at-home effect as well.
Labour might view it as good news in the sense that it means their voters are mostly not attracted to either UKIP or the Tories (which is what the media and politicians were expecting). For left-wing voters, it's the usual issue of having two left-leaning parties to choose from (Labour or Lib Dems) which splits the left-leaning vote, combined with low turnouts disproportionately affecting left-wing parties compared to right-wing parties.
It's obviously good news for Lib Dems. Although it does look like a tiny amount in real terms, it means they're starting to see voters returning them after their collapse in the 2015 election, and they're starting to shows signs of once more being viewed as a valid alternative to Labour.
Summary of folder information (if tl;dr):
- Constituency has always been a tight race between Labour and Tories.
- Constituency has been swinging away from Labour and towards Tories since 2001.
- By-election turnout is historically low (GEs don't go below 62%)
- Looks like Tories gained from UKIP.
- Looks like Lib Dems gained from Labour.
May's policy, since becoming PM, has been to try and regain the voting ground lost to UKIP in recent years. The Tories have lost voters, donors (such as Aaron Banks) and MPs to UKIP in recent years. Towards the end of last year, there was talk of donors and defector MPs rejoining the Tory Party, and signs that voters may be doing the same.
The recent collapse of the UKIP party is a combination of things:
- They are a party defined by two issues (Brexit and immigration) who have had their dream realised (achieving Brexit from an anti-immigration argument) and therefore are stuck trying to figure out what their future should now be.
- The Tories have moved into their territory and are looking like a much more attractive option to voters than UKIP.
- UKIP's success in recent years has stemmed from voter attraction to Nigel Farage; it struggles for an identity in his absence.
edited 17th Nov '17 5:20:13 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Oh, bother.
Hmm. Valid points.
For a while I've thought that, if the USA ending up with a right-wing populist as President was inevitable given the forces and trends that gave Trump the win, then maybe we were lucky that it ended up being someone as stupid, boorish, and incompetent as Trump. Like you said, he sticks out like a sore thumb. Imagine if we ended up with someone with a better Mask of Sanity instead.
Disgusted, but not surprised
If you do end up with Pence, you'll be in the same situation as us, I think.
Relatively, anyway (the religious narrative isn't quite the issue in the UK politics — oddly, given that clergy of a certain rank can sit in the House of Lords).
edited 24th Feb '17 6:13:06 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Thousands attend free London screening of Iranian film in Trump Oscars protest
Background to this one: The London mayor decided to screen a free, open-air premiere of the Oscar-nominated film, The Salesman, the film by the Iranian director who couldn't make the Oscars because of Trump's immigration ban.
Khan is doing a #LondonIsOpen campaign to celebrate London's diversity, and scheduled this film to premiere just before the Oscars. Obviously, it was invited to be a protest of Trump's immigration EO as well, with plenty of well-known celebrities jumping on board.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Homicidal Editor
And May and her goons are okay with that? I thought she and her goons would scream "Terrorists!!!" or something like that. Or a protest to this screening? If nothing happens, that is good news.
May isn't arbitrarily restricted foreign nations from entering the UK, if this guy was cleared than its fine.
And May might be treading carefully, for fear of being associated with Trump by her own citizens.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
May has endorsed the campaign. The point of the campaign is to show the world that 'Britain is open for business' in the wake of the EU referendum. By using this specific film (it's not the only one being screened), the mayor turns Trump's anti-immigration stance into a pro-London one (the message essentially being 'Look, World, if the US won't have your business, the UK will').
May isn't going to kick up too much fuss about this specific event because, if it succeeds, she reaps the rewards by virtue of being the prime minister. If it fails, she can distance herself by blaming the Labour Party.
It's win-win for her.
edited 26th Feb '17 1:52:36 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Speaking of Sadiq Khan, he has denied that he has claimed that nationalists are racist. This after parts of his address to the Scottish Labour Party in Perth implied exactly that.
It has certainly gone down badly with the SNP, and will do nothing to dispel the notion that Scottish Labour are massively out of touch with Scottish voters. I haven't looked into what he's said in much detail, but I do think the suggestion that the SNP are dividing people in the same way that Brexit and Trump have done is offensive, given that the SNP are promoting unity and multiculturalism in a way that Labour are seemingly determined to avoid.
He's probably latched onto the behaviour of the WOS activists, who do play the divide and conquer game. They're not a good example of how mainstream SNP activists behave.
edited 17th Nov '17 5:22:04 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
The last British guy named Sadiq I saw was bad news.
edited 26th Feb '17 7:18:23 PM by Bat178
It has just been reported that The Right Honourable Sir Gerald Kaufman, who served as Member of Parliament for Manchester (Ardwick, then Gorton) since 1970, died yesterday.
The Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke CH QC MP is now Father of the House of Commons.
Field Marshal of Cracked
I need to fucking vent.... *inhales*
I don't give a fuck what the majority voted for! we live in a Parliamentary Democracy! that means PARLIAMENT is supreme! not the mob, for all I care the mob could go out tomorrow and vote that the sky is purple, won't make it true! it was just a fucking opinion poll, we have systems to make referendums legally binding, they were enacted for the AV referendum back in 2011, but not for the EU referendum! it was just a fucking opinion poll! Parliament should grow a spine and actually turn round and say "no" to the mob, the majority of the damn experts say it's stupid! all our allies say it's stupid, the smartest man in the world says its stupid! but nooooooo! the mob said differently! this is why we don't leave it up to the mob, if it had its way we would bring back hanging, we would return to the gold standard, we would let even fewer refugees in than we are doing right now! hell, we'd probably rip up all our climate change agreements and end foreign aid entirely!
but do you know what the worst part is? the worst part is that the side who voted the "wrong" way are just being ignored, everything I hear is just fucking pandering to the 52%, the people who would rather listen to Nigel Farage, a crook, a liar and a racist, than experts, the 48% are just being ignored, shoved to the side, all this talk of a "hard" Brexit, just pandering to the mob, they don't give a damn about us, we don't fucking matter to them, they won, that means we should jsut roll over and let them fuck up our futures, the vast majority of the current generation voted to remain, and they've been overruled by those who won't suffer in the long run, and we're just being ignored, well what's the fucking point then? every time a vote comes in or there;s a new govenrment it's always us who get hit first, of the elderly and nearly dead? showing them with tax cuts and more money! the young? cut income support, benefits and treble tuition fees! all the while ignoring their opinions! we don't fucking matter to them, nor to the mob, I haven't seen them once try and alleviate the fears of those who voted against them, do anything that would support the current generation, just "we're so great! we're GREAT Britain! see! "Great" is in out name! that makes us better! they're talking us down! they're bremoaners! traitors! the lot of them!" bullshit! I repeat my starting fucking point, it was just a fucking opinion poll, a stupid one at that, and I don't give a fuck what the mob says, they could vote that the sky is purple and that the grass is blue, won't make it true!
sorry, but I fucking needed this, I'm sick to my back teeth of Brexit
advancing the front into TV Tropes
A procrastination in of itself
I hit apathy point a while ago, I've got my own life to manage. Plus I'm trying to disconnect a bit from national politics.
Still trying to work out how to actually quit the Labour Party though. Think I have to email my CLP chair or something.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
UKIP are facing resignations in Liverpool and Merseyside over Nuttall and donor Aaron Banks' handling of Hillsborough recently.
The chairs are already gone and more are expected to follow, after Nuttall falsely claimed he lost friends in the disaster, and Banks tweeted that he was sick of hearing about it and that we should move on.