The Politics Thread

[Prufrock]

Why are all Tories so very scared by any sort of change?

Clue is in the name squire.

[William the White]

Internet fiver says Libdems told Labour that if Brown fecked off, and they gave them PR, they would have discussions about coalition. Thye further this goes on, the less likely I feel a Tory/Lib pact is gonna come off.

the libdems are using an alternate vote issue (which possibly could be why they [the libdems] got less votes/seats than last time- pushing for PR put folk off 'em) as a bargaining chip.

and the tories and labour may see this as "being played for chumps" while the libdems whore themselves about using a vote loser.

the libs are going all in with ace high. and are gonna be only a bit better off when the other two start messing with AV+ .

Oh god, please stop posting. The Lib-Dems have always advocated PR, it has been at the forefront of their policies forever.

Stop replying - it's glaringly obvious he's on a wind up... the provocative little scally's always doing this and should be indulged no more than three posts to keep him amused - cos we all deserve a little amusement...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

mummy - what you actually said was..

our traditions are not the property of this generation to give away

which seems pretty conclusively to suggest we do not have the right to change them....

and why do you keep suggesting we could not go back to FPTP in the future if we wanted to... why not?

Ha, you can be depressingly literal sometimes, when it suits!

However, might a defence of what I said not go something along these lines:

The wording I used was 'give away', which seems to go to the method of changing, rather than acting as a denial of any right to change.

I also gave my later clarification about a 'presumption' in a situation of doubt.

No, I am reasonably happy with my metaphor that our traditions and constitution are not our property to give away. To continue the legal metaphor a little, I would say that we merely hold them on trust, as trustees with duties and limited powers of distribution etc.

trustees have duties and powers of decision within a framework that is legal.

Our constitutional trustees are in two houses of parliament and, decoratively, a monarch, and, marginally, a judiciary.

I presume you agree?

So if our constitutional trustees operating within a legal framework in line with the range and compass of their tasks - including historically the alteration of our constitution - pass a parliamentary bill to implement a legal act (a referendum) and thus offer the beneficiaries of our constitution a right to determine the way in which their benefits are to be realised are they exceeding their duties and powers of decision? Constitutionally, legally or any other way other than upsetting you and the other members of the Young Fogey Party and Lord Palmerston?

Yep - I think what I'm saying is that it's not something to be taken lightly!

Glad you are on board with the trustee metaphor though...

[William the White]

Yep - I think what I'm saying is that it's not something to be taken lightly!

Glad you are on board with the trustee metaphor though...

Feckin hell, took the lawyer's bait...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Urgh, I have just been invited to a Facebook event which reminds me why I stayed away from university politics.

"Cambridge University Conservative Association invited you to the event "Hung Parliament Punting""

You couldn't make it up.

I was never active in CUCA, because, I admit, generally I find enthusiastic young Conservatives to be dreadful company. I never showed up to any of the 'port and cheese' nonsense, but kept in touch so that I could attend speaker events when senior Conservative figures came to town.

Has anyone else ever had any enthusiasm for student politics?

[William the White]

Urgh, I have just been invited to a Facebook event which reminds me why I stayed away from university politics.

"Cambridge University Conservative Association invited you to the event "Hung Parliament Punting""

You couldn't make it up.

I was never active in CUCA, because, I admit, generally I find enthusiastic young Conservatives to be dreadful company. I never showed up to any of the 'port and cheese' nonsense, but kept in touch so that I could attend speaker events when senior Conservative figures came to town.

Has anyone else ever had any enthusiasm for student politics?

I was a founding member of the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation at Lancaster. Within a year we'd all expelled each other. Our lot were expelled by the miltant Bolsheiks, several of whom had been to public school and were especially zealous in sniffing out traitors to the working class. (While being ironic, i actually mean this).

I then helped found the Libertarian Socialist Society which tried to unite ideas of freedom, collectivism and equality in a strange but beguiling (to me) mixture of marxist dissidence and anarchism. For a while - actually only two issues - I edited a mag called Libertarian Communist Review. It had, I think, three issues in total.

Interestingly - possibly for you, mummy - Lancaster University Conservative Association closed down for lack of interest. The Monday Club, however, thrived, small in numbers, its ideologues always in a minority, much plagued, but obdurate, and provocative. This was the kind of mentality that gave support to Thatcherism. Admirable, in a way. apart from the support for apartheid and the 'Hang Nelson Mandela' badges.

Does any of this count as 'enthusiasm'?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Does any of this count as 'enthusiasm'?

I should say so!

Nice to see you lived out the potted caricature of the left wing with your warring factions.

I think students are generally pretty apathetic these days, and so what's left is the dregs at the extremes.... that was my experience anyway.

[a1]

Stop replying - it's glaringly obvious he's on a wind up... the provocative little scally's always doing this and should be indulged no more than three posts to keep him amused - cos we all deserve a little amusement...

yeah , yeah. all i know is folk voted for a local mp , a load of them make a government. gordon brown or david cameron werent on the ballot, nor did it say if you vote for someone who loses then the statistics can be skewered towards proving changing how you vote.

i did know that the non-tories in parliment could team up and vote against them on laws and that.

certain folk keep using national statisics and overall votes to prove no one (on here?) wants the tories.

if either the av+ or the PR bollox i dont get becomes law. how do you vote tactically ?

[Verbal]

Urgh, I have just been invited to a Facebook event which reminds me why I stayed away from university politics.

"Cambridge University Conservative Association invited you to the event "Hung Parliament Punting""

You couldn't make it up.

I was never active in CUCA, because, I admit, generally I find enthusiastic young Conservatives to be dreadful company. I never showed up to any of the 'port and cheese' nonsense, but kept in touch so that I could attend speaker events when senior Conservative figures came to town.

Has anyone else ever had any enthusiasm for student politics?

No. In fact I was so sick of it that I ended up ripping into every candidate of the Sabbatical elections at Bath via an 'Election Spy' fan page (which got more 'fans' than all bar one candidate...600 plus and counting up to now)

A few mates have continued it for the ol' GE, and as such we've ended up with a bunch of labourites, tories and lib dems just trying to dick on each other on the board. The people in question, in my personal experience, verge on repugnant.

[Prufrock]

Does any of this count as 'enthusiasm'?

I should say so!

Nice to see you lived out the potted caricature of the left wing with your warring factions.

I think students are generally pretty apathetic these days, and so what's left is the dregs at the extremes.... that was my experience anyway.

I went along to the Revolutionary Socialist Society here. The meetings were awful, ridiculously extreme, and mainly full of smug tossers, with half-arsed ideas. One girl started a sentence, 'obviously it is safe to say nobody here went to private school', I didn't say anything, I couldn't face it. However afterwards some of the more regulars (temporally and in normality) would go to the pub and I enjoyed those bits, very interesting discussions of USSR and East Germany. However they seemed to all genuinley expect, never mind think possible, a revolution of the working class ending up in an almost communist utopia. Clue is in the name Revolutionary Socialist Society (or Revo as it's awfully called) I know, but somehow considering the fragmented nature of the left that was the only one!

Student politics is dead. Half the members join so the actual members will join their own, what with needing a certain number of members to be recognised by the uni.

[William the White]

Stop replying - it's glaringly obvious he's on a wind up... the provocative little scally's always doing this and should be indulged no more than three posts to keep him amused - cos we all deserve a little amusement...

yeah , yeah. all i know is folk voted for a local mp , a load of them make a government. gordon brown or david cameron werent on the ballot, nor did it say if you vote for someone who loses then the statistics can be skewered towards proving changing how you vote.

i did know that the non-tories in parliment could team up and vote against them on laws and that.

certain folk keep using national statisics and overall votes to prove no one (on here?) wants the tories.

if either the av+ or the PR bollox i dont get becomes law. how do you vote tactically ?

[a1]

monotonicity criterion

[General Mannerheim]

This thread is hard work for us lesser educated morons! I do read it with interest tho, just dont understand half of what your all on about I wikipedia the 'ists' & 'isms' - i read the pages but nothing is computing, my brain is refusing to learn, which is strange becuase i want to? i guess im just not intelligent enuff.*

anyway, just wanted to know, If Brown had resigned before the election, would Labour have been clear outright winners?

i think i would have voted Labour myself had he not been in charge. although i did this the other day, http://www.votematch.org.uk/2010/index.php and that has me firmly in the Tories camp, also worringly BNP too if you bother to check their comparisons box at the end of the questionnaire...

*joke.

[Worthy4England]

Stop replying - it's glaringly obvious he's on a wind up... the provocative little scally's always doing this and should be indulged no more than three posts to keep him amused - cos we all deserve a little amusement...

yeah , yeah. all i know is folk voted for a local mp , a load of them make a government. gordon brown or david cameron werent on the ballot, nor did it say if you vote for someone who loses then the statistics can be skewered towards proving changing how you vote.

i did know that the non-tories in parliment could team up and vote against them on laws and that.

certain folk keep using national statisics and overall votes to prove no one (on here?) wants the tories.

if either the av+ or the PR bollox i dont get becomes law. how do you vote tactically ?

No - still not having it.

No one is using statistics (as far as I've seen) to prove no one want the Tories. 10m people voted for them, which is more than voted for either Labour or Lib Dem.

Unfortunately, that didn't get them enough seats to form an outright Government (one that's guaranteed to win a vote assuming all its MP's vote for it), but they can request of the outgoing Prime Minister that they form a minority Government, in the event that they can't find a coalition partner that gets them over the win-line.

Your bit about non-tories teaming up to vote against the tories is a bit unfortunate, as that's equally what the tories are trying to do with with the lib dems. As a party that didn't win big enough to form a Government on its own, they're having to team-up with another party, who normally they wouldn't give the steam off their pi$$ to - to enable them to vote against Labour and the other parties and be sure of carrying legislation through the house.

The last point about how do you vote tactically under AV and PR - is one of the fundamental points. Under pure PR you wouldn't have to vote tactically. My one vote for Screaming Lord Such would count as one vote and if he got enough of them up and down the country, he'd get a seat. Bit different under AV and AV+ as there's progressively more tactical bits and less proportional bits.

Final point. The country has never voted for a Government on a greater than 50% share since 1931. The party in power never represents the will of most of the electorate, the voting system is just rigged to make it look that way. 6 out of 10 cats said they didn't want the glorious Thatcher years - 6 out of 10 cats said they didn't want the glorious Blair years - the last two elections this has been nearer 6.5/10 who didn't want Labour last time and don't want the Tories this time. Hardly what you'd call a "resounding mandate".

[thebish]

mummy - what you actually said was..

our traditions are not the property of this generation to give away

which seems pretty conclusively to suggest we do not have the right to change them....

and why do you keep suggesting we could not go back to FPTP in the future if we wanted to... why not?

Ha, you can be depressingly literal sometimes, when it suits!

However, might a defence of what I said not go something along these lines:

The wording I used was 'give away', which seems to go to the method of changing, rather than acting as a denial of any right to change.

I also gave my later clarification about a 'presumption' in a situation of doubt.

No, I am reasonably happy with my metaphor that our traditions and constitution are not our property to give away. To continue the legal metaphor a little, I would say that we merely hold them on trust, as trustees with duties and limited powers of distribution etc.

OK - but you still haven't said why it is we could not go back to FPTP - or having a Lord Chancellor if a future generation chose to do so.

[thebish]

Back to leader for the Labour Party - It'll probably be David Milliband or some Balls or other. Which is probably a better long term bet than Alan Johnson (who'd probably get my vote)

Surely Balls couldn't get it - he makes even George Osborne look like a bloke you wouldn't mind having a pint with.

I have a lot of respect for David Miliband and think he would be a formidable opponent.

It won't be Balls - no party will elect a leader with a stupid name - it's about image nowadays...

I suspect Johnson or Milliband (David, not Ed - though there are rumours he might stand too....)

also...

At a Labour conference a few years ago, delegates appeared sporting “my favourite Miliband” badges. Some stated that their preferred Miliband was David. Others said Ed. Almost as popular were badges saying “My favourite Miliband is Ralph”, a reference to the brothers’ late father, a towering intellectual figure on the Left. The whole business started getting silly when delegates wore badges proclaiming: “My favourite Miliband is the Steve Miller band”.

[bedwetter2]

I suppose I must be other-worldly or easily shocked but why do I keep thinking that the Liberal Democrats are highly duplicitous tarts who should, to a man or woman, be avoided like the plague by the two main parties? Is it because I think that they do not have the interests of the country at heart but can only see as far as getting their cherished four main policies (which may change at a moments notice, by the way) accepted by the next Government?

Their behaviour will not endear them to the electorate if they persist in playing one party off against another.

[thebish]

Does any of this count as 'enthusiasm'?

I should say so!

Nice to see you lived out the potted caricature of the left wing with your warring factions.

I think students are generally pretty apathetic these days, and so what's left is the dregs at the extremes.... that was my experience anyway.

students actually have to work nowadays - 'tis very different from when I was there - when work was merely a minor distraction....

[fatshaft]

Back to leader for the Labour Party - It'll probably be David Milliband or some Balls or other. Which is probably a better long term bet than Alan Johnson (who'd probably get my vote)

Surely Balls couldn't get it - he makes even George Osborne look like a bloke you wouldn't mind having a pint with.

I have a lot of respect for David Miliband and think he would be a formidable opponent.

It won't be Balls - no party will elect a leader with a stupid name - it's about image nowadays...

I suspect Johnson or Milliband (David, not Ed - though there are rumours he might stand too....)

also...

At a Labour conference a few years ago, delegates appeared sporting “my favourite Miliband” badges. Some stated that their preferred Miliband was David. Others said Ed. Almost as popular were badges saying “My favourite Miliband is Ralph”, a reference to the brothers’ late father, a towering intellectual figure on the Left. The whole business started getting silly when delegates wore badges proclaiming: “My favourite Miliband is the Steve Miller band”.

Made me laugh anyway

[fatshaft]

Ok, lets change tack a little. So we get a Lib/Lab government, who becomes PM? Brown has stood down, and there won;t be a new Labour leader for weeks if not months.