The Politics Thread

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Who will you be voting for?

Labour
13
41%
Conservatives
12
38%
Liberal Democrats
2
6%
UK Independence Party (UKIP)
0
No votes
Green Party
3
9%
Plaid Cymru
0
No votes
Other
1
3%
Planet Hobo
1
3%
 
Total votes: 32

thebish
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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:35 pm

I wonder if Pru and Insane might have a little go at answering the question i asked a couple of pages ago...

thusly:

what makes you think Cooper and Burnham will suddenly get it right? I have seen NOTHING in their campaigns so far to suggest anything different from what labour offered over the last 5 years.

maybe I've missed it, though - ARE they offering anything different to what milliband offered? anything at all?

if not - then why would burnham succeed where milliband failed so badly? are you thinking he would win by having more charisma than milliband? and if not him - same question for Cooper?
Precisely how is it that you are imagining Burnham or Cooper leading labour to General Election victory? What do you think will make the public who didn't vote for Milliband's Labour suddenly want to vote for Burnham's/Cooper's labour?

and/or - if you like - be more personal - what is it about them that makes YOU want one of them to be leader?

we get you are anti-Corbyn... I am interested to hear what makes you PRO any of the others - why should labour elect your chosen one as leader?

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:38 pm

Prufrock wrote:
Again, Corbyn-ites don't have a monopoly on ideas and principles. You keep saying it like the only decision is between people who believe in ideas and people who believe in winning.
ok - what ARE Burnham and Cooper's ideas and principles? give us a handy bullet-point list.

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by freeindeed » Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:44 pm

thebish wrote:
Prufrock wrote:
Again, Corbyn-ites don't have a monopoly on ideas and principles. You keep saying it like the only decision is between people who believe in ideas and people who believe in winning.
ok - what ARE Burnham and Cooper's ideas and principles? give us a handy bullet-point list.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Hoboh » Wed Aug 05, 2015 9:14 pm

thebish wrote:
Prufrock wrote:
Again, Corbyn-ites don't have a monopoly on ideas and principles. You keep saying it like the only decision is between people who believe in ideas and people who believe in winning.
ok - what ARE Burnham and Cooper's ideas and principles? give us a handy bullet-point list.
I'll supply a few bullets for Kendal, burn'um and balls the fem!

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by freeindeed » Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:45 am

Public investment in infrastructure, housing and hi-tech industry, using targeted quantitative easing, combined with redistributive taxation and rights at work: “Corbynomics” is scarcely revolutionary. As the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman put it, when Labour supporters refuse to accept a failed austerity ideology, they aren’t “moving left”, they’re “refusing to follow a party elite that has decided to move sharply to the right”.

That is what Labour’s other leadership candidates all did after the election, ditching the party’s most popular policies, such as the mansion tax and 50% top rate, in order to appease corporate business – which polling shows most voters believe Labour has in fact been too soft on. Add to that their reversion to the New Labour formulas of the 1990s and refusal to oppose George Osborne’s attacks on the working poor – and no wonder they’re struggling to cope with Corbyn-mania.

So now the mild-mannered London MP faces a wall of propaganda from almost the entire media and every Blairite has-been that can be mobilised to derail his bandwagon. Can’t his supporters understand, they rage, that someone such as Corbyn simply could never win an election, that the “rules” of politics mean elections can only be won on the centre ground? Don’t they know what happened in the early 1980s?

There’s no sensible comparison with the 1980s, when Labour was trounced after a rightwing faction broke away to form the Social Democratic party and Margaret Thatcher dined off the jingoism of the Falklands war. And the political and media establishment’s “centre ground” bears no relation to the actual centre ground of public opinion, from public ownership to taxes on the rich.
Win or lose, Jeremy Corbyn has already changed the rules of the game

http://gu.com/p/4ba4b?CMP

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Hoboh » Thu Aug 06, 2015 12:55 pm

I quite like Corbyn although I suspect his naïve views on migrants being only due to wars and the EU may be a chasm to wide to breech between our views.
A lot of what he says about the very well to do paying more is backed up by the rate of growth of this group compered to others.
Companies should pay tax or be fcuked off and not allowed to trade here, national interest such as power water rail etc. should be in the hands of the people via government.

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by BWFC_Insane » Thu Aug 06, 2015 1:14 pm

thebish wrote:I wonder if Pru and Insane might have a little go at answering the question i asked a couple of pages ago...

thusly:

what makes you think Cooper and Burnham will suddenly get it right? I have seen NOTHING in their campaigns so far to suggest anything different from what labour offered over the last 5 years.

maybe I've missed it, though - ARE they offering anything different to what milliband offered? anything at all?

if not - then why would burnham succeed where milliband failed so badly? are you thinking he would win by having more charisma than milliband? and if not him - same question for Cooper?
Precisely how is it that you are imagining Burnham or Cooper leading labour to General Election victory? What do you think will make the public who didn't vote for Milliband's Labour suddenly want to vote for Burnham's/Cooper's labour?

and/or - if you like - be more personal - what is it about them that makes YOU want one of them to be leader?

we get you are anti-Corbyn... I am interested to hear what makes you PRO any of the others - why should labour elect your chosen one as leader?

I've said before it is a poor list of choices.

I'd choose Burnham because I think he will strike a better chord with people than Miliband. I also agree about re-nationlising the railway so already he's talking about something I'd be in favour of.

I think he's the best bet of repairing the Labour party, glueing it together with a bit of compromise from left and right and developing a tangible and realistic mandate to take to voters. Best chance might still be only average but you either abstain of go for the best bet in your view.

Also I've met him, and he does have passion. Real genuine passion for making people's lives better, not for politics itself. Obviously that may be the case for all the runners and riders but that is my reasoning for Burnham.

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Prufrock » Thu Aug 06, 2015 1:33 pm

I don't want either of them! So that's that one.

It's unfair to say they don't have any principles though. It probably *is* fair on the basis of the election contest so far to say they don't have many policies. That's frustrating, but then we are 5 years out from a general election. It's a lot easier to throw policies around when you don't give a toss about having to explain how exactly you're going to pay for them (in a completely unknown economic climate).

They're my back-us because unlike Corbyn I think they've got a chance of winning, albeit in both their cases, by essentially being Milliband and hoping the Tories fall apart (that's uninspiring and why neither is getting my 1st choice vote).

It keeps being dismissed as mere maths, but Corbyn isn't winning in the seats we have to win to win. He can stick 6m on the vote in central London and it won't make a difference. It isn't PR. It makes for safer campaigning, but that's the system.
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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Beefheart » Thu Aug 06, 2015 1:40 pm

Oh god, it's only 6th August. There's weeks of this LLB (Labour Leadership Bollocks) to come. I wonder if Corbyn's lead will trigger the others into have some actual opinions or ideas. Still think whoever wins will have to step down in 2018 (as I'm naively hoping that someone better will come to the fore in the interim).

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Prufrock » Thu Aug 06, 2015 2:10 pm

Having a conversation with a mate in the pub last night.

If I were Keir Starmer I'd be having a word with Corbs. "I'll back you now, you go and have two years of smashing into the Tories; you'll take some personal hits, but I think you're used to that by now, bring the debate leftwards, then stand down and I'll come in as the candidate that can take those left arguments and sell them to middle england. Boom. Labour win."
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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by freeindeed » Thu Aug 06, 2015 3:42 pm

Hoboh wrote:I quite like Corbyn although I suspect his naïve views on migrants being only due to wars and the EU may be a chasm to wide to breech between our views.
"Why is the UK seen as a target?
The situation in Calais is part of a wider migration crisis in Europe - caused largely by the displacement of people from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea, and also North Africa."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29074736

Caused in large part by our misguided foreign policy.

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Hoboh » Thu Aug 06, 2015 3:54 pm

freeindeed wrote:
Hoboh wrote:I quite like Corbyn although I suspect his naïve views on migrants being only due to wars and the EU may be a chasm to wide to breech between our views.
"Why is the UK seen as a target?
The situation in Calais is part of a wider migration crisis in Europe - caused largely by the displacement of people from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea, and also North Africa."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29074736

Caused in large part by our misguided foreign policy.
European policy is creating the migrant crisis alongside world meddling in Africa.
If the African continent was meant to house huge increases in population then why are so many deadly diseases and droughts rife over there? It wasn't and goody two shoes Western interventions are creating a mass of people who were never meant to be. These people aside from the odd war (which have raged through Africa since day one) see a better way of life that we have rammed down their throats and want it, makes you weep to hear the illegal SOB's claiming they have rights to travel and settle wherever they like!
No Africa you've had Billions out of us for years and done nothing, you sure as hell ain't coming here to steal my life style and drain our resources.

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Thu Aug 06, 2015 3:58 pm

Prufrock wrote:I don't want either of them! So that's that one.

It's unfair to say they don't have any principles though. It probably *is* fair on the basis of the election contest so far to say they don't have many policies. That's frustrating, but then we are 5 years out from a general election. It's a lot easier to throw policies around when you don't give a toss about having to explain how exactly you're going to pay for them (in a completely unknown economic climate).

They're my back-us because unlike Corbyn I think they've got a chance of winning, albeit in both their cases, by essentially being Milliband and hoping the Tories fall apart (that's uninspiring and why neither is getting my 1st choice vote).

It keeps being dismissed as mere maths, but Corbyn isn't winning in the seats we have to win to win. He can stick 6m on the vote in central London and it won't make a difference. It isn't PR. It makes for safer campaigning, but that's the system.

no Pru - not really good enough. You rejected Corbyn as a bonkers choice and told us that you need BOTH electability and ideas/principles for this job.

your consistent failure to list the Burnham/cooper ideas that would have you vote for them (as your backups) whilst at the same time insisting that Corbyn isn't the only one to have them speaks volumes...

why can't you simply list them for us?

some might suspect that it precisely because in this race, Corbyn actually DOES have something like a monopoly on ideas and principles... or at the very least, he's the only one willing to admit to them and speak them out loud...

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Hoboh » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:00 pm

thebish wrote:
Prufrock wrote:I don't want either of them! So that's that one.

It's unfair to say they don't have any principles though. It probably *is* fair on the basis of the election contest so far to say they don't have many policies. That's frustrating, but then we are 5 years out from a general election. It's a lot easier to throw policies around when you don't give a toss about having to explain how exactly you're going to pay for them (in a completely unknown economic climate).

They're my back-us because unlike Corbyn I think they've got a chance of winning, albeit in both their cases, by essentially being Milliband and hoping the Tories fall apart (that's uninspiring and why neither is getting my 1st choice vote).

It keeps being dismissed as mere maths, but Corbyn isn't winning in the seats we have to win to win. He can stick 6m on the vote in central London and it won't make a difference. It isn't PR. It makes for safer campaigning, but that's the system.

no Pru - not really good enough. You rejected Corbyn as a bonkers choice and told us that you need BOTH electability and ideas/principles for this job.

your consistent failure to list the Burnham/cooper ideas that would have you vote for them whilst at the same time insisting that Corbyn isn't the only one to have them speaks volumes...

why can't you simply list them for us?

some might suspect that it precisely because in this race, Corbyn actually DOES have something like a monopoly on ideas and principles... or at the very least, he's the only one willing to admit to them and speak them out loud...
Don't forget Lizzy wet dream bish!

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:01 pm

Prufrock wrote:Having a conversation with a mate in the pub last night.

If I were Keir Starmer I'd be having a word with Corbs. "I'll back you now, you go and have two years of smashing into the Tories; you'll take some personal hits, but I think you're used to that by now, bring the debate leftwards, then stand down and I'll come in as the candidate that can take those left arguments and sell them to middle england. Boom. Labour win."
so now you're suggesting people SHOULD vote Corbyn because it needs to move leftwards??? :conf:

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Bruce Rioja » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:09 pm

thebish wrote:
so now you're suggesting people SHOULD vote Corbyn because it needs to move leftwards??? :conf:
Burnham was on telly last night on about re-nationalising the trains. Now, is this a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Corbyn's clearly doing very well with his left wing agenda and that Burnham's felt the need to come out with something along those lines, or is it something that he's believed in for a while?
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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:19 pm

Hoboh wrote:
Don't forget Lizzy wet dream bish!

I'm flattered, but also a bit disturbed that you would call me wet dream bish! :shock:

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:22 pm

Bruce Rioja wrote:
thebish wrote:
so now you're suggesting people SHOULD vote Corbyn because it needs to move leftwards??? :conf:
Burnham was on telly last night on about re-nationalising the trains. Now, is this a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Corbyn's clearly doing very well with his left wing agenda and that Burnham's felt the need to come out with something along those lines, or is it something that he's believed in for a while?
it's not summat he said out loud during the last election, though he claims it was in the last election manifesto...

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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by Bruce Rioja » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:26 pm

thebish wrote:
Bruce Rioja wrote:
thebish wrote:
so now you're suggesting people SHOULD vote Corbyn because it needs to move leftwards??? :conf:
Burnham was on telly last night on about re-nationalising the trains. Now, is this a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Corbyn's clearly doing very well with his left wing agenda and that Burnham's felt the need to come out with something along those lines, or is it something that he's believed in for a while?
it's not summat he said out loud during the last election, though he claims it was in the last election manifesto...
Oh, maybe it was just summat else that Ed forgot to mention then?!" ;)
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Re: The Politics Thread

Post by thebish » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:30 pm

I think there was summat that was a response to the East Coast Mainline - which did very well in public ownership - allowing some kind of a public body to bid on the same terms as the private companies for the franchise...

nobody got excited about it - cos Labour were so petrified of appearing to be, errrr.., like Labour...

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