Off Topic Politics - just how bad is it?

Some smart cookies on this board and a nice diverse range of opinions, thought I'd ask whether anyone else agrees that politics, the system that is supposed to be in place to help and guide the general populus, is completely unfit for purpose and - when you think about it - probably hasn't been for nearly half a century?

We seem to be sleepwalking towards a future abyss, not enjoying either where we are or where we're going, yet completely unable to get a grip and change it. Time has almost just stopped.

 

There are problems but it is fit for most purposes. No system is going to please 65 million people all the time.

I'd like to see an element of PR brought in alongside FPTP but there will still be criticism even if that happened. People's cynicism won't go away. There is a distinct split on certain issues at the moment which has us more or less 50/50 on left/right politics, immigration, and the EU which has left us toing and froing and in a bit of a mess politically but I don't see that lasting in the long term and a different political system probably wouldn't see us being any more decisive (other than a dictatorship which luckily we don't have).

 

Bored to **** of politics. It's turned decent folk quite nasty and friends against one another. Never known it as bad as this.

 

People will start realising which politicians they should have voted for when their kids are dieing because they can't afford medical treatment !!

Idiots

 

While I'm not particularly bored of it, as I think it's important, I agree totally about how nasty it is getting. The worst thing about politics at the minute is how polarised we are getting and how so many people can't discuss it anymore without throwing insults. Compared to other places I think we did quite well to avoid it resorting to that on here.

 

Nobody worth voting for coupled with bat **** politics from all sides. We are fast becoming a basket case of a country and becoming more and more like America. Pity really, we should be much, much better than this.

 

We are far from being a basket case of a country, as anyone from the central and Eastern Europe economies or sub-Saharan Africa would argue, try Venezuela's socialist experiment as well, we have a good economy that given sensible management combines good aspects of both socialist and capitalist ideals, our problems come from the more extreme proponents of these ideologies and those that for some reason don't like the heart of the UK which is England yet want to run the country. I also don't think we are anything like America and never will be, these are big themes and issues which many people ignore or can't be bothered to explore, I read a letter from an 18 year old to a national newspaper this week, her reason for voting for Labour was solely based on the promise on tuition fees, no other consideration or thought of where the money would come from.

 

I didn't say we are a basket case. I said we are fast becoming one. That being said I agree with what you've said. Albeit you put it far more eloquently than I did

 

I think this has been a problem in recent years. No really strong leaders who people can get behind. I suppose Corbyn has managed to stoke up some excitement in some voters recently but he doesn't convince enough people really. I suppose it shouldn't be about personalities, but it is quite frankly, and that's before you get to their policies.

 

This is the problem. As for the system itself, I think Churchill said it best: It's the worst system of government in the world except for all the others.

The real problem is the lack of leaders that you can actually support. This isn't because there aren't bright people in politics. There are. The difficulty is that they very rarely become leader of any of the parties. The last political leader who really stood out was Tony Blair. I personally despise him but at the beginning he did look like something new and impressive, an improvement on politics as usual. Since then it has been a case of which ugly pygmy you dislike least. From the current crop, May is deeply untrustworthy and unlikeable. Corbyn is genuine, he doesn't change and he says what he thinks. I just think that most of what he thinks is wrong.

10 years ago, Conservative and Labour were so busy fighting for the centre vote that their policies became virtually identical. Now it's a race to the extremes. There is a huge opening for a centrist leader if there was someone credible willing to stake out that territory

 

legal criminals

 

If something is legal then it can't be a crime

 

though a conspiracy to do it may be

 

ha ha , you nah what i mean

what can can i say , people in power have a lot going for them ..

 

One of the problems of living in a healthy democracy is that citizens have to confront issues and think about them, argue about them and come up with ideas for how to solve them. If we were under a dictatorship we could just let the great leader get on with running the country, but I'm much happier having uncomfortable conversations about the future of our country than just sitting and letting someone else decide for us. Politics is ****, but the alternative is ****ter, to paraphrase Churchill!