Absolutely. Obviously we could take an American stance on this where tourism is treated as follows....visa applied for before holiday....passport....finger prints....photograph to match on records....providing evidence of first night accommodation...and the next plane back home if customs aint happy.
You support a government that is propped up by a bunch of fascist bigoted religious nut jobs. The Lib-Dems at least reigned in some of the dafter excesses of the tory party, committing political suicide in the process. Now, however, the torys are propped up by a party with clear terrorist links. I'll grant you that the torys are ruthless. Ruthlessly self serving, manipulative, divisive, selfish and uncaring about anything other than their own self gratification.
To be fair to him I can't stand any of the major parties, which explains my avatar. I would never have voted for the Tories in a million years, but sadly they got me by the short and curlies, simply because i was so passionate about Brexit (not that anyone would guess lol) I had to see this through to the bitter end, basically Cameron and May played a blinder!...i'm not happy about it, but it is what it is.
Along with 13,636,689 others in the UK, the Tories received its highest vote share since 1983. Despite your slight reticence regarding your support for them they remain the most popular political party in the UK.
Oh no. You don't get away with that. I'll accept they get the most votes, but the most popular? Even brb votes for them as "they have me by the short and curlies". I would say that they are the most despised. The Labour Party has over 500,000 members, tories <150,000 and LD >80,000 as of SN05125 House of Commons Briefing Paper March 2017. Oddly the tories haven't published their membership figures since 2013, one can only speculate why; LP and LD as of 2017. Again you have either wilfully misrepresented the truth or have an apparent inability to recognise what the truth is. Unfortunately Mrs H-F is a regular tory voter, who is disgusted by the present coalition. She also voted for brexit. She rather wishes she hadn't already. As you can imagine though, politics is rarely discussed in our house. I am not and never have been a member of any political party. I am pro-Remain; pro Union; pro nuclear deterrent; pro constitutional monarchy; anti elitist (and yes I get the irony of that, I wrestle with it every day - cognitive dissonance 101 right there); very much pro having a strong armed forces; anti fascist; anti communist; especially anti religious, particularly pertaining to Faith schools; pro choice and women's equality; pro small business; anti cartels and profiteering; pro social / affordable housing; pro NHS despite the mess it's in -down to poor funding and mismanagement of those funds; pro higher rates of income tax (earn more, pay more whilst keeping the levels sensible); pro free education and especially anti student debt; pro public transport, especially the railways which should be renationalised; totally anti HS2; precious little sympathy for either the Palestinians or the Israeli state; I agree with the scientific consensus about climate change, evolution, cosmology and vaccinations. I despise trump and all he stands for, and despise his government even more than our own- and that is quite an achievement. It's the greed that I really hate. There, I think that covers it.
Sadly Hornet-Fez is correct, why the hell would i ever vote Tory, jeez bad memories of the Wicked Witch of the West (Thatcher for younger members). But May and the Tories knew how to steal votes long before their alliance to finally gain power. Brexit was their gem in the making for another five years in power, how to make good out of a bad Cameron situation. Probably one of the cleverest moves in politics in my lifetime. I knew the only chance I had of seeing anything resembling the Brexit vote I placed back in June 2016 was by reluctantly giving them my vote. Don't get me wrong it was no easy decision, I waivered many a time before the day or should i say before my postal vote. I was going to waste my vote, but then sense prevailed and said well if i waste that vote, I may have well wasted my Brexit vote and there is no way in my political mindset that could happen.
We must agree on 90% of your views although your comment above on the Tory Party is rather strange. As previously pointed out by several posters, especially to Cologne, political party membership has no bearing on actual voting. You can choose any number of words too describe why the electorate prefer the Tories to lead the country. I can only give official true statistics, if you want to bizarrely describe them as a misrepresentation that is your prerogative.
I have never said that there was a direct correlation between party size and success in elections. However - dwindling membership is a problem for the health of a countries democratic system. Britain has one of the lowest rates of membership in Europe at just over one per cent (Germany is not much better at 2%) - the highest are in Finland and Austria. Low membership means that parties are overproportionally dependent on private sponsorship for their election campaigns - quite simply - the less money you get from membership dues the more you have to compensate elsewhere. At the last Conservative Party conference only 30% of those present were actually Party members - who were the rest ? We don't only have dwindling numbers in the UK. but those numbers are old - the majority of Tory members are over 60. The second problem is overstretching of resources - In constituencies where a party is not strong in numbers but where there has to be a candidate for every ward at eg. local elections then people will be drafted in who are unsuitable. Quite simply the political parties of today are trying to cover the same work now that was previously done by numbers 30 or 40 times larger. The Conservative Party had nearly 3 million members in the 1950s compared to 140,000 now.
If you think that it is ok. for a dwindling number of old men to buy election success then fine....I am not happy with it. The Conservatives spend, on average, 19 million pounds per election campaign - this is double Labour's average. Most of this comes from private donors who expect something for their money.
Of course the Labour Party is financed by the trade unions with narrow objectives. The union bosses treat the Labour leaders like puppets on a string. Most people are not happy with that. I expect the Tories to not score own goals at the next election and Labour's likely lads to be exposed as opportunistic liars. The Conservatives will remain the natural party of government.
With the Tories recently gaining it's largest share of the vote since 1983 it clearly shows political party membership is totally irrelevant.
There is a direct relationship between falling party membership and the importance of private donors - The Conservative Party received 750,000 pounds in membership dues last year - since Cameron became their leader they have had over 40 individual donations which are larger than this sum. I can well understand that falling numbers is not seen as such a great problem because it is far easier to take a potential donor out to dinner than it is to go on a recruitment drive for new members - and brings in more money. However - this places the party in the hands (and at the service of) its donors. Only when all private sponsorship of political parties is forbidden, only then will parties have to re engage with the public.
There is no such thing as 'the natural party of government' - because government itself is not natural (it will take you hours to work that one out ).
I totally agree it is disgraceful if any donor receives any direct assistance in return for donations. There are however perfectly good reasons why donors, of all persuasions, would prefer to choose a government sympathetic to their general views. I suppose the only way to keep this clean is to ban all political donations and use strictly allocated state finance.
