OT Elections - changing allegiance

Well, if we're talking about being in a minority, I might as well out myself as the modern pariah of politics.

I voted Lib Dem in the specific hope that it would result in a Lib Dem/Conservative alliance. I still think it has worked out as the best of the possibilities available at the time.

Labour was morally and intellectually bankrupt. It happens to any party after 3 terms. They needed a relegation season to rebuild. They would have been a disaster in office.

A Lib Dem majority was never going to happen. By joining a coalition with the Conservatives I hoped they would tone down the worst of the vindictive zealotism that characterises their governments when they have a majority government. I think its probably worked. For all that the coalition government has been a bag of bastards as it turned out, it would have been a bag of nastier bastards with a clear Conservative majority.

The difficulty is that Labour have really not seized their relegation season the way I'd expected. there's not a lot there to give confidence.

 

Oh, hell yes my friend.

 

There's not a lot I can argue with there, and while I can never agree with them joining forces with a party who (to me) stand for so much that is uncompassionate and greedy, it is easy for me to say that was wrong but harder to come up with a credible alternative. The problem I have is how they have allowed things to become law that will probably never now be undone - tuition fees making education a luxury, bedroom taxes telling poor people that they are not allowed to have family visit them from elsewhere in the country unless they can afford hotels, and targeting northern cities for massive funding cuts while inflicting much lower cuts down south and even increasing local budgets in some wealthy areas. Unforgivable to me.

 

So you approve of a system that sees the US as having a child mortality rate similar to some developing countries and the lowest life expectancy of any of the developed western world?

 

I forget who called politics the science of the possible.

You speak of the Lib Dems allowing things to become law. That suggests that they could have prevented it.

If I get in a car with a drunk driver to try to tell him to slow down and pay attention, am I to blame for the people he hits or am I the saviour of the additional people he would have hit if he had been on his own ? Not an easy question.

 

No but you could have knocked him out, stole his keys and not let him get in the car in the first place

 

Ah, a military coup headed by Nick Clegg ! Of course, that is what should have happened

 

I think the option I'd have preferred would have been to allow a minority government to have been formed and to vote on a policy by policy basis. I have no idea how it would have turned out, but before its dismissed as unworkable, isn't that what we will have for the next year in the zombie parliament we're going to have until the next election?

 

I have conjured up my very own referendum

http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/263720-My-political-agenda

 

The only difference is that the arguments would have ben in public rather than in private. Whether that would have resulted in more or fewer pure tory policies being implemented is anyone's guess

 

I see it is attracting the usual level of intellectual thought on GC

 

The way I see it is all three main parties are run by, and for, upper middle class bellends who are totally out of touch with ordinary people. Okay, labour occasionally has a token working class person - that postie guy was the last one, but Ed Balls wanted his job, so f**k him eh? - but on the whole everything they do is from the perspective of the elite bubble. And this means that even when they aren't actively stealing and are, instead, trying to do something good, they will always f**k it up because they are pretty much clueless toffs that have no idea what's actually going on. (Just look at whenever they try to fix the health service or education).

Mind you, while I f**king hate the tories, I will give them one thing: they don't bother to disguise their loathing of ordinary workers half as much as the Labour party, it's refreshing. As for the Labour party, they are a bunch of patronizing ****s who pretty much are on the same page as the tories, it's just they direct their lies at a different segment of the population, so people think they might be nicer; they aren't. What's more, after that f**ker Blair - who was my Gran's MP and did f**k all for poor miner's widows such as herself - and his illegal wars and dodgy 'intelligence' they deserve to be out of power for a generation, if not longer. In fact, I honestly wish people would stop voting for them so we could get a proper party to represent ordinary men and women, instead of the current omnishambles of upper middle class pseudo intellectuals.

I think the lib dems are finished. Rightly so. They are the successors to the political party that started WWI, so it's due really. Not much more to be said about them really, other than that if they ever did win a majority, they'd be exactly the same as the other two.

Ukip, I don't think is a serious party. Just look at the logo. That is not the logo of a serious political movement. They don't really seem to have many ideas either; well, other than promise everything to everyone. However were I still living in the UK, I probably would have voted for them local and Europe. Not because I like them or agree with them but for two specific reasons: First, because they do have a point that since the seventies the UK has undergone massive constitutional change, and is being slowly, but surely, integrated into an undemocratic European super state, without ever consulting the public about what they want and telling repeated lies about it. But mostly because voting for them is sticking two fingers up to the establishment, and I am a bit of a massive bellend myself and like that sort of thing.

The sad reality is however, if you really want to change things, voting won't do much. You really have to get involved in the parties and change things from within. And obviously, given the nature of politics, very few decent people want to take that sort of commitment on. (Also nepotism within the parties is a really problem. Does anyone really believe any of the current three leaders is the best their respective parties can produce).

 

On the Lib dems you are completely correct. As the Liberal party 1859-early 20th century, they where Britains greatest ever political party. But after the merger with the Social Democrats the party had pretty much died with little to no chance of revival.

The image of ukip as a whole should be reassessed, including the Logo. Except keep the purple

 

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Michu.

 

Michu > politics ?

 

Michu > everything.

 

Michu is an immigrant - don't tell UKIP!

Shhhhhhhhhhh

 

Saved me a **** load of time explaining why I think they are all a complete set of bollocks.

 

And therefore what ? Simply let them get on with it ?

 

I assure you he could obtain a work permit