Off Topic The General Election Countdown and Aftermath

All general discussions relating to the upcoming General Elections here please. Any related topic warranting its own thread will be indexed here

The ‘None Of The Above’ Party Manifesto

 

Of late I've been trying to get some kind of idea on what attracts people to right wing parties like UKIP. I've read that because we're pretty much well off, we tend to look toward social issues. We don't struggle to feed our families, put a roof over their heads, supply education and health care etc. We might like more, but the reality is that most of us are doing ok. Others are of the opinion the the opposite is the case. As a flat economy can make a lot of us tighten our belts, we tend to apportion blame and seek a new direction. But just how valid are the new values we pursue? History shows that political trends tend to occupy a sort of middle ground most of the time. To such an extent that it's sometimes difficult to split the left from the right. Most of the time it's centre left, centre right. But then along comes the economic down turn, and the loonies come screaming from their bolt holes. I'm not suggesting that the UKIP are extremists, but they certainly occupy a space in the far right of the spectrum. What does the near future hold for them? Are they still building, or is the ground beginning to shift beneath their feet?

 

I wouldn't say they are far right Cyc, they are just more right than the rest of the mainstream parties. UKIP are always on about copying the Australian way of policing our borders using a point system. Unless you think your government is far right aswell?

Far right as far as I'm concerned is Nazi Germany. I don't think UKIP wanting to cut down on immigration significantly makes them far right.

 

I think using the Nazi epithet is a bit of a stretch Shergy, but I can certainly see how supporters of UKIP would take offence at the 'far right wing" tag. But a lot of their policies seem to sail very close to the wind. Australia's border protection policies are an abomination. That the UKIP would support the way we've imprisoned men, women and children in off shore facilities is nothing to brag about mate. If you do a little research into the mess we've made of our handling of immigration issues, you'd quickly back pedal in recommending the way we do things.

 

The horse racing forum during General Election campaigns - that brings back memories.

On the old 606 site in 2010 there was an ongoing quarrel about which of 2 horses were better. I put up a thread asking "if the Queen asked you to form a new Government who would you have as Chancellor - New Approach or Sea the Stars?" It got taken down by the mods on the basis that "there should be no canvassing for any individual policical party on this forum"

 

The Sea The Stars for leadership reminded me of this.

http://www.not606.com/threads/the-rebellion.35669/

 

The old 606 site was run by the BBC, which is supposed to be politically impartial, even though everybody recognises that they have a left-wing bias. Neither New Approach nor Sea The Stars would have voted for Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg because the Mansion Tax would probably hit both of their residences.

I wonder what hidden new tax Ed Balls has in mind on stud fees as most of the top studs are owned by wealthy foreigners...

 

The UK Independence Party are categorised as right wing simply because many of their ‘other’ policies mirror the Conservatives, who are considered to be the right wing of British politics whilst Labour are the left wing and the Liberal Democrats are centre left. The small nationalist parties are all considered left wing because their policies are predominately socialist; and their numbers do not add up as they depend on taxing the wealthy and them not taking their wealth elsewhere.

Whilst UKIP propose an Australian-style points system for immigration, I do not think that they advocate running it by holding people offshore. What they propose is that potential immigrants apply before they come here, which might be better expressed like the American green card system. All those folks currently living in squalor on the outskirts of Calais trying to smuggle their way across the Channel in the back of trucks might as well go home because they do not tick the right boxes and they only got that far because France is part of the Schengen agreement which allowed them to cross neighbouring borders without documentation.

 

At last QM, something on which you and I can agree; all Englishmen of every political persuasion can unite around the principle of blaming the French.

To address Cyclonic's questions about Ukip, Cameron was right the first time; fruitcakes and racists, the lot of em. And yes, the rats have come out of the sewer as they always do when things turn bad.

Oh, and in this first world economy, plenty of people do struggle to feed their families, as witnessed by the proliferation of food banks. There's also a whole generation of people priced out of the housing market and forced to either stay at home with their parents until middle age, or pay exhorbitant rent to live in cramped squalor.

Ukips answer to these problems; blame the foreigners. Labours answer; tax the foreigners. The Tories; artificially inflate the property markets and take credit for the creation of thousands of low wage jobs filled by foreigners.

My answer; Britain's ****ed. Get out and become a foreigner somewhere else. Spain is also ****ed but at least the weather's nice. I might go there while I'm still an EU citizen and can get in. I might have gone to Oz but they pulled up the ****ing drawbridge long ago.

 

Picture a poker game where one player only has one playable hand but keeps playing a different one. The player is Ed Miliband, the playable hand is the NHS and the fast track to having no chips left is the Economy.

It is time for some moralising about rich Non Doms not paying enough tax. Scrap that iniquitous old tax break that means people have not had to pay tax on their foreign assets for a couple of centuries. Do not bother to check whether the Shadow Chancellor had previous said there was no money to be made out of it. Announce your latest wheeze for taxing the rich and tell the assembled audience that “independent experts” say it will rake in hundreds of millions.

It might have been a good idea to make sure that the economics team were all singing off the same hymn sheet. On the Daily Politics, Shadow Treasury Minister Shabana Mahmood was repeatedly asked by Andrew Neil to identify the source of the hundreds of millions figure. She could not answer the question. The BBC asked the Institute of Fiscal Studies for an estimate but they declined to give a figure because there were too many variables to reach a valid conclusion.

My local loony-left candidate is seeking re-election and sent me a post card that says he has “a positive vision” that is not “this government’s failed policies on the economy, immigration and public services”. Of course his government’s last thirteen year tenure had a fantastic record on the economy and they still have no policy when it comes to E.U. immigration as they are sold on the failing super state.

 

QM, I think the next time any candidate knocks on your door you should invite them in and grill them, record it and summarise the Q&As for us. I think that would be ****ing marvellous

 

I like the way that the media stoke the fires about lightweight issues like pollie pay checks, driving great hosts of the populous to jump on board. In the over all scheme of things, even a 50% cut in pay would mean next to nothing when taken in context against the GDP. It's a joke.

Another "vote catcher" is the taxing of the so called non-doms. No doubt ways can be found to wring a few extra shekels from the wealthy, but at what risk? It seems that there are about 100,000 of these folks on the books. According to lawyers Pinsent Masons, non-doms paid better than 6 billion pounds tax in 2012. This a huge sum to play around with. The real risk though is whether these international financial investors might start to take flight. If so, the knock on effect to the economy will far outstrip the recouped sums being talked about. To me, this is another of these shallow, fear driven issues.

 

Reflecting on the televised political debate, I have had enough of all this crap. The figures that were banded about to discredit each other just shows how numbers can be construed, and misconstrued, to create whatever impression they want. So although, as previously mentioned, I don't have the knowledge to run a country, I have come to the conclusion that those with (supposedly) the knowledge can't either. So, **** it. Over the next few years I am going to prepare my own policies to get the UK out of the **** for good. If I can (at a stroke) knock £20m (conservative) pa off one company's IT budget whilst improving it's overall ability to launch competitive new products more efficiently and faster than its competitors, I'm sure as **** I could knock some holes in the UK expenditure without too much pain. All I need is indisputable facts as to where every penny goes at present with the larger numbers being broken down into more detail until there are no large numbers left. Trust me

 

I think that when we say this or that country is a terrible place to live or not we miss a point in that we focus on countries, but what really decides our experience of life is not where you live so much but rather if you have money. I also feel that up until perhaps 100 or so years ago, maybe a little more it was accepted that if you could not work life would be a struggle and if you could only work in a low paying job life would also be a struggle.

Man has always survived by his ingenuity and ability to work, whether that be as a hunter gatherer in pre-historic times or modern day. What happened however is with the advent of social security safety nets, which are of course a mark of our progressive civility and collective responsibility, we started to expect and look to the govt to fulfil those expectations and needs, if we are out of work we blame the Govt but is it really their fault? When we are ill we can get medical care free of charge, this is preposterous in so many parts of the world and would have been throughout practically all of it with only the briefest step back in time, yet now we not only expect it but complain when it is not of the highest standard or if the service cannot keep pace with new drug creation meaning that just because a drug is available it may not be affordable to a service with limited resources.

These are just a couple of examples of where expectation has leaped faster than should really be expected. People often feel that the following is a reasonable expectation. A person regardless of whether they can work or not should have a home, free medical care treating all known conditions with whatever drugs are available at whatever cost, they should be provided all necessary needs with regard food, drink, clothing as well as leisure possibilities, they should also have utilities such as clean water, electricity and gas provided as needed. Now don't get me wrong I would love to be the case when creating this eutopia in my head but it's not a reality and never has been throughout history, and yet expectation has reached such proportions that we feel a right to complain if these things are not met.

Throughout time productivity has always produced provision, Intelligence, guile and even physical proficiency has always helped make individuals ideally positioned to find and take opportunity and survive, a few years back however we decided these things would not matter or at least be decisive anymore, noble but unrealistic, and whilst attempted expectation really has no place.

 

There are plenty of fruitcakes on Cameron’s team and most of the others. At least Farage admitted it!

The problems with housing were started by Maggie. She allowed people to buy up their council houses at a song but did not bother building replacements. Successive governments of all colours have totally failed on social housing, allowing private landlords to charge any level of rent they like knowing that the government of the day will subsidise them with housing benefit (our taxes). The house building industry has purposefully built houses at a slower and slower rate to keep the prices going up as they make more profit that way. Now we do not have enough people with the necessary building skills so all the liars standing for election are promising pie-in-the-sky new house numbers of up to half a million for the Greens.

The first and the last of your arguments here appear to be cause and effect. Our indigenous unemployed who cannot find low skilled work are being kept out of the workplace by impoverished Europeans who we cannot stop from taking the jobs. The United States used to welcome these people but now they can get cheaper labour from Mexico they have tightened up the rules. Even the Jocks and the Paddys find it harder to get in now.

 

Ron, nobody is stupid enough to knock on my door; not even the postman. I think my local Lib Dem candidate is a woman so I am doubly certain she will not be seen around here.

What makes you think that I would get any answers to questions? I have watched Andrew Neil try and fail to get any answers on the Daily Politics and the Sunday Politics. No wonder Paxo quit Newsnight – he knew that asking the current lot fourteen times would not work.

 

Cyc, the Non-Doms thing really was a massive own goal. When the IFS will not even estimate the financial loss/gain and different people in your own team are saying different things, you should put down the shovel and stop digging.

You have pretty succinctly summed up how ill thought out this vote catcher looks. We have quite a few French Non-Doms here who moved to avoid Mr Hollande’s 75 per cent tax rate, making London the sixth biggest city in France! There is no doubt that the wealthy investors of all nationalities will up sticks and go to New York, where the tax rate would be lower than London.

 

I see why you are the Forum Philosopher as on the face of it this statement is life for the vast majority of people on the planet, especially in what we call the developing world.

Just to be argumentative, I am going to say money is not all that decides your life experiences; and I think that where it has largely gone wrong here is the disintegration of community/society. I have money in the bank – certainly more than many of my friends and family – but it does not make for happiness.

Somewhat ironic that back in 2010, Cameron’s campaign featured quite a lot about the “big society” but that now seems to have translated into having a local food bank for many. Miliband’s campaign in 2015 started out being “living standards” but the light at the end of the tunnel is the economic train that is going to hit him. In large parts of the country (especially here up north), the Nanny State has killed aspiration and created an unbroken cycle of deprivation that cannot be solved by the politics of envy.

 

I do agree QM it's not all that decides and certainly is not what decides if you are happy or not. It is very rare however that someone will call themselves happy without their basic needs of a home free from the threat of violence, food and utilities and for these things money is the main factor.

It is a strange phenomenon that happiness is so sought after yet impossible to maintain as it is measured by the mind alone, something which is in constant fluctuation, the mind also seeks it as a potential permanence within an impermanent structure called objective awareness (the Buddhists would agree with this idea). Some do let go of the pursuit of happiness however as although many of us will simply pursue a balanced state throughout life until the body can no longer support the game, others will play the game of getting what you want but upon winning realise it does not provide what they were looking for with regard happiness, others will play the game and never quite succeed in getting what they want and become despondent, at this point both may look beyond circumstance and situation and enquire into their subjective identity instead.

Back to the politics I saw on facebook the other day a humorous post which went something like this. At the moment your life is like this; There is a cake cut into ten slices a banker and a head of a multi national approach the table whilst David Cameraon encourages them to, they take 9 slices of the cake and leave you 1, Nigel Farage sidles up to you quietly and whispers in your ear ' careful that foreigner over there is after your cake', all the while Ed Milliband sits in the corner rehearsing a speech that he knows nothing about and wonders how he got in the room in the first place, as does everyone else. Who you gonna vote for?