Off Topic General Election Results

If any of the parties were serious about affordable housing and helping people onto the property ladder they would engage in large scale house building - for both private and social use. Supply and demand dictates that only increased supply and decreased demand will force house prices down. Instead they don't build new houses ( no increased supply) but bring in help to buy, and right to buy. Help to buy increases the number of buyers (demand) and pushes prices up. Right to buy decreases affordable rental properties, increasing the numbers who decide to buy instead (demand). All of this pushes both land and house prices up. It's almost as if the people making these decisions were landowners and multiple property owners, Oh, wait a minute......

 

I left the UK in 2010, just after Cameron took office. And as an outsider looking in, it continues to stagger me that every time I return to the UK to visit friends or family, the country appears to be in a worse state.

Houses are more unaffordable year upon year, people seem to be earning less and less, intolerance of immigration grows, the quality of schools and teachers is deteriorating, the welfare provisions shrink more and more, and the NHS is being cut until there's nothing left.

What confounds me most is that the people who are the most negatively affected by all of this appear to be the ones most resistant to change. Is it fear, or because their crappy newspapers (I'm pointing at you the Sun and Daily Mail) are telling them there's nothing worse than 'Red Ed' and his 'nanny state' politics.

Shocking stuff. Glad I don't live there anymore. Britain will get the government it deserves and all the consequences with it...

 

welcome to hell .

 

Fundamentally, modern politics isn't fit for purpose. Politicians spend almost all of their lives trying to be popular, or populist. The best way to sum it up was Cameron 'pledging' to create a law that will stop him fiddling with taxes. That's one soundbyte across years of similarly themed crap, where businesses try to make money, eventually succeed in spite of politics then the PM takes the credit. But somehow it's NOT his fault the NHS is in continual disarray, or that our communities are completely divided, and so on.

I got a letter from our school saying Halal meat would now be an option on a menu. I mean, wtf? There's a vegetarian option if it's such a goddam issue, but now we have to cut another teacher from budget to bring in halal meat. It's fcking beyond a joke, nothing to do with immigration, it's just fcking mental.

Politics flies in the face of human economics, bowing constantly to the pressures of capitalism and the rich. A recent program showed that the super-rich are given tax breaks for one reason - they make the country's balance sheet look good. Who to? Who cares? There are people here in trouble, fcking fix their fcking problems.

Where I think politics fails is that the decisions for elevation come from within, not without. Per borough, per seat, you should have a multi-point manifesto, then get scored, independently, on your performance and the top performers should be invited to elevate themselves up the political ladder to higher positions of more authority. It's muddled, but whatever we've got right now isn't going to improve unless actual reform - not the garbage Cameron coins - is achieved.

 

Don't kid yourself, they're all as bad as each other.
In it for themselves, nothing more, nothing less.
Look at Clegg, seen the chance of power 5 years ago, grabbed it with his grubby hands, and now he's reaping the result of getting into bed with the devil.
Him and his cronies got everything that they deserved, but, no doubt they'll get a nice payoff running into Tens of Thousands of Pounds for their troubles.

Labour lost the Election 5 years ago when the Unions chose the wrong Miliband.
Ed Miliband, the Labour Party's version of John Carver.
Shame that Nicola Sturgeon is a Nationalist otherwise, she'd be the ideal person to be leader of Labour.

As for UKIP, I can understand why people voted for them up here, and I know plenty who did.
A disenfranchised electorate, a Labour Party with a **** leadership who couldn't give a **** and took a lot of their voters for granted.
(Sounds a bit like NUFC really).

 

Heed, what are you doing man, remember, the first rule of JPF's dungeon is what happens in the dungeon stays in the dungeon

 

Thoughts on the election:

1. TROLOLOLOLOLOL @ Clegg.
2. It was obvious it was going to be a conservative majority. Blindingly. Nobody thinks Ed Miliband is PM material. The FT mentioned a few weeks ago he had the worst rating of any opposition leader in ****ing history, yet somehow the media have convinced the mindless this would be in anyway "close"?
Cameron knew all he had to do was keep his mouth shut and he'd walk it, he doesn't have to have a good record to even do it, the other parties ****ed themselves sticking by their incompetent ****wits.
3. How hilarious SNP get 56 seats out of about 5 million votes, and UKIP get 1 out of about the same share of the vote
4. Good luck getting a decently paid job if you're like me or Cbrad, a graduate of a recent generation who didn't do a medical or engineering degree. You're absolutely ****ed.
5. If Labour had have picked David, they would have been the one strolling past the post, honest.

 

I didn't vote for Labour for the simple reason that they walk it in my constituency and they take us for granted. Anything that cut their majority locally has got to help. The thing is, it would have made no sense for me to vote UKIP as someone with left leaning tendancies. I know loads of Labour voters defected to UKIP but I still can't get my head round why someone who had a left view of politics would jump to a party more thatcherite than Thatcher. I voted Green as I wasn't going to vote for a party who governed with the Tories.

To be fair, the longer the campaign went on the more he showed that he had a good grasp of the issues. Problem is that in this country it has become all about the showbiz and spin. He's not photogenic but I'd prefer a geeky, nerd who knew what he was doing than a photogenic bastard. His brother is from the tory-lite side of the party. He would have picked up more of the centre votes but lost just as many of the left side votes. Labour's problem is that they are the next party due for a split. Thirty odd years ago the SDP split from Labour. Since then the Tories have spawned UKIP. Now Labour is covering too wide a base. Either that or we ned a stronger central party than the current lib dems and let labour drift left back to their natural ground.

 

I disagree, the more the campaign went on, the more the dumbing down of the issues and the faux promises come in to pander to the morons who really shouldn't be allowed to vote. Sure, under that guise Ed might have seemed competent, but I put it to you a chimp taking selfies with hired bimbos and being asked to point at other politicians would not only have looked as competent, but a darn sight more endearing.

Ed was absolutely ****ing clueless. You could dress a chicken in red and it'd bang the NHS drum just fine, but woefully inept was Ed's understanding of small businesses, something the conservatives have been especially good at promoting, and something which is necessary for a strong economy. It's fine looking like a nerd, people think "oh well, you might be a virgin, but at least you're brainy", the problem comes when you're not actually that clever.

 

Sounds like you're speaking from painful experience there JPF.

 

Have to say I generally agree.

A sign of this for me in this election more than previously was the so called television debates. If they are what are called debates then saints preserve me. It was a tedious exercise of waiting for each leader to come out with the 3 or 4 soundbites that their party pr men/women had pre-prepared ready for that debates "magic memory" to be repeated in the next days newspapers.

The debates were so shallow as to be insulting as they were exactly the opposite to what they were held out to be. The style being adopted in recent years is more akin to the USA where the President is more a personality and figurehead rather than an educated leader capable of outlining in a clear, concise way which is understandable to the common man the policies they have to enable this country to prosper.

There seemed little inclination or ability to persuade voters as to the merits of any particular policy as opposed to slagging off the other party/parties and having "headline cliches" ready for the next days newspapers. Unfortunately the rise of social media purporting to increase communication has the opposite effect and leaves far too many people unable and unwilling to listen or read anything which has more than 144 characters and so the politicians look for the soundbite to the detriment of proper detailed debate. ( Old man rant over )

 

True, the debates are a farce. I don't get it anyway. These same politicians rant and rave at each other ALL YEAR LONG in the commons. It's on tv constantly, but next to some boring old windbag political correspondent, and everybody switches over because it's boring. All of a sudden, near vote-time, the media is covering it 24/7 and we have a couple of 1 hour-long condensed versions of what people were too busy instabooking their lives away to care about... And suddenly it becomes hashtag worthy

I firmly believe that nobody should be automatically entitled to vote, it's not sensible. You should be privileged to vote, and by privileged I mean know the responsibility of your vote... e.g Your vote card only becomes available after having read each of the party's manifesto's...

There was a lass in work who didn't know why she had two votes (one being local, one general), and she took ages figuring out who to vote for because she didn't know who represented each party

Honestly, if one party promised you would get ten years younger and were bringing in a "part-exchange on your partner law" to get someone half the age and double the firmness, they'd run away with the next Heat-magazine-inspired election.

 

I called the Milliband thing months ago.
David came back from the U.S. few months ago.. As planned... to pick up the pieces of the Labour Party.
He will be a great leader and will take the top job at the next election I'm sure.

 

I'll admit I deliberately didn't watch any of the campaign coverage and only read it but i thought Labour had some decent policies. That's just a personal choice though. I'd prefer to pay a bit more in tax and protect the safety nets. I also would prefer we didn't have a referendum on Europe cos I think a lot of people will take their lead from facebook and urban myths rather than what is best for the country.

My own small business relies on other small businesses starting up. Many of the grants to help new businesses start up have been cut back and quite a few of my clients now rely on funding through agencies directly funded from Europe because the Westminster funding has dried up.

 

To be honest, funding for small business should always be tight. Considering how likely it is small businesses fail in the first year, it's not sensible policy offering a great deal of finance to them. However, what the conservatives offered the SMEs was fair, such as policies that help successful ones trade abroad (forcing banks to offer deals for international trade and clinics), policies that make it easier and cheaper for them to take on apprentices etc. Labour offered them nothing under Ed, which is why a couple of months ago Cameron spent every waking moment harping on about it.

 

The companies taking on apprentices and trade abroad are more often the medium sized ones. They are important and need help, but so do those at the smaller end of the scale as they make up the vast majority of new ventures. The funding used to be to help those who might not have a strong academic background but have a viable business idea, get initial help with basic paperwork training, legal requirements and such like. It helps reduce the welfare bill too. There is room for helping both.

 

Showing Cameron's understanding of SME:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...aised-by-obamas-former-head-of-small-business
https://www.gov.uk/government/speec...rons-qa-at-the-federation-of-small-businesses
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25903681

And a website comparing them:
http://startups.co.uk/cameron-vs-miliband-who-boasts-the-best-policies-for-small-businesses/

Personally, having a girlfriend who works in the NHS, in a department that is profitable and easily privatised, while I myself work with small and medium businesses on a day to day basis, I was in a catch 22 and decided not to vote. Had I been single, I'd have been inclined to disobey my father and vote blue.

 

I think its time to forget this area ****e and go man for man in these elections ..like why is this so unfair ...biggest wins