This election is causing me me real problems deciding who to vote for. Due to boundary changes I am now in Beckenham and Penge which almost certainly return a Labour MP. According to the BBC It would of last time as well if it had been run on the new boundaries. So I have been switched from a constituency where it wasn't worth me voting because it was a Tory stronghold to one which is more or less a Labour one. This seems to indicate to me that we have a problem with our electoral system. I agree with Lardi regarding immigration. If we need it then it is partly our own fault for not educating people correctly. However as we are now where we are I think I would like some of the people who want to run at these levels come up with a solution to providing infrastructure to deal with it. No one seems willing to address this issue except for Nigel Farage who says we have to somehow reduce it to net 0. He is also in favour of some firm of PR. It is about time we had a government that 60% of the population didn't vote for. As for stopping fossil fuel exploitation to my mind this is just plain stupid. I agree we need to reduce our usage but to rely on imports is crazy when we have our own. How does it make sense to ship coal from Australia when we have our own? Surely that must be worse for the planet? Same with the reliance on Russia, look where that had got the Western Nations. All in all I am stuck. I can't vote Conservative after the mess they have made of things, I don't like the class warrior attitude of Labour. Raising VAT from private schools seems just envy to me. If it is justified what about the elitist Royal Opera house, our great orchestras etc. even Pickhurst Junior School PTA all of show are charities. And while I'm in rant mode what about abolishing the 7 year rule or at least capping it if everyone is so concerned about IHT. Also Labour said it would make a special case for NHS consultants pensions... Why what is so special about them? I could go on and on.
So it's not B****t itself that's the problem? The two main parties won't talk about it, but the discussion is starting, and Nigel Farage will be challenged as to what could have made it work, and what evidence there is to that effect.
It doesn’t really matter who you vote for in this election (unless you can influence millions of others). What may matter, is 2029 or 2034. But who knows what the state of play will be by then ?
Yes, if that happens then it’s fair enough and Farage would have to provide the answers. But let’s be honest, Labour are not going to be asking him. They will just reverse the process bit by bit.
You are right once again it will not make a scrap of difference who I vote for. It has been this way every time since I got the vote and I am 75 now. I may not get many more chances to vote but it would be nice to vote at least once where i could think my vote counted. Even my local council elections are a foregone conclusion. I was hopeful of the mayoral one but no Mr Khan got in again. Unless something changes radically we are now in for at least 10 years of Labour government. I can't say I am looking forward to it, but it will have to be absolutely appalling to be worse than the last 5 years. I just wish we had a government that made decisions based on facts rather than ideology. I am left of centre by nature. The sad thing is I don't see any current politicians who inspire me to vote. I never liked Margaret Thatcher but she was an outstanding politician, so we're quite a few of her first cabinet. Since then we have gone downhill.
I had forgotten the 3 referenda I've voted on. At least I felt my vote counted even though I finished on the losing side in the latest 2. Maybe we should be like Switzerland where they have lots of referenda without a lot of lobbying and lying by politicians before them.
That would be far too democratic and wouldn’t give the MP’s the power that they crave. Their general view is that we elect them to make decisions on our behalf, NOT that we elect them to put in place our decisions.
I quite agree far too democratic. Yes unfortunately it is true that all our politicians seem to think that it is their job to tell us what to think and do. It is also the reason we will probably not get PR in my lifetime. The 2 current major parties would lose control of the electorate and we can't have that happening. The stupid Conservatives even undid the PR for the London Mayor. If they had left it alone I think there would have been a good chance of Mr Khan being defeated such was the opposition to ULEZ in the outer boroughs. Still at least Bromley are in the football league! (Although not for long I suspect)
There was actually a higher turnout in the outer boroughs than the inner city. We don't like honest politicians, otherwise we'd make sure that they got elected.
I guess we will have to wait until at least Monday before learning the answer to this question... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw88x6ww1p8o But if it does happen it will be remarkable. For many reasons The Sun and Keir Starmer are, not to put too fine a point on it, blood enemies. And if the newspaper does decide to back Starmer there will be plenty of people in the Labour Party who will need gas masks to survive the stink they will sense blowing through their headquarters. But the influence of this rag should not be underestimated. The Sun backing Keir Starmer will be the final nail in the coffin of even Rishi Sunak's despairing dream of an Electoral miracle. And it will help to build the 'super-majority' that Starmer must be secretly dreaming of. If I was running The Sun I would be tempted by the idea of backing Reform UK. But that's probably a bit too outlandish. Too much of a long game. The primary motivation of The Sun will simply be that they love to be seen to back the winner.
Not surprising to see the right wing Press now propagating the myth that a landslide Labour victory on July 4th will create a 'Dictatorship'. Eagerly feeding paranoid conspiracy theories straight out of the Donald Trump playbook; A nasty new twist on Project Fear. The Express on Sunday The Sunday Telegraph from an interview with ex-minister and ex-MP Robert Jenrick Who suggests Conservative Party supporters are somehow being denied their right to vote. This coming in the wake of recent comments that Britain is sliding towards a "One Party Socialist State". This amounts to nothing less than a shameless attack on Democracy, and in my view it borders on incitement to violence. Far right extremists in the UK, people of similar views to the Proud Boys in the USA, are being primed to take matters into their own hands. If a politician is injured or killed here during the Election campaign, these newspapers will have blood on their hands. Already one Labour candidate has cancelled hustings meetings because of the abuse and death threats she has received. Once again I apologies unreservedly for laughing when Nigel Farage had a drink thrown over him a little while ago. He has since had objects hurled at him in the street - an incident that could easily have resulted in him or somebody close by being injured. But I very much doubt we will see any apologies from these newspapers if the growing amount of online extremism and abuse directed towards election candidates culminates in a violent attack on somebody that leads to injury or death. All I expect over the next 17 days is a ramping up of this kind of anti-democratic and intimidatory rubbish being published in the Tory supporting Press. A One Party Socialist State. A Labour Dictatorship. This is the worst kind of sewage, which does not serve our free Press. Undermining our Democratic process and even threatening a peaceful transition of power. They should be ashamed of themselves. And this kind of behaviour should be called out by the rest of our free Media in this Country.
We complain about the calibre of our politicians, but honestly who would want to be one with all the hassle? Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet gets abuse these days.
It's an attack on our Democracy. Already we have had Boundary changes. Photo ID required at polling stations. The 15 year limit (after leaving the UK) on voting rights lifted from Ex-Pats. All of those changes were brought in to skew the voting procedure in favour of the Conservative Party. Now we have the Conservative supporting Press sowing the myth that the UK is in danger of becoming a Socialist Dictatorship. It's straight out of the 1920's, when there was real fear in the UK of a Communist Revolution following events in Russia in 1917. Around 100 years ago one of the Conservative backing newspapers (the Mail, Telegraph or Times I think) manufactured a document directly linking the Labour Movement in Britain to Lenin's Bolshevik Kremlin, claiming Labour was a puppet of Communist Russia. It was a total fabrication, but it was said to have cost Labour the General Election. Fake news is not a recent invention. And it will be used to undermine our democracy unless it is exposed by constant vigilance.
The Tories are fuked , abit like our country is … hay ho I haven’t many summers left now but I feel for my kids and grandkids
