Said it before. Dorries is unhinged.
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Absolutely in favour of this as long as Octopus agree to pay interest on the loan within a minimum period and the Gov get a share of future profits.
Anything else is pitiful.
Hold on, I'm confused. Weren't we all on Brutus' side when he finally got rid of Caesar (metaphorically speaking)?
Will probably be sold under valuation, with no interest on loan, and no stake of future profit, so Government friends and donors can make a nice profit.
Tory MP inadvertently admitting the economic policies of the last 12 years haven't worked:
Why must morons like this have to hijack any good thing in this country:
If you truly believe the bolded then you've not been paying attention.
FPTP is barely democratic at all. It is an antiquated system which by design keeps the power swinging to the right for the majority of elections. When a more progressive party do finally get a chance at government PR would be a much more representative system.
But it isn't at all is it? Because FPTP doesn't deliver governments which represent the majority of voters.
In extreme cases, like in 1951, it's possible for FPTP to deliver majority governments to parties which received fewer votes than the 'losers'. In most cases it delivers majorities to parties who received a plurality of the vote, even when those parties received nowhere near 50% of the vote. For example, Labour in 2005 and the Tories in 2015 both formed majority governments on 35% and 36.8% of the popular vote respectively.
In the latter case, that 36.8% handed Cameron the mandate he required to call the Brexit referendum.
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Evil villain vibesJRM's summer vibes.
I have to smile a little at this discussion about how a PR-based system would work, as if conjecture based on personal experience of committee work and general speculation was the only way to answer that question. Most democracies have PR, so possibly one could judge how a PR-based system works on the basis of their experience instead?
It is a question of some complexity that a lot of things play into though - it's how the different elements of a country's whole political culture and institutional and legal setup come together that gives us the observable result, and it's hard to pick out precisely how the mode of representation plays into it. So, to some extent what works in a certain way in one country might not work in the same way in another. But I do think some valid general points can be made.
FPTP and PR causes political parties to become very different things. In a PR system, parties tend to become highly representational tribes - built around a shared general political vision, or sometimes other things (regional or ethnic identity, defining single issues etc). Generally speaking, if there's a sizeable group or constituency of opinion that isn't well reflected by one of the existing parties, this will tend to generate a new party. This means that political parties tend to be genuine communities of shared views or shared interests in a way that is not the case in a FPTP system - if there's too much tension within an existing party, one wing will tend to peel off.
With FPTP, the threshold of meaningful success for a new party is so high that this generally does not happen, because there's not much point. Instead, you get huge parties that really are not communities of shared belief in any meaningful sense, but rather either organisational machines built to pursue power on the basis of politics that are really very vague and shifting, or broad church confederacies of various groups that really do not agree on enough things to co-exist constructively, but who have nowhere else to go. In both cases, where parties stand politically tends to reflect which particular faction is currently on top, rather than any broader consensus in the party (let alone its voters).
Generally speaking, a FPTP system tends to foster a polarised and oppositional political culture, whereas PR tends to foster a political culture much more oriented towards co-operation and consensus. It's not straightforward, and is affected by lots of things: For instance, other traits of the US system has traditionally stimulated cross-party co-operation despite a FPTP system, though this is by now showing signs of breaking down. Whereas France has a highly polarised political tradition despite having at least partially a PR system (and it was arguably even more so back when they had a much clearer PR system than they have now).
It's an easy temptation to think that the advantage of FPTP is that it results in more efficient governments that can get things done more easily, while the advantage of PR is, more nebulously, that views are represented more fairly. But this I would argue is not necessarily so. Because societies really aren't built and shaped by individual decisions, or in four years. If you want to build and shape something, and not just end up with whatever's the net result of a jumble of disjointed and, over time, contradictory decisions, it requires a consistent sense of general direction and design over decades. This requires that there is some degree of shared thinking among the major political parties, and also that there is an ability to sit down and agree on a long-term arrangement occasionally. Certain things - pension or tax reform, defence investment, large infrastructure programs - simply cannot be solved well on the basis on one group of people doing their thing for a few years and then another group of people doing a different thing for a few years. Most places, you get broad consensus agreements in place for such things, but that simply does not happen in the UK. And if you can't do that when you really need to, it hurts you.
My point here is that every democratic system actually needs to be able to do cross-party policy making and consensus-based politics, at least occasionally. A system that can't, or doesn't even try to, is simply dysfunctional. It will be faced with problems it can't solve well, or at all. Given that, is it really an efficiency advantage to have an electoral system that allows the ruling party to just ignore cross-party co-operation, in many cases? At the very least, that means that when you do end up with a situation that requires this, the system isn't really equipped to handle it. In a PR system, this is a matter of day-to-day necessity, and the whole apparatus of government evolves around that. Clearly, it is quite feasible to govern well and solve problems efficiently on that basis. Indeed, if you look around the Western world and ask yourself who seems to have gotten things more or less right and have a political system few regards as being in a state of crisis, most of those you'd name have PR. On the other hand, if you're picking the ones that are obviously in deep trouble, a couple of big FPTP countries are well ahead in that queue.
I'd question your use of the term "back-room" deals here. What does that mean, exactly? If we're talking about shady dealings of various kinds that does not stand the light of day, I really do not think a FPTP system make those less likely or common - if anything, the opposite. If you're talking about agreements between political parties, then I think your terminology is weird, and also that there's little reason to think there is less of this in an FPTP system.
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JRM's summer vibes.
He looks more like a peado everytime I see him.
So the plan is to use the money to hedge future gas supplies now, right at the top of the market? That sounds a surefire way to need a further taxpayer bailout in a year or two.
Yep, and it is such a good idea that apparently they can get no private investment for it, meaning it will be all of us that cover the failure.
Privatise profits, nationalise losses. Tory socialism.
If Boris had been around for the run up to the next GE, we would have seen not only the 'low hanging fruit' gathered in by him and his pals, but the trees would be ripped up as well! Some Tories feared they were heading towards a colossal defeat at the next GE (some still believe that) and they would have used Boris to activate a 'scorched earth' departure.
Ben Wallace with his military background knows there is a time to fight and a time to retreat, that's why he didn't enter the race to replace Boris.
Starmer keeps his nerve, he should scrape in, if he can find a few good clearly costed policies to get us through for the next few years, and he can get something in Scotland, then he could have the highest number of Labour seats at Westminster in years.
No but it generally delivers the majority of votes needed to govern
Of course not, but its one way to answer that question!
Yes, but who decides which community is on the 'front row' and who is on the 'back row' when the 'goodies' are handout,?'Leveling' up of any kind would be practicably impossible(probably is now, given where we are) also how this country thinks e.g." every Englishman's home is his castle" would create even more local divisions. People tend to band together in large political parties like the Tories and Labour, because these are the 'heavyweights' who have a chance of getting something done, lots of smaller minority groups scrambling to reach a consensus would be potentially disastrous, we would finish up having more changes of governments than in Italy (Scusi!)
Nah, I wouldn't be caught dead in that suit.
1. You don't have any fewer or less influential minority interest groups just because you have fewer parties. What you have is minority groups scrambling to control one of the big parties. Which leads to things like Corbynites ruling the Labor party, and 160,000 mostly well-established elderly landowners now getting to decide what the tens of millions of people who voted conservative at the last election actually turned out to vote for.
2. Sorry, but I see little to no evidence that you're actually getting anything more done, or getting it done better, than most countries with a PR system.
3. Neither FPTP nor PR is a guarantee of a well-functioning political system. But Italy is hardly typical of a PR-based system. You may want to consider f.e. Germany or the Scandinavian countries as examples of PR systems that generally have been getting things done over the past couple of decades.
4. Unless you simply ignore the wider picture around Europe, there's no basis for assuming that a more consensus-oriented form of politics leads to chaos and an inability to get things done. Rather the opposite, actually. A key part of consensus-oriented politics however is that it is not approached by the parties as a blind scramble for sectional interest, but rather on the basis that a good solution is one where everyone's interests are considered, and where no one is left too unhappy. In which case you start thinking of "compromise" as something good, rather than as being forced to accept an inferior solution - in other words a form of failure, which in my experience is how people tend to think of it in the UK.
Also, it's centred on some sort of notion of it being in everyone's interest that society as a whole ends up better off, as opposed to it all being about which particular group gets to stand in the front row for handouts.All this being said, I'm not arguing that switching to a PR system would instantly transform the UKs political culture. On a comparative basis, it seems obvious to me that that culture is extremely oppositional, and while the electoral system is an obvious part of the reason why it is, there are also many others, shaped and strengthened by centuries of political institutions evolving on this basis. Including how Britons fundamentally think about politics and society. It seems to me very possible that a PR-based electoral system applied to such a political culture won't necessarily be very functional either. But if I were you, I'd worry about the limitations that clearly imposes on UK politics and its ability to address and solve hard problems - as well as how well it'll withstand the new form of politics driven by social media and other factors that is in itself driving all democratic systems in a more polarised direction.
Yes, as they might see it for the great good...and the 'greater good' is being in power, part of a government that can accomplish things and whatever their shade of opinion within their party, all MP's are subjected to, or subject themselves to, the party Whips.
When you have a number of differing parties, trying to participate in governance each with its own sense of being, then even more boundaries are created. Also even if some are broadly aligned on the left, on the right, or even in the centre, they are subject to their own membership rules and regulations, operation procedures; etc; hence you have the same leadership machinations/intrigues as you have in the larger parties, the same objections/ differing emphasis in policy matters, the same tendency to want to 'deal'; inertia in a government is the worst sin of all at times, and when there are more than two parties in any coalition, inertia is much more likely to occur.
It is true that some countries, their population mix, their constitutions, their geography and even their history may make a 'better fit' for PR than others, but as I said before its my view that without a written constitution, that involves more than precedent, and still retaining an 'island race' mentality, which over the centuries the majority of immigrants embrace, then simple PR is not the solution for the UK. Its possible, e.g. if the UK were to break up, then PR lite or PR+ might be an answer, but at the present I don't see that occurring.
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This has nothing to do with it being democratic and representing the will of the people though, which was the thrust of your argument. The big argument for FPTP isn't that it delivers outcomes which reflect the will of the people, it's that, as you've alluded to, it's meant to deliver strong, stable governments who can prosecute their agendas quickly and unhindered by the opposition.
The reason its stupid now is that it was introduced at a time in the late 19th century when the pool of people who had the ability to decide the outcome of an election was pretty homogenous - rich, property-owning men. In that situation, where basically everyone involved in politics shared an interest in preserving the status quo, a system which delivers strong governments capable of acting quickly to protect those shared interests, which favours established political parties and tends to disadvantage new ones (like those pesky trade unionists) and in which results can be very easily manipulated depending on how you draw the constituency boundaries, was exactly what the political class of the time wanted.
Nowadays, in a country where diverse groups with disparate opinions and interests expect to be equally treated by the electoral system, it's a millstone around the country's neck. It's not the only reason the country is fecked, but it's a big contributing factor to it.
Christ on a bike
How aren't we in the streets with torches over this? This is the most blatant lining of pockets with public money since the last one.
This is exactly what its meant to do and is everything to do with democracy and the defined will of the people.
Once a government is elected it has to be able to govern. An official opposition does just that and opposes, and except where there are massive (80+seat) majorities can do so effectively when there is genuine doubt/disagreement about a specific policy being pursued by the Government of the day.
I do agree that massive majorities such as we have seen with Boris/Tories can reduce effective opposition and invests too much power in a Government, however as we have seen such sizeable majorities tend to breed complacency and that leads to collapse.
Without (preferably written) constitutional change, political PR type changes will not bring better representation to the process of governing in the UK. Maybe a 'third way', arguably tried by Roy Jenkins & Co. with the Social Democrats might work now, it was perhaps a head of its time previously. However having a myriad of small parties who in theory coalesce around some ideal of broad political representation is a non-starter as far as effective governance is concerned..
There is also the 'sticky' point about how to effect both Constitutional and Political change, no Government having been elected is going to even try to make such changes...they have enough to do dealing with things like climate change, energy costs, food shortages and mass immigration/migration issues, to name but a few.
I'm all for civil servants getting more money but it's not exactly unusual for area based pay. Is that not already a feature of the civil service today? Surely London staff aren't getting the same pay as Hull?
It is already a feature, jobs are always advertised as 2-4k more in London.
https://news.sky.com/story/nearly-7...ghest-number-on-single-day-this-year-12664099
Good to see that Priti Patel plans to completely disrupt the people traffickers business model by transferring male so called illegal immigrants to that safe haven called Rwanda is working beautifully.
She must be absolutely delighted.....
She should be made to make a statement on this disaster of a plan.
Good to see that Priti Patel plans to completely disrupt the people traffickers business model by transferring male so called illegal immigrants to that safe haven called Rwanda is working beautifully.
She must be absolutely delighted.....
She should be made to make a statement on this disaster of a plan.
Be bold! Scrap the civil service!
How is this even possible?
What exactly have the tories done to gain popularity? This country is full of idiots.
I mean, we’re fecked up over here, but y’all got a special kind of fecked up.