The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

RandallFlagg

capo4th said:

Right I am going to screw the au pair and take my helicopter for a spin 

I'm sure he will be delighted.

Drew_TNBD

Fretwired said:

This is interesting - membership of Conservative groups in universities has swelled. Bad news for Tim nice but Dim who thinks all students are left learning .... :-)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/22/student-tory-groups-swell-backlash-left-wing-activists/

Lots of reasons for that. There is a groundswell of conservative thinking across the Western world right now; it's actually more closely aligned with skepticism, classical liberalism and libertarianism.

VimFuego

ThePrettyDamned said:

marantz1300 said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

capo4th said:

Of course there is poverty and deprivation in London there is also lots of people claiming poverty who can still buy the latest trainers from JD Sports and clothe their kids in the latest designer sportswear .....      always makes me laugh

Yeah but we can live on stereotypes for ever. Fat cat bankers, anyone? 

I know some ,not all bad people, not all good people.

But...

£640,000 for two days a week plus bonus. I've seen the pay paperwork.

Before the 2008 crash I saw the Christmas bonus share out in an American bank I was working at.

£8.5 Billion .

One guy got £50,000,000 for his bonus.

The cleaners had a £20 pay cut and half of them were laid off that Christmas.

No wonder their was a crash.

They can't possibly afford to pay the bottom of the pyramid more.

Jesus christ there is something wrong with that model. 

And no, I'm not against people earning loads of money. 

I am not idealogically opposed to that model, if they accept the risk involved in what they do. But if it does all go wrong, don't go running to the tax payer (who you've already been screwing) to bail you out.

Jalapeno

Drew_TNBD said:

Fretwired said:

This is interesting - membership of Conservative groups in universities has swelled. Bad news for Tim nice but Dim who thinks all students are left learning .... :-)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/22/student-tory-groups-swell-backlash-left-wing-activists/

Lots of reasons for that. There is a groundswell of conservative thinking across the Western world right now; it's actually more closely aligned with skepticism, classical liberalism and libertarianism.

Makes a welcome change from Marxism/Trotskyism

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

This is interesting - membership of Conservative groups in universities has swelled. Bad news for Tim nice but Dim who thinks all students are left learning .... :-)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/22/student-tory-groups-swell-backlash-left-wing-activists/

Being conservative is the new rebellion. Whether it is Breitbart, Rebel TV, the lot with Spiked, the rise of self-professed libertarians in my area at Bristol University, a lot of it boils down to "I want the right to say what I want". It's very different to the sort of Marxist protest Christopher Hitchens described when he was at Cambridge. Back then being conservative was seen as being part of the establishment: now being conservative is still being part of the establishment but it has an undoubted image within some groups as being rebellious, mostly around free speech issues.  

I note that actual numbers within those associations isn't mentioned yet the article is happy to quote specific numbers for Labour organisations. It would be interesting to see actual figures rather than percentage increases. 

It stands to reason that Labour membership has dropped. Uni associations will almost certain mirror our mainstream politics. Wheres the right has two main options, you have far more options on the left so you end up with more small groups rather than one or two dominant groups, as we have seen with the left-wing vote since 2005. 

The rise of 'open Conservatism' at UK universities is very much along social lines in my view. The libertarians at Bristol Uni I've met were almost entirely privately educated. Tom Harwood from the Telegraph article was privately educated at the Perse School in Cambridge. The same article quotes William Rees-Mogg of the Oxford Conservative Society (former Eton College boy) and Alastair Ward-Booth of the Cambridge Conservative Association (Bishops's Stortford College, another fee paying institution). It is only Eliot Smith of the Reading University Conservative Association who can say he came from a comprehensive background and he is relegated to the very end of the article after the privately educated chaps have been featured. 

So as much as I have some concerns over this being reduced to 'private versus comprehensive', there's equally no doubt in my mind that the left leaning wing have failed dismally in coming together. They ultimately are as clique orientated as the traditional privately educated bunch on the other side. I've had some pretty horrible moments involving left-leaning groups. Their regular use of the word 'allies' annoyed me greatly. It felt like they would only accept you if you agreed wholeheartedly with their point of view and that stance is very distasteful and unattractive to many people who should be part of their audience. 

It all boils down to some pretty clear divisions. Again though this only mirrors what we are seeing politically across the country. 

VimFuego

sadly the left have, of recent times, forgotten their roots in the labour/union movement, and have become basically a series cliques of bourgeois metroland dwellers more interested in the politics of identity.

Fretwired

VimFuego said:

sadly the left have, of recent times, forgotten their roots in the labour/union movement, and have become basically a series cliques of bourgeois metroland dwellers more interested in the politics of identity.

^^
This. And a problem for Labour is 'up north' Corbyn is seen as a London-based metropolitan politician who has no idea what happens outside London.

The Communist Party has just endorsed Corbyn, so that should be the last nail in his coffin for many.

Heartfeltdawn

If the Telegraph goes all waaaaaaaah at the Commies backing Corbyn, then it's a bloody odd position to hold when they have an open Marxist and former RCP man as a columnist. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/brendan-oneill/

Actually, it's not odd. The RCP modus operandi was to tear down other left wing organisations. It still is now. 

http://www.monbiot.com/2003/12/09/invasion-of-the-entryists/

Heartfeltdawn

VimFuego said:

sadly the left have, of recent times, forgotten their roots in the labour/union movement, and have become basically a series cliques of bourgeois metroland dwellers more interested in the politics of identity.

But the roots have changed. The unions are neither as plentiful nor as powerful as they once were and industries have changed massively since the 1970s. You have a whole generation or two of people who sit on the left who work in the service industry who have absolutely zero contact with unions. If Labour now reformed the party around the unions, then you'd cut out a huge number of the Labour Party membership.

So if you did reform around the unions, would it actually make Labour a more potent political force? I suggest not because greater potency would rely on those union members to be involved. We've just had the battle for Unite's general secretary position: the turnout was just over 12% with a bit over 130,000 votes. That's really shite. If they can't be motivated to vote in their own union election, can you see them getting motivated for, say, enhanced LGTB rights? 

Equally those older union members are the ones who will be damning Thatcher at rallies. What relevance does that have with the younger generations who never knew Thatcher and who grew up under Blair? For some people, the politics of identity is all they have because they've got sod all else. Dismissing that group as 'bourgeois metroland dwellers' is as daft to me as the sort of stereotypes the Mail throws up about unionised workers. 

What needs to happen if Labour are to ever pull themselves out of the mire is to respect the historic nature of the Labour party and the unions but to acknowledge that it's 2017 and harping on about Maggie and Marxism is going to make you look old-fashioned and stupid. Blair understood this even if he went about it the wrong way. David Cameron understood this with his attempts to make the Conservatives look more inclusive. Even Ed Milliband understood this, which is why he went for the changes in party membership. With Corbyn, there is the danger of something really quite regressive coming back into play. The old guard needs to open up and so do the new guard. It can't all be about the right to strike on one side and gender-neutral shithouses on the other. 

siremoon

Fretwired said:

Jalapeno said:

Fretwired said:

Bad news for May .. Macron will win the French election. The wheels are coming off her wagon. Hard Brexit it is ...

If he pulls that stunt expect 100% tariff on French cars, cheese, wine etc, we're a big market for French farmers & automobiles. Not to mention French interests in our water & power companies ... they'd be compulsorily reacquired !  Macron is a free-trade businessman first and foremost.

Macron is a Europhile first and foremost and passionately believes, as do others, that if you leave the EU you should lose the benefits of membership. He's also an ex-banker who wants banks in London to relocate to Paris and Frankfurt - he wants the City of London to have no access to EU markets. He is a young radical.

And as the French trade unions are all such reasonable people his ideas about renegotiating worker's rights should go through without a murmour.

Drew_TNBD

Heartfeltdawn said:

The old guard needs to open up and so do the new guard. It can't all be about the right to strike on one side and gender-neutral shithouses on the other.

But that's all the left have. Left wing politics is dead, dead, dead. All they have ownership of is bitterness, abused and false statistics, lies, and... I dunno, maybe videotapes - I hear they're hip again.

Really what I would like to see is a lot of the left-wing people starting to embrace the libertarian movement. But they wont, because they're too rooted in identity politics. Even in the 1970's they were rooted in identitarianism and group think. When you hear stories from Erin Pizzey - the woman who basically invented domestic violence shelters - and you hear her talk about how rabid left-wing feminists killed her dog and sent her so many death threats that she moved to Canada... you start to realise that the left are empty and hollow. I think Mags has a bit of a point when he calls it a mental illness!!

Oh, and what did Erin do to deserve that treatment? She said domestic violence was most often reciprocal. That's it.

PS: The Libertarian movement is currently being smeared by the left as the 'alt-right' - it's bullshit.

ThePrettyDamned

VimFuego said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

marantz1300 said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

capo4th said:

Of course there is poverty and deprivation in London there is also lots of people claiming poverty who can still buy the latest trainers from JD Sports and clothe their kids in the latest designer sportswear .....      always makes me laugh

Yeah but we can live on stereotypes for ever. Fat cat bankers, anyone? 

I know some ,not all bad people, not all good people.

But...

£640,000 for two days a week plus bonus. I've seen the pay paperwork.

Before the 2008 crash I saw the Christmas bonus share out in an American bank I was working at.

£8.5 Billion .

One guy got £50,000,000 for his bonus.

The cleaners had a £20 pay cut and half of them were laid off that Christmas.

No wonder their was a crash.

They can't possibly afford to pay the bottom of the pyramid more.

Jesus christ there is something wrong with that model. 

And no, I'm not against people earning loads of money. 

I am not idealogically opposed to that model, if they accept the risk involved in what they do. But if it does all go wrong, don't go running to the tax payer (who you've already been screwing) to bail you out.

Exactly! 

hungrymark

Fretwired said:no

Heartfeltdawn said:

Fretwired said:

And in other news May's lead is cut ... a landslide now looking unlikely. You have to take the usual caveat that polls are rubbish though .. ;-)

Which poll are you quoting from? Sunday Mirror ComRes poll has her at 50%.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-tory-party-theresa-may-landslide-sweeping-election-victory-latest-polls-a7697351.html

Last YouGov poll says 48% for May. 

13 Labour MPs have announced that they are quitting. 

More importantly, I've got a sodding laptop to repair today. Disk read errors all over the place. I think it's borked. Yawn

A poll carried out for the Mail on Sunday which is a Tory supporting paper.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4436044/Tory-lead-slashed-half-tax-U-turn.html

That article was comparing two different polls put out by two different polling companies (ICM and Survation). To compare numbers over time you have to compare polls from the same company as they have completely different methodologies, weightings etc. Comparing two different pollsters is meaningless.

Put into context, the Survation poll putting the Tory lead at 11% was two points higher than the last poll by that company, indicating that in fact they are increasing their lead. All other polling companies still giving a lead of 20+. Still think a landslide is unlikely? This is just the Mail trying to scare its readership in case they get complacent 

holnrew

Nitefly said:

holnrew said:

capo4th said:

Sporky said:

capo4th said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

You mention translation services. How would you tackle that? 

If people want to live in Britain they should speak English a simple tick box excercise on entry. There you go point one on the new immigration policy £millions saved on translation services.

So you'd stop translating for the people already here? What do you think the outcome of that would be?

Hopefully they would leave and stop being a drain on resources. They are probably the same people who choose not to integrate with society. English is not a difficult language to learn go and ask the billion people who can already speak it.

How many languages do you speak fluently?

What difference does that make?  If I was going to live in Greece I'd learn to speak Greek.

Another alternative would be to  bring your own translator along.  At your expense.

It was more the implication about how easy it is.

Drew_TNBD

holnrew said:

Nitefly said:

holnrew said:

capo4th said:

Sporky said:

capo4th said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

You mention translation services. How would you tackle that? 

If people want to live in Britain they should speak English a simple tick box excercise on entry. There you go point one on the new immigration policy £millions saved on translation services.

So you'd stop translating for the people already here? What do you think the outcome of that would be?

Hopefully they would leave and stop being a drain on resources. They are probably the same people who choose not to integrate with society. English is not a difficult language to learn go and ask the billion people who can already speak it.

How many languages do you speak fluently?

What difference does that make?  If I was going to live in Greece I'd learn to speak Greek.

Another alternative would be to  bring your own translator along.  At your expense.

It was more the implication about how easy it is.

It is easy. Just takes commitment.

(getting better at Japanese before you start!)

Heartfeltdawn

Drew_TNBD said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

The old guard needs to open up and so do the new guard. It can't all be about the right to strike on one side and gender-neutral shithouses on the other.

But that's all the left have. Left wing politics is dead, dead, dead. All they have ownership of is bitterness, abused and false statistics, lies, and... I dunno, maybe videotapes - I hear they're hip again.

If it was all the left had, then there wouldn't be such division. It's a lot more scrambled than that. 

Erin Pizzey is a debate for another time. I agree that domestic violence is not one sided. Any attempt to portray men as the problem is one I wholeheartedly reject. However I am wary of Pizzey herself and I'll explain why. That Reddit chat she did a few years ago threw up this:

"One of the early mantras of the feminist movement was to make the personal political. Therefore, those women who had bitter and violent experiences of the first male their lives (e.g. their father) then branded all men as violent and dangerous. They are also what I call the walking wounded. As far as I’m concerned the prominent feminists of the day virtually all had appalling relationships with their fathers."

If that is true, then women who had bitter and violent experiences of the first female in their lives (eg. their mother) who then go on to brand specific women or groups of women as violent and dangerous must also exist. Pizzey has detailed that she was physically and mentally abused by both of her parents. Her parents were held under house arrest by communist China when she was 3 before escaping to South Africa whilst her father was sent to Beirut. As I shall quote:

"But despite his clumsy, predictable form of macho brutality - born out of his being the 17th child of a violent Irish father - it was my mother's more emotional, verbal form of abuse that scarred me most deeply. She indulged in a particular kind of soul murder - and it was her cruelty that, even 60 years on, still reduces me to tears and leaves me convinced that feminism is a cynical, misguided ploy."

It doesn't take much imagination to imagine that someone who felt that way 60 years on would have really bloody hated the Marxist feminist wing in the 1970s. 

I don't think she's a liar or dishonest or lacking in a desire to help. There is good mixed up with a lot of hurt in that woman. 

One day I'll debate her with you. Bring boxing gloves  

Fretwired

Listened to the R4 interview this morning with Labour's Sir Keir Starmer. If Labour win they will immediately guarantee the rights of all EU citizens without expecting anything in return and will insist on access to the single market, no tariffs etc. In fact every benefit we have now. Nick Robinson suggested this was a wish list and what happens if the EU say NON. There would be a vote in the HoC and if the deal was rejected we'd remain in the EU.

So if you want to remain in the EU vote Labour.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/25/general-election-2017-labour-leaves-door-open-keeping-uk-eu/

 

Jalapeno

Interesting - Wonder if this is on the basis that a General Election is the latest referendum and therefore "trumps" the Brexit one ? (as somebody on R4 was saying yesterday)

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

Listened to the R4 interview this morning with Labour's Sir Keir Starmer. If Labour win they will immediately guarantee the rights of all EU citizens without expecting anything in return and will insist on access to the single market, no tariffs etc. In fact every benefit we have now. Nick Robinson suggested this was a wish list and what happens if the EU say NON. There would be a vote in the HoC and if the deal was rejected we'd remain in the EU.

So if you want to remain in the EU vote Labour.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/25/general-election-2017-labour-leaves-door-open-keeping-uk-eu/

 

It's a policy designed to stop Remainers defecting to the Lib Dems. Laughable. 

Jeremy, you've had votes in the House of Commons and your lack of backbone was clear. You evoked the 'will of the people' gibberish and now you've proposing something different. 

Arsewit. 

Fretwired

Heartfeltdawn said:

It's a policy designed to stop Remainers defecting to the Lib Dems. Laughable. 

Jeremy, you've had votes in the House of Commons and your lack of backbone was clear. You evoked the 'will of the people' gibberish and now you've proposing something different. 

Arsewit. 

I think its more a realisation that the only chance of power is a coalition of the left - Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP. The only way to achieve this is to appeal to those who want to remain in the EU. Mandelson was on Newsnight to promote his pro EU strategy to depose up to 20 Tory MPs - he did say that he had support from some Tory MPs so I guess he thinks even if Labour loses he might be able to thwart Brexit with the help of some renegade Tory MPs.

The problem for the better off voter who wants to remain in the EU is do I vote Labour but take accept higher taxes on income, property and inheritance tax?