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Post by Horsie on Jan 22, 2020 20:02:51 GMT
No, I'm starting to understand why Labour's been doing poorly lately, and most tellingly in places where Labour normally has strong support.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 22, 2020 20:12:59 GMT
Labour have become the party of the middle class.
They have nothing to say to working class people and seem to view us with contempt.
When they are bashing Brexiteers and "gammons" (which refers to an angry red faced brexit supporter, apparently) it all starts to come across as a very sneering class contempt.
The lower class are ignorant, racist and backward, and need our enlightened middle class betters to lead us out of the darkness. And if the working class aren't grateful for this, or worse yet refuse the help from their superiors? Well then they get what they deserve!
There are two strands to what motivated the police to ignore all these sex crimes. One was their desire to avoid looking racist and be PC, but the other was their obvious contempt for poor, white, working class girls. They viewed the girls as scum who had no value and deserved what ever they got.
Its a microcosm for the whole problem labour has sunk into.
You can bang on about economic interest or whatever else but voters will not vote for someone they believes holds them and their communities in contempt.
Am I being harsh on labour? Yes, but this is the impression they've managed to create for themselves. It's their problem now to fix.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 24, 2020 19:14:52 GMT
I just realise today...
I went to school with some of the grooming gang members.
That is a bit distressing.
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Post by Horsie on Jan 26, 2020 23:27:32 GMT
You've got me beat, the worst thing I'm aware of any of my friends getting up to is trafficking contraband cigarettes.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 27, 2020 22:11:46 GMT
Sorry I meant to say "went to school". That was a Freudian slip because a friend of mine pointed this out to me. I am terrible at remembering names and faces, so I didn't recognise them, but he pointed out that he went to school with several of them, and he was a couple of years before me, so they would have been at the school when I was there.
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Post by zaealix on Jan 28, 2020 4:34:46 GMT
If you needed to be told that about peeps you knew, you probably aren't that close to begin with, so I don't think their decisions reflect on your decision-making.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 28, 2020 8:54:12 GMT
I only went to school with them, I didn't actually know any of them closely. I didn't recognise any of them myself but logically they must have been at the school when I was.
Its creepy that they grew up with the same school as me and presumably consuming much of the same media, but they came out with an entirely different, almost opposite world view.
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Post by Horsie on Apr 29, 2021 3:54:24 GMT
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Post by StyxD on Apr 29, 2021 6:40:21 GMT
The famously polite Canadian lumberjack has had enough.
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Post by StyxD on Oct 16, 2023 21:16:14 GMT
My brain after I've been making preparations this year for the far right to seize totalitarian control in the country, but instead they lost the election:
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 17, 2023 7:55:39 GMT
In general Europe is shifting to the right. The question is how far right they are going to swing. The centre left forces that have dominated the continent have been discredited in to eyes of the public, so we will have to see what alternative people choose.
Poland has had a more right wing government than most for a while, so their situation is a bit different, as the establishment to reject is already right wing. Though also Polish democracy is weird since you can win the most votes and still not get to be in power.
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Post by StyxD on Oct 17, 2023 13:30:20 GMT
Honestly, I don't know enough about the European political move to the right to judge how Poland fits into this (though I'd reasonably guess at least 2/3 of that are because of immigration policies). Maybe I should educate myself more now. After all, I've got at least 4 more years of Poland not exiting the EU. But the last sentence has me intrigued. How is it weird? It's just a simple function that if you can't muster normal majority in the parliament, you can't pass the vote of confidence for the government. And if you can, then your government stands.
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 17, 2023 18:15:32 GMT
It's odd (To me) to have the party that got the most votes not be the one to form the government. I think that might be technically possible in Britain, but the system is set up to make it very unlikely in practice.
Yeah immigration is super unpopular now, added to which is a general economic decline and lots of global problems. If you are in power right now, you are headed for a bad time.
In the UK the conservatives are in power (In the UK the conservatives are almost always in power) who are centre right. They do a lot of talk about limiting immigration but in practice they don't do very much about it.
Now I'm not saying this as a personal opinion on the good and/or bad of immigration...but it is undeniable that mass immigration makes native populations angry. Governments need to get a handle on it and find a solution.
In the UK the major alternative party is Labour, who are more left wing and more pro immigration. So people have to basically choose between two main stream parties who are both in favour of the thing people don't want.
The risk with this situation is that people may go looking for another alternative, and support some out there untested party.
People voted for Brexit largely because of this issue. There are crazier things people can vote for than Brexit.
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Post by Canuovea on Oct 21, 2023 16:05:42 GMT
The ability to win more votes but lose the election is just a result of a more than two party system. Sorta. To me that kinda makes sense. It allows for you to vote for a party you like knowing that they could, in theory, form a coalition to stop, say, the Nazis taking over (which was attempted in the Weimar Republic, but...).
However, it also depends on how you determine the winner. The Electoral College in the USA is a deliberate example of a means to subvert the popular will because the founders didn't trust mob rule. Yes, that's right, it was deliberately anti-democratic... but it does allow a spread of votes mattering rather than just the most populous areas. Trump lost the popular vote against Clinton, but won the Electoral College, after all. I kinda see the point in such a system, because it prevents one area from making the choice exclusively... but still gives them some power.
But it can go funny in a parliamentary system too. Last Canadian election, the Conservatives technically won the popular vote but failed to get enough seats to match the Liberals. Basically, where the Cons won they often won by a lot... but that only gets them one seat, whereas a Liberal could win elsewhere with 45% of the vote if the Cons got 44% and the Fascists (sorry, the People's Party) got, say, 11%. In that situation, the Liberals gain one seat. Frankly, I don't like the First Past the Post system at all, even if an alternative would mean the Cons likely winning the previous election (ranked voting would have allowed the Fascists to vote for the Fascists, but then choose the Cons as their second choice, therefore avoiding a vote split).
So I don't like two party systems, and I don't like First Past the Post. One of those contributes to lack of choice and the other contributes to losing when you shouldn't (and also lack of choice, because why vote for the niche party/candidate you like when they probably won't win?).
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 21, 2023 22:37:28 GMT
I should have been more clear in what I was saying. I said "more votes" off the cuff, I should have said "more seats in parliament". I was trying to communicate "the one that did the best by the system electoral victory is measured by should win, rather than a coalition of hte second and third place parties".
The American system makes sense for America. When questioned on losing the popular vote, Trump said if the popular vote mattered he would have campaigned differently, and he has a point.
If America was a direct "most votes = president system" Rural states would basically be utterly ignored. The only places people would campaign would be huge, heavily populated cities.
America is a massive, diverse place with lots of different ways of life going on. And things like farmers, or less populated areas are important, so the system has to take into account that their voices also have value.
So I didn't mean to come across like I was advocating for some very crude "most votes wins" form of direct democracy, just that I like a system that makes clear winners.
In a lot of european countries, the election is kidn of a side show and the ACTUAL way government is determined is back room deals after the elections where the politicians and parties make bargains with each other to form coalitions. That makes it kinda look democratic, but really it is the people in power negotiating amongst themselves. This is one of hte things i don't like about how the EU is run. THe real decision making isn't actually voted on.
No system is perfect, but without the first past the post you can end up with this kind of horse trading being what REALLY determines the leader.
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