Blimey. I never expected this forum to be full of Gammons 😅
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
The Petition - for another general election
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JimmyP
“Gammon” is an insulting slur that tends to be used by british leftists against people who have the objectivity and common sense that they evidently lack. Leftists like to use mockery and insults because at the heart of it, they are elitists and pro authoritarianists who think they know better than the right leaning people whom they view as beneath them and thus have contempt for the latter.
Gagaryn
Of course the petition won’t result in a fresh election at this point but what it does show is that popular opinion is turning against the Labour government in a big way. I believe it is indicative of how people in the western world are beginning to realise that the left are no longer the left but have gone far left to the point of being leftists in their policies and yet at the same time have been bought over by big business and corporate interests in an equally big way. As a result, what you have is actual injustice and elites Controlling the lions share of wealth and power and the existing establishment power structure being entrenched and strengthenedwhile the government on the surface mouthing progressive aspirations but implementing really bad policies that will ruin the nation. Labour isn’t likely to take this feedback on board and make course corrections of course just like the Democrats in us didn’t, and so this trend will only become more marked as the country goes into the next election cycle. The reform party actually won a lot of votes in rbe last election despite being a minnow of a party that just started out, and the conservatives will not come back from the disarray and disunity that they are wracked with. So Labour can expect a much more formidable opponent in the reform party for the next election.
Hilariously, I decided to delete my post but apparently I don’t have permission to do that :)
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uk is just generally destroyed
nothing works, not a single service, we pay more than we ever have, get less for it,
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chlorox Of course the petition won’t result in a fresh election at this point but what it does show is that popular opinion is turning against the Labour government in a big way.
Agreed, although like I say, I’m not convinced that popular opinion was ever really with Labour. They capitalised on the Tories collapse.
chlorox I believe it is indicative of how people in the western world are beginning to realise that the left are no longer the left but have gone far left to the point of being leftists in their policies
Some truth in this - politics is becoming more polarised. People increasingly like to see things in terms of black and white, right and wrong - and politics reflects this with parties moving towards then margins and leaving a big gap in the grey area in the centre - which is probably where common sense naturally lives. This problem is likely to get worse in the short to medium term.
chlorox And yet at the same time have been bought over by big business and corporate interests in an equally big way.
Business and corporate interests follow the power. You’re right that the left is not immune to this - but no more than any other power holders.
chlorox As a result, what you have is actual injustice and elites Controlling the lions share of wealth and power and the existing establishment power structure being entrenched and strengthenedwhile the government on the surface mouthing progressive aspirations but implementing really bad policies that will ruin the nation.
Yup. Things have been moving that way for decades, under governments of all colours.
chlorox The reform party actually won a lot of votes in rbe last election despite being a minnow of a party that just started out, and the conservatives will not come back from the disarray and disunity that they are wracked with. So Labour can expect a much more formidable opponent in the reform party for the next election.
Yup, Reform lost out big time under FPTP and that needs to change. It’s a remarkably undemocratic process for a “democracy” to continue to use. There is no logical reason not to implement a form of proportional representation - other than self serving interests of the established parties. But the Reform party has a lot of maturing to do before it truly becomes a formidable opponent. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen - there is a real danger of crash and burn if it doesn’t push towards presenting itself as a party of alternative rather than a party of protest. The latter is never sustainable.
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Gagaryn
I agree that popular opinion was never with Labour. There was just such disenchantment with the conservatives that Labour reaped the benefit. Reform was too newly minted and raw to be a valid choice for too many people, and to be fair, they were not ready by a long shot. However the problem with Labour is that they have terrible ideas on how to run a government and they are almost guaranteed to do a worse job than the conservatives. Will the reform party ever be ready? It may be too much for farage to do in time for the next election as they are really starting at the ground level.
In reality, apart from certain key issues, labels don’t really matter. The truth is for the most part, there is no centre, nor righr nor left for that matter. Look at usa currently - the republican party is espousing many positions that used to be talking points of the left while the dems have become the very caricature of their stereotype of the republicans as the party of the rich and the powerful.
In every election the battle is always between the establishment party vs the party on the outside and speaking more towards rhe needs of the people themselves. The elites and establishment always try to co-opt and corrupt candidates to allow them to continue being top dog and to have the best for themselves. The mainstream media and entertainment industry and education system are their ways of manipulating the population to do their bidding so that they can parrot the positions and opinions they choose for them and trick them into thinking they have freely adopted those views. The more comfortable and educated the people, the more pliant, easy to manipulate and lemming like they become, the less they are willing to sacrifice for their own freedom and sovereignty. For those have always Been the levers of power for the haves to enslave the have nots.
Yesterday that party which was co opted was the tories, today it is Labour.
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chlorox reading the discussion, especially the last 2 posts with interest, my take on it is:
- Politics itself is broken in the UK
- Politicians need far stricter rules, than those they set themselves
- Politicians all need integrity, or to have it thrust upon them
- No gifts freebies, tickets etc.. should be accepted from anyone (much like the queen used to do)
- Absolutely no outside work, or second jobs
- Proportional representation should be implemented properly and not some fancy system no one understands and wouldn’t vote for as last time with AV2, it also really changes little.
- Manifestos are not just story books, there should be a right of recall if parties don’t do what they say they will, manifestos should be legal documents!
My method of proportional representation would be simple and totally fair. Every vote counts!. Coupled with a huge cull to the civil service and kwangos.
- People vote for the party they want
- A set number of commons seats exist (650)
- The % of the vote your party gets, dictates the number of seats you are assigned (or none if your % is too small to garner a seat.
- MP representatives are assigned into areas starting with party having largest vote.
This way there is no fudging of boundaries, population density etc.. and you get a government in the HOC that truly reflects the populations vote
P.S and call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think something has been done to that poll behind the scenes, by the stablishment
Will never change due to the money involved,
and even those who get in for the right reasons cannot get a foot in to change it,
my big thing is how they allow massive business to kill the population with crap food then moan there is an obesity pandemic,
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Poll latest
Blimey. All these rich blokes with expensive coffee gear moaning about how tough it is 😅
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
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it’s all a lot of horse-poo really. We’ve now got the leader of the Tory party complaining about electric car targets for the industry… they were set by the Tory government she was a part of. There’s just countless examples of how utterly banal and thoughtless everything political seems to be nowadays. Maybe it always was. I’ve picked two Con examples but they’re all about the same. I do think it’s a bit mad that people think of Labour as “hard left” - a lot of their current policies would be right of Thatcher.
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JimmyP
Firstly allow me to point out thar there is no equivalence between what I originally posted and what you said in response to my post. I never cast any slurs nor insults on anyone. I believe every single reference I made concerning people on the so called progressive left would be acknowledged by them to be at the very least arguable statements of mere fact - that they are obsessed with woke politics, leftist, etc. If I had slurred them or insulted them with a pure slur equivalent to what you called me and others here of my viewpoint with “gammons”, I would have used terms like “loony left”. Which I didn’t…hence I didn’t “dish” out anything so ss to deserve being given some of the supposedly same treatment as u erroneously claimed…
As for my ability to take what I give, I have proven here and elsewhere that while i always give back with compound interest any unfair treatment anyone dishes out to me, I will always concede a point if I see that I am incorrect on anything.
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Cuprajake
On UK getting destroyed, one big part of it is the general increasing lawlessness and the over permisiveness that is facilitating it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/27/netflix-star-caught-smuggling-drugs-worth-150k-into-uk/
This person didn’t even have to serve any jail time and she was trying to smuggle in 40 kg of a banned narcotic. 40 kilograms! One may be mistaken about being tricked to be a mule for 400g or 4kg even but 40 kg!!! Basically almost as heavy as she probably is! The absurdity of this is that had Thai immigration or customs or airport officials discovered the contents of her suitcases while she was still in Thailand, she would have been facing not only imprisonment but the death penalty…I am not saying uk should have the death sentence for such offences but the answer is certainly not this kind of patting of the wrist and saying there, there…
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Milko
Which of their policies would be hard right of thatcher? Labour still seems not only left to me but leftist…
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/more-housing-fewer-aristocrats-starmer-lays-out-left-wing-vision-20240717-p5ju9v
Though as I said above, tbe labelling of the party as left or right nowadays isn’t as important as the key question of whether they are actually entrenching and defending and proseuting the interests of the establishment and the elites who control power, money and influence today and censoring and shutting down dissent and giving back little but dregs snd crumbs to those outside their orbit. And in that sense Labour certainly qualifies…
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Cuprajake
The way Big Agri and Big Processed Food industries get the population addicted to toxic food-like substances and poison the population so that Big Pharma can then barely keep them alive but not cure them so as to make maximum money off them…
This is what rfk jr is wanting to change in the US and why trump has nominated him to be secretary of the HHS but this is also why the lobbyists and their agents in the media are now trying to make him look like a vaccine e denier (despite the fact that he and his kids are all vaxxed) and saying he isn’t qualified (despite the current secretary of the hhs also not being medically qualified either) as a pretext not to get him confirmed congressionally ..
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DavecUK
Agreed fully on thr massive cull of the civil service being needee. The creation of a vast bureaucracy is the power center of how elites control the population and suborn a big part of that population to serve their interests by making their interests aligned with theirs (though they get only a sliver of what the elites get). The same thing is done by the dictator who rules north korea concerning the vast north Korean military which is loyal personally to him. Denuding thar civil service will also gut the belly of the beast in that sense. Brexit only freed uk from the Brussels bureaucracy and regained its sovereignty but another Bureaexit is needed to free the UK from its own bureaucracy!
The problem is most of the population want to be taken. Care of and are willing to trade their sovereignty for comfort and security despite the fact that they are given less and less of that comfort and security as time goes and as the elites become more tyrannical and rapacious.
On “proportional representation,” it sounds like you want the rule of the majority and the overall popular vote. The problem with this system is that it allows then the tyranny of the overall majority over the overwll minority - even if tbe overall uk majority was just a tiny one eg 50.1 per cent.
That wouldn’t be a fair system nor truly democratic one - especiaply where so many of the citizenry are so easily manipulated and brainwashed by the mainstream media that is almost wholly and virulently leftist.and pro-establishment.
In that sense the current system is fairer because in a particular constituency, each party must actually get the majority in that constituency to win it, and the party with the most constituencies won, wins the general election and gets fo choose the prime minister from among those members of parliament in their party.
I think there is however something wrong in the UK system where reform party can win so much of the popular vote but so few seats. Perhaps the issue is rather the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries?
Thing is you say any of this and you get discredited and called a conspiracy but job
Doesn’t take a genius to work out there’s something wrong when you can buy 30 packets of crisps for £3 or 10 strawberrys for the £3
As a small business owner were pushed to breaking point my energy costs have gone from £450 per month to over £1500 the constant wage increases mean we have to find £10k plus extra a year, just to break even, do the government not realise the more they put stuff up the less we can do,
£2 per hour extra for 18-21 who are the backbone of the likes of Asda, so what will happen to food prices, pretty certain that Mr ASDS ain’t taking the hit in profit!!
What makes my piss boil is when Lidl say they made £11bill on last yr which was a high inflation year, they are taking the Mick. Yet the Westminster bubble are clueless because they are subsidies
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DavecUK I totally concur with your opinion on this. I have often added a box to my voting paper for the “None Of The Above Party” and crossed that. My opinion is that all politicians are out of the same mold, its only the colour of their tie that changes.