What's in the news?

[Guest MattP]

7 minutes ago, Buce said:

As with most parties, there are things with which I don't agree.

 

Tbh, when I say I'm spiritually a 'Green', I mean more in an abstract sense - I support the 'Green' movement.

Fair enough, I would hope most support that movement in some way.

 

I almost get the feeling the Greens want to be wacky outsiders rather than serious, it's a great shame a party supposed to be focused on the environment has also decided to throw a hard left blanket around itself, it should be open to all voters. Makes even less sense when Labour are led by someone like Corbyn.

[Buce]

4 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

Let's be honest, most people that vote Green don't exactly read their manifesto, it's not exactly relevant, they're never getting in. It's just a throw away protest vote meant to represent an interest in fairly left wing, fairly environmental politics. 

 

If they were more electable they'd need a sensible manifesto but right now they could put raising taxes by 2500% in order to colonise Neptune with dwarf slaves to grow Super Potatoes for our mass conversion to veganism and they'd still get the same number of votes.

 

Which is a long-winded way of repeating what I originally said about voting Lib Dem.

[Alf Bentley]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Could you really vote Green in all seriousness? If they were like the German Greens with a serious policy document I could fully understand it but this lot?

 

This was a political party that at the last election wanted to shut down our security services, convert army barracks into windfarms, withdraw from NATO and legalise membership of ISIS, they are crackers and I can't believe an intelligent person could actually vote for them to run a country.

 

If the Greens were serious contenders for govt (e.g. if polls showed them at 25%+, not low single figures), I'd think seriously about any bonkers policies.

 

When you vote, surely you make a judgment on what the party would actually do in power - and what their chances of gaining power are.

For now, I assume that the Greens have zero chance of power. So a vote for them would mainly be a message to the other parties (particularly Lab/LD) - and they'd do well to even hold the single seat they have.

 

Likewise, if I seriously thought Labour was going to try to carry out the immediate mass nationalisations and budget-wrecking expenditure attributed to them by opponents, then I probably wouldn't vote for them.

For now, I assume they'd probably do the odd stupid thing, quite a few good things - and would be pragmatic about their long list of idealistic policy goals.

 

[Alf Bentley]

5 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I don't have evidence to support it, but I would be willing to bet that at the time of the referendum campaign, Farage would have been the person most associated with Leave by the General Public.

 

I'm sure he's the most identifiable anti-EU politician. But he wasn't the de facto leader of the Leave campaign.

 

Worth reading that (very long!) article by Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave Campaign Director, that I linked yesterday. One of the things he says is that he was desperate to ensure Farage was on our TV screens as LITTLE as possible.

The voters who liked him would already be voting Leave, but they knew he put off the swing voters they needed to attract into voting Leave. Thinking back, Farage certainly appeared during the campaign.....but I don't think he was particularly prominent, never mind the de facto leader

[Guest MattP]

17 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

I'm aware of Farage's hypocrisy, wanting a second vote when he thought he'd narrowly lose. He even said it on voting night, anticipating a 52% vote the other way. But I think we should set our standards higher than his.

 

What's the figure quoted? A 6% swing from 2016 would be 54%-46% Remain....so still very close, as I said. Indeed, very similar to many polls immediately before the 2016 vote.

By this stage, given the fiasco of the negotiations, the potential risk and the rubbish deal, I hoped that polls would be consistently showing 70%+ support for Remain, which would have clearly justified another referendum....hasn't happened.

Not to mention Farage was told he was talking bollocks when he called for this and that the decision would be final.

Yougov's last poll on referendum day was 52-48 remain, so a 6% swing would actually be 58-42 remain, which we all know it complete bollocks, polling is pretty irrelevant though unless we have a snap referendum, which would be impossible. Another campaign would be very different as well as the "Brexit" side would be campaigning on the issue of democracy, it might even be the subject of a boycott.
 

11 minutes ago, Buce said:

I don't have evidence to support it, but I would be willing to bet that at the time of the referendum campaign, Farage would have been the person most associated with Leave by the General Public.

Boris Johnson by a mile at the the time of the campaign, he was a game changer.

Nigel Farage certainly did more than anyone to bring about the referendumm but the biggest amount of votes UKIP ever got in a General Election was about 3.5 million - 17.4 million voted leave, that's around 14,000,000 who voted to leave the EU but didn't want to vote UKIP, a bigger number of people that voted Conservative or Labour at the last election.
 

2 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

I'm sure he's the most identifiable anti-EU politician. But he wasn't the de facto leader of the Leave campaign.

 

Worth reading that (very long!) article by Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave Campaign Director, that I linked yesterday. One of the things he says is that he was desperate to ensure Farage was on our TV screens as LITTLE as possible.

The voters who liked him would already be voting Leave, but they knew he put off the swing voters they needed to attract into voting Leave. Thinking back, Farage certainly appeared during the campaign.....but I don't think he was particularly prominent, never mind the de facto leader

This is absolutely spot on. One of the best bits in the drama last night was the scene where Cummings drew the pie chart and split it into three, a third are voting Leave whatever, **** them, A third are voting Remain whatever, **** them - that third of swing that always decide elections, that's exactly where you go and that is exactly where Vote Leave went, Leave.EU had little interest in those people and instead went into the home end to speak to the converted.

I'm more convinced than ever now Farage actually lost Leave more votes than he gained during the referendum campaign, all the people who loved Farage were already voting to leave the European Union, he wasn't going to convince people who hadn't already made up their mind.

Dominic Cummings by the way, if that was in anyway accurate the man is someone I'd love to have for dinner, what an interesting character.

[Alf Bentley]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

Dominic Cummings by the way, if that was in anyway accurate the man is someone I'd love to have for dinner, what an interesting character.

 

I'm sure they employed a fair bit of dramatic licence, making him a more dominant character than he was in reality.

 

I presume various people had a significant influence on strategy, even if he did lead the strategy and take certain crucial decisions (e.g. bringing in the data bods to target habitual non-voters/angry excluded/off-the-radar people via social media).

That sort of complexity would be difficult, and potentially boring or confusing, for a drama director to depict. Good drama, though, I thought.

 

In the Spectator article that I linked, Cummings does come across similarly to how he was depicted: independent lone operator, undiplomatic, intellectual visionary/nutter, nerdish, not egotistical.

It's a long, long article but worth reading when you have an hour or two!

[Nick]

41 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Which is a long-winded way of repeating what I originally said about voting Lib Dem.

If Caroline Lucas was fronting any other political party she’d likely be a realistic contender. In terms of ‘leading’ being a leader of people with the brains and not just sound byte rhetoric she leaves Corbyn and May for absolute dead in the talent department.

[Guest MattP]

5 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

I'm sure they employed a fair bit of dramatic licence, making him a more dominant character than he was in reality.

 

I presume various people had a significant influence on strategy, even if he did lead the strategy and take certain crucial decisions (e.g. bringing in the data bods to target habitual non-voters/angry excluded/off-the-radar people via social media).

That sort of complexity would be difficult, and potentially boring or confusing, for a drama director to depict. Good drama, though, I thought.

 

In the Spectator article that I linked, Cummings does come across similarly to how he was depicted: independent lone operator, undiplomatic, intellectual visionary/nutter, nerdish, not egotistical.

It's a long, long article but worth reading when you have an hour or two!

I remember reading the article at the time in the magazine (it was about 16 pages I think lol) but I'll certainly read it again after last night.

I enjoyed the drama as well, I felt they did fairly well in terms of balance. I didn't like the ending though, they didn't mention anything about the Remainers portrayed, we certainly should have been told Oliver actually was rewarded with a knighthood for that car crash of a campaign he ran and the reference to Trump was just lazy, they seemed to throw that one scene in with Banks and Farage meeting the Breitbart donor just to make that relevent.

 

2 minutes ago, Swan Lesta said:

If Caroline Lucas was fronting any other political party she’d likely be a realistic contender. In terms of ‘leading’ being a leader of people with the brains and not just sound byte rhetoric she leaves Corbyn and May for absolute dead in the talent department.

She once stood up in the house and said we should borrow money until we can't afford to pay it back, she's just as barmy as the rest of them.

[Nick]

1 minute ago, MattP said:

I remember reading the article at the time in the magazine (it was about 16 pages I think lol) but I'll certainly read it again after last night.

I enjoyed the drama as well, I felt they did fairly well in terms of balance. I didn't like the ending though, they didn't mention anything about the Remainers portrayed, we certainly should have been told Oliver actually was rewarded with a knighthood for that car crash of a campaign he ran and the reference to Trump was just lazy, they seemed to throw that one scene in with Banks and Farage meeting the Breitbart donor just to make that relevent.

 

She once stood up in the house and said we should borrow money until we can't afford to pay it back, she's just as barmy as the rest of them.

She’s twice as smart as anything else on offer.

[Alf Bentley]

7 minutes ago, MattP said:

I enjoyed the drama as well, I felt they did fairly well in terms of balance. I didn't like the ending though, they didn't mention anything about the Remainers portrayed, we certainly should have been told Oliver actually was rewarded with a knighthood for that car crash of a campaign he ran and the reference to Trump was just lazy, they seemed to throw that one scene in with Banks and Farage meeting the Breitbart donor just to make that relevent.

 

 

Tend to agree with that assessment - and the words on screen at the end were a bit clunky. If they wanted to say "what happened next" re. the Brexiteers, they should have done likewise re. the Remainers.

 

I suppose they felt that they couldn't just ignore the US / funding, though the drama was really about the campaign in GB / state of British politics / state of British society. In such a complex scenario, it must be hard to decide what to include/exclude - just realised there was no mention of the Irish border, for example.....a complexity too far? The scenes with normal voters in focus groups, at the pub and at home were well and fairly done, I thought.

[Strokes]

3 hours ago, Buce said:

 

I agree until I ponder the (albeit extreme) example I gave.

 

If our politicians were shipping off people to death camps, would you still uphold the law?

Puel haters? 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Finnegan said:

Let's be honest, most people that vote Green don't exactly read their manifesto, it's not exactly relevant, they're never getting in. It's just a throw away protest vote meant to represent an interest in fairly left wing, fairly environmental politics. 

 

If they were more electable they'd need a sensible manifesto but right now they could put raising taxes by 2500% in order to colonise Neptune with dwarf slaves to grow Super Potatoes for our mass conversion to veganism and they'd still get the same number of votes.

Most people who vote blue or red don't read their manifesto either. I'd say the people voting green are more likely to read the manifestos than those voting blue or red. The difference is that they are looking for certain viewpoints that reflect their own wishes as opposed to many who vote blue and red who do it because their parents did/ the perceived social differencies/ because they "hate" whoever is in power.

[purpleronnie]

13 hours ago, Vacamion said:

 

I've tried not to venture into this thread or its predecessor too much, as most people are pretty set on their opinions about current political news, and so discussion tends to be a bit circular.

 

However, I've just seen online that group of angry blokes, those wannabe gilets jaunes, harassing Owen Jones and also Anna Soubury outside Westminster today.

 

Not good.

 

With the potential to spill over.

 

Looks like some people learned nothing after what happened to Jo Cox.

 

If you disagree with someone's policies or actions, you should by all means be free to shout your opinions at them from a reasonable distance, but not to get up in their grille,block their way and intimidate them in a group.

 

I don't like Owen Jones very much and I do rather admire Anna Soubury, but, regardless of political hue, neither should have been subjected to that treatment.

 

I regret that I like our country less and less. 

Me too, Everything I loved about England, the tolerance, the warmth, the openness seems to be ebbing away it's very sad.

[Kopfkino]

If ever a report could sum up why a large chunk of younger voters see the appeal of Corbynism this is it.

 

1.2m families don't earn enough to save for a deposit but earn too much to qualify for social housing, with the worst off paying 67% of wages on rent

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8142952/million-british-families-pay-costly-rent-forever/

 

[leicsmac]

TBH (and I'm sure you all will be surprised) I see no problem that Spectator article - or any article at all - linking the Brexit campaign and the election of Trump as more and more I'm coming to believe that those two votes are merely two votes in a bigger tide of populism (whether you could call it nationalist or not depends on who you ask) in a variety of different places, driven by various forces.

 

The ascendancies of Trump, Duterte, Bolsanaro, Erdogan et al - the more governments elect populist leaders, the less such outcomes appear to be purely coincidental and not related.

[Guest MattP]

3 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

TBH (and I'm sure you all will be surprised) I see no problem that Spectator article - or any article at all - linking the Brexit campaign and the election of Trump as more and more I'm coming to believe that those two votes are merely two votes in a bigger tide of populism (whether you could call it nationalist or not depends on who you ask) in a variety of different places, driven by various forces.

 

The ascendancies of Trump, Duterte, Bolsanaro, Erdogan et al - the more governments elect populist leaders, the less such outcomes appear to be purely coincidental and not related.

It was the drama on C4 that did it, not the Spectator article, it was only a tiny two minute piece but it didn't seem very relevant to the rest of it, as Alf said, the focus groups and scenes in the pubs got down to the real issue of why people were voting for Brexit, the ones that try and connect it to Trump do so in my opinion to try and delegitimise it.

For what's it worth I see the two things as totally different,but I'm sure that won't surprise you - you can't seriously put Erdogan alongside Trump and Bolsanaro as well, that's really lazy. You can disagree with the latter two all you want but neither of them have a rap sheet even close to the things Ergodan has done.

 

42 minutes ago, purpleronnie said:

Me too, Everything I loved about England, the tolerance, the warmth, the openness seems to be ebbing away it's very sad.

The problem is it was only your side that felt that, (generally speaking) whilst people on the Remain side were enjoying decent jobs, cities with plenty of work, holidays, university educations etc you had others who had no access to that at all. The people on the other side of the coin weren't feeling that tolerance, openness and warmth you loved whilst being labelled bigots, racists etc for expressing an opinion, had there been an effort to solve that you wouldn't have ended up in this position.

Actually I still think it would, I was surprised Brexit came this early, but an organisation like the EU, obsessed with furthr integration at any cost and held together now through fear was always going to fall and fall it will.

[Buce]

Man tries to rob female MMA expert:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/mixed-martial-arts/46786100

 

There you go @Milo - no Brexit or politics.  

[leicsmac]

7 minutes ago, MattP said:

It was the drama on C4 that did it, not the Spectator article, it was only a tiny two minute piece but it didn't seem very relevant to the rest of it, as Alf said, the focus groups and scenes in the pubs got down to the real issue of why people were voting for Brexit, the ones that try and connect it to Trump do so in my opinion to try and delegitimise it.

For what's it worth I see the two things as totally different,but I'm sure that won't surprise you - you can't seriously put Erdogan alongside Trump and Bolsanaro as well, that's really lazy. You can disagree with the latter two all you want but neither of them have a rap sheet even close to the things Ergodan has done.

 

 

Ah, thank you for the clarification!

 

I'm not quite sure how "delegimisation" would work seeing as far as can be ascertained the two votes were both perfectly legit - the arguments about Russian "meddling" etc are interesting but until there's some cast-iron proof on that score there's not much more beyond speculation there. If it's more trying to link the two because the same folks who voted for Brexit might do for Trump...well, he did use the Brexit vote to inspire those in his own campaign and invited Farage over there to that end, so...

 

When it comes to all of the names I mentioned being linked I was more referring to their "X country First"  policies rather than the body count they've racked up as yet (Erdogan and Duturte have had much more time to get cracking with that, Trump can't because the checks and balances in the US system seem to be working better than the other nations mentioned, and Bolsanaro has only just gotten into the game, give him time and I'm sure he'll be up there considering his attitude). They all have very particular beliefs about the exercising of power and who exactly should be exercising it, and once again, I don't think all those guys coming to prominence in different places at roughly the same time is purely coincidental.

[leicsmac]

In sort-of related news:

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46792556

 

This is going to do far far more harm than good. Stupid.

 

 

[purpleronnie]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

It was the drama on C4 that did it, not the Spectator article, it was only a tiny two minute piece but it didn't seem very relevant to the rest of it, as Alf said, the focus groups and scenes in the pubs got down to the real issue of why people were voting for Brexit, the ones that try and connect it to Trump do so in my opinion to try and delegitimise it.

For what's it worth I see the two things as totally different,but I'm sure that won't surprise you - you can't seriously put Erdogan alongside Trump and Bolsanaro as well, that's really lazy. You can disagree with the latter two all you want but neither of them have a rap sheet even close to the things Ergodan has done.

 

The problem is it was only your side that felt that, (generally speaking) whilst people on the Remain side were enjoying decent jobs, cities with plenty of work, holidays, university educations etc you had others who had no access to that at all. The people on the other side of the coin weren't feeling that tolerance, openness and warmth you loved whilst being labelled bigots, racists etc for expressing an opinion, had there been an effort to solve that you wouldn't have ended up in this position.

Actually I still think it would, I was surprised Brexit came this early, but an organisation like the EU, obsessed with furthr integration at any cost and held together now through fear was always going to fall and fall it will.

I don't know why tolerance of other people has to do with what job or how much money you have, I was tolerant when I was making minimum wage and that hasn't changed.  Brexit seems to have stirred up hatred not just between remainers and Brexit voters but intolerance between religion and race.

 

I remain a remainer but I hope Brexit will be the best thing that ever happened to this country, I hope all those people who've felt left behind and forgotten somehow benefit from leaving the EU, I simply don't know how but I really hope they do.

 

I also hope that if and when that happens we can become united and intolerance disappears...if it doesn't I will definitely consider leaving (ahem), if it weren't for family ties I would be seriously considering leaving now as over the past decade I have felt increasingly disconnected in the way politicians have led this country and the increasing intolerance of the public.

Edited 8 January 2019 by purpleronnie

[Guest MattP]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46789601

 

Incredible how quickly and robustly they come down on this sort of behaviour as soon it's one of their own on the receiving end of it.

 

Farage went through this for years and they couldn't give a shit, the hypocrisy of it all is terrible.

[Strokes]

42 minutes ago, MattP said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46789601

 

Incredible how quickly and robustly they come down on this sort of behaviour as soon it's one of their own on the receiving end of it.

 

Farage went through this for years and they couldn't give a shit, the hypocrisy of it all is terrible.

I agree, they were all quite happy for farage to face the gauntlet regularly, still doesn’t make it right.

I think we will see more of this sort of thing rather than less though tbh. This won’t go away anytime soon.

[Buce]

56 minutes ago, MattP said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46789601

 

Incredible how quickly and robustly they come down on this sort of behaviour as soon it's one of their own on the receiving end of it.

 

Farage went through this for years and they couldn't give a shit, the hypocrisy of it all is terrible.

 

11 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I agree, they were all quite happy for farage to face the gauntlet regularly, still doesn’t make it right.

I think we will see more of this sort of thing rather than less though tbh. This won’t go away anytime soon.

 

Who was happy for it to happen to Farage? 

[Guest MattP]

22 minutes ago, Buce said:

Who was happy for it to happen to Farage? 

I think many were but I obviously couldn't prove it. Point is though, were they ever interested in doing anything about it when it happened to him or people they opposed? They couldn't care less then.

 

Now it's a Remain female being attacked we have MP's writing to this police, the speaker making statements and even absurd talk of the law being changed.

 

When it's Farage, Boris etc you don't hear a word from anyone about it, they just have to tolerate it and in the case of the former even pay for his own security.

 

I mean the same people now calling this were the ones openly ready to join Westminster protests if Trump visited (and just imagine the level of personal abuse we would have seen there) - John McDonnell is on the record as saying no Tory should be able to walk the street without direct action.

 

It's just all so transparent. 

Edited 8 January 2019 by MattP

[Guest MattP]

@Alf Bentley they got this scene spot on - he even punched the ceiling