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UK General Election 12th December 2019 |OT1| Hindsight is 20/19 (Tory majority confirmed)
- Thread starter Uzzy
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Even if there were an emphatic and obvious result for Scottish Independence or Irish Reunification (the former may have happened last night, the latter is still a bit questionable), I sort of fail to see the actions that would let Johnson let both of these things come for a vote. Or if there's a vote, have it be legitimized. But I'm happy to be wrong.
At least when it all goes tits up and you suffer, I can laugh.
Until yesterday, Ipswich was the only place in East Anglia that was red in the last couple of elections.
Felt sick to the stomach to see it turn blue this morning however, Ipswich leant towards 'Leave' more so than 'Remain' back in June 2016, and prior lifelong Labour supporters who in all likelihood voted 'Leave' unfortunately ticked the ballet box for the Conservative Party yesterday (just to get on with Brexit).
Felt sick to the stomach to see it turn blue this morning however, Ipswich leant towards 'Leave' more so than 'Remain' back in June 2016, and prior lifelong Labour supporters who in all likelihood voted 'Leave' unfortunately ticked the ballet box for the Conservative Party yesterday (just to get on with Brexit).
We need an exhaustive, 50 year (minimum) plan to upgrade our grid to adapt to the changing planet. Private energy suppliers invest the legally required minimum into the network and aren't equipped to develop on the scale needed (and frankly I don't blame them - our infrastructure is in shambles and any broad strokes requires us begging the Chinese for billions in investment).
We need to rethink energy like they rethought healthcare in the 1940's - and that can't be done through patchwork privatisation.
I mean, it's actually sort of a UK-centric phenomenon because of FPTP! And a lot of it still has to do with residual anger towards the coalition. Center parties do okay in Europe, though obviously they're different in every country and no one party is the same.
This is the kind of shit scraped off a shoe you put yourself in alignment with England/Wales. Not to mention the Donald Trump tweet where he displays his excitement with Boris.
Congratulations. Many of us will be there to say we told you so in 5 years.
Johnson likes a gamble and imgaging himself as the modern Churchill, the SNP should offer to rule out another referendum for twenty years if they lose or something.
You probably just weren't targetted so you didn't see what the tories were putting out.
The tories will just keep the names and signs in public ownership, it's being steadily flogged off bit by bit.
Why is nationalising a natural monopoly where the infrastructure was built by public funds (and continues to be funded with public money) not a good idea? There is no free market here so privatisation makes no sense whatsoever.
I know nurses who think that too, we are fucked. I don't think people have any concept of the ideology behind the parties.
a big problem was the incorrect belief that the manifesto in 2017 cut through because of its radicalism, so labour tried to announce policies in series in an attempt to boost the flagging poll numbers as if it was a videogame conference (oh and one more thing..waspi women).
whereas the 2017 manifesto was superficially radical (everything radical was actually in place in britain in memory of most voters) which got attention and buzz but actually limited in many ways, plausible to voters that only other people would pay for it and presented a cohesive vision and (i hate to admit it) quite right wing by accepting the end of freedom of movement and pledging to do brexit
It's certainly true that you can't win an election in the UK by being fully left wing.
But the bigger problem is what kind of centrism could work (spoiler: none of them). Do you want a tougher, less lefty-pacifist leader? Do you want them to drop the nationalised socialist economics? Or should they address people's "legitimate concerns" over immigration, sharia law, European army conscription and the female penis.
Labour are a bit stuck because there is no way to appeal to the strongly social-progressive urban and young that make up most of their activist base and also maintain support from the older working class socially conservative supporters.
Any move towards the centre will lose about as much support as they gain.
They could do better with someone like Stamer, but I don't know if he'd be enough. He's a middle class human rights lawyer and that's not going to help rebuild "the red wall". He's also less likely to boost youth turnout in the way that Corbyn (probably) has.
I think we'll just have to wait for demographic shift. I can't see millennial switching to Tory as they get older, since the Tories will selfishly prevent them from becoming owners of capital. Millenials will maintain their progressive social views as they age and I don't think the Tories will be able to trick them into blaming immigrants for why they still can't afford a mortgage in their 40's.
But it'll take a decade before the young and progressive can outnumber the old and conservative.
My fear is that Labour's electoral calculus makes them think that they can afford to lose young urban voters (like US democrats don't need to care about voters in California) because they need tougher authoritarian and socially-conservative policies to get build support in the new swing seats from the rubble of "the red wall".
But the bigger problem is what kind of centrism could work (spoiler: none of them). Do you want a tougher, less lefty-pacifist leader? Do you want them to drop the nationalised socialist economics? Or should they address people's "legitimate concerns" over immigration, sharia law, European army conscription and the female penis.
Labour are a bit stuck because there is no way to appeal to the strongly social-progressive urban and young that make up most of their activist base and also maintain support from the older working class socially conservative supporters.
Any move towards the centre will lose about as much support as they gain.
They could do better with someone like Stamer, but I don't know if he'd be enough. He's a middle class human rights lawyer and that's not going to help rebuild "the red wall". He's also less likely to boost youth turnout in the way that Corbyn (probably) has.
I think we'll just have to wait for demographic shift. I can't see millennial switching to Tory as they get older, since the Tories will selfishly prevent them from becoming owners of capital. Millenials will maintain their progressive social views as they age and I don't think the Tories will be able to trick them into blaming immigrants for why they still can't afford a mortgage in their 40's.
But it'll take a decade before the young and progressive can outnumber the old and conservative.
My fear is that Labour's electoral calculus makes them think that they can afford to lose young urban voters (like US democrats don't need to care about voters in California) because they need tougher authoritarian and socially-conservative policies to get build support in the new swing seats from the rubble of "the red wall".
Some nurses would actually do well out of charging patients the earth, I don't think they would care.
Yeah they are trapped, going after one group ensures losing another.
I stand by this. They made a bad guy out of Ed Milliband. We're fucked.
Zaph SMD
Yeah. For some reason I thought the National Grid was still publicly owned and we were talking about the distribution networks. The National Grid should be nationalised. I agree. When reading about this found an article that suggested the Tories were actually considering this back in 2016. Lets hope they return to that plan.
The Tory voters blame Labour for austerity and Labour voters blame Lib Dems for austerity. The campaign against Corbyn and Swanson was disgusting. The fucking Tories are responsible for austerity and pissing their fucking pants at the other parties attacking each other.
Just some light renegotiation for drug prices, nothing to see here.
If you can afford it, get your family on private healthcare now. At least one that just covers the common long term conditions. Yeah, its a bitter tory-tasting pill, but prices for new customers are only going to go up, and it gets prohibitively expensive if you begin cover later in their life.
I think we need to be careful trying to portray the northern Labour Party as some brutish offshoot, it's a chunk that wanted brexit not most of it, it was sadly big enough to tip the balance when joined with the Tories etc.
They still voted for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown Ed Miliband and even Corbyn a few years ago.
They still voted for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown Ed Miliband and even Corbyn a few years ago.
water and power should absolutely be public utilities though. We paid for them, sold them on the cheap and now they provide a crap service while creaming the profits. It's ridiculous.
The government might well end up paying for the WASPI cost anyway
Broadband is probably the hardest sell because it's such a commercial business but Open Reach is failing. Areas that are seen as unprofitable they don't service (and neither do Virgin). The infrastructure is old and crap and we're going to pour billions into BT to sort it out and hope they do.
Beyond that though there's a bigger question about access and I personally think providing people broadband would have enormous benefits for the country and economy that far outstrip the costs involved. Even the companies that would be targeted in tax would've been better off with a additional tens of millions of people that can suddenly uses their services.
The Lib Dems are directly responsible for passing a lot of the Tory austerity.
The 'they are going to get what they deserve' crowd aren't going to help.
The Lib Dems are just as responsible for austerity as the Tories...
In the case of NI, it's legally not Johnson's call. The Good Friday Agreement says that the Secretary of State shall call a referendum "any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland".
So, for example, if there were a series of opinion polls in NI that suggested that a united Ireland would win a referendum, it should be legally incumbent upon the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to call that referendum. Once called, if won, "the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament such proposals to give effect to that wish".
In real life I'm sure Johnson would be able to quietly order the Secretary of State for NI to creatively misinterpret any such circumstances, but in legal terms he shouldn't be involved, either in the decision to call the referendum or in any attempt to mess with the result afterwards.
I think that's what he'll do. He might even try to make that legally stick - like, removing the ability of the Scottish parliament to call even advisory referendums for 20 years as a condition for allowing another one.
They let Sturgeon sleep for a few hours and in the next 10 minutes she's going to address the nation
Time the rustle jimmies and call out the disgrace that is the UK.
Time the rustle jimmies and call out the disgrace that is the UK.
Well first of all without government intervention it's very difficult to encourage the market to get ahead of the curve - it's a lot easier when you remove the need for satisfying shareholders and also the government can look beyond profit making in identifying both the technology and sites for renewable power generation.
It's important that the government in its role as both policy maker and investor can encourage the kinds of technology that works best for the UK. So for example, while PV is coming down in price around the world, I'm not sure we would see as much benefit as other parts of the globe. Jokes about the lack of sunshine aside, solar panels need a higher level of solar radiation to be viable and because of the way planning permission works, it'd be very difficult for the private sector to make large inroads on viable solar farms.
I'm not sure the current technology would be enough anyway, as we would need to generate more than we'd use and have the capacity to store that energy for when the cloud cover reduces or stops generation. Battery capacity isn't there yet and the UK isn't exactly bathing in solar radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Solar_potential.
There are initiatives to improve the mapping of solar radiation around the country but it can get fairly granular, so unless you want to invest in a massive plant (something like this still involves the government despite the private component: https://gulfnews.com/uae/worlds-lar...ople-switched-on-in-abu-dhabi-1.1561799168033) then it's going to need a lot of careful planning.
Other forms of renewable energy will require a lot of detailed planning in the long term, which you can't expect from private firms. A lot of the improvements we need to the grid will come down to storage in the future, otherwise we'll be wasting excess energy and continue to require conventional energy sources for the downtime. For example, Hydro Quebec is state owned and is in a partnership with Sony to address this very issue: http://news.hydroquebec.com/en/pres...-scale-energy-storage-system-for-power-grids/
As for water, it's more a practicality thing - the UK doesn't really do desalination and hopefully we won't have to invest in that direction but water treatment as well as increasing reservoir capacity are crucial to make sure that we don't waste our natural resources. Part of the reason we have summer droughts/hosepipe bans is because of the inefficiencies in the system, as well as the waste from consumption https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190310-why-britains-rain-cant-sustain-its-thirst
Singapore (also state owned) reuses its water as best as possible, dubbed New Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater. We could be better:
Again, having water utilities state owned makes it easier for the government to make these changes to the sector on its on schedule to meet its own targets rather than meet shareholder requirements.
If I had more time to study this I could probably find better details.
You're seriously making excuses for deaths via austerity huh?
I have tried to avoid any of that stuff, shit is fucked up and the us v them stuff only benefits people who thrive on division.
I agree that they shouldn't have joined the coalition but once they did they have to compromise on their manifesto or a coalition is pointless. They thought they could get rid of FPTP and the compromises were worth it. They were wrong obviously but we wouldn't be in this mess now if their gamble had worked.
I don't think he's making excuses, he's saying the claim is untrue. All the fact checking sites that we have to rely on say that the claim is untrue.
I thought Phisheep was a Tory voter when we were on the old site, I'm not sure where or why that is in my head, but I don't see the point of fighting over the coalition any more, hopefully the libdems move on if they have anyone in Westminster not tainted by it.
It was never x definitely died because of y so it was a pretty useless argument anyway even if it was true. People fucking suffered who could afford it least and that is a fact.
It was never x definitely died because of y so it was a pretty useless argument anyway even if it was true. People fucking suffered who could afford it least and that is a fact.
Agree. Considering the long term benefits, I honestly think that was the most vitally important plan in the manifesto. It sounds like a gimmick on the surface, but if even the world's biggest superpower cannot bring blue-collar jobs back, we stand no chance. Broadband for all increases our technical literacy and prepares us for the inevitable services-only economy without actually saying it. As we saw with EU & Wales - working class towns are overly sensitive to feeling patronised and hate being told they have to re-train. Free broadband was a great back-door solution that would have paid dividends for future generations outside of cities.
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