This country is doomed

Well they’re at least required to present evidence and have the powers to intervene when the law is broken.

So they can report issues to the media - cos checks and balances in liberal democracies are about the relationship between government, the court and the media which all hold each other to account.

Or at least that's the theory. In times of authoritarianism we see more corruption and less holding to account. But the theory still persists that you can observe this process itself.

It is also not clear what the polling staff/clerks did in those situations. For all we know, they intervened or people had a valid reason.

The Democracy Volunteers statement noted that it had confirmed 12% of the observed electorate over 32 separate incidents being potentially directed via family voting.

It did not state whether this was related to any particular political party, religious group, or ethnicity.

I didn’t say they were biased or “not neutral”. I questioned what the point of them is when they appear to have zero powers and zero ability to back their claims with evidence. It would make total sense to replace them with a police officer in every polling station. The blind faith in a bunch of impotent volunteers is touching.

Looking at who they are, there's some heavy duty credentials going on with Democracy Volunteers.

They don't look like crackpots or biased. I was fully expecting them to be.

What they say about poor enforcement of election law is also consistent with my own personal knowledge and experience.

I definitely agree, they both creep me out. ZP more though, it’s his face and the fear of the unknown.

How have we gotten to a point where these are our options? We are fucked with either of them

What are the solutions

I don't think that you understand the concept of Election Observers- their role is to observe elections (clue is in the name) and report their observations after the election. They are common at elections around the world.

They claim that they reported their concerns to polling station staff, and I have no reason to think that they would lie about that given they are neutral observers.

They are not there to take action against electoral mis practise - that is the role of the police. Whether they were able to or not would rely on there being a police officer at the polling station.

I still don't understand why you think that with Democracy Volunteers monitoring major elections around the world that you think that they have suddenly become "biased and not neutral " for a relatively insignificant by election in Manchester.

To be honest it comes across as tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

The tax the rich mantra is stupid because what always happens - see Labour now - is that it ends up being tax the middle. Those on PAYE with settled lives are captives - the only ones you can rely on to squeeze. Billionaires? Not enough of ‘em. Houses over 2 million? Not enough either.

Property taxes would be needed: and naturally the money drains away pretty fast. And of course a drop in house prices because a purchase would have to factor in the tax. Good? Maybe not because then the tax would have to be extended or increased. Eg If my house fell from £750k to £500k then less tax would be due on it. So the threshold would have to drop accordingly.

Don't use Meta, do use Amazon occassionally, and do believe both should adhere to UK law.

I hope you don't use Amazon or Meta.

What has happened is globalisation. Companies can choose where they base themselves. The world is open, technology made that possible.

In the 80s we had national companies, then international and subsequently Global. The market cap of some of the world's largest companies exceeds the GDP of many countries. That's scary as companies have more economic power that governments and that trend will only continue. Unless consumers worldwide decide to give up the tech?? however even if every UK person did it wouldn't make a difference because at 70m population we're a tiny % in the global world

The pace of charge has been so fast that most people can't relate to the economy.. it's why the extreme left and right is rising because simple slogans sound good but the solutions are complex and will take time, which is causing anger amongst voters.

Mixed feelings here. I'm glad they won rather than Reform, but I would not want the country to be run by the Green party in its current iteration - too extreme on the left rather than the right.

Agree, but that means the job market will contract with less vacancies for everyone, which means less tax collected. The migrants, arriving will have more "needs" such as health care, education and housing and there will be hardly any working people to pay for it all.

The Greens solution to tax the wealthy and companies would be fantastic, if it had even a small chance of working, but it won't. The large corporates will relocate, look at the success of Ireland because Corporation tax is low. The UK no longer has such a pull factor for companies and higher taxation makes it even less feasible. This is the sad reality.

The original Green manifesto was about simple living, reducing people's need for spending, using the Earths finite resources which they recognised wouldn't fly with consumerism so ditched that to selling a dream.

Labour are trying a Greens "lite" policy, tax more (increases in NI) and the economy has responded negatively and quickly by high unemployment.

I don't have the answer but the Greens agenda isn't it...I wouldn't trust Reform either. There is a reason the UK bounced between more centre parties for generations!

Brava.

It clarifies that there’s no point to them. They say they reported their concerns to poll clerks, the poll clerks say they didn’t. If they can’t report their concerns to the police and they can’t collect evidence, why have them in the first place?

There are more Catholics than Muslims (including myself) and no one is up in arms about us, and beliefs are very similar to Islam

Can you explain?

I'm so glad it's not just me.

You can offer to take the kids to Disneyland and everyone can get excited and be really happy.

It's a bit shit though when the reality is you thought the £200 for five holiday to Disneyland was too good to be true, but you paid for it anyway and now you can't get your money bank because the conman running the website has fucked off.

The Green will turn out to be like this.

People who think immigration is something that has only happened in the last couple of decades, need to educate themselves

This country has been multi-cultural for Centuries, Millenia even.

This “British culture” people bang on about is a hodge-podge of wider European traditions. No culture (unless they have not been exposed to outside influences) has developed in isolation.

We have always been a place of Refuge, for people suffering religious and political persecution. Economic migration is not new.

…and maybe if we hadn’t invaded large parts of the world and imposed our langague, laws, and religion, maybe people would be less likely to want to move here.

The country is no more doomed now, due to immigration, than when 50,000 French Huguenots moved here in the 17th Century, 90,000 Jewish Refugess moved here prior to WW2, and the 6,000,000 of Irish Descent.

There are more Catholics than Muslims (including myself) and no one is up in arms about us, and beliefs are very similar to Islam.

It’s not unskilled jobs getting squeezed out by AI. It’s a raft of white collar jobs.

The people voting for the Greens aren’t looking at their other policies, other than open borders and support of the Palestinians. I suppose a bit like Reform. Extremist parties will lure people in with their headline stuff which they can exploit, but then have absolutely ridiculous other policies in the small print. I think even the lefties on this thread don’t really want open borders or for millions to be diverted to overseas issues in Gaza, but they are happy to see Labour punished, so are being blinkered as to the true picture of what life would be like under a Green lead government.

I guess The Donald has just pissed on Zack's chips.