Westministenders: Before the Fire Alarm of Rome goes off

[RedToothBrush]

I’m going to keep this one very simple.

THE DEADLINE TO REGISTER TO VOTE IS 22ND MAY.
www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Postal votes start to go out on 23rd May.

Your challenge is to persuade someone to register to vote or to get someone who is considering not to, to get their arse to the polling station.

Go forth and harass. Especially women and the young.

That’s it. No frills OP.

Didn't Amber Rudd make that vile suggestion at the Con Party Conf that companies should publish a list of the number of foreign employees they have? I won't shed any tears if she loses her seat which I'd theoretically winnable (maj: 4796).

Just bought Johnny Marr's Set The Boy Free on Kindle daily deal.

Oops wrong thread!

Yes lala theoretically winnable.
I've just checked, and in 2005 Labour won her Hastings seat, and in 2010 and 2015 it was a fairly narrow Tory majority.

Encouraging voter registration and participation is one of the main focuses (foci?) of Gina Miller's Best for Britain campaign. The other is tactical voting.

<a class="break-all" href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-comey-firing.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=t.co/LsR9PXI8ND" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-comey-firing.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=t.co/LsR9PXI8ND

In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred.

Demanded loyalty.

Hmmmm. Echoes of that here too

.

Love these Dear Libby things...

Can you wise lot please help me understand this?

I believe many pretty mainstream economists have been warning against austerity and sceptical of the Tory approach for a while. I expect you get people who will support each side, but the conservative austerity agenda is by no means universally accepted as the best approach. Many think more investment would be a far better way to go. In my view austerity is an ideological rather than economic agenda for the Tories. They want to cut the public sector and benefits system to the bone and use the economy as an excuse.

Completely agree Bigly

.

In my view austerity is an ideological rather than economic agenda for the Tories. They want to cut the public sector and benefits system to the bone and use the economy as an excuse.

This. To a point.

The reality is that cutting services generally ends up costing the tax payer more.

I saw an example a couple of weeks ago about how someone had lost their disability car but we're legally allowed mobility assistance. This means they had an allowance for a taxi for various trips - such as to hospital appointments. This was costing many times more than the disability car was, plus it reduced the ability of that person to live and degraded them.

One of the reasons situations like this are arising us because the ideologically and decision making behind it is incompetent and ignorant. Especially of legal rights. (See Theresa May's record at the home office)

Why do you think they want Brexit? To remove all those pesky underlying rights that are costing money.

Where will that leave the person without the disability car who then has no legal right to assistance to attend hospital appointments and no ability to earn money and no right to any other financial assistance?

We know the answer and it's beyond grim.

It's also why these threads will continue indefinitely and Remainers won't just 'get on with their lives' as some suggest. Purely because Brexit means for many people that they can't just get on with their lives. The implications for their lives are devastating.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e938d1b2-3699-11e7-a950-1fd679d420f6
Carefully chosen, an identikit team

The coming of the May-Bot MP army.

A whole load of people incapable of independent thought or intelligent decision making, fully indoctrinated to follow their dear leader.

Can't wait for the post election version of 'Strong and Stable' to deflect from answering questions.

'Rome is not burning' as the flames rise higher, in the style of Comical Ali in the Iraq War II claiming they were winning the war as the American tanks are almost visible in the background.

The reality is that cutting services generally ends up costing the tax payer more.

Who cares ? As long as the proles are taught their place, then it makes very good sense to spend their money teaching them a lesson.

I was born before the famous court case where a barrister asked - without irony - is this a book you would like your wife, or servants to read. People might think we have progressed - we invented digital watches fgs. But to anyone who tells me that I am imagining things, I give you Jacob Rees-Mogg

Where will that leave the person without the disability car who then has no legal right to assistance to attend hospital appointments and no ability to earn money and no right to any other financial assistance?

Hopefully out of sight ?

Ian Dunt @ iandunt
Is Theresa May capable to answering a question without saying "what I would say is"?

It's what she does when she doesn't want to answer the question and is digging around for giving an answer to a completely different question.

She always says 'Let me be clear' when she's about to spout bollocks.

The says 'Strong and Stable' when she can't think of anything else to say. It's a comfort blanket for when it gets tough and the mean nasty journalist has difficult questions for her.

It's quite nice at the moment as she can just say 'Look! Jeremy Corbyn' and journalists look in the other direction.

Does she realise the reality of what a landslide brings? She can't do that anymore. When is a comedian, newsnight audience member, newspaper etc going to do a piece on May's 'tells'.

They are actually quite funny especially with the frequency with which she uses them.

www.channel4.com/news/prime-minister-theresa-may-interview-with-gary-gibbon

Let's play spot the 'tell'.^

Big demonstrations in Russia against Putin.

Barely mentioned in British press, again.

Looks like we have a global fight back against the 'you know what' type of government.

www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-protests.html?_r=0

Canada wil do nicely as an example.

They have endured years of right wing Thatcher type gov, and Trudeau is not perfect but he's not May or Trump.

The Strong and Stable thing reminds me more than anything else of those people repeating "cool wet grass" with increasing desperation as they try their hand at walking barefoot on hot coals.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3Fterm%3Dcool%2520wet%2520grass%26amp%3Dtrue

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/populist-personalities-the-big-five-personality-traits-and-party-choice-in-the-2015-uk-general-election/
Populist personalities? The Big Five Personality Traits and party choice in the 2015 UK general election

This is fascinating.

It leaves me the question: what would happen to your personality and therefore your politics if you lived through stable / unstable times?

Think what that might well mean for the future of politics in the UK....

Strong and stable is beginning to sound like Dr Seuss.

For Motheroffourdragons - and also (relevant to this thread ) anyone else interested in how the state broadcaster can alter perceptions.

Here is how @scotelects (and everyone else except the BBC ) reported the facts of Scottish council elections. Although there were a few outlets (eg the Guardian, ITV and a few others) who reported the SNP has having a notional increase of 31 seats Because that's what they were: notional. Parties didn't put forward candidates in these notional seats (eg my ward changed from a 3 candidate ward to a 4 candidate ward) and/or people's 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc preferences would have been different.

Scotland Elects @scotelects

Scotland #LE2017 results by seats won

SNP 431 (+6)
CON 276 (+161)
LAB 262 (-132)
OTHER 172 (-24)
LD 67 (-4)
GRN 19 (+5)

Changes w/ 2012

Scotland Elects @scotelects
Scotland #LE2017 first preference votes:

SNP 32.3% (N/C)
CON 25.3% (+12%)
LAB 20.2% (-11.2%)
LD 6.8% (+0.2%)
GRN 4.1% (+1.8%)

Scotland Elects @scotelects

Scotland #LE2017 results by largest party in each council

SNP 19 (+10)
CON 4 (+2)
IND 4 (-1)
LAB 3 (-13)
(+ 2 ties w/ SNP-IND and SNP-LAB)

The other thing that was interesting when I was looking for bald figures to provide (there are others on @scotelects) was a) the predominance of the BBC's "loss" figures and b) defensive articles from the BBC about "how it calculated the results"

1st preference votes were exactly the same percentage between 2012 and 2017 for the SNP: the percentage changes are from Labour to Tory - resulting in the gap to 2nd placed party (in number of seats) increasing from c30 to over 150

Election Data @ Election_data
°I'm of the [early] view that the lack of UKIP candidates in Labour seats isn't such a bad thing for Labour. UKIP drew votes from Labour in^
a lot of Labour-held seats between 2012 and 2015 and some more since. However, it is something of a stretch to believe those votes now
transfer to the Conservatives as some seem to be suggesting. I'm sure Lab-UKIP-Con is happening but not seen convincing evidence that is the
case. That vote has to go somewhere of course. The options are 1. back to Labour, 2. Stay at home, 3. Tories, 4. Another party. How that
breaks will decide the impact of UKIP not standing and the net effect may hurt Labour of course. But it's simplistic to believe it's going
to lose seats for Labour without understanding how those votes break. One further point. The removal of UKIP from the ballot paper provides
Labour candidates with some clarity of purpose. "Us vs the Tories" concentrates the minds of voters in a lot of Labour heartland seats.
Without UKIP on the ballot paper voters are almost being challenged to vote Tory. For many Labour voters that's still a step too far.

I agree with this.

The assumption that Kippers will all go Tory is wrong.

The pattern I've seen is more like half kipper votes will go blue. The rest either go elsewhere or don't vote.

I've also personally come across the curious case of the Lib Dem Kippers. This rare breed do exist. The father of one of my good friends is one. He believes in letting people live as they want (this includes the right to be a racist twat). He is a hard leaver but as a nationalist believes very strongly in grassroots politics and localism. Without a Kipper to vote in his area I could see him going back to the LDs. Even with them being pro EU. The localism thing is more important. He hates the Tories with a passion. The LDs just need to get to his front door and talk to him. Whether they will is another matter.