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.

Off for some ongoing with Chukka grin
Go girl! Tell him I'll be over later.

Tory manifesto to require all companies with 250+ staff to publish a breakdown of staff wages by ethnicity, to show racial pay disparities.

Does ethnicity include sectarian distinctions wrt Christian denomination? Could warm it up nicely during marching season.

I wonder if those of Jewish heritage have 'Sarah' or 'Israel' stamped on passports for old times's sake?

The idea that its compulsory is the alarming bit though

red you know how this works, you've read Arendt.

Weimar started with:

universities chuck out foreign students: check
workplaces: check (today's manifesto, trialled at conference?)
then the mobs are unleashed..
they are ready to go.

We can normalise it or not. I choose not to

I'm curious as to how they will be able to work out the ethnicity of employees.

I have consistently refused to fill in anything asking for my ethnicity for over 30 years. Including my current employer.

And if they try and make it a legal requirement to divulge your "ethnicity" then will there be anyone checking up ? Will we see someone who has declared themselves to be Caucasian required to redefine themselves as something else if they have a darker skin than the chart says is allowable for Caucasian ?

Perhaps we need a ministry for Racial Purity ?

It seems many on the liberal left are determined to repeat the mistakes of the 2015 general election, the EU referendum and the US presidential race. There is a widespread failure – perhaps even a refusal – to understand the reasons May and the Conservative party are so popular. Until we try to do so, we will always lose.

I don't think its quite that simple. Macron hasn't tried to understand. He offered an alternative ultimately even if it was a simple choice between a centrist banker or a fascist. What's our effective choice here?

Where is the alternative? What is the alternative in the UK?

Its all about comparisons. Its also about having something viable to believe in.

If its Corbyn v May then no communism doesn't really appeal to a lot of people. That's the problem. There is also an over simplified understanding of debt and keeping within your means that people think also applies to government spending - and there in a desire for small government.

The problem is this does not take into account how the UK is changing and how we need to adapt (and how our service need to deal with that). Eg People think lots is going into the NHS but don't realise its still significantly less than our European neighbours.

I know plenty who fear Corbyn more than May. And honestly, I don't think that's without good reason.

It precisely why May called the GE when she did because the Cons.

know this.

sorry cut up too soon.

On the topic of breaking down staff wages by (self-declared) ethnicity: the Tory comments I'm reading are dead against it because they see it as some kind of pinko, politically-correct, touchy-feely, positive discrimination BS ... while on here it's the first step to the Third Reich!

I'll give you a clue, it's much more likely to be the former than the latter. May is basically Heath but with an inverted view of the EU.

Until we try to do so, we will always lose. I have been trying really hard ever since the referendum. The trouble is that there is very little in the way of positive arguments in her support that I can understand, far more of the attitudes, perceptions and motivations that attach to May are, as far as I can see, emotional and tribal, and influenced by the media. Look at the Barmy Arms or the way many threads inevitably go.

I think the answer as Red says is to fight fire with fire. Ideally it would be with a charismatic centrist candidate like Macron but nobody is stepping up to the plate. I hope Vince is right and after the election the forces of the Centre will align, and we will have some hope next time but in the meantime all we can do is vote tactically. Luckily locally I do have a charismatic centrist candidate and I can go out on the streets and help generate enthusiasm. It is all that is keeping me sane....

I don't refuse to fill in ethnicity on forms - but I tick the box "Other European".

I self-identify as Scottish but I was born in South Africa and have Afrikaans, German, Danish, Swedish, Irish, French, Australian but no Scottish ancestors.

If its Corbyn v May then no communism doesn't really appeal to a lot of people.

That is a huge part of this.

Having just read the Chuka link, and yet again realised how good he is - even as a staunch Leaver I can see the sense & pragmatism in what he says.
If he was the Labour leader this whole election would be completely different.

Corbyn is absolutely a communist and this is Not Good. Extreme left & communism is just as scary as extreme right & fascism; Corbyn has been consistent in his beliefs for decades - I do not believe for a second that he's 'been on a journey' and softened his views (as Emily Thornberry would have us believe).

Will they be requiring people to wear yellow stars next?

Theresa May being in Abingdon, suggests that they are 'frit'. It's part of Oxford West and Abingdon and was LibDem between 1997 -2010. In 2010 Nicola Blackwood ran a particularly dirty campaign against the then MP Evan Harris. Last time the seat suffered from the swing away from the LibDems, no doubt because of tuition fees . In the local elections 11 days ago, all three seats in the town went to the LibDems. Two were already LibDem and a complacent Tory went and lost the third, although he and our MP were seen out campaigning. Well, it was good to see them doing some work, but it was too little and too late in that case.

I don't refuse to fill in ethnicity on forms - but I tick the box "Other European"

I refuse, because to do anything else is just tacit accepting the premise in the first place - which I disagree with.

As I said upthread, for it to have any "meaning" then someone is going to have to be arbiter of ethnicity. And that will result in the ludicrous situation a friend had when there were at school, in England, in the 1980s. They were Danish by descent, but they - and their father - had been born in Kenya. He was (and still is) proudly "African". Yet, he was told off for calling himself African, while at the same pupils whose heritage was Afro-Caribbean but were 2nd generation British, were referred to as "African".

And - if it's not supposed to make a difference - then why does it need to appear on job application forms before candidates are selected ?

The only place I can see it ever has a bearing is in medical notes, as ethnicity can play a major factor in disease and hereditary ... sickle-cell anaemia being the obvious case.

YouGov‏*@YouGov*

Westminster voting intention (North East)
CON 40%
LAB 42%
LD 6%
UKIP 8%
(Con lead over Lab -2, from -22 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (North West)
CON 42%
LAB 42%
LD 8%
UKIP 6%
(Con lead over Lab +0, from -13 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (Yorks&Humber)
CON 43%
LAB 38%
LD 9%
UKIP 7%
(Con lead over Lab +5, from -7 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (East Mids)
CON 54%
LAB 28%
LD 8%
UKIP 7%
(Con lead over Lab +26, from +12 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (West Mids)
CON 51%
LAB 28%
LD 9%
UKIP 9%
(Con lead over Lab +23, from +9 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (East Eng)
CON 56%
LAB 19%
LD 12%
UKIP 9%
(Con lead over Lab +37, from +27 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (London)
CON 36%
LAB 41%
LD 14%
UKIP 6%
(Con lead over Lab -5, from -9 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (South East)
CON 56%
LAB 19%
LD 15%
UKIP 6%
(Con lead over Lab +37, from +33 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (South West)
CON 52%
LAB 22%
LD 16%
UKIP 6%
(Con lead over Lab +30, from +29 at GE2015)

Westminster voting intention (Wales)
CON 41%
LAB 35%
PC 11%
LD 7%
UKIP 4%
(Con lead over Lab +7, from -10 at GE2015)

Corbyn is absolutely a communist and this is Not Good

"You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism"

P. J. O'Rourke

Red & Ron - of course a Macron-like candidate would stand a much better chance of winning in the UK, but that's because such a candidate would represent a massive rightward shift from the status quo on the left.

Look at what happened in France. In a single term, Hollande (= less loony Corbyn) became a national joke and his party has fallen into total political irrelevance. He and his party were replaced wholesale by Macron, a pro-capitalist centrist banker (= Blair without the baggage) who is now feted as the great hope of the European "left" (for winning two-thirds of the vote against the real far right).

Is the Labour Party ready to make that kind of move to win? Not a chance.

I would love to believe that this is a well meant, but deeply misguided policy, rather than anything more sinister, but no-one can be that stupid could they?

To me this seems like a policy dreamt up by someone from the right who is trying to appeal to the left. They often get some broad high-level idea, but they don't understand the details and nuance enough to get it right and often end up making things worse from the point of view of someone from the liberal or left. Someone has thought, we need to appeal to labour and lib dem voters. Those liberals are always banging on about equal pay, I know we'll do something that won't actually cost us any money but sounds like we care. Sadly they have not taken the time to actually understand or care about the racial inequality in the country or the inherent racism in their own policies that make the publication of this data problematic, meaning they rather miss the mark and end up annoying everyone.

Nearly half EU businesses already looking to cut ties with UK suppliers

Corbyn is absolutely a communist and this is Not Good

The labour manifesto as leaked is not even remotely communist. If the Tories hadn't shifted so far to the right it would not even be considered particularly radical. Or are we not talking about policies here but a general unspecified air of communism and a dislike of his taste in hats?

Someone got grumpy with me for using the loaded phrase "ordinary people" . Who the devil are these mythical "ordinary people"?

Well, here they are:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/15/are-tories-workers-party-labour-polling-figures-suggest-they-are

Theresa May first made clear her ambition to rebrand the Conservatives as “the workers’ party” in her first speech as prime minister to the Tory party conference in 2016.

In that speech the comprehensive-school educated May’s repeated emphasis on “ordinary, working-class people” was taken as an attempt to break from the class-limited appeal of the public schoolboys in David Cameron’s cabinet.

The latest polling data shows her hopes of claiming to be the workers’ party have been realised far earlier than she could ever have expected.

For Jeremy Corbyn appears in this election campaign to have achieved something even Ed Miliband was unable to do: lose the majority support not only of Britain’s skilled workers, dubbed social class C2 by the pollsters, but also the DEs – the semi-skilled, unskilled and unemployed.

As the social class breakdown in Monday’s Guardian/ICM poll shows, the Conservatives enjoy an overwhelming 55% to 29% lead over Corbyn’s Labour party among the critical C2 voters.

This social group holds the key to many Midland and north-west marginal seats that have not seen a Conservative MP since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victories of the 1980s. Indeed, polling data from the 1980s suggests that Thatcher, while capturing a significant proportion of the skilled working-class vote, never established a lead among them.

Lurking But you can get good ice cream in communist country and then there is the dancing..... Dance classes in every community centre and public park in both Cuba and China. Can't be that bad if they are dancing in the streets.....

here's good value for £0.01

Memory dims, but I flipped through this in the library in the 1990s.

The standout part for me, was where Ken expresses his admiration for Mrs. Thatcher, and the genius of persuading people to vote Conservative against their own interests. He summed it up by saying (possibly quoting someone) "if you treaty people middle class, they will vote middle class".

He also noted that the triumph of Thatcherism was to change the previous pyramid model of society, where the bottom and middle layers could outvote the top, to an "egg shaped" onel, where the middle bulge could outvote top and bottom.

Make of it what you will, but the fact I can recall it nearly 30 years after reading it, suggests it made an impact.

Recent wranglings aside, I have always had a soft spot for Ken. To my DM he was a devil incarnate (although she preferred him to anyone else as mayor; because - like most Londoners - she preferred a Londoner devil incarnate, than some parachuted in Tory twat (her words)). However he had the time, and grace to accept an invitation to our 6th form lunchtime politics club (as did Tony Benn - no Tory did) and explain in person the whole "Red Ken supports the IRA" thing of the early 80s. And when he did, it all made perfect sense (and came true with the GFA). An early lesson in not believing everything you are told.

That's a fair point Lurking - and to support it, one of the differences I noted amongst my relatives in South Africa in the run up to the fall of apartheid was that they had finally started to identify as "Africans" rather than "Europeans" or "whites" - because (d'uh ) they had lived in Africa for many generations going back to 1770

Having said that, I'm still (usually depends on context ) ok with completing it (eg census forms). But if I didn't now identify as Scottish, I'd be happy to would insist on tick the "African" box! .....despite my lovely Germanic/Scandinavian pale skin, blondeish hair and blue eyes (Dh, 100% Scottish has dark hair, olive skin and black eyes probably courtesy of a shipwrecked Spaniard )

So gratifying to see a real constituent taking Theresa May and the useless Nicola Blackwood to task. Watch the pair of them stand there like a pair of nodding dogs.

Having said that, I'm still (usually depends on context ) ok with completing it (eg census forms)

Census forms are the last place on earth I would ever put my ethnicity. But then I've studied a bit of history.

Maybe this could swing a few voters ...

If you think a Corbyn is a communist, then frankly we deserve the government we're about to get.

If it Chukka was leading, well, maybe Labour would have soared to 32 or even 33% in the polls. Labour is fucked, starting about 10 years ago at least.