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Brexit

Brexit Arms

990 replies

DustyDiamond · 07/11/2019 09:39

Welcome to the Brexit Arms!!

🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷

#PrayForSally
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44
DustyDiamond · 13/11/2019 19:10

I do find it kind of fascinating that people would swing from Conservative to Labour and vice versa.

It's not really that unusual in my experience

Some people are tribal & loyal but most folk I know aren't

I've voted Labour (97), then didn't vote again until 2010 because Blair's govt screwed me over massively (armed forces), then in 2010 I voted Lib Dem, then 2015 & 2017 Tory.

If it wasn't for Brexit I'd still vote Tory this time - but putting Brexit aside, if labour was not Corbyn et al & they had a credible alternative then I'd likely vote for them again in the future.

OP posts:
frumpety · 13/11/2019 19:26

I unfortunately don't have the joy of being a floating voter where I live, well I can obviously vote for whoever I choose but generally do so each time knowing it won't make the slightest bit of difference. At least not in a GE. Very much a true blue area.
As far as local government is concerned, the conservative councillors are not the biggest fans of their counterparts in Westminster, because they are seen as the ones making the cuts to services and getting the stick for it when in fact it is national policy that is responsible.
Its interesting what you said about a middle class manifesto wrt Labour Dusty , I am curious to know which bits you think appealed to the middles classes ?

My own view is that this election will be just as seismic, the difference being that the incumbent government are the ones looking to upend things

Upend things in what way SingingLily ?

SingingLily · 13/11/2019 20:03

We've had five years of coalition government and four years of minority government with a confidence and supply agreement. The Conservatives are gambling on a majority government this time, and a healthy majority at that.

By the way, I'm a floating voter but I don't live in a marginal.

How do you choose who to vote for, Frumpety, if you never read the manifestos beforehand? Genuine question.

XingMing · 13/11/2019 20:45

Bill Clinton summed up most elections when he said, "It's the economy". But here in the UK, this year, 2019, it isn't that simple.

Geography is a huge factor: if you live in the Southeast, then there are jobs. Around the perimeter there are a lot fewer, and the wages are much lower, plus people are competing for those jobs with migrants who have come from countries where the standard of living expectations are not so high, but may have degrees and PGs. If you attended a bog-standard comprehensive, staffed by teachers who were taught that your dreams define your horizon, and that you can do anything as long as you're passionate enough, then you are in a pickle. You don't want to work in a care home, and dream of being a game designer: either you work for peanuts on the ladder to game design, if you can find a toehold, or you work for peanuts caring (or in tourism/hospitality/retail -- substitute at will).

Locally, rural SW, I saw an apprenticeship for environmental conservation last week. It looked okay, with the National Trust, but when you read it through, they wanted a young person to dig ditches and holes for three years. Sometimes with a digger.

No one on MN wants to read this and apply it to their DC, but the world needs more ditch diggers and fewer investment bankers and vloggers, lawyers and film-makers.

For the above, you may substitute postal service, plumbers, delivery drivers, bar staff, hairdressers, waiters, chefs, warehouse operators, fork lift drivers, health care assistants and baristas. They catch fish and milk cows, drill and dig spuds, build houses and hospitals -- we all depend on them.

Anyone who does an honest day's work should be treated fairly and have a shot at making a better life. For me, that means not trapped in a stroppy class-based fight, nor does it mean vulnerable to exploitation (intellectual or financial).

On balance that makes me a fairly left-wing Tory.

frumpety · 13/11/2019 20:55

How do you choose who to vote for, Frumpety, if you never read the manifestos beforehand? Genuine question.

Ok, I will give you an honest answer SingingLily , I vote for who I think will cause the least harm to my patients this time.

frumpety · 13/11/2019 21:09

I am not right wing or left wing , I sit in the centre with the rest of the sensible folk , who wonder what the chuff is happening ? I am not against companies making a profit or being profit driven , but I believe that a grown up government legislates for the worse excesses of that ideology, profit is fine as long as it doesn't endanger life or requires the taxpayer to fund private profit.

SingingLily · 13/11/2019 21:18

I vote for who I think will cause the least harm to my patients this time.

That's a pretty fair reason, Frumpety - thank you.

You're a One Nation Tory, XingMing. I'm somewhere between classical liberal and ONT so not a million miles away from you ideologically.

XingMing · 13/11/2019 21:36

SingingLily, I thought the same about you!

SingingLily · 13/11/2019 21:46
Smile
frumpety · 14/11/2019 07:37

Have any of the main political parties published their manifestos yet ? Had a quick glance at their websites but they all seem a bit light on detail ?

frumpety · 14/11/2019 08:13

Raised an eyebrow and sighed deeply at the 40 new hospitals thing on the Conservative website

We’re providing £850 million for 20 hospital upgrades, £2.7 billion for the first six new hospitals, and seed funding so that work on 34 more can make progress.

howabout · 14/11/2019 10:19

People are deeply cynical about all NHS spending pledges now. May not believe Tory 40 new hospitals but the NHS is still bearing the cost of all Labour's PFI largesse and the SNP are busy building hospitals and not opening them.

Otoh I have always been opposed to Uni tuition fees. At the level set by Labour they ensured that there was a tax on education so it became more economically sensible to be a pop star. At the level set by the Tories there is now a perverse incentive to wrack up maximum loans if you know you are unlikely to be a high earner - it was always obvious that 80% would never repay them but it has taken 10 years for the OBR to work this out and treat it as £10 bn Govt spending pa (almost exactly the same costing they gave for Labour policy to scrap them in 2010).

Brew while waiting for my oven to self clean.

Saucery · 14/11/2019 10:42

I agree with both Xing and howabout.
We need to lose the snobbery about many jobs, provide decent apprenticeships and non- graduate pathways and return to free university education for anyone who wants it. Too many young people were sold the lie that they need to go to university to pursue their chosen career and too many are unable to go just to study a subject they love in more depth.

Parker231 · 14/11/2019 11:18

Why won’t Boris hold an enquiry?

Twenty-five sitting and former Conservative councillors have been exposed for posting Islamophobic and racist material on social media, according to a dossier obtained by the Guardian that intensifies the row over anti-Muslim sentiment in the party.

The disclosure that 15 current and 10 former Tory councillors have posted, shared or endorsed Islamophobic or other racist content on Facebook or Twitter will increase pressure on Boris Johnson after he backtracked on a pledge to hold an independent inquiry into the issue.

Saucery · 14/11/2019 12:01

Why do the LibDems and Greens hate women and have no concept of safeguarding issues?
Why is Labour riddled with anti-semitism?
Why is Nigel Farage so inexplicably popular?
Why are the working class in this country held in such contempt unless they prove useful to a political party?
Why was an advisory referendum handled so appallingly?

Questions....questions......sooooo many questions.....

twofingerstoEverything · 14/11/2019 12:26

Why are the Tories such inveterate liars?
Why is the Conservative Party riddled with Islamaphobes?
Why do people like Christopher Chope and Iain Duncan Smith even exist?
Why do some members of the working class repeatedly vote for austerity?
Why do so many voters vote for privileged, public-school educated people who have no concept or experience of what life is like for most of us?
So many questions...

twofingerstoEverything · 14/11/2019 12:34

Locally, rural SW, I saw an apprenticeship for environmental conservation last week. It looked okay, with the National Trust, but when you read it through, they wanted a young person to dig ditches and holes for three years. Sometimes with a digger.
Cote Restaurant chain was offering waiting staff 'apprenticeships' paying £3.70/hour with the proviso that apprentices would be expected to work evenings and weekends at that rate. Call centres regularly offer 'apprenticeships' too, along with large, chain hotels offering 'receptionist apprenticeships.'
Old apprenticeships could lead to well-paid careers - these lead to minimum wage jobs.

Saucery · 14/11/2019 12:46

Completely agree about apprenticeships, twofingers. They shouldn’t be an excuse for cheap labour.

SingingLily · 14/11/2019 14:36

😂Saucery

Just to cheer you all up, here is today's Telegraph cartoon.

SingingLily · 14/11/2019 14:37

Aargh, it's not posting. Will try again later.

Limer · 14/11/2019 15:26

I was out with friends last night, deliberately didn't mention the election, and nobody else did either. I think people are already fed up with the whole palaver!

Looking forward to today's cartoon SingingLily

SingingLily · 14/11/2019 15:39

Done it! Here you go...

Brexit Arms
Limer · 14/11/2019 15:42

Interested to see your voting history, Dusty which has made me think of mine. I've actually voted for the winning party in all GEs from 1983-2017, apart from 2005 when I voted Conservative, but Labour won. Like you, I voted Labour in '97 and again in '01.

Limer · 14/11/2019 15:46

Love it SingingLily Grin

The whole renationalisation idea is utter madness. It was only when Labour ditched the old Clause IV that they became electable. Surely Comrade Corbyn remembers this?

SingingLily · 14/11/2019 16:53

I voted Labour in 1997 too, Limer. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. However, I came across an article and a bar chart some time ago that explained all. Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark it and cannot for the life of me remember where to find it.

In essence, a professor of politics and economics in the UK developed a software programme which allowed him to input key words and phrases from all party manifestos over the last fifty years. The software did an overall analysis and assigned each party leader's direction a weighting on the Left/Right spectrum and compared them by era.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest distance - huge, in fact - was between Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock. However, it showed Tony Blair was clearly to the right of John Major. That explains 1997. It also explains why Corbynistas hold Blairites in such high regard now Grin. Theresa May was to the right of Ed Miliband but still to the left of Tony Blair. That also explains a lot.

Jezza is so far off to the left of even Kinnock that the software probably had to go and lie down in a darkened room for a bit. Boris doesn't appear - the analysis predated his appointment as leader - but I think the gap between him and Jezza is probably just as wide as the one between Lady T and Lord Kinnock even though Boris himself is socially and fiscally to the left of Lady T.

Surely Comrade Corbyn remembers this?

I don't think Jezza has changed his mind about anything since 1983. Wasn't it Tony Blair who - whatever your view of him, knew a thing or two about winning elections - said something like, "When a traditional left wing party competes with a traditional right wing party at an election, it ends in a traditional result"?