Westminstenders: Register to Vote

[RedToothBrush]

The closing date for registration is this Tuesday

The weekend has seen the leaders question time debates.

Johnson failed to answer a question and the BBC edited later edited footage to change laughter at him to applause.

Swinson continues to prove that the Lib Dem campaign planners don't understand the electorate. They based the campaign around her and the more the public see her and the more she opens her gob she proves she's the witless headgirl who really knows fuck all.

Corbyn has now adopted a neutral 2nd referendum position. Far too late.

Jo Johnson apparently said that a good election manifesto is one people aren’t talking about 48 hrs later, and it seems that the Conservatives really have gone for that strategy.

Johnson had promised a manifesto for change yet of the three main parties it seems far from that. It avoids controversy for the most part, but also doesn't offer solutions to some of our biggest problems like social care. But with the Tories so ahead in the polls, the status quo and making sure they don't have a repeat of the 'dementia tax' car crash seems to be the order of the day. Because Brexit is going to going to provide a magic solution instead...

Meanwhile the Labour Party have gone completely the other way and really have gone for it and come up with ideas. With a mixed response from the public and press.

And I still can't tell you what is in the LD one, cos Prince Andrew...

This week should see the election come into focus as postal voting starts. As it stands its hard to bet on anything but a Tory majority.

Look at the raw data

Conservatives 32%
Labour 28%

UNDECIDED 13%

It's going to be an interesting few weeks.

Looks like Conservatives have a top down approach.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-candidate-fake-election-ruse-crick-tory-ashfieldukk5ddbfe83e4b00149f7211742?ncid=fcbklnkukhpmg00000001&fbclid=IwAR0s-SKKwbkBUSldagOMEWti96OGxxZ9YmtHzsXPVCzr9bG89QaeYHLino&guceereferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZmFjZWJvb2suY29tLw&gucereferrerrsig=AQAAANbtoIUCFn2Cp1i94zyaG7O5AzSJwBCw4cLmfM7uLvJA5QhTHS0SJDR-2nc4KEY0BngjwbcFR772sP5G9Xtw5Jk-hvdtMP3ZbupwlAoCVsPnOpqpKvzuvzL7Pp-MM5qPsLTGOCF8CzI8a44uEBs3fJpDGwOOD8ObZIiw4Sn5FNI&guccounter=2

The polls are as meaningless as they were in 2017.

I hope so. Those of you who can think back to 1997 when Blair first got in - from what I remember the Tories were expected to do badly, but no one predicted the absolute carnage they suffered.

Similarly, in this year's local elections - the BBC made as much as it could about being a bad night for Labour, but tried to play down how the Tories were absolutely slaughtered in many places.

So much for BJ "getting Brexit done":

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/25/johnson-sowing-seeds-of-biggest-brexit-crisis-yet-warns-sir-ivan-rogers?

Boris Johnson is sowing the seeds of “the biggest crisis of Brexit to date”,
Britain’s former envoy to the EU Sir Ivan Rogers has said in a scathing verdict on the government’s “diplomatic amateurism”.

Less than three weeks before polling day, the man who resigned as the UK’s EU ambassador in January 2017 said
Johnson was repeating Theresa May’s “strategy errors” and would soon find himself “unwisely” boxed in by his campaign promises.
...
In a lecture at Glasgow university on Monday night, Rogers, who resigned following a Tory backlash over his reports that an EU trade deal might take a decade,
said “the biggest crisis of Brexit to date” was “virtually inevitable” in late 2020.

_ The Ghost of Christmas yet to come: Sir Ivan Roger’s Brexit lecture full text_

Yay ! It's all happening in Glasgow

Ivan Rogers is the most informed British analyst, as always, being our former ambassador to the EU
A great loss to our negotiating team, but he spoke truth to power, which is usually a career-ender

https://policyscotland.gla.ac.uk/ghost-of-christmas-yet-to-come-brexit-lecture-full-text/

Looking ahead to the coming year(s) of the Brexit process, hosted by Policy Scotland at the University of Glasgow on 25 November 2019.

Ha ha I'm not what could be considered as a posh glaswegian!!

Random - dh (Glaswegian norm and bred) insists that I'm not truly a Glaswegian as I was brought up in Bearsden/Milngavie and am therefore a snob

But I've now lived with him on the Southside for over 25 years - and learnt a lot of his vocabulary even if I still have a posh accent

And even before then, when I lived down in England post graduation, I found out I spoke a different English (even more different than St Andrews ): with simple words/expressions like outwith, going for the messages, graphs that go "up the way/down the way", thole, dreich, scunnered, oxters, peely wally.....

Electoral Reform Society
@electoralreform
NEW: Two thirds (1.86m) of the 2.8m who've applied to #RegisterToVote so far this election campaign are under the age of 35

Cheering, isn’t it Just?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-brexit-latest-boris-johnson-article-50-second-referendum-a9217656.html

People speaking out over Tory manifesto and attack on our courts

Has anyone got their postal voting papers yet? We're registered for a postal vote. Got confirmation of that some time ago, but no actual voting papers as yet.

They’re rattled.

Allison Pearson
@allisonpearson
·
1h
For the first time I feel sick about this election. The Opposition is not normal. Even if you didn’t support Blair or Miliband, they were decent men who could basically be trusted with our country.
But This.
More Labour moderates should speak out

Tuesday Papers

i
Corbyn says money "stolen" from WASPI women is a debt that must be paid

Sun
Claims only 30,000 voters may swing it in the 50 key seats the Tories have to win

We've seen many Tory moderates speak out, including several former ministers

I hope nobody minds, but I am collecting the positive Twitter-and-such quotations from this thread (and also information about the NHS and the Tory manifesto) to give to our Labour candidate when I see him tomorrow, to give him some extra encouragement for the hustings later in the week.

He has been campaigning for WASPIs for a couple of years at least, and about our local hospital for even longer, as a local councillor and mayor, and people on these threads do a brilliant job of finding short, easy to memorise data.

(Spent the day manning the temporary HQ telling people who came in how to register to vote, so that others fit enough to do it could go out canvassing or leafleting. I still feel useless, but marginally less so. Seven votes definitely secured against the ERG incumbent so far, several more possibles.)

Late to this particular discussion, but wanted to remind folks that the reason we're talking about the NHS for this particular election is Brexit and subsequent FTA with US. This will put health care front and centre. One example is how Canada was forced to accept higher drug prices as part of its FTA renegotiation as US believes they pay higher prices because foreign governments force drug prices down. Americans ready to stop this ... eg www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CEA-Rx-White-Paper-Final2.pdf

Negotiating a trade deal with the EU in an unprecedentedly quick time is the centrepiece of the prime minister’s misleading pledge to “get Brexit done”.

I think Sir Ivan is wrong on this - Johnson and his extreme right wing minders neither know nor care about an EU trade deal. For them it's how soon the UK can become a vassal state of the US. That's all that matters to them.

The Labour party received a boost on Tuesday when 163 economists signed a public letter offering broad support for its proposals for higher public investment to kick start growth and raise productivity.

www.ft.com/content/d29b4cbe-0fa4-11ea-a225-db2f231cfeae

I'd like to think so AH, Im hoping the grime scene has got more people registering and ready to vote for Labour

Well over a quarter of a million people under 35 registered for a vote in a big daily spike.

www.gov.uk/performance/register-to-vote/registrations-by-age-group#from=2019-10-01T00:00:00Z&to=2019-11-01T00:00:00Z

On the day of the 1997 election I was standing by the river chatting to an acquaintance. He said that even though the polls suggested Labour would do well, he thought the Tories might scrape in. It was a beautiful sunny day, one that filled me with optimism and suddenly the “things are going to get better” refrain made perfect sense to me. I said it would be a Labour landslide (though voted LD as was my wont, albeit not any more).
On BJ vs TM: she wasn’t likeable but even on these threads was perceived as a grown up with principles, even though one might not agree with them. BJ is correctly seen by anyone with an ounce of sense and humanity as an immature philanderer and liar with only his own self interest at heart.

born I remember walking to the polling both in 1997. It was a lovely warm evening and a blackbird was singing its heart out outside the polling booth and I remember feeling so optimistic too. And the days that followed were so happy.

So the gap IS narrowing Cellion. Keeping everything crossed for a hung parliment and big youth vote. I think that would send exactly the right message to the dingbats in charge.

Sorry Cendrillon

That message is we the electorate are sick of being spoken doen to. We can evaluate issues independantly. The public school boy arrogant bluster does't cut it with anyone born after 1959 and certainly not with most women. Climate change is a big deal, as are workers' rights (which disproportionally protect women) and food standards. Coalition and comprimise is the only way forward in 2020.