Westminsterenders: Talent or Colour

[FishesaPlenty]

RTB and BCF are presumably busy with more important things. I'm clearly not qualified to start a Westminsterenders thread - but somebody has to take control and collect the waifs and strays.

The party of no talent want to introduce no colour into our lives.

6 days to the election.

Johnson is still a liar.

Corbyn is still apparently loved by Labour members and hated by everyone else.

Swinson is still a charming PTA chair.

....and Scotland, aka "the testing ground"

Despite the fact that it was North Sea Oul that was helping to fund the tax cuts and the growth of the South East

I'm not anti london but I do bloody hate the way the guardian thinks anyone outside of london is an ignorant fascinating alien. And the guardian is the only "left" paper (it doesn't feel very left to me!) so what else am I supposed to read

A very welcome rant, Red.

I am hopeful because the younger generation, who have grown up within social media, seem very good at negotiating it.

Yes, prettybird.

I'm actually really sorry for forgetting that, prettybird.

Dear Labour leavers, if you’re tempted to vote Tory, here are 10 reasons to think again - Joseph Harker

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/07/labour-leavers-tempted-vote-tory-10-reasons-think-again?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

the poster in France, talking about her child's class size being reduced to 15.

That was me, and it's actually been reduced to twelve

😁 @Wesh

The map makes a lot of sense to me. I'm probably borderline 'young kind capitalist' / 'centrist'. But I know a lot of traditionalists and somewheres.

I still maintain that I'm expecting more shocks on election night than are being anticipated. I think the electoral calculus prediction on percentages for my constituency looks more accurate than the last YouGov one especially having looked at the ward breakdown. I do think a small working tory majority is probably where we are headed. I doubt things will be squeezed more than that.

It comes down to turnout. Turnout in my constituency is always above average and it looks like they thing it will be down over 5% on 2017.

So that's what I'll be looking for on Thursday. Strange things start to happen if turnout is significantly above or below normal levels.

.

I am hopeful because the younger generation, who have grown up within social media, seem very good at negotiating it.

Call out culture is not a healthy element of social media. Neither is the increasing consumerism of social issues unfortunately.

There are pros and cons.

That's a depressing sea of blue in that map

@thecatfromjapan

It's like the US map showing 'a lot of support for Trump'

The reality is that we need a density map. The less dense rural counties have less people in - but are big. So it looks like there's a lot of blue.

In the cities, they are smaller but denser.

Really we need a 3d map with columns of colours.

This is what I am talking about (it's US, not the UK though)

blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html

It seems older people are very disillusioned and might stay home, and younger ones are going to come out more than usual. WE'll see.

Yes, agree Red, also lots of cons to social media culture

The Lib Dems have gone from revoke a50 to new ref back to revoke back to new ref and nobody has a clue what kind of glue they are sniffing.

As far as I am aware their position hasn't changed: if they formed a Government, they would have a mandate for revoke. If not, they back a people's vote.

In some areas exhorting people that 'they must vote Labour' is giving the Tories a free pass. The seat I am in, in its various guises, has never had a Labour MP. The town itself used to have the odd one or two Labour Councillors. The County Council - Tory or hung.

BTW - when I logged on I saw Tory adverts on the side bar. Now it's not going to make me change my vote, but I wonder why? Do I complain to MN?

An important entry point into journalism was the local paper. You'd cover local stories, cutting your teeth, hoping for a big story that could get you into a national.

This is spot on. My FIL started out as a cub reporter on his local paper and ended up as head of desk at a major national. These days you'd have to do onths and months of unpaid internships in London to go the same route, putting it out of reach of anyone not funded by the bank of mum and dad.

Fascinating map, choma.

True, Red - but I wonder how much traction that has in the UK? And if it's younger people doing it here?

I genuinely wonder about those things , mainly because my own off-spring are a bit sceptical about it.

And we still do have class analysis in the UK - I think the smaller space given to that in the US is a significant determinant in the rise of 'call out culture'.

In a more lighthearted note- has anyone been following the story of the 'Away' start-up? It's a news article that is all over Twitter.

I mention it because it is a really fascinating example of the dangers of 'consuming woke politics' (rather than actually doing actual transformative politics). The absence of a good old-fashioned class analysis (and old-fashioned Marxian concepts such as alienation and spectral labour) is flaring, A's is the damage that's occurs to workers when such an analysis is lacking.

Google it if you haven't read it, using search terms: away luggage slack customer experience news story

No surprise to me

Strong Left, Internationalist, socially liberal surrounded by Leave voters and traditionalists.

That's why I don't put certain posters in my window!!

"Jobs lost in manufacturing are mainly down to increased automation not immigration."

Yep, red Of the big 3 - automation, globalisation & immigration - people totally underrate the massive effects of automation / tech and the massive loss of jobs still to come

They also often claim the jobs have been replaced by new ones - well, not in the same numbers, or with the same job security, pay & conditions
Jobs for life have been replaced by the gig economy, the precariat

Just look at any factory producing cars or any other widgets:
Manufacturing used to give millions of reliable jobs, but robots mean production lines & admin too can be run with an order of magnitude fewer workers

When I first entered the jobs market, everywhere had typing pools & secretaries, reliable jobs for nearly all women,
long since replaced by either one person or everyone except the highest managers doing all their own

Banks, utilities etc had trained staff to deal with customers in person locally, instead of godawful call centres

Globalisation - outsourcing manufacturing, call centres etc and increasingly more skilled jobs further up the pay ladder - to countries like India, China, Malaysia with much cheaper labour
India alone, for example, produces many millions of graduates per year, including about 1 million in engineering fields

..... but many people primarily blame immigrants
Politicians whip up anti-immigrant feeling because they can't do anything to reverse automation or globalisation
and the furrin have for centuries been an easy target for demagogues

(so they promise to stop E27 workers - and don't mention they are replacing them with workers from developing countries that have much lower wages)

I’m getting more and more confused by the day about who to vote for (except definitely never ever the tories ) Does anyone feel like giving me some advice?

Our constituency is always Tory. They tend to get 50% of the vote, with the remainder split fairly evenly between Labour and libdems. Labour came slightly ahead of the libdems in 2017, and the libdems came slightly ahead in 2015. Both labour and libdems are sending me leaflets telling me they’re the only ones who can beat the tories. (Although libdems have sent loads of leaflets and labour just 3) My natural instinct is to vote labour, but I’m not against voting LibDem to keep out the tories.

Side note: locally, I’ve seen 2 Tory billboards when previous elections there have been loads. No labour billboards, and about 7 LibDem ones.

Westminstenders, what would you do??

Peregina the problem with the LD policy was the nuance in it. I think it's been consistent the trouble is no one knew what it was in the first place because its one thing in one scenario and one in another but they promoted revoke heavily as a simple message out of fear of looking wishy washy and indecisive like Labour. I think their policy is more clean cut and generally more straightforward than Labour's but it can easily be spun differently. Meanwhile the torys policy looks simple but just completely ignores reality.

Westminstenders, what would you do??

Look for your constituency on Wikipedia to see the vote history in recent GE's. If there's no obvious choice, study the candidates and vote for the nicest person.

My dad was asking me yesterday what I thought the result will be. I said I didn't have a fucking clue

I said that Stirling should go SNP as it was highly marginal and the lovely Alyn Smith is the SNP candidate. Genuinely don't know about the others, as it depends on whether Labour "Unionists" are prepared to vote Conservative to keep the SNP out

I also said it will depend on turnout and getting the younger people on the electoral register to actually vote - but that unusually, this mid-Winter election means that bad weather might actually benefit the anti-Tory vote as the "old" cohort might be discouraged from going out to vote.

My dad was already aware of the unusually high proportion of "Don't know/won't say" that is not reported in the headline figures and that the youth vote may not be accurately reflected in the polling.

He also asked me if I thought that Jo Swinson (his MP) would retain her seat (he's voting SNP - or rather, his proxy voter will be ). Again, said I didn't know because it depends on how many Conservative "Unionists" are prepared to vote LibDem to keep the SNP out I did however send him this this morning https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/jo-swinson-not-hit-home-20999590

I've promised to WhatsApp him the exit poll on the 12th and the result as soon as it's become obvious, but he's not sure whether he'll have mobile coverage where he'll be.

Goodness, Scotland is fascinating on that map.

It makes me think of a mug I have that says 'It's a Scottish thing : you wouldn't understand'