Westminstenders: The New Era

[RedToothBrush]

Scotland.
The GFA.
Its not Brexit Honest.
Levelling Up Shitholes caused by Tory austerity.
Babymilk Shortages
Cronyism

But we did good with covid jabs.

As a Cant (Kentishwoman) it is incredibly frustrating. My constituency is generally anti brexit and was remain, but its only ever been Tory since it was created. Our MP is really good locally too - and was one of the ones who resigned in protest from a cabinet position. We don't want a lorry park and although I didn't vote tory, I can understand why people did on a local level. The FTPF system is totally broken.

Quentin I’ve only just made the Kent/Cant/Canterbury connection!
Amazing how one doesn’t see things that should be so obvious...

Good god, am I reading this right, people on here still think Britain is fundamentally a decent place with a few - what - errors of judgement and maybe a technical or procedural glitch or two?

Britain is not a democracy. You can’t have such a thing in a nation of nearly 70 million or so people (to confirm from earlier questions that others answered I use the 68 million estimate for the U.K.). But you could try to have a distributed representative system with local democracy and a central talking house. You could also attempt, no matter the difficulty and nuance, to have professional codes of ethics trained in to all professions, including banking and politics. The FinCen scandal broke a while ago

We could have a public broadcasting sector driving and leading a media sector, similarly re-professionalised, backed by information and interested in fulfilling a social role questioning and holding higher levels to account rather than the cheap entertainment sector currently fixated on Cummings.

Britain is barely a land of law and order any more, with a closed down, corrupt or at least highly prejudiced, and under funded police force up against international drug cartels and other organised crime rings, legitimised, aided and abetted by the smug self-righteous upper middle classes. Those who are solely interested in maintaining their own wealth and power now, rather than considering the needs and health of a whole population.

It’s corrupt to the core now. Money is the only thing that matters, because the only ethic that rules is greed and stuff-others-before-they-stuff-you. I’m surprised it’s taking so long to filter through to common understanding, but communications were taken down first.

Kent’s naming is a bit weird, a Celtic survival out of the Dark Ages on the Saxon Shores with a Celtic-named leader at the same period, iirc. Interesting period to review, for squirrels, interest, or turbulence.

(Add in to law-and-order issues the soup of different cultural customs and practices, brought in by unchecked immigration. With undermined local laws which are no longer valued or supported -or even understood - by high minded and liberal elites, so why should the immigrants who now bring in their own elites). I should add that there are people dotted around still trying, individually or in groups, here and there, and the majority are just trying to get by. But the main systems and overall organisation are broken utterly, broken ultimately by the need to chase the big bucks.

@HesterThrale

Of course our electoral system can translate small swings into large majorities but look at polling?
Labour way behind, Brexit still popular..thats my point, if the country swung 80/20 in favour of rejoin, thats exactly what Bojo would do (or try)
But what i see is that people blame the EU, not Bojo/govt.

^if the country swung 80/20 in favour of rejoin, thats exactly what Bojo would do (or try)

Exactly so. He's about the only one who could.

@Peregrina

^if the country swung 80/20 in favour of rejoin, thats exactly what Bojo would do (or try)

Exactly so. He's about the only one who could.

Majority isn't everything. Pretty certain you could get a majority in favour of re introducing slavery. Doesn't mean we should necessarily do it ...

Is what they'd say - the irony being they're reintroducing slavery anyway.

Still ...

@Peregrina

^if the country swung 80/20 in favour of rejoin, thats exactly what Bojo would do (or try)

Exactly so. He's about the only one who could.

Actually, on reflection, this is probably true. Boris has been built up to be so "can do no wrong" that he could jettison the hardcore right wing nutjobs in the Tory party (who put him there) and still see his popularity rise.

DGR - I would love to see some of the ardent promoters of Johnson and who hate the EU absolutely get their knickers in a twist as to why rejoining the EU was the best thing ever.

MayYouLive, Britain is a democracy. All adult citizens have a vote as you know. Just because you don't approve of how people vote and the resultant elected government, does not mean we are not a democracy.
If a different Party were to win a large majority would it then become a democracy?

It's not about how people vote - it's how those votes are counted......

@mrslaughan

It's not about how people vote - it's how those votes are counted......

Exactly this. Under FPTP, not every vote counts. It really is as simple as that. It's the same with the US Electoral College system.

Proportional Representation is more democratic, because every single vote actually counts and impacts on the outcome. An added bonus is that you get a wider range of political parties, and fresh parties have a shot at seats in Parliament. FPTP just perpetuates the two-party system and leaves many people politically homeless.

Conservative votes are now so efficiently spread that it takes just 38,000 to elect a Tory MP but 51,000 votes for every Labour MP. But because of our first-past-the-post system it needs 336,000 for every Lib Dem MP and a ludicrous 866,000 to elect Caroline Lucas for Brighton Pavilion. It is why we need proportional representation, because this is sham democracy. Caroline Lucas, Layla Moran and Clive Lewis in The Guardian.

To give the SNP their due, even though they benefit from FPTP and as a result are over-represented at WM with 47 out of 59 voted in as MPs in 2019 (and 56 out of 59 in 2015 ), they would still prefer a PR system that was more representative of the votes cast

Not that they want to be at WM at all

DEAD CAT DEAD CAT DEAD CAT.

But do spare a though for poor old Laura Kuenssberg...

What, so she can't testify against him now?

How lovely that they were allowed to marry at WC. Odd they could, but I wasn't able to marry in a church because of previously been married.

How did Johnson manage to swing that then? Did he secretly get his other marriages annulled? Although with four kids from the previous one, it's a bit difficult to pretend that there never was a marriage.

So he rushed to get married so that Carrie couldn't be asked to testify - well, it is exactly the sort of trick he would pull.

I do foresee another messy divorce coming up in the next few years though, when he's booted out of Downing Street and Carrie decides that she'd prefer a younger husband.

Getting all of his previous marriages annulled seems a bit unlikely.

If Johnson's wedding really did go ahead in Westminster Cathedral, then I should think that a lot of people who were refused church weddings because of a previous divorce will be thoroughly pissed off.

Of course, it's possible that they had a quiet Registry Office wedding first and then had the Church ceremony blessed - without the public being admitted we would never know what exactly happened.

Sorry, already a thread on the wedding, I see.

I may be completely wrong about this, but my understanding is that if he previously married outside of the RC church those marriages may be canonically invalid. As long as he is legally divorced he can go ahead and marry in the RC church.

If a different Party were to win a large majority would it then become a democracy?

Well, actually a wrong is a wrong whoever wins the next GE, having a party win on 44% of the vote is fundamentally undemocratic.

I believe Belarus is the only other country in europe that uses FPTP