PurpleTreeFrog
Neko
Posts: 54
Favorite Anime: One Piece, Black Lagoon, Berserk
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Post by PurpleTreeFrog on Sept 14, 2015 21:57:27 GMT
What with all the stuff going on with the labour party lately i was wondering what everyone elses view on the whole political scene in the UK is? As a bit of background up until the 2010 elections i always thought that politics was "boring" and only old people had to really worry about it so i never bothered voting. Then the whole coalition thing happened which did stir a bit of interest. I was very very disillusioned with the whole process though, so other than the main elections (and despite trying to keep fairly up to date on the events) I never really took part in anything because "theyre all just the same at teh end of the day" and i thought that the government would mess up so bad that there was no way theyd get into power a second time. Then the elections this year happened and i just lost all faith in the public. Since Corbyns been campaigning though, i've actually been interested in what he's had to say, especially seeing as it seems like he does actually give a about the people, and he wants the entire governing process to be more focused on representing the people and teh less pandering to the banks. Since he's become the Leader of the labour party I've joined up as a full member and im hoping I'll be able to raise awareness amongst people i know about what he's actually campaigning for (seeing as almost all forms of print media seem to be finding everything they can to complain about him rather than fairly representing his views.
Has anyone else had like a similar experience, or do they agree with one of the other parties? If people dont agree with what i believe in thats completely fine, but what is it that you do believe in and why?
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duoinchains
kami
Posts: 893
Favorite Anime: 5cm/s, Garden of Words, Time of Eve, Girls und Panzer, Kids on t'Slope, Usagi Drop
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Post by duoinchains on Sept 15, 2015 11:59:13 GMT
Usually, politics and religion are the 2 big subjects to avoid on forums, but personally I have no issues with debating either.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, and always have been*.
I became more interested in politics during a Govt. & Politics O level during my lower 6th form days, and through meeting politically active people through following a band (New Model Army). From that, I became more active in protests (Criminal Justice Bill, anti-hunt, anti-road) at a time when Thatcher was consolidating her power and destroying the sense of community in favour of the 'me! me! me!' selfishness of the right. She also led the move away from social well-being and compassion (not to mention destroying whole industries and selling off what national industries remained - usually by conning the working classes into 'buying' shares in industries THEY ALREADY 'OWNED'. All to generate profit for those that had no need for more money, other than to justify capitalism and it's never-ending need to show a profit.
The right also promoted the home ownership myth and, in doing so, stripped away much of the country's social housing stock (which in turn led to the shortage of housing for those in desperate need). Allied to that was the abolition of rent control (so rents spiral and house prices spiral for no reason other than to make 'profit')
De-regulation of the banks allowed unfettered gambling of the nation's wealth, allowed hostile take-overs of stable companies and the accelerated globalisation of trade.
The right moved further rightwards (politically) and the left, re-branded as 'New Labour' moved rightwards with them. The Lib-Dems now appeared to be the left/centre party and became my party of choice in local/general elections (*tactical voting, NuToriesLabour were less likely to win than the Lib-Dems and keeping the Tories out was the primary objective.)
Labour then took power, but with a rightist stance, pretty much continuing much of the Tories policies with little change. I (and many of my friends) bacame very disenchanted and disenfranchised by what the Labour party had become. My own interest in politics waned considerably.
FFwd a decade and the Tories get back in on the back of the financial crisis and adopt a very hard-line austerity 'solution' which pushed the country deeper into recession. The Lib-Dems sold out by enabling the Tories to take power. That act, as demonstrated by the demolition of the LDs as a parliamentary party last time around, will not be quickly or easily forgotten. It's going to take probably 2 generations for the LDs to recover.
The one bright spark which has re-fired my interest has been the Labour party leadership campaign. Despite the appalling dirty tricks from the media and his opponents, Corbyn has outlined a proper socialist manifesto and won substantial support from the membership of the wider Labour movement. I look forward to seeing him bring Labour back leftwards and show the Tories and their supporters that austerity is a flawed concept that does much more harm than good. I also agree with many of his policies - Trident is a huge and unnecessary waste of money, re-nationalisation of core industries, rent control and fairer taxation (even though the latter may personally cost me more) but I don't agree with everything he says (Nato, use of UK armed forces)
Despite that, personally, I think the party system we have is broken and leads to instability and boom/bust (albeit over a longer cycle than was the case in the 70s and 80s)
I favour a parliamentary system based on the original Greek concept of a citizens lottery - 600 MPs in total, but selected at random from the electoral roll, with 150 changing every year (gives some continuity and means no one would serve more than 4 years). No party politics, just the governing of a nation by sensible consensus. If selected, you get paid a fixed salary that ALL MPs get. You can't swap or dodge your term (genuine medical reasons allowed) - it should be an honour to serve your country, not a chore. (I know there are some aspects that need refining - holding open of jobs/guaranteed return, etc). The parliament would be supported by a professional, non-political, advisory civil service.
If that can't happen, then some form of PR must be introduced in place of the flawed First-past-the-post system - to engage and enfranchise the public, we must feel that our votes actually count for something. Over the past 95 years, there has only been ONE election (1931) which empowered via a majority (>50%) of the popular vote. Every other government has been elected on a minority vote.
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Post by MIBlackburn on Sept 15, 2015 17:41:28 GMT
I'm on the left of the spectrum (got -5,-5 on the Political Compass), for my first general election I voted for the Lib Dems as I had Vera Baird, one of the most useless constituency MPs ever, especially after being parachuted in by New Labour after Mo Mowlam's resignation. The Lib Dem was elected but that turned out well didn't it? The 2015 election I voted Green as their policies were the closest to mine, especially after the rightward move of the Labour part mentioned above. So now we have a Conservative majority, slim at 12 seats which is enough to be a bit of a thorn in the side of Cameron and whoever replaces him (Osbourne, May or Johnson... *shudder*) but enough to ram through terrible legislation. Thankfully Corbyn ran, I voted for him as a registered £3 supported and am tempted to join as a full member sometime this week. He should hopefully move the party at least back to the old centre ground which by over 30 years worth of the parties being drifting rightwards comes across as "Crazy left-wing Communism!!!1!" to most of the press and idiots that follow it blindly without thinking which seems to be the readership of most right-wing papers (I read the Guardian for day-to-day coverage, and Private Eye for deeper coverage, used to read the Telegraph to get a sort of balance but they went absolutely nuts a few years back and stopped reading full stop when Peter Oborne quit). I agree on a lot of Corbyn's proposals but not all of them (Same as yours Duo, Nato/Army) but most of them come across as common sense to me, cut the benefit (I hate that term) bill not by punishing people that can't help themselves but by building more council housing, limiting right-to-buy (RTB isn't a bad idea but when the money wasn't allowed to be used to build more housing, that's where it falls down) and rent capping, all of which would bring down the bill on the housing side as the government wouldn't be paying rent to private landlords. Tax credits could come down if people are paid a decent wage, I know the government have been discussing today cutting tax credits and talking about hardworking people and raising minimum wage but that's stupid when you end up losing more by tax credit cuts than the raise. The worst bit is when you get people that say they should get better paying work so they don't need tax credits, sorry, doesn't exist and someone has to do those jobs anyway. Besides, if it wasn't for the nutter governments of Thatcher and Raygun and them not allowing wages to rise in line with productivity, the minimum wage would be somewhere around £18 if I remember (can't find the source, but a US equivalent is here. People would spend more if they had more spare cash from a higher wage which go around the economy, money is like manure, useless if it's not spread around. Other things like Trident, I can't believe we're still talking about this, it's archaic. "We need an independent nuclear deterrent", except it isn't independent, we have to go to the American's and beg them for us to launch them, the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore and MAD isn't a big thing anymore. Then there's nationalisation, it would lead to better competition. Yes, but only in services and industries that aren't natural monopolies, the only one I can think of is telecommunications and even then they take the P with some elements of it (Line rental goes up among the few companies that do it at roughly the same time, umm). Electricity/Gas all bump up at the same time so even though there is choice, it's more like which brand you like on your service. Water you have no choice whatsoever, I'm stuck with Northmubrian water which happens to be owned by a Chinese company. Railways, I can't hop onto a First or Virgin train from my local station, only Northern (Abellio and Serco) services run, so no competition there. It's stupid that these were allowed to be privatised, it's an asset that can make money or be reduced to non-profit by the government but instead it's given away to private companies or other countries' national services which is the really annoying one, our government can't run our services but other countries can, such as the Dutch (Abellio), German (Deutsche Bahn) and France (SNCF). I'm all for private business but only outside of natural monopoly areas and then with regulation as some businesses tend to lead to cartels. I'm up for some form of PR, possibly the Mixed Member Proportional where you vote for a local MP on one side of the sheet and party MPs on the other, keeps a constituency link which is good if you have a good local MP (my last one helped me as best he could a few times) and some proportional. The Lords need sorting out too but I have no idea how, not a fan of elections for the upper chamber as a leader can be lame ducked (see US) as well as no real competition for the government if they win both houses and not a fan of parties being able to stuff new Lords in like Cameron is thinking of doing. So, long rant there, but hopefully Corbyn will help some people in this country at least realise that we don't have to use the Neoliberal way of running our economy.
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PurpleTreeFrog
Neko
Posts: 54
Favorite Anime: One Piece, Black Lagoon, Berserk
Favorite Manga: One Piece
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Post by PurpleTreeFrog on Sept 15, 2015 21:44:30 GMT
What do people think of what's gone on today then? The Governments managed to pass a new bill with the intention of cutting the tax credits that are given to people in low paying jobs (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/15/government-wins-vote-to-cut-working-tax-credits). I'm wondering how they managed to get a majority of 35? Ive read they've between 12-16 seats more than labour so that accounts for them, and I think i read some people from UKIP voted for it as well, but im wondering where the other 15 or so came from? Do they release a list of who voted for what? I earn too much for this bill to affect me, but it will affect other people in my family (my younger sister for example).
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duoinchains
kami
Posts: 893
Favorite Anime: 5cm/s, Garden of Words, Time of Eve, Girls und Panzer, Kids on t'Slope, Usagi Drop
Favorite Manga: Banana Fish, Bunny Drop, 5cm/s, Two of Hearts, Seven Days, Kurosagi CDS
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Post by duoinchains on Sept 16, 2015 6:59:44 GMT
The Tories have a slim (12) seat overall majority - 330 out of 650 total seats (but Sinn Fein never attend Westminster, so that makes it 330 out of 646 and the Speaker doesn't vote, so 330 out of 645)
However, the Northern Irish Unionist parties and UKIP would side with the Tories, giving them 11 more votes.
And that, of course, assumes that every MP is present and votes. On any given session, the actual number of MPs sitting varies, depending on how important the subject being voted on is. And there's a system whereby MPs 'trade off' votes such that if a Tory and Labour MP agree that their votes would cancel each others, they register this with the Speaker and so don't vote/skive off.
So, not all 650 MPs will be present, not all MPs might vote, hence the majority may be more or less than the Parliamentary numbers much suggest.
As for the tax credits debate, I'm guessing they will counter the cut by lowering the income tax rates and thresholds at some point to give people more money - whether this gives back what they lost through the reduction in tax credits remains to be seen... and of course the govt can bank that saving until the tax rates change - which is a sneaky trick.
I agree with Mibu's comment that money is like manure - spreading it around and allowing people to spend more would stimulate the economy. Sadly, the right's thought processes are more around concentrating wealth among the top earners, not the bottom.
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duoinchains
kami
Posts: 893
Favorite Anime: 5cm/s, Garden of Words, Time of Eve, Girls und Panzer, Kids on t'Slope, Usagi Drop
Favorite Manga: Banana Fish, Bunny Drop, 5cm/s, Two of Hearts, Seven Days, Kurosagi CDS
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Post by duoinchains on Sept 16, 2015 13:31:42 GMT
As for the tax credits debate, I'm guessing they will counter the cut by lowering the income tax rates and thresholds at some point to give people more money - whether this gives back what they lost through the reduction in tax credits remains to be seen... and of course the govt can bank that saving until the tax rates change - which is a sneaky trick. Ah yes... there we are. From today's PMQs, Cameron's answer to Corbyn's question about the reduction of tax credits was, '...the lowest paid would get a "£20 a week pay rise next year."' (No mention, of course, about how that will happen - I'm still betting on an rise in the lower threshold for income tax to take a few hundred thousand more out of income tax)
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PurpleTreeFrog
Neko
Posts: 54
Favorite Anime: One Piece, Black Lagoon, Berserk
Favorite Manga: One Piece
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Politics
Sept 16, 2015 15:34:09 GMT
via mobile
Post by PurpleTreeFrog on Sept 16, 2015 15:34:09 GMT
Ah yes... there we are. From today's PMQs, Cameron's answer to Corbyn's question about the reduction of tax credits was, '...the lowest paid would get a "£20 a week pay rise next year."' (No mention, of course, about how that will happen - I'm still betting on an rise in the lower threshold for income tax to take a few hundred thousand more out of income tax) The increase in pay will be nice for some people that i know but its still below what an actual living wage is supposed to be www.livingwage.org.uk/news/living-wage-foundation-response-budget-2015 as its based on what the banks can afford rather than whats actually needed. Im sure ive read as well that even though people will be getting the quivalent of £20 extra a week in pay, that only covers 26% of the benefits that they will be having taken away from them, so they will actually end up with significantly less money. And people also have to take into account that none of this applies to people under 25
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