Politics Thread!

[zip accident]

What puzzles me about that graph is where the average respondent's self positioning is, because that'd be interesting, and they say they collected the information, but it doesn't seem to be on the graph. I mean, you might expect it to tend toward the 50:50 line, but I really wouldn't expect it to be an exact fit.

[KlaxonCow]

These negotiations resulted in a total of ten treaties, negotiated in two phases, the sum of which makes a large share of EU law applicable to Switzerland.

Yeah, as I was suggesting, Switzerland can't explicitly join the EU because that's a non-neutral political stance for them to take and their permanent neutrality policy doesn't allow it.

The EU does stuff like apply sanctions on Russia or condemn North Korea's nuclear ambitions and so forth, from time to time. If Switzerland officially joined the EU, then it would be seen, implicit by its membership, to be conspiring in these non-neutral political actions.

So, instead, there's a "special relationship" where Switzerland and the EU to have a bunch of treaties that effectively makes it a kind of "unofficial EU member", in that it ends up admitting the EU law that their neutrality policy permits, but they are not, in any official capacity, a member of the EU.

It's a special arrangement to respect Switzerland's neutrality, but to show no prejudice towards it for that stance, regards being part of the wider European community of nations.

You get the gist. They can't officially join, as that's not a neutral political stance to take. But they can align their laws, by treaty, so as to make it so that, to all intents and purposes, you can barely tell the practical difference.

So, again, Switzerland can't really be used as any model to predict how things would be for the UK leaving the EU, as what's going on there is very much "a special case".

[pogo]

Of course this is all highly speculative, not just as we don’t know who will win the election but as we don’t know what Europe will look like in two years time when a referendum is supposed to take place. It’s not been much in the news this week no doubt because of our election but Greece still seem no closer to coming to an agreement which will unlock the funds they need to make it through the next three months. Which means there’s a real chance they will be out of the euro, and possibly out of the EU, within a few months.

In the short term this will mean chaos, as the eurozone/EU tries to realign things with one fewer member, and as other countries move to the head of the list of who is likely to leave next. In the medium to long term it should mean a radical overhaul of the EU, before or after more members leave. It probably means the Tories will find it hard to get anyone interested in renegotiating Britain’s membership – they will all have more important things to worry about – pretty much guaranteeing a referendum.

[Ollie]

Change happens slowly sometimes. I wasn't sure who the Whigs were, and when Labour came in, Victorian times ended about when WW1 started stewing, by the time it kicked off, which is a century ago now, surely Labour were well established in third place?

Victoria died in 1901, it was then Edwardian times up until WW1.

[zip accident]

Change happens slowly sometimes. I wasn't sure who the Whigs were, and when Labour came in, Victorian times ended about when WW1 started stewing, by the time it kicked off, which is a century ago now, surely Labour were well established in third place?

Victoria died in 1901, it was then Edwardian times up until WW1.

Okay. I thought Dreadnought was Victorian, but it looks from Wikipedia as if that was Edwardian, there was some fuss before that, but it's hard to connect anything that early with the war.

[pogo]

#EdStone

Apparently if he’s PM this goes up in the No. 10 garden. Because if he prints his pledges on pieces of card he cannot be trusted, I guess, so he has to set them in stone. Problem is they are all meaningless. Not actual targets, mostly things that don’t require them to do anything.

'Controls on immigration' – is any party planning to remove controls? Or to not have a strong economic foundation? Or not improve living standards for families/the next generation? Or not build more houses? Only 3 is plausibly an actual target, to presumably reduce NHS waiting times. But it’s a lot vaguer than the £8bn of cash the other two main parties have promised for the NHS.

[gravy]

#EdStone

Apparently if he’s PM this goes up in the No. 10 garden. Because if he prints his pledges on pieces of card he cannot be trusted, I guess, so he has to set them in stone. Problem is they are all meaningless. Not actual targets, mostly things that don’t require them to do anything.

'Controls on immigration' – is any party planning to remove controls? Or to not have a strong economic foundation? Or not improve living standards for families/the next generation? Or not build more houses? Only 3 is plausibly an actual target, to presumably reduce NHS waiting times. But it’s a lot vaguer than the £8bn of cash the other two main parties have promised for the NHS.

It's fucking stupid.

But you know, Cameron's going to pass a law to make sure he doesn't raise taxes. I mean a lump of stone is pretty dumb but having to bother the statute books to keep yourself honest? It's an order of magnitude thicker.

This election isn't really bringing out the best on any side.

[KlaxonCow]

What's Clegg going to do?

Tattoo the Lib Dem manifesto on his arse?

It is, indeed, somewhat farcical.

Not least because it's hardly as reassuring as they seem to think it ought to be. I mean, if they've got to pass laws to stop themselves or construct the monolith from 2001 in their back garden to remind themselves of what it is they're supposed to be doing, then it implies that even they don't entirely trust themselves to have sufficient self-control and honesty to do what they've said either.

It hardly emboldens one with immense confidence, when even the folks canvassing for your trust appear to have bugger all trust in their own self-control either.

(Also, we all know it's bollocks regardless. We've had "pledge cards" and "kick me out if I don't deliver!" in previous elections that were happily broken and meaningless within five minutes of the election win, so we know these kinds of gestures literally do mean absolutely bugger all to these people.)

[Mayhem]

What puzzles me about that graph is where the average respondent's self positioning is, because that'd be interesting, and they say they collected the information, but it doesn't seem to be on the graph. I mean, you might expect it to tend toward the 50:50 line, but I really wouldn't expect it to be an exact fit.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That, and the fact the red line is too far to the left compared to current reality (since about 1995), but hey, that's public perception for you!

[Cloudane]

There are so many RED LINES even the graph has one.

The problem I recall with the lab government's approach to things like reducing NHS waiting times is that it's just bureaucracy. I remember it last time they tried to tackle it in the early 2000s. They just handed targets down to the surgeries and said "you have to meet those" with no actual support or solutions for doing so - and so they just ended up fudging the numbers (can't remember exactly how... it was in the papers at the time... maybe just turning people away?) to make it look like they were meeting the targets even though they weren't in reality because it was a literal impossibility with the number of staff vs. demand.


BTW has this been posted yet, I can't remember.







( It's just silly satire, before someone starts trying to pick it apart :p )

[pogo]

What puzzles me about that graph is where the average respondent's self positioning is, because that'd be interesting, and they say they collected the information, but it doesn't seem to be on the graph. I mean, you might expect it to tend toward the 50:50 line, but I really wouldn't expect it to be an exact fit.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That, and the fact the red line is too far to the left compared to current reality (since about 1995), but hey, that's public perception for you!

If you combine people’s perceptions of the parties with their expected voting intentions (with the Tories + UKIP getting around 48% of the vote) then the average is well to the right of the line, at least for 2015 (the only year including UKIP). So average political outlook in the UK is centre-right, as I noted a couple of days ago. This is why I think it would be a mistake for Labour to be more radical than the Labour party of Brown and Blair. Doubly so if they do so in partnership with the SNP.

Interestingly the Economist thinks the SNP wasn’t radical enough: The second-longest suicide note in history

Their point is the SNP missed an opportunity to distinguish themselves from Labour by either being more radical or even more centrist, being willing like the Lib Dems in 2010 to partner with whichever party was most accommodating to their demands. Instead their manifesto mostly cribs from Labour’s with little the Labour party could not come up with themselves, and so will give them little room to influence Labour and so condemn them to irrelevance.

On the other hand their lack of a clear agenda that is different from Labour’s gives them plenty of room to come up with something during negotiations, based on what they think they can get away with – much like Labour whose pledges are so vague they give Labour immense freedom in how they go about meeting them. So it should be easy for the SNP and Labour to find common ground. They only have to find a way to do it that won’t put off large numbers of English voters.

[gravy]

What puzzles me about that graph is where the average respondent's self positioning is, because that'd be interesting, and they say they collected the information, but it doesn't seem to be on the graph. I mean, you might expect it to tend toward the 50:50 line, but I really wouldn't expect it to be an exact fit.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That, and the fact the red line is too far to the left compared to current reality (since about 1995), but hey, that's public perception for you!

If you combine people’s perceptions of the parties with their expected voting intentions (with the Tories + UKIP getting around 48% of the vote) then the average is well to the right of the line, at least for 2015 (the only year including UKIP).

Hahaha, you keep 'forgetting' the Greens and SNP as left leaning parties.

The polls have right / left evenly matched today, fuck knows where you get 'far to the right' from. That's crazy talk.

[(o)(o)]

#EdStone

Apparently if he’s PM this goes up in the No. 10 garden. Because if he prints his pledges on pieces of card he cannot be trusted, I guess, so he has to set them in stone. Problem is they are all meaningless. Not actual targets, mostly things that don’t require them to do anything.

'Controls on immigration' – is any party planning to remove controls? Or to not have a strong economic foundation? Or not improve living standards for families/the next generation? Or not build more houses? Only 3 is plausibly an actual target, to presumably reduce NHS waiting times. But it’s a lot vaguer than the £8bn of cash the other two main parties have promised for the NHS.

Whilst it's a silly PR stunt (for some reason I'm reminded of the stone circle in Spinal Tap) I'm not totally cynical. As it's 'written in stone' and for all to see.. Labour will have a super hard time distancing themselves from these pledges - and should they fail to deliver on them this obelisk will get rammed up their backsides sideways in the media and they know it. Also thought the pledges were wooly but, before rushing to judgement, went to google typed in 'Labour pledges' and 30 seconds later...

If you combine people’s perceptions of the parties with their expected voting intentions (with the Tories + UKIP getting around 48% of the vote) then the average is well to the right of the line, at least for 2015 (the only year including UKIP). So average political outlook in the UK is centre-right, as I noted a couple of days ago.

This is a bollocks argument because you are omitting non-voters.

Voting should be mandatory.

As I "noted" a couple of days ago.

Spoiler: show

[gravy]

GnnnnnGGGGG. Russel Brand says do vote and vote Labour



What about the idiots following this idiot who haven't registered to vote?

And does this mean he was registered to vote all along?

[pogo]

Hahaha, you keep 'forgetting' the Greens and SNP as left leaning parties.

The polls have right / left evenly matched today, fuck knows where you get 'far to the right' from. That's crazy talk.

I don’t recall writing “far to the right”, but that whole graph the average is to the right all the way down. Today The tories and UKIP have 48% of the vote, so almost half the electorate is well over to the right, while theoretically left-wing parties are much more spread out, and much less radical, at least according to people’s perceptions. Including SNP and the Greens will make little difference to that.