EU referendum are you in or out

[Dio]

There's nothing much wrong with that LD leaflet. At the least, it's no worse than your own argument - both of you are cherry-picking your own chosen data.

You're both successfully indicating is that all the indicators about voting intentions disagree.

Yes, you are right that the end result is probably a Tory win because, yes, it's a shitty voting system, and yes, the LDs should have made unconditional, no-referendum PR a condition of entering into government. Although looking at those numbers this is one of the places AV might well actually make a difference.

[(o)(o)]

There's nothing much wrong with that LD leaflet. At the least, it's no worse than your own argument - both of you are cherry-picking your own chosen data.

I'm not claiming to know what is tactically the right vote. I suspect most people in the constituency feel likewise.

That's why I favour a progressive alliance or tactical pact.

An alliance would counter some of the "I can't vote for a scarecrow" inbreds that pollute this place with their Range Rovers, if it was felt the LDs would ammeliorate some of Corbyn's far left communist terrorist-sympathy antisemitic policies, like bringing outsourced NHS contracts in house when they expire.

Instead we get this shitlerature pushed through our doors. That muppet's entire premise is that people need to vote LD because people voted remain in the EU elections. Looking at the three graphs below, do you honestly believe LD votes here will do anything for the good?

[(o)(o)]

No Deal is off the table until January 31st, as I understand it. If that's a misunderstanding, the four people from Labour who've been on Radio 5 today have completely failed to explain why no deal isn't yet off the table: they seemed to imply they wanted no deal off the table even after Jan 31st, which is obviously A. ridiculous and B. pointless because no government can bind a future government.

Actually just legislate to revoke, in the case that a deal fails to pass through parliament with a majority. Corbyn wanted no deal off the table.

But Swinson forced his hand.

Now we may bathe in this :

https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1 ... 3932817410

[Dio]

Again, you're cherry-picking your data.

Here's the 2010 data for Tatton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatton_(U ... stituency)
Liberal Democrat David Lomax 10,200 22.6 + 0.8
Labour Richard Jackson 7,803 17.3 - 6.2

Given Tatton was Remain, and the LD vote is likely to be more similar to 2010 than any other election, I think it's perfectly possible to assert that the LDs have the best chance of winning the seat. It is also possible to assert that Labour have the best chance of winning the seat. But it's most possible to assert that neither really stands much of a chance.

[(o)(o)]

Again, you're cherry-picking your data.

No, not "again", didn't do it in the first place. OK those graphs are fucked.. thought they were Tatton - I'm blaming the website.

However where did you get :

Given Tatton was Remain, and the LD vote is likely to be more similar to 2010 than any other election" from??

Interesting election upon which to lay that assumption, given that it's the single instance in 39 years that the LD achieved a higher vote than Labour in our constituency. Talk about cherry picking!

Aside from 1997 of course, when Labour and LibDem's agreed to do the right thing tactically to stop Neil Hamilton getting more envelopes of cash (and still 37% voted for the cunt!)

Labour and LD could of course eradicate incumbent McVey - if Swinson wasn't talking mental about LDs winning 326 seats.

FFS.

[Dio]

No, not "again", didn't do it in the first place. OK those graphs are fucked.. thought they were Tatton - I'm blaming the website.

Yes - by picking anything post-2010 then the LD vote is modulated heavily downwards after the post-coalition wipeout. The LDs were running at sub-10% in the polls at that point, not around 20%.

Interesting election upon which to lay that assumption, given that it's the single instance in 39 years that the LD achieved a higher vote than Labour in our constituency. Talk about cherry picking!

Sure. But in my defence:
- first of all I've been quite clear that anyone - including me - can pick the data to show whatever figure they want
- if you look at what I wrote above after showing that data, I quite clearly acknowledge that fact, rather than insisting it demonstrates my viewpoint. I specifically call out that the most likely result is NOT a LD win, and that either LD or Labour could come second.
- in 2005 the difference between the LDs and Labour was about 1%, so it's not exactly utterly unrepresentative
- If you look at the national % of the vote figures for the LDs and indeed all the parties in 2010 and now, they are much more similar than 2015 or 2017 and now, and coupled with the much more credible leadership than 2017 it's probably more likely that 2010 is representative than 2017. If you also take into account that Tatton is a Remain constituency and only the LDs are clearly and unrefutably a Remain party, one could try to build an argument they'll do better than average. But note that I am not doing that.

I am saying that this election is not predictable, and someone who is trying to pull out specific items of data and make hard statements without looking at a wider range of data and making more nuanced statements is not coming across as credible.

So I expect people with a bias to present that bias, but it is not obviously refutable with data, which is what you claimed in the first place over that LD leaflet. It is one valid interpretation of the data. It is not the only one.

[tufty]

Labour and LD could of course eradicate incumbent McVey - if Swinson wasn't talking mental about LDs winning 326 seats.

Or from the other perspective, Labour and the Lib Dems could eradicate McVey if it weren't for Corbyn's insistence on being "the messiah", and his inability to hold a single, coherent position on brexit.

Face facts, man. You, like I, will never vote conservative, and died-in-the-wool conservative voters will never vote labour, regardless of the leader, or the policies of that "other" party WRT the "issue du jour". The Lib Dems inhabit that point inbetween the two mainstream extremes that the average labour or conservative voter could probably go along with. You're blinded by your hatred of the Lib Dems, based on their perceived "betrayal" (and far from being the only one, on both sides of the cleft).

The Lib Dems are not a "left wing" party. They inhabit the void between the now *very* right wing Conservatives, and the relatively right wing (as compared to, say, the 1970s or 1980s) Labour party. That Labour now have a slightly old-school socialist as leader does not distract from the fact that Labour are, since the days of Blair, barely distinguishable from the tories that Thatcher would have called "wets". The space between Labour and Conservative is very much on the right wing, as is the party that inhabits it. There's no real left wing party, as they say, "left".

The tories have to go. Not just get voted out, but to get obliterated, get dragged back to their pre-Thatcher position. Because they've been coopted by the extremists, from Thatcher onwards. There's 20% or so of racist cunts, worldwide, that will vote for the most extreme position given the chance. those are a big chunk of the tories' support, and current leadership. But the rest of the conservatives' support aren't cunts, they're just normal people. But not people that would vote for Labour. If they can be pulled back from the brink of the Tories' current extremism, there may be hope for the country in the future. But it's not Labour that's going to do it.

[(o)(o)]

Labour and LD could of course eradicate incumbent McVey - if Swinson wasn't talking mental about LDs winning 326 seats.

Or from the other perspective, Labour and the Lib Dems could eradicate McVey if it weren't for Corbyn's insistence on being "the messiah", and his inability to hold a single, coherent position on brexit.

Swinson was asked if she would work with Labour. She said no. She can't work with him. He didn't eradicate antisemitism.

The Lib Dems are not a "left wing" party. They inhabit the void...

Agreed.

The tories have to go. Not just get voted out, but to get obliterated, get dragged back to their pre-Thatcher position. Because they've been coopted by the extremists, from Thatcher onwards. There's 20% or so of racist cunts, worldwide, that will vote for the most extreme position given the chance. those are a big chunk of the tories' support, and current leadership. But the rest of the conservatives' support aren't cunts, they're just normal people. But not people that would vote for Labour. If they can be pulled back from the brink of the Tories' current extremism, there may be hope for the country in the future. But it's not Labour that's going to do it.

Stay positive!

[tufty]

Swinson was asked if she would work with Labour. She said no. She can't work with him. He didn't eradicate antisemitism. :roll:

John MacDonnell has said there is no chance of Labour going into coalition with *any* other party.

We would run a minority government.

How does it go? Oh, yes.

:roll:

[KlaxonCow]

In other news, the right honourable member for the 18th century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, ironically displayed absolutely no common sense whatsoever by deciding to publicly blame dead people for lacking the common sense of avoiding being dead.

He later apologised for being an ignorant sociopathic cunt, but unfortunately remains so, in his heart, because of his poor upbringing where his parents routinely abandoned him. It's unknown whether he was slouching and speaking Latin at the time.

[rowan]

In other news, the right honourable member for the 18th century, Jacob Rees-Mogg, ironically displayed absolutely no common sense whatsoever by deciding to publicly blame dead people for lacking the common sense of avoiding being dead.

I don't really feel he did that. I can't stand the guy but when I read the context, I felt I could hear where he was coming from / infer his meaning.

Yes it was insensitive or crass to say what he did publicly but he wasn't blaming them.

[Dio]

What he said was very simple: "I'm smarter than the oiks." Hell, the guy they sent out to explain it said that's what he was saying (and then had to apologise for that too). I agree that he wasn't intending to say "They died because they were stupid" because nobody would do that but that is what he did actually unintentionally say.

If there's a black irony in this, what Rees-Mogg is proving is that he isn't actually that well blessed with common sense: in D&D terms, he seems to be high INT, average to low WIS. Many of his actions betray a lack of ability to perceive himself as others see him, for example. The eccentricity that served him well as a backbencher is not an asset in a premium post. One might make a similar observation about Our Dear Lovably Rumpled Leader.

The Tories are suffering quite a bit from the purges now. May's government was already flirting dangerously with a government of none of the talents; Boris' is laughably so. That Chris Grayling can cling on, that Raab has a premium post, that Rees-Mogg has been given responsibility for even something as archaic as the House of Commons... it's a pretty weak team.

Labour finally succeeding in getting rid of Watson hardly indicates they're doing brilliantly on that score, mind.

[KlaxonCow]

What he said was very simple: "I'm smarter than the oiks." Hell, the guy they sent out to explain it said that's what he was saying (and then had to apologise for that too).

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... s-20818947

Jacob is... er... a leader. He's... er... an authority figure. And what he's failed to realise is that in a life-threatening and stressful situation, most people - most of the public - will probably defer to the advice of an authority figure. Be that someone from the fire authority or the police and not come to their own conclusions. And, as we know, with regard to Grenfell, that advice was flawed

Do you think he meant to say that he thought that he would not have stayed put?

That's what he meant to say. That's what he meant to say.

But, in a way, that is exactly what people object to, which is that he's, in effect, saying 'I wouldn't have died, because I would have been cleverer than the people who took the fire brigade's advice

*sigh* But we want very clever people running the country, don't we, Evan? That's a by-product of what Jacob is and that is why he is in a position of authority. What he’s actually saying is that he would have given a better decision than the authority figures who gave that advice.

So, there you go, a fellow Tory MP defended Jacob Rees-Mogg by confirming that what JRM meant to say was that he was cleverer than the victims and cleverer than the fire brigade. Apparently, being a "leader" and an "authority figure" grants JRM more knowledge than the fire service, when it comes to dealing with fires.

Please also note the section "most people - most of the public - will probably defer to the advice of an authority figure [...] and not come to their own conclusions".

So, really, Andrew Bridgen is claiming that he and JRM are cleverer than the victims, cleverer than the police and fire service, and cleverer than "most of the public", who are fundamentally unable to think for themselves, it seems.


By the way, Andrew Bridgen has form when it comes to pissing on people's graves:




I appreciate that you are good natured and attempt to see the best in people.

But there really are genuinely privileged people in this world who absolutely do believe that the poor "deserve" their fate. I've met and debated with such people, and they absolutely 100% mean it. It is a sincere belief that they possess.

This might be, in our opinions, factually wrong - even blatantly so - but it's a repeatable demonstrable psychological flaw of human beings:



(And what must also be remembered is that when we say "rich player" and "poor player" here, we're solely talking about their status in the game of Monopoly. It's quite possible - as the selection was perfectly random - that, in real-life, the "rich" player is actually the poorer of the two in reality.)

My guess is that it's possibly rooted in the idea that "everything happens for a reason". Therefore, by this magical thinking, even the coin toss - which all players are aware happened and chose their positions in the game - must have been guided by the gods / the universe / some higher power to select the "deserving" from the "undeserving".

Floods and earthquakes can't just be chaotic natural phenomenon, but must be, as some religious preachers put forward, some kind of "punishment" from God for tolerating gays or whatever. Or we have the conspiracy theorists who can't accept that things are just random sometimes, so gun violence or terrorist attacks must be orchestrated conspiracies from "higher powers" like governments or gods or whatever. It can't just happen, it must happen, they believe, for a reason. There must be someone or something behind our fates.

We all comprehend how social inequality affects the poor, but it's less generally understood how this also affects the rich - how it twists their perceptions and psychology.

Why do multi-billionaires wreck other companies - buy them out and gut them - for the pursuit of an extra million or two here and there, which is as nothing to their overall wealth and has no consequences to them? Why do they jump through so many hoops to avoid paying any taxes, when they are, by definition, those who can most afford it and for whom it has to least effect?

There's elements of the same addictions and psychological problems that, amongst the poor, would be reason to send them to "Gambler's Anonymous" to deal with their mental health issues. But, amongst the rich, they are cushioned from the consequences when they can afford to lose more money than most everyone else sees in a lifetime without batting an eyelid, and they land on their feet. So no-one much suggests that, nonetheless, they have a mental health problem which should, for their sake as well as others affected by it, be addressed.

Everyone is slightly fucked up in the head. The question is not whether you are, but just how you are, in what way, and how we can avoid any negative consequences from what's intrinsically wrong with us.



I inserted that little jibe about Jacob Rees-Mogg's "poor upbringing" where his parents routinely abandoned him - to nanny, to boarding school, etc. - for a reason.

("Maybe your momma gave you up, boy. It's the same old, same old".)

Because, indeed, no-one thinks to examine whether a rich moneyed upbringing of private education and child-care could, in fact, be a disadvantageous to its recipients. That it could potentially harm its victims in different but no less of a fashion than a poor family being unable to afford to feed their kids or pay the rent.

As the poem by Phillip Larkin has it, "they fuck you up, your mum and dad". And I don't see that that conclusion's altered in the slightest by having money or otherwise. They still fuck you up, but just in slightly different ways.


I do accept that, consciously, Jacob Rees-Mogg has no intent of being a cunt. No-one has that intent. No-one thinks they're evil or even wrong. But it happens anyway, so we must delve deeper into how otherwise good people - which I'd say everyone is, as they're born that way - get twisted and mangled into evil bastards.

[skab]

good people - which I'd say everyone is, as they're born that way

I strongly disagree. Basically we all are rabid apes. It's culture, society and civilisation that keep us in check.

If you are very rich, or in another powerful position, or are a soldier in a war, or just a part of a violent mob, many of those checks don't apply anymore, and all of a sudden we go completely feral and do all those "unthinkable" things.

And then there's cause and effect. Does money or power corrupt you, or is it the other way, is it you being a sociopath that actually enables you to become rich and powerful?

[gilesgoat]

good people - which I'd say everyone is, as they're born that way

I strongly disagree. Basically we all are rabid apes. It's culture, society and civilisation that keep us in check.

If you are very rich, or in another powerful position, or are a soldier in a war, or just a part of a violent mob, many of those checks don't apply anymore, and all of a sudden we go completely feral and do all those "unthinkable" things.

And then there's cause and effect. Does money or power corrupt you, or is it the other way, is it you being a sociopath that actually enables you to become rich and powerful?

I may tend agree with Skab theory ... I don't believe that "humans are naturally born good", probably the contrary but certainly it all depends on how we been set up.