danielpholt Posted January 12, 2022 Report Share Posted January 12, 2022 It's only a matter of time before they ditch Johnson. What worries me is that the general public will be on hand to vote for whoever replaces him, as if they deem the UK's issues are tied exclusively to Johnson and not ten years of Conservative rule. I didn't see my family across 2020/21, aside from two separate funerals for my Aunt and my partners Nan. We didn't hug. We sat socially distanced and we said our goodbyes and went home to cry on our own. Meanwhile they're off, laughing at us.... That being said, it says an awful lot about the state of our countries politics that after everything; the corruption, the mistreatment of the most helpless in our society, the complete lack of care in which Brexit and Northern Ireland was handled, that it's a fucking garden party that does the current PM, and (potentially) his governing party in. I've said it before, but the biggest issue we have in our democratic system is that the electorate just isn't paying attention. If they were, maybe we'd figure this stuff out before it got to this point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 12, 2022 Report Share Posted January 12, 2022 I think the biggest issue is that the electorate are fucking idiots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted January 12, 2022 Report Share Posted January 12, 2022 (edited) 5 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said: I think the biggest issue is that the electorate are fucking idiots. I prefer lazy, uninformed and disinterested, some of which I understand. It does feel like you're ignored, that your vote doesn't matter and that 'they're all the same'. We do an awful job of bringing people into our politics, of teaching how it all works, what it all means and how it can all come together to make our country a better place. We should be teaching this shit at schools from an early age. You want to know why the young don't participate in this stuff, because they don't understand it (aren't taught it) and they see policies that consistently go against their best interests (because they're not participating in voting - because they aren't taught what it means or how to do it). Lets be honest, that's by design; it suits those at the top. The last thing they want is an educated electorate, and that goes for both major parties to some extent. Edited January 12, 2022 by danielpholt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 12, 2022 Report Share Posted January 12, 2022 You give people more credit than I am willing to. So often I encounter situations where people have something explained to them in plain English and completely misunderstand what's going on. I mean yeah, there's another part that feels ignored/is lazy/whatever, but a huge portion are just fucking idiots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 13, 2022 Report Share Posted January 13, 2022 I don't necessarily think "lazy" is fair. A lot of people in this country have to work three jobs just to keep the heating on. Asking that they spend whatever time they have left to make themselves aware of the deeper consequences of proportional representation voting systems, Brexit, etc is a big ask, especially when people who are paid a huge amount of money to think about this stuff full time don't have a straight answer. People want a simple, soundbite answers to complex problems because the system has them too exhausted to be able to deal with the complex, tedious, difficult solutions. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted January 13, 2022 Report Share Posted January 13, 2022 Also, there's people like me who are like "why would I go out of my way to support Democrats? they won't actually do anything good, their 'best' quality is that they won't actively do the horrible things Republicans want to do". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted January 14, 2022 Report Share Posted January 14, 2022 (edited) 19 hours ago, Thursday Next said: I don't necessarily think "lazy" is fair. A lot of people in this country have to work three jobs just to keep the heating on. Asking that they spend whatever time they have left to make themselves aware of the deeper consequences of proportional representation voting systems, Brexit, etc is a big ask, especially when people who are paid a huge amount of money to think about this stuff full time don't have a straight answer. People want a simple, soundbite answers to complex problems because the system has them too exhausted to be able to deal with the complex, tedious, difficult solutions. Lazy was the wrong word. There's many reasons why people aren't as involved in our politics as I would like, most of which IMO comes from how it's taught (or not) in schools, how our media landscape is shaped to favour one of the two big parties and how democracy happens to people, rather than them being involved in it. Unfortunately important decisions can't be squashed down to a soundbite, and the powers that be don't want us educated enough to realise how fucked we are. It doesn't have to be like this, other countries make it work, and they're all the better for it. Until we break the cycle it won't get any better, but that cycle isn't going to break on it's own. It's creaking, but until we push a little, it won't break. ---- Lazy was a bad choice of word, but I as I also said in the previous comment, there's many reasons why people don't engage with politics in the UK, most of it stems from how little time we spend educating people on our democracy; it's importance and it's day-to-day ramifications, but there's also the fact that democracy for most people in this country means one thing and one thing alone; elections. Democracy is something that happens to people in this country, they're not actively involved in it, it just appears every 4-5 years and they tick a box based on which middle-class white dude they like the look of more on that given day. We can do better, we have to do better. Look at the Brexit referendum for example; the general public haven't got a clue about whether or not remaining in the EU is a good idea, and why would they? Forcing us to choose Leave or Remain is a horrendous way of deciding something that's going to effect every single one of us for the rest of our lives. However, a Citizens Assembly would have been a much fairer, more nuanced way to handle that question. It would have gotten us closer to understanding the true positives and negatives of leaving the EU, removed all aspects of party politics from the equation and brought the general populace into the debate in a way that didn't feel forced or like we were being spoken down to; it's democracy for the people, by the people. We can make changes to the system to benefit all of us, and that has got to start in schools. We need to be teaching our kids the importance of our democracy, of the value of their voice. Teach them how other countries run their own systems of government and how they're electoral systems work vs our own. Teach them about the role of the Unions in making working people's lives better, and about how as a collective of individuals we can make changes on every level. I don't expect people to suddenly start reading manifestos and joining political parties, but I do think we as a country are almost uniquely disinterested in the politics that shape our lives. And I don't blame people for that at all, I get it entirely. Life in the UK sucks, it's sucked for a while and for a lot of people it doesn't matter who's making the decisions, red or blue or yellow; it still sucks. That being said, change isn't going to come out of nowhere and getting the red guys in power instead of the blue guys isn't going to magically fix everything; it'll make it better but if we truly want to make things better we have got to get more involved as a nation. And I think that comes through schooling. I'm going to end with a quote I like now from Charles De Ghaulle because I've gone on long enough, and no one is actually still reading. Quote I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. Finally, I've edited this post like 5 times because I think that we do fundamentally agree, I think I came across as an ass in my previous post and didn't want that to happen again. Edited January 14, 2022 by danielpholt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted January 14, 2022 Report Share Posted January 14, 2022 I didn't think you came across as an ass at all fwiw, and I do think that we are all on pretty much the same page on this topic. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted October 14, 2022 Report Share Posted October 14, 2022 Well... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted October 17, 2022 Report Share Posted October 17, 2022 On 10/14/2022 at 1:48 PM, Thursday Next said: Well... Amazingly the situation got even worse than it was on Friday. That's almost impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted October 19, 2022 Report Share Posted October 19, 2022 What's happening? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 The UK economy is getting fucked in the ass multiple times in a row thanks to their new PM, who is now so unpopular that she may have just killed the Conservative party, no exaggeration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 So this podcast goes over the events leading up to the 30th of September: https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/ones-and-tooze/britain-economic-freefall/ That prompted me to ask on the Discord back then. Like, were you guys okay? So anyways, seems like there was some damage control in the time since and well, today happened. I'm not exactly sure what went down but: Those are the summaries I got. Like, what the fuck? If it makes any of you Brits happy, the midterms are in a couple of weeks here in the US, and the totally legitimate Supreme Court will be doing some rulings by early December. There's time for shitstorms on our side! Brazil! Russia and Ukraine. EU. Iran. Koreas! China and Taiwan! LFG! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 8 hours ago, Mister Jack said: The UK economy is getting fucked in the ass multiple times in a row thanks to their new PM, who is now so unpopular that she may have just killed the Conservative party, no exaggeration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 The fact that we need a disambiguation is, in itself, telling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_Kingdom_government_crisis 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 39 minutes ago, Thursday Next said: The fact that we need a disambiguation is, in itself, telling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_Kingdom_government_crisis The saddest thing is that, despite all of this, you know they're going to get a not insignificant share of the vote when we finally get a GE. I think they time in government is over for the next decade or so, but I can't see them being wiped out entirely. I think they might lose a portion of their vote to the Lib-Dems, but eventually those True Blue voters will revert to type. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 Lettuce for PM? Or maybe Boris Johnson can come back to kill what's left. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 It's extremely frustrating to me that the rule is not "New PM = immediate General Election". It feels deeply wrong that we will have had 3 Prime Ministerships (if not 3 different PMs) with no say from the general public. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted October 22, 2022 Report Share Posted October 22, 2022 On 10/21/2022 at 10:34 AM, Thursday Next said: It's extremely frustrating to me that the rule is not "New PM = immediate General Election". It feels deeply wrong that we will have had 3 Prime Ministerships (if not 3 different PMs) with no say from the general public. If we had a more solid constitution this could all be avoided. In the last 15 years we've had 6 different PM's and only *3 of them got elected to that position (I know we don't vote for a PM but yadda yadda yadda). I have no issue with the way we don't directly elect our PM, but I do think it's about time we had a rule that made it constitutionally guaranteed that within 3 months of a change of leadership, we get a GE. As with many things in this country, we need to seriously sit down and think about how our system works. Unfortunately we seem incapable of having calm waters for long enough to actually do that. We've bounced from one crisis to another since the Scottish Referendum and it's starting to really effect our institutions and our democracy as a whole. *Technically only one of them got elected PM without also being the incumbent. May and Johnson already had the job. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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