Who are you voting for?

Who?

  • Labour

    Votes: 7 15.6%
  • Tory

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Lib Dem

    Votes: 21 46.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • No-one

    Votes: 9 20.0%

  • Total voters
    45

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Most of the Orange Bookers I've come across have been advocates of fairly mainstream Keynesian policy (like Labour) and critical of Tory deficit fetishism.

the party's Beveridge Group are a direct lineage from the original Liberal Keynesians too, tbf.

what Spectator article are we talking about wrt Clegg, btw?

ta.

i wouldn't say they neatly 'line up', exactly, w the Tories economically, but there's more common ground there than among many Labour, surely.

the Keynesians in the L-Ds definitely have more of the numbers than non-Beveridge sorts AFAIK as i think i speculated earlier, mind you, granted.

not sure how to treat the fourth paragraph from David Osler here. Osler always seems fairly well-connected (journo and writer himself), but of course he can only throw things out anonymously (and is clear about his party bias).

have some unsubstantiated gossip then, thread! :cool:

Clegg’s public position is that he would in the first instance work with whoever emerges the strongest after the impending election. I’m told by journalists who know him that his personal preference would be to come to terms with Cameron.

magnificent face fuzz from Mr Heath there, Lichen!
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
P.S. Vim: i notice House of War was blessed w a comments-box visit from Richard Seymour recently!

my you are going up in the world ;)

(loved your reply to the guy.)
 

mms

sometimes
On one level I'd kind of like to see the tories get in. I wasn't about for Thatcher/John Major so I've never really known a Tory government. I reckon they would be good fun to hate as they be stealin ur milks etc. I think Dave Cameron would be amazing to hate.

pfft
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
As a centrist, I think the Tories may work best as a corrective to the last few years of Labour's communism-lite, hence Tory vote (for the first time, I might add).

Lib Dems are a shoo-in to win locally.
 
Last edited:

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
As a centrist, I think the Tories may work best as a corrective to the last few years of Labour's communism-lite, hence Tory vote (for the first time, I might add).

Please don't. I told my own mother I wouldn't speak to her for six months if she voted Tory last time, so I may have to order a hit on you.

Communism-lite?????! I'm not sure which Labour policies you're thinking of....or, come to think of it, what situation, real or hypothetical, the Tories could possibly correct.
 
Last edited:

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Communism-lite?????! I'm not sure which Labour policies you're thinking of....or, come to think of it, what situation, real or hypothetical, the Tories could possibly correct.

Their micro-management of national services in the aim of churning out self-congratulatory production figures; their social engineering obsession and reality-shaping conceit; their suppression of our right to demonstrate; their feverish law-creation; their buying of voters by creating ghettos reliant on their support; their intrusion in private social affairs in which government should really have no say; their disregard for popular feeling in formulating international policy; their love of all-encompassing databases and close surveillance; their undermining of competing power structures through enforced compromise under the guise of a respectful multiculturalism; their meddling in the universities and reduction of intellectual activity to yet more productivity figures; their bone-headed recycling of communist tropes, seemingly with no awareness of their often dubious history (the 'tsars', the rising sun of their manifesto cover etc).

Government has been getting too large and intrusive and I'm attracted by any party that promises a diminution of its influence.
 
Last edited:

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Their micro-management of national services in the aim of churning out self-congratulatory production figures; their social engineering obsession and reality-shaping conceit; their suppression of our right to demonstrate; their feverish law-creation; their buying of voters by creating ghettos reliant on their support; their intrusion in private social affairs in which government should really have no say; their disregard for popular feeling in formulating international policy; their love of all-encompassing databases and close surveillance; their undermining of competing power structures through enforced compromise under the guise of a respectful multiculturalism; their meddling in the universities and reduction of intellectual activity to yet more productivity figures; their bone-headed recycling of communist tropes, seemingly with no awareness of their often dubious history (the 'tsars', the rising sun of their manifesto cover etc).

Government has been getting too large and intrusive and I'm attracted by any party that promises a diminution of its influence.

oh, you meant 'communism' (Stalinist state socialism), not communism. not being picky, but there's a monumental difference (um, and tsars aren't really a communist trope under any definition!)

and c'mon, suppression of the right to demonstrate (!), undermining of competing power structures, intrusion in private social affairs* etc - have you checked the record of the 1979-1997 Tory governments? As to self-congratulatory production figures/reduction of intellectual activity to more production figures, that's a FAR wider problem than this last Labour government.

but a diminution of government influence is only half of that issue - what will come in its place is the other half. as i recall, tory governments are pretty intrusive upon people's lives - it's just that they reserve this intrusion for the poorer parts of society.

not sticking up for New Labour, obviously, but i don't see the point in voting for something that is likely to be even worse. What good things will the Tories do, in your opinion? Apart from try to privatise everything else that hasn't already been privatised, of course...(including education, making it easier to start up new private academies; and new schools get paid for attracting pupils!). Cameron is on record as being a big fan of Thatcher - nuff said.

*and Cameron is pledging to recognise marriage in the tax system! That strikes me as pretty fucking intrusive.

Edit: But they will "challenge racism and bigotry in all its manifestations". Best start chasing your own tail...
 
Last edited:

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
oh, you meant 'communism' (Stalinist state socialism), not communism.

My contention is that Labour has been gradually introducing a fundamentally ineffective and illiberal system modelled, consciously or not, on Eastern European state socialism (which often called itself 'communism').

Bear in mind that social mobility has been said to have decreased under Labour, which considering that 'fairness' might be said to be their (ostensible) raison d'etre is somewhat of an epic fail.

It may be a case of choosing between almost certain continued decline in the prospects of the comparatively poor and a speculative glimmer of hope in a reverse, pending the application of non-leftist policies (eg. the return of grammar schools?)
 

Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
unless there are some surprises on the ballot in my ward, I'm not voting. My "compromise" approach to Labour has gone far enough, the "yeh, but they're still better than the other lot" argument no longer holds, for a dozen reasons. So, no. Sadly, in the absence of a none of the above option, I'll be staying home and feeling depressed
 

Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
pending the application of non-leftist policies (eg. the return of grammar schools?)

I went to a grammar school and the very notion of their return is an appalling one. I'm all for (very very mobile) streaming within schools, but a two-tier system like the grammar school is divisive, harmful, elitist and unacceptable.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
As to self-congratulatory production figures/reduction of intellectual activity to more production figures, that's a FAR wider problem than this last Labour government.

Yes, and it's a problem that they don't appear to be trying to solve (as it would entail decentralisation).

Apart from try to privatise everything else that hasn't already been privatised, of course...(including education, making it easier to start up new private academies; and new schools get paid for attracting pupils!).

I'm for their educational plans, broadly speaking: they're supposedly based on good practice (the much-lauded Swedish model) and the private school system as it is in the UK currently is internationally renowned. If they relinquish control of exams and hand them over to universities (academic exams) and business (vocational), then so much the better.

and Cameron is pledging to recognise marriage in the tax system! That strikes me as pretty fucking intrusive.

Well, that's no different to the benefits system encouraging the creation of babies and attendant single mothers, except the outcome is more to be desired (children are born into families with greater resources); it's an attempt to solve an obvious social problem. Accord homosexual marriages the same status and the bigotry charge disappears. Not sure where racism enters into it.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I went to a grammar school and the very notion of their return is an appalling one. I'm all for (very very mobile) streaming within schools, but a two-tier system like the grammar school is divisive, harmful, elitist and unacceptable.

Fine, but which system delivers more working class students into top universities or top jobs?

btw The Tories' beloved Swedish model does not involve selection or hard-and-fast streaming afaik, so a return to grammars is unlikely (not that they have disappeared completely, anyway).
 
Last edited:

connect_icut

Well-known member
Tactical Lib-Dem vote to keep the Tories out. Voting by proxy in Hereford, which is a Lib-Dem/Tory marginal. Labour don't stand a chance there.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
their suppression of our right to demonstrate

i mentioned this up thread but agreed here M B and w specific regard to things like Charles Clarke bringing in certain laws on demos near Parliament. whatever you thought of something like that, it must be said that Labour's PR on the matter was very bad and the Tories and L-Ds capitalised on this by loudly attacking the govt.

this article from 2007 sketches a few points about the trajectories of civil libs under the govt.

The deployment of terrorism and public order law to control, sometimes to curb completely, political speech and public demonstrations is a serious matter. It is clear that, from this civil libertarian perspective, there are aspects of the Blair-Brown legislative record on these matters that give rise to legitimate concern.

Past generations of civil libertarians had battles on their hands that were far worse than those we confront today: the 1930s and the 1980s were particularly severe, with police powers being deployed in a draconian fashion against hunger marches and striking miners, as a coherent part of what unreconstructed Marxists would call a straightforward class war. Old Labour was very much alive to the impact of such police aggression on civil liberties: the coalition between the worker and the intellectual was a source of great civil libertarian solidarity in days gone by, but this is much less the case today - Labour has lost the cohesiveness on issues of freedom and liberty that used to be such a feature of the party.

This is not to say that the state of freedom in Britain today does not give cause for concern. A recent survey of British attitudes, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research and the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights, found two disturbing trends in public opinion. First there has been a marked decline in support for civil liberties since the mid-1990s - the exact moment when the then opposition Labour party decided to drop its long-standing commitment to their protection. Second, even the support that remains drops still further when the public are invited to take into account the need to act to prevent terrorist attacks.

The reduction of the civil libertarian-minded, intellectual wing of the Labour party to an eccentric rump, to be mocked rather than admired, is one of the most damaging pieces of work that the successive administrations of Tony Blair have done in this area. That effort at marginalisation would not have been as successful as it was had there not been a broader uncertainty on the left about how to react to religious extremism and political violence in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. It is as though the party lost its civil libertarian nerve some time during the early and middle Blair years and has since found it very hard to recover its sense of principle.

this link has the numbers on inequality under Blair/Brown. (the solitary comment under the article is sensible.)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yes, and it's a problem that they don't appear to be trying to solve (as it would entail decentralisation).

I'm for their educational plans, broadly speaking: they're supposedly based on good practice (the much-lauded Swedish model) and the private school system as it is in the UK currently is internationally renowned. If they relinquish control of exams and hand them over to universities (academic exams) and business (vocational), then so much the better.

Well, that's no different to the benefits system encouraging the creation of babies and attendant single mothers, except the outcome is more to be desired (children are born into families with greater resources); it's an attempt to solve an obvious social problem. Accord homosexual marriages the same status and the bigotry charge disappears. Not sure where racism enters into it.

Ah, the bigotry and racism quote wasn't connected to that particular point - just saying that they have a nerve, given the last Tory election campaign.

I take huge issue with your normativity in the last paragraph - 'greater resources' means what exactly, aside from the Tory god of money? A loving single parent family is surely to be preferred to a child growing up amidst a disastrous marriage - how many kids have wished their parents had split up earlier to avoid all that pain??

Re education - by private school system, you mean the academy system? I've heard plenty of bad things about it. Whether it's internationally renowned (by who?) is of little concern.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yes, and it's a problem that they don't appear to be trying to solve (as it would entail decentralisation).

I'm for their educational plans, broadly speaking: they're supposedly based on good practice (the much-lauded Swedish model) and the private school system as it is in the UK currently is internationally renowned. If they relinquish control of exams and hand them over to universities (academic exams) and business (vocational), then so much the better.

Well, that's no different to the benefits system encouraging the creation of babies and attendant single mothers, except the outcome is more to be desired (children are born into families with greater resources); it's an attempt to solve an obvious social problem. Accord homosexual marriages the same status and the bigotry charge disappears. Not sure where racism enters into it.

Ah, the bigotry and racism quote wasn't connected to that particular point - just saying that they have a nerve, given the last Tory election campaign.

I take huge issue with your normativity in the last paragraph - 'greater resources' means what exactly, aside from the Tory god of money? A loving single parent family is surely to be preferred to a child growing up amidst a disastrous marriage - how many kids have wished their parents had split up earlier to avoid all that pain??

Re education - by private school system, you mean the academy system? I've heard plenty of bad things about it, not least . Whether it's internationally renowned (by who?) is of little concern.
 
Top