General Election 2024

[Tony L]

Can't argue with that, apart from when the decline started. I'd say 1979, the year of the witch and toads.

One can argue the UK has had elite rule and has been based upon nationalism, colonialism and ethnic exceptionalism forever aside from a brief bounce in the 20th century where civil rights activism and a sense of optimism very briefly rose to the surface. The UK is just falling back to being a fiefdom for a vanishingly small disproportionately wealthy elite. Very likely its natural state.

The thing that astonishes and depresses me is just how effective the gaslighting has proven. Outside of London and a few wealthy suburbs and rural areas the UK is a very poor nation with obviously declining living standards. The overwhelming majority of the population are barely making ends meet, yet we allow an oligarch class to take us for £bns, shit in our rivers, and take us for idiots as long as they point to a refugee, homeless person, trans person or someone in a wheelchair on benefits to blame. It is impossible to look at the UK rationally and not see a hellscape. I’ve always been highly cynical of establishment power, always recognised this is not a democratic country, but the last 14 years has made me truly detest the place. If I could afford to get out to somewhere more liberal and progressive I’d be long gone by now.

I see no hope or optimism in Starmer’s Labour. Just another dull grey establishment party with no intellect, no ideas, no honesty, and lacking the courage to challenge or change anything. They aren’t even at the level of deckchair arrangers on a sinking ship. Just vacuous flag saluters as it goes down.

 

[TheFlash]

Add to this the mainstream media seemingly giving near equal billing to elite public school fascist Richard Tice and his oligarch-backed racist party despite zero MPs and only two councillors and the UK’s decline is locked-in. The window of dialogue has been set. Starmer accepts the rules. He will play the game.

This is the bit I don't get about BBC or any other media coverage: why grant an odious rightest wing of a right wing thing such coverage? Because it's sensationalist? Farage, Tice and the like should get coverage in line with the vote they got ast the last general election when they may well have been called something else...

The UK is over. It is a dead nation killed by Brexit and 14 years of thieving oligarch rule. We are done as no party is even allowed to address the elephant in the room. As I see it increasing decline and fascism of one colour or another is pretty much the only possible destination from where we are right now. The exit roads have all been blocked off. The failure seems all but locked-in.

I am slightly more optimistic, though depressingly recognise the locked-in nature of the beast.

Where we will continue to differ is your dismissal of the Tory party (or at least those party members who constitute the present government) as "thieving oligarchs". Many Tories simply and actually believe that the best way of shaping a Britain which will be prosperous and successful is to foster a spirit or competition which leads to innovation etc etc. They're genuinely well-meaning folk, even if some of us would consider some of their policies to be misguided. Sure, there may be a thieving oligarch or two in the mix but I simply don't recognise what comes across as a sweeping dismissal of every member of parliament representing the party as being a selfish thief.

 

[Tony L]

Where we will continue to differ is your dismissal of the Tory party (or at least those party members who constitute the present government) as "thieving oligarchs". Many Tories simply and actually believe that the best way of shaping a Britain which will be prosperous and successful is to foster a spirit or competition which leads to innovation etc etc. They're genuinely well-meaning folk, even if some of us would consider some of their policies to be misguided. Sure, there may be a thieving oligarch or two in the mix but I simply don't recognise what comes across as a sweeping dismissal of every member of parliament representing the party as being a selfish thief.

As ever follow the money. Look at how the party is funded (though you have to dig a bit as it is so deliberately obfuscated). Look at how many MPs are multimillionaires with outside interests worth multiples of their MP salaries, bogus “directorships” for lobbying etc. Barely a week goes by without one of them getting busted for lobbying, shilling, fiddling their taxes, or dipping the till in some way or another. Then look at how they sell peerages, state assets, contracts etc. Political corruption semi-“legalised” via deliberately bent rules.

The UK Conservative Party is a criminal entity IMHO. Gangsters, albeit very posh public school educated ones. The last thing it represents is the wider electorate.

 

[Sloop John B]

Call me morbid call me pale

the lesser of 2 evils

cutting off one’s nose to spite the face

best of a bad lot

I don’t get you guys sometimes. All over the EU there most likely will be a move to the right in elections in June, which may well threaten the EU going forward.

In the UK it looks like there will be a defeat for a right wing government with them losing power. Now you can argue all day about how left Labour is but if Labour win the election, it certainly isn’t a lurch to the right which has to be a good thing. The UK will probably be the European outlier by not lurching to the right.

Embrace it, it could be a the start of the dismantling of some of the Thatcher era stupidity. It’s probably likely that some water companies will be re-nationalised and not inconceivable that rail would also be in Labour’s first term. It would be stupid for Starmer to frighten the horses at this stage in the campaign but I would expect a Labour government to be much better than what a lot of you seem to think and not be Tory-Lite By a long shot.

.sjb

 

[paulfromcamden]

I simply don't recognise what comes across as a sweeping dismissal of every member of parliament representing the party as being a selfish thief.

I think that's fair enough. But at the same time I would also hold them, at the very least, complicit in the widespread corruption and embezzlement of public funds we saw during, for example, covid.

 

[Weekender]

 

[paulfromcamden]

It’s probably likely that some water companies will be re-nationalised

Only because the alternative is a) the taps stop working or b) writing a blank cheque to firms that have spent the past thirty years racking up billions in debt so they can pay it to themselves.

And water nationalisation is being touted as 'temporary' so there's a good chance we're actually at option b anyway.

There doesn't seem to be any recognition that nationalisation might actually be a desirable thing in itself. It's always presented as an unfortunate stop-gap contingency until the free market can step in again.

 

[paulfromcamden]

OT but on the subject of water.. a mind blowing admission from the head of the Environment Agency:

The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Duffy said: “I see these letters and these FOI requests and I’ve got great volumes of them, and I see local officers going through quite a contorted processes to not to answer when they know, often, the answer but it’s embarrassing.

“They do it because they are frightened. They are worried about revealing the true state of what’s going on, they’re worried about reaction from NGOs and others, and possibly from the government, about the facts of the situation.”

Environment Agency chief admits regulator buries freedom of information requests

Speaking at the UK River Summit, Philip Duffy said officials do not want to reveal the true ‘embarrassing’ environmental picture

www.theguardian.com

 

[Minio]

"Always look on the bright side of life".

People's lives depend on it.

(The New Yorker April'24) "What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule

So it says in an elitist magazine in one of the world's wealthiest cities.
Try taking a slow(ish) train down to Virginia from Penn station NYC.

Several hundred years of capitalism and you can easily find the downside.

 

[wacko]

^ natural monopolies should not be privatised FULL STOP

 

[Mick P]

I spend seven months in the UK and five months in Spain. If I was a worker instead of being a retiree I would count myself lucky living in the Uk because although the cost of living in Spain is lower than in the UK, the wages in Spain are awful, housing is cramped and waiting lists for everything are long. The average Spaniard regards us as being very fortunate to be living here.

Nobody is ever happy with their lot but we are bloody fortunate in comparison to those in many other countries.

 

[gez]

Au contraire. The punishment at the hands of the electorate will be a spectacle through the night into the 5th. The destruction of the Tory Party has been a dream for millions of us. They’ll fracture while Reform cannibalises their vote but with no victories.

Yeah sure, but look at who's going to replace them. Another bunch of morons with no integrity or values.

 

[gez]

Wetter...

Couldnt have timed his speech better, the twat.

 

[wacko]

I spend seven months in the UK and five months in Spain. If I was a worker instead of being a retiree I would count myself lucky living in the Uk because although the cost of living in Spain is lower than in the UK, the wages in Spain are awful, housing is cramped and waiting lists for everything are long. The average Spaniard regards us as being very fortunate to be living here.

Nobody is ever happy with their lot but we are bloody fortunate in comparison to those in many other countries.

UK has been richer than Spain for 200 years : maybe just played the Empire game better.
The comparison should be what the UK is now, compared to what it could have been with honest and efficient government for the last 14 years.

 

[gez]

The young don’t vote for them and their natural electors are dying

People become tend towards voting tory as they get older, a significant percentage of those young labour/alternative votors today will vote tory in 10,15,20 years time. It's a falacy to believe that the tory vote is going anywhere, ever.

People need to remember there is tory and their is tory, this gov is on the extreme right wing end of the span of politics that can be labelled tory. as Mick P has pointed out, Tony Blair may well have been Labour, but many of his policies were very much Tory in nature.

 

[Mick P]

UK has been richer than Spain for 200 years : maybe just played the Empire game better.
The comparison should be what the UK is now, compared to what it could have been with honest and efficient government for the last 14 years.

Spain suffered from a Franco dictatorship but millions of Spaniards still love him because he brought foreign money into the country and anyone involved in export industries did well under him. He died in 1975 and democracy was restored in a matter of months.

The Spanish have a far better education than us, for instance how many foreign languages are you fluent in?

Over here second and third languages in youngsters are common.

However they are paid worse than us and they work longer hours. Believe me if you work over here doing the same job as you do in the UK, you would be way worse off. However unless you speak reasonable Spanish, you would be unemployable.

 

[gez]

Strong government is over-rated.

Worse, they're dangerous.

Military Dictatorships, One Party Communist rule. Both examples of strong government (pretty much the pinacle of) and look how the general population tends to be treated by such regimes.

 

[Mick P]

People become tend towards voting tory as they get older, a significant percentage of those young labour/alternative votors today will vote tory in 10,15,20 years time. It's a falacy to believe that the tory vote is going anywhere, ever.

People need to remember there is tory and their is tory, this gov is on the extreme right wing end of the span of politics that can be labelled tory. as Mick P has pointed out, Tony Blair may well have been Labour, but many of his policies were very much Tory in nature.

I cannot forget Thatchers response when she was asked what was her greatest achievement. She replied Tony Blair and New Labour. She forced them to change.

This is why we now have two very similar parties ruling the roost.

 

[davidsrsb]

Income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient peaked in the UK in 2001

After 2001, the very rich became more efficient at hiding or offshoring their wealth. Do you seriously feel that the UK is a more equal society these days?

 

[gez]

First, we've lost the smoking legislation. This is a major deal and I hope whoever wins revives it.

Same. But of course the internet is full of people proclaiming this a win as it was a removal of their individual freedoms etc.