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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The 2016 White House race: The battles to secure the Republ
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The 2016 White House race: The battles to secure the Republican and Democratic party nominations
The above polling from the respected Quinnipiac University is of matchups between Democratic and Republican Party contenders in two of the key swing States that will decide next year’s White House Race – Ohio and Florida.
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But the very convincing arguments Hannan makes are not the arguments of Farage at all. If a Farage-fronted campaign wins then the only way to reconcile the country voting to regain control of our borders (if that is the #1 issue that wins the debate) is to leave the EEA altogether. So that puts me in the In camp today.
I'm truly torn on this in the way I haven't in any ballot since 2005 (I hopefully for the last time was reluctant about voting Tory, I despised the "are you thinking what I'm thinking" dog whistle campaign).
EDIT: fixed typos.
With regards the EU it's just a slur used by those who oppose the free market and want the UK to leave the EU so the nanny state can provide political and economic patronage to their chosen few.
Oh and I was on the Yes side in the Independence vote.
If immigration is the main battle then the EEA is off the table IMO. And that's a shame and that's why it matters what battles are fought.
Nothing the EU does it outwith these functions.
You can argue that it could do these better, that it could get better but it is purely bigotted nonsense that the EU does not support the free market.
Don’t blame me for migrant flood, says Merkel http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4579940.ece
Its the same as the AV referendum. I love FPTP, I think AV is a reasonable version of FPTP (see Australia's two party lower house) and I despise with all my being PR. Since the arguments for AV were arguments for PR I voted against AV. Arguments matter, AV had it been won would have been a stepping stone to PR and that I could not countenance.
Had the arguments for AV been solely on the merits of AV and going to an Australian rather than a European style system then I might have voted Yes. Instead I was passionately No. Its like Chess and exactly the same as you looking two steps ahead and worrying about what the EU might be rather than just what it is.
@alextomo: Working today on a major exclusive on the News of the World hacking scandal - watch this space. #channel4news
I hated the Michaelmas term for the first 2 years of upper school because I was a hooker too, after which I worked out that learning how to kick a ball just a little higher than most people meant you'd get protected rather than nailed on a rugger pitch.
The Working Time Directive and the Social Chapter has sod all to do with the free market and is just European socialism.
You'd struggle to unwind that.
FPTP offers absolutely NOTHING and is not democratic in a Representative Democracy.
Came as a surprise to me as the line out of european govts is that they have no clear idea what we are asking for. All a bit puzzling, frankly.
If you are unwilling to admit that what you see as weaknesses others see as strengths then you are delusional or naive.
A free market in goods and services requires the same Labour rules across all parts of that market. If your argument is the abolition of Labour rules, fine, but that's not an argument against the EU, that's an argument against any government controls on Labour markets and I do not believe that would be particularly popular.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/05/worlds-first-lesbian-bishop-calls-church-remove-crosses-install-muslim-prayer-space/
Do the "leaves" just accept it for a generation ?
It ought to be possible to put the child back with his real parents if the matter is managed well and sensitively though it would not be at all easy. But I think that to learn that you had been taken away from your parents for no good reason - whenever you learn it - would be very traumatic and I wonder whether this factor has been fully taken into account.
Often miscarriages like this happen because parents do not get proper legal advice right at the start. It is not easy to get Legal Aid - and I don't know whether you can even get it now - and really good lawyers in this field are essential and not always easy to find and you need real help to deal with state representatives who can often combine the truculent pigheadedness of traffic wardens combined with the levels of transparency of the Kremlin circa 1970.
What you have completely failed to do is explain why it is BETTER. It is not better that a voter has no representative of their party or political allegiance who could deal with their issues when that party or political allegiance could be backed by 40% of the electorate in a constituency. It is not better that a government can be formed across a nation based on 33% of the vote (as happened in the UK in 2010).
Explaining how something works is not explaining why you think it is better. Go on try. I doubt you will make any sense but at least it might be funny.
On a matter of what's best for the child - I think the adoptive parents should voluntarily let the biological parents adopt the child back.
https://twitter.com/thedailymash/status/652028981420515328
Nine times out of 10 there these situations are very grey and muddy; there is a whole sea of facts, statements, and opinions you don't know about, all of which may have a bearing on the case.
There may not be sufficient evidence to convict the parents 'beyond reasonable doubt' (or for a jury to be 'sure' as they say these days, sadly), but that does not mean that the parents are beyond reproach. Did they have 'previous'? Have other children been taken into care? Are they dysfunctional in another way? Have other offences come to light between removal of the child and now? [Note that I'm not condoning removing children from a family just because a child has been removed in the past, or because a family is dysfunctional - people and situations change, often radically.]
But all these things carry weight in considering the welfare of the child. We might not know about them, but those making the decisions do. All will have been considered in reaching the verdict.
A final point: The parents may well be entirely innocent in this case. I don't know. But the black/white statement that 'a mistake must be reversed' misses the fact that those making the decisions are not doing so maliciously or perversely, however much the headline may make it appear so.
FPTP is neither representative nor democratic !
1: Each person should have one and only one person responsible for them. This is the one person that stands up in the Commons to represent their local interests, the one person that represents the entire area, the one person that can be ejected if they fail to do so. This is about accountability.
2: Only the most popular wins. Each MP must deal with their own local consituents and ensure they are that most popular one. If they fail to do so then no matter how high up the party tree they are then they are gone. No ifs, no buts. Just ask Ed Balls or for a Scottish example wee Dougie Alexander.
If a region has multiple MPs then the electorate can be shunted from one to another, if it is a prizes for all situation then that combines the aloofness and unaccountability as an MP at the top of the list will be re-elected regardless of what their electorate thinks of them. Alexander is gone from Westminster, his electorate decided they didn't want him anymore and so now Mhairi Black represents them and is accountable to them. Had he been on a list he'd still be hanging around like a bad smell accountable to no-one. No thanks.
If, as I think more likely, it turns out that Cameron got nothing of any substance and the British position within the EU is unchanged or worsens (from the perspective of a Eurosceptic) the I think there will be a huge amount of trouble for the Tory party and I can foresee a genuine rift.
It all depends on what you think the EU wants (what Britain wants will no longer matter) and what it will do in the aftermath of a remain vote.
100% of the electorate is represented by their most popular local candidate. It is true representation. In 56 seats the local electorate chose the SNP candidate, in 1 seat the local electorate chose the UKIP candidate. That is not broken, that is representation. That is democracy.
My point was only that this is one gargantuan mess and whatever is done now, there is going to be a lot of suffering as a result. But I can see why it might be deemed in the child's best interests to remain where they are.
(Ok, my views here are perhaps influenced by a couple of friends of mine who adopted a baby about six months ago after trying for a baby for 15 years or so. I'm not sure that they would suffer less than biological parents if their child was taken away from them because some social worker had made a mistake, saying the child should never have been up for adoption in the first place.)
Let's forget about the very real situation where the vast majority of people are not voting for a local representative but instead select a party (and this is demonstrable over and over again from results). And forgetting any explanation of why 650 instead of 1 or 63 million.
You are actually suggesting there is some merit in being represented by someone who up to 72% of the voters DID NOT VOTE FOR. Yet somehow an individual voter has the ability to eject this representative when 72% have ALREADY rejected them in an election they "won".
The incoherent nonsense bubble you are living in is truly unique.
No system will please all the people all the time. In fact all systems will probably aggravate a fat chunk of the electorate, it's just that the chuck will vary in composition.
Feel free to indulge your feelings on the subject, but accept that they are just that - your demos, your unit, is merely an imagined distinction. It has no more validity than someone who feels British, or feels like a Shetland Islander, or feels European.
Who else should have won other than the most popular candidate? Someone who got even less than the winner? It is you who are being incoherent and putting it into capital letters doesn't change things.
How traumatic do you think it would be now, to take it away from those it's thinks of as 'mummy and daddy' and hand it over to people who are effectively strangers? A child that young wouldn't understand.
It's an awful decision to leave things as they are, but perhaps the better of a bad decision in the long run.
They had supervised visits and the child knows/knew them. The adoption was only made final this year.
If a government bod was saying that the church must do this then that would be one thing, but churches are free to evolve and appeal as they please.
The questiong of how we ended up there is therefore, if anything, more relevant than what we do now.
If 72% of a voting body reject someone, that is almost three times as many as support them, yet under FPTP that person becomes a representative. The question is not about "who else should be the representative" as you comically try to make it, the question is why does this system create such a clearly broken and unfair outcome.
And the answer is that it is designed to create a broken and unfair outcome in order to allow small interest groups to gain absolute control despite having minority support. And for the Right - which tends to be less factional and fractured than the Left - this is ideal.
The sad thing is that everyone knows why FPTP is supported by those that support it. It is because it allows them absolutely power without majority support. The problem for those supports is that this is clearly an indefensible position so they have to invent utterly fanciful excuses.
It is not clearly unfair. It is clean and simple, to me it is clearly unfair that someone who scores even less than that gets elected.
The adoptive parents are going to have to tell the child that it has been adopted and why. If what we know is the truth - and I wonder whether we have indeed been told the whole story - then that truth is going to hurt that child and I'm not sure that has been fully taken into account in determining the child's best interests.
There is always a danger that those involved seek to find reasons to justify the original decision rather than focus on the justice of the case and then use the passage of time to reinforce the original wrong/unjust decision. Any change would be difficult for a child but it would be easier at 3 than later - if managed properly.
Knots indeed.
And anyway, your describing the most important feature (not bug) or FPTP. It delivers majority governments and the ability to implement change without pandering to minority partners with influence far beyond their actual size.
You wrote : -
Each person should have one and only one person responsible for them. This is the one person that stands up in the Commons to represent their local interests, the one person that represents the entire area, the one person that can be ejected if they fail to do so. This is about accountability.
So clearly YOU think it is about the voters ability to eject someone. The problem is (as you now accept), the voters have no reliable mechanism to eject someone under FPTP.
This is, of course, also a valid criticism of AMS and pure/region PR (but less so AV) but none of those systems are being justified on this basis.
You're actually trying to defend FPTP with an argument FPTP utterly and clearly FAILS when tested on. This is YOUR argument and FPTP does not work based on YOUR argument.
If nobody else gets more votes than them, then they are re-elected. I never for one second said they could be ejected by adding all the losers together, that is stupid. The voters have a very clean, very clear, very unambiguous way of ejecting someone under FPTP - elect an alternative with more votes. How do you eject someone at the top of a party list under PR?
Make a bad coalition and you are held accountable at subsequent elections.
My favourite mistranslation story is from Antony Acland who told me that, on a diplomatic mission to Japan, he was introduced to the Prime Minister as a "Immortal Junior Typist"
(he was, of course, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the FCO)
I am not a Christian so I am quite content to let the bishops and the Church decide this on their own but separation of church and state gives them that right to decide what they want on their own.
Major intervention from International Olympic Committee on Fifa crisis. "Enough is enough".
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQzJ0mhWEAAAMZT.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQzJ0msWEAAsFw9.jpg
Mr. Charles, I've read a couple of old Chinese stories, and they often have cool nicknames (Timely Rain, Jade Unicorn, Sleeping Dragon etc). Immortal Junior Typist would be a fantastic nickname for a comedy character in that setting. [According to one translation of Outlaws of the Marsh, there's a character called Short Arse Wang (although another translation renders it Stumpy Tiger Wang, I think)].
Individuals can be ejected under PR using open lists. In practise, the requirement for open lists does not show much popular support nor indeed is there much indication of voters caring and using it when it does exist.
But that is merely your attempt at creating a logical fallacy. PR or AMS is not being justified on the basis of ejection of specific individuals (which FPTP cannot do). It is being offered as being a far more representative way of electing representatives (which should be the key factor) and reflecting the beliefs of voters and the real world practicalities of how people actually choose how they vote.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34475768
That real life is complicated is inevitable but that is the case regardless of voting system. One person, one vote, one representative. It is the one true form of representation and PR is broken as it does not have that. Whether you admit it or not.
http://stephentall.org/2015/10/08/camerons-speech-a-triumph-of-right-wing-virtue-signalling-made-possible-by-labours-abdication-as-a-credible-opposition/
"The Tories have a wafer-thin majority masquerading as a landslide thanks to the reckless self-indulgence of Labour’s decision to abdicate its role as a credible party of government for as long as the Bennite Left is in charge. The gap between Cameron’s rhetoric and Conservative reality would be exploited by Her Majesty’s Opposition if it were itself in touch with reality. Sadly, it’s too busy promenading its own rhetorical virtue-signalling on social media.
I watched last night’s excellent BBC2 documentary, Denis Healy: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had? There was a leader who understood the necessity of compromise, of politics as the art of the possible, who hated opposition because it meant not being in power to achieve something for the people who elected you.
My simplistic plea: a lot less virtue-signalling, a lot more virtue-doing."
FPTP is neither representative nor democratic !
Except when Labour win under FPTP then he never hear this crap !
[Ok, you're both probably doing a little of both, but the bias is as I've stated]
Doesn't suit everybody, but it suits Britain just fine. And it offers:
- stability of government and constitution
- direct constituency link between individual and the legislature
- accountability (government and representatives)
All of which are most definitely something, and cherished by the majority of the people.
Being governed by people who are accountable to people other than the UK electorate is made no more acceptable to me by virtue of the fact that they are elected, rather than appointed.
It might be nice if there was a candidate B but while voters have to select from candidate B, C, D, E and possibly F and do not have enough information to know which is best to replace candidate A, the FPTP system fails on the ONLY measure by which you claim to support it.
AMS offers the exact same benefit of a FPTP constiency while ensuring the legislature actually reflects the country that wants to be represented by it. FPTP does the opposite and ensures as little link as possible between the voter and the overall legistlature.
Not only that but the biggest problem with FPTP is not that it fails its own measures of success but that it offers the most significant problems. It is the root cause of factional, uncompormising, adversarial politics and the main cause of almost every significant problem in how the UK is governed.
I don't say they have to like him, but they shouldn't be blinded by their own feelings into assuming that's what the 4m UKIP voters think too
I don't say he should lead any campaign, neither should any UKIP politician. But farage doesn't say that either,
Nor would farage be any more powerful were we to leave the EU. People saying they worry about voting to leave because of that baffle me... Why would it make any difference? I'd think thst world probably be a good time for Nigel to stand down. His life's work complete
We see today the reluctance of Tories on here to even admit the election result! The partisan nature in here really is incredible
You are fooling only yourself by claiming anyone would look at the UK and think "hey, great example of democracy". It is almost certainly the worst example in all Western liberal democracies - so bad that it probably shouldn't be included in such a grouping.
That was on a turnout of 42%, I suspect we'll get General Election levels of turnout for an EU referendum so that implies 9.6 million voters could vote Yes and still lose by two to one.
I want Farage to lose not because I dislike him but because I dislike his arguments. As Richard said almost all of the rest of the Eurosceptic movement is open to being No to the EU but Yes to the EEA - as are many Stay voters like myself. Farage's arguments close down the EEA as an option and thus close down probably any chance of the UK voting Out. He is damaging your cause.
I listen to people on here who paint a positive picture of life after the EU - and I think you know what, I could get behind that. And then I hear Farage and think, maybe not.
As I said earlier, a vote on the EU referendum is not just about the EU, it is about the direction the country takes after the vote. If that is in the direction of small-minded buffoons, I'll probably prefer to stick with arrogant but moderately competent Eurocrats.
People who are unconcerned about Nigel Farage telling me that they are unconcerned about Nigel Farage aren't really giving me (or any of the absolute majority of the population that don't like him) any very useful information.
But look, a simple statement that UKIP got one vote for every three Tory votes at the GE is argued over in here by anti Kippers, even though it is a fact. You have to bear things like that in mind when reading their posts
UKIP is looking like a one man power-trip, and Farage unable to let go, or allow anyone else in.
Farage will not be on the political scene forever. But the vote will have a dramatic impact on the UK for decades to come.
Out isn't risk-free, but we are certain the EU wants closer union. It wants to erode our sovereignty until it doesn't exist, and if we refuse to hand over powers in some areas, elsewhere QMV and the divergent interests (and critical mass of voting power) of the eurozone means we'll be constantly defeated.
The risk of remaining is certain: being a member of a club which takes billions of pounds a year and does not have our best interests at heart.
Ten, 20 or 30 years down the line, how would you feel if you voted Out, and we left, or In, and we remained? I think I'd be far happier with Out (or, perhaps, less unhappy).