FPT: The longer this campaign has gone on, the less inclined I am to vote for any of the three main parties:- 1. Corbyn: no. Lots of reasons - mainly dragging his party into a Far Leftist illiberal anti-Semitic gutter. And the WASPI bribe has really annoyed me. 2. Boris: no. A total charlatan. Has made a Faustian pact with the Hard Brexiteers for the sake of his ambition thereby trashing the main things which made traditional Conservatism worthwhile. 3. Swinson: strategically inept and talking dangerous rubbish over the Gender Recognition Act. Apparently expecting people with gender dysphoria to undergo medical tests is too too ghastly to contemplate but women are expected to put up with having men invade their private spaces and the risk of some of them abusing that. In Lib Dem La-La-land, rape is not as ghastly as being asked questions by a doctor. In my constituency that leaves the Brexit Party (as if!) or the Greens. Or the Meeks option - abstaining in person. What a choice.
How many trans women have raped cis women in women-only spaces, in fact?
As far as I know, all the examples used for this have been trans women in women-only prisons who already had a history of sexual assault. The prison system should never be exposing vulnerable women to people with a history of sexual assault (on women) regardless of their gender presentation. It seems to me that this particular group could (and should have been in the first place frankly) be excluded from women’s prisons without that decision having much to do any other part of the discussion about wider trans issues.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
How are you feeling about it al BJO?
We will not win.
Johnson Maj of between 20 and 40
New direction for Lab on 13.12.19
Not sure if I will vote on next Lab leader.
I am sure Laura Pidcock will win anyway, even if Labour goes sub 200 seats as Comres projects.
If she becomes leader, we should brace ourselves for Prime Minister Davey in about 20 years.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
How are you feeling about it al BJO?
We will not win.
Johnson Maj of between 20 and 40
New direction for Lab on 13.12.19
Not sure if I will vote on next Lab leader.
I am sure Laura Pidcock will win anyway, even if Labour goes sub 200 seats as Comres projects.
If she becomes leader, we should brace ourselves for Prime Minister Davey in about 20 years.
Wow! Does that mean 20 years of inch-perfect Boris governments? On that note, does my state pension get paid if I move to Venezuela?
The longer this campaign has gone on, the less inclined I am to vote for any of the three main parties:-
1. Corbyn: no. Lots of reasons - mainly dragging his party into a Far Leftist illiberal anti-Semitic gutter. And the WASPI bribe has really annoyed me. 2. Boris: no. A total charlatan. Has made a Faustian pact with the Hard Brexiteers for the sake of his ambition thereby trashing the main things which made traditional Conservatism worthwhile. 3. Swinson: strategically inept and talking dangerous rubbish over the Gender Recognition Act. Apparently expecting people with gender dysphoria to undergo medical tests is too too ghastly to contemplate but women are expected to put up with having men invade their private spaces and the risk of some of them abusing that. In Lib Dem La-La-land, rape is not as ghastly as being asked questions by a doctor.
In my constituency that leaves the Brexit Party (as if!) or the Greens.
Or the Meeks option - abstaining in person.
What a choice.
So your happy with either Boris or Corbyn as PM then.
Quite the contrary. I would like them both to lose. And disappear from the political stage, never to be heard of again.
As I have a Labour MP with a very large majority, my vote is largely pointless.
If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.
In effect most people don't vote, as their votes are worthless.
But the problem is not so much that heads want to have classes of over 30, it's that they are forced into it because nobody wants to work in their schools.
If you were a teacher, would you want to work in an inner-city school in Hartlepool or a nice grammar school in Harrogate? Not really a hard choice, tbh.
So that in itself means that attracting enough teachers to such tough schools is very hard, and also that many of them tend to be the worse teachers who can't get jobs elsewhere.
What is the head supposed to do if they can't recruit enough teachers to meet this target? Send children home?
One possible way out of this is for schools to have more control over their own pay scales and to give more funding to schools struggling to attract teachers so they can pay higher salaries. That was, indeed, one of the ideas for academies. But it hasn't been a success.
And I note Labour don't say where this extra £25 billion will come from.
I have seen many many admission appeals, and frankly the infant class size rules should be relaxed - in practice panels allow appeals the rules say they shouldn't, due to common sense - but its politically toxic to allow schools to be more flexible as any party would call it out as encouraging massive class sizes.
Which is not to say the aim of 30 is not good, but if a school thinks it could handle it and is set up for it it should not be as hard. If there are not funds or teachers to guarantee lower classes things need to be more flexible.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
How are you feeling about it al BJO?
We will not win.
Johnson Maj of between 20 and 40
New direction for Lab on 13.12.19
Not sure if I will vote on next Lab leader.
What went wrong for you?
People are conservative by nature.
A radical change was offered.
Affordability concerns the main reason why not enough people will vote for real change.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
Yeah, but Nick Clegg was born with a birthmark on his arse that reads "KICK ME"......
Nick Clegg's fatal mistake was trusting the Tories, I doubt the Lib Dems will ever make that mistake again (likewise the DUP).
The voters fatal mistake was trusting Nick Clegg,particularly the young voters that believed his lies about scrapping tuition fees.
Remember every single Lib Dem MP made a personal pledge with all the razzmatazz that went with it, Clegg go into coalition where he could deliver his promise & then tripled fees.
You don't understand what a coalition is.
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
Jo Swinson's latest policy is to require all genders at school to wear the same uniform. Is this really a vote winner?
In future years, there are going to be lawsuits by kids who were allowed to take hormones and have themselves mutilated and later regretted it.
People under 18 are not given hormones or surgery.
They are given medication to delay the onset of puberty though so that they can make a slightly less complicated choice post 18. Whether this is in fact a good idea is controversial.
Indeed, but delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation
Well I don't count myself as a bleeding heart, anything but, but that sounds terrible to me. We are going into some dark places.
I think given we dont trust the judgement of children to do so much at that age, a decision like that should not be open to them until they are an adult. Idk, I dont see what's unreasonable about delaying such fundamental choices for children, that's why we consider them children.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
But the problem is not so much that heads want to have classes of over 30, it's that they are forced into it because nobody wants to work in their schools.
If you were a teacher, would you want to work in an inner-city school in Hartlepool or a nice grammar school in Harrogate? Not really a hard choice, tbh.
So that in itself means that attracting enough teachers to such tough schools is very hard, and also that many of them tend to be the worse teachers who can't get jobs elsewhere.
What is the head supposed to do if they can't recruit enough teachers to meet this target? Send children home?
One possible way out of this is for schools to have more control over their own pay scales and to give more funding to schools struggling to attract teachers so they can pay higher salaries. That was, indeed, one of the ideas for academies. But it hasn't been a success.
And I note Labour don't say where this extra £25 billion will come from.
I have seen many many admission appeals, and frankly the infant class size rules should be relaxed - in practice panels allow appeals the rules say they shouldn't, due to common sense - but its politically toxic to allow schools to be more flexible as any party would call it out as encouraging massive class sizes.
Which is not to say the aim of 30 is not good, but if a school thinks it could handle it and is set up for it it should not be as hard. If there are not funds or teachers to guarantee lower classes things need to be more flexible.
The point is that once you set the rules you also have to match that with funding. The reason the Tories won't set a limit on class size is that they don't want to properly fund state education. Most of them don't use it themselves and so they don't give a monkeys. The day I see private schools with 35 kids in a class is the day I believe that class size doesn't affect the quality of education.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
How are you feeling about it al BJO?
We will not win.
Johnson Maj of between 20 and 40
New direction for Lab on 13.12.19
Not sure if I will vote on next Lab leader.
What went wrong for you?
In the interests of time, shall we deal first with what went right? It’ll be much quicker.
Anyway, last Thursday of the campaign, thank God. But the sun is still out and there is no snow on the ground, so off out again - to test the mood of the voters so I can report back here.....
Yeah, but Nick Clegg was born with a birthmark on his arse that reads "KICK ME"......
Nick Clegg's fatal mistake was trusting the Tories, I doubt the Lib Dems will ever make that mistake again (likewise the DUP).
The voters fatal mistake was trusting Nick Clegg,particularly the young voters that believed his lies about scrapping tuition fees.
Remember every single Lib Dem MP made a personal pledge with all the razzmatazz that went with it, Clegg go into coalition where he could deliver his promise & then tripled fees.
You don't understand what a coalition is.
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
If people want to say they negotiated a poor coalition agreement thats one thing, but people usually imply any coalition is itself a betrayal.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
How are you feeling about it al BJO?
We will not win.
Johnson Maj of between 20 and 40
New direction for Lab on 13.12.19
Not sure if I will vote on next Lab leader.
What went wrong for you?
People are conservative by nature.
A radical change was offered.
Affordability concerns the main reason why not enough people will vote for real change.
Neo Liberalism continues after GE 2019
So nothing to do with the ambivalence of their Brexit position, or Corbyn as a potential PM? From reports on the ground, those seem be pretty consistent messages.
Heard on R4 this morning that Tory staffers think it will be tight next Thursday.
Two ways to look at this:
1) GOTV operation in swing. 2017 possibly resulted in HP because there was complacency
2) it actually IS tight.
I would probably favour the former but at the same time I have said for a while I could very easily see the sort of result where the majority is very slim.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
But the problem is not so much that heads want to have classes of over 30, it's that they are forced into it because nobody wants to work in their schools.
If you were a teacher, would you want to work in an inner-city school in Hartlepool or a nice grammar school in Harrogate? Not really a hard choice, tbh.
So that in itself means that attracting enough teachers to such tough schools is very hard, and also that many of them tend to be the worse teachers who can't get jobs elsewhere.
What is the head supposed to do if they can't recruit enough teachers to meet this target? Send children home?
One possible way out of this is for schools to have more control over their own pay scales and to give more funding to schools struggling to attract teachers so they can pay higher salaries. That was, indeed, one of the ideas for academies. But it hasn't been a success.
And I note Labour don't say where this extra £25 billion will come from.
I have seen many many admission appeals, and frankly the infant class size rules should be relaxed - in practice panels allow appeals the rules say they shouldn't, due to common sense - but its politically toxic to allow schools to be more flexible as any party would call it out as encouraging massive class sizes.
Which is not to say the aim of 30 is not good, but if a school thinks it could handle it and is set up for it it should not be as hard. If there are not funds or teachers to guarantee lower classes things need to be more flexible.
The point is that once you set the rules you also have to match that with funding. The reason the Tories won't set a limit on class size is that they don't want to properly fund state education. Most of them don't use it themselves and so they don't give a monkeys. The day I see private schools with 35 kids in a class is the day I believe that class size doesn't affect the quality of education.
That was the point I was attempting to make, that if there are not the funds the rules need more flexibility since it doesnt prevent larger classes, it just causes personal and administrative hassle for schools and parents even when they could accommodate a few more over 30 without prejudicing the overall educational provision. And the point was politically relaxing that had not been possible even when no one was suggesting money to deal with issues, making statements about 30 just posturing.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
I think it's a fair point. Unless the margin of victory is less than three votes, no one individual vote in any constituency can be considered to have mattered.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
I think it's a fair point. Unless the margin of victory is less than three votes, no one individual vote in any constituency can be considered to have mattered.
I'd prefer to look at it as EVERY vote in EVERY constituency mattered but the winner is the one who got the most of those individual votes.
Heard on R4 this morning that Tory staffers think it will be tight next Thursday.
Two ways to look at this:
1) GOTV operation in swing. 2017 possibly resulted in HP because there was complacency
2) it actually IS tight.
I would probably favour the former but at the same time I have said for a while I could very easily see the sort of result where the majority is very slim.
It’s crap, they are trying to scare every last vote in every seat the election is not close labour will be sub 200, the tories just want more tories.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Its morally right because they got more votes.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Is it morally right that in another system a candidate can win with even less of the vote?
We had a referendum on AV in 2011, and 68% voted to stick with what we have. And remember, Labour remained "neutral".
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
The difference between a class of 29 and 31 is of far less significance than one with and one without several children with unfunded special educational needs - particularly in primary schools in difficult areas. The combination of Cameron's inclusion policy and the gutting of Local Authority funding (together with the squeeze on school budgets) has been a deeply toxic one.
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
I’m over generalising from my own experience again I see...
Having said that, we have classes of 33 and even 34, though most are smaller.
And the honest question which should follow, did you feel that these large class sizes did compromise the quality of education that the whole class got, or a section of the class, or made no difference ?
Clearly there would be a difference between 30 and the public school 18, but is there a difference between 30 and 34 ?
It does when you run out of desks for them to sit at because the room is too small to fit them in.
The SLab vote seems to be almost halved, and is splintering quite literally in all directions. Not mostly SNP, as I, and many others, had assumed.
If we end up with roughly the same number of MPs we started with then there are going to be a lot of unhappy bunnies in my party.
Incidentally, the poll indicates that turnout is going to be sky-high in Scotland.
Batten down the hatches. If Scots thought Thatcherism was grim, they ain’t seen nothing yet. London is going to be vindictive and vicious on an unprecedented scale.
Presume it went on SNP national total and Tory national total rather than Scottish subsample.
However if the Tories did get 31% in Scotland and 14 Scottish seats it would be the best Tory result in Scotland since 1983 seats wise and votes wise since 1979, so much for Boris being unpopular with Scots and the Tories being doomed without Ruth Davidson
I’ve never said that the Scottish Tories were doomed without Ruth Davidson. Quite the opposite in fact. She was seriously over-hyped, and seriously unpopular with large sections of conservative members and voters.
On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s unpopularity with Scots is a simple matter of record. Very easy to just look up the approval ratings: they are horrific.
Yeah, but Nick Clegg was born with a birthmark on his arse that reads "KICK ME"......
Nick Clegg's fatal mistake was trusting the Tories, I doubt the Lib Dems will ever make that mistake again (likewise the DUP).
The voters fatal mistake was trusting Nick Clegg,particularly the young voters that believed his lies about scrapping tuition fees.
Remember every single Lib Dem MP made a personal pledge with all the razzmatazz that went with it, Clegg go into coalition where he could deliver his promise & then tripled fees.
You don't understand what a coalition is.
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
If people want to say they negotiated a poor coalition agreement thats one thing, but people usually imply any coalition is itself a betrayal.
Coalition itself isn't a betrayal, what the Lib Dems did on tuition fees was a betrayal.
They were a minor party and put forward a manifesto and betrayed it. Their manifesto should have been commitments they could honour in a coalition because that was as good as they were going to get.
I don't go to the bank, take out a loan promising to make repayments then reneg on the repayments saying "I didn't win the lottery so I can't pay it back". They made their commitments full well knowing they would only ever be minor coalition partners but betrayed their voters and made electoral reform referendum their red line instead.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
You are joking right?
Jeremy Corbyn's racism isn't a laughing matter.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
The difference between a class of 29 and 31 is of far less significance than one with and one without several children with unfunded special educational needs - particularly in primary schools in difficult areas. The combination of Cameron's inclusion policy and the gutting of Local Authority funding (together with the squeeze on school budgets) has been a deeply toxic one.
Well that's not going to change due to the incentives that encourage some parents to seek SEN status and separately the incentive that tax credits produced for families to have a second set of children as the first set reached teenage years.
Heard on R4 this morning that Tory staffers think it will be tight next Thursday.
Two ways to look at this:
1) GOTV operation in swing. 2017 possibly resulted in HP because there was complacency
2) it actually IS tight.
I would probably favour the former but at the same time I have said for a while I could very easily see the sort of result where the majority is very slim.
They don't want their voters and workers to be complacent.
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
I’m over generalising from my own experience again I see...
Having said that, we have classes of 33 and even 34, though most are smaller.
And the honest question which should follow, did you feel that these large class sizes did compromise the quality of education that the whole class got, or a section of the class, or made no difference ?
Clearly there would be a difference between 30 and the public school 18, but is there a difference between 30 and 34 ?
It does when you run out of desks for them to sit at because the room is too small to fit them in.
That sounds like a matter of individual size not a matter of a uniform rule.
If a room has space for 28 but gets 30 is that better than a room that has space for 36 and gets 34?
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
There is no "enough". Some seats are won by candidates with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of votes more than winning candidates in other seats. Some people not elected to parliament get more votes than others who are elected.
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
I’m over generalising from my own experience again I see...
Having said that, we have classes of 33 and even 34, though most are smaller.
And the honest question which should follow, did you feel that these large class sizes did compromise the quality of education that the whole class got, or a section of the class, or made no difference ?
Clearly there would be a difference between 30 and the public school 18, but is there a difference between 30 and 34 ?
It does when you run out of desks for them to sit at because the room is too small to fit them in.
I had that in the past - what was worse was the child that was trying to get in was the new Vicar's child in his CoE school. All we needed him to do was to put the child in the Catholic school next door for 2 months until a family we knew were leaving had left.
Liberal Dem who stood against Ian Blackford at last election is now backing the SNP
The Liberal Democrat candidate who stood against Ian Blackford in Ross, Skye and Lochaber at the last election has backed the SNP in the 12 December polls.
Jean Davis, who stood for the Lib Dems in the constituency at the 2017 election, has announced she will now support the SNP as “the best option to stop Brexit” and because “we need to have a further debate and referendum on independence, especially if we do end up leaving the EU.”
Liberal Dem who stood against Ian Blackford at last election is now backing the SNP
The Liberal Democrat candidate who stood against Ian Blackford in Ross, Skye and Lochaber at the last election has backed the SNP in the 12 December polls.
Jean Davis, who stood for the Lib Dems in the constituency at the 2017 election, has announced she will now support the SNP as “the best option to stop Brexit” and because “we need to have a further debate and referendum on independence, especially if we do end up leaving the EU.”
Best prices - Ross, Skye and Lochaber
SNP (Blackford) 1/9 SLD 15/2 SCon 33/1 SLab 50/1
Hmm, a liberal nationalist. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
You are joking right?
Jeremy Corbyn's racism isn't a laughing matter.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
Life long anti racist is a racist?
Whereas obviously the watermelon smiles letterbox man isn't a racist
But the problem is not so much that heads want to have classes of over 30, it's that they are forced into it because nobody wants to work in their schools.
If you were a teacher, would you want to work in an inner-city school in Hartlepool or a nice grammar school in Harrogate? Not really a hard choice, tbh.
So that in itself means that attracting enough teachers to such tough schools is very hard, and also that many of them tend to be the worse teachers who can't get jobs elsewhere.
What is the head supposed to do if they can't recruit enough teachers to meet this target? Send children home?
One possible way out of this is for schools to have more control over their own pay scales and to give more funding to schools struggling to attract teachers so they can pay higher salaries. That was, indeed, one of the ideas for academies. But it hasn't been a success.
And I note Labour don't say where this extra £25 billion will come from.
I have seen many many admission appeals, and frankly the infant class size rules should be relaxed - in practice panels allow appeals the rules say they shouldn't, zes.
Which is not to say the aim of 30 is not good, but if a school thinks it could handle it and is set up for it it should not be as hard. If there are not funds or teachers to guarantee lower classes things need to be more flexible.
The point is that once you set the rules you also have to match that with funding. The reason the Tories won't set a limit on class size is that they don't want to properly fund state education. Most of them don't use it themselves and so they don't give a monkeys. The day I see private schools with 35 kids in a class is the day I believe that class size doesn't affect the quality of education.
That was the point I was attempting to make, that if there are not the funds the rules need more flexibility since it doesnt prevent larger classes, it just causes personal and administrative hassle for schools and parents even when they could accommodate a few more over 30 without prejudicing the overall educational provision. And the point was politically relaxing that had not been possible even when no one was suggesting money to deal with issues, making statements about 30 just posturing.
If you make the rules flexible then the funding will definitely not increase, the class sizes will just keep on getting bigger. This happens every time the Tories are in power because they think that state education is for other people's kids.
The SLab vote seems to be almost halved, and is splintering quite literally in all directions. Not mostly SNP, as I, and many others, had assumed.
If we end up with roughly the same number of MPs we started with then there are going to be a lot of unhappy bunnies in my party.
Incidentally, the poll indicates that turnout is going to be sky-high in Scotland.
Batten down the hatches. If Scots thought Thatcherism was grim, they ain’t seen nothing yet. London is going to be vindictive and vicious on an unprecedented scale.
Presume it went on SNP national total and Tory national total rather than Scottish subsample.
However if the Tories did get 31% in Scotland and 14 Scottish seats it would be the best Tory result in Scotland since 1983 seats wise and votes wise since 1979, so much for Boris being unpopular with Scots and the Tories being doomed without Ruth Davidson
I’ve never said that the Scottish Tories were doomed without Ruth Davidson. Quite the opposite in fact. She was seriously over-hyped, and seriously unpopular with large sections of conservative members and voters.
On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s unpopularity with Scots is a simple matter of record. Very easy to just look up the approval ratings: they are horrific.
They are better than Corbyn's with Scots and amongst Scottish Leavers ie close to 40% of Scottish voters, Boris is actually quite popular. Hence the Tory vote in Scotland holding steady at about 25 to 30%.
Jo Swinson's latest policy is to require all genders at school to wear the same uniform. Is this really a vote winner?
In future years, there are going to be lawsuits by kids who were allowed to take hormones and have themselves mutilated and later regretted it.
People under 18 are not given hormones or surgery.
They are given medication to delay the onset of puberty though so that they can make a slightly less complicated choice post 18. Whether this is in fact a good idea is controversial.
Indeed, but delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation
Well I don't count myself as a bleeding heart, anything but, but that sounds terrible to me. We are going into some dark places.
Puberty is what cures a lot of "gender confused" kids - it gives a massive dose of the appropriate hormones, and this tends to make them much more comfortable in their own gender.
My sister was like this. She basically wanted to be a boy until she was about 14. Hormones did their thing, she became pretty relaxed about being a girl. She's now 30, happily married, perfectly normal. Fortunately no one was stupid enough back then to think that rather boyish girls should have puberty blocked followed by lots of surgery and usually mental health problems.
You sound like an expert on the matter. Please do educate us some more. I assume you have the relevant qualifications?
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
I’m over generalising from my own experience again I see...
Having said that, we have classes of 33 and even 34, though most are smaller.
And the honest question which should follow, did you feel that these large class sizes did compromise the quality of education that the whole class got, or a section of the class, or made no difference ?
Clearly there would be a difference between 30 and the public school 18, but is there a difference between 30 and 34 ?
It does when you run out of desks for them to sit at because the room is too small to fit them in.
That sounds like a matter of individual size not a matter of a uniform rule.
If a room has space for 28 but gets 30 is that better than a room that has space for 36 and gets 34?
As with most things: it all depends. Our top maths sets are about 50% bigger than the bottom ones because they are easier to teach. Practical subjects often have a hard limit on class sizes so we might have two chemistry sets with the same number of students as one history set. I taught in one school where the A-level was taught using a lecture-tutorial model: one huge group for some lessons and several much smaller ones for the rest.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Its morally right because they got more votes.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Your mental gymnastics are something to behold. You will really justify anything if you think it benefits you.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
Did Nick Clegg ever subject himself to Andrew Neil during an election campaign? I don't think Cameron did, but did Clegg? Or Miliband when you vote swapped and voted for his party?
Surely it would have been Paxman not Neil that politicians were ducking back in the day?
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
You are joking right?
Jeremy Corbyn's racism isn't a laughing matter.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
The SLab vote seems to be almost halved, and is splintering quite literally in all directions. Not mostly SNP, as I, and many others, had assumed.
If we end up with roughly the same number of MPs we started with then there are going to be a lot of unhappy bunnies in my party.
Incidentally, the poll indicates that turnout is going to be sky-high in Scotland.
Batten down the hatches. If Scots thought Thatcherism was grim, they ain’t seen nothing yet. London is going to be vindictive and vicious on an unprecedented scale.
Presume it went on SNP national total and Tory national total rather than Scottish subsample.
However if the Tories did get 31% in Scotland and 14 Scottish seats it would be the best Tory result in Scotland since 1983 seats wise and votes wise since 1979, so much for Boris being unpopular with Scots and the Tories being doomed without Ruth Davidson
I’ve never said that the Scottish Tories were doomed without Ruth Davidson. Quite the opposite in fact. She was seriously over-hyped, and seriously unpopular with large sections of conservative members and voters.
On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s unpopularity with Scots is a simple matter of record. Very easy to just look up the approval ratings: they are horrific.
They are better than Corbyn's with Scots and amongst Scottish Leavers ie close to 40% of Scottish voters, Boris is actually quite popular. Hence the Tory vote in Scotland holding steady at about 25 to 30%.
I agree that he is Marmite. The clear majority of Scots find him unpalatable; however, a significant minority have acquired a taste. They’ll need a stomach pump soon.
Liberal Dem who stood against Ian Blackford at last election is now backing the SNP
The Liberal Democrat candidate who stood against Ian Blackford in Ross, Skye and Lochaber at the last election has backed the SNP in the 12 December polls.
Jean Davis, who stood for the Lib Dems in the constituency at the 2017 election, has announced she will now support the SNP as “the best option to stop Brexit” and because “we need to have a further debate and referendum on independence, especially if we do end up leaving the EU.”
Best prices - Ross, Skye and Lochaber
SNP (Blackford) 1/9 SLD 15/2 SCon 33/1 SLab 50/1
Hmm, a liberal nationalist. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.
Lots of Scots are liberals. Why shouldn’t we be? After all, it can be argued that our country is the birthplace of liberalism.
Not many of us vote Lib Dem, but that’s because they are neither liberal nor democratic; and we are not too fond of British nationalists.
Yeah, but Nick Clegg was born with a birthmark on his arse that reads "KICK ME"......
Nick Clegg's fatal mistake was trusting the Tories, I doubt the Lib Dems will ever make that mistake again (likewise the DUP).
The voters fatal mistake was trusting Nick Clegg,particularly the young voters that believed his lies about scrapping tuition fees.
Remember every single Lib Dem MP made a personal pledge with all the razzmatazz that went with it, Clegg go into coalition where he could deliver his promise & then tripled fees.
You don't understand what a coalition is.
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
If people want to say they negotiated a poor coalition agreement thats one thing, but people usually imply any coalition is itself a betrayal.
Unfortunately, as the past few years have proved, for some people any negotiation is a betrayal.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Spouting bollocks as usual.
The issue is how the electoral system mediates the political views of the electorate into parliamentary governance (and vice-versa).
I may think of them as an ignorant, foul, verminous rabble, but UKIP should have had 80-odd MPs (emphasis on the odd) at their height.
And furthermore FPTP does not even accurately reflect the views of the electorate in a single constituency.
Jo Swinson's latest policy is to require all genders at school to wear the same uniform. Is this really a vote winner?
In future years, there are going to be lawsuits by kids who were allowed to take hormones and have themselves mutilated and later regretted it.
People under 18 are not given hormones or surgery.
They are given medication to delay the onset of puberty though so that they can make a slightly less complicated choice post 18. Whether this is in fact a good idea is controversial.
Indeed, but delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation
Well I don't count myself as a bleeding heart, anything but, but that sounds terrible to me. We are going into some dark places.
Puberty is what cures a lot of "gender confused" kids - it gives a massive dose of the appropriate hormones, and this tends to make them much more comfortable in their own gender.
My sister was like this. She basically wanted to be a boy until she was about 14. Hormones did their thing, she became pretty relaxed about being a girl. She's now 30, happily married, perfectly normal. Fortunately no one was stupid enough back then to think that rather boyish girls should have puberty blocked followed by lots of surgery and usually mental health problems.
This forum is fantastic! So many experts on mental health.....
The SLab vote seems to be almost halved, and is splintering quite literally in all directions. Not mostly SNP, as I, and many others, had assumed.
If we end up with roughly the same number of MPs we started with then there are going to be a lot of unhappy bunnies in my party.
Incidentally, the poll indicates that turnout is going to be sky-high in Scotland.
Batten down the hatches. If Scots thought Thatcherism was grim, they ain’t seen nothing yet. London is going to be vindictive and vicious on an unprecedented scale.
Presume it went on SNP national total and Tory national total rather than Scottish subsample.
However if the Tories did get 31% in Scotland and 14 Scottish seats it would be the best Tory result in Scotland since 1983 seats wise and votes wise since 1979, so much for Boris being unpopular with Scots and the Tories being doomed without Ruth Davidson
I can remember (I have a long memory!) Malcolm Rifkind, after the 1992 election, when the Tories did unexpectedly well, opining that Scots Tory strategy was to get voteshare up to 30%. LOL. We all know what happened thereafter. So, nearly 30 years later, could it actually happen? Not convinced TBH but will be interesting viewing on election night.
Jo Swinson's latest policy is to require all genders at school to wear the same uniform. Is this really a vote winner?
In future years, there are going to be lawsuits by kids who were allowed to take hormones and have themselves mutilated and later regretted it.
People under 18 are not given hormones or surgery.
They are given medication to delay the onset of puberty though so that they can make a slightly less complicated choice post 18. Whether this is in fact a good idea is controversial.
Indeed, but delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation
Well I don't count myself as a bleeding heart, anything but, but that sounds terrible to me. We are going into some dark places.
Puberty is what cures a lot of "gender confused" kids - it gives a massive dose of the appropriate hormones, and this tends to make them much more comfortable in their own gender.
My sister was like this. She basically wanted to be a boy until she was about 14. Hormones did their thing, she became pretty relaxed about being a girl. She's now 30, happily married, perfectly normal. Fortunately no one was stupid enough back then to think that rather boyish girls should have puberty blocked followed by lots of surgery and usually mental health problems.
This forum is fantastic! So many experts on mental health.....
And you started it, with the eyepoppingly preposterous "delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation" - so that's all right, then!
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
Burger King have taken a cheeky swipe at the infamous Brexit battle bus with a general election-themed advert. The ad, which appears on the side of a red London bus, says: "Another Whopper on the side of a bus. Must be an election.”
He has apparently said if he becomes PM he will turn Chequers over to a homeless family.
He seems not to be aware that this would be illegal under the Chequers Estate Act 1917:
Clause 8(b): But if any Prime Minister shall decline to avail himself of the rights hereby conferred upon him then so long as he shall so decline similar rights shall be offered by the Administrative Trustees to the following persons and in the following order viz. :—The Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for the time being The Secretary of State for the Colonies for the time being The United States Ambassador at the Court of Saint James's for the time being The President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for the time being The First Lord of the Admiralty for the time being The Secretary of State for War for the time being The Speaker of the House of Commons for the time being The Lord Chief Justice of England for the time being or to the respective persons for the time being holding similar positions to the above
Edit - it occurs to me it would be deliciously ironic if he tried to put a homeless family in and as result the American Ambassador got the lease.
Yes, if only the prime minister and government of the time had some ability to effect changes in the law...
It’s not just a law - that gave effect to a deed of settlement.
You’d need to convince the Speaker, the Loed Chief Justice and the Directors of the National Gallery and the National Trust to set aside Lord Lee’s wishes.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Its morally right because they got more votes.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Your mental gymnastics are something to behold. You will really justify anything if you think it benefits you.
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
Tuesday’s Buckingham Palace reception yielded a couple of viral clips, in which Johnson could be seen joining in with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron as they took the piss out of Donald Trump, in order to amuse Princess Anne, who many viewers assumed had herself just done the Alan Partridge “so what?” shrug at the Queen when she got a dirty look for not greeting the US president/hotelier. (Incidentally, the latter sentence marks the exact point at which the “sentences you didn’t expect to type four years ago” officially outnumbered all the other typed sentences, ever. We have reached it: the political singularity. There is now no way back to normality.)
Anyway, last Thursday of the campaign, thank God. But the sun is still out and there is no snow on the ground, so off out again - to test the mood of the voters so I can report back here.....
Toodle-pip.
Could you canvass in a labour Leave area please. I know there are many of those in your patch
According to the Guardian headline Labour are promising to recruit 20,000 more teachers. Would it not be easier to reduce the rate at which young teachers are leaving the profession, or are they going to try to do that at well?
But that wouldn’t be 20,000 more. They said so about nurses, so it must be true.
On the subject of class sizes: it’s the good, oversubscribed schools (particularly grammar schools) that tend to have large classes. Heads will go to an appeal and explain that the school is already full. The panel will agree but grant the appeal any way and you now have to deal with a class too big for the number of desks in any of your classrooms.
That’s not altogether true. The largest class I taught in my inner city comp was 34. The largest I have taught since was 30. The largest I have come across was a friend in Middlesbrough with 37.
Although of course good schools are oversubscribed for a very obvious reason.
The difference between a class of 29 and 31 is of far less significance than one with and one without several children with unfunded special educational needs - particularly in primary schools in difficult areas. The combination of Cameron's inclusion policy and the gutting of Local Authority funding (together with the squeeze on school budgets) has been a deeply toxic one.
100% this. Moving away from inclusion is the absolute key to fixing primary education.
I’d only quibble with your characterisation of it as Cameron’s policy. It was Blunkett as SOS for Education who first championed it. It’s still Labour policy, depressingly. One of the reasons I’ll be voting LD is that Layla Moran is one of the very few politicians who understands the importance of getting SEN provision right.
He has apparently said if he becomes PM he will turn Chequers over to a homeless family.
He seems not to be aware that this would be illegal under the Chequers Estate Act 1917:
Clause 8(b): But if any Prime Minister shall decline to avail himself of the rights hereby conferred upon him then so long as he shall so decline similar rights shall be offered by the Administrative Trustees to the following persons and in the following order viz. :—The Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for the time being The Secretary of State for the Colonies for the time being The United States Ambassador at the Court of Saint James's for the time being The President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for the time being The First Lord of the Admiralty for the time being The Secretary of State for War for the time being The Speaker of the House of Commons for the time being The Lord Chief Justice of England for the time being or to the respective persons for the time being holding similar positions to the above
Edit - it occurs to me it would be deliciously ironic if he tried to put a homeless family in and as result the American Ambassador got the lease.
Yes, if only the prime minister and government of the time had some ability to effect changes in the law...
It’s not just a law - that gave effect to a deed of settlement.
You’d need to convince the Speaker, the Loed Chief Justice and the Directors of the National Gallery and the National Trust to set aside Lord Lee’s wishes.
Since all PB Tories seem to believe that Corbyn et al plan to institute a totalitarian Marxist state it's odd that you expect them to be thwarted by the director of the National Trust.
The JLM report just read out by Sky actually targets Corbyn directly and is terrible. He wants to talk education today but this report will derail his hopes as Sky confirm they will be seeking his response to the report
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
That would be principles without pragmatism. If you want to have any influence on national politics at all you have to vote tactically.
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
Totally agree. I am voting LibDem next Thursday for precisely that reason.
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
That would be principles without pragmatism. If you want to have any influence on national politics at all you have to vote tactically.
No, it's principles and pragnatism. How on earth does the message get across if you don't vote for it?
Jo Swinson's latest policy is to require all genders at school to wear the same uniform. Is this really a vote winner?
In future years, there are going to be lawsuits by kids who were allowed to take hormones and have themselves mutilated and later regretted it.
People under 18 are not given hormones or surgery.
They are given medication to delay the onset of puberty though so that they can make a slightly less complicated choice post 18. Whether this is in fact a good idea is controversial.
Indeed, but delaying puberty hardly counts as mutilation
Well I don't count myself as a bleeding heart, anything but, but that sounds terrible to me. We are going into some dark places.
Puberty is what cures a lot of "gender confused" kids - it gives a massive dose of the appropriate hormones, and this tends to make them much more comfortable in their own gender.
My sister was like this. She basically wanted to be a boy until she was about 14. Hormones did their thing, she became pretty relaxed about being a girl. She's now 30, happily married, perfectly normal. Fortunately no one was stupid enough back then to think that rather boyish girls should have puberty blocked followed by lots of surgery and usually mental health problems.
This forum is fantastic! So many experts on mental health.....
I think if you oppose and hate racism it’s a principled position to not vote for Labour (even if I disagree). But you can’t then vote for the Tories, that just makes you a hypocrite. You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
Do you think the Tories are racist?
Can't speak for CHB, but I think that all parties contain a small number of racists, which they generally deal with too slowly and attract varying amounts of criticism for. It's certainly hypocritical to condemn one without the other.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Spouting bollocks as usual.
The issue is how the electoral system mediates the political views of the electorate into parliamentary governance (and vice-versa).
I may think of them as an ignorant, foul, verminous rabble, but UKIP should have had 80-odd MPs (emphasis on the odd) at their height.
And furthermore FPTP does not even accurately reflect the views of the electorate in a single constituency.
It’s funny how so many of those who say the will of the people should be respected do not believe it should be reflected in the way that Parliament is composed.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
There is no "enough". Some seats are won by candidates with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of votes more than winning candidates in other seats. Some people not elected to parliament get more votes than others who are elected.
Enough is more than anyone else in the seat. The people not elected to Parliament got fewer votes than the winner of their seat.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
You are joking right?
Jeremy Corbyn's racism isn't a laughing matter.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
Life long anti racist is a racist?
Whereas obviously the watermelon smiles letterbox man isn't a racist
Funny old world, the Thompson house
Its not enough to be anti-racist to everyone except Jews.
The SLab vote seems to be almost halved, and is splintering quite literally in all directions. Not mostly SNP, as I, and many others, had assumed.
If we end up with roughly the same number of MPs we started with then there are going to be a lot of unhappy bunnies in my party.
Incidentally, the poll indicates that turnout is going to be sky-high in Scotland.
Batten down the hatches. If Scots thought Thatcherism was grim, they ain’t seen nothing yet. London is going to be vindictive and vicious on an unprecedented scale.
Presume it went on SNP national total and Tory national total rather than Scottish subsample.
However if the Tories did get 31% in Scotland and 14 Scottish seats it would be the best Tory result in Scotland since 1983 seats wise and votes wise since 1979, so much for Boris being unpopular with Scots and the Tories being doomed without Ruth Davidson
I’ve never said that the Scottish Tories were doomed without Ruth Davidson. Quite the opposite in fact. She was seriously over-hyped, and seriously unpopular with large sections of conservative members and voters.
On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s unpopularity with Scots is a simple matter of record. Very easy to just look up the approval ratings: they are horrific.
Yes the Tories under Davidson only started doing well after Davidson adopted the policy of her leadership rival Murdo Fraser.
She'd led the Tories to a series of worst ever results in council election, euros and general election before doi g as Murdo said he would and getting rid of the word Conservative and rebranding as the Scottish Unionist Party.
To think, if the SCons had went with Murdo in 2011 they could have skipped the wasted 5 years of Davidson's tenure and got straight to Holyrood 2016 levels right off the bat.
The longer this campaign has gone on, the less inclined I am to vote for any of the three main parties:-
3. Swinson: strategically inept and talking dangerous rubbish over the Gender Recognition Act. Apparently expecting people with gender dysphoria to undergo medical tests is too too ghastly to contemplate but women are expected to put up with having men invade their private spaces and the risk of some of them abusing that. In Lib Dem La-La-land, rape is not as ghastly as being asked questions by a doctor.
How many trans women have raped cis women in women-only spaces, in fact?
Karen White and the women raped by him. Of course they are anonymous and this happened in a women only prison so no-one really cares.
I think that before a person legally changes gender and has access to single sex spaces there should be a medical diagnosis that they do have gender dysphoria and they should be actually taking steps to live as their real gender. Beyond that I don’t care.
But in a ladies loo or changing room or women’s refuge etc I don’t want to have a man who says he is a woman - without more - having access. Such a policy clearly permits a man with evil intent to take advantage of a bloody great loophole, even if it is intended to help genuine trans-women. Trans women should have rights but these should not come at the expense of the rights of women who were born as women. And one of those rights is that we should not be made to feel vulnerable or put at risk of sexual violence. It is perfectly possible to deal with discrimination against trans people without diminishing the rights of others. The insistence on attacking the many women who have expressed concerns about this policy (Janice Turner, Julie Bindel, for instance) feels like a lot of very male bullying and telling women that our concerns are unreal or unimportant. Womanhood - the experience of it throughout life - is real and not simply an imagined construct and not something to be wished away or eliminated.
Yeah, but Nick Clegg was born with a birthmark on his arse that reads "KICK ME"......
Nick Clegg's fatal mistake was trusting the Tories, I doubt the Lib Dems will ever make that mistake again (likewise the DUP).
The voters fatal mistake was trusting Nick Clegg,particularly the young voters that believed his lies about scrapping tuition fees.
Remember every single Lib Dem MP made a personal pledge with all the razzmatazz that went with it, Clegg go into coalition where he could deliver his promise & then tripled fees.
You don't understand what a coalition is.
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
I do understand what a coalition government is. Nick Clegg, despite being well aware of how coalitions in other countries work, was so keen to jump into Government, he caved in after just a couple of days producing a very weak coalition agreement. A result of this is that the LDs were obliged to actively support the trebling of tuition fees, rather than making it clear that this was a conservative policy and is necessary to get XYZ LibDem policies through.
Nick Clegg in those 7 days set back the case for coalition government in the UK by 20 years.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Its morally right because they got more votes.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Your mental gymnastics are something to behold. You will really justify anything if you think it benefits you.
Who says it benefits me? 🙄
I've supported First Past the Post all my life. Even when its worked against my party. I voted Conservative in 2005 just as more people in England did than any other party yet that saw a Labour majority - including a Labour majority in England despite us winning more votes then.
I didn't say after 2005 "its not fair, why should Labour get a majority when 65% of people didn't vote Labour" - I still supported FPTP then. I oppose gerrymandering, which is a real risk under FPTP as we see in the USA, and unequal sized out of date constituencies but we don't have gerrymandering here.
If other parties become more popular than the Tories in the future, which will happen at some point, I won't suddenly support electoral reform.
The JLM report just read out by Sky actually targets Corbyn directly and is terrible. He wants to talk education today but this report will derail his hopes as Sky confirm they will be seeking his response to the report
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
There is no "enough". Some seats are won by candidates with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of votes more than winning candidates in other seats. Some people not elected to parliament get more votes than others who are elected.
Enough is more than anyone else in the seat. The people not elected to Parliament got fewer votes than the winner of their seat.
Which is arbitrary and the source of the capriciousness and iniquity of the system.
Normally your posts are more intelligent than this.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
No all seats are counted linearly. Every count adds no more and no less than 1 to the vote total in any seat.
The seat winners simply got more votes. Its not like one party gets 12k votes but loses to another that got 7k mythical double-votes. If you want to win, get more votes - its not rocket science!
But it is trolling. You understand the point perfectly well.
Its not trolling, the point is wrong.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
However if one party 'win' with 26% of the vote in a four way contest...... as can happen..... how is that morally right?
Its morally right because they got more votes.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Your mental gymnastics are something to behold. You will really justify anything if you think it benefits you.
Who says it benefits me? 🙄
I've supported First Past the Post all my life. Even when its worked against my party. I voted Conservative in 2005 just as more people in England did than any other party yet that saw a Labour majority - including a Labour majority in England despite us winning more votes then.
I didn't say after 2005 "its not fair, why should Labour get a majority when 65% of people didn't vote Labour" - I still supported FPTP then. I oppose gerrymandering, which is a real risk under FPTP as we see in the USA, and unequal sized out of date constituencies but we don't have gerrymandering here.
If other parties become more popular than the Tories in the future, which will happen at some point, I won't suddenly support electoral reform.
All votes are equal, but some votes are more equal than others.
Every vote counts. Every election every seat start with zero votes cast and every seat can change hands. Former safe seats can be overturned or become marginals if that is what the local voters want.
If you want to elect a Lib Dem MP you don't need to change the electoral system. You just need more of your neighbours in your constituency to also vote Lib Dem than Tory or anyone else.
The first step to changing anything is to realise your own problems. The problem is not the electoral system the problem is people don't want to vote for your party.
Sadly some votes count for a lot more than others. As is blindingly obvious when you look at the results.
I vote in a seat, Bedford, where it almost always matters and is regarded as the top bellwether constituency of all 650 of them.. It makes you think very carefully. I've had my postal voting pack for a week and have decided to wait until next Thursday before making my choice.
I won't be backing the party whose leader is too scared to be interviewed by Andrew Neil
As you know only one other party can win in Bedford.
Don't see it as a vote for Corbyn see it as a sensible tactical vote against a Johnson landslide.
A "tactical" vote for Labour does not stop it also being a vote for the anti-semite enabling Corbyn.
It denies the racist Johnson one more MP though
While granting the racist Corbyn one more MP and potentially making the racist Corbyn Prime Minister.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
You are joking right?
Jeremy Corbyn's racism isn't a laughing matter.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
Life long anti racist is a racist?
Whereas obviously the watermelon smiles letterbox man isn't a racist
Funny old world, the Thompson house
Its not enough to be anti-racist to everyone except Jews.
Antisemitism is a sub-category of racism. It's a particularly odious one, but a sub-category nonetheless. It is dishonest to rant against AS whilst tolerating other forms of racism, which after all are far more prevalent and damaging.
Comments
https://mediamatters.org/research/2016/05/05/comprehensive-guide-debunked-bathroom-predator-myth/210200
I'm frankly a little surprised at Cyclefree using such intemperate rhetoric.
I want my vote to count. It never does.
Which is not to say the aim of 30 is not good, but if a school thinks it could handle it and is set up for it it should not be as hard. If there are not funds or teachers to guarantee lower classes things need to be more flexible.
But I don’t get why you would want to move from Mexico To Venezuela...
Have a good morning.
A radical change was offered.
Affordability concerns the main reason why not enough people will vote for real change.
Neo Liberalism continues after GE 2019
Had there been a LibDem government, they would have scrapped tuition fees. There wasn't.
Toodle-pip.
Two ways to look at this:
1) GOTV operation in swing. 2017 possibly resulted in HP because there was complacency
2) it actually IS tight.
I would probably favour the former but at the same time I have said for a while I could very easily see the sort of result where the majority is very slim.
Every seat is won by the candidate who got the most votes (unless there's a tie and straws are drawn). If you aren't popular enough try to become more popular, don't change the voting system.
Only one parties racism is so severe they're lumped in with the BNP at needing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to sort them out.
The other 74% had a reason why they couldn't stand each other enough to vote for a united alternative more.
Pillars of Eternity 2 is coming to consoles at the end of January.
Edited extra bit: ah, paragraphs are back to normal.
Also, does anyone know if the player character carries over, or is new?
We had a referendum on AV in 2011, and 68% voted to stick with what we have. And remember, Labour remained "neutral".
The combination of Cameron's inclusion policy and the gutting of Local Authority funding (together with the squeeze on school budgets) has been a deeply toxic one.
On the other hand, Boris Johnson’s unpopularity with Scots is a simple matter of record. Very easy to just look up the approval ratings: they are horrific.
They were a minor party and put forward a manifesto and betrayed it. Their manifesto should have been commitments they could honour in a coalition because that was as good as they were going to get.
I don't go to the bank, take out a loan promising to make repayments then reneg on the repayments saying "I didn't win the lottery so I can't pay it back". They made their commitments full well knowing they would only ever be minor coalition partners but betrayed their voters and made electoral reform referendum their red line instead.
And if he wins seats like Bedford then that racist could be PM. That is no laughing matter either.
If a room has space for 28 but gets 30 is that better than a room that has space for 36 and gets 34?
I've since moved to another church in town.
The Liberal Democrat candidate who stood against Ian Blackford in Ross, Skye and Lochaber at the last election has backed the SNP in the 12 December polls.
Jean Davis, who stood for the Lib Dems in the constituency at the 2017 election, has announced she will now support the SNP as “the best option to stop Brexit” and because “we need to have a further debate and referendum on independence, especially if we do end up leaving the EU.”
Best prices - Ross, Skye and Lochaber
SNP (Blackford) 1/9
SLD 15/2
SCon 33/1
SLab 50/1
Put your money on it.
Whereas obviously the watermelon smiles letterbox man isn't a racist
Funny old world, the Thompson house
Damning stuff.
I taught in one school where the A-level was taught using a lecture-tutorial model: one huge group for some lessons and several much smaller ones for the rest.
Not many of us vote Lib Dem, but that’s because they are neither liberal nor democratic; and we are not too fond of British nationalists.
The issue is how the electoral system mediates the political views of the electorate into parliamentary governance (and vice-versa).
I may think of them as an ignorant, foul, verminous rabble, but UKIP should have had 80-odd MPs (emphasis on the odd) at their height.
And furthermore FPTP does not even accurately reflect the views of the electorate in a single constituency.
You could vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens for example, that would probably the most principled thing you could do.
The ad, which appears on the side of a red London bus, says: "Another Whopper on the side of a bus. Must be an election.”
You’d need to convince the Speaker, the Loed Chief Justice and the Directors of the National Gallery and the National Trust to set aside Lord Lee’s wishes.
Why wouldn't you vote on next Labour leader?
Tuesday’s Buckingham Palace reception yielded a couple of viral clips, in which Johnson could be seen joining in with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron as they took the piss out of Donald Trump, in order to amuse Princess Anne, who many viewers assumed had herself just done the Alan Partridge “so what?” shrug at the Queen when she got a dirty look for not greeting the US president/hotelier. (Incidentally, the latter sentence marks the exact point at which the “sentences you didn’t expect to type four years ago” officially outnumbered all the other typed sentences, ever. We have reached it: the political singularity. There is now no way back to normality.)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/04/pms-operation-avoid-trump-goes-off-almost-without-a-hitch
I’d only quibble with your characterisation of it as Cameron’s policy. It was Blunkett as SOS for Education who first championed it. It’s still Labour policy, depressingly. One of the reasons I’ll be voting LD is that Layla Moran is one of the very few politicians who understands the importance of getting SEN provision right.
Optimist.
Finally.
She'd led the Tories to a series of worst ever results in council election, euros and general election before doi g as Murdo said he would and getting rid of the word Conservative and rebranding as the Scottish Unionist Party.
To think, if the SCons had went with Murdo in 2011 they could have skipped the wasted 5 years of Davidson's tenure and got straight to Holyrood 2016 levels right off the bat.
I think that before a person legally changes gender and has access to single sex spaces there should be a medical diagnosis that they do have gender dysphoria and they should be actually taking steps to live as their real gender. Beyond that I don’t care.
But in a ladies loo or changing room or women’s refuge etc I don’t want to have a man who says he is a woman - without more - having access. Such a policy clearly permits a man with evil intent to take advantage of a bloody great loophole, even if it is intended to help genuine trans-women. Trans women should have rights but these should not come at the expense of the rights of women who were born as women. And one of those rights is that we should not be made to feel vulnerable or put at risk of sexual violence. It is perfectly possible to deal with discrimination against trans people without diminishing the rights of others. The insistence on attacking the many women who have expressed concerns about this policy (Janice Turner, Julie Bindel, for instance) feels like a lot of very male bullying and telling women that our concerns are unreal or unimportant. Womanhood - the experience of it throughout life - is real and not simply an imagined construct and not something to be wished away or eliminated.
This article sums it up well - https://unherd.com/2019/12/jo-swinsons-feminist-credentials-are-a-joke/
Nick Clegg in those 7 days set back the case for coalition government in the UK by 20 years.
I've supported First Past the Post all my life. Even when its worked against my party. I voted Conservative in 2005 just as more people in England did than any other party yet that saw a Labour majority - including a Labour majority in England despite us winning more votes then.
I didn't say after 2005 "its not fair, why should Labour get a majority when 65% of people didn't vote Labour" - I still supported FPTP then. I oppose gerrymandering, which is a real risk under FPTP as we see in the USA, and unequal sized out of date constituencies but we don't have gerrymandering here.
If other parties become more popular than the Tories in the future, which will happen at some point, I won't suddenly support electoral reform.
Normally your posts are more intelligent than this.