for entry to Singapore; all visitors must be granted permission to enter Singapore by the Singapore government and if granted permission to enter, you will be issued Stay at Home Notice (SHN) for at least 21 days
Border control and quarantine enforcement has been a massive blind spot for Western governments for the past 15 months. The rest of the world is doing it, and doing it properly.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
There is a real opportunity to gain the votes of comfortable voters in the South who previously voted tory. It would need the lib dems to move further tk the right on economics though, basically dropping the social democrat aspect. Macron's en marche approach. It's not my politics but I do think it's the only way they can progress further in the south. Promise lower taxes or something. Need to get the economics side of it as well as just the Remainer/internationalist side. I think the members and activist base are still much more on the social democrat side overall though.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this measure also morphs into looking at the postal voting system. As you said, many of the BAME community vote by post. Given they are not BJ's natural supporters, that is an obvious area for BJ to target and would especially help the Tories in Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and the West Midlands.
When a lot of people talk about electoral fraud, they know and we know that they are talking about asian electoral fraud and postals is the modus operandi. So yes, a pivot away from turn up ID to postal ID would make more sense for Tory strategists.
Absolutely, and again that would be from the most successful part of the American playbook.
Odd we never discuss making voting compulsory, like Australia with its election day barbecues and democracy sausages. Makes voter fraud much harder and voter suppression virtually impossible.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
for entry to Singapore; all visitors must be granted permission to enter Singapore by the Singapore government and if granted permission to enter, you will be issued Stay at Home Notice (SHN) for at least 21 days
Border control and quarantine enforcement has been a massive blind spot for Western governments for the past 15 months. The rest of the world is doing it, and doing it properly.
On the other hand - Singapore and New Xiland are perhaps ripe for future waves to "rip through" given their lack of exposure to the outside world. When they open up they will be like the Mayans when the Spanish arrived.
Yeah, anyone who's done any process architecture or process design can see the problem.
Increase the number of hurdles to do something and the reduction in those that do it (or want to do it) is disproportional, even if the extra hurdles are easy or cheap.
It's precisely why Amazon patented their 1-click shopping strategy and protected it jealously until it finally expired. Anyone who's only weakly incentivised to do something can be dissuaded simply and easily.
If there's a significant issue with personation, then maybe it should be considered, despite the cost. If not, then not. I've yet to have seen any evidence of significant personation in the UK. Accordingly, it looks more like a diversion ("We're solving a problem that doesn't exist and we can make it look like we're oh so noble doing so (and maybe we'll get a bit of an electoral benefit as well)! Don't look over there at the serious issues such as adult social care; they're icky and difficult, look at this!"), and possibly, as people say, a backdoor to getting ID cards in. And, of course, the essential master ID register that links to everything; no point having ID cards without that.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
There is a real opportunity to gain the votes of comfortable voters in the South who previously voted tory. It would need the lib dems to move further tk the right on economics though, basically dropping the social democrat aspect. Macron's en marche approach. It's not my politics but I do think it's the only way they can progress further in the south. Promise lower taxes or something. Need to get the economics side of it as well as just the Remainer/internationalist side. I think the members and activist base are still much more on the social democrat side overall though.
Don't have to lose the social democrat aspect. Just focus it on the things that appeal to those comfortable voters: education spending, saving the local NHS hospital, tackling rail season ticket inflation. Just go easy on income tax bands and make sure there are sufficient tax-efficient options for savings.
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
Eh? Bike hire in Manchester predates Andy Burnham. Not that there is not an opportunity to do it better. Mobike was a particular low point.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
Low rise is better. Sprawling out is much better than going up.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
Philip won't tell us what his experience is. But I can guarantee that its considerably better experience than yours
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
I agree with you completely that postal votes is much more important. Don't disagree at all.
And I respect your experience of both types - and I think it puts paid to the notion that fraud is non-existant.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this measure also morphs into looking at the postal voting system. As you said, many of the BAME community vote by post. Given they are not BJ's natural supporters, that is an obvious area for BJ to target and would especially help the Tories in Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and the West Midlands.
When a lot of people talk about electoral fraud, they know and we know that they are talking about asian electoral fraud and postals is the modus operandi. So yes, a pivot away from turn up ID to postal ID would make more sense for Tory strategists.
Absolutely, and again that would be from the most successful part of the American playbook.
Odd we never discuss making voting compulsory, like Australia with its election day barbecues and democracy sausages. Makes voter fraud much harder and voter suppression virtually impossible.
Compulsory voting is a truly terrible idea, giving contrarians, narcissists and anarchists a splendid opportunity for self publicity and a spot of martyrdom while wasting time and money on pointless prosecutions.
He's lucky it's not 20 years on Benbecula breaking rocks.
Nope - he named names of "victims" in a sexual allegation case. That was f***ing stupid and the actual sentence is appropriate in the circumstances.
Actually, he didn’t. In order to work out who the accusers were, you would also have needed some journalists’ reports. Strangely, though, none of the journalists who provided more useful clues, such as Dani Garavelli (whose husband holds a senior position in the Crown Office) were even cautioned, let alone charged. Craig Murray’s most heinous crime was in fact that of crossing the junta in Bute House.
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
Well quite. I don't think that purported option was thought through.
I don't think the EU allows partial membership by country does it?
No, so it is not equivalence, and it is also not an equivalence because the UK was not a sovereign part of the EU, whereas Scotland is a sovereign part of the UK. It is an interesting idea.
The Little Scotlanders might end up with an even littler Scotland than they hoped for. I guess the Islands might vote to remain as well. Maybe we just allow Glasgow to go independent because that is where most of the SNP whingers seem to reside, and say good riddance. It could be like a gloomy Monocco, with Princess Nicola as it's head of state.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
Well said. Flats are the last thing that should be getting built. Homes with driveways > Homes with road parking > Flats.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
Parking is always the problem. They build flats in cities, making the assumption that everyone who lives there will only ever take public transport.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
If you have a large enough concentration of low rise flats- so you have enough customers for a decent range of local businesses and a high-frequency public transport hub (OK a bus stop, but a bus stop with a bus every 5 minutes and running moderately frequently until midnight)- it can work, and car availability isn't so important. 15 minute neighbourhood and all that. A lot of European cities are very livable on that basis.
One of the problems with the UK is that, for all sorts of reasons, the developments we build are just too small to facilitate that. It can work if it's making an existing city denser- there are several developments like that near me, where a corner site with one big house becomes five apartments. But if you want to do it on the edge of a small town or on a remote green/brownfield site, you need a heck of a lot of people, so a heck of a lot of flats, to make it happen.
for entry to Singapore; all visitors must be granted permission to enter Singapore by the Singapore government and if granted permission to enter, you will be issued Stay at Home Notice (SHN) for at least 21 days
Border control and quarantine enforcement has been a massive blind spot for Western governments for the past 15 months. The rest of the world is doing it, and doing it properly.
On the other hand - Singapore and New Xiland are perhaps ripe for future waves to "rip through" given their lack of exposure to the outside world. When they open up they will be like the Mayans when the Spanish arrived.
They're not going to re-open until they have herd immunity via vaccination - Australia isn't planning on re-opening until 2022.
If we are to require photo ID for elections, but we want to avoid having a card we might one day be forced to carry around, and we want to be able to offer it for free, then I have a solution.
Print photos on poll cards and make it a requirement to take one with you. For those who’ve lost it, there can be a long queue and a printer at X polling stations on the day.
Hey presto. A one use voter ID. Yes polling cards would get more pricey, and you would need some anti-forgery measures. But photo ID cards can be forged too and how far does anyone want to take this?
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
If you have a large enough concentration of low rise flats- so you have enough customers for a decent range of local businesses and a high-frequency public transport hub (OK a bus stop, but a bus stop with a bus every 5 minutes and running moderately frequently until midnight)- it can work, and car availability isn't so important. 15 minute neighbourhood and all that. A lot of European cities are very livable on that basis.
One of the problems with the UK is that, for all sorts of reasons, the developments we build are just too small to facilitate that. It can work if it's making an existing city denser- there are several developments like that near me, where a corner site with one big house becomes five apartments. But if you want to do it on the edge of a small town or on a remote green/brownfield site, you need a heck of a lot of people, so a heck of a lot of flats, to make it happen.
So you could keep slumming more and more people higher and higher into the sky, without any gardens or green space or parking.
Or you could take countryside that's not being lived on and build proper houses.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
Have you ready what I said. 10% "vs the average for the seat". So if there's 60% across the constituency there could be a 10% negative variation to that amongst WWC voters who never used to vote. Not 10% overall.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
If you have a large enough concentration of low rise flats- so you have enough customers for a decent range of local businesses and a high-frequency public transport hub (OK a bus stop, but a bus stop with a bus every 5 minutes and running moderately frequently until midnight)- it can work, and car availability isn't so important. 15 minute neighbourhood and all that. A lot of European cities are very livable on that basis.
One of the problems with the UK is that, for all sorts of reasons, the developments we build are just too small to facilitate that. It can work if it's making an existing city denser- there are several developments like that near me, where a corner site with one big house becomes five apartments. But if you want to do it on the edge of a small town or on a remote green/brownfield site, you need a heck of a lot of people, so a heck of a lot of flats, to make it happen.
And that's the issue here - it's 3 small blocks of a few flats, 40 minutes walk or so from town.
and most brownfield sites are just like that big enough for 20 / 40 flats which house a lot of people but don't provide anything like enough critical mass to justify public transport.
And were the blocks to be big enough to justify the public transport the NIMBY backlash would make building on the green belt look minor.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
This is the issue. Require voter ID and: (a) a small number of people who would otherwise have voted do not vote (b) a small amount of casual electoral fraud may be prevented
If b > a then it's potentially worth doing (also weigh up any other costs).
But we don't seem to have either made a good attempt to meaure b (which could presumably be done by randomly sampling polling station records and then following up a sample of voters to see whether they did in fact vote).
We also have not, from what I've seen, done a proper evaluation of a. There have been some trials, but these really need to be randomised to polling stations within some carefullly demographically chosen bigger areas, with blanket literature to the bigger areas about whether or not ID is needed at your polling station. Current trials seem to be bigger areas, presumabl with an information campaign, but that information campaign may itself raise turnout (you remind people of the vote, how to vote etc etc) so it skews any assessment of impact on turnout.
We need to get serious about this and commission a university (probably, or ONS) to do a properly designed trial of impact of requiring electoral ID to establish a and an audit of past voting to try and establish the size of b.
If we are to require photo ID for elections, but we want to avoid having a card we might one day be forced to carry around, and we want to be able to offer it for free, then I have a solution.
Print photos on poll cards and make it a requirement to take one with you. For those who’ve lost it, there can be a long queue and a printer at X polling stations on the day.
Hey presto. A one use voter ID. Yes polling cards would get more pricey, and you would need some anti-forgery measures. But photo ID cards can be forged too and how far does anyone want to take this?
Or have a photo taken when you go to vote, to be kept only locally and temporarily. Should there be any hint of personation (eg a second person turns up to vote with the same identity, or any other reason to suspect personation has taken place), the local photo register is kept, and - with legal procedures followed to ensure no abuse - it can be investigated.
And, as rcs1000 has pointed out, in this case, you literally have a photo of the suspect at the very start.
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
They have been in several I believe but the abuse of the system lead them to cancel them.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
Philip won't tell us what his experience is. But I can guarantee that its considerably better experience than yours
Philip has extensive opinions on all matters. Experience maybe a bit thin from what I can tell.
That said I might find myself agreeing on voter ID. It may well be that Tories are introducing it because they think it will help them, but the fundamental principle is hard to argue against, i.e. that much less important things rely on producing ID. If Labour thinks it will disadvantage them then they need to educate their voters. I think it may be a red herring anyway because it appears that the average Labour voter is more educated now than the average Tory, so the matter should even itself out.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
A lot of people I know are expecting an employment act - given the number of here there be dragons it would contain I'm about the only person not expecting one.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
A lot of people I know are expecting an employment act - given the number of here there be dragons it would contain I'm about the only person not expecting one.
It is a thought though. Chuck a few more billion into the “take back your furloughed worker” pot and the “kickstart” pot; and link it to the new state aid stuff.... They might do something like that.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
They have been in several I believe but the abuse of the system lead them to cancel them.
Yep - it was one of the growth areas in 2019 until the owners discovered how much hassle they really are and the habit that they ended up either nicked or in canals.
They are also very hard to manage well - add a bit of rain and you end up with all the bikes either in the suburbs as people take the bus to work or in town as rain results in them getting the tram home.
And if Manchester is famous for 1 thing - it's rain.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
I fully expect us to now be back to normal service from the New Labour years. Every party conference the Tories will announce another increase to police numbers.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
Have you ready what I said. 10% "vs the average for the seat". So if there's 60% across the constituency there could be a 10% negative variation to that amongst WWC voters who never used to vote. Not 10% overall.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
Actually I 100% agree it is very easy for people to find an excuse not to vote if they don't want to vote, but that's all that it is: an excuse.
People will vote if they want to, and not vote if they don't want to do so. Nobody is being disenfranchised and the way to get people to vote is to make them want to vote.
So if you don't think turnout will drop 10% what do you think it will actually drop by? Not having people who weren't going to vote anyway now name this as their excuse for not voting, but people who would vote all else being equal but now suddenly don't. How many is that do you reckon?
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
I agree with you completely that postal votes is much more important. Don't disagree at all.
And I respect your experience of both types - and I think it puts paid to the notion that fraud is non-existant.
I don't think anyone ever claimed it didn't exist. The claim is it is immaterial and can be reduced by better, cheaper, more effective and less intrusive means.
The first type I described needs no action. It is trivial. It is ineffective. It is very rare as a consequence. I have only heard of it once.
The second type is more common and more organised, but to do it to any extent will result in getting caught and can be eliminated with better checks on registration rather than voter id.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
As part of Labour's "anti-British" and anti-law and order agenda, surely.. The genius of rightwing populism.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Philip, let's assume you are right re the numbers who will be turned off by voter id, can you answer my post below which explains why this type of voter fraud is miniscule and ineffective and what little there is can be prevented by other more effective and simpler means (see below).
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
I agree with you completely that postal votes is much more important. Don't disagree at all.
And I respect your experience of both types - and I think it puts paid to the notion that fraud is non-existant.
I don't think anyone ever claimed it didn't exist. The claim is it is immaterial and can be reduced by better, cheaper, more effective and less intrusive means.
The first type I described needs no action. It is trivial. It is ineffective. It is very rare as a consequence. I have only heard of it once.
The second type is more common and more organised, but to do it to any extent will result in getting caught and can be eliminated with better checks on registration rather than voter id.
I agree that its probably immaterial. I just also think the impact on turnout will be immaterial too.
I object to Voter ID laws from ethical grounds that I don't think the state should be able to insist upon or demand our ID. Not because of suppression or anything else.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in or near the countryside, Philip ?
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
He lives on a keyboard, and has little time to venture outside.
As for voter ID I am torn. It is an important activity, perhaps the most important one, and it makes sense to ensure that people are who they say they are for this activity. But I loathe giving ID for anything. When I walk into a City building for a meeting and am asked for my ID or for them to take a photo I visibly scowl.
Of course it's much worse in Yurp where they ask for your passport and don't give it back until you are leaving the building. Bloody continentals.
For a vital civil function I think it's OK, though whether or not it makes practical sense is another matter. Although they've had it in Northern Ireland for years.
I agree, for stupid meetings which are probably pointless anyway, it's infuriating.
I am all over the place because although I am ambivalent about voter ID I am very much against vaccine passports but then as you say, and much as people might argue otherwise, going to the pub is not a vital civil function (although proving you are not breaking the law in one is) and hence for those functions it makes sense to have ID.
In the self-proclaimed Land of the Free, you have to have ID to enter bars (and not just if you look under 21 or even 30 in some places. In Chicago they have to card everyone, even if they look 70).
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Labour would do the same. Another opportunity for LDs to carve a niche - protect the environment and the natural beauty we have left.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
They have been in several I believe but the abuse of the system lead them to cancel them.
We generally prefer the simpler system of just nicking a nearby bike if you need one. Credit cards/drop-off stations, bit of a faff, innit?
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
Have you ready what I said. 10% "vs the average for the seat". So if there's 60% across the constituency there could be a 10% negative variation to that amongst WWC voters who never used to vote. Not 10% overall.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
Actually I 100% agree it is very easy for people to find an excuse not to vote if they don't want to vote, but that's all that it is: an excuse.
People will vote if they want to, and not vote if they don't want to do so. Nobody is being disenfranchised and the way to get people to vote is to make them want to vote.
So if you don't think turnout will drop 10% what do you think it will actually drop by? Not having people who weren't going to vote anyway now name this as their excuse for not voting, but people who would vote all else being equal but now suddenly don't. How many is that do you reckon?
Huh? I just answered that - a gut feel at least 10% drop in those communities. What that means overall depends on the demographics of any given seat.
On voter ID, whenever we receive our form from our LA to register we have to sign it, and it clearly states the signature will be checked against the voter return
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
In short: ONS's regulator agrees that ONS screwed up the numbers behind the housing market assessment, particularly, "in areas with high student populations". The original complaint was from Coventry but it's pretty relevant to Oxfordshire too.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
On the upside if you had overnight accommodation in Hartlepool those same officers would be stuck in the custody suite of Hartlepool police station. Custody suites are way more labour intensive than people think they are which is why centralising them has been happening across all police forces.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
Have you ready what I said. 10% "vs the average for the seat". So if there's 60% across the constituency there could be a 10% negative variation to that amongst WWC voters who never used to vote. Not 10% overall.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
Actually I 100% agree it is very easy for people to find an excuse not to vote if they don't want to vote, but that's all that it is: an excuse.
People will vote if they want to, and not vote if they don't want to do so. Nobody is being disenfranchised and the way to get people to vote is to make them want to vote.
So if you don't think turnout will drop 10% what do you think it will actually drop by? Not having people who weren't going to vote anyway now name this as their excuse for not voting, but people who would vote all else being equal but now suddenly don't. How many is that do you reckon?
Huh? I just answered that - a gut feel at least 10% drop in those communities. What that means overall depends on the demographics of any given seat.
Yes but you're saying not 10% overall. So how big of a community and how big a drop are you expecting in certain seats?
I think 10% is ridiculous really. As you very correctly identify, it is very easy for people to find an excuse if they want to do so. So they don't need ID as an excuse if they don't want to vote. If they do want to vote, then 1 in 10 of a community won't be put off because of this.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
NIMBYism is entirely appropriate in the countryside.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
It's really not - the brand new 4 storey flats near us are creating a nightmare on the new estate close to it - as they didn't build enough car parking spaces.
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
If you have a large enough concentration of low rise flats- so you have enough customers for a decent range of local businesses and a high-frequency public transport hub (OK a bus stop, but a bus stop with a bus every 5 minutes and running moderately frequently until midnight)- it can work, and car availability isn't so important. 15 minute neighbourhood and all that. A lot of European cities are very livable on that basis.
One of the problems with the UK is that, for all sorts of reasons, the developments we build are just too small to facilitate that. It can work if it's making an existing city denser- there are several developments like that near me, where a corner site with one big house becomes five apartments. But if you want to do it on the edge of a small town or on a remote green/brownfield site, you need a heck of a lot of people, so a heck of a lot of flats, to make it happen.
So you could keep slumming more and more people higher and higher into the sky, without any gardens or green space or parking.
Or you could take countryside that's not being lived on and build proper houses.
Re-read what I said. Low-rise. I'm talking places like this;
Three stories above ground, plus a basement. Some is flats, some is terraced houses. In this case, the central gardens are public, but that's the East End for you. Similar squares elsewhere have gorgeous shared but private gardens. There isn't enough parking space for every dwelling to have two cars, but the Central Line is about 200 metres away, so who cares?
Georgians knew what they were doing with urban design. The speculative builders behind metroland knew as well- how many people need to be within 10 minutes walking distance of this tube station for the development to work? Barratt and their ilk frankly don't.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's still plenty of room to build on developer-hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do, what often makes a difference to their psychological health and their communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
On voter ID, whenever we receive our form from our LA to register we have to sign it, and it clearly states the signature will be checked against the voter return
Only for postal votes. One of the reasons I don’t use them - sounds silly but I know my signature changes over the years so I always worry the vote will be voided.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
Of course, the truth is that it was Labour's economic incompetence that meant there was "no money left" (in their own words) and caused the Conservatives to cut the police.
On voter ID, whenever we receive our form from our LA to register we have to sign it, and it clearly states the signature will be checked against the voter return
Only for postal votes. One of the reasons I don’t use them - sounds silly but I know my signature changes over the years so I always worry the vote will be voided.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
First line of the LibDem policy paper on planning - "We have a chronic shortage of housing across the country, and especially the type of homes people with lower or even middle incomes can afford."
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.
My small village in south Devon has recently had 67 houses built in it. Dartmouth is currently having at least three hundred and probably more - in a population of c. 6,000. Schools are full, no local hospital, roads already buggered if two large vehicles meet. And that is before answering the question: where will the occupants work? But we are shouldering more than our fair share of national housebuilding targets locally.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
First line of the LibDem policy paper on planning - "We have a chronic shortage of housing across the country, and especially the type of homes people with lower or even middle incomes can afford."
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
"Wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations"; translation: houses near me. 🙄
What's the right kind of house in the right location? Please don't say brownfield.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
<<That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.>>
Road infrastructure creates suburban sprawl in itself though, reducing contact with nature. Denser towns with full countryside outside are very likely to be more conducive to mental health than endless monochrome sprawl.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Oh cut the bullshit! Meanwhile in 2021 there's this thing call zero emission vehicles. Meanwhile by 2030 the Internal Combusion Engine is going to be made illegal to retail in new vehicles.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
The reporting of the story is skewed to in person fraud. I believe it addresses postal vote harvesting as well, where significant effects on the result are more likely. It seems sense to cover all the options in the one proposal.
I don't see how photo ID would work for postal voting, and am not aware it's part of the proposal
But the same applies. Say I'm a candidate, or someone nefarious that a candidate has 'employed' to try and cast fraudulent postal votes. I can find out the list of postal voters (but only from a declared agent - so already a hurdle) and I can find out when they will be posted.
So I call round at the houses and hope to fish them out of letterboxes, or recover them from the halls of HMOs. In the old days before signature cross-checking, that might have worked, provided that the recipient wasn't bothered about voting (unlikely if they've applied for a PV) or moved away. If the person wants to vote, they're likely to complain to the council when their vote doesnt arrive, and thereupon a note would be put to see if that vote was returned, immediately triggering a risk. Nowadays, with signature cross-checking, the likelihood that any votes I stole would pass the verification is small indeed. And the missing votes would again trigger complaints that would flag a problem - particularly if the missing voters were concentrated in one area.
Or I can try to bribe or threaten the postal voters in order to get them to complete them in front of me. How risky is that, and how likely, out of the blue, to succeed?
In the hypothetical of a father of a large family pressuring the others in his household to vote a certain way, he's going to pressure them to supply whatever ID is required, so that circumstance isn't pertinent to the proposal in any case.
I thought that it was the postal votes cast by non-existent and deceased people that was more of a problem.
You'd still need to obtain the physical votes and pass the verification. Unless you'd applied for them yourself in the first place, of course. But how many people have access to multiple addresses and the patience to put in all the admin legwork, just for a few votes?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
Sufficient to lose the Tories seats. A 10% drop in turnout vs the average for the seat would screw them if the people staying at home are the people they need to win the seat. Reverse the don't vote > votes Tory trend and the blue wall looks very wobbly.
You seriously think turnout will drop 10% !?
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
Have you ready what I said. 10% "vs the average for the seat". So if there's 60% across the constituency there could be a 10% negative variation to that amongst WWC voters who never used to vote. Not 10% overall.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
Actually I 100% agree it is very easy for people to find an excuse not to vote if they don't want to vote, but that's all that it is: an excuse.
People will vote if they want to, and not vote if they don't want to do so. Nobody is being disenfranchised and the way to get people to vote is to make them want to vote.
So if you don't think turnout will drop 10% what do you think it will actually drop by? Not having people who weren't going to vote anyway now name this as their excuse for not voting, but people who would vote all else being equal but now suddenly don't. How many is that do you reckon?
Huh? I just answered that - a gut feel at least 10% drop in those communities. What that means overall depends on the demographics of any given seat.
Yes but you're saying not 10% overall. So how big of a community and how big a drop are you expecting in certain seats?
I think 10% is ridiculous really. As you very correctly identify, it is very easy for people to find an excuse if they want to do so. So they don't need ID as an excuse if they don't want to vote. If they do want to vote, then 1 in 10 of a community won't be put off because of this.
Imagine this is written in crayon
It Depends On The Seat
In nice constituencies with middle class demographics this won't be much of an issue at all. In newly conquered poor urban areas now Tory this will be a big problem for Tory campaigners getting their vote out.
I know that you - with all your "I couldn't possibly tell you" experience think this is a non-issue. The Electoral Commission disagree - and you've already told them that actually they are all for it actually. So why are you even bothering to debate at al?
You know you are right. You are always right. On every issue. Especially the ones where your experience is so deep and profound that you have to impose a super-injunction on talking about it.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
First line of the LibDem policy paper on planning - "We have a chronic shortage of housing across the country, and especially the type of homes people with lower or even middle incomes can afford."
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
It's the old LibDem hypocrisy that sank you before though. Pretend to one tranche of voters you stand for one thing, pretend to another tranche that you stand for the exact opposite.
Plenty of nimby literature in last week's elections that is utterly at odds with that LibDem policy paper. Because it isn't what local voters want to hear.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.
Road infrastructure creates suburban sprawl in itself though, reducing contact with nature. Denser towns with full countryside outside are very likely to be more conducive to mental health than endless monochrome sprawl.
Suburban sprawl is a great thing. Its funny how denser towns and protecting the countryside are most keenly advocated by ... people who don't live in towns.
So, do we think there will be unbriefed surprise to capture the press? Something definitive and infrastructure related? Leeds/Manchester rail?
Return of capital punishment.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Crime is a massive issue for voters in places like Hartlepool. As a town the Tory police cuts have absolutely screwed them - a total lack of resources means Cleveland PD have no overnight accommodation which means anyone lifted in town at night needs to get vanned into Boro which takes the few officers they have off the streets.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
Of course, the truth is that it was Labour's economic incompetence that meant there was "no money left" (in their own words) and caused the Conservatives to cut the police.
If there was no money left how come there is plenty of money left? We have literally hosed money at people during Covid. The police didn't need a hosepipe of cash, just not malicious cuts aimed at Labour areas.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Oh cut the bullshit! Meanwhile in 2021 there's this thing call zero emission vehicles. Meanwhile by 2030 the Internal Combusion Engine is going to be made illegal to retail in new vehicles.
There is no excuse to be anti-car nowadays.
That's an interesting point of view but I can recognise a "not going to get anywhere with this" argument when I see one. Enjoy your cities full of traffic, your out-of-town retail parks with acres of concrete, your obese population.
It's all about the society you want to build, and I'm happy that the party coming into power in my county is one that has pledged more Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and cycleways.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Oh cut the bullshit! Meanwhile in 2021 there's this thing call zero emission vehicles. Meanwhile by 2030 the Internal Combusion Engine is going to be made illegal to retail in new vehicles.
There is no excuse to be anti-car nowadays.
Question - where /how do you charge up your electric car if you live in a place without off road parking.
And how do you put 50 charging options in a car park with 50 narrow parking spaces for 50 flats?
I'd have thought the biggest issue for fraud would occur on postal votes inside the household.
It's very easy for the dominant householder to open all the ballots, complete them, insist on signatures and send them off again.
That’s intimidation, not fraud.
Eh? You what? Someone's ballot being taken away and denied to them and then completed on false pretences?
Fraud. It's just that person is guilty of two offences.
Postal ballots have virtually no checks on them. A better way might be to make them available for completion in advance but only at post offices or at council sites by the voter.
If they can't travel (at all) to vote due to disability or other issue then that needs assuring.
A postal vote requires my signature (checked against a historic one) alongside other information - I have one as I always used to be away on election note (2017 I was in India so couldn't even visit this site to read the fun).
If anything my postal vote is more rigorously checked than any in person vote.
Your postal vote is not checked to ensure you have not sold it to anyone else, or been blackmailed or forced to cast it in a particular way, or that it is one of several dozen that have been filled in by a party activist.
Postal votes are far more open to fraud than in-person votes.
Except for the last one - how does that differ with an in-person vote.
If I give you £100 to vote for Boris Corbyn, and you have a postal vote, I can demand to see it before handing over the dosh. If you vote in person then you put an X on the paper and, without showing it to anyone, place it in the ballot box. You can lie to me in order to collect my £100 bribe and secretly vote for Sir Keir Rees-Mogg.
If you were that brazen and desperate, you'd look for people desperate for money who didn't care about voting. In which case you could probably trust them inside the polling station, provided you got them there.
But given the severe penalties, the earning opportunity you'd be giving them would be blackmail.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.
Road infrastructure creates suburban sprawl in itself though, reducing contact with nature. Denser towns with full countryside outside are very likely to be more conducive to mental health than endless monochrome sprawl.
Suburban sprawl is a great thing. Its funny how denser towns and protecting the countryside are most keenly advocated by ... people who don't live in towns.
I live in a city, having lived in various places, but I don't really think what you're describing is conducive to well-being. What very many people need, some of whom are unfortunately stuck in big cities, is daily contact with a qualitatively different natural environment. Suburban sprawl is not that.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Oh cut the bullshit! Meanwhile in 2021 there's this thing call zero emission vehicles. Meanwhile by 2030 the Internal Combusion Engine is going to be made illegal to retail in new vehicles.
There is no excuse to be anti-car nowadays.
Question - where /how do you charge up your electric car if you live in a place without off road parking.
And how do you put 50 charging options in a car park with 50 narrow parking spaces for 50 flats?
That's precisely the point I was making. That's precisely why I support building more houses with off-road driveways and fewer flats.
A house with two reserved parking spots and charging should be the norm in 2021 not the exception for construction.
Question - where /how do you charge up your electric car if you live in a place without off road parking.
You install charging stations on the pavement, silly. Those inconvenient paupers who use the pavement at present can just buy a car like all right-thinking members of society.
(And if you think I'm joking, do a Google Image Search for 'pavement charging stations'. Heaven forfend that installing the infrastructure needed for cars should result in road space being taken away from cars.)
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
First line of the LibDem policy paper on planning - "We have a chronic shortage of housing across the country, and especially the type of homes people with lower or even middle incomes can afford."
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
"Wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations"; translation: houses near me. 🙄
What's the right kind of house in the right location? Please don't say brownfield.
Wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations means great that you are building on that massive brownfield site, stupid that all the houses are 4-5 bed "executive" homes and there's a massive local shortage of starter homes.
Developers should be invited to tender to develop housing developments that fit the needs of the community. Not buy the land, refuse to build for just long enough to overrule the council the councillors the community and the MP, then build whatever the fuck you like for the maximum possible profit.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
Good!
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
Do you currently live in the countryside, Philip ?
No I live in a town that has been expanding into the surrounding countryside - and needs to do so because of rising population.
Do you like the accessibility of the countryside from where you are now ?
The countryside will remain accessible, the entire country is accessible with a short drive.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
That's true, but there's plenty of space to build on hoarded brownfield. Many people don't have a car, and even for those that do what often makes a difference to their psychological health and communities is natural space within walking distance, not by car.
That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
...ran the thinking in 1975.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
Oh cut the bullshit! Meanwhile in 2021 there's this thing call zero emission vehicles. Meanwhile by 2030 the Internal Combusion Engine is going to be made illegal to retail in new vehicles.
There is no excuse to be anti-car nowadays.
Question - where /how do you charge up your electric car if you live in a place without off road parking.
And how do you put 50 charging options in a car park with 50 narrow parking spaces for 50 flats?
That's precisely the point I was making. That's precisely why I support building more houses with off-road driveways and fewer flats.
A house with two reserved parking spots and charging should be the norm in 2021 not the exception for construction.
No profit in houses compared to 4-5 bed executive homes or flats.
And if the 4 bed "executive" homes round here are typical (and I suspect the none local builder ones are) the houses are little bigger than my 1930's unextended house except they've filled the loft with a large bedroom and an en-suite.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That makes sense though, since the Conserative Party has become the concrete-over-everything party and to hell with the original inhabitants party.
LibDems: Luddite and Proud!
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
First line of the LibDem policy paper on planning - "We have a chronic shortage of housing across the country, and especially the type of homes people with lower or even middle incomes can afford."
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
"Wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations"; translation: houses near me. 🙄
What's the right kind of house in the right location? Please don't say brownfield.
Wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations means great that you are building on that massive brownfield site, stupid that all the houses are 4-5 bed "executive" homes and there's a massive local shortage of starter homes.
Developers should be invited to tender to develop housing developments that fit the needs of the community. Not buy the land, refuse to build for just long enough to overrule the council the councillors the community and the MP, then build whatever the fuck you like for the maximum possible profit.
What's wrong with building 4-5 bed homes? Those who move into them have good homes and that frees up the old homes they used to live in.
Building more shit homes is not the solution. Building more good homes is the solution, build up the quality. If you're not happy with what the developers are building then give consent to other developers on other land.
On voter ID, whenever we receive our form from our LA to register we have to sign it, and it clearly states the signature will be checked against the voter return
At the last General Election I had my postal vote rejected because I accidentally put the wrong year of my birth. I was out by one. I put my wife's. I got the letter rejecting it after the election so I couldn't rectify it. I gave myself a slap on the wrist. It could have made a difference but didn't TG.
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And in some instances absolutely worthless.
We are, even where I am currently sitting in London Zone 2, a low-rise country.
To paraphrase Yazz, “the only way is up (in brownfield sites)”.
Increase the number of hurdles to do something and the reduction in those that do it (or want to do it) is disproportional, even if the extra hurdles are easy or cheap.
It's precisely why Amazon patented their 1-click shopping strategy and protected it jealously until it finally expired. Anyone who's only weakly incentivised to do something can be dissuaded simply and easily.
If there's a significant issue with personation, then maybe it should be considered, despite the cost. If not, then not.
I've yet to have seen any evidence of significant personation in the UK. Accordingly, it looks more like a diversion ("We're solving a problem that doesn't exist and we can make it look like we're oh so noble doing so (and maybe we'll get a bit of an electoral benefit as well)! Don't look over there at the serious issues such as adult social care; they're icky and difficult, look at this!"), and possibly, as people say, a backdoor to getting ID cards in.
And, of course, the essential master ID register that links to everything; no point having ID cards without that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/register-to-vote-if-you-havent-got-a-fixed-or-permanent-address
He's lucky it's not 20 years on Benbecula breaking rocks.
I would have thought tightening up postal voting was far more important. In fact of the 2 methods I gave of voter id fraud the 2nd (and more effective) is best done via a postal vote and not turning up at the polling station.
PS I have actual experience of both types of frauds (I hasten to add not as the culprit, but in identifying it).
Elsewhere the problem isn't so big as it's masked by people parking in the car park for the local shops.
Not that there is not an opportunity to do it better. Mobike was a particular low point.
That's much greater than my expectation of 0.0% or the 0.03 to 0.7 recorded in the trials. What makes it one in ten voters who would vote will suddenly not do so because of this?
BJ is an idiot and a buffoon, which makes him very, very bad at governing.
It doesn't make him easy to beat in a campaign.
He will tell any lie that suits his purpose at any given moment, and will betray anyone when it no longer does.
And the people love him for it.
His defence is that press articles went further than he did.
It's why the occasional desire by some to demand people only use real names on social media and the like are so obviously flawed.
And I respect your experience of both types - and I think it puts paid to the notion that fraud is non-existant.
The Little Scotlanders might end up with an even littler Scotland than they hoped for. I guess the Islands might vote to remain as well. Maybe we just allow Glasgow to go independent because that is where most of the SNP whingers seem to reside, and say good riddance. It could be like a gloomy Monocco, with Princess Nicola as it's head of state.
https://twitter.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1391770935859023878?s=20
One of the problems with the UK is that, for all sorts of reasons, the developments we build are just too small to facilitate that. It can work if it's making an existing city denser- there are several developments like that near me, where a corner site with one big house becomes five apartments. But if you want to do it on the edge of a small town or on a remote green/brownfield site, you need a heck of a lot of people, so a heck of a lot of flats, to make it happen.
It'll play well in Hartlepool. Which is apparently the alpha and omega of policy development in this belle epoque.
Print photos on poll cards and make it a requirement to take one with you. For those who’ve lost it, there can be a long queue and a printer at X polling stations on the day.
Hey presto. A one use voter ID. Yes polling cards would get more pricey, and you would need some anti-forgery measures. But photo ID cards can be forged too and how far does anyone want to take this?
Or you could take countryside that's not being lived on and build proper houses.
You won't speak about your experience. Mine is of working these communities for 15 years. Its easy for regular voters to find an excuse / reason not to vote. Its very very easy for one who is not an established regular voter to do so.
As these WWC voters are the people who put Liar into office, deterring them from voting would be a totally stupid strategy. Perhaps as we're speculating above the focus will pivot to trying to disenfranchise Labour-voting asians using postals.
and most brownfield sites are just like that big enough for 20 / 40 flats which house a lot of people but don't provide anything like enough critical mass to justify public transport.
And were the blocks to be big enough to justify the public transport the NIMBY backlash would make building on the green belt look minor.
(a) a small number of people who would otherwise have voted do not vote
(b) a small amount of casual electoral fraud may be prevented
If b > a then it's potentially worth doing (also weigh up any other costs).
But we don't seem to have either made a good attempt to meaure b (which could presumably be done by randomly sampling polling station records and then following up a sample of voters to see whether they did in fact vote).
We also have not, from what I've seen, done a proper evaluation of a. There have been some trials, but these really need to be randomised to polling stations within some carefullly demographically chosen bigger areas, with blanket literature to the bigger areas about whether or not ID is needed at your polling station. Current trials seem to be bigger areas, presumabl with an information campaign, but that information campaign may itself raise turnout (you remind people of the vote, how to vote etc etc) so it skews any assessment of impact on turnout.
We need to get serious about this and commission a university (probably, or ONS) to do a properly designed trial of impact of requiring electoral ID to establish a and an audit of past voting to try and establish the size of b.
Should there be any hint of personation (eg a second person turns up to vote with the same identity, or any other reason to suspect personation has taken place), the local photo register is kept, and - with legal procedures followed to ensure no abuse - it can be investigated.
And, as rcs1000 has pointed out, in this case, you literally have a photo of the suspect at the very start.
That said I might find myself agreeing on voter ID. It may well be that Tories are introducing it because they think it will help them, but the fundamental principle is hard to argue against, i.e. that much less important things rely on producing ID. If Labour thinks it will disadvantage them then they need to educate their voters. I think it may be a red herring anyway because it appears that the average Labour voter is more educated now than the average Tory, so the matter should even itself out.
"We will hire 20,000 police officers" is a brilliant and popular Tory policy. The true genius is that is has been completely disconnected from who cut more coppers than that in the first place - the Tories. Listening to vox pops from Pools, WWC voters think Labour cut the police.
They are also very hard to manage well - add a bit of rain and you end up with all the bikes either in the suburbs as people take the bus to work or in town as rain results in them getting the tram home.
And if Manchester is famous for 1 thing - it's rain.
People will vote if they want to, and not vote if they don't want to do so. Nobody is being disenfranchised and the way to get people to vote is to make them want to vote.
So if you don't think turnout will drop 10% what do you think it will actually drop by? Not having people who weren't going to vote anyway now name this as their excuse for not voting, but people who would vote all else being equal but now suddenly don't. How many is that do you reckon?
The first type I described needs no action. It is trivial. It is ineffective. It is very rare as a consequence. I have only heard of it once.
The second type is more common and more organised, but to do it to any extent will result in getting caught and can be eliminated with better checks on registration rather than voter id.
Ironic that the LibDems are for a very open door immigration policy. You just don't want to build houses for them to live in once they get here....
What "original inhabitants"? Nobody is having their own private land they inhabit being concreted over do they?
If you mean that selfish hatefilled NIMBY scum aren't able to tell people that land they do not inhabit shouldn't be built on then that is a good thing. Living near some green land doesn't mean you inhabit it.
I object to Voter ID laws from ethical grounds that I don't think the state should be able to insist upon or demand our ID. Not because of suppression or anything else.
What isn't always accessible is good houses. That's far more important to people's lives.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thousands-of-green-belt-acres-wrongly-built-on-after-population-data-mistake-zz0lh90gg
In short: ONS's regulator agrees that ONS screwed up the numbers behind the housing market assessment, particularly, "in areas with high student populations". The original complaint was from Coventry but it's pretty relevant to Oxfordshire too.
I think 10% is ridiculous really. As you very correctly identify, it is very easy for people to find an excuse if they want to do so. So they don't need ID as an excuse if they don't want to vote. If they do want to vote, then 1 in 10 of a community won't be put off because of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Square
Three stories above ground, plus a basement. Some is flats, some is terraced houses. In this case, the central gardens are public, but that's the East End for you. Similar squares elsewhere have gorgeous shared but private gardens. There isn't enough parking space for every dwelling to have two cars, but the Central Line is about 200 metres away, so who cares?
Georgians knew what they were doing with urban design. The speculative builders behind metroland knew as well- how many people need to be within 10 minutes walking distance of this tube station for the development to work? Barratt and their ilk frankly don't.
You will be shocked to find out that the LibDem approach is to give more power back to local communities and take it away from developers who build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong locations.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there's this thing called the climate emergency.
What's the right kind of house in the right location? Please don't say brownfield.
<<That's why we should be encouraging as many homes as possible to be built with 2 dedicated parking spaces per house, to make it easier for people to have a car.
The more we sprawl out the more natural space becomes available within walking distance. By having a spread out sprawl we can have green spaces, parks etc between people - but trying to cram as many people into as tiny a space as we can fit them, the less space that people have within walking distance.>>
Road infrastructure creates suburban sprawl in itself though, reducing contact with nature. Denser towns with full countryside outside are very likely to be more conducive to mental health than endless monochrome sprawl.
There is no excuse to be anti-car nowadays.
It
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On
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In nice constituencies with middle class demographics this won't be much of an issue at all. In newly conquered poor urban areas now Tory this will be a big problem for Tory campaigners getting their vote out.
I know that you - with all your "I couldn't possibly tell you" experience think this is a non-issue. The Electoral Commission disagree - and you've already told them that actually they are all for it actually. So why are you even bothering to debate at al?
You know you are right. You are always right. On every issue. Especially the ones where your experience is so deep and profound that you have to impose a super-injunction on talking about it.
Plenty of nimby literature in last week's elections that is utterly at odds with that LibDem policy paper. Because it isn't what local voters want to hear.
It's all about the society you want to build, and I'm happy that the party coming into power in my county is one that has pledged more Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and cycleways.
And how do you put 50 charging options in a car park with 50 narrow parking spaces for 50 flats?
But given the severe penalties, the earning opportunity you'd be giving them would be blackmail.
A house with two reserved parking spots and charging should be the norm in 2021 not the exception for construction.
(And if you think I'm joking, do a Google Image Search for 'pavement charging stations'. Heaven forfend that installing the infrastructure needed for cars should result in road space being taken away from cars.)
Developers should be invited to tender to develop housing developments that fit the needs of the community. Not buy the land, refuse to build for just long enough to overrule the council the councillors the community and the MP, then build whatever the fuck you like for the maximum possible profit.
And if the 4 bed "executive" homes round here are typical (and I suspect the none local builder ones are) the houses are little bigger than my 1930's unextended house except they've filled the loft with a large bedroom and an en-suite.
Building more shit homes is not the solution. Building more good homes is the solution, build up the quality. If you're not happy with what the developers are building then give consent to other developers on other land.