If we are going to do ID lets do it properly. Free to everyone. High tech, look at the likes of UAE, Estonia, Korea and copy best practices. Plan how it will integrate into govt services for the next 10-25 years.
I would still not be in favour of it but at least that approach has advantages as well as disadvantages to the status quo, unlike whatever cheap and quick option the govt will actually deliver.
I want the UK to remain an ID card free zone.
So do I. But collectively we have voted for a nationalist authoritarian party who are in favour of them. If we are going to do it, we may as well do it right.
That's not doing it right, that's doing it authoritarian. That facilitates a Chinese style social credit system. Utterly horrific.
Doing it quick, cheap and dirty in the finest British tradition, so it doesn't integrate with other systems, is the best safeguard of all.
One day you will realise that you are cheerleading an authoritarian government.
If that day arrives I will stop supporting it.
Yet you seem incapable of explaining anything actually authoritarian it is doing (besides emergency Covid measures which were supported across the aisle and I think are being removed too slowly but must be removed in full IMO).
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
Probably explains why Sir Keir is -48 with YouGov, & perhaps why they have more outliers
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
As far as I can ascertain from what evidence there is, the Indian variant isn’t resistant to the vaccine. So might be worth going with Andy Burnham’s plan and vaccinating everyone quick sharp in Greater Manchester and East Lancs. We could do that in a fortnight.
Yes we are far enough down the track that surge vaccinating, instead of surge testing, in the final pools of the virus could be well worthwhile.
The NHS could do that under the radar if it so wished, simply pour the juice into the higher prevalence areas. Interesting idea, although @MaxPB might well be right insofar as we’ll be thru first doses in six weeks anyway.
Yes that's what I think would be a good idea.
While officially its 40-44 still the reality is 35-39 year olds are already getting jabbed, and some 30-34 are already too. I've had my jab, many of my friends across the country are getting it now and I know many other thirty-somethings on this site have said they've either had theirs or its booked now.
So if we're already getting 30-somethings done it won't take much extra juice where its needed to get into the twenty somethings. Take the few areas were outbreaks are still significant - Bolton, Birmingham etc - and seek to get all doses within a fortnight.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
And your argument is the British Army shouldn’t have gone in, a UN peace keeper force should have gone onto UK streets instead in 1969?
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
Several months BEFORE Bloody Sunday to boot.
I really used to believe that we were the good guys.
It really is quite apparent that parts of the British Army were way out of control. I know that fair trials are nearly impossible after such a time, and have no desire for individual squaddies to be in the Dock for what seems to be at least tacitly sanctioned by the commanders.
When I was very young, probably around the time of the Gerard Tuite incident so I’m talking 7-8, I had a very romantic view of the IRA & thought they were the good guys. As it turns out, my girlfriends family have possible connections going back a few generations it seems. I think the boys qualify for Eire if they’re any good at sport anyway!
I would never romanticise the IRA. They were brutal bastards, as were the Loyalist paramilitaries. I just am disappointed that parts of the British Army were acting like Latin American death squads. Perhaps not surprised, but certainly disappointed.
The evidence from across the world is that if governments use soldiers to conduct police actions, innocent people will be shot.
If the PM was really interested in cracking down on electoral fraud he'd make obtaining a postal vote much harder but that's not going to happen given how many Tories use postals.
The more the left whine at the injustice of it all and how it is going to adversely affect the voters Boris courts, the more likely one is attracted to looking at the doublethink aspect to their attack.
Eventually the Tories will lose power and then the left take power and then make it harder for Tories to vote then you'll have no moral ground to complain.
No they will just let 16 year olds and other groups who currently don't have the vote take part.
I'd expect them to reduce the availability of postal votes to those overseas.
Make the older Tory vote stand in line to vote.
No mention of that in the discussion document
I'm talking about a future Labour government's plans.
This would be the tat for the Tory tit.
Because Labour's 2019 manifesto didn't already propose lowering the voting age to 16 and extending the franchise to millions of EU and non-EU residents alike in order to give themselves a permanent demographic advantage?
They're going to do whatever they're going to do. So, therefore, should we.
You sound like an American Southerner complaining about giving the blacks the vote.
And you sound a bit dense. Votes are for citizens, not residents. Labour wanted to rig the system in their favour in the most shameless manner in modern history, but I don't recall you complaining about that.
I did actually.
The Scottish experience persuaded me that 16 and 17 year olds should have the vote, but for EU citizens a vote in general elections is off, if they want the vote they can apply for citizenship.
So you do see how vast the implications of their plans were. If Labour had won the election, they would have immediately enfranchised every person over the age of 16 in this country, thus shifting the balance of power well to the left of what either of us would like to see for the foreseeable future. This got almost no news coverage during the election, despite the fact that it approached Brexit itself in its potential consequences.
I must admit that I think all these decisions should be taken out of the hands of political parties and given to a completely independent body.
Political parties always seek partisan advantage. Labour are just as bad as the Tories (just look at the devolved Parliaments, albeit in Scotland it has backfired on them).
On enfranchising 16 year olds, I note that this is what Drakeford did for the most recent Senedd elections. Probably a contributory part of his success.
Are there any stats on how those 16 to 18 voted? Green and Nationalist be my guess.
Wasn’t Scotland 16 and 17 too?
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
Boobs. Natural ones. Large and curvy.
Cleavage, as in impressive.
Ah. Got your attention now. 🤓
The age of consent being 16. Sweet 16. I’m sure, off the top of my head, when Sam Fox was 16 when she entered The Sun’s ‘search for next Page 3 star’ competition.
When was all that officially switched to 18? Was it a bit like the disappearance of Talcum Powder, no great fanfare on the basis it’s utterly embarrassing it was allowed to go on for so long?
I’m sure I have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere, but AFAIK the age of consent in England & Wales is still 16 and that hasn’t changed?
If the PM was really interested in cracking down on electoral fraud he'd make obtaining a postal vote much harder but that's not going to happen given how many Tories use postals.
The more the left whine at the injustice of it all and how it is going to adversely affect the voters Boris courts, the more likely one is attracted to looking at the doublethink aspect to their attack.
Eventually the Tories will lose power and then the left take power and then make it harder for Tories to vote then you'll have no moral ground to complain.
No they will just let 16 year olds and other groups who currently don't have the vote take part.
I'd expect them to reduce the availability of postal votes to those overseas.
Make the older Tory vote stand in line to vote.
No mention of that in the discussion document
I'm talking about a future Labour government's plans.
This would be the tat for the Tory tit.
Because Labour's 2019 manifesto didn't already propose lowering the voting age to 16 and extending the franchise to millions of EU and non-EU residents alike in order to give themselves a permanent demographic advantage?
They're going to do whatever they're going to do. So, therefore, should we.
You sound like an American Southerner complaining about giving the blacks the vote.
And you sound a bit dense. Votes are for citizens, not residents. Labour wanted to rig the system in their favour in the most shameless manner in modern history, but I don't recall you complaining about that.
I did actually.
The Scottish experience persuaded me that 16 and 17 year olds should have the vote, but for EU citizens a vote in general elections is off, if they want the vote they can apply for citizenship.
So you do see how vast the implications of their plans were. If Labour had won the election, they would have immediately enfranchised every person over the age of 16 in this country, thus shifting the balance of power well to the left of what either of us would like to see for the foreseeable future. This got almost no news coverage during the election, despite the fact that it approached Brexit itself in its potential consequences.
I must admit that I think all these decisions should be taken out of the hands of political parties and given to a completely independent body.
Political parties always seek partisan advantage. Labour are just as bad as the Tories (just look at the devolved Parliaments, albeit in Scotland it has backfired on them).
On enfranchising 16 year olds, I note that this is what Drakeford did for the most recent Senedd elections. Probably a contributory part of his success.
Are there any stats on how those 16 to 18 voted? Green and Nationalist be my guess.
Wasn’t Scotland 16 and 17 too?
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
Boobs. Natural ones. Large and curvy.
Cleavage, as in impressive.
Ah. Got your attention now. 🤓
The age of consent being 16. Sweet 16. I’m sure, off the top of my head, when Sam Fox was 16 when she entered The Sun’s ‘search for next Page 3 star’ competition.
When was all that officially switched to 18? Was it a bit like the disappearance of Talcum Powder, no great fanfare on the basis it’s utterly embarrassing it was allowed to go on for so long?
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
Several months BEFORE Bloody Sunday to boot.
I really used to believe that we were the good guys.
It really is quite apparent that parts of the British Army were way out of control. I know that fair trials are nearly impossible after such a time, and have no desire for individual squaddies to be in the Dock for what seems to be at least tacitly sanctioned by the commanders.
When I was very young, probably around the time of the Gerard Tuite incident so I’m talking 7-8, I had a very romantic view of the IRA & thought they were the good guys. As it turns out, my girlfriends family have possible connections going back a few generations it seems. I think the boys qualify for Eire if they’re any good at sport anyway!
I would never romanticise the IRA. They were brutal bastards, as were the Loyalist paramilitaries. I just am disappointed that parts of the British Army were acting like Latin American death squads. Perhaps not surprised, but certainly disappointed.
The evidence from across the world is that if governments use soldiers to conduct police actions, innocent people will be shot.
If you know the history you know it’s wrong to imply there was a choice. Final days before British soldiers were deployed 1969 ROI were promising to send theirs to do the job.
As far as I can ascertain from what evidence there is, the Indian variant isn’t resistant to the vaccine. So might be worth going with Andy Burnham’s plan and vaccinating everyone quick sharp in Greater Manchester and East Lancs. We could do that in a fortnight.
Nah, just continue with the current rollout. We're going to be doing millions of first doses per week soon and the last 14-15m people will be done by the end of June and both doses done by the end of July. We just stay the course, don't overcomplicate anything.
Millions of first doses per week? Not saying you are wrong (chiefly because you have been spot on so far) but that sounds optimistic. That said I we have munched a huge amount of second dose debt up in the last few weeks.
The second dose debt moves on to AZ which is good because under 40s aren't getting that anyway. We're also due a slight bump in deliveries from Pfizer as their manufacturing gains continue to feed through, additional we are due a pretty big increase in Moderna deliveries (from ca. 0.8m per week to around 1.8m per week) in the second half of this month.
From what I understand we should do around 7-9m first doses in the month of May, so far we've done about 1.3m in 10 days, the rate is already rising but we should see much bigger rises in the final 10-12 days of May. This week we should surpass the 1m mark by some distance until we're in the millions per week range again like we were back in Feb/March for first doses.
I remember the panic about no first doses at all in April, yet we ended up on about 3m in the end, we also had the panic about only doing 2.7m doses total from the middle of April and we're still doing about 3.5m per week without too much trouble and that number will continue to rise.
Photo ID is required in Northern Ireland and is entirely uncontroversial (It took me 10 minutes to get an Electoral ID card although I usually just use my Passport these days). It is hardly an affront to democracy to expect GB voters to be able to do the same.
But Northern Ireland had an actual, well-documented problem with electoral personation.
Great Britain? Not so much.
Sadly GB has an actual, well documented problem with electoral fraud.
If people are willing to commit fraud the potential for personation becomes much greater. And if you're not looking for it, you won't find it.
Sad but true.
What's wrong with my suggestion?
It eliminates personation, doesn't suppress voting, and is cheap.
I have nothing against your suggestion personally.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
And your argument is the British Army shouldn’t have gone in, a UN peace keeper force should have gone onto UK streets instead in 1969?
My argument is that aggressive combat units not trained in interacting with civilians shouldn't be sent in to police civilians, particularly not after they have very obviously fucked it at their first attempt.
I see it's trains and speculation about nuclear strikes. Or Tuesday on PB.
Some of us are trying to chat about wine and related stratigraphy!
Has anyone watched "The Wine Show"?
I'm not sure what channel it was on originally, but I've watched it on Amazon. I've found it a really fun and interesting introduction to loads of wines I knew nothing about.
I think the presenters are excellent; Matthew Goode, James Puefoy, Joe Fattorini and Matthew Rhys all impressed me.
And has anyone else seen Matthew Rhys in The Americans?
Might be my favourite TV show ever..
Timed this one really badly at the end of the last thread and would love to know if anyone else enjoyed The Wine Show or The Americans?
I don't know either well (I lost track of the Americans after season 1 and never seen the other), HOWEVER welcome to PB!
I just bought all six series of The Americans on Amazon and watched them in a fortnight. I found it by looking up Matthew Rhys after seeing him on the Wine Show.
The premise of the show, KGB agents living as Americans in the USA in the 80s, drew me in before I watched the pilot.
The pilot's use of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" (I believe a world record holding song for the number of musicians on a charting song, due to the number in the marching band they recorded with) is amazing.
I found the whole thing superbly paced, really well cast and acted, believably and intriguingly scripted. I'm not sure why you gave up after the first series!
But my favourite thing about it is that main characters Philip Jennings and Martha (the FBI secretary he's conning and screwing) are perfectly acted by a Welshman and a Mackem.
The Americans is a fantastic series and I think quite underrated including here on PB if you can imagine.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
If the PM was really interested in cracking down on electoral fraud he'd make obtaining a postal vote much harder but that's not going to happen given how many Tories use postals.
The more the left whine at the injustice of it all and how it is going to adversely affect the voters Boris courts, the more likely one is attracted to looking at the doublethink aspect to their attack.
Eventually the Tories will lose power and then the left take power and then make it harder for Tories to vote then you'll have no moral ground to complain.
No they will just let 16 year olds and other groups who currently don't have the vote take part.
I'd expect them to reduce the availability of postal votes to those overseas.
Make the older Tory vote stand in line to vote.
No mention of that in the discussion document
I'm talking about a future Labour government's plans.
This would be the tat for the Tory tit.
Because Labour's 2019 manifesto didn't already propose lowering the voting age to 16 and extending the franchise to millions of EU and non-EU residents alike in order to give themselves a permanent demographic advantage?
They're going to do whatever they're going to do. So, therefore, should we.
You sound like an American Southerner complaining about giving the blacks the vote.
And you sound a bit dense. Votes are for citizens, not residents. Labour wanted to rig the system in their favour in the most shameless manner in modern history, but I don't recall you complaining about that.
I did actually.
The Scottish experience persuaded me that 16 and 17 year olds should have the vote, but for EU citizens a vote in general elections is off, if they want the vote they can apply for citizenship.
So you do see how vast the implications of their plans were. If Labour had won the election, they would have immediately enfranchised every person over the age of 16 in this country, thus shifting the balance of power well to the left of what either of us would like to see for the foreseeable future. This got almost no news coverage during the election, despite the fact that it approached Brexit itself in its potential consequences.
I must admit that I think all these decisions should be taken out of the hands of political parties and given to a completely independent body.
Political parties always seek partisan advantage. Labour are just as bad as the Tories (just look at the devolved Parliaments, albeit in Scotland it has backfired on them).
On enfranchising 16 year olds, I note that this is what Drakeford did for the most recent Senedd elections. Probably a contributory part of his success.
Are there any stats on how those 16 to 18 voted? Green and Nationalist be my guess.
Wasn’t Scotland 16 and 17 too?
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
Boobs. Natural ones. Large and curvy.
Cleavage, as in impressive.
Ah. Got your attention now. 🤓
The age of consent being 16. Sweet 16. I’m sure, off the top of my head, when Sam Fox was 16 when she entered The Sun’s ‘search for next Page 3 star’ competition.
When was all that officially switched to 18? Was it a bit like the disappearance of Talcum Powder, no great fanfare on the basis it’s utterly embarrassing it was allowed to go on for so long?
I’m sure I have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere, but AFAIK the age of consent in England & Wales is still 16 and that hasn’t changed?
Watch this space! But aiui they were talking about topless pictures of under-18s which are now verboten.
There can be no justification for the Hamas rockets raining down on Israel tonight. Friends of mine are cowering in shelters with their children.
Don’t even bother with ‘what about’ tweets. I wrote to the Foreign Secretary today about the loss of life in Gaza and related issues. I deplore those rocket attacks, too.
Some might treat this conflict like cheering on a football team. I don’t. Try being consistent yourselves.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
Several months BEFORE Bloody Sunday to boot.
I really used to believe that we were the good guys.
It really is quite apparent that parts of the British Army were way out of control. I know that fair trials are nearly impossible after such a time, and have no desire for individual squaddies to be in the Dock for what seems to be at least tacitly sanctioned by the commanders.
When I was very young, probably around the time of the Gerard Tuite incident so I’m talking 7-8, I had a very romantic view of the IRA & thought they were the good guys. As it turns out, my girlfriends family have possible connections going back a few generations it seems. I think the boys qualify for Eire if they’re any good at sport anyway!
I would never romanticise the IRA. They were brutal bastards, as were the Loyalist paramilitaries. I just am disappointed that parts of the British Army were acting like Latin American death squads. Perhaps not surprised, but certainly disappointed.
The IRA and the Loyalists were both far worse than the British Army. The weeks of torture the terrorists would inflict. With only death at the end.
We should have just bombed the fuck out of all of them. Demolished the dreary steeples.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
And your argument is the British Army shouldn’t have gone in, a UN peace keeper force should have gone onto UK streets instead in 1969?
My argument is that aggressive combat units not trained in interacting with civilians shouldn't be sent in to police civilians, particularly not after they have very obviously fucked it at their first attempt.
They were trained in interacting with civilians. But the internal discipline of some units, in particular in the early days of the troubles, was wanting.
But the point is who else would you have used for the role? If the blue helmets then fine it's a view.
We don't have a "People's Armed Police" or indeed any kind of roled unit for such a mission.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Some misunderstanding on the previous thread. I was not saying that I supported the linking of HS1 and HS2, I was saying that I supported the demolition of Camden!
The only good thing about the project was the linking of HS1 and HS2. It meant you'd be able to stay on the same train from Manchester to Paris or Lille without getting off. Caving in to Camden residents was a big mistake IMO.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
How many tanks does the Electoral Commission have?
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
The fact that the Troubles were a huge fuck up on all sides is something we haven't come to terms with. The most egregious errors were sins of omission in the period before troops were deployed. The UK and ROI didn't want to see the shitshow brewing, and the NI government didn't care.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
If you ever start sympathizing with modern Irish republicanism, in its radical guise, remember the grotesquerie that was the murder of Robert McCartney, killed for ‘insulting’ an IRA bigwig
‘Robert McCartney was involved in an altercation in "Magennis' Bar" on May Street in Belfast's city centre on the night of 30 January 2005. He was found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and died at the hospital the following morning. McCartney was 33 years old.[2]
‘The fight arose when his friend, Brendan Devine, was accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to a woman in the Co social club. When Devine refused to accept this or apologise, a brawl began. McCartney, who was attempting to defend Devine, was attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed.[1] Devine also suffered a knife attack, but survived. The throats of both men had been cut and McCartney's wounds included the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine was hospitalised under armed protection.’
It was a murder so heinous it led to this. I do not joke
‘On 8 March 2005, the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that four people were directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knew their identity, that two were IRA volunteers, and that the IRA had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.[15]’
No one was ever convicted of the murder. The family was eventually driven from its home
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
I think that votes at 18 was one of Screaming Lord Sutch's original "loony" policies.
Photo ID is required in Northern Ireland and is entirely uncontroversial (It took me 10 minutes to get an Electoral ID card although I usually just use my Passport these days). It is hardly an affront to democracy to expect GB voters to be able to do the same.
But Northern Ireland had an actual, well-documented problem with electoral personation.
Great Britain? Not so much.
Sadly GB has an actual, well documented problem with electoral fraud.
If people are willing to commit fraud the potential for personation becomes much greater. And if you're not looking for it, you won't find it.
Sad but true.
What's wrong with my suggestion?
It eliminates personation, doesn't suppress voting, and is cheap.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Yes I was still larking around going to Jam concerts for many years after the Troubles began.
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
If you ever start sympathizing with modern Irish republicanism, in its radical guise, remember the grotesquerie that was the murder of Robert McCartney, killed for ‘insulting’ an IRA bigwig
‘Robert McCartney was involved in an altercation in "Magennis' Bar" on May Street in Belfast's city centre on the night of 30 January 2005. He was found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and died at the hospital the following morning. McCartney was 33 years old.[2]
‘The fight arose when his friend, Brendan Devine, was accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to a woman in the Co social club. When Devine refused to accept this or apologise, a brawl began. McCartney, who was attempting to defend Devine, was attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed.[1] Devine also suffered a knife attack, but survived. The throats of both men had been cut and McCartney's wounds included the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine was hospitalised under armed protection.’
It was a murder so heinous it led to this. I do not joke
‘On 8 March 2005, the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that four people were directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knew their identity, that two were IRA volunteers, and that the IRA had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.[15]’
No one was ever convicted of the murder. The family was eventually driven from its home
I don't doubt how brutal the IRA were, but the Ballymurphy massacre verdict was about innocent civilians being killed by British soldiers, and then covered up. Doesn't it make you a teensy bit embarrassed about British conduct in Ulster?
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Yes I was still larking around going to Jam concerts for many years after the Troubles began.
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
Yes, hence my point about not trying squaddies, when the collusion and policy were endorsed at much higher level.
To vote against those policies we needed to know about them. The Ballymurphy cover up was designed so as to conceal truth from us.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Watergate, the scandal, happened years later. At the time it was just a break-in.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
One minor point. Surely all cameras nowadays are "instant cameras". One imagines you've been touting this (fairly good) suggestion since Polaroids were a thing.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Yes I was still larking around going to Jam concerts for many years after the Troubles began.
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
Yes, hence my point about not trying squaddies, when the collusion and policy were endorsed at much higher level.
To vote against those policies we needed to know about them. The Ballymurphy cover up was designed so as to conceal truth from us.
Well it was our dirty little secret. We could have taken an interest and made an assumption but no one ever wanted to know about British soldiers patrolling urban British streets. And if anyone had thought about it they might have wondered what other military tactics were involved.
And as for my point about them being the enemy well of course they weren't to start with. And the army tried not to make them so thoroughout but it was generally only one side trying to kill agents of the Crown so the squaddies reacted to facts on the ground.
Not of course to excuse the law breaking then or now.
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Watergate, the scandal, happened years later. At the time it was just a break-in.
That is rather the point. Only those paying attention to Watergate knew it was more than a failed burglary. Ditto Wallpapergate.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
One minor point. Surely all cameras nowadays are "instant cameras". One imagines you've been touting this (fairly good) suggestion since Polaroids were a thing.
The photos should be physical, so that they can be signed. That can be a digital camera and a printer. But I don't want electronic photos (at least not solely electronic), because that brings with it other risks.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
If you ever start sympathizing with modern Irish republicanism, in its radical guise, remember the grotesquerie that was the murder of Robert McCartney, killed for ‘insulting’ an IRA bigwig
‘Robert McCartney was involved in an altercation in "Magennis' Bar" on May Street in Belfast's city centre on the night of 30 January 2005. He was found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and died at the hospital the following morning. McCartney was 33 years old.[2]
‘The fight arose when his friend, Brendan Devine, was accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to a woman in the Co social club. When Devine refused to accept this or apologise, a brawl began. McCartney, who was attempting to defend Devine, was attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed.[1] Devine also suffered a knife attack, but survived. The throats of both men had been cut and McCartney's wounds included the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine was hospitalised under armed protection.’
It was a murder so heinous it led to this. I do not joke
‘On 8 March 2005, the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that four people were directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knew their identity, that two were IRA volunteers, and that the IRA had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.[15]’
No one was ever convicted of the murder. The family was eventually driven from its home
I don't doubt how brutal the IRA were, but the Ballymurphy massacre verdict was about innocent civilians being killed by British soldiers, and then covered up. Doesn't it make you a teensy bit embarrassed about British conduct in Ulster?
No. The history of terrible violence goes back to the Irish Civil War, then to the Black and Tans, beyond that to the Famine, throughout this see the violence of the Catholic church against Irish women (for centuries), back to the violence of Cromwell, before him the Normans, before them the Vikings.
Ireland is violence. The ‘fighting Irish’ is not a cliche it is a truism. Something about Ireland’s bleak beauty distills a darkness in visitors and visited.
The UK government is right to draw a line and say enough. Truth and Reconciliation
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Yes I was still larking around going to Jam concerts for many years after the Troubles began.
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
Yes, hence my point about not trying squaddies, when the collusion and policy were endorsed at much higher level.
To vote against those policies we needed to know about them. The Ballymurphy cover up was designed so as to conceal truth from us.
Well it was our dirty little secret. We could have taken an interest and made an assumption but no one ever wanted to know about British soldiers patrolling urban British streets. And if anyone had thought about it they might have wondered what other military tactics were involved.
And as for my point about them being the enemy well of course they weren't to start with. And the army tried not to make them so thoroughout but it was generally only one side trying to kill agents of the Crown so the squaddies reacted to facts on the ground.
Not of course to excuse the law breaking then or now.
Civil wars are often the dirtiest. I don't particularly have a problem with an amnesty or statute of limitations for the Troubles, but it should be conditional on the truth being told. The families of the victims deserve it.
One of my cousins served in Northern Ireland as a junior officer in the Eighties, I am not unsympathetic to the issues.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Yes I was still larking around going to Jam concerts for many years after the Troubles began.
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
Yes, hence my point about not trying squaddies, when the collusion and policy were endorsed at much higher level.
To vote against those policies we needed to know about them. The Ballymurphy cover up was designed so as to conceal truth from us.
Well it was our dirty little secret. We could have taken an interest and made an assumption but no one ever wanted to know about British soldiers patrolling urban British streets. And if anyone had thought about it they might have wondered what other military tactics were involved.
And as for my point about them being the enemy well of course they weren't to start with. And the army tried not to make them so thoroughout but it was generally only one side trying to kill agents of the Crown so the squaddies reacted to facts on the ground.
Not of course to excuse the law breaking then or now.
Civil wars are often the dirtiest. I don't particularly have a problem with an amnesty or statute of limitations for the Troubles, but it should be conditional on the truth being told. The families of the victims deserve it.
One of my cousins served in Northern Ireland as a junior officer in the Eighties, I am not unsympathetic to the issues.
Indeed.
I wonder if I bumped into your cousin but there were a lot of us over there at the time!
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
And occasionally to what might be described as the Right. See attitudes to pre and extra marital sex at the beginning and end of the 19th C. And the levels of casual violence, car theft and burglary deemed acceptable just 40 years ago.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
I never have been able to rally any support for my “repeal the Great Reform Act” petition.
Linking back to the thread header, whether or not to support the idea of democracy (expressed as votes for all rather than votes for some) was a live debate in the Tory Party in Disraeli’s day. Perhaps we’ve come full circle. Boris does like some Disraeli/Salisbury/Austin Chamberlain ideas of Toryism.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
Couple of wonder examples there, of, what? Misogyny? And you mean the zeitgeist applied to the people as older, not a particular decade in their lives?
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Watergate, the scandal, happened years later. At the time it was just a break-in.
That is rather the point. Only those paying attention to Watergate knew it was more than a failed burglary. Ditto Wallpapergate.
But we were caveating the chances of the Tories in Hartlepool with ‘national polls closing because of Wallpapergate’ when most people couldn’t give a flying!
Political junkies over react to everything, because they want to be seen to be the first to have called a trend. The ones they call incorrectly get forgotten so it’s a permanent state of over sensitivity to events
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
I never have been able to rally any support for my “repeal the Great Reform Act” petition.
Linking back to the thread header, whether or not to support the idea of democracy (expressed as votes for all rather than votes for some) was a live debate in the Tory Party in Disraeli’s day. Perhaps we’ve come full circle. Boris does like some Disraeli/Salisbury/Austin Chamberlain ideas of Toryism.
If you come to Newcastle don't be pulling down Grey's Monument. You'll destroy Eldon Square and get 10 years in jail. And Goths will have no place to gather. Which would be tragic. So they'd probably like it.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
Couple of wonder examples there, of, what? Misogyny? And you mean the zeitgeist applied to the people as older, not a particular decade in their lives?
No, I mean that as causes once considered radical succeed, they become part of the zeitgeist. Things that were once progressive are now mainstream. The individual has not changed, society has.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
And occasionally to what might be described as the Right. See attitudes to pre and extra marital sex at the beginning and end of the 19th C. And the levels of casual violence, car theft and burglary deemed acceptable just 40 years ago.
As I said to my priest "It isn't premarital sex if I never get married"
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Watergate, the scandal, happened years later. At the time it was just a break-in.
That is rather the point. Only those paying attention to Watergate knew it was more than a failed burglary. Ditto Wallpapergate.
But we were caveating the chances of the Tories in Hartlepool with ‘national polls closing because of Wallpapergate’ when most people couldn’t give a flying!
Political junkies over react to everything, because they want to be seen to be the first to have called a trend. The ones they call incorrectly get forgotten so it’s a permanent state of over sensitivity to events
To a point but opinion polls becoming closer may be a separate issue, unrelated to Wallpapergate. As some PBers remarked – or asked – on the night, if opinion polls were close but Hartlepool was not, then there should have been compensating votes somewhere else in the country, and indeed we did later see Labour gains further south and in the mayoral contests.
@Time_to_Leave you’re in luck. The Great Reform Act ie the Representation of the People Act 1832 has already been repealed by the Representation of the People Act 1948, which in turn was repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1986. Congrats.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
I think the necessary control becomes that the electoral register can never be linked to other Government records directly and the ICO would have to be all over it.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
@Time_to_Leave you’re in luck. The Great Reform Act ie the Representation of the People Act 1832 has already been repealed by the Representation of the People Act 1948, which in turn was repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1986. Congrats.
My life’s work is complete.
NB: It’s always nice to see Acts occasionally actually repealed and replaced. Nothing more annoying that trying to read amendments to existing Acts on legislation.gov.uk when the consolidated version has not yet been produced. I know there’s other sources for lawyers but it always feels more definitive from the source.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
Don’t get me wrong - I oppose the idea of photo ID. It’s just that if we must have it, it should be done in as user friendly a way as possible.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
The same thing you'd do if it happened at 9:30am, complain.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
The same thing you'd do if it happened at 9:30am, complain.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
The same thing you'd do if it happened at 9:30am, complain.
To whom?
The same person you'd complain to at 9:30am.
If they are accepting your word for it that you are who you claim you are without any ID, they aren't going to be kicking up a fuss when you have a matching ID to go along with it.
Nothing wrong with showing proper ID in order to vote. Perfectly sensible. Perfectly reasonable.
The most important piece of legislation for most of us on here from a betting point of view is the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act. It will liven things up beautifully in the betting markets.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
I think that could work. I also offer my suggestion - print photos on polling cards. Single use ID the owner can control and destroy. Everyone gets one, and if you lose it we can have printers in polling stations (you’ll just be in a longer queue).
What a great idea. I love it. (Although it does mean that the government has a database with the picture of all citizens in it...)
Its a terrible idea. What do you do if you get to the polling station after work at 9:30pm and the polling stations staff arbitrarily say it isn’t you, even though it is?
Ask for - or rather be offered before you ask for it - a Provisional Ballot.
That is, you are issued a ballot paper and mark it in the normal manner. But instead of placing it in the ballot box, you put into an envelope, give your name and voting address, and sign statement swearing (or attesting) that you are you.
The poll workers also fill in relevant details: polling station, time of day, any info that seem relevant (such as someone already voted under same name & address) then put the provision ballot envelope (with ballot inside, unseen by the poll worker) into a separate container to be handed over to the returning officer along with the regular ballot box.
At this point, the returning officer is charged with researching & making determinations re: provisional ballots, as to whether they are properly cast by duly registered voters and will be counted OR are NOT valid (giving reasons) and are NOT added to the count.
> if the margin of victory is GREATER than total number of unresolved PVs by the conclusion of the count, then they are NOT determinative of the outcome, and any issues may be addressed AFTER the result is declared.
> if on the other hand the margin is LESS than number of unresolved PVs when the unchallenged ballots are counted, then the declaration can (and should) be deferred until the PVs are fully resolved one way or another.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
One minor point. Surely all cameras nowadays are "instant cameras". One imagines you've been touting this (fairly good) suggestion since Polaroids were a thing.
The photos should be physical, so that they can be signed. That can be a digital camera and a printer. But I don't want electronic photos (at least not solely electronic), because that brings with it other risks.
Bonkers Robert, sorry. If you're going to all of that faff, which would put huge strain on election staff in a very short space of time, then you can sort out your photo ID in advance of voting in the unlikely event that you have neither a passport, a driving licence or one of the other acceptable IDs on their list.
This is a non story.
Repeal of the FTPA is, on the other hand, exciting. Not unexpected of course but still wonderful. We will back to all that febrile speculation of 'Will the PM call an election?'
And the answer to that general question is that yes I think he will. May 2023.
Re: the 1982 Illinois Governors Race, PBers may be surprised to learn that this VERY close election was won NOT by Democrat Adlai Stevenson III but by his Republican opponent Jim Thompson, who was the incumbent Governor.
And it was Stevenson who asked for a recount. This from the Wiki article on the race:
"Thompson managed to prevail by a narrow 5,074 vote margin. Thompson won a clear majority of Illinois's 102 counties, but Stevenson won Cook County home of Chicago. Cook County accounts for more than 25% of the states total population. Thompson was most likely able to win narrowly, because he performed well in the Collar (Suburban) counties of Chicago, including, Will, Lake, and DuPage counties. Immediately following the election Stevenson filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court for a state paid recount. But his motion for a recount was denied by the panel by just one vote. Shortly after the court's decision Stevenson conceded defeat, and called Thompson to congratulate him on his victory."
Big Jim Thompson was re-elected handily in rematch with Stevenson in 1986 with some assistance from Lyndon Larouche. But that is ANOTHER weird tale from the strange annals of Illinois politics.
No to ID cards, no to government databases, no to anything of that nature. It'll lead to a social credit system eventually.
I am dead against ID cards. I am solidly for having to demonstrate your identity before being allowed to vote. The two are wholly separate, a straw man made by apologists for those who would pollute democracy with cheating.
And anyone saying "no to government databases" is
a) naive - they have them already, in massive detail such that
b) they can deliver 37m people vaccinated against Covid with the minimum of fuss.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
Bottom line is, whatever electoral system or voting method or timeframe is used, free and fair elections, certainly in highly-developed countrys, SHOULD give voters AND election workers a timely opportunity to correct errors and omissions.
Clearly cases of personation are errors, willful on the part of perps and unwitting on part of election workers. IF correctable in a reasonably timely manner, they should be corrected. And system should provide time for such correction IF they affected ballots might determine the outcome in very close races.
However, somehow I'm doubting whether getting it right - or rather correct - is REALLY what's motivating the Johnson administration in this entire matter.
IF they wish to prove otherwise, then include in any new electoral law imposing additional requirements for voting, some reasonable way of fixing errors such as we've discussed. Other than just saying tough luck, sorry old chap - and adding insult to injury.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
My personal attitude toward voter fraud is, when and if you have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt - hang 'em high. Then cut 'em down, chop off their head, and stick it on a pike.
That's for my opposition. For my own side, boil 'em in oil BEFORE hanging.
Personally agitated - with some success - to clean up Dodge on one notable occasion. Problem wasn't fraud, but rather incompetence by officials of my own political persuasion.
We got that fixed pretty good. And in the process a few crum-bums got their fat rat asses handed to them.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Problem is NOT stopping fraud - that's GOOD.
Problem is PRETENDING to fix fraud, when vast preponderance of EVIDENCE is that, in order to fix a rare problem, you make voter disenfranchisement a much bigger problem, esp. for the eligible citizens who lose their vote in the process - that's BAD.
Unless you're religion forbids it, killing a pesky fly is a good thing. Using a bazooka to do it is NOT.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I can't see what the problem is with basing the system on trust. I don't want us to be like every other country in the world that doesn't trust people to do anything without showing ID. The vast majority of people can be trusted to be honest.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
I can tell you that if we only had checks in places like Maybury and Sheerwater, there would be - fully justified - accusations of racism.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Nothing in life is perfect, and never will be.
In a similar sort of way, football and other sports are being ruined by the obsessive quest for perfect decisions.
I can't see what the problem is with basing the system on trust. I don't want us to be like every other country in the world that doesn't trust people to do anything without showing ID. The vast majority of people can be trusted to be honest.
Most accusations of electoral fraud centre around farming of postal votes. I don't see how photo ID helps with that, or with people being incorrectly on the electoral register in the first place.
I suppose we could go back to the days when postal voting was hard to get approved, rather than on request. That would probably help more than anything else.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Somewhere between 30-60,000 people died during the course of Operation Condor in the Seventies, not to mention tens of thousands more who were raped and tortured. Around 350 died at the hands of the security forces in Northern Ireland. That seems like a lot of difference to me.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Nothing in life is perfect, and never will be.
In a similar sort of way, football and other sports are being ruined by the obsessive quest for perfect decisions.
Personally, I think VAR and goal line technology are both big steps forward in football. I saw some appalling decisions before that.
Incidentally, nice to be back in 3rd place after beating Man United reserves. A big step towards Champions League. It would be nice for West Ham to squeeze out Chelsea, after the ESL farce.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Nothing in life is perfect, and never will be.
In a similar sort of way, football and other sports are being ruined by the obsessive quest for perfect decisions.
If council insiders are running a sophisticated in-person voting fraud, voter IDs aren't going to going to stop it.
At best, it puts in one more tiny step. Somebody gets paid off or a bunch of fake voters get a whole bunch of fake IDs.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
I can tell you that if we only had checks in places like Maybury and Sheerwater, there would be - fully justified - accusations of racism.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Somewhere between 30-60,000 people died during the course of Operation Condor in the Seventies, not to mention tens of thousands more who were raped and tortured. Around 350 died at the hands of the security forces in Northern Ireland. That seems like a lot of difference to me.
As well as the 350 known deaths there are a number where collusion between Crown forces and terrorists seemed to take place. The murder of Patrick Finucane for example.
Certainly the CIA supported death squads of Operation Condor were brutal, but call me old fashioned. I would rather that Crown forces didn't commit extrajudicial killings.
Comments
Yet you seem incapable of explaining anything actually authoritarian it is doing (besides emergency Covid measures which were supported across the aisle and I think are being removed too slowly but must be removed in full IMO).
While officially its 40-44 still the reality is 35-39 year olds are already getting jabbed, and some 30-34 are already too. I've had my jab, many of my friends across the country are getting it now and I know many other thirty-somethings on this site have said they've either had theirs or its booked now.
So if we're already getting 30-somethings done it won't take much extra juice where its needed to get into the twenty somethings. Take the few areas were outbreaks are still significant - Bolton, Birmingham etc - and seek to get all doses within a fortnight.
From what I understand we should do around 7-9m first doses in the month of May, so far we've done about 1.3m in 10 days, the rate is already rising but we should see much bigger rises in the final 10-12 days of May. This week we should surpass the 1m mark by some distance until we're in the millions per week range again like we were back in Feb/March for first doses.
I remember the panic about no first doses at all in April, yet we ended up on about 3m in the end, we also had the panic about only doing 2.7m doses total from the middle of April and we're still doing about 3.5m per week without too much trouble and that number will continue to rise.
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
Also debated in the Lords in February 1969.
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
https://twitter.com/wesstreeting/status/1392195819789602823
There can be no justification for the Hamas rockets raining down on Israel tonight. Friends of mine are cowering in shelters with their children.
Don’t even bother with ‘what about’ tweets. I wrote to the Foreign Secretary today about the loss of life in Gaza and related issues. I deplore those rocket attacks, too.
Some might treat this conflict like cheering on a football team. I don’t. Try being consistent yourselves.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
We should have just bombed the fuck out of all of them. Demolished the dreary steeples.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
But the point is who else would you have used for the role? If the blue helmets then fine it's a view.
We don't have a "People's Armed Police" or indeed any kind of roled unit for such a mission.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
The most egregious errors were sins of omission in the period before troops were deployed.
The UK and ROI didn't want to see the shitshow brewing, and the NI government didn't care.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24987465
‘Robert McCartney was involved in an altercation in "Magennis' Bar" on May Street in Belfast's city centre on the night of 30 January 2005. He was found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and died at the hospital the following morning. McCartney was 33 years old.[2]
‘The fight arose when his friend, Brendan Devine, was accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to a woman in the Co social club. When Devine refused to accept this or apologise, a brawl began. McCartney, who was attempting to defend Devine, was attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed.[1] Devine also suffered a knife attack, but survived. The throats of both men had been cut and McCartney's wounds included the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine was hospitalised under armed protection.’
It was a murder so heinous it led to this. I do not joke
‘On 8 March 2005, the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that four people were directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knew their identity, that two were IRA volunteers, and that the IRA had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.[15]’
No one was ever convicted of the murder. The family was eventually driven from its home
THAT is the IRA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Robert_McCartney
And wrt the MRF or later FRU etc the govt had a policy which the soldiers implemented. And if you look at the detail they were tasked with finding the enemy. Of the government. Of us. If we didn't want that policy we should have voted in Jeremy Corbyn back then.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
To vote against those policies we needed to know about them. The Ballymurphy cover up was designed so as to conceal truth from us.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
And as for my point about them being the enemy well of course they weren't to start with. And the army tried not to make them so thoroughout but it was generally only one side trying to kill agents of the Crown so the squaddies reacted to facts on the ground.
Not of course to excuse the law breaking then or now.
Ireland is violence. The ‘fighting Irish’ is not a cliche it is a truism. Something about Ireland’s bleak beauty distills a darkness in visitors and visited.
The UK government is right to draw a line and say enough. Truth and Reconciliation
One of my cousins served in Northern Ireland as a junior officer in the Eighties, I am not unsympathetic to the issues.
I wonder if I bumped into your cousin but there were a lot of us over there at the time!
See attitudes to pre and extra marital sex at the beginning and end of the 19th C.
And the levels of casual violence, car theft and burglary deemed acceptable just 40 years ago.
Linking back to the thread header, whether or not to support the idea of democracy (expressed as votes for all rather than votes for some) was a live debate in the Tory Party in Disraeli’s day. Perhaps we’ve come full circle. Boris does like some Disraeli/Salisbury/Austin Chamberlain ideas of Toryism.
Political junkies over react to everything, because they want to be seen to be the first to have called a trend. The ones they call incorrectly get forgotten so it’s a permanent state of over sensitivity to events
You'll destroy Eldon Square and get 10 years in jail.
And Goths will have no place to gather. Which would be tragic.
So they'd probably like it.
NB: It’s always nice to see Acts occasionally actually repealed and replaced. Nothing more annoying that trying to read amendments to existing Acts on legislation.gov.uk when the consolidated version has not yet been produced. I know there’s other sources for lawyers but it always feels more definitive from the source.
If they are accepting your word for it that you are who you claim you are without any ID, they aren't going to be kicking up a fuss when you have a matching ID to go along with it.
Nothing wrong with showing proper ID in order to vote. Perfectly sensible. Perfectly reasonable.
The most important piece of legislation for most of us on here from a betting point of view is the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act. It will liven things up beautifully in the betting markets.
That is, you are issued a ballot paper and mark it in the normal manner. But instead of placing it in the ballot box, you put into an envelope, give your name and voting address, and sign statement swearing (or attesting) that you are you.
The poll workers also fill in relevant details: polling station, time of day, any info that seem relevant (such as someone already voted under same name & address) then put the provision ballot envelope (with ballot inside, unseen by the poll worker) into a separate container to be handed over to the returning officer along with the regular ballot box.
At this point, the returning officer is charged with researching & making determinations re: provisional ballots, as to whether they are properly cast by duly registered voters and will be counted OR are NOT valid (giving reasons) and are NOT added to the count.
> if the margin of victory is GREATER than total number of unresolved PVs by the conclusion of the count, then they are NOT determinative of the outcome, and any issues may be addressed AFTER the result is declared.
> if on the other hand the margin is LESS than number of unresolved PVs when the unchallenged ballots are counted, then the declaration can (and should) be deferred until the PVs are fully resolved one way or another.
This is a non story.
Repeal of the FTPA is, on the other hand, exciting. Not unexpected of course but still wonderful. We will back to all that febrile speculation of 'Will the PM call an election?'
And the answer to that general question is that yes I think he will. May 2023.
Quite.
And it was Stevenson who asked for a recount. This from the Wiki article on the race:
"Thompson managed to prevail by a narrow 5,074 vote margin. Thompson won a clear majority of Illinois's 102 counties, but Stevenson won Cook County home of Chicago. Cook County accounts for more than 25% of the states total population. Thompson was most likely able to win narrowly, because he performed well in the Collar (Suburban) counties of Chicago, including, Will, Lake, and DuPage counties. Immediately following the election Stevenson filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court for a state paid recount. But his motion for a recount was denied by the panel by just one vote. Shortly after the court's decision Stevenson conceded defeat, and called Thompson to congratulate him on his victory."
Big Jim Thompson was re-elected handily in rematch with Stevenson in 1986 with some assistance from Lyndon Larouche. But that is ANOTHER weird tale from the strange annals of Illinois politics.
And anyone saying "no to government databases" is
a) naive - they have them already, in massive detail such that
b) they can deliver 37m people vaccinated against Covid with the minimum of fuss.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
Clearly cases of personation are errors, willful on the part of perps and unwitting on part of election workers. IF correctable in a reasonably timely manner, they should be corrected. And system should provide time for such correction IF they affected ballots might determine the outcome in very close races.
However, somehow I'm doubting whether getting it right - or rather correct - is REALLY what's motivating the Johnson administration in this entire matter.
IF they wish to prove otherwise, then include in any new electoral law imposing additional requirements for voting, some reasonable way of fixing errors such as we've discussed. Other than just saying tough luck, sorry old chap - and adding insult to injury.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
That's for my opposition. For my own side, boil 'em in oil BEFORE hanging.
Personally agitated - with some success - to clean up Dodge on one notable occasion. Problem wasn't fraud, but rather incompetence by officials of my own political persuasion.
We got that fixed pretty good. And in the process a few crum-bums got their fat rat asses handed to them.
Problem is PRETENDING to fix fraud, when vast preponderance of EVIDENCE is that, in order to fix a rare problem, you make voter disenfranchisement a much bigger problem, esp. for the eligible citizens who lose their vote in the process - that's BAD.
Unless you're religion forbids it, killing a pesky fly is a good thing. Using a bazooka to do it is NOT.
In a similar sort of way, football and other sports are being ruined by the obsessive quest for perfect decisions.
I suppose we could go back to the days when postal voting was hard to get approved, rather than on request. That would probably help more than anything else.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2893546/Mike-Jones-worst-penalty-decision-ball-hits-Wes-Morgan-face-Liverpool-lead-says-Gary-Lineker.html
Incidentally, nice to be back in 3rd place after beating Man United reserves. A big step towards Champions League. It would be nice for West Ham to squeeze out Chelsea, after the ESL farce.
At best, it puts in one more tiny step. Somebody gets paid off or a bunch of fake voters get a whole bunch of fake IDs.
The proviso i have that it should be required in the absence of a polling card only.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/30/pat-finucane-murder-a-pitiless-act-and-a-political-storm
Certainly the CIA supported death squads of Operation Condor were brutal, but call me old fashioned. I would rather that Crown forces didn't commit extrajudicial killings.
https://twitter.com/DUPleader/status/1392175816394657793?s=20
I am not of the left and I don't believe Tories are evil.
But I know the current leadership are stupid and venal