Does anyone here still support the Tories?

[Come On Down]

This forum has become very political. In fact I've never known politics to dominate the news as much either. Obviously there is a good reason for that with Brexit, Covid etc, but I'm sure there are other forums to discuss tory bashing/truss bashing etc, yawn, all a bit main stream, unimaginative and boring dont you think? Let's all jump on the whatever the current prime minister bashing band wagon. Not sure how Labour would have handled the last few years, oh yes, I know, MUCH WORSE.

[14stFlyer]

2 minutes ago, Come On Down said:

his forum has become very political. In fact I've never known politics to dominate the news as much either. Obviously there is a good reason for that with Brexit, Covid etc, but I'm sure there are other forums to discuss tory bashing/truss bashing etc, yawn, all a bit main stream, unimaginative and boring dont you think?

Perhaps this is because avoiding a HPC has become completely reliant on political interventions over the last 15 years?  

If the coming house price crash is not the result of unscrupulous political decision-making, I don’t know what is.  

[byron78]

6 minutes ago, 14stFlyer said:

Perhaps this is because avoiding a HPC has become completely reliant on political interventions over the last 15 years?  

If the coming house price crash is not the result of unscrupulous political decision-making, I don’t know what is.  

 

It is.

And it's an inconvenient one now for a lot of internet bores who have been banging the Tory and/or Brexit drum for over a decade now and have delivered....

A national crisis pricing many of their friends and family out of the cost of living.

A couple of house price booms, and a ten year period unmatched in political history where the richest got richer at an accelerated rate whilst almost everyone else in the UK got poorer.

Bonus marks for the last lot of Truss Tories who - despite the above - decided the reason trickle down wasnt trickling down was because the rich needed even more...

I agree the above is boring and lazy. It's not as boring and lazy as trying to pretend a lot of proles haven't been complicite in voting for Christmas whilst also dressing as turkeys though...

Edited October 18, 2022 by byron78

[Joris Bohnson]

Hopefully after the next two years of disaster they are out, not just for a generation - but for a century.

SNP likely to be the opposition come 2024!

Current Prediction: Labour majority 364

Party	2019 Votes	2019 Seats	Pred Votes	Low Seats	Pred Seats	High Seats
CON	44.7%	365	24.1%	18	48	192
LAB	33.0%	203	50.6%	369	507	557
LIB	11.8%	11	10.1%	8	19	38
Reform	2.1%	0	1.8%	0	0	0
Green	2.8%	1	4.6%	0	1	1
SNP	4.0%	48	4.4%	25	52	54
PlaidC	0.5%	4	0.8%	2	4	5
Other	1.1%	0	3.7%	0	1	3
DUP		8			8
SF		7			7
SDLP		2			2
Alliance		1			1

Prediction based on opinion polls from 05 Oct 2022 to 14 Oct 2022, sampling 11,358 people.

Probability of possible outcomes

Labour majority	99%
Lab minority	1%

[Joris Bohnson]

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html

[HovelinHove]

I lent the Tories my vote in 2019 to get Brexit done. I joined the party this year to have a say in who would replace Boris…I voted for Truss…doh! In my defence it was her or the slimy globalist Sunak. I supported her drive to lower taxes, but by not providing a viable counter balance of deep cuts at the same time, she sunk the whole project on day one. I really didn’t realise she was as brainless as she has turned out to be. Oh fool me.

The Tories are now reverting to their pre-Brexit globalist form and I won’t be voting for them unless by some miracle they turn things around radically.

I cannot vote for Labour because of their culture and class war stances and inability to understand that too much tax crushes innovation and growth.

Lib Dems no different.

Greens…we need gas and oil until we have viable sustainable alternative sources of energy like Nuclear on tap and in sufficient supply to meet our needs at all times. 

I will vote Reform, may even stand as an MP. At the moment they seem to adopt the same approach to tax as Truss, so they need to re examine how they go about implementing that without the markets melting down, otherwise they resemble what the Conservative party should be.

[14stFlyer]

1 minute ago, HovelinHove said:

Greens…we need gas and oil until we have viable sustainable alternative sources of energy like Nuclear on tap and in sufficient supply to meet our needs at all times. 

Agree with this.  A proper, timed, costed transition from oil and gas to a stable Nuclear and renewables future from any party would be a “nice-to-have” I think!

[nero120]

11 minutes ago, HovelinHove said:

I will vote Reform, may even stand as an MP. At the moment they seem to adopt the same approach to tax as Truss, so they need to re examine how they go about implementing that without the markets melting down, otherwise they resemble what the Conservative party should be.

Yes, this 1000%. If there is any hope of fixing our broken system it has to come from the ground up - citizens organising and taking political power away from the establishment. If we had viable alternative candidates in elections then maybe there would be an actual point to voting...

[Gurgle]

9 hours ago, Si1 said:

I'm centre right so I have supported them at times, but not this sh1t show.

The lack of self analysis or compassion is simply unforgivable. I wouldn't let them take my dog for a walk.

And yes I would vote for the current labour lot. They're not outstanding and have faults, I don't think they'll make a great govt, but at least they won't accidentally murder poor people, which I consider a good start.

your first 2 paragraphs are exactly my view too.  However, I will never be able to bring myself to vote for Labour.  Blair has a lot to answer for and is the root cause for our current predicament.  Starmer is ok, but his front bench are woefully inadequate.  They claim to have an economic plan but can’t tell us what it is
 

Of course I can’t suggest an alternative party but I voted Lib Dem last time because they’re the only party with a chance of winning this seat from the conservatives who I would typically have voted for in the past.  Couldn’t vote for a Johnson government though hence Lib Dems.

 

[HovelinHove]

1 minute ago, nero120 said:

Yes, this 1000%. If there is any hope of fixing our broken system it has to come from the ground up - citizens organising and taking political power away from the establishment. If we had viable alternative candidates in elections then maybe there would be an actual point to voting...

The problem is FPTP though. Until we have PR there will never be a break from the awful politics we have.

[HovelinHove]

13 minutes ago, 14stFlyer said:

Agree with this.  A proper, timed, costed transition from oil and gas to a stable Nuclear and renewables future from any party would be a “nice-to-have” I think!

Must have more like. Living near Brighton I cannot stomach Caroline Lucas and all the woke garbage she promotes.

[Shrink Proof]

5 minutes ago, HovelinHove said:

The problem is FPTP though. Until we have PR there will never be a break from the awful politics we have.

Indeed. A two party, in-out, FPTP, non accountable, crony-based, political system breeds incompetence, corruption and abuse of power.

[nero120]

9 minutes ago, HovelinHove said:

The problem is FPTP though. Until we have PR there will never be a break from the awful politics we have.

It's not the outcome of elections that is important at the moment, there needs to be signs that the citizenry are starting to organise against the establishment. If you (and many others) stand as alternatives to the establishment narratives it will give other citizens hope and they will begin to change their behaviour in kind.

The system only works if there is buy in. If you have (dumb) people saying "Oh well, I know Labour are bad but these Tories are terrible, so I'll just vote Labour" then the establishment has still won. We need more citizens to turn away from the establishment parties but most people still think they need to vote so they need alternative candidates to vote for.

We need to get to the point when the establishment is so afraid it does a Zelensky and bans any alternative parties from standing in elections. Once we are there then we know they and their system are finished. It's just a matter of time, but if you have the determination to stand as a candidate then please do it as every extra motivated citizen tearing one more vote from the establishment makes a difference.

Think strategically, it is not the battle that is important but the war. Play the long game.

Edited October 18, 2022 by nero120

[Who am I?]

4 minutes ago, HovelinHove said:

The problem is FPTP though. Until we have PR there will never be a break from the awful politics we have.

Exactly. I lived in New Zealand at the time they switched from FPTP to PR. Best thing that country ever did. Led to a far more balanced group of people in parliament.

Everything from conservative Christian idiots to a dreadlocked cannabis smoker who lit up in parliament to prove a point about cannabis laws. It might sound chaotic, but it's actually not. The fringe get representation and keep the majority honest. It's what the UK desperately needs.

The fringe getting representation is important by the way. Hard to scream against the man keeping you down to add to your unhinged supporters if you're sitting in a seat in parliament.

[nero120]

1 minute ago, Who am I? said:

Exactly. I lived in New Zealand at the time they switched from FPTP to PR. Best thing that country ever did. Led to a far more balanced group of people in parliament.

Everything from conservative Christian idiots to a dreadlocked cannabis smoker who lit up in parliament to prove a point about cannabis laws. It might sound chaotic, but it's actually not. The fringe get representation and keep the majority honest. It's what the UK desperately needs.

The fringe getting representation is important by the way. Hard to scream against the man keeping you down to add to your unhinged supporters if you're sitting in a seat in parliament.

With respect, I think this example proves that even with PR you still get awful governments. Changing an electoral system does not an antidote to having a dumbed-down and salve-like electorate. Citizens get the system they deserve.

[Patfig]

Not while I have a hole in my @rse

[Who am I?]

Just now, nero120 said:

With respect, I think this example proves that even with PR you still get awful governments. Changing an electoral system does not an antidote to having a dumbed-down and salve-like electorate. Citizens get the system they deserve.

No it doesn't. The government became much more representative of the population after PR was implemented. It's still government. It's still got politicians who are mostly slimy weasels. But it's a hell of a lot better than it was. And it now has regular people sitting in it that aren't beholden to a specific political party for their future success. Orders of magnitude better than under FPTP.

The New Zealand government works fairly well. You no longer get a government that just steamrolls through any opposition with only 30 percent of the vote. Movement tends to be slightly slower, but it takes more of the country with it. Nandor tanchos (the smoker) was never going to have any real say in the general running of the government, but he brought a counter view to any argument about drug laws that made the laws better. He was also just a regular Joe for votes on everything else, so he would likely have voted against a left wing party going too far as well as the same from the right.

 

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

35 minutes ago, HovelinHove said:

I lent the Tories my vote in 2019 to get Brexit done. I joined the party this year to have a say in who would replace Boris…I voted for Truss…doh! In my defence it was her or the slimy globalist Sunak. I supported her drive to lower taxes, but by not providing a viable counter balance of deep cuts at the same time, she sunk the whole project on day one. I really didn’t realise she was as brainless as she has turned out to be. Oh fool me.

 

I've been a member since the 1990s, but never did I vote for the clowns, Johnson or Truss. I've secretly not voted Tory in General Elections since Boris became leader.

In my personal opinion, most of the current Conservative members are geriatric corpses who clap like trained sea lions when presented with a Brextard candidate saying Brextard things. A good dose of C19 is definitely required at future hustings.

[nero120]

2 minutes ago, Who am I? said:

No it doesn't. The government became much more representative of the population after PR was implemented. It's still government. It's still got politicians who are mostly slimy weasels. But it's a hell of a lot better than it was. And it now has regular people sitting in it that aren't beholden to a specific political party for their future success. Orders of magnitude better than under FPTP.

The New Zealand government works fairly well. You no longer get a government that just steamrolls through any opposition with only 30 percent of the vote. Movement tends to be slightly slower, but it takes more of the country with it. Nandor tanchos (the smoker) was never going to have any real say in the general running of the government, but he brought a counter view to any argument about drug laws that made the laws better. He was also just a regular Joe for votes on everything else, so he would likely have voted against a left wing party going too far as well as the same from the right.

So, again, any brit who thinks PR will fix everything here just look at NZ as an example to the contrary. How's busting down the establishment working out? I would have followed with saying how terrible a leader Jacinda Ardern is but then it would be very hypocritical given the utter cluster of useless women we've had in charge over here (yes I'm counting Boris as a woman).

If you introduce PR and you still have the establishment running things then you know your problem isn't the electoral system...

[Who am I?]

4 minutes ago, nero120 said:

So, again, any brit who thinks PR will fix everything here just look at NZ as an example to the contrary. How's busting down the establishment working out? I would have followed with saying how terrible a leader Jacinda Ardern is but then it would be very hypocritical given the utter cluster of useless women we've had in charge over here (yes I'm counting Boris as a woman).

If you introduce PR and you still have the establishment running things then you know your problem isn't the electoral system...

It's not perfect. It's still government. And for the most part it's still a two party system. The difference is that when the two main parties start to drift away from what their supporters actually want they lose votes to smaller parties. This is a good thing. It keeps the main parties more honest. You don't end up with total idiots living in an echo chamber running things. Not for long anyway. 

You can argue ardern is crap. I haven't lived there in a long time so I won't comment. But she's nowhere near as crap as what we have here. And if she was, the NZ labour party would lose huge numbers of seats to 'labour party 2'. Which is how it should work. Over here the only other option is the Tory party. Right now the Tory voters are ******ed. Who do they vote for? Abject failure, or a left wing party? Under PR there would be another right wing party they could vote for. And the current Tories would never have been allowed to get into the state they are as they would have lost too many votes to ever get to this stage in the first place. Same goes for the shit starmer is serving up to the left.

Right now we have 2 main parties who would only ever be fringe parties under PR. They would have their place and would pull the government of the day in a general direction. But they would never be the main party in power. Under FPTP they have devolved into utter worthlessness and are now doing actual harm to the country. And the only way to get rid of them is to vote for a party that is just as, or almost as, crap.

 

 

 

[nero120]

42 minutes ago, Who am I? said:

It's not perfect. It's still government. And for the most part it's still a two party system. The difference is that when the two main parties start to drift away from what their supporters actually want they lose votes to smaller parties. This is a good thing. It keeps the main parties more honest. You don't end up with total idiots living in an echo chamber running things. Not for long anyway. 

You can argue ardern is crap. I haven't lived there in a long time so I won't comment. But she's nowhere near as crap as what we have here. And if she was, the NZ labour party would lose huge numbers of seats to 'labour party 2'. Which is how it should work. Over here the only other option is the Tory party. Right now the Tory voters are ******ed. Who do they vote for? Abject failure, or a left wing party? Under PR there would be another right wing party they could vote for. And the current Tories would never have been allowed to get into the state they are as they would have lost too many votes to ever get to this stage in the first place. Same goes for the shit starmer is serving up to the left.

Right now we have 2 main parties who would only ever be fringe parties under PR. They would have their place and would pull the government of the day in a general direction. But they would never be the main party in power. Under FPTP they have devolved into utter worthlessness and are now doing actual harm to the country. And the only way to get rid of them is to vote for a party that is just as, or almost as, crap.

I don't agree, but fair enough. I think NZ has just as many problems and the establishment are firmly in control of that country just like here. But regardless, the last GE in the UK showed that a "fringe party" can challenge the two-party system. The Brexit party was set to win a huge share of the tory votes which scared them so much that Farage "voluntarily" stood their candidates down in effort to "avoid splitting leave vote" (speculation whether he was made an offer he couldn't refuse or whether he genuinely believed that the snake tory party would actually deliver Brexit - more fool him if so). Brexit was a grass-roots movement showing that change will be forced from the bottom-up, not from the top-down. Brexit itself was just one example of this and won't be the last - let's see how the land looks after a long, dark, cold winter. If we have enough alternative candidates standing in every constituency come the next GE then why would any right-leaning voter vote for the establishment parties after everything that we've been through? At that point a hung parliament will do the job of derailing the establishment's plans as long as enough genuine alternatives make it to parliament.

[Who am I?]

20 minutes ago, nero120 said:

I don't agree, but fair enough. I think NZ has just as many problems and the establishment are firmly in control of that country just like here. But regardless, the last GE in the UK showed that a "fringe party" can challenge the two-party system. The Brexit party was set to win a huge share of the tory votes which scared them so much that Farage "voluntarily" stood their candidates down in effort to "avoid splitting leave vote" (speculation whether he was made an offer he couldn't refuse or whether he genuinely believed that the snake tory party would actually deliver Brexit - more fool him if so). Brexit was a grass-roots movement showing that change will be forced from the bottom-up, not from the top-down. Brexit itself was just one example of this and won't be the last - let's see how the land looks after a long, dark, cold winter. If we have enough alternative candidates standing in every constituency come the next GE then why would any right-leaning voter vote for the establishment parties after everything that we've been through? At that point a hung parliament will do the job of derailing the establishment's plans as long as enough genuine alternatives make it to parliament.

I think Brexit is the perfect example of where PR is needed. 

I don't personally care if we are in or out of the EU. You can make an argument either way. But it hasn't been dealt with. If we had PR then Brexit would not have been built up as some massive issue. Some, maybe many, of the issues people had (immigration etc) would have been dealt with over time by third parties forcing the issues earlier. Maybe that would have been enough and people would not have wanted to leave the EU. Or maybe not. But it would have been dealt with slowly and (vaguely) sensibly. Under FPTP the issues were purposefully ignored by both main parties until the pressure got so large it exploded in both their faces. Our broken FPTP system allowed that to build. It did everything it could to disenfranchise people it disagreed with until half the voting population were disenfranchised. That's bad. That's inefficient. That's downright dangerous for a democratic system.

Having lived under both systems I know that FPTP makes it extremely difficult to get rid of entrenched political power. Under PR it's less difficult. Not easy, but not near impossible as it is now. No system is perfect, but FPTP only suits the establishment. PR has its problems, but it is far better than what we have.

 

[Far Canal]

I'll be voting for the candidate who has aims of shrinking the size of the public sector.

Will be ReformUK.

 

A dose of inflation is what the UK needed to sort some hings out. Giving us the higher interest rates which will hopefully clear out the get rich quick people who were abusing residential housing.

The inflation figures are still being manipulated down but it can't be ignored at these levels.

 

https://usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

 

 

[Trump Invective]

If they cause a HPC, they are my best friend

[Will!]

13 hours ago, Pmax2020 said:

Genuine question. Does anyone still intend on voting for the Tories in 2 years time? Or were there to be a general election sooner?

 

 

Hunt is going to shrink the public sector.  That may be popular with some Tory-inclined voters.