A 2019 General Election Analysis

One of the outcomes of this election, will be the fact that the BBC will become less anti-Tory.
I can see that happening in general. It's hard for left wing comedians to do some left wing comedy, when your audience has shown they will happily vote Tory now.
 
I guess you are feeling foolish today :)

Not really.

As I wrote elsewhere, Brighton Pavilion is still Green and Brighton Kemp Town is still Labour. And we are still an oasis of sanity amongst the blue meanie madness!

Apart from this, life goes on, we go back to having no power nor influence and I've already lost interest. :)
 
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My initial comment is that the electoral boundaries need a serious rethink. It's not because I disagree with the results, but because Scotland & NI have disproportionally too many MPs.
If you look at the results, the Tories & Labour won 567 seats with 76% of the votes. The SNP won 48 seats with less than 4% of the votes. Proportionally, they should have around 29 seats. Likewise NI should have 8 instead of 15.
The electoral boundaries need to be adjusted so that they have a similar representative population.
 
Here in the U.S. the Conservative win is seen as a cautionary tale for our Democratic Party, whose presidential candidates have been moving ever further to the left. The more centerist candidate, Joe Biden (and newcomer Mike Bloomberg) are using it to show that the Overton Window has not moved as fast as many Democrats would like.
 
Here in the U.S. the Conservative win is seen as a cautionary tale for our Democratic Party, whose presidential candidates have been moving ever further to the left. The more centerist candidate, Joe Biden (and newcomer Mike Bloomberg) are using it to show that the Overton Window has not moved as fast as many Democrats would like.
Overton Window?

I need to do a bit of research on that.
 
My initial comment is that the electoral boundaries need a serious rethink. It's not because I disagree with the results, but because Scotland & NI have disproportionally too many MPs.
If you look at the results, the Tories & Labour won 567 seats with 76% of the votes. The SNP won 48 seats with less than 4% of the votes. Proportionally, they should have around 29 seats. Likewise NI should have 8 instead of 15.
The electoral boundaries need to be adjusted so that they have a similar representative population.
<4% of the UK vote but they didn't stand across the whole of the UK but only in Scotland. There they got 45% of the vote vs the Conservatives 25%.

If you want to get into proportionality the Conservatives should only have got 279 MPs.
Nothing to do with boundaries but the first past the post voting system. Which the Conservative manifesto says they have no intention of changing. Page 48 "We will continue to support the First Past the Post system of voting"

Gerrymandering of constituency boundaries to give advantage to one particular party would go down particularly badly in Northern Ireland (and to a lesser extent in Scotland).
 
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I dont understand what you mean. You dont have to be in the EU to be part of a supply chain for companies in the EU. For example Airbus gets their wing fairings from the UAE, a country half way around the world totally detached from the EU and who they dont even have a FTA with (they trade under WTO rules).
In the context I raised `independence' I was meaning being totally self-sufficient and not having to trade with other countries. For example, if we built our own aeroplanes with only our own components, we wouldn't be relying on trade with other countries whether or not they were EU members. The question I asked was: How much real independence is there anywhere, particularly in the UK?
 
As for Scotland it seems they want independence but they haven't been told the whole story by the SNP like who is going to pay for all the things the English tax payer covers they have been told the gas and oil will cover it but as the world is going to be using less fossil fuels in the future it seems to me it is only a short term fix so will be bankrupt in no time unless of course they plan to forget going green with the rest of us. It is time the people of Scotland where told the truth by the SNP. I am not Scottish but can see the SNP only have one agenda not good for a major party and should consuntrate on getting the economy going first instead of buying votes by overspending at the expense of the British tax payer.
You highlight a major point. What are the facts? How did Leaving EU compare with Remaining? Both sides told us various things, but how much of it was fact? The annoying thing was that Brexit progress was stopped by MPs who wanted to give the public the choice when the public knows even less of the facts than they do. The matter is too complex and that is why voting has been instinctive/gut reaction and not based on facts. But democracy prevailed. The same uncertainty applies to Scottish independence. Nicola Sturgeon is a UK citizen who should abide by the decisions made and recognise the sense of what you said but she looks like going to continue with her crusade. This will be particularly wasteful given that the Government now can simply ignore her.
 
Am I the only person left in the country who doesn't give a toss about Brexit and thinks that there are far more important issues that need to be addressed?

And no, I'm not going to list them as they should be evident to anyone with decent eyesight and a reasonably functioning brain.

No, many under 25yo's think that may, my son included (he lost the £10 bet).

You can't get MP's in our own country to do as we ask much of the time, and if under EU then we have even less (if any) control over our countries direction.

Now we are no longer going to be under EU control we then have the max 5 year window to change everything completely again with our GE's.

This referendum & the GE has hopefully shown MP's that they ARE still answerable & meant to support the views of those that elected them.

As more members join the EU and they exert even more control an individual countries peoples rights will become nothing more than a protest voice. Cameron couldn't get them to listen to make the reasonable changes that many EU countries now realising needs doing. Power corrupts.

My BOLD section above is no different to how Scotland now feels about UK. They have votes but they don't lend them the choice to be independent. Once Brexit done and Scottish parliament becomes massively dominated by SNP again then they should have their 2nd vote IMO, but certainly not in 2020.

If Scotland, once independent, want to join EU and ultimately loose that independence then on their head be it.
 
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I don't know myself if the BBC is biased but it does seem to me that the Brexit coverage has been gut reaction on all sides. I don't like the way interviewers ask a question and then talk over the interviewee's reply. Very little comes out of the interviews. I suppose the BBC can't give air time to every member of the public but why waste 10-15 minutes on their Brexit `blind dates'? -two chosen but unknown celebrities talking over the dinner table. There was a much better programme on Victoria Derbyshire -members of the public discussing Brexit in a café; also a focus group doing the same in studio. Have you tried contacting `Points of View' ?


Hmm..

Points of View, where the questions are selected by a fair minded panel of unbiased experts...

Err... no they aren't, they're selected by the producer, who has his own agenda or more likely that of their masters.
There's always an unbalanced selection of messages of mostly, "effusive praise" of programmes and a few of mild criticism, the latter voiced by someone in seemingly in their dotage.
Excuses are found to include clips of running TV series for promotional purposes.

The programme is a joke.
But the BBC can say that it gives the viewers an opportunity to voice their opinions (but only those which are deemed acceptable).

Nicola Sturgeon has said Scotland shouldn't be "imprisoned in the UK."

Hmm.. At the moment they're "imprisoned" by a disproportional number of benefits.

They've as much chance of leaving the UK as Catalonia leaving Spain.

The referendum wasn't "best of three."
 
<4% of the UK vote but they didn't stand across the whole of the UK but only in Scotland. There they got 45% of the vote vs the Conservatives 25%.

If you want to get into proportionality the Conservatives should only have got 279 MPs.
Nothing to do with boundaries but the first past the post voting system. Which the Conservative manifesto says they have no intention of changing. Page 48 "We will continue to support the First Past the Post system of voting"

Gerrymandering of constituency boundaries to give advantage to one particular party would go down particularly badly in Northern Ireland (and to a lesser extent in Scotland).

You're simply blinded by your love for the SNP. less than 4% of the total vote of the UK and they get 48 seats.

Even in Scotland 45% of the vote and 80% of the seats.

Let them stand in the rest of the UK and see how many more votes they get, not many I'm willing to wager.
 
In the context I raised `independence' I was meaning being totally self-sufficient and not having to trade with other countries. For example, if we built our own aeroplanes with only our own components, we wouldn't be relying on trade with other countries whether or not they were EU members. The question I asked was: How much real independence is there anywhere, particularly in the UK?

I see what you are saying but why would you want to do that?. What benefit is there in shutting yourself off from trading with other countries?. It is by opening up your market to other markets that you increase growth through a better use of resources, if someone else can make specific parts of a airplane better/cheaper than you that frees you up to move that labor and investment into areas that are more productive.
 
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Can Catalonia hold the nuclear weapons of Spain 'hostage'....;)
Neither Scotland nor Catalonia have an army, so the question doesn't arise. The Scots would be limited to peaceful protests. Anything that "threatened security the realm" would result in long jail time.
As it'd be classed as "treason."
Sturgeon is just being a pain, that's all.

Boris should threaten to move the base, how much unemployment would that cause?
How would that work out for "Fish Face?"
 
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I think some are over estimating the importance of Scottish politicians.

For many in the rest of the UK the activities in Scotland are considered like Neville Chamberlain once said.. "a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing."
 
Neither Scotland nor Catalonia have an army, so the question doesn't arise. The Scots would be limited to peaceful protests. Anything that "threatened security the realm" would result in long jail time.
As it'd be classed as "treason."
You appear to have taken my 'hostage' comment as involving seizing the base. Quite the opposte.
Rather making use of the base difficult to impossible through peaceful non violent means. That is also a 'hostage' scenario. There is a situation of all eggs in one basket being hostage to fortune.

The UK nuclear weapons travel by lorry from England to Scotland and from Scotland to England regularly. Scotland has a police force. The police can stop lorries.
See where this is going...

Scotland has roads departments. Roads departments close roads and dig them up all the time. There are only two road entrances into the nuclear weapons store.
See where this is going...

Ah, you may say, Move them by sea then. That they have never been moved by sea in the past but instead rely on regular road convoys may be an indication of the difficulty that solution would entail.

As for peaceful protest I don't recall threats of 'long jail time' or charges of 'treason' being effective at the Greenham Common Peace Camp or for that matter at the Faslane Peace Camp.
Boris should threaten to move the base
The position is the other way round, it is the stated intent of the SNP that an independent Scotland would require the removal of RNAD Coulport (or to be precise, its nuclear warhead contents).

Your comment shows you know nothing about the situation. I'd advise you read the article linked below in full.

How do you propose to move a mountain, a deep water port and its associated infrastructre worth £billions? As an indication of the scale of the facilities, the Trident Works Programme at Faslane and Coulport took 13 years and cost around £1.9 billion (at 1994 prices), the second most expensive works project in the UK after the Channel Tunnel.

Even from this cursory examination of Scottish facilities, it is obvious that replicating them in England would be exceptionally expensive. Although some equipment could be removed for transporting it is clear that huge investment has literally gone into the ground, tunnels, roads, jettys and buildings that can’t be moved.

A very optimistic estimate made by RUSI in 2014 that extrapolated historical costs put the relocation figure (using Devonport) around £4Bn. In the much more regulated environment of the 2020s, such a project would surely run into the £10s of billions.


And more critically perhaps, move it to where? There are no viable alternative sites. The MoD has already examined alternative sites and concluded that they all have very serious drawbacks leading to the conclusion
It is hard not to conclude that if an independent Scotland will not allow nuclear weapons to remain on its soil this would probably signal the end of the British nuclear deterrent.
Why relocating Trident away from Scotland is virtually impossible | Save the Royal Navy
....how much unemployment would that cause?
How would that work out for "Fish Face?"
Not a lot of jobs involved even if it was completely closed. Just 520 civilian jobs depend on Trident and the associated nuclear weapons store at Coulport.

Fact Check: How many jobs depend on Faslane?

Ministry of Defence reveals just 520 Faslane jobs depend on Trident | Nuclear Information Service

Labour and Tories under fire for inflating Trident job losses
 
You appear to have taken my 'hostage' comment as involving seizing the base. Quite the opposte.
Rather making use of the base difficult to impossible through peaceful non violent means. That is also a 'hostage' scenario. There is a situation of all eggs in one basket being hostage to fortune.

The UK nuclear weapons travel by lorry from England to Scotland and from Scotland to England regularly. Scotland has a police force. The police can stop lorries.
See where this is going...

Scotland has roads departments. Roads departments close roads and dig them up all the time. There are only two road entrances into the nuclear weapons store.
See where this is going...

Ah, you may say, Move them by sea then. That they have never been moved by sea in the past but instead rely on regular road convoys may be an indication of the difficulty that solution would entail.

As for peaceful protest I don't recall threats of 'long jail time' or charges of 'treason' being effective at the Greenham Common Peace Camp or for that matter at the Faslane Peace Camp.

The position is the other way round, it is the stated intent of the SNP that an independent Scotland would require the removal of RNAD Coulport (or to be precise, its nuclear warhead contents).

Your comment shows you know nothing about the situation. I'd advise you read the article linked below in full.

How do you propose to move a mountain, a deep water port and its associated infrastructre worth £billions? As an indication of the scale of the facilities, the Trident Works Programme at Faslane and Coulport took 13 years and cost around £1.9 billion (at 1994 prices), the second most expensive works project in the UK after the Channel Tunnel.

Even from this cursory examination of Scottish facilities, it is obvious that replicating them in England would be exceptionally expensive. Although some equipment could be removed for transporting it is clear that huge investment has literally gone into the ground, tunnels, roads, jettys and buildings that can’t be moved.

A very optimistic estimate made by RUSI in 2014 that extrapolated historical costs put the relocation figure (using Devonport) around £4Bn. In the much more regulated environment of the 2020s, such a project would surely run into the £10s of billions.


And more critically perhaps, move it to where? There are no viable alternative sites. The MoD has already examined alternative sites and concluded that they all have very serious drawbacks leading to the conclusion
It is hard not to conclude that if an independent Scotland will not allow nuclear weapons to remain on its soil this would probably signal the end of the British nuclear deterrent.
Why relocating Trident away from Scotland is virtually impossible | Save the Royal Navy

Not a lot of jobs involved even if it was completely closed. Just 520 civilian jobs depend on Trident and the associated nuclear weapons store at Coulport.

Fact Check: How many jobs depend on Faslane?

Ministry of Defence reveals just 520 Faslane jobs depend on Trident | Nuclear Information Service

Labour and Tories under fire for inflating Trident job losses

You accuse of other people not thinking things through. We're you biggest trading partner by a country mile and more. You want to make things difficult for us, magnify that and we could bring Scotland to a standstill. Please if you think Scotland has the upper hand you're seriously deluded.
 
LAST MOD WARNING: Moving forward, any post involving Scotland will be moved to the correct thread. And this toxic bickering needs to stop now.
 
And you live in Texas :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
 

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