-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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posted
I’m finding the whole thing a bit bleak really, and trying to avoid any tv coverage as their smarmy faces make me
That is not to say I wont be voting though, oh no. The memory of actually having to leave a newsagents because I started crying when I saw all the headlines saying 4 MORE YEARS!!111!! after the US election is too fresh for me to not vote, and have that on my conscience.
But I don’t have any righteous fervour.
On a related note checkout today’s Kilroy-mouth-spaff in The Metro. I paraphrase….
The only thing worse than them coming over here, is them coming over here and TAKING OUR JOBS! Those sneaky thieving foreigners undercut our good honest workers by living TEN TO A ROOM, just so they can rip us off! The fucks!
posted
He didn't use that method on Howard last week though. It made for great television. Paticularly when he made Howard ball up his fists and shake with anger, shouting about how he (Howard) would be friends with Bush.
-------------------- If Chuck Norris is late, time better slow the fuck down Posts: 2741
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posted
oh yes, I remember putting a circle round the Paxman interviews in the TV guide last week. Didn't remember to actually watch em though.
I got my postal vote and everything. However, it will be for my old Earlsfield address, so I don't know anything about who I shall be voting for. Not that it really makes much difference:
Conservative: don't think so Labour: no ID cards, thanks Lib Dems: I suppose so *weary sigh*
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posted
Read again, Mikee, I have a postal vote. Requires even less effort than going to a polling station. Assuming they send it me in time, of course.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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posted
I dare say I'll drag myself to the polling booth, but voting has never felt more like a choice between a rock and a hard place, or the lesser of a number of evils. And is it me, or are they even more lying and oleaginous than ever before? Bloody Blair with his hands carefully stage managed in his pocket, and his bloody cup of everyman tea. After the war in Iraq I swore I wouldn't vote Labour, but what's the alternative? In an ideal world, where we all vote how we feel, not tactically, we could vote LibDem and not inadvertently let the Tories in by the back passage,
Maybe, as I suspect South Hackney is about the safest imaginable Labour seat, I can vote Green or something as a protest. That'll show 'em.
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
posted
I'm in the worlds safest Labour seat. You don't get much safer than a 22,000 majority in an area full of ex-miners and ex-mines. Seriously, you can't move round out way without falling down a pit shaft. Also, I have a legalise cannabis party candidate!! How exciting is that?
Has anyone got an exciting MP? Like an important one? I've always wanted to be able vote for/against a cabinet member or something.
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posted
I'm going to vote Liberal Democrat. Labour will barely get their deposit back in Newbury... so a vote for anything other than Lib Dem is really a vote for the Conservatives
Also David Rendel MP has backed plans to build a "cinema" in the town. Apparently that's like a giant television in a room, on which you can see moving images and hear the sounds of famous people, in exchange for around £6.00. Wonders will never cease!
posted
Anyone not already completely disgusted with the election campaign should check out Peter Oborne's documentary on Channel 4 tonight ('Election Unspun', 8pm). He may write for right-wing rags like The Spectator and The Evening Standard but his piece on the US election last year was by far the best - and actually left him more outraged by the Bush/Rove campaign than with the hapless Kerry's efforts.
Round us, snowy haired Lib Dem Phil Willis holds sway - having ejected the Tories in 1997. Labour, so the Lib Dem pamphlets helpfully remind us, 'can't win' in Harrogate - so I reckon I could justify voting L-D on the basis of not wanting to split the vote and allow the Conservatives back in (the candidate in 1997 was Norman Lamont, ffs).
On the other hand I want to somehow register my support for at least 51% of what Blair's done since he got into power - and from which most people in this country have benefited... even if only in the form of indirect, 'soft' positives (stable economic climate, widespread prosperity, reductions in child poverty). Bear it is, then - and afterwards... Brown?
Also: this election may be 'boring' or 'predictable' or 'meaningless', but these are complaints that tend only to be made by people with full little tummies, a nice green lawn and a Bluetooth widget hanging out of their ear. When you consider the archetypal 'interesting', 'unpredictable' and 'life-or-death' election to be the sort taking place in fucking Haiti maybe we should just appreciate that mellow, edgeless British vibe and fulfil the pretty minimal duty required to keep the job going.
quote:Originally posted by ben: On the other hand I want to somehow register my support for at least 51% of what Blair's done since he got into power - and from which most people in this country have benefited... even if only in the form of indirect, 'soft' positives (stable economic climate, widespread prosperity, reductions in child poverty).
Is there actually widespread prosperity, or just widespread borrowing on credit? A lot of people I know round these parts (and down London) have the big tellies and Playstations and the latest footie kit etc, but there's no way they're buying that stuff through well-paid jobs and a low cost of living. They get it by buying from catalogues, or remortgaging the flat so that the £45,000 mortgage they started with in 1992 is now for £130,000 instead, or they juggle credit cards, or do childminding on the black or run dodgy car boot stalls.
We've always been tight with our cash, take the cheapest of holidays (six of us going for a week in France for £500 next half term), don't buy posh clothes or gadgets and don't go out socialising and that, but even taking care like that we've still got a big car loan.
OK, we live in a notoriously showy area where the bling factor is all important, but I'm fairly sure it's not just happening round here.
Does the fact that people qualify to borrow huge amounts of cash on the never never signify a prosperous nation?
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posted
i ain't registered. but i'm with polly toynbee. there's no point protesting the war and the current iraq situation, whoever was in charge would have gone in with the usa thanks to our "special relationship". labour seem to be doing something: see school meals, tax credits etc.
mrsa is not a good campaign policy. its not about cleaning up the dirt its about making sure that people who are carriers don't do cleaning. the dutchers do it that way.
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: Is there actually widespread prosperity, or just widespread borrowing on credit?
Well it's going to be a bit of both, really. Clearly there's been a credit boom in the past five years or so, but that couldn't have happened if people weren't already feeling confident about their own finances and the UK economy in general.
It's easy to caricature the deranged spending spree that seems to have been ongoing since the millennium, but more people are in employment and many types of goods have genuinely got cheaper (food, clothing, air travel, electrical/electronic gear). I'm always a little suspicious of the media jeremiads about 'irresponsible spending' as it seems always to be something that someone else is doing (usually a different social class from the writer's own).
In general, though, there's pretty much full employment, the proportion one has to spend on essentials (food etc) continues to fall and interest rates are historically very low. Unscientific I know, but not all those purchases of dvds, ipods, Blueteeth, red wine, oyster mushrooms, city breaks and lifestyle magazines are the first faltering steps on the twisty road to the midnight eviction, the bull-necked baliff, the shivering overnighters with the kids in the car.
quote:Originally posted by doc d: there's no point protesting the war and the current iraq situation, whoever was in charge would have gone in with the usa thanks to our "special relationship".
Would they do it again though, if they knew that they would be voted straight out of power at the first opportunity?
That said, it's quite amazing that such emotive issues as the Iraq invasion, compulsory ID cards, grossly unbalanced council tax charges etc seem to actually be of so little importance to the general public that Labour and the Tories (with almost identical policies) still hold some 70% of the vote between them, according to opinion polls.
This sort of thing always reminds me that there is a massive population in this country and that I only ever actually get to communicate with a tiny weeny fraction of them. This can lead one into a false sense of security, believing that there are lots of rational and sane people around, when in fact there are very few.
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This is the Labourer what is in charge where I will be voting. Sinister Maths teacher or what?
Oooh, I've just discovered I could vote for:
Mills, Andrew (UKIP) Wiess, George (vote yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket) Wilson, Alistair (Tiger's Eye- the party for kids)
Edit: just seen from the stats that a vote for the LDs in Wimbledon looks to be pretty much "wasted".
I agree with ben up to a point; Britain is generally comfortably well off under Labour, and they have introduced stuff like the minimum wage and free entry in lots of London's flagship museums. It's the ID cards issue though. It's the one thing that would really make me say, "I don't want to live here anymore"- not in a bratty-teenage-threatening-to-run-away-from-home-way, but in the despairing manner of someone whose country is not what they thought it was. I can't bring myself to vote for anyone who thinks ID cards have a future in this country.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: Would they do it again though, if they knew that they would be voted straight out of power at the first opportunity?
<insert global politics rant about how this is all stabilizing the new empire of which we're part, here>
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quote:Originally posted by ben: It's easy to caricature the deranged spending spree that seems to have been ongoing since the millennium, but more people are in employment and many types of goods have genuinely got cheaper (food, clothing, air travel, electrical/electronic gear). I'm always a little suspicious of the media jeremiads about 'irresponsible spending' as it seems always to be something that someone else is doing (usually a different social class from the writer's own).
I don't have facts to quote, just observations of people I know. It just seems to me that if people borrow to the max at a time when interest rates are historically low then they really are going to be stuffed if - *cough* - when the rates change. I know that I will be, although I have plans to duck out for a bit in the next couple of years, God willing.
To suggest that people are confident and sensible and fully aware of their own financial limitations is head in sand time. Confident, maybe, but people are confident that they can drive big cars forever more, or that they can retire at 65 and live a happy life of luxury till they die. That's not being sensible or aware of financial limitations, that's living in blind hope.
As I say, I don't really know the first thing about everyone else, but just taking my own situation, with just the one car loan and a mortgage, I know I will be really stuck if interest rates start rising to anything like the levels we were once used to.
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posted
VP's chap clearly chose the backdrop to match his eyes, but actually looks like his head is hollow and someone just drilled a couple of holes all the way through.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: but that couldn't have happened if people weren't already feeling confident about their own finances and the UK economy in general.
Dang - need something to nail this fucker. Let me see your draft word by return. thks. - AC
quote:Originally posted by dang65: To suggest that people are confident of their own financial limitations is head in sand time.
Dang - Not yet strong enough. Need suggestion of ridiculousness of B's position if we are going to fuck him properly. Maybe insert unfounded stuff about plebs being sensible or aware? W/evs. Draft still needs work. - AC
quote:Originally posted by dang65: To suggest that people are confident and sensible and fully aware of their own financial limitations is head in sand time.
Dang - Excellent; will make a media professional of you yet. - AC
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