tweeeep

There are different ways of doing PR, and the ones we would likely adopt wouldn't just be taking percentages. Much more likely to use Single Transferable vote. I'm not quite sure exactly how it works, but its would make things more proportional, not absolutely (it's highly unlikely we'll fully do away with constituencies). Just worth bearing this in mind - a lot of people on my facebook have done "calculations" that don't actually reflect what PR would give us. And also fuck the Tories. Whilst the lib dems aren't particularly popular, they blocked a lot of vile illiberal policies that we will see happening in the next 5 years. We have lost the main voice for liberalism in this country, which is sad, even if they did make some poor choices.

sholto was a babe

Watching the Tories shoot themselves in the face repetitively is getting to be quite enjoyable. Slate Labour for making "unfunded claims", and then make an unfunded claim to spend £8bn on the NHS. They then announce cutting inheritance tax - because if people were unsure if they stood for the rich and privileged, they sure as hell are now! They seem to be panicking, because their campaign is getting highly personal! The right wing papers are also trying their best to smear Labour, but I'm hoping people will see straight through that. Also, Labours manifesto was released today, and it is pretty decent. It's nice to see them swing back towards the left a little, and move on from what New Labour was. I think they've won my vote for this election.

Nah, if you don't agree with any of the parties, read into your local MPs, and see what issues they are fighting for locally, and then balance their local policies with the policies of the party they stand for. I mean, obviously don't vote for a candidate who represents a party that you have a massive objection to, but if you have a really good local candidate who has a good track record of improving the local community then they could be worth voting for. Or, vote for an independent if they seem okay, that definitely sends a better message to parties than simply spoiling your vote. When I vote, it'll be to keep the Tories out of power, but to those who are unsure having a quick look at what the candidates want to do locally is a good idea.

That game made GCSE IT worthwhile.

Hehehe :twisted: I am legitimately unbanned, and have been for a while now. :)

Was browsing through my feed earlier, and saw a profile of someone I recognise from OB. It's pretty weird when this happens. But seriously, their wall is awful. What is up with their profile picture. :lol:

Kendrick Lamar dropped his 'To Pimp a Butterfly' this week, and this is one of the finest albums of this decade. A true work of art; fuses hip hop with other genres such as jazz, and is genuinely insightful. This is a single from it, but this album is phenomenal.

Paxman did a fair job of grilling Cameron, and forced him to tackle some issues such as food banks and zero hour contracts, and this seemed to make him feel uncomfortable. The audience questions weren't too bad though, and they treated him fairly nicely. Cameron continued to use his same bullshit lines of "long term economic plan". Miliband started with audience questions, and got off to a bad start - through little fault of his own. The questions were bullshit, and were often particularly personal (especially when asking him about his brother), and the audience at times were simply attacking him for being socialist. Paxman was also particularly unfair, and spent a lot of time focusing on whether he'd be "tough" enough to be a leader rather than attacking his policy. Not sure Paxman was best placed to chair that debate either, seeing as how he is a self confessed one nation tory who was recently approached by the labour party and asked to run for mayor of london for them. However, Kay Burley really took the piss - she "moderated" the questions with the audience, and was just downright rude to Miliband, interrupting him a hell of a lot more than she did with Cameron. She hid her biases worse than Paxman. That said, Miliband did well, and got in a few punches on Paxman before the end - which is a massive achievement in its own right for any politician. A personal favourite was "you're important Jeremy, but not that important, it's the British public who decide the election result, not you" (or something to that effect). The debate got particularly personal against Miliband, and he really stood up for himself well. Not that Paxman didn't grill Cameron, but it was a lot less personal. Whilst he didn't win the polls after the debate, they were close. Considering he went from an incredibly low popularity rating to 40 something % after that debate, he definitely won it in at least some aspects. also venga your avatar :lol: Yeah, this is true. I don't discuss politics with some of my closest friends who are tory, because I know I'd end up being frustrated as hell with them! I'll happy talk politics with my left leaning friends, and debate the best way to implement legislation, but I do avoid arguing politics with my close right wing friend because (apart from him holding silly political views) he's a genuinely nice guy. Thankfully none of my close friends are UKIP, because that's one debate I genuinely wouldn't put down, what with the whole opposing bigotry, racism, and homophobia being a good thing and all that. That said, a platform like this is a good place to debate politics, as an online platform provides a situation in which you can fully present an argument with a fair level of analysis without someone interrupting you shouting "filthy socialist!".

I was expecting something much more kinky for that title.

Yeah, the TV debates are just stupid. They should be in place so that David Cameron can defend this governments current record, but he's avoiding any form of confrontation with Miliband, simply because Miliband can't lose out from the debates - there's no way he could become any less popular than he is now! I'm interested to see how the 7 way debate will go - it's a good thing that it's happening, but it's likely to be a mess! For those who are interested, there is one tonight between Cameron and Miliband, but it is just a Q&A session, with no actual engagement between them, because David Cameron wouldn't agree to a format in which he would have a proper one-on-one debate. Interesting how he isn't willing to defend his failing austerity measures, failing to cut the deficit by more than half of what they said they would, a much slower recovery than expected, horrifying reforms to the welfare system which have resulted in people losing their lives, raising VAT after promising not to, reorganising the NHS top down and selling off new contracts to companies which tories MPs have shares in, the list goes on. Hell, they've lied more than the lib dems. And Gaz, you're right, fuck the lib dems. They're as good as dead now - they fucked over their core demographic. They should have agreed to support a minority conservative government on a per issue basis, and then block every piece of vile legislation the tories tried to push through, and defend tuition fees to the death. That would have made students love them, and they wouldn't have lost their "third party" status to UKIP. They proved they are fundamentally establishment, and forced those who wanted an anti-establishment vote to look elsewhere - I don't think it's unreasonable to credit them at least partly for the rise of the Greens and UKIP. The only thing I really like them for is for their socially liberal policies, such as drug decriminalisation. I wish more parties held more liberal drug views! Not only is their economic plan fucking awful (and bordlerline illiterate), it's also longterm! Why, if that isn't a reason to vote for them, I don't know what is!

I know you're sort of taking the pish, but it's worth noting that liberalism and left wing are not the same thing. I mean, I am both, but plenty of right wing people also hold liberal social views too. using liberal as an insult is pretty silly when you actually favour economic liberalism (ie freer more deregulated markets). ;) they dont seem to understand that the collaboration of nuclear and sustainable energies would be the most efficient for the UK which really fucks me off. I would personally rather not have no nuclear power but what choice do we have? We wouldn't be able to produce as much energy as efficiently without it - it's pointless being against Nuclear. Exactly. Yeah, this too. I'm sure your dick is ~20 inches too, venga ;)

I guess it depends on your definition of sustainability. We can't continue going on like we are with regards to our economy which heavily relies on fossil fuel consumption, which is where my comment came from. You are right in the fact that our economy is otherwise sustainable, with no thanks to the tories. Also, do you consider New Labour to be center left? I'm pretty sure I'd put them as center right tbh, seeing as they oversaw the mess that was the privatisation of the rail system, deregulation of the financial system, and not properly tackling tax loopholes. I'm really not a massive fan of them.

-Wealth inequality doesn't cause competition, it reduces it. When people are unable to easily join or leave a market due to lack of wealth, you have less competition, very simply. -There are people who live in poverty in the UK. Over 900000 people in this country use food banks. Getting people to have access to water and housing is a very basic thing that needs to be done, and I agree that is a reasonable metric on which to judge whether or not we have eliminated poverty or not. These things require government spending, and the tories are cutting welfare for many people who need it. People have committed suicide with mere pounds to their name; people with mental health problems are being failed by the system; many disabled people are being told to work in jobs they can't do. If you want to eliminate poverty, this will require some form of wealth redistribution. -A capitalist society will always have some level of wealth inequality, and I highly doubt anyone will try to challenge you on that point. Hell, most left wingers are fine with a certain level of wealth inequality. The level to which this inequality occurs is what is being debated. However, advocating "top heavy" economies in the sense that we do nothing to challenge a widening wealth gap is bad, as I outlined in my previous post explaining that people with less money spend a higher percentage of their wealth, resulting in more economic activity. Wealth inequality exists on a level that people don't quite realise - I'm not advocating communism, or for completely equal distribution of wealth, but it is bad at the moment, and getting worse:

What, the fact that a quarter of the people who answered your poll are morons? That's a completely ridiculous view to hold, because it completely neglects to recognize the main driver behind government spending: fiscal multiplication. This is basically a term that is used to describe the returns on government funding; for example, a fiscal multiplier of 8 would mean that for every £1 the government spends on something that £8 will be returned to the economy. Different forms of government spending have different fiscal multipliers, with some being vastly more beneficial than others. The Tories basically assumed that all government spending had a fiscal multiplier of about 0.5, and cut everything across the board with little regard to the effects that it would have in the long run. If you do believe that austerity is the answer (which I don't), then you'd probably be best off voting for the lib dems, because their policy Also, governments borrowing money really isn't an issue, and if you are worried about government debt voting conservative is a terrible idea. Two things worth noting about this: 1) Labour acquired debt as the result of a global financial crash for which they had little responsibility for (apart from not regulating the banks properly, for which the tories would have been far worse). Large scale borrowing happened then for two reasons; to bail out the banks (something I'm not convinced is a good idea, but the tories would have done this too), and to support those who were hardest hit by the recession. The first would have happened under either labour or conservative for sure. I'm not too sure about the latter, but that spending was necessary, because allowing the poorest in society to fall through the gaps due to the irresponsible behaviour of the top percent of the top percent just simply isn't okay. 2) The tories want to cut how much we are borrowing, apparently, and in order to do this they cut spending. That's the narrative they try to push, but in reality they are also pushing tax cuts. If you want to reduce the deficit, phasing tax rises along side spending cuts is the method to do it, not giving tax breaks to the richest. The only real hike in tax has been in the form of VAT, a regressive form of tax that hits the poorest the hardest. It becomes very apparent from this that cutting the deficit isn't the issue that the tories are really trying to deal with, but rather an ideological attack on the state. Tories only win on the metric that government spending is inherently bad - and there is very little common sense that actually backs up this metric. Government spending has fiscal multiplier effects that ripple throughout the economy and, if governments focus their spending on fiscally beneficial things, can prove very beneficial. I actually believe that after a recession, spending more money on fiscally beneficial things is the best way to do things. This isn't much of a problem, seeing as how government loans are also not problematic - they are low interest, and not the same as private loans. So yeah, even if you think austerity is the answer (it isn't), then the liberal democrats are probably a better vote, since all the tories stand for are tax cuts for the rich (which makes sense, because that's where all of their funding comes from). How do you define fascism then? What should a fascist party stand for, if it isn't racist and authoritarian ideals? And that is pretty much what nationalism is, by definition: 'the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination'. I think you're thinking of patriotism, not nationalism. .That's a load of bollocks. Labour didn't regulate the banks very well, but here's a quote from George Osbourne before the financial crash: "Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy-making….With its vision of a highly- educated, innovative, open, dynamic, low-tax economy and relentless focus on the long-term drivers of prosperity, Ireland’s economic miracle has shown that it has the answers to the challenges of the new global economy.” Just remember that Ireland ended up as an absolute fucking mess, and they required bailing out. No, also wrong. The tories support risk taking of the financial sector through deregulation (and quantitative easing to an extent), which is arguably a bad thing because private entities act only in their own interests. Government spending isn't "risky" behaviour, banks lending out loans to people the shouldn't under a deregulated market is "risky" (remember that financial crisis in 2008?). lol This is the most ill formed view points I have ever read. Actually supporting wealth inequality is a terrible idea. Whilst I don't have the time to explain why people living in poverty whilst the rich get richer is bad, I will alert you to something called the "marginal propensity to consume". This is an idea used by economists that basically says that the poorer spend a larger proportion of their wealth than the rich, who hoard a large proportion of their wealth, meaning that economies will be much more active when high levels of wealth inequality are not present.