UK Election Poll

[Wavid]

So, we are surely looking at an election in the UK in May/June next year, what with Gordon Brown (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4064325.stm) (note for overseas bods: the government's bean-counter) getting out all sorts of things to cheer up the electorate. Hurrah!

So, lets get in there first and do our own pre-election poll to find out who will win the election. This will be the most accurate poll, because not only does it include a vast cross section of society, but it also includes voters from the US, Canada, Poland and a few other places besides. So, if you aren't a UK voter, just choose who you would vote for if you were. This will make the poll more accurate.

Roughly, the Tories are right-wing, Labour sort of in the middle, and the Lib Dems are kind of left-ish. UKIP are rabidly right-wing and rather mad.

By the way, this is a genuinely anonymous poll - I can't find out who voted for who. Honest. I tried to find out who voted for Janet Street-Porter in the IaC...GmooH! poll but couldn't. So vote with impunity!

[RC]

How do I vote for that Galloway feller?

[NottyImp]

I assume you mean "Gorgeous" George Galloway?

He's Labour. Or was - did they kick him out?

In answer to my own question - yes, they did.

[Wavid]

yes, you're right. He made his own party, ludicrously called 'Respect - The Unity Coalition.'

[NottyImp]

Well, daft or otherwise, he appears to have a Canadian fan.

[RC]

Why are we laughing at him?

[Wavid]

He is just a little oafish, and could possibly be the dictionary definition of 'champagne socialist'.

[NottyImp]

It is also alleged that he may have been rather more friendly with Saddam Hussein than is usually deemed appropriate. I believe he is involved in a court case about this just now, so I'll tread carefully.

[Wavid]

Watch the news, Notty!

It finished yesterday, and he won £150k damages. So can I point out now that Mr galloway had no links, financial or otherwise with Saddam Hussein or the Ba'ath Party.

Thanks. :shock:

[NottyImp]

Jolly good. Vote for George!

[John Self]

He is also legendarily litigious so careful what you say. However I think we can agree that he made a fool of himself by supporting Saddam in the 1990s and making that visit to Iraq where he was shown saying "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He said (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4016803.stm)during the recent libel case that this was taken out of context, though his notion that he was actually referring to the Iraqi people and not Saddam personally is undermined by the fact that the sentence was preceded with the word "Sir."

He will actually be fighting the general election under the Respect banner having been kicked out of the Labour party. He is always very well turned out though.

[RC]

Re 'champagne socialist': I got my grounding in Marxist ideas from a man who owned every kitchen gadget that had then been invented, and dressed very well. He was nevertheless a man entirely committed to the cause of social justice and on a personal level quick to help when help was needed.
Springsteen (Bruce) was always trailed by similar charges. Boy from the 'burbs, what does he know?
There is a wall between the poor and the not-poor. There's no chance of brotherhood between a man who is excluded from easy street and one who hangs on to what he's got. But realistically it would serve no purpose for people like Galloway or my old professor to give away what they have. Better a 'champagne socialist' than no socialist at all.
Going by what I've read, Galloway's delivery is passionate. My guess is you find that distasteful. I like it.

[Wavid]

Nah. I just think he's a bit of a twat.

[amarie]

It's hypocritical though. Some of these so-called socialists bang on and on about elitism in education, among many other things, and then what do they do? Oh, yes, send their children to private schools. Frankly, I'd rather be without that type of 'socialism'.

[RC]

One lives in the present while standing up for how things ought to be. Hypothetically speaking, IF private school were the only way to get your kids an education worth anything, that's where you'd have to send them (if you had the means).

[Wavid]

See this (http://www.palimpsest.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=632) for a pretty thorough raking of the Public School issue.

amarie's point was not, I believe just about public schools. For schools, read flash cars, big houses, posh suits etc etc. It does gall rather when people spout off about the starving in Iraq when they themselves are wearing a suit the value of which would feed a whole street in Baghdad for a month.

George Galloway speaks passionately about issues he doesn't have to experience himself. Fair enough, the Telegraph went too far when they said he had committed treason, but Galloway is man with more than his fair share of skeletons in his closet. I believe him to be a politician who acts purely out of self-interest. He has never been taken seriously in British politics, and now he is out of the mainstream party system, he never will be. Genuinely: if people are looking for a left-wing firebrand to call their own, Galloway is not the man they are looking for.

[amarie]

Hypothetically speaking, IF private school were the only way to get your kids an education worth anything, that's where you'd have to send them (if you had the means).

"If you had the means". Exactly. A lot of the politicians do have the means, but a huge amount of the general public don't. So we have to send our children to shitty schools. Oh, sorry, those wonderful comps that give just as good an education as the public schools.

[amarie]

Thanks Wavid. You're right, it's not just about public schools, it's about all the hypocrisy that gets flaunted in our faces. They're telling us to do one thing while doing the exact opposite themselves.

And yes, Galloway is a twat.

[RC]

Sorry Wavid, I don't get it. If somebody's got a good income (which I don't, I eat beans) how is it worse when he speaks out against the war in Iraq? And are you saying a person would have to impoverish himself before he can honestly voice an opinion against social inequality?

[Wavid]

We're not talking about being wealthy, we are talking about the ostentacious displaying of the trappings of wealth. That's what is distasteful.

[RC]

Oh, you prefer the closetted indecently wealthy. :D

[Wavid]

Yes please, we're British, after all. :wink:

[RC]

Allright then, where do I find a Brit left-wing firebrand to call my own?

[NottyImp]

Me? :lol:

[RC]

Wavid, would you write in NottyImp on the ballot please?

[Wavid]

Only if he tells us what his party is called!

[NottyImp]

Lol - I'm sorry, but I must decline the nomination. I'm not actually a fan of representative democracy. But how about this chap:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2055263.stm

Probably the last unreconstructed leftie in the British Parliament.

[wshaw]

Nah. I just think he's a bit of a twat.

I'm afraid that's the truth of it, R.C. He is a self-serving arse who happens to be on the right side. And I wish the Stop The War movement hadn't used him as a cheerleader.

Dennis Skinner, on the other hand, is a genius.

[RC]

Dennis Skinner. Yes, I like him already. But I can't possibly vote for any party which is headed by that !@#$%^&* Blair. Ever. Under any circumstances.

[bakunin_the_cat]

I do think that if politicians had to send their kids to 'bog-standard' comps and travel where feasible on public transport, there'd be much more of an incentive for them to improve things. If they're all driving round in chauffeured jags and sending their kids to private schools, it's difficult to be convinced that they really care.

A case in point, is Diane Abbott, who used to be my MP in Hackney, who famously sent her kids to private schools outside the area. If she was just a normal citizen you could understand it. The state schools do have many of the problems reflecting the social problems around a pretty deprived area, compounded by a local council that varies between the incompetent and the corrupt, but what kind of message does it give to normal people there? 'Oh. Yeah the schools round here are shit, but hey, my kids will be allright as I can afford to put them through private school. Sorry.'

Not exactly socialism is it?

[RC]

NottyImp - would you be a fan of actually representative democracy?

[RC]

Re the schools - and I meant to get back to amarie on this: Yes there's certainly an argument to be made that when the elite can escape low-standard public services they have much less incentive to support improvements. In Canada now we're having an intense debate about allowing private health care clinics. Many rightly see any room made for private clinics as the thin edge of the wedge, the beginning of a 'two-tier' system and the undermining of our cherished universal health care.

[wshaw]

I genuinely don't know who I'm going to be voting for.

Our MP (http://www.ivorcaplinmp.com) is a loathesome oaf who supported Blair loyally, agitating for the war despite the fact it was clearly unpopular with his constituents. As a result he was promoted, firstly becoming one of the whips who encouraged enough of Labour's spineless backbenchers to get into line over the issue, and then a junior Minister of Defence.

But despite his considerable success, he's just announced he's not standing at the next election. Why? Because he's suddenly figured out that the Iraq issue isn't going to go away and he's going to lose the seat humiliatiingly if he stands. And despite all the's done for Tony, they're clearly not planning to fly him into a safer seat.

Hurrah.

My first general election was the 79 one. So I know what Britain's like when Labour doesn't get in for 18 years. As a result, I resent the somewhat ironic fact that after New Labour bullied their way into power by insisting that the only electable form of socialism was Blairism, they've now gone and bollixed it all up making the Labour Party despised, ridiculed and reviled because of their mad adventurism in the Middle East.

So I'm buggered if I'm voting for my MP's replacement unless they make it clear that they're going to be one of the awkward squad. But they haven't named him/her yet. So I'm waiting.

[/rant]

[NottyImp]

NottyImp - would you be a fan of actually representative democracy?

Well now, that depends. I'd actually like to see much more in the way of direct democracy, and the involvement of pretty ordinary folk like myself in direct decision-making about a whole range of local/regional/national issues.

But realistically we'd have to seriously re-structure society politically, economically (I mean, who has the time and energy to get involved?), and socially for that to happen.

[NottyImp]

A case in point, is Diane Abbott, who used to be my MP in Hackney, who famously sent her kids to private schools outside the area.

Ah yes, the lovely Diane Abbott, who spent many, many years arguing voceiferously at the top of her not inconsiderably loud voice against private education. I saw her interviewed about this when the news first broke, and rarely have I seen someone squirm less attractively in an interview.

[Jerkass]

Springsteen (Bruce) was always trailed by similar charges. Boy from the 'burbs, what does he know?

The only charge I'll lay against Bruce is that he is/was a mediocre-to-ok pop musician who, in his old age, seems to have decided that he's an actual serious musician or something.

I could tell a great story about this, but it probably should go on the famous people thread.

[Wavid]

I, personally, thought The Rising was excellent, though, so maybe he is a serious musician, after all?

[RC]

Springsteen the man I can take or leave, never found him appealing in a personal way. But have always been a fan of the music, and 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' surpassed everything he had done before, which to my mind is saying a lot.

[NottyImp]

I saw him once in the early 80's in Newcastle - very good live, I have to say.

[amner]

Going back to Dennis Skinner (the Backbencher's Backbencher) for a sec. Back in the 80s, my Nana - you want Brit left-wing firebrand? Find a miner's wife from the People's Republic of South Yorkshire RC! - signed up for a Magical Mystery Tour through her local WMC in Mexborough, near Rotherham. The big day came and she and all the other pensioners waddled off to the gates of the Working Mens Club in the centre of Mexico (as we used to call it) and waited for the bus. When it arrived they duly hopped on and off it went.

As is customary with Mystery Tours it wound its way around streets and raods, doubling back, disorientating the admitedly already disorientated, until heading for its final - hopefully exotic - location. At the end of the confusing journey it disembarked at ... Bolsover Working Mens Club! Where, none other than Dennis Skinner gave them all a tubthumping rabble-rousing speach about the iniquities of Thatcher's Britain!

[NottyImp]

Fantastic! Better than a trip to a cafe in Buxton.

[Wavid]

Surely this can't be right, though? The Tories and the Lib Dems level pegging? No votes at all for Labour?!

[NottyImp]

Listening to that worm Mandelson on Today this morning should be enough to turn anyone off from Labour. Sacked twice from the cabinet and still on the European gravy-train with a fat salary to match.

[amner]

I voted 'Other' mate, and will when the big day comes too. Green, if it were today, I reckon.

[HP]

It would appear hell hath no fury like ... well, like a dumped Home Secretary. Already physically blind, it seems his judgement and powers of reason have been rendered sightless, too. If pursuing the object of his erstwhile affections like a rottweiller after a rabbit (albeit a bunny for whom it's hard to find much sympathy), weren't enough, it seems he is now rounding on his colleagues with bared teeth. Tone, Gordy, Bobbin Cook, Chas Clarke and John punch-first-ask-questions-later-Two-Jags-Prescott - all our given short shrift in the Stephen Pollard biography, apparently. Whatever his motives (until the Kimberley Quinn affair, he at least gave the appearance of being a principled soul) - I fear such actions are unlikely to serve him well.

Oh that silly little four letter word - love! How reassuring to know it still makes idiots of clever men (and women).

[Deb Zell]

Listening to that worm Mandelson on Today this morning should be enough to turn anyone off from Labour. Sacked twice from the cabinet and still on the European gravy-train with a fat salary to match.

Who's Mandelson? Sorry I am ignorant but would love to be filled in.

[Wavid]

Here he is:

http://palimpsest.org.uk/images/mandy.jpg

He is generally credited as being one of the architects of 'new' Labour, his main forte being spin and marketing. He used to work for Neil Kinnock in this capacity, coming up with the red rose logo and shaving his moustache off.

Since Labour got into government, he has resigned twice over scandals, one to do with alledgedly lying on a mortgage application form, the other for being a little too closely involved with the rather dodgy Hinduja brothers from India.

He is a metropolitan fop who once earned the ire of his constituency (in the north-east of England) by confusing mushy peas with guacamole in a chippy. The dickhead. However, much of the bile reserved for him by many of the right-wing press in the UK has been based on homophobia, rather than anything else. He was at the centre of a claim in (I think) The Daily Mail that Britain was run by a 'gay mafia' :roll:

He works as a commissioner in the EU, a job where you have to do something really corrupt to get the sack. I give him 18 months.

[John Self]

I have no love for Mandy but in his defence, the mushy peas/guacamole story was invented by Neil Kinnock:

Even Mandy's old boss, Kinnock, attempted to discredit him by repeating at conference the shaggy dog story that Mandelson mistook chip shop mushy peas for guacamole. Labour party members who hated Islington socialists lapped it up, and the story stuck.

(In fact the story is true, but it wasn't Mandelson: the mushy peas mistake was made by an American student who'd volunteered to help in the campaigning during the Knowsley North by-election in 1986.)

Also I think it's widely accepted that he didn't have any dodgy dealings with the Hinduja brothers, but Blair got nervous with the allegations arose and sacked him to nip it in the bud.

Oh and the 'gay mafia' story was in the Sun (and since publicly regretted by the then editor, David Yelland). But other than that, you're spot on Wavid! :wink:

[Wavid]

Ah. Well, the Daily Mail was a reasonable guess, I thought...