Paz on 13/11/2006 at 01:25
You've got to offset it with the knowledge that I'm an auto-Tory-attacker ;)
Anyway, our political map is certainly rather shit at the moment.
And the BeeEnPee finding a proper niche amongst this awful malaise remains a semi-realistic concern.
TheGreatGodPan on 13/11/2006 at 01:47
Quote Posted by aguywhoplaysthief
I sure hope it's a utopia because otherwise I'll have nowhere safe to escape to when we get national ID cards and socialized medicine.
A nice ordered list of countries (
http://freetheworld.com/) here. The U.S ties with NZ and Switzerland for third place, the U.K ties with Ireland for the next spot, sixth, with a difference in score of 0.1.
Have the BNP or UKIP actually taken any seats? Not having a record would seem to be their prime source of respectability.
SD on 13/11/2006 at 02:14
BNP and UKIP are irrelevancies. For all its moaning and whinging about multi-culturalism and Europeans destroying the country, the British public hasn't seen fit to back parties that push a fascist or xenophobe agenda at the ballot box in any great numbers (unless you count the Tories and Labour, ho ho).
I don't trust Cameron as far as I could throw him; he was largely responsible for authoring the last Tory manifesto, which was horribly right-wing, so I find his Damascene conversion to liberal conservatism somewhat hard to believe.
That said, I think I could at least rely on him to retain most of the centuries-old civil liberties that the Labour government is so desperately trying to wipe out, which is why I'd favour him over Labour. More than anything, I don't want to live in some Orwellian nightmare.
If the price for personal freedom is the erosion of public services and the oppression of the underclass that has been a feature of most Tory governments, I can live with that - that can be fixed later. The damage Labour is doing to the country, whether it is abolishing the right to trial by jury, tagging us all wherever we go, destroying habeas corpus, or whatever - that damage is irreparable.
Labour is the biggest threat to freedom this country has faced since World War II.
Myoldnamebroke on 13/11/2006 at 07:35
New Labour - it's what Hitler would have wanted
d0om on 13/11/2006 at 09:03
I don't see why we can't change to a system where you can vote for as many candidates as you want to. That way the libdems wouldn't be so heavily disadvantaged.
So a Lab/Lib pair of votes puts both candidates +1, whichever candidate has the most votes at the end wins.
Nice and simple.
Cause you can vote for all the parties if you want to abstain in a more interesting manor, much like in parliament.
Paz on 13/11/2006 at 13:26
The only authority who could change the voting system would be either a Labour or Tory government, and they'd only change it on the basis of reform leading to a more likely return of another Labour/Tory government (can't blame them for that, really).
Obviously that wouldn't be an improvement. We'll have to wait for a mythical party of altruism to get in before anyone alters our method.
I'd better stop typing now though, because the stormtroopers are watching my every word and I have to kill another five Jews to meet my quota today. Oh Tony, why do you make me do it? :(
VVVVV I was speaking with regard to the UK rather than making some kind of generalised political statement - our own mistakes are depressing enough without thinking about the ones Australia makes as well. The Tories had a 13 year stretch ('51-'64) and an 18 year stretch ('79-'97) but I think in the modern era where ideology is essentially dead, it would take major reinvention for a party to cling on for anything beyond four general elections. Of course "the opposition being utterly terrible" could always come into play; nothing is a concrete rule.
Convict on 13/11/2006 at 13:37
Quote Posted by Paz
I think once you've hung on to power for over a decade, you're dead in the water whatever you try.
Australia's equivalent of the conservative party (Liberal party) has been in power for >10 years and is still going fairly well in the polls (I thought, I might be wrong). This is after some laws that unions were quite unhappy about too (that's their liberal economics side coming out).
aguywhoplaysthief on 13/11/2006 at 17:17
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
the oppression of the underclass
Good times.
Paz on 13/11/2006 at 17:29
Great tunes.
