General Election Pre-Thread (5 of 6)

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Wainy316 said:

What's making you lean that way?

Kicked in the head by a horse

[Genie]

34 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

Aside from scrapping the NHS and going with an insurance based health system, leaving the ECHR, slashing spending on already decimated public services and climate change denial, which I assume all come under extreme, what is attracting you to Reform that means you can overlook those extremes and lean towards voting for them?

Scrapping the TV licence fee will be popular with many I suspect.

[bickster]

polling of a different kind

 

[Wainy316]

How is 'Corbyn would have been better than Boris' a gaffe? 

The people that were conned by and voted for that prick in 2019 are as much to blame for the state of the country as anything.

[Genie]

Boris will 100% be part of a conversation of “worst prime ministers in the history of the UK”. I’d laugh my head off if I spoke directly someone trying to argue Corbyn would have been worse.

[The Fun Factory]

The Reform 'contract ' is an ill-assorted hodge podge of ideas that do not add up. But if the split the tory vote I am all for them.

[Genie]

1 minute ago, The Fun Factory said:

The Reform 'contract ' is an ill-assorted hodge podge of ideas that do not add up. But if the split the tory vote I am all for them.

It’ll be quite funny if they get about 20% of the vote and 0 seats. 

[Wainy316]

15 minutes ago, Genie said:

Boris will 100% be part of a conversation of “worst prime ministers in the history of the UK”. I’d laugh my head off if I spoke directly someone trying to argue Corbyn would have been worse.

Plenty would but it would probably be more about defending their vote than actual belief.

[bickster]

The responses are as you'd predict. The amount of (especially Tory) candidates that don't understand or realise the responses they'll get to SM posts is quite shocking really

 

[The Fun Factory]

24 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’ll be quite funny if they get about 20% of the vote and 0 seats. 

It could be quite possible.

It would also be funny if the tories end up with a disproportionate amount low number of  seats to their vote, and then they become firm advocates of voting reform. The irony machinery would be in overdrive.

Edited June 24 by The Fun Factory

[bickster]

I've said some disarranging things about Tory comms in this election, I may even have suggested more than once that children are running the campaign. I'm actually convinced now though.

We're down to junior school level now

 

[Davkaus]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

I mean this is exactly my point. Because these are impossible to pay for. And their only explanation of how they would do it is "eliminating government waste". Which even if it was true, wouldn't raise anywhere near the amount required.

 

It's impossible to pay for employers paying more tax?

Tbh, I am not interested in getting too into the weeds of the affordability of the overall Reform manifesto, because they're a bunch of clearings in the woods, and one of their funding mechanisms is "**** the planet, let's bring back coal" (no seriously), but I'm not convinced that my favourite of their policies of sacking off tuition fees for doctors and nurses is some pie in the sky unaffordable idea, we don't do it because of political decisions and because we think we can get away with not doing it, not because we couldn't possibly afford to.

Scrapping nurses tuition fees overnight (which isn't their actual policy, its linked to NHS employment) would cost us under 300 million a year in England, assuming it leads to 0 savings. It's an absolute nonsense that we couldn't pay for that if we actually wanted to, and it's nothing personal, but I'm increasingly **** off with how often people act like it's unreasonable to aspire to improve the country because it might cost something and the credit card is maxed out. 

There are obviously practical considerations (we don't want the whole bloody country studying to go into nursing because it's free), but we have a massive staffing crisis in the NHS, and when you look at the numbers and where we spend billions, under 300million a year seems like a rounding error on the UK national budget. Obviously that's just nurses and just in England, but it demonstrates that it's far from "impossible". A billion here and there to get an influx of trainees to start plugging the gaps seems very sensible to me.

It's not something I think should necessarily be a permanent policy, but it's a really good and relatively affordable lever the government could be using to target struggling public sector roles - teachers ought to be on the list too.

Edited June 24 by Davkaus

[bickster]

Talking of own goals...

It's becoming a bit of a thing, even Thangam Debbonaire is getting in on it

 

[Jenko#4]

Right, stupid question time. Apologies if this has been covered already, but I haven’t been able to find a sensible answer online to a hypothetical scenario that could play out.

(removing the other parties for simplicity) what if-

Labour get 45% of the seats

Reform get 30% of the seats

Tories the remaining 25%
 

Could Farage go to the Tories, say ‘make me your leader’ and then essentially ‘manage’ a majority government despite not being the majority party? 

[ml1dch]

4 minutes ago, Jenko#4 said:

Right, stupid question time. Apologies if this has been covered already, but I haven’t been able to find a sensible answer online to a hypothetical scenario that could play out.

(removing the other parties for simplicity) what if-

Labour get 45% of the seats

Reform get 30% of the seats

Tories the remaining 25%
 

Could Farage go to the Tories, say ‘make me your leader’ and then essentially ‘manage’ a majority government despite not being the majority party? 

Hypothetically. He could be Prime Minister in a Reform / Tory coalition, his party being the junior partner wouldn't mean he couldn't be PM. There are loads of things would stop it happening (not least there are Tory MPs that would cross the floor to another party or sit as independents in such a scenario).

But while it's interesting as a hypothetical, the biggest problem with the above is that Reform won't get 3% of the seats, let alone 30% of the seats. 

Edited June 24 by ml1dch

[ml1dch]

More MPR fun, and look at that lovely, lovely tactical voting:

 

 

[Stevo985]

15 minutes ago, Jenko#4 said:

Right, stupid question time. Apologies if this has been covered already, but I haven’t been able to find a sensible answer online to a hypothetical scenario that could play out.

(removing the other parties for simplicity) what if-

Labour get 45% of the seats

Reform get 30% of the seats

Tories the remaining 25%
 

Could Farage go to the Tories, say ‘make me your leader’ and then essentially ‘manage’ a majority government despite not being the majority party? 

Reform have about as much chance of getting 30% of the seats as I have of getting the England job once Southgate is sacked

[Wainy316]

As a one time Labour member and thus on their mailing list, I'm getting absolutely inundated with emails begging for money.

[MCU]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

I mean this is exactly my point. Because these are impossible to pay for. And their only explanation of how they would do it is "eliminating government waste". Which even if it was true, wouldn't raise anywhere near the amount required.

Hence the ones that sound good are impossible to deliver.

 

And the reason it's so poorly thought out is they do not give a single shit about those policies. Not one shit. 

They are saying them because they know people will go "What a bloody good idea! I'll vote for them" and they'll never have to actually deliver them. Which they couldn't do anyway. because they're impossible.

I assume you've done the sums for the other parties and concluded they can pay for everything they promise then?

[Stevo985]

40 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

It's impossible to pay for employers paying more tax?

Tbh, I am not interested in getting too into the weeds of the affordability of the overall Reform manifesto, because they're a bunch of clearings in the woods, and one of their funding mechanisms is "**** the planet, let's bring back coal" (no seriously), but I'm not convinced that my favourite of their policies of sacking off tuition fees for doctors and nurses is some pie in the sky unaffordable idea, we don't do it because of political decisions and because we think we can get away with not doing it, not because we couldn't possibly afford to.

Scrapping nurses tuition fees overnight (which isn't their actual policy, its linked to NHS employment) would cost us under 300 million a year in England, assuming it leads to 0 savings. It's an absolute nonsense that we couldn't pay for that if we actually wanted to, and it's nothing personal, but I'm increasingly **** off with how often people act like it's unreasonable to aspire to improve the country because it might cost something and the credit card is maxed out. 

There are obviously practical considerations (we don't want the whole bloody country studying to go into nursing because it's free), but we have a massive staffing crisis in the NHS, and when you look at the numbers and where we spend billions, under 300million a year seems like a rounding error on the UK national budget. Obviously that's just nurses and just in England, but it demonstrates that it's far from "impossible". A billion here and there to get an influx of trainees to start plugging the gaps seems very sensible to me.

It's not something I think should necessarily be a permanent policy, but it's a really good and relatively affordable lever the government could be using to target struggling public sector roles - teachers ought to be on the list too.

Yeah you can pick and choose some policies and say they make sense and aren't that expensive, but overall their policies would cost an obscene amount that they have no way to pay for. And like I said they don't actually want to do them anyway, they're just deliberately in there so people will do exactly this, point to them and say "that sounds good" and ignore the horribly racist and right wing policies that they actually care about.

 

Ultimately they'll never ever deliver them. We can all invent a load of great sounding policies that we'll never have to deliver so that we can win some votes. And that's what they're doing.

I doubt a guy who openly wants to dismantle the NHS cares much about nurse's tuition fees