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maqroll

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1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

When we have a system that produces a candidate that doesn't know what a Leppo is, perhaps it's not fair to ask the electorate what the best policy might be.

Look at how many people have been outraged by gay judges dabbling in politics and then tell me they understood what they were voting on.

To be clear, the same goes for both sides. Very few people have the tools to fully understand and research a poorly phrased question where lies and stupid claims were the fodder for the masses.

It was a con. It was a con, whoever won. Nothing to do with sore remainers and dictators.

What's a Leppo?

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is this the same villatalk that was always against career poiticians now seemingly saying we need career politicians to make informed decisions for us ?

 

 

Edited by tonyh29
Deleted loads as it's EU stuff rather then US hadn't realised the thread title
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7 minutes ago, V01 said:

What's a Leppo?

One of the candidates (Johnson pictured above) was asked what he would do about Aleppo in an interview. He asked what a Leppo is.

It wasn't sprung on him from a crowd, it was a pre arranged TV interview you would presume he did some prep for.

He was never going to win the election. It was a brainfart. But it was good short hand for a point about voting on things you don't understand.

The point (for me) is that we need to resist the career politicians and the snake oil salesmen.

What we need is more and more education. Teach people how to be critical. How to analyse. I'm not overly bothered if you're a good person or a tory, as long as you gave it some thought and have some sort of logic behind your views. Not just a lazy newspaper headline of a thought process.

Education. A meaningful life. An equal chance. It's going to take a while.

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6 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

One of the candidates (Johnson pictured above) was asked what he would do about Aleppo in an interview. He asked what a Leppo is.

It wasn't sprung on him from a crowd, it was a pre arranged TV interview you would presume he did some prep for.

He was never going to win the election. It was a brainfart. But it was good short hand for a point about voting on things you don't understand.

The point (for me) is that we need to resist the career politicians and the snake oil salesmen.

What we need is more and more education. Teach people how to be critical. How to analyse. I'm not overly bothered if you're a good person or a tory, as long as you gave it some thought and have some sort of logic behind your views. Not just a lazy newspaper headline of a thought process.

Education. A meaningful life. An equal chance. It's going to take a while.

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2 hours ago, LondonLax said:

The idea of a representative democracy is that we elect people whose full time job it is is to study and debate issues then come to a decision on our behalf. 

With direct democracy every voter has to be across every issue before making a decision.

People don't have time to become as informed on issues as a person whose full time job is to do just that. In addition we have the very unreliable internet to get a lot of our information from. 

Direct democracy is a bad way to try to run a country. 

This. This. This. A million times this. 

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10 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:

Problem is we are also in the social media age too, where I suspect instead of seeking information, a certain number of impressionable people can get bombarded by a certain view that their peers share.

Yep. This election cycle really shed light on the social media echo chamber effect. 

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8 hours ago, maqroll said:

I'm close to certain that he didn't know who he was until he met him

... okay I'll bite. Farage was invited by Trump to speak at one of his rallies in Mississippi to tell the Brexit story. Safe to say he knew who he was before then.

 

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On the referendum point of course it's correct to say we live in a representative democracy, but I believe there is still a place for referenda on the very big issues.

Did anyone suggest the Scots or the Welsh were too stupid to vote on devolution?  Were the general public too stupid to vote on the structure of the actual voting system itself, or the Scottish people unqualified to vote in a referendum on their independence - a far more consequential vote for the U.K. than Brexit? 

Maybe the public shouldn't have been allowed a vote on whether to actually join the Common Market in the first place when even less unbiased information was available? 

Maybe posters on here were lining up and saying exactly that over the last decade, but if they were I must have missed all of them.

..If they weren't, and this denunciation of direct democracy is linked only to the referendum that gave a result most of them didn't like, it's hard not to suggest sour grapes may be acting as a motivation.

Also many people on here know or have met politicians, or if not then watch them on the news, Question Time etc. Most of them are no better informed or qualified to make the biggest decisions than many of the people on this thread. Yes we need them to take care of the vast majority of day to day issues, that's what they are paid for.

However when they are so misaligned with public opinion on a very major issue then a referendum provides a course correction mechanism that otherwise wouldn't exist. 

People talk about wanting change and their frustration with party politics. Without the potential for popular referenda the cosy consensus of Westminster politics would be even worse and virtually unchallengeable. 

In a referendum the people aren't worrying about Party Whips or their donors and special interest groups, so are likely to come collectively to the better decision. I'd argue we've done exactly that in every referendum held during my lifetime.

Edited by Awol
IPhone spelling
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2 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Yep. This election cycle really shed light on the social media echo chamber effect. 

As did the EU referendum and the last general election, possibly even the last two.

Just like polls, social media is not a meaningful barometer of voter intentions or vote outcomes. 

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44 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

As did the EU referendum and the last general election, possibly even the last two.

Just like polls, social media is not a meaningful barometer of voter intentions or vote outcomes. 

Unfortunately, our actual media would appear to also contain all of the failings attributed to social media.

In a way, I think the reason that neither social media, nor our actual media seems to be much of a barometer on voter intentions is more to do with the public not believing either (or anything) than it does on believing what is reflected back to them, either by social media algorithm or private interest formal media.

In a world where you can't believe anything the papers or the TV tell you, and social media reinforces what you already think you know, then facts become less and less important - once you get to there, you vote for the simplest character - you get Trump.

There's something in the current 'fake news' furore that smacks to me of 'you'll take your news through our filters or not at all'.

 

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1 hour ago, Awol said:

Farage was invited by Trump

Are you sure it was Trump, or Trump's campaign manager? Trump is totally ignorant of world affairs. He thought Brexit was Braveheart Part 2.

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30 minutes ago, maqroll said:

Are you sure it was Trump, or Trump's campaign manager? Trump is totally ignorant of world affairs. He thought Brexit was Braveheart Part 2.

No, I'm not sure. I thought you meant Trump didn't know Farage before they met up in NY this week.

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10 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

When we have a system that produces a candidate that doesn't know what a Leppo is, perhaps it's not fair to ask the electorate what the best policy might be.

Look at how many people have been outraged by gay judges dabbling in politics and then tell me they understood what they were voting on.

To be clear, the same goes for both sides. Very few people have the tools to fully understand and research a poorly phrased question where lies and stupid claims were the fodder for the masses.

It was a con. It was a con, whoever won. Nothing to do with sore remainers and dictators.

The quote was "the people need to be protected from themselves" That is very dangerous ground. 

 

As for the candidates that have been produced - The ones to date have not been much better.

 

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