UK General Election - 12th December 2019 | Con 365, Lab 203, LD 11, SNP 48, Other 23 - Tory Majority of 80

[CassiusClaymore]

Isn't Gove using lyrics from Stormzy's song 'Shut Up'?

Yeah I reckon.

Getting a bit tired of all this shit at the moment I must say. Every day a new slur, a new turn of whataboutism, a new race to the bottom from all sides. Can't be good for your mental health.

 

[P-Nut]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...JLR3L7rH5C9iOCJBvyXHcvIiV4W4ZpyU_ZNnMBUNlrrUs

First time I've seen the media call themselves out on how much they bash Labour and support the Tories.

 

[altodevil]

Never, as from last July (well, occasionally to visit family, but we don't have anywhere to live there now). We've moved here permanently. I believe we can vote for 15 years.

Pardon my ignorance but that doesn't really seem right to me. I'm sure you have perfectly reasonable views, but as you are now a permanent resident of another country I'm not sure what basis you have for voting in UK elections.

 

[Kentonio]

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Jesus fecking christ..

 

[villain]

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This is part of a long thread by a disabled woman about her personal struggles about trying to apply for disability benefits
The above tweet is the start of external reports she quotes which put into perspective the amount of people's lives who have been ruined as a result of the Tories' stance on disability benefits.

 

[Kentonio]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...JLR3L7rH5C9iOCJBvyXHcvIiV4W4ZpyU_ZNnMBUNlrrUs

First time I've seen the media call themselves out on how much they bash Labour and support the Tories.

Really interesting factoid in there too!

One recent LSE study found that a boycott of The Sun on Merseyside in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster appears to have led to lower levels of Euroscepticism in the region.

 

[Honest John]

Simply getting older doesn't make someone conservative. The reason people tend to get more conservative the older they get is because they require more wealth - property for example but the millennial generation(And younger generations) will be first generation that won't be better off than their parents.

But they will wind up Tories. Because they will accumulate wealth through work and inheritance. And they will have families and responsibility.

I have voted conservative since I was first able - that was 1979, Thatcher.

There is nothing in my family background or my upbringing to suggest that I should have been anything else but a Labour voter. We lived in the poorest area of my city and and my sister and I spent two years in a home. I went to an ordinary secondary school and left to start an engineering apprenticeship. The place I worked in was a virtual closed union shop. I remember being summoned to the AUEW office as a 17 year old and royally bollocked for missing my £1.32 a week union dues. Out of a take home pay of £14.93 I gave my mum £10.00. The panel of union people gave me a lecture on how my pay and tea-breaks had been won through the blood of men and women past.

I remember the decade vividly, the power cuts due to strike action the disruption at the car plants and by 1979 the winter of discontent.

I can't put my finger on why I voted Tory in 1979 but I had an old uncle who was a sea-going engineering and who I loved far more than my own step-father, who was a violent alcoholic, never worked a day and a total cnut. I respected my uncle because he had been 40 years in the merchant navy and a risen to Superintendent Engineer of the whole division. He said to me that there was no wealth without production and there was no welfare without wealth. I think that stuck with me.

I put myself at the Ken Clarke end of conservatism. I do not believe that all Tories are heartless the same as I don't believe that all Labour MP's are Marxist. It is just my preference that I put personal freedoms and aspiration high on the list of what I think a government should be encouraging. I don't believe in a nanny state. Now just because I have said that, it does not mean that social justice and care for the poor do not feature anywhere in my mind. I want everyone to have a fair crack, help when they need it and dignity when they become old and sick.

I thought New Labour would be a disaster but it didn't turn out as bad as I thought. I understand why - as I'm sure the more Left among you will be quick to say. But then I believe that the UK is mostly left or right of centre. That is precisely how Labour won three terms.

I resent and reject the way some go on in this forum. It seems like unrelenting vitriol against all Tories. It does absolutely nothing to change my mind on the way I think or will vote - as I am sure nothing that I say will for some of you.

I am not a great fan of this current set of politicians from any side. I hate the fact that the country voted out. But I concede defeat and believe that we should leave. At least do that first then hopefully change it later. It is the only democratic way.
I am hoping for a clear conservative majority. But strangely my 2nd choice is not a Tory minority propped up, or in coalition with, another party. Or the same situation on the Labour side. My 2nd choice would be a clear Labour majority because much as I believe their policies are regressive, I will judge them on their record and it is easier to do that if they have won an outright victory.

 

[villain]

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[Sweet Square]

This is a key point. The current and future younger generations won’t enjoy the economic prosperity the generations before them took for granted. It’s easy to dignify that tired trope when you’re living in a million pound house you bought in the 80s for 90k with a teachers salary and your healthy pension locked down.

But maybe you could afford a house if you just stopped eating avocado toast ?

A lot of the older generation look at the technology advancement made over the last few decades and think - well of course the younger generation have it better. Without as you said realising they brought a house for under 100k.

Social norms change as well - what was considered liberal in the 60s may end up being conservative now. Someone who was for civil partnerships but against gay marriage in the 60s would've probably been quite liberal compared to their parents; someone with that position now would rightfully be seen as conservative. There's a hint of truth in the fact that a lot of people become more conservative as they age but a lot of people mistake that as being a linear approach wherein someone completely abandons all left-wing ideals they had for a set of right-wing views. And even if young people now do become more conservative, the extent to which a lot of them in the UK aren't conservative at the moment is surely a worry for the Tories, who just aren't offering them anything attractive policy-wise.

Good point.

These social changes have of course come because of the struggles by activists groups for decades but I do also put a lot of credit to, ironically enough Neoliberalism. The reality is Ronald Regan has done more to break up the traditional family than any ''cultural marxists'' could have dreamed of. Globalisation, killing of unions, technology change, mass debt, selling and stopping of social housing, precarious work, individualism(''There is no society'') and million other things I'm missing out, has created generations of people who have no interest at all in voting for the tory party. Its the age old problem for consertivies, they support a constantly revoulutary process - Capitalism.

 

[MrPooni]

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[Sassy Colin]

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Yes, this never happened, btw.

 

[Sassy Colin]

But they will wind up Tories. Because they will accumulate wealth through work and inheritance. And they will have families and responsibility.

I have voted conservative since I was first able - that was 1979, Thatcher.

There is nothing in my family background or my upbringing to suggest that I should have been anything else but a Labour voter. We lived in the poorest area of my city and and my sister and I spent two years in a home. I went to an ordinary secondary school and left to start an engineering apprenticeship. The place I worked in was a virtual closed union shop. I remember being summoned to the AUEW office as a 17 year old and royally bollocked for missing my £1.32 a week union dues. Out of a take home pay of £14.93 I gave my mum £10.00. The panel of union people gave me a lecture on how my pay and tea-breaks had been won through the blood of men and women past.

I remember the decade vividly, the power cuts due to strike action the disruption at the car plants and by 1979 the winter of discontent.

I can't put my finger on why I voted Tory in 1979 but I had an old uncle who was a sea-going engineering and who I loved far more than my own step-father, who was a violent alcoholic, never worked a day and a total cnut. I respected my uncle because he had been 40 years in the merchant navy and a risen to Superintendent Engineer of the whole division. He said to me that there was no wealth without production and there was no welfare without wealth. I think that stuck with me.

I put myself at the Ken Clarke end of conservatism. I do not believe that all Tories are heartless the same as I don't believe that all Labour MP's are Marxist. It is just my preference that I put personal freedoms and aspiration high on the list of what I think a government should be encouraging. I don't believe in a nanny state. Now just because I have said that, it does not mean that social justice and care for the poor do not feature anywhere in my mind. I want everyone to have a fair crack, help when they need it and dignity when they become old and sick.

I thought New Labour would be a disaster but it didn't turn out as bad as I thought. I understand why - as I'm sure the more Left among you will be quick to say. But then I believe that the UK is mostly left or right of centre. That is precisely how Labour won three terms.

I resent and reject the way some go on in this forum. It seems like unrelenting vitriol against all Tories. It does absolutely nothing to change my mind on the way I think or will vote - as I am sure nothing that I say will for some of you.

I am not a great fan of this current set of politicians from any side. I hate the fact that the country voted out. But I concede defeat and believe that we should leave. At least do that first then hopefully change it later. It is the only democratic way.
I am hoping for a clear conservative majority. But strangely my 2nd choice is not a Tory minority propped up, or in coalition with, another party. Or the same situation on the Labour side. My 2nd choice would be a clear Labour majority because much as I believe their policies are regressive, I will judge them on their record and it is easier to do that if they have won an outright victory.

Echos a lot of how I feel about things, so thanks for putting it out there, although the majority of people posting in the this thread simply cannot comprehend this belief set.

Apart from in the most recent Euro election, I have always voted Conservative, often with a very heavy heart.

The whole Brexit issue has completely ruined this country.

 

[sun_tzu]

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.
But Mr Neil asks him if he is ashamed that British Jews fear him getting into Downing Street?

"We will not allow anti-Semitism in any form in our society, because it is poisonous and divisive just as much as Islamophobia and far-right racism is," he says.

Asked four times if he would like to apologise to the British Jewish community, he does not take the opportunity.

I'd vote for Jess Phillips...

 

[Kentonio]

Main story on the BBC mobile website: “Corbyn refuses to apologize over Anti-Semism claims”

Not appearing on the main page at all: Michael Gove putting on a ‘black man voice’ in a tweet.

Quelle surprise..

 

[Mr Pigeon]

It doesn't tend to work like that. Have you not heard the saying?

"If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain".

Life changes you, Having children is another thing that tends to move you to the right.....

Not necessarily. The year I got my honours degree was the year of the market crash. I entered a jobs market where nobody was employing and ended up taking what I could get. I'm 32, still renting, with four kids and now working in a job that I know pays about 20% less than it would had it not been for this government's "1% cap for the public sector" that saw inflation overtake what I made from my second year in the job onwards. We're still behind and I look at my kids and say that I'll never ever vote for a party that will put them through the same shit that my generation walked out of the doors of university into.

I'm doing a second degree and getting my TQFE so I can become a teacher trainer. But if I wasn't in Scotland, and if it wasn't because of Scottish Labour and SNP policies, I would have had to pay for it, just like my first degree.

So, yeah, feck the Tories.

 

[Stacks]

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This is hilarious

 

[Mr Pigeon]

Main story on the BBC mobile website: “Corbyn refuses to apologize over Anti-Semism claims”

Not appearing on the main page at all: Michael Gove putting on a ‘black man voice’ in a tweet.

Quelle surprise..

Do they? I'm not seeing it, just the live blog. Which does say "Jeremy Corbyn launches a race and faith manifesto, declaring anti-Semitism "vile" and "wrong"

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Main story on the BBC mobile website: “Corbyn refuses to apologize over Anti-Semism claims”

Not appearing on the main page at all: Michael Gove putting on a ‘black man voice’ in a tweet.

Quelle surprise..

They were lyrics from a Stormzy song. Corbyn should have just apologised and moved on to what he wants to talk about, instead he refused to and even stuck on the subject after Neil tried to move on. He's tanking on this interview, not quite as badly as Sturgeon last night but he's doing pretty badly.

 

[esmufc07]

Tough interview for Corbyn....

 

[Jacko21]

That interview sure hasn’t helped Corbyn’s cause.

 

[esmufc07]

That interview sure hasn’t helped Corbyn’s cause.

The hypothetical question at the end was daft, as most hypotheticals are. He didn’t answer the anstisemtism stuff well, nor did he do well on how Labour would find the £58bn for the WASPI women.

 

[Ekkie Thump]

Not necessarily. The year I got my honours degree was the year of the market crash. I entered a jobs market where nobody was employing and ended up taking what I could get. I'm 32, still renting, with four kids and now working in a job that I know pays about 20% less than it would had it not been for this government's "1% cap for the public sector" that saw inflation overtake what I made from my second year in the job onwards. We're still behind and I look at my kids and say that I'll never ever vote for a party that will put them through the same shit that my generation walked out of the doors of university into.

I'm doing a second degree and getting my TQFE so I can become a teacher trainer. But if I wasn't in Scotland, and if it wasn't because of Scottish Labour and SNP policies, I would have had to pay for it, just like my first degree.

So, yeah, feck the Tories.

Your just not aspiring hard enough is all.

 

[fergiesarmy1]

“Ill pay for it out of our reserves” - “but we don’t have £60 billion reserves” - “errrrm”

 

[Fluctuation0161]

How's that unbalanced? They're reporting what he said.

Look to the right!

 

[sun_tzu]

Corbyn should have just apologised and moved on to what he wants to talk about,

Yup... Jess got the tone right

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Not that I expect Johnson to do any better if he shows up for an interview

 

[Mr Pigeon]

Your just not aspiring hard enough is all.

Yeah, I've heard that one before funnily enough. Usually from twunts without children who got a help from their families for a deposit.

*Cries into triple chocolate granola*

 

[Mr Pigeon]

Yup... Jess got the tone right

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Not that I expect Johnson to do any better if he shows up for an interview

I'm sure Andrew Neil and the BBC headline editors will unexpectedly have an "off day" when that happens.

 

[sun_tzu]

I'm sure Andrew Neil and the BBC headline editors will unexpectedly have an "off day" when that happens.

I doubt he will turn up... Probably send POB to drop some grime for the kids

That would be my advice to him if I was on the conservative Comms team... Andrew Neil will eviscerate you if he's in the mood... Chuck gove under the bus as you owe him a backstabbing from the 2016 leadership election

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Yup... Jess got the tone right

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Not that I expect Johnson to do any better if he shows up for an interview

He's probably the toughest interview in fairness. He did Sturgeon on detail and the contradictions and hypocrisies in their independence movement but Corbyn just needed to apologise and the big headline would be gone. He just kept digging. Why can’t they just launch these minor players that have been anti Semitic out of the party too? It makes no sense to me.

 

[Ekkie Thump]

He's probably the toughest interview in fairness. He did Sturgeon on detail and the contradictions and hypocrisies in their independence movement but Corbyn just needed to apologise and the big headline would be gone. He just kept digging. Why can’t they just launch these minor players that have been anti Semitic out of the party too? It makes no sense to me.

I actually think Corbyn faired better in this interview than the one he did in 2017, but my memory is admittedly hazy.

 

[Guy Incognito]

Neil is the toughest interviewer out there, but when his interview with Sturgeon was pulled up by the BBC fact-checkers it doesn't exactly help his cause.

https://bbc.co.uk/news/50552295

His format is designed to catch politicians out, but I'm not sure any would've been able to counter him effectively. Is that a good thing? Sturgeon went about it the right way, she needed to see his sources before jumping to an answer.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

I doubt he will turn up... Probably send POB to drop some grime for the kids

That would be my advice to him if I was on the conservative Comms team... Andrew Neil will eviscerate you if he's in the mood... Chuck gove under the bus as you owe him a backstabbing from the 2016 leadership election

Why wouldn't he turn up though? If he sends someone then it's obvious he was afraid, if he does turn then up Laura will make sure that the headlines don't say anything too damning if he fecks up.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

At this point it doesn't matter what Boris does, he won't be touched in the media. It would take a scandal involving an affair or giving taxpayers money to someone he's having an affair with, or quashing an investigation into a scandal or lying to the monarch or using racist language. Oh no wait, he did all that and none of it seems to be a big deal.

Ach, feck it. I'm getting in my caravan until this all blows over.

 

[Kentonio]

They were lyrics from a Stormzy song.

And you think that makes the optics of this look better?

 

[Kentonio]

Do they? I'm not seeing it, just the live blog. Which does say "Jeremy Corbyn launches a race and faith manifesto, declaring anti-Semitism "vile" and "wrong"

It’s been the top story on my feed for at least the last hour.

 

[Honest John]

I actually think Corbyn faired better in this interview than the one he did in 2017, but my memory is admittedly hazy.

He got more of his messages in than Sturgeon. Should have apologised though.

 

[CassiusClaymore]

He's probably the toughest interview in fairness. He did Sturgeon on detail and the contradictions and hypocrisies in their independence movement but Corbyn just needed to apologise and the big headline would be gone. He just kept digging. Why can’t they just launch these minor players that have been anti Semitic out of the party too? It makes no sense to me.

What do you think the headline would be if he apologises?

There's already an ongoing investigation into this taking place. He's unequivocally stated he's against discrimination of any kind and unlike most politicians can actually back up those claims with evidence and yet that's still not good enough for some and it never will be because and I think it's fair to say this, not all racism is the same in the current climate.

 

[Buster15]

Interesting to note that the oh so neutral BBC has made the Labour/Jewish Rabbi story the number one news headline with massive coverage, whereas the Tory/Muslim Council story is nothing like as high profile.
Is one really more important than the other?
And if so why not the same amount of news coverage.

 

[BeforeKeanetherewasRobson]

I actually think Corbyn faired better in this interview than the one he did in 2017, but my memory is admittedly hazy.

Bloody hell. If he fared worse than he did tonight, I'll have to Google it!! Must have been carnage.

Anti semitism, huge borrowing and the fact that it's not just the top5% (and businesses) that'll take the pain.... are all issues for Labour and Andrew Neil knew that and went for them.

As long as he does the same for all.

 

[Jacko21]

The hypothetical question at the end was daft, as most hypotheticals are. He didn’t answer the anstisemtism stuff well, nor did he do well on how Labour would find the £58bn for the WASPI women.

Could be damaging for Corbyn.

Don't see Boris fairing better mind.