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Jools

The Reform Party

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Where is Jools' by the way? I know Trump's implosion is causing many of his world-views serious mental health issues (referrals are available) - but anyway he is still a Canaries supporter so is redeemable.!

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On 03/11/2020 at 12:47, Rock The Boat said:

He is by far and away the most successful politician of our time. 

Financially he certainly is, well apart from the Blair's. 

The Brexit Party was a ltd company meaning he could take the £25 'registered member' fees and £100 candidate application fees as salary and dividends.

That's why he's gone from a three bed semi in Kent to living in a £4.4m house in a quiet Chelsea side street. 

Fantastic businessman first and foremost, finding a legal way to sell you nothing for £25. 

And then you all lap it up when he rinses and repeats the con. 

Smart guy, he has my utmost respect for being able to pull this off - few could. 

Edited by TeemuVanBasten
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4 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Financially he certainly is. The Brexit Party was a ltd company meaning he could take the £25 'registered member' fees and £100 candidate application fees as salary and dividends.

That's why he's gone from a three bed semi in Kent to living in a £4.4m house in a quiet Chelsea side street. 

Fantastic businessman first and foremost, finding a legal way to sell you nothing for £25. 

And then you all lap it up when he rinses and repeats the con. 

Smart guy, he has my utmost respect for being able to pull this off - few could. 

Yes - a very successful snake oil salesman now looking for new mugs!

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4 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Yes - a very successful snake oil salesman now looking for new mugs!

Doesn't even need new ones, the old mugs are still mugs. 

I'm a leave voter by the way, but never bought into this Farage cult and once he was on LBC he'd never been clearer to read as a grifter and chancer.

But I just find it amusing to observe, he's very good at it. 

Galloway made a very good living out of gaslighting and his oratory skills on the left as well, so no surprise that they got into bed with each other for the leave campaigning. 

Both made millions by harnessing a fanatical cult of personality. 

Edited by TeemuVanBasten
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The Conservatives had 4 years to do a trade deal with the USA and pro-UK President, and they failed. There is no chance now. 

So says the man who has had more political parties than Churchill.

So now Farage admits that getting a trade deal, all 18% of it with the US, is not the easy task he promised.

Its about time he was highlighted on Watchdog as a serial scammer.

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13 minutes ago, horsefly said:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newslondon/reform-think-tank-asks-nigel-farage-to-rethink-brexit-party-name-change/ar-BB1aPiFM?ocid=msedgntp

OOPS! Looks like Narky Nige might have to think again about changing the name of the Brexit Party to Reform UK. Can anybody here help out with a suitable alternative?

Scam.

 

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The sad sack of sh*t is having a go at cyclists now:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/farage-s-anti-cyclist-article-shows-car-users-fear-loss-of-control/ar-BB1aU1Zo?ocid=msedgdhp

Clearly the pillock thinks this is another populist bandwagon that he can hijack to make himself relevant to the world of gammon.  However, it will come as no suprise that this is yet another ill-conceived pile of tosh written on the back of one of his fag-packets after too many pints at the Bigot Arms.

"Anti-cyclist pieces in the Mail are not exactly uncommon, but this one was notable because its key argument was that cyclists should “pay road tax”.

If this blogpost were a film, this would be the moment to insert a sudden, soundtrack-halting needle scratch, with a narrator filling the sudden silence to say: “Yes, road tax.”

You know the one. Abolished in 1937. Replaced by vehicle excise duty (VED), which is, as has been explained countless times, very much not a tax to pay for roads – the money goes into the central pot, as do almost all tax revenues.

VED is also based on exhaust emissions, meaning that even if cyclists were liable for it, bikes would be, as with dozens of electric and hybrid cars, charged precisely £0 a year."

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4 hours ago, Surfer said:

Such a deep thinker, our Nigel. 

Yep! He has as much depth as a sheet of Graphene.

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I think it's a toss up between making Donald a member of the Royal family (how else can he continue his bromance) and campaigning for the right of an English gentleman to drink Diesel.

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On 02/11/2020 at 17:40, Herman said:

A good piece by David Allen Green.

https://davidallengreen.com/2020/11/the-importance-of-nigel-farage-and-other-political-hobgoblins/

"And when there are political gaps, the political hobgoblins appear.

They are an index of the failure of a government to properly explain a complex policy issue and to engage with the public.

The easy answers promoted by the political hobgoblins have little or no merit in themselves, but this does not matter.

The political hobgoblins do not care, for they thrive in the political gaps.

And that is why political populists should always be taken seriously, for they are an indication of political failure.

Political hobgoblins exist to warn us."

I'd go further. It's not just a failure of government to properly explain an issue.... in our case in the UK it's a failure of government / election models. Political gaps appear where there is inadequate representation. Election models that are not proportionate give far greater scope for such things, and models where gerrymandering and the spoiler effect are rampant exacerbate this.

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1 hour ago, TheGunnShow said:

I'd go further. It's not just a failure of government to properly explain an issue.... in our case in the UK it's a failure of government / election models. Political gaps appear where there is inadequate representation. Election models that are not proportionate give far greater scope for such things, and models where gerrymandering and the spoiler effect are rampant exacerbate this.

Agree here with this. You get political figures characterised by fascist behaviours / messages when such illegitimacy is exposed by a failing system of representation.

Brexit is one perfect example of an issue cleaving the gap further in two. You then get attitudes coalescing around the extremes, you get 'us and them', you get left and right, darkness and light etc etc.

Farage and other populists fill the space and ramp up division. Cummings understands how to disrupt too. Even on this board you get a cabal of posters ramping up division. This is the aim. Such attempts to divide are evident on the Brexit, Coronavirus and Trump threads. You can read here that the poor are largely responsible for their own poverty, that BAME communities spread the virus and so on. Attempts to insert debate or articles are shot down quickly as quirky, left wing, idealistic or whatever other term of derision can be found. Some copy and paste from articles in order to justify positions. 

The answer is to keep asking questions, find not necessarily consensus but at least understanding. I'm now not just talking about this board but  government. Otherwise, nationally, we have many unhappy years ahead. The current government has obsfuscated ceaselessly, been relentless in offering ridiculous promises in this pandemic, alongside quite shameless sloganising. We need better leadership. Full stop. I laugh when I read Farage wants a 'reform' party because he wants to exploit further our divisions and not repair the system. Like all political points of view though, Farage will be right about some things, that's the problem, there will always be a kernel of truth in what he says. The system does feel moribund. 

We need cooperative government and more 'complementary' thinking. That's the kind you get at the European Commission. And we're moving away from that fast.

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9 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Agree here with this. You get political figures characterised by fascist behaviours / messages when such illegitimacy is exposed by a failing system of representation.

Brexit is one perfect example of an issue cleaving the gap further in two. You then get attitudes coalescing around the extremes, you get 'us and them', you get left and right, darkness and light etc etc.

Farage and other populists fill the space and ramp up division. Cummings understands how to disrupt too. Even on this board you get a cabal of posters ramping up division. This is the aim. Such attempts to divide are evident on the Brexit, Coronavirus and Trump threads. You can read here that the poor are largely responsible for their own poverty, that BAME communities spread the virus and so on. Attempts to insert debate or articles are shot down quickly as quirky, left wing, idealistic or whatever other term of derision can be found. Some copy and paste from articles in order to justify positions. 

The answer is to keep asking questions, find not necessarily consensus but at least understanding. I'm now not just talking about this board but  government. Otherwise, nationally, we have many unhappy years ahead. The current government has obsfuscated ceaselessly, been relentless in offering ridiculous promises in this pandemic, alongside quite shameless sloganising. We need better leadership. Full stop. I laugh when I read Farage wants a 'reform' party because he wants to exploit further our divisions and not repair the system. Like all political points of view though, Farage will be right about some things, that's the problem, there will always be a kernel of truth in what he says. The system does feel moribund. 

We need cooperative government and more 'complementary' thinking. That's the kind you get at the European Commission. And we're moving away from that fast.

Re. the bit in bold, this is why the whole notion of a meritocracy is toxic nonsense and indeed was originally defined as such by the man responsible for bringing this term into common usage. That man was no other than the late Sir Michael Young in his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy", which was a satire. Unfortunately, the meaning has been twisted over the years and also taken radically out of context.

No-one would argue that within a small group, picking people based on their relative merits is anything but logical, prudent, and the best way forward. When "merit" is used to justify cutting off swathes of society though, that's when it becomes toxic - as written by the man himself less than a year before he died.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

And as for the European Commission and European electoral models, they use - the D'Hondt version of proportional representation. Which has enabled the likes of Farage and indeed Nick Griffin to take seats in their Parliament. Both are men who haven't had a snowball in hell's chance of getting an MP's seat here. Yet they decry Europe as less democratic...

Illogical. At least Farage realises our model is the problem, but that really was where he should have gone first.

Edited by TheGunnShow
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5 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Re. the bit in bold, this is why the whole notion of a meritocracy is toxic nonsense and indeed was originally defined as such by the man responsible for bringing this term into common usage. That man was no other than the late Sir Michael Young in his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy", which was a satire. Unfortunately, the meaning has been twisted over the years and also taken radically out of context.

No-one would argue that within a small group, picking people based on their relative merits is anything but logical, prudent, and the best way forward. When "merit" is used to justify cutting off swathes of society though, that's when it becomes toxic - as written by the man himself less than a year before he died.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

And as for the European Commission and European electoral models, they use - the D'Hondt version of proportional representation. Which has enabled the likes of Farage and indeed Nick Griffin to take seats in their Parliament. Both are men who haven't had a snowball in hell's chance of getting an MP's seat here. Yet they decry Europe as less democratic...

Illogical. At least Farage realises our model is the problem, but that really was where he should have gone first.

Agree TheGunnShow. I even posted an article on meritocracy by Michael Sandel....maybe 2 months ago! It was shot down immediately by a poster stating simply "b*llux". 

Agree about PR too. Yet in a way I would rather they are 'in' the system and can be seen (and heard) and cannot play out their nonsense outside of it (the p1ssing outside of the tent analogy is possibly apt). At least then they are obvious.

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2 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

I'd go further. It's not just a failure of government to properly explain an issue.... in our case in the UK it's a failure of government / election models. Political gaps appear where there is inadequate representation. Election models that are not proportionate give far greater scope for such things, and models where gerrymandering and the spoiler effect are rampant exacerbate this.

Only the politically naieve fail to see that PR takes power away from the people and hands it to the politicians. PR allows politicians to ignore their mandate and do things they didn't campaign for. Like Nick Clegg and university fees. PR makes politicians unaccountable. 

This subject rears its head whenever the left knows it can not win elections. Try to have policies that people like and you might get elected. 

Edited by Rock The Boat

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1 minute ago, Rock The Boat said:

Only the politically naieve fail to see that PR takes power away from the people and hands it to the politicians. PR allows politicians to ignore their mandate and do things they didn't campaign for. Like Nick Clegg and university fees. PR makes politicians unaccountable. 

This subject rears its head whenever the left knows it can not win elections. Try to have policies that people like and you might get elected. 

Which is even more pronounced with first-past-the-post! A model so discredited and useless that practically all the First World doesn't use it any more.

UK, USA, and Canada, and that's pretty much it. The only other European country that uses FPTP is that democratic paradise of... Belarus.

Scared, lazy politicians like first-past-the-post as they can easily carve themselves safe seats.

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9 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

Only the politically naieve fail to see that PR takes power away from the people and hands it to the politicians. PR allows politicians to ignore their mandate and do things they didn't campaign for. Like Nick Clegg and university fees. PR makes politicians unaccountable. 

This subject rears its head whenever the left knows it can not win elections. Try to have policies that people like and you might get elected. 

Well....another label for me then RTB "politically naive". As well as a fool plus having views that are b*llux. I'm building quite a repertoire.

The 'left' as you put it (another label that obscures any depth of the issue) has rarely won in 100 years because of the system and gerrymandering. Read up on the history of boundaries changing too.

We need less dyadic thinking with only two sides each side of a line being argued over.

Ps. The irony of being 'politcally naïve'!

Edited by sonyc
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41 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Well....another label for me then RTB "politically naive". As well as a fool plus having views that are b*llux. I'm building quite a repertoire.

The 'left' as you put it (another label that obscures any depth of the issue) has rarely won in 100 years because of the system and gerrymandering. Read up on the history of boundaries changing too.

We need less dyadic thinking with only two sides each side of a line being argued over.

Ps. The irony of being 'politcally naïve'!

I'd argue also that the left rarely win because they misunderstand the average voter. On social issues the average voter is pretty right wing. There is a hole in this country for a economically left wing party that doesn't also embrace a lot of the identity politics stuff that puts a bunch of voters off. Starmer seems to recognise you need to win power and convince people at least, rather than just dictating and expecting them to come along with you.

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5 minutes ago, king canary said:

I'd argue also that the left rarely win because they misunderstand the average voter. On social issues the average voter is pretty right wing. There is a hole in this country for a economically left wing party that doesn't also embrace a lot of the identity politics stuff that puts a bunch of voters off. Starmer seems to recognise you need to win power and convince people at least, rather than just dictating and expecting them to come along with you.

I am inclined to accept this point alongside the boundary / constituency issue. It's clear that Labour has struggled having power for over a century (isn't it only 30 out of more than 100 years?). Blair understood appealing to the centre but ruined his copy book.

Are society's big problems going to be successfully solved by ascribing each part of any particular issue with a left or right label? The issues are so interlinked and complex (we see clearly in this pandemic how health and economy tie together). In fact I would argue just the use of words 'left' or 'right'  (by either side), obscures the finding of solutions. Using such terms is lazy and tries to ascribe an identity to matters that deserve a much deeper analysis.

 

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On a slightly different note, I have no words for this (other than to say I keep thinking it must be a wind-up, but it really appears not):

Apparently his "doctorate" comes from a university in Florida, unregulated by the American education system, and awarded after "at least" 126 hours of study.

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1 hour ago, Nuff Said said:

On a slightly different note, I have no words for this (other than to say I keep thinking it must be a wind-up, but it really appears not):

Apparently his "doctorate" comes from a university in Florida, unregulated by the American education system, and awarded after "at least" 126 hours of study.

Just another ham wanna-be politician

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On 07/11/2020 at 09:39, Yellow Fever said:

Where is Jools' by the way?

Perhaps he's contemplating reinventing himself in another guise after his time as The Thin White Puke? 🤔🤣

Apples

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3 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Which is even more pronounced with first-past-the-post! A model so discredited and useless that practically all the First World doesn't use it any more.

UK, USA, and Canada, and that's pretty much it. The only other European country that uses FPTP is that democratic paradise of... Belarus.

Scared, lazy politicians like first-past-the-post as they can easily carve themselves safe seats.

Alongside eliminating gerrymandering constituency boundaries to "pick" your voters (a particular American abuse) the easiest reform to introduce would not be proportional representation but transferrable vote  - there are several variants of this, but in each constituency you count the votes and if no candidate has more than 50%, you eliminate the lowest vote count candidate and transfer their votes to the second choice that the voter indicated. Repeat until someone gets to more than 50%. This scheme avoids the problem of two or more parties with broadly similar manifestos that together gain the support of the majority of the voters in that constituency losing to a party with a completely different manifesto who gets fewer votes, but just happens to get more than either one of them. It also helps resolve the problem of "independent" spoiler candidates being financed or otherwise promoted by one of the other parties to bleed off some votes. 

Voters have to do their part by indicating a ranking of the candidates when voting, but it's still a relatively simple adjustment w/o the rancor of electing MP's from a pool nobody voted for i.e. it maintains direct representation in Parliament by your local MP. 

Edited by Surfer
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15 minutes ago, Surfer said:

Alongside eliminating gerrymandering constituency boundaries to "pick" your voters (a particular American abuse) the easiest reform to introduce would not be proportional representation but transferrable vote  - there are several variants of this, but in each constituency you count the votes and if no candidate has more than 50%, you eliminate the lowest vote count candidate and transfer their votes to the second choice that the voter indicated. Repeat until someone gets to more than 50%. This scheme avoids the problem of two or more parties with broadly similar manifestos that together gain the support of the majority of the voters in that constituency losing to a party with a completely different manifesto who gets fewer votes, but just happens to get more than either one of them. It also helps resolve the problem of "independent" spoiler candidates being financed or otherwise promoted by one of the other parties to bleed off some votes. 

Voters have to do their part by indicating a ranking of the candidates when voting, but it's still a relatively simple adjustment w/o the rancor of electing MP's from a pool nobody voted for i.e. it maintains direct representation in Parliament by your local MP. 

We had a referendum in 2011 between FPTP and AV. Great. The two methods that can be gerrymandered. Single transferable vote or mixed-member representation is probably the better option.

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Apparently his "doctorate" comes from a university in Florida, unregulated by the American education system, and awarded after "at least" 126 hours of study.

Paul Nuttal was going to launch a comeback but he ended being busy creating a vaccine for Covid19 whilst filling in for Virgil Van **** at Liverpool. 😀

 

 

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