Poll: General election voting intentions poll

Voting intentions in the General Election - only use the poll if you intend to vote

  • Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

    Votes: 2 0.3%

  • Conservative

    Votes: 287 42.0%

  • Democratic Unionist Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 67 9.8%

  • Labour

    Votes: 108 15.8%

  • Liberal Democrat

    Votes: 25 3.7%

  • Other party (not named)

    Votes: 15 2.2%

  • Plaid Cymru

    Votes: 2 0.3%

  • Respect Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Scottish National Party

    Votes: 36 5.3%

  • Social Democratic and Labour Party

    Votes: 1 0.1%

  • Sinn Fein

    Votes: 4 0.6%

  • UKIP

    Votes: 137 20.0%
  • Total voters
    684
  • Poll closed .
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scorza said:
My view is that because these people live in the same society as you and I, then yes we should care about them because the consequences of their actions can affect the quality of life for lots of other people. These troubled and troublesome people are the way they are for a reason, they often need help and support to break the cycle of depravation. Who should deliver this support? A combination of the state, charities and individuals or as I like to think of it - society.
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It's easier to just label people scumbags and segregate from them though. Live in a more affluent area, a gated community if you can afford that, then pretend poor people don't exist.

I sometimes wish I did live in an era where community was more emphasised upon. I think in those times though there was much less disparity between poor>comfortable>rich. The rich were not so, and the poor were more (numerous) so. The need to rely on one another was more apparent, now it's every man for himself in a dog eat dog world. Thing is, I'm all for competitive markets, the free economy ethos, and a bit of dog-eat-dog. That framework for our 'Western' way should not be to the detriment of decent human nature though, hence why a decent government who can regulate accordingly should be in place.... which party is that though??
 
scorza said:
My view is that because these people live in the same society as you and I, then yes we should care about them because the consequences of their actions can affect the quality of life for lots of other people. These troubled and troublesome people are the way they are for a reason, they often need help and support to break the cycle of depravation. Who should deliver this support? A combination of the state, charities and individuals or as I like to think of it - society.
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Exactly this, there's a reason as to why people are how they are and you need to take a deeper look at the culture they've grown up in to understand why. It's the easy way out to just label them scumbags and dehumanize them.

That way if you don't see them as people and lose empathy you won't feel bad about the lives they're forced to live by bad government policies such as destroying essential services.

I hear al lot about people on JSA who don't want a job and just want to sponge off peoples taxes etc etc

The reality is in some of the most deprived areas where the majority of these people are there's very good reasons for this. Take the old industrial areas in Wales and up north that were completely decimated under Thatcher where entire communities were made redundant overnight and nothing was ever done to try and replace those jobs or retrain the workers. That may of been in the 70's and 80's but it's the children who have grown up since that grew up where everyone they knew was claiming benefits and they're not aware of any other life at this point. It has become the culture as they wanted to imitate their parents like so many other children.
 
scorza said:
My view is that because these people live in the same society as you and I, then yes we should care about them because the consequences of their actions can affect the quality of life for lots of other people. These troubled and troublesome people are the way they are for a reason, they often need help and support to break the cycle of depravation. Who should deliver this support? A combination of the state, charities and individuals or as I like to think of it - society.
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So basically appeasement and compensation of poor personal choices?

Let me ask another question, why should these people ever be better off than those who earn more of their own volition?
 
Castiel said:
I'm a bit peeved at what I've read today about the sell off of certain NHS services. The money should be invested in the NHS, not given to private profit seeking firms to shore up services where the money should have gone to begin with. The NHS should be publicly run in its entirety and any money spent on health care should be done through the non-profit mechanism of the NHS.
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I have a really novel idea, how about we stop caring about how services are delivered and start caring about how well services are delivered?

Profit is not the only way for money to be lost from service provision.
 
Did someone say compassionless narcissists? ;)

Dolph said:
So basically appeasement and compensation of poor personal choices?

Let me ask another question, why should these people ever be better off than those who earn more of their own volition?
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You say poor personal choices but I see a consequence of a vicious cycle of neglect, abuse and failure in our cities. How do we break this cycle? Not through your NIT profile where you'd end up giving these families a load of cash and effectively make all public services optional by charging for them.

Yes it's totally wrong that people on benefits earn more than working people, I also think it's wrong that someone who owns a single property in London earns more a year sat on their backside doing nothing than most workers. We live in a very sick society, sooner or later somethings going to give.
 
scorza said:
Did someone say compassionless narcissists? ;)



You say poor personal choices but I see a consequence of a vicious cycle of neglect, abuse and failure in our cities. How do we break this cycle? Not through your NIT profile where you'd end up giving these families a load of cash and effectively make all public services optional by charging for them.

Yes it's totally wrong that people on benefits earn more than working people, I also think it's wrong that someone who owns a single property in London earns more a year sat on their backside doing nothing than most workers. We live in a very sick society, sooner or later somethings going to give.
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We don't break the cycle by encouraging and rewarding it, that has been thoroughly disproven. Nor do we break it by punishing the successful.

There are things we could do (we might even agree on some of them). My ideas would include: Reform social housing and end right to buy, attaching social rents as income percentages. Reform the benefits system and improving education at all levels, including ending the current monetary selection (via house prices and catchment areas) and moving to some form of performance selection but with greater flexibility than the existing 11 plus system, the list goes on.
 
Dolph said:
We don't break the cycle by encouraging and rewarding it, that has been thoroughly disproven. Nor do we break it by punishing the successful.

There are things we could do (we might even agree on some of them). My ideas would include: Reform social housing and end right to buy, attaching social rents as income percentages. Reform the benefits system and improving education at all levels, including ending the current monetary selection (via house prices and catchment areas) and moving to some form of performance selection but with greater flexibility than the existing 11 plus system, the list goes on.
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I certainly agree with ending the right to buy which has been a disaster.

On education, I think the biggest problem is selection full stop, either by ability to pay or other (thinking about Gove's dangerous Free Schools here). We need to move to a fully comprehensive school system like they have in Finland, not just cherry-pick the bits of the Finnish system we like.
 
scorza said:
I certainly agree with ending the right to buy which has been a disaster.

On education, I think the biggest problem is selection full stop, either by ability to pay or other (thinking about Gove's dangerous Free Schools here). We need to move to a fully comprehensive school system like they have in Finland, not just cherry-pick the bits of the Finnish system we like.
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How do you stop the problem of such variation between schools, and the impact of varying abilities and willingness to learn?
 
AlecR said:
Don't want the Marxists on TV anyway, they have no place in our society.
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Ignoring the inaccurate comment about the Greens being Marxists, why don't the Greens have a place in our society?

Even if they were Marxist, you realise where Karl Marx is buried? :p
 
Captain Planet said:
It's easier to just label people scumbags and segregate from them though. Live in a more affluent area, a gated community if you can afford that, then pretend poor people don't exist.
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whats funny though is when people have the exact same attitude as these people but instead of being poor and living off benefits they have rich parents and mooch of them, the "oh but they need support and help there's an external reason they're like this" attitude goes right out the window and its "Scummers, need to learn to work etc etc lazy *******s, take thier money away form them and see how they feel then that will make them get a job".


its quite ironic, only difference is the target of their scrounging.
 
Tom_ed1987 said:
Ofcom says UKIP, but not Greens, are 'major party'
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Sadly, I must agree. UKIP came top in the last national election, got many more votes in the last general election, are polling much higher and are likely to have more MPs after the election. The case for the Greens to be treated as equal with the former "big three" is much weaker.
 
Tunney said:
Ignoring the inaccurate comment about the Greens being Marxists, why don't the Greens have a place in our society?

Even if they were Marxist, you realise where Karl Marx is buried? :p
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The greens have a damaging effect on the idea of environmental protection because they tie doing the right thing for the environment to an insane and highly illiberal left wing economic platform.

By implying that the two ideas are interlinked, they damage the environmental cause.

This article covers it quite well.

We must reclaim the climate change debate from the political extremes

http://gu.com/p/46hxm
 
As we get closer to election time UKIP's estimated seats are declining futher.
http://may2015.com/category/seat-calculator/

May2015 is now predicting just 3 seats.
Election forecast has dropped form 2 to 1 IIRC
LADBROKES has dropped form 5.5 to 4.5

This is something I suspected would happened due to the recent trend in UKIP voter share declining
 
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