Poll: Poll: Prime Minister Theresa May calls General Election on June 8th

[Irish_Tom]

Countries like Japan, Poland and Hungary don't have any problems with Islamic terror. We need to understand why and act accordingly.


Personally I'd put efforts to stop the slaughter of our nation's children as more important than those things.

I'm in no way mitigating the severity of terror attacks, but the fact is they affect a tiny percentage of the population.

Those other issues I've mentioned will affect the whole country; adults, children and children yet to be born, for decades to come.

Day to day, I worry more about how I'm going to care for my parents when they get older, or the kind of education my children (if/when I have them) will receive, or the kind of country they will grow up in, rather than whether I'm going to get bombed the next time I go to a public place. It might happen, but the statistical likelihood is tiny.

 

[stewski]

First and foremost, I care about stopping Islamic terror in the UK because that is the biggest problem facing the UK today.

I'd argue a lack of education, specifically around the critical analysis and understanding of data is the biggest problem facing the UK. Reading yours and others posts here re enforces my thoughts in that area.

In the time during our Unilateral Intervention in Iraq, what do you imagine the ratio of Civilian's violently killed by terror attacks for Iraq V the UK are?

You can make many arguments that the region is more unstable as a baseline, that the Iran Iraq war had a massive death toll too (lets not ask where the weapons came from), that Saddam was a bad man (though the world is full of dictators not sitting on a giant oil field), or that you simply don't care to think about the situation of terror/civilian deaths in far flung lands, what you can't really show is that Islamic Terror is the biggest problem the UK faces.

I'd be interested to see the mortality rate that can reasonably be attributed to Austerity cuts over the same time period for example, people on the streets don't last that long frankly.

 

[stewski]

Are you in a constant state of panic and fear? I know I'm not, what makes me special that I am immune to the government propaganda?

I thought Scorza just told you

stopping Islamic terror in the UK because that is the biggest problem facing the UK today.

Don't tell me you disagree?

On your specific statement: Are you susceptible to fashion advertising, do you like iDevices and other items with incredibly high brand value mark up, what makes you so special and immune to advertising? Perhaps that multi billion industry is ineffective too?

 

[KNiVES]

First and foremost, I care about stopping Islamic terror in the UK because that is the biggest problem facing the UK today.

Jobs and the economy, the welfare state, the incoming pensions crisis, the NHS and police force cuts, and our inability to look after the disabled are FAR greater problems than Islamic terror, it's not even close.

This is reflected in the discussions leading up to the imminent general election, even in the wake of a recent suicide bombing there is little talk on tackling Islamic terror, because the other issues the nation is facing are much more pressing.

 

[antijoke]

As per my other posts the article (and the BBC article based on it) is a disingenuous use of the figures - my post was in response to the kind of attitudes that seem to be emerging of jumping entirely to a different sort of foreign policy (usually Corbynesque always the soft option) due to some failings of our foreign policy rather than looking at it as a whole and maybe making some modifications.



TM increasingly seems to be about the greater glory of TM and her agenda and more and more falling apart when she has to do real politics and not ramming through what she wants LOL.

I'll say it again I honestly believe anyone voting Tory or Labour this election is bat **** crazy.

Voting anyone else is bat **** crazy

 

[antijoke]

Countries like Japan, Poland and Hungary don't have any problems with Islamic terror. We need to understand why and act accordingly.


Personally I'd put efforts to stop the slaughter of our nation's children as more importa

As stated, and as terrible as attacks are, the day to day issues are far more pressing to the UK.

 

[McPhee]

What threat does terrorism pose that would make it the biggest problem our country faces? I wouldn't say it's a significant threat, either to our way of life, or our continued existence.

 

[Rroff]

Voting anyone else is bat **** crazy

I don't necessarily disagree at face value but that doesn't mean its the only way forward.

 

[McPhee]

The Lib Dems under Nick Clegg in 2010 is the closest thing we've had to a real third option. I think it's a shame how history turned out TBH. If the Tories had won a majority in 2010, I think the Lib Dems would have been a significant threat by 2015. The party was changing, it was becoming bolder, more interested in having a seat at the table than standing outside the door waving a placard.

Fast forward to today and they're back to being a protest party. The 2017 manifesto is a joke. I'm genuinely considering leaving the party TBH.

 

[stewski]

If we are discussing incredibly important decisions/topics for the future of the UK.
The single Conservative Manifesto point "No deal is better than a bad deal" is potentially more costly to the UK than all the re nationalisation Corbyn et al could imagine without any obvious potential benefit.


http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...russels-destroy-british-economy-a7760026.html

is economic logic that presents far greater dangers to our living standards than policies on tuition fees, nationalisation, capping energy prices, funding social care, or any of the economic issues that have dominated this election campaign. It’s senseless to discuss a party’s economic and fiscal credibility without talking about its position on Brexit.

Those jumping up and down about the IFS analysis of Labours investment plans seem to ignore that that body swerves the whole topic of the cost to the UK in May's current direction of negotiating with the EU.
From the article:

put the damage from this kind of cliff-edge Brexit at between 2.6 per cent and 5.5 per cent of GDP, or between £50bn and £110bn, by 2020.

http://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Comparing-Brexit-forecasts-table.pdf

 

[stewski]

The Lib Dems under Nick Clegg in 2010 is the closest thing we've had to a real third option. I think it's a shame how history turned out TBH. If the Tories had won a majority in 2010, I think the Lib Dems would have been a significant threat by 2015. The party was changing, it was becoming bolder, more interested in having a seat at the table than standing outside the door waving a placard.

Fast forward to today and they're back to being a protest party. The 2017 manifesto is a joke. I'm genuinely considering leaving the party TBH.

The Lib's and Clegg personally lost any support I could give the moment they twisted voting reform to only include an option that would clearly favour their own interests as a third party, If we want selfish idiots to vote for, we already have a 2 party FPTP system for that exact thing.

 

[scorza]

Jobs and the economy, the welfare state, the incoming pensions crisis, the NHS and police force cuts, and our inability to look after the disabled are FAR greater problems than Islamic terror, it's not even close.

This is reflected in the discussions leading up to the imminent general election, even in the wake of a recent suicide bombing there is little talk on tackling Islamic terror, because the other issues the nation is facing are much more pressing.

There's an estimated 23,000 jihadis in the UK right now - imagine if just 1 in 10 of them are successful in launching a devastating attack like we saw last week? All that monitoring and investigation of their activities costs money you know, if we were like Poland and didn't have a problem with jihadis in the community then we'd save a lot of money.

 

[McPhee]

The Lib's and Clegg personally lost any support I could give the moment they twisted voting reform to only include an option that would clearly favour their own interests as a third party, If we want selfish idiots to vote for, we already have a 2 party FPTP system for that exact thing.

That isn't what happened at all.

The Lib Dems had campaigned for a couple of decades for Proportional Representation via the Single Transferable Vote system. In 1997, Tony Blair set up the Jenkins Commission in to Electoral Reform. The commission recommended we change our electrical system over to Alternative Vote Top-Up (AV+). The commission's recommendations were put on the back burner.

AV+ only resurfaced during the 2010 election campaign. Labour supported it. The Lib Dems supported STV, as they had for a long time. The Tories opposed reform. During the coalition negotiation, the Lib Dems were offered a referendum on AV+ as part of a coalition deal with the Tories. That lead to the AV+ Referendum of 2011.

AV+ was a consolation prize. The Lib Dems didn't really care for it. The Tories opposed it. And Labour, in the end, chose to largely stay out of the debate. The referendum was doomed from the word go.

AV+ didn't really work for the Lib Dems. And STV is something they've supported for a long, long time. They haven't shifted position on that. Frankly, STV is a voting system that would benefit all small parties, not just the Lib Dems. There's a high likelihood that UKIP would have come third in 2015 under STV.

 

[Amp34]

Opinion is one thing - the numbers on paper - even if very slightly disingenuous use of the numbers - says otherwise. As above much of our intervention has been stuff like Bosnia which hasn't had significant repercussions domestically.

As you wouldn't expect, because they weren't wholesale regime change resulting in power vacuums.

 

[stewski]

That isn't what happened at all.

The Lib Dems had campaigned for a couple of decades for Proportional Representation via the Single Transferable Vote system. In 1997, Tony Blair set up the Jenkins Commission in to Electoral Reform. The commission recommended we change our electrical system over to Alternative Vote Top-Up (AV+). The commission's recommendations were put on the back burner.

AV+ only resurfaced during the 2010 election campaign. Labour supported it. The Lib Dems supported STV, as they had for a long time. The Tories opposed reform. During the coalition negotiation, the Lib Dems were offered a referendum on AV+ as part of a coalition deal with the Tories. That lead to the AV+ Referendum of 2011.

AV+ was a consolation prize. The Lib Dems didn't really care for it. The Tories opposed it. And Labour, in the end, chose to largely stay out of the debate. The referendum was doomed from the word go.

AV+ didn't really work for the Lib Dems. And STV is something they've supported for a long, long time. They haven't shifted position on that.

Are you trying to suggest that Nick Clegg who could have worked with either Labour or Conservatives as a government had no choice but to compromise on voting reform, a compromise which by happy coincidence massively favoured third parties?
Everything about who proposed AV+ long before any government offered a referendum is a red herring (pardon the pun).

 

[Mr Jack]

The referendum was on AV, not AV+. Even Clegg described it as a "miserable compromise". AV+ was an okayish, sort of PR system, AV is merely a mild improvement that doesn't address the fundamental error of constituency level aggregation of votes.

 

[Amp34]

My point (though based off a couple of articles that make a slightly different point) is that even the best foreign policy isn't going to work 100% of the time without making enemies. That doesn't necessarily mean our foreign policy doesn't need some adjustment but a lot of people seem to want to jump fully to an almost isolationist soft alternative in response to the times when it has resulted in an impact felt at home.

How many people have actually jumped on that? It's likely what you'll find is that in fact far more people are a lot more cautious about large scale wars that involve regime change, whereas targeted interventions aimed at specific threats, often in response to requests from the governments themselves will be received far more favourably.

As an example our intervention in Sierra Leone had little but positive responses, yet the invasion of Iraq had a very large negative response even before soldiers went in. Frances intervention in Mali (at the request of the Malian government) was largely positively viewed as well, whereas the obvious regime change in Libya a couple of years before was not.

Honestly a leader that recognises that these do receive different responses from the public, and takes notes from history (regime change is expensive and costly in life - that's not just a modern phenomenon) will likely go up in the estimations of a lot of people - hence why Corbyn's speech seems to have actually gone over fairly well outside of the usual places.

So why has France, who did not take part in Iraq, been so badly affected by Islamic terrorism? Why has Poland, who did take part, not experienced any Islamic terror attacks on its soil? The issue isn't about any western country's foreign policy, it's more about the ideology of Islamic jihad.

Wouldn't it be 'stirring the hornet's nest' if the UN got involved in Africa?

Hey Scorza, as you seem to have missed my post from yesterday here it is again... May answer a few points you appear to be glossing over.

Quite. And the fact the examples given by Scorza are completely different interventions - very targeted and either designed to back up the existing government against rebels (such as Sierra Leone) or designed specifically to discourage an action by a government and provide a peacekeeping force to police it afterwards (Yugoslavia). Compare that to the regime change and dismantling for government and security systems of Iraq and Libya creating a power vaccum which was taken advantage of by insurgents.

France may not have taken part in Iraq, but was a member of the Afghanistan coalition sicnce 2001 , was an instrumental factor in the assault on Libya (UK and France were the two main advocates) and also has a significant, often conflict heavy history in North Africa in general, for example the Algerian war of independence which resulted in hundred of thousands killed.

Mali is in part a spillover from the instability in Libya after the collapse of Gadaffi, part independence war and part taking advantage of instability within the county itself (Toureg rebellion and the coup both causing instability and ineffectual security services).

The CAR on the other hand also stems from civil unrest and rebellion (largely secular) and has ended up with a situation of reprisal attacks on both Christians and Muslims, with the latest episode including the displacement of thousand stars of Muslims and several massacres.

The Philippines has it's origins, as discussed in the other thread - replies to which Scorza has obviously ignored - in the colonisation of the area by the Spanish and the forced integration and conversion to Christianity of an existing Muslim state. The current insurgency stems directly from this - a fight for an independent state.

Nigeria has similar roots, a large sultanate in the area was superseded by British colonization and conversion to Christianity, with the current issues having origins in a fight for an independent Islamic state in a predominantly Christian country (after we sent in missionaries).

So there we go, a bit of background on al of Scorzas examples. While that doesn't excuse the actions of anyone it just goes to show things aren't quite as simple as he's trying to make out.

 

[McPhee]

Are you trying to suggest that Nick Clegg who could have worked with either Labour or Conservatives as a government had no choice but to compromise on voting reform, a compromise which by happy coincidence massively favoured third parties?
Everything about who proposed AV+ long before any government offered a referendum is a red herring (pardon the pun).

So according to you, Nick Clegg decided to drop his party's decades-long support for STV in favour of an inferior voting system that would deliver his party fewer seats?

That doesn't make any sense.

As for a deal with Labour, the numbers didn't add up. A 6 party coalition was needed to get them to a majority. It was never a credible option; too unstable. A Labour minority government, seeking assistance on a vote-by-vote basis, was an outside chance. A coalition was a pipedream.

 

[Amp34]

You're voting for a person to become the representative Member of Parliament for your constituency. The party with the majority of MPs governs, with their leader being the PM.

So, you aren't really voting for a party, you are voting for a person who happens to represent a party in your constituency. That person may or may not agree with everything the party stands for, but will generally go along the party lines in votes in the House of Commons.

It's perhaps a little scary that this question is being asked, but at the same time probably quite representative of the country as a whole - a reason for PR, which would likely lead to more coalition governments which can only be a good thing in my mind.

 

[McPhee]

The referendum was on AV, not AV+. Even Clegg described it as a "miserable compromise". AV+ was an okayish, sort of PR system, AV is merely a mild improvement that doesn't address the fundamental error of constituency level aggregation of votes.

Yeah, I got the two confused. AV+ was the one recommended by Jenkins, and the one Labour supported. AV was part of the deal offered to the Lib Dems by the Tories. That actually makes more sense now you've pointed out the mistake; it explains why Labour didn't campaign in favour of AV in the referendum, and why nobody could really be bothered campaigning in favour. AV is crap.