The UK Election!!!!

Yes, I knew, although, being Dutch might help here, eh neighbour? Now, did you know? We've got one in the first week of June (exact date escapes me at the moment).

I guessed as much. No big deal, we is only smalls afterall. Yay! I can bore you all with descriptions of the 40 or so parties that will participate in our election! Not that most of them will win even one seat, but still! The general public here wouldn't know about any of the "smaller countries" either. Though, most being bigger then us, we do at least get news reports about them when they happen. In The Netherlands (Holland is a province (well, two, north and south) telling me I'm from Holland (I'm from Limburg, greatest province of all! ) is like me saying a Londoner is from Wales, I don't think that would go over well ) the general public doesn't care about the "smaller countries" that much either, but English, German, French, Spanish and Italian elections get plenty of coverage here. Like I said, the others are at least reported on by the news, and finding out additional information about them isn't that hard either.

Like this: Use peek and all that, or read the "help" links to the left of your reply box for a change.

I don't know exactly what all their stances are, but based purely on these mugshots, and becuase I like their party name The Liberal Democrats.

I see this as one of the major drawbacks of your system. You have to vote for a local man/woman, but that local vote also determines the national party's power. Say you've got a very competent tory representative, he's realy good, has done a lot of work for his constituency, and as a result it has prospered. Yet you don't like the national tory party. Will you vote for him or not? Will you risk losing a cracking MP for your constituency over the fact that nationally, his party blows?

I think this has to do with the national party, right? This is exactly what I mean, why not vote for a man that has brought your constituency prosperity? Ok, let's hope it gets fixed then.They system we have in The Netherlands is a list of candidates for the entire country, Everybody gets to vote for the same persons, whether they are from your "constituency" or not (which is why we don't have constituencies). This prevents dilemmas like yours from happening. The drawback to this is of course that heavily populated areas are likely to have more "local" guys in the government, and they tend to forget the lesser populated areas. This tends to focus around the "big cities" of the "randstad", basically the are between Utrecht, Amsterdam The Hague and Rotterdam. Though I realize that our country is a lot smaller than yours, so implementing a system like that might be a bit hard over there.

Would anyone like to clarify exactly what the stances of the three parties are? I get that labour is more of a left leaning party, and the tories are more right leaning. What are the Libdems like? In the middle? A bit to the right, a bit to the left? What are their stances on say stemcell research, nuclear power, crime fighting, social security, that sort of stuff?Could somebody fill me in please?

Thanks for the info.Well on what I see so far I've got only one question left. Why didn't people vote libdem in the past? They souund like my party all te way, except on the stance of nuclear power, which i think shouldn't be shunned as a "clean" power source. Not saying we should go completely neutral, but until we can say for sure that we have efficient clean power supplies, we shouldn't rule out nuclear just yet.

Wait what? How does that work? Their ancestors were Asian, moved to Uganda, had them as kids, and now they moved to the UK?

Ah I see. Complicated history that.

The biggest objection to this is of course that the public are utter and complete idiots. I'm an utter and complete idiot on many things myself. Don't ask me to make decissions about building projects or economic planning for the coming years, it would fail terribly. I talk to people daily who haven't got the slightest clue about how things function in society.For example:When asked if we should spend less money on immigrants, most people will say "yes!". However if you ask them if we should deny immigrants housing, healthcare, eduction or all the other things that make up the cost for those immigrants, most people will say "no!". You can't have one without the other, but most people are far too "simple" to think stuff like this through.Again, I freely admit I'm not the one who should be making decission that effect the country as a whole, I'm far too stupid for that. But so are most of the people. A direct democracy would turn into a complete disaster very quickly.What if on the one hand people vote to "cut the deficit!" yet on the other hand vote for "a completely new and modernised infrastructure!". How do you suppose to reconcile those two things?

Exactly, how to prevent this with an utter idiotic public doing the listening. Even I sometimes find myself caught up in bullshit from time to time. I don;t even recognize it all the time. Especially not when it concerns difficult multilayered topics, like planning of the economy. Yes, and we can get to them if they make decissios that turn out to be mistakes. Or at least, we should be able to. That won't do the trick. Some people simply are idiots and can't be educated in every field there is. Especially economics can get very complicated an multilayered, there's no way an average joe could ever comprehend it. Oh yes, tremendoulsy more. Another example, what if the votes go like this: "less taxes!" ; "Cut the deficit!" ; "Better education" ; "Better Healthcare" ; "Free public transport". How the hell do you implement that? There's just no way. Very much. They've all got education levels I don't have. Also, in fields more relevant then my interests, which is mainly science. Ours was. Again, ours was. Actually they are. In both cases. But I agree with you, experts should be elected in the government, instead of "politicians". That's one thing I would like to change, and for which you'll have my full support. But letting the average Joe decide these things? I'm glad they can't. I never said that. Like I said, I fully support you when it comes to getting experts in the proper places. But I dread the day the average joe gets a say over things. I've given you examples of possible decissions made by the average joe voting crowd. These are impossible to implement. Outcome: "immigrants". Now what, you're gonna start denying them healthcare? Oh wait, there was another vote that said "everybody is entitled to completely free healthcare!" oops! Well, kick them out in the street then! Oh dear "Housing is a basic right for everyone, it should also be cheaper". Alright, I've got it, no education for them! But, they get to vote, so stupid people get to vote then. Oh shit, another problem "To propogate our newly formed direct democracy, education is a must and should therefore be free for everybody!". How in the world are you ever going to implement shit like that. It's fucking impossible. Nobody wants to make cuts that effect them, there's a majority to be found for virtually every "money costing" measure there is. Free public transport? Check! Cheaper and better healthcare? Check! Cheaper and better housing? Check! Less taxes? Check! Improved and modernised infrastructure? Check! And so on. It's impossible to implement all this and still have a workable budget.

Like I told Legend, I fully support his contention that experts should be in charge. If I could overthrow politicians and replace them with experts in their respective fields, I would do so in a heartbeeat.But to suggest then that since the politicians aren't experts in their respective fields, the public at large will do a better job, is utterly rediculous. If there is one thing I dread more than a politician, it's the idiocy of the masses.

I don't know if I followed all that, but did he just call stupid idiots stupid idiots? And this pissed off the stupid idiots? Or is there more to it?

In other words he told the truth for once, and now the truth is suddenly not good enough? Damn people are stupid. The "average voter" is a stupid idiot. What's even worse is that they apparently don't realize it. Quite.