[prog2djent]

(Original post by biggie)
scientists, engineers,
businessmen
lobbyist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

What if the actions of the state, some of the problems we have now, are the result of private, therefore business interests.
Most lobbyists are businesses.

[kka25]

Reading this.

[TheHistoryStudent]

(Original post by Chad_Bronson)
Wasn't that the only reason why people voted against AV? Lib Dem voters were left frothing at the mouth when Clegg sold them out - so naturally the public wanted to exert revenge however possible back at Nick Clegg.

I wonder how he sleeps at night...

I think that's probably the case amongst the Lib Dem's supporters, who bear in mind, were mostly students - it'd be only natural I think, for that particular demographic to vote no to AV purely based on the fee trebling. However other demographics I think voted no out of apathy, or because they were convinced by the No campaign.

And I think he sleeps at night with the knowledge that in all likelyhood he's probably killed his party's chances of ever being re-elected - and so continues the trend of Labour-Tory-Labour-Tory that we've had going for nearly the past century.

To illustrate the point, the last time anyone but Labour or the Tories were in power was during the Asquith government I think, which was roughly the turn of the 20th Century - yeah we had a few coalitions, but these were times of absoloute crisis, such as WW1, 2, and during the economic crisis of the 20s and 30s.

[Martyn*]

(Original post by internetguru)
Labour don't want to win because they agree with the current government's decisions.

This.

[biggie]

(Original post by callum9999)
I absolutely despise that ridiculous argument.

Being university educated in NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM means you cannot "understand" life without a university degree. If you stop and think about it, hopefully you can understand the absolute lunacy of such a claim.

Now that's what I call jumping to conclusions. At no point did I make the claim that university education is a bad thing and automatically renders you out of touch. I admit that my wording may appear confusing to some, but you are challenging an argument that I did not make, nor had any intention of making.

(Original post by callum9999)
As to "career politicians" being evil, if they are so bad I have absolutely no idea why so many people keep electing them year after year (the only way you could possibly be a life-long MP is to be good enough at the job to be constantly re-elected).

Because the system facilitates it. Anyone could get elected as an MP in certain seats, even a clothes peg could win in places like St Helens if it wore Labour colours.

Again, you are overreacting to what I have said. I do not advocate the removal of such politicians, I merely deride the fact that there are too many of them, and that Parliament is therefore unrepresentative. We lack people who have knowledge of what they govern; Michael Gove is a prime example. As a journalist, he is qualified to offer his opinions, but doesn't know the first thing about running education.

[Rennit]

(Original post by prog2djent)
With regards to the next general election, of course the lib dems are finnished, and the labour vs tory votes will be quite close IMO, with those that have moved to UKIP moving back to the tories to keep labour out (as the former move is, IMHO, a pressure/protest move against Cameron's so-called social liberalism and not tought enough economic/socio-economic policy). Those disillusioned with new-labour who moved to the Lib Dems in 2010, or those who went from labour to lib dem, to Green/socialist parties, I think will rally in support of labour to keep the Tories out.

I'm largely apathetic to it, nothing will really change, the parties are almost identical with regards to official line coming from Milliband.

But when we look at the labour front bench, I mean really, this is the best they have?

State for Culture, Media and Sport - Harriet Harman

Treasury - Ed Balls

Justice - Sadiq Khan

Home Office - Yvette Cooper

Business, Innovation & Skills - Chuka Umunna

Health - Diane Abbott/Andy Burnham (who?)

Work & Pensions - Hon Liam Byrne (who?)

Education - Stephen Twigg (who?)

Communities and Local Government - Hilary Benn (who?)

Equalities Office - Yvette Cooper

Transport - Maria Eagle (who?)

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - Mary Creagh (who?)

Sorry, are you saying that labour won't win the next election?
I smell a troll.

[prog2djent]

(Original post by Rennit)
Sorry, are you saying that labour won't win the next election?
I smell a troll.

Christ.

Do you even know what troll means? Its just that I see a fair few posts that come from some self-important hack going "I smell a troll", "2/10 ... troll" when the OP is clearly not trolling, and the idiot reponding seems to have just discovered "trolling" and now likes no point it out at everything, the whole "I smell a troll" really grinds my gears beacuse I see this phrase everywhere, THINK UP YOUR OWN GOD DAMN PHRASES, its just like "LOOOOOK AT MEEEE!!! LOOK AT ME POINT OUT THE TROLL AAAAAHHH BASQUE IN MY ******* GREATNESS HGFUOBGJGGHHBH BHUFRHEIUOJVJFLEDVKMDSJIOPRU*$£ R%*($"T%UEWnjeginrj"

[prog2djent]

(Original post by biggie)
1. "jumping to conclusions" - 2 "automically renders you out of touch"

3. "my wording may appear confusing to some - 2 "out of touch"

facilitates
advocate the removal of such politicians
I merely deride

Also, I really hate the phrase, sorry, soundbite ... "out of touch" with regards to politics/economics.

[simonc1993]

(Original post by TheHistoryStudent)
This to me. It does certainly seem that there is very little difference between the three big political parties, or even the people at the top of them to be honest, generally seem to be middle-upper class, male, usually white, university educated (and usually one of the better/top universities at that) and middle aged. It's hardly representative of all the people in the country, let alone their hopes, fears, desires and so on...

Although I voted against AV in the recent refurrendum (because I didn't think it'd be as good as PR and wanted to get back at Nick Clegg...), I do think that to an extent, proportional representation would be a good thing, purely so that the other parties have a fighting chance for getting their views across in parliament. Sure you'd get extremist parties such as the BNP in there but at the end of the day if that's who some people vote for that is who they vote for, the current system of election I feel, denies the smaller parties much of a voice in parliament, (which for maybe the past 70-80 years has just been a swap of Labour-Tory-Labour-Tory) and sometimes it's the smaller parties which represent people much more than the big nation-wide parties do.

You do realise now that seeing as the UK 'voted for FPTP' so to speak, there's no hope in hell of us ever getting a change in the voting system in the near future? It's not in the interest of the main parties and they'll use the: 'we gave you the chance before' rhetoric .

[Spaz Man]

They seriously need to get rid of Ed Balls and Harriet Harman to have any chance of winning the next election. Balls in particular is completely repulsive to the average voter and reeks of arrogance and hubris for a guy who was Brown's right hand man while all the asset bubbles were blowing up.

[Leon Trotsky]

Chuka Umunna will be Prime Minister one day. You heard it here first, lads.

[TheHistoryStudent]

(Original post by simonc1993)
You do realise now that seeing as the UK 'voted for FPTP' so to speak, there's no hope in hell of us ever getting a change in the voting system in the near future? It's not in the interest of the main parties and they'll use the: 'we gave you the chance before' rhetoric .

Yup, that's correct, it's not going to change at all for the forseeable future, of course that doesn't mean it's a good idea . As I say I think part of the problem with the AV vote was that it came after the debacle about student fees and the effective "stab in the back" as it were, by the Lib Dems of it's (then) largest goup of supporters - no matter what arguments (and there were some positive ones) the Yes campaign put forward, they were all, I think, carrying the loadstone of the student fees vote, with that heavily colouring anything they said.

As for myself whilst being generally apathetic about politics, whenever it comes to elections I always vote and I always (if I can) try to have a look at the main candidates ideas in my area to see which I like best - I vote with my head essentially, same went with the AV really, and I personally found it a poor alternative to PR (which would have been better) but not a good replacer for FPtP - hope that makes sense . I think it was down mainly to the fact that certain candidates could come first despite not initially getting a high number of votes, although since it was a while ago now I dont really remember or understand what the proposed system was now... In any case I just see PR as a much simpler and straight-forward system - one vote per person, number of votes gets that proportion of MPs to parliament, easy.

[Chad_Bronson]

(Original post by callum9999)
I absolutely despise that ridiculous argument.

Being university educated in NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM means you cannot "understand" life without a university degree. If you stop and think about it, hopefully you can understand the absolute lunacy of such a claim.

Moan all you want about how you think politicians don't care about the poor etc. - but them merely having a posh accent or attending a good school is NOT remotely relevant.

As to "career politicians" being evil, if they are so bad I have absolutely no idea why so many people keep electing them year after year (the only way you could possibly be a life-long MP is to be good enough at the job to be constantly re-elected).

I agree with you on this, but please don't be a fool and pretend that most politicians are not degree educated - because they are.

Attending a good school is more important than you might think. It seems to sift through the high flying and ambitious students, than the unambitious failures. Again, you would be a fool if you try to decline that.

Maybe if we had more ambitious individuals who want to be politicians, party leaders et al from working class backgrounds, we might be able to break away from the middle-upper class of people who become such things. Yes, Gordon Brown was from a working class background, but sadly he is in the minority of MPs (or PMs for that matter).

[callum9999]

(Original post by biggie)
Now that's what I call jumping to conclusions. At no point did I make the claim that university education is a bad thing and automatically renders you out of touch. I admit that my wording may appear confusing to some, but you are challenging an argument that I did not make, nor had any intention of making.



Because the system facilitates it. Anyone could get elected as an MP in certain seats, even a clothes peg could win in places like St Helens if it wore Labour colours.

Again, you are overreacting to what I have said. I do not advocate the removal of such politicians, I merely deride the fact that there are too many of them, and that Parliament is therefore unrepresentative. We lack people who have knowledge of what they govern; Michael Gove is a prime example. As a journalist, he is qualified to offer his opinions, but doesn't know the first thing about running education.

I did think that after I posted, but then there was zero need for you to even mention it at all if that was the case. Stick "university educated" before something you are moaning about it and it's hardly unreasonable to assume you're moaning about that as well (as many people do)!

So are you complaining about MPs or about Cabinet Ministers? I too think it's rather ludicrous that someone can be the Health minister one year then the Defence minister the next - but then I don't think it's a particularly big deal. It seems to be the civil servant experts and external experts conducting "reviews" etc. that come up with the policy/solutions and the relevant minister will then make a judgement based on that or present that to the Cabinet who will make a judgement. It does seem ridiculous, but then I guess it is going to be tough to have a defence expert, education expert, health expert etc. in each party when they are going to be out-of-work for most of their lives, and if they do get in then it's only going to be for 4/5 years at a time!

As to career politicians, I repeat - they are elected. Either you like democracy or you don't, you can't complain that it was morons or biased people etc. electing them (which incidently is why I dislike democracy so much anyway - the thought that the country is being governed based on the wishes of a bunch of greedy, idiotic and bone-idol people is rather disturbing!).

(Original post by Chad_Bronson)
I agree with you on this, but please don't be a fool and pretend that most politicians are not degree educated - because they are.

Attending a good school is more important than you might think. It seems to sift through the high flying and ambitious students, than the unambitious failures. Again, you would be a fool if you try to decline that.

Maybe if we had more ambitious individuals who want to be politicians, party leaders et al from working class backgrounds, we might be able to break away from the middle-upper class of people who become such things. Yes, Gordon Brown was from a working class background, but sadly he is in the minority of MPs (or PMs for that matter).

When did I say most aren't degree educated? I merely said it's utterly irrelevant.

That last bit is precisely my point. People moan continuously about politicians being "unrepresentative" of them (generally meaning "I couldn't name any of their policies bar the ones listed on the news last night, but I don't like paying tax and they sound a bit posh so they are therefore deliberately penalising me because they don't understand me) but if you dare suggest they do something to fix that...

[Chad_Bronson]

(Original post by callum9999)
When did I say most aren't degree educated? I merely said it's utterly irrelevant.

That last bit is precisely my point. People moan continuously about politicians being "unrepresentative" of them (generally meaning "I couldn't name any of their policies bar the ones listed on the news last night, but I don't like paying tax and they sound a bit posh so they are therefore deliberately penalising me because they don't understand me) but if you dare suggest they do something to fix that...

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. If it really was truly and utterly irrelevant as you say, why is it that the people who do represent us are continually churned out of University educated systems? If it is utterly irrelevant, why are we not seeing more from working class / deprived backgrounds?

Precisely that. A lot of working class students, like myself, are hard working and ambitious, but many aren't. Politicians will never, ever represent the hard working majority of this country.

You can't argue with the facts most politicians are from University backgrounds. They work hard, they get results. End of.

[callum9999]

(Original post by Chad_Bronson)
I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. If it really was truly and utterly irrelevant as you say, why is it that the people who do represent us are continually churned out of University educated systems? If it is utterly irrelevant, why are we not seeing more from working class / deprived backgrounds?

Precisely that. A lot of working class students, like myself, are hard working and ambitious, but many aren't. Politicians will never, ever represent the hard working majority of this country.

You can't argue with the facts most politicians are from University backgrounds. They work hard, they get results. End of.

Because most of those people either do not care about the Government or are bone idol?

I AM NOT arguing that most politicians aren't from university educated. FOR THE THIRD AND FINAL TIME I am saying it's irrelevant. And no, it most certainly is not a FACT that if you've been to university you are unable to represent people who haven't been to university - that sounds like the logical deduction of a 5 year old. Give me a SINGLE reason why they can't represent uneducated people just because they themselves are educated.

The idea that Parliament needs to be exactly the same in demographics as the population is utterly ridiculous. A white man can represent a black man, a rich woman can represent a poor man, an uneducated trans-gender person can represent a pensioner.

[Chad_Bronson]

(Original post by callum9999)
Because most of those people either do not care about the Government or are bone idol?

I AM NOT arguing that most politicians aren't from university educated. FOR THE THIRD AND FINAL TIME I am saying it's irrelevant. And no, it most certainly is not a FACT that if you've been to university you are unable to represent people who haven't been to university - that sounds like the logical deduction of a 5 year old. Give me a SINGLE reason why they can't represent uneducated people just because they themselves are educated.

The idea that Parliament needs to be exactly the same in demographics as the population is utterly ridiculous. A white man can represent a black man, a rich woman can represent a poor man, an uneducated trans-gender person can represent a pensioner.

Please, Callum, there is no need to raise your voice and get uppity. I'm explaining my argument and your glistening arrogance is not helping the situation. If I may continue?

I am not disputing whether or not University graduates represent us as a whole, because that's not the case; I agree with you entirely on some of your points. University doesn't guarentee a ticket into politics, but because they are mostly graduates from Uni, it gives politics a hard working and snobbish attitude.

You seemed to have countered your own argument with your first line - most people who are, to quote "Do not care about the Government or are bone idol" - That's just it. The majority of the people don't care about political issues. Whatever race, colour or creed people are from they represent the views and interests of a political party.

University is indeed irrelevant, I agree with you on that. But having the so called representatives to represent other people from different background is absolute nonsense.

If you watch the news, you will hear David Cameron is regularly accused of being out of touch with the British public because he is from a wealthy background. Don't even bother saying that is a representation of Britain - because a lot of us are not from wealthy backgrounds.

Brown was an absolute disaster both as an MP, chancellor and PM, but I had respect for him because he worked his way out of poverty to become something.

Politicians do represent the uneducated people of Britain, because the representatives act as a "glove" to try and encapsulate everyone. What exactly are you trying to get at, Callum?

[Samd603]

Labour could fill their front bench with Cornish pasties and they'd still have the same troop of unemployed, immigrants, teenage mums and radical lefty students voting for them.

[Chad_Bronson]

(Original post by Samd603)
Labour could fill their front bench with Cornish pasties and they'd still have the same troop of unemployed, immigrants, teenage mums and radical lefty students voting for them.

Seems to be a lot of hate for Labour on this thread. Unless I'm missing something and dismissing Brown's failed tax and spend policies by using the nation as a credit card, what did Labour do that was so drastically wrong?

[Hopple]

(Original post by Chad_Bronson)
Seems to be a lot of hate for Labour on this thread. Unless I'm missing something and dismissing Brown's failed tax and spend policies by using the nation as a credit card, what did Labour do that was so drastically wrong?

Why have you dismissed the main thing? People care about the economy, and it went to pot under Labour.