UK Elections

[seremtan]

what the actual fuck...?

[Mat Linnett]

How the fuck did that happen?

[phantasmagoria]

[Ryoki]

Seriously, you guys have a weird weird electoral system, been trying to understand it a little but what the fuck?

[Eraser]

I still don't understand how you can call this winner-takes-all/district type of election "democratic".

[syp0s]

People in the UK pretend to be left wing, because it's seen as cool to be "for the people", but when it comes to the crunch, they only care about themselves, and vote accordingly.

Or, they're over 50 and haven't got any money, so just vote labour again because their parents did.

[Ryoki]

Indeed.

For you Brits, here's a thingie about some of the things that puzzle the hell out of us mainlanders: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-europe

[syp0s]

It's definitely weird, I got laughed at on a job recently after admitting that I've only just understood how it works in the last few months. Even when you understand it, it still doesn't make any sense.

[Eraser]

Just heard that the UKIP number in that chart is off by a factor 10: They got 3 million votes (and only 1 seat).

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Was it a paper ballot election? tia

[Eraser]

They've got a nice looking infographic here:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicd ... calculator

The ring segments signify each party’s share of the vote. Each filled square denotes a seat won by the party; each empty square shows additional seats it would have gained under a directly proportional system. Seats outside the ring represent those obtained beyond proportional allocation.

Clearly shows how unfair the first-past-the-post system is. As a voter, I'd be rightly pissed off if a considerable percentage of the votes practically goes to waste.

[Ryoki]

Jesus what the fuck

[scared?]

It's definitely weird, I got laughed at on a job recently after admitting that I've only just understood how it works in the last few months. Even when you understand it, it still doesn't make any sense.

Nice job regurgitating what the pundits say verbatim... The reality is the elections are rigged... There is no democracy... Grow the fuck little man... ...

[syp0s]

That makes no sense, I don't think any pundits have admitted that they don't know how the electoral system works.

[seremtan]

the BBC has some useful info too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

somehow the Tories managed a tiny majority with only a 0.8% increase in their vote share, and a mere 36% overall

meanwhile UKIP got 2 1/2 times more votes than SNP (not to mention a huge 9.5% increase in vote share) and ended up with one seat

of course, nobody complains about UKIP's gross under-representation since every media outlet bar the Daily Express hates them

[syp0s]

Jesus, you don't really realise what a kicking the Lib Dems took until you see it on a graph. That is catastrophic.

[vesp]

Well, we don't use a proportional representation system.. so. yeh. total number of votes doesn't mean too much.

The SNP appear to have a lot more seats than their overall number of votes would account for because Scotland has quite a lot of constituency areas with low population numbers, so a lot less votes are needed for a win (e.g. Orkney & Shetland isles and the outer hebrides).

It's about bums on seats in parliament, not total number of votes.

I remember the alternative voting system was rejected in the UK a few years back in a referendum. The apparent rise of smaller political parties in the UK might prompt some more questions however, particularly as Labour look to be so weak - we could have Tory dominated politics for the foreseeable future if we stick with FPTP!

[seremtan]

Jesus, you don't really realise what a kicking the Lib Dems took until you see it on a graph. That is catastrophic.

they were the night's only absolute losers. even Labour managed to increase its vote share. LOL

Orkney & Shetland

ironically still held by the Lib Dems iirc

[Don Carlos]

Lots of people are surprised...I am not in the slightest. Ed was a skunk who I wouldn't trust with scissors

[losCHUNK]

Fucking Tory CUNT

Welsh elections I'm voting plaid, getting as far away as possible from you bunch of crooks.

With reguard to the fptp system, it's fucked. Collectively the centre left outweigh the right but thanks to the system were stuck with a right wing party.

[lvlshot]http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z28/maplefootball/Election%202015%20%20%20BBC%20News_zpskxnumcz7.png[/lvlshot]

Maggie found out you can piss off a good portion of the population and still get elected. It's like voting for your own dictator.

[losCHUNK]

Lots of people are surprised...I am not in the slightest. Ed was a skunk who I wouldn't trust with scissors

So trust the guy that's already talked through his arse ?


We will balance the books by 2015
THE TRUTH: Britain still has a budget deficit of £90billion

We will pay down Britain’s debts
THE TRUTH: George Osborne has borrowed over £500billion in five years - more than Labour did in 13

We will get net immigration down to the tens of thousands
THE TRUTH: Net immigration is almost 300,000 per year

No more top-down reorganisations of the NHS
THE TRUTH: £3billion wasted on the biggest reorganisation in NHS history

We will improve your living standards
THE TRUTH: Families £1,600-a-year worse off than in 2010

We will deport more foreign criminals
THE TRUTH: The number of foreign crooks on our streets soars 20%

We will keep our nation’s defences strong
THE TRUTH: Army hacked back by 20,000 troops to its lowest level since the Napoleonic wars

We will not raise VAT
THE TRUTH: VAT hiked to 20%, costing the average family £450-a-year

We will protect the vulnerable from the cuts
THE TRUTH: Cruel welfare sanctions force one million people to use food banks

We’re all in it together
THE TRUTH: Millionaires get a £100,000-a-year tax cut - the poor get the £15-a-week Bedroom Tax

GP access promised 12 hours a day, seven days a week
THE TRUTH: Patients face a 10-day wait to see their family doctor

We will get tough on illegal immigrants
THE TRUTH: Home Office loses track of 174,000 illegal immigrants

We will get tough on tax avoidance
THE TRUTH: The Treasury is still missing out on an estimated £34billion a year

We will stop the closure of A&E and maternity wards
THE TRUTH: Dozens closed or downgraded since 2010

We will cut the number of MPs by 10%
THE TRUTH: Not a single MP has been cut

We will get Britain building again
THE TRUTH: Lowest level of house-building since the war

We will have more small schools with smaller class sizes
THE TRUTH: Number of infants in oversized classes up 200%

We will protect front-line policing
THE TRUTH: 17,000 cops get the boot

We will support families through the tax and benefits system
THE TRUTH: The average family loses £1,100 through tax and benefit changes

We will be the Greenest Government Ever
THE TRUTH: Cameron tells his Ministers to “cut the green cr*p”

We will work towards ending child poverty by 2020
THE TRUTH: 300,000 more kids plunged into poverty

We will enhance the status of teachers
THE TRUTH: Teachers’ pay cut in real terms year after year and their status publicly attacked from Michael Gove

We will revolutionise cancer care
THE TRUTH: The key cancer treatment waiting time target missed for the past four quarters

We will cut the number of highly-paid special advisers in Government
THE TRUTH: Number of special advisers soars by 50%

We will support and improve Sure Start
THE TRUTH: 763 Sure Start centres closed and many more scaled down

We will break down barriers between health and social care
THE TRUTH: Social care funding slashed by £3.5billion as part of attack on town hall budgets

We will restore trust in politics
THE TRUTH: The Tories trouser £30million in donations from hedge funds – which were given a huge tax cut in 2013

We will protect our NHS
THE TRUTH: 40% of NHS contracts handed to private health firms

We will revolutionise prisoner rehab
THE TRUTH: Prison escapes, assaults and suicides all soar as inmates are locked in overcrowded cells for 23 hours a day

We will increase spending on vital flood defences
THE TRUTH: Flood defence spending cut by £247million – and thousands of homes are flooded

We will fight for the union
THE TRUTH: Cameron talks up the SNP to punish Labour and unveils plans to downgrade Scottish MPs at Westminster

We will tackle inequality
THE TRUTH: The richest 1% of Britons now own the same amount of wealth as 54% of the population.

We will treat white collar crime as seriously as other crimes
THE TRUTH: 90% of cyber-crime is allowed to go undetected

No more winter crises in hospital
THE TRUTH: A&E departments in meltdown with one in five patients not seen within the four hour target.

We will invest in our schools
THE TRUTH: Plans to build more than 700 new schools across Britain brutally axed

We will help the disabled into suitable jobs
THE TRUTH: Remploy factories shut down and disabled people subjected to cruel Atos tests

We will make our borders more secure
THE TRUTH: Customs checks for dangerous drugs and weapons scaled back dramatically

We will keep supporting our young people
THE TRUTH: More than 2,000 youth workers axed and at least 350 youth centres closed

We will create security for British businesses
THE TRUTH: HSBC is amongst a raft of UK firms unsettled by Cameron’s EU referendum pledge.

We will not means-test child benefit
THE TRUTH: Child benefit means-tested and then cut for better-off families

We have no plans to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We have no plans to get rid of Labour’s Future Jobs Fund
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We will improve Britain’s productivity
THE TRUTH: Productivity is 21% lower than the G7 average

We will deal with long-term unemployment with our ‘Work Programme’
THE TRUTH: More than 650,000 people are left off work for more than a year.

We will bring in 3,000 more midwives
THE TRUTH: Cameron misses his target by almost a third

We will create the “right sort of jobs” to spread prosperity “for the many not the few”
THE TRUTH: 1.7million zero hours contracts handed out in Cameron’s low-pay Britain

No-one will be made homeless by our welfare cuts
THE TRUTH: Rough sleeping up 55% since 2010

We will not allow cuts to front-line services
THE TRUTH: Services are cut across the board, from nearly 500 public libraries to over 1,000 lollipop ladies

We will not cut the NHS
THE TRUTH: The NHS is forced to find £5billion of ‘efficiency savings’ – cuts by any other name

We will have head-to-head TV debates like in 2010
THE TRUTH: Cameron was too chicken to take part

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ge ... es-5648458

[vesp]

Orkney & Shetland

ironically still held by the Lib Dems iirc

Yup, but only by about 900 votes - a miniscule amount in the grand scheme of things, and representative of FPTP system - that seat "cost" only 9,407 votes whereas the East Ham constituency had over 40,000 votes for one labour seat.

It is crazy, as Chunk says, that we have a right-wing government but most of the country didn't vote that way.

[Don Carlos]

Does that make Ed less of a skunk in any way?

[losCHUNK]

When You have a known skunk and a potential skunk, yes it does.

Ed also got to where he was without owing anyone any favours. He also done a lot as leader of the oppo, like stopping the BSkyB monopoly bid by news corp, strikes on Syria and recognising Palestine as a country, all against the wishes of the Torys. He's done alright in my book.

[syp0s]

Ed also got to where he was without owing anyone any favours.

That's total speculation that you can't possibly prove. It's also likely completely wrong. Attaining leadership of a major political party and not owning favours at the end of it?

Ed doesn't seem a terrifically evil human being, but come on.. He's as dirty as everyone in Westminster, and he played by the same dirty rulebook as the rest of them.