The General Election Thread

[JoceAndChris]

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. " Thoreau

Would that every politician could live, and think, as he did, even just for a moment.

I don't think I'll vote at all. I just don't see it as remotely relevant to anything that matters.

 

[Nigel Watts]

William Morris was a great man but his utopian vision was...

thwarted by the relentless greed of the capitalists who ...

built factories to mass produce products at a low cost that ordinary people could afford, thereby increasing their standard of living and providing them with large numbers of jobs, while Morris's appoach only employed a tiny number of skilled artisans to produce exquisite things which were only afforable by the rich, many of whom were the self same greedy capitalists.

I agree that a new, more sustainable, way of living needs to be found in the future, but it has to be practical and not involve an excessive curtailment of individual freedom - otherwise it simply wont work. A modified form of capitalism, for example one which factors in the environmental cost, seems to me a more realistic mechanism for getting there.

 

[Schoolmarm]

I don't think I'll vote at all. I just don't see it as remotely relevant to anything that matters.

Please go and write on a voting slip though. xx

 

[LadyArowana]

I'm starting with http://www.treansitiontownlouth.org.uk

I was waiting for Mr P to say something witty and propose http://www.transitiontownlouth.org.uk/ instead.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I don't think I'll vote at all. I just don't see it as remotely relevant to anything that matters.

Please go and write on a voting slip though. xx

! :lol: xxx

What would I write? It would have to be a complete Luna Lovegood spaz-out - that what interests me is not national debts and economic growth and somehow new improved schools and hospitals but toasted currant buns with melted butter, the slow unfurling of spring leaves, the golden glimpse of an old stone house through rusted wrought iron, the friendly tapping of rain on the roof.

 

[Pford75]

And if democracy doesn't deliver the results that Greenpeace want...at least we now know they plan to resort to violence :!:

http://weblog.greenpeace.org/climate/2010/04/will_the_real_climategate_plea_1.html

How comforting to know that they are up there with the very best of facist regimes ("we know where you live....")

Really, i'm lost for words.

 

[Schoolmarm]

What would I write? It would have to be a complete Luna Lovegood spaz-out - that what interests me is not national debts and economic growth and somehow new improved schools and hospitals but toasted currant buns with melted butter, the slow unfurling of spring leaves, the golden glimpse of an old stone house through rusted wrought iron, the friendly tapping of rain on the roof.

Lol! You have to spoil your paper or write that you didn't want to choose one of the above parties etc. Then it will be counted as a spoilt paper or abstention instead of going in the figures for not turning out.

 

[Penners]

I was waiting for Mr P to say something witty

Yup - me too. :roll:

I don't think I'll vote at all.

Not voting is the very worst thing you can do. The entire democratic system relies on each citizen exercising their right to vote. And of course if you don't vote, then you forego your moral right to complain about the next Government. And I'll bet you a silver spoon to a fresh egg that you'll want to - sooner or later. :wink:

Don't forget what Winston Churchill said:-

democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Joce,

People the world over die for the chance to spoil their ballot papers.....blah blah.....civic duty.......blah blah.......King's horse........blah blah....

You know the arguments. Your know your duty. Besides, Emily Pankhurst wore some fab outfits!

 

[Schoolmarm]

I always vote though. Even though I said about spoiling papers.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, OK. Chris will make me vote Conservative anyway. He'll jump up and down about IR35 and say that if I don't vote Conservative I jeopardise my chances of any more Farrow and Ball paint.

That thing that anti-feminists used to say - "any woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself" - I never found it to work.

As long as I can wear a large hat there will be some joy in the whole boring process.

 

[yamin]

I'll vote of course, but wish the parties were more poilitically divided! I mean, unless you take a big interest in these things and examine the manifestos then its very hard to see how any of them differ, or how any of them is going to do a better job! I hope there are lots of informed people about to make educated decisions, but as far as I'm concerned it seems like I could vote for Mickey Mouse and not a lot would change, for better or for worse. The old orators of decades back (Anyone seen 'Our Friens In the North?) may have been all about the hype, but at least they seperated themselves from each other.

I suppose like modern inventions, the differences always come down to minutiae in the en, because the earlier decades/centuries took care of all the big big stuff (I'm sure I'm ignorant and someone will correct me, but thats how I feel!)

I shall vote, and it may just be a vote to 'try the other side', not that I feel any particular disgust with what we have at the moment - although my one opinion is that I don't like having a Prime Minister that has not been voted in by the public. There, I am political!!!! Who knew??

 

[biffvernon]

http://www.transitiontownlouth.org.uk/ instead.

Thankyou.

 

[biffvernon]

built factories to mass produce products at a low cost that ordinary people could afford, thereby increasing their standard of living and providing them with large numbers of jobs,

While superficially attractive it is exactly this which has led us to burning the coal and then the oil. When it results in the collapse of civilization and perhaps the extinction of the human race 'their standard of living' will appear a hollow achievement.

Quality of life, both for us and future generations, must be the measure, not past standard of living. But these issues are not part of the electoral discourse. The sheeple just don't get it.

 

[Penners]

Quality of life, both for us and future generations, must be the measure

The trouble is that quality of life is a highly subjective concept. One person's rural idyll is another's primitive peasantry.

 

[yamin]

When it results in the collapse of civilization and perhaps the extinction of the human race 'their standard of living' will appear a hollow achievement.

To you I'm sure it does, to those who's lives were made bearable maybe not. I begin to wonder if with past debates always being punctuated by 'that won't work', 'thats not enough' 'things will only get worse', we wouldn't be better off accepting our inevitable demise on the grounds that it seems we can never do enough to reverse the alleged progress of destruction.

The sheeple just don't get it.

Well, that shoul get us on side! :?

 

[biffvernon]

Oh my life has been made bearable. Positively luxurious compared to that which most of humanity for most of history has put up with. My point is that it has been at the cost of bad stuff happening to generations not yet born. For some strange reason I do care about them. Rather in the same way that I care that houses survive into the future when I am no longer here.

Maybe some folk on this forum only care for their period properties while they themselves can enjoy them but don't care about demolition thereafter. That's not me. I like making windows that I think have a good chance of being useful in a couple of hundred years. They won't be useful if there's nobody left to look out through them. That's why I think an interest in period properties is more than an interest in the past. It is just as much about the future.

Sheeple believe what they are told and they are told to live for the now. Never mind about global warming, the important thing is that if you earn more than £20000 you might have to pay more on your National Insurance.

 

[JoceAndChris]

There, I am political!!!! Who knew??

:lol: I like this new political Abi. What politics needs is more girls, like in Italy.

 

[DaveBrigg]

Now Pford, that's rather unfair to bring real-world evidence of outcomes to bear against the list of tractor production statistics about inputs/outputs!

I didn't notice any evidence of real world outcomes beyond an anecdotal grumble that someone who has presumably graduated with an IT qualification may not be similarly qualified in English. I'm not sure that there ever was a golden age when everyone left school fully literate; perhaps the difference is that many of those who graduate now would have been previously written off aged 16 (or 14). However, the Government has listened to the CBI, and a new Functional Skills qualification has already been through its pilot phase before being implemented nationwide.

The argument that we now have to rely on immigrant labour for unskilled tasks has been raised by others, but strangely enough none of those I have spoken to want these jobs for themselves or their own children. Maybe there is an anonymous group of 'other' people in this country whose ambition is to take their child out of college to pick cauliflowers for the minimum wage.

In our school all classroom support assistants are qualified. As pointed out, there are two levels, and the training covers a range of issues, including teaching skills. The CSA's are always better qualified than the pupils they work with. However, I know that in some primary schools, non-teaching adults are encouraged to help in the classroom, for example listening to pupils read. Since most adults have a reading age well above a six year old, this would appear to be a worthwhile scheme. These adults do not plan lessons, teach the class or produce National Curriculum assessments.

FamilyWiggs has a valid point that this investment in education costs money. It is the job of governments to decide how important education is, and fund it accordingly. I believe that there was a desperate need for education to be improved, and welcomed a government which looked to the long-term future of this country. Others may disagree.

The 'tractor production statistics' is presumably a reference to Stalinism, and a phrase I've encountered before when the facts do not support a particular dogma. If the facts are wrong, correct them, but imho, an opinion which dismisses any inconvenient evidence loses some of its validity.

 

[Nigel Watts]

built factories to mass produce products at a low cost that ordinary people could afford, thereby increasing their standard of living and providing them with large numbers of jobs,

While superficially attractive it is exactly this which has led us to burning the coal and then the oil. When it results in the collapse of civilization and perhaps the extinction of the human race 'their standard of living' will appear a hollow achievement.

Quality of life, both for us and future generations, must be the measure, not past standard of living. But these issues are not part of the electoral discourse. The sheeple just don't get it.

Biff you are right in so many ways, but its like trying to persuade someone to go on a diet or give up smoking - we know it would be good for us but we just dont have the willpower.

I have huge sympathy for the views of Ruskin and Morris but I dont see a workable political or economic system there. Technological solutions and free enterprise tempered to reduce its damaging side effects, not a retreat into a romanticised mediaevalism, is what we should be looking for. Factories, for example, can be run on sustainable power and dont need to be polluting; genetically modified crops can improve yields for poor farmers in the third world and dont just have to be about Monsanto selling more herbicide.