Cameron: UK public is fine with domestic spying Recent disclosures over domestic surveillance and GCHQ spying on citizens aren't much of an issue to the public, according to Prime Minister David Cameron. Speaking to Parliament on the government's National Security Strategy, the Prime Minister said that while the media has made a stink about Edward Snowden's disclosures on …
I don't know. My money's on stupid, because that's consistent with his obsession about foreign aid, and his persistent attacks on anything that might be termed core conservative values or voters. I suppose that's what you get by electing rich boy Oxbridge twats for you party leader,
I'd like the see the smug rich fucker burned at the stake.
"Nigel Farage will lead us out of the darkness! Viva il Duce!"
What options are there?
Not voting achieves nothing because there's no de minimis or quorum of voters that has to be achieved to elect MPs. The three main parties have all shown themselves incompetent and dishonest, with a happy enthusiasm for treating government as a trough at which they take turns, and there's precious little to choose between their policies when you stand back. Voting for that rubber faced champagne socialist Millitwat will leave us with the same policies as the current lot, just with some Canute style window dressing on energy bills, and the usual Labour enthusiasm for more laws, more red tape, and higher public spending. Liberals have shown themselves as only fit to be a minority opposition party. And there seems to be universal agreement that Cameron is an unelectable, out of touch arsehole. All three parties routinely make promises that they don't deliver on, all three are big-state enthusiasts who think mass surveillance is the best thing since their last pay rise.
Farage may be a loon, and I can't see UKIP winning many seats. But by voting UKIP I hope to (collectively) deny the Conservatives victory until they have policies I will be happy with, and a leader who isn't an arse.
"What options are there?"
Tactical voting. Careful, considered tactical voting.
I've said some of this before, so apologies for the repetition:
A lot of MPs are only in place due to voter apathy. If turnouts were a lot higher, and people who don't like any of the big three were to follow two simple rules, the complacent big parties would receive a very bloody nose indeed. Don't think that spoiling your paper makes a blind bit of difference, by the way - it doesn't. Spoilt papers go straight in the bin.
Y'see, the argument that it's not worth voting because of the large Tory / Labour / whatever majority doesn't always hold water. If enough of the refuseniks were to do as I'm suggesting, there could be some serious upsets for all the big complacent three.
If you normally can't be bothered to vote, just forget about all the manifestos, broken promises, patronising bullshit and general piss and wind, and just follow one of these two simple tactical voting rules:
1: Vote for the most popular candidate other than the big three. Doesn't matter which party.
2. If it's only the big three, vote for the candidate that came third last time.
And remember this - it doesn't matter which party.
The last Home Secretary, Jacqboot Smith (no relation, thankfully) came in for some well-deserved contempt from El Reg. If those simple rules had been followed, she wouldn't have been elected. Here is her 2005 result. Stats are taken from the Electoral Commission's website (www.electoralcommission.org.uk):
Redditch had a total electoral roll of 63,150. The valid votes were cast as follows:
Smith, J.J. Ms (Labour): 18,012
Lumley, K.E. Ms (Conservative): 15,296
Hicks, N.S. (Liberal Democrat): 5,602
Ison, J.P. (UKIP) 1,381
That gave the Jacqboot a majority of 2,716.
63,150 - (18,012+15,296 + 5,602 + 1,381) = 22,859 people who were registered to vote but didn't.
Let us assume that 10% of these genuinely couldn't vote, as opposed to couldn't be bothered to. That gives us 20,573, rounding down.
Applying rule 1 gives us this:
Smith, J.J. Ms (Labour): 18,012
Lumley, K.E. Ms (Conservative): 15,296
Hicks, N.S. (Liberal Democrat): 5,602
Ison, J.P. (UKIP) 1,381 + 20,573 = 21,954.
So the UKIP would have won with a majority of 3,942. That's 1,226 more than Jacqboot's majority and without taking swinging voters into account.
Not even safe seats are immune from this. Here's the 2005 result for Gordon Brown:
Registered electors for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath: 71,603.
There were 41,796 valid votes, cast as follows:
Brown, G. (Labour): 24,278
Bath, A.T. (Scottish National Party): 6,062
Cole-Hamilton, A.G. (Liberal Democrat): 5,450
Randall, S.R. (Conservative): 4,308
West, S.C. (Scottish Socialist Party): 666
Adams, P. (UK Independence Party): 516
Parker, J. (Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party): 425
Kwantes, E.S. Ms. (Independent): 47
Sargent, P. Ms. (Independent): 44
Gordon Brown won with a majority of 18,216.
This time, there were 28,807 refuseniks. Taking off an assumed 10% genuine reasons leaves 26,826. All they would have had to do was vote for Ms Sargent - that would have been enough to dispose of Paw Broon.
And if that had been repeated across the country, the House of Commons would have looked very, very different. In fact, it would look like this if only half the apathetic voters had made the effort in 2005:
This was the actual result:
Labour 355
Conservative 198
Liberal Democrat 62
Democratic Unionist Party 9
Scottish National Party 6
Sinn Féin 5
Plaid Cymru 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party 3
Ulster Unionist Party 1
Speaker 1
Your Party 1
Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern 1
Respect/Unity Coalition 1
If 50% of refuseniks had pulled their fingers out, this would have been the result:
Labour 262
Conservative 192
Liberal Democrat 58
SNP 35
Green 25
British National Party 18
Plaid Cymru 11
UK Independence Party 10
Democratic Unionist Party 9
Respect/Unity Coalition 8
Sinn Féin 5
Independent 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party 3
Veritas 1
Ulster Unionist Party 1
Speaker 1
Your Party 1
Liberal Party 1
Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern 1
National Front 1
There would have been one tied vote between the BNP and UKIP.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert in political analysis. And I don't particularly like the idea of seeing fascists in the House of Commons. But the boot up the arse that a result like that would give all three groups of self-satisfied smug gitbags would force them to take a serious look at themselves and how they dealt with the people who they ask to put them in power.
"Now, I don't claim to be an expert in political analysis...."
Well you're setting out a stall for some form of analysis. I think your "rule 1" falls at a fairly early hurdle because a very large proportion of people don't vote because the three party system is so broken that they can't see the point. That's not going to change any time soon.
And looking at your parliamentary analysis, the outcome of your hoped for "50% of refuseniks to vote" would simply have been a Labour led coalition including the Liberals and a handful of other generally left wing parties. Would that have been any better? I doubt it. It would have been worse because all the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted would have gone ahead, and then you'd have "golden wish" gifts to the minority members. That sort of "golden wish" shit is why Germany is carping on at the rest of Europe over carbon even as it shuts down good quality, safe nuclear power plants, and tries to ignore industry screaming that it can't compete with the ludicrous energy prices.
So I come back to why UKIP makes sense. For both parties, they've ignored voters concerns about immigration and about Europe for too long, and they still won't do anything about either. Clearly the drippy conservative leadership are not listening this time, but maybe they will after a further five years on the house of commons cheap seats. The Labour party might want to also consider who they claim to represent, because they are in a similarly poor position, and currently look set to win the next election simply by not being the current government.
If in the meanwhile we have a bit of colour added to the otherwise drab, ineffectual house of commons, that has to be a good thing.
"I think your "rule 1" falls at a fairly early hurdle because a very large proportion of people don't vote because the three party system is so broken that they can't see the point. That's not going to change any time soon."
Er, that was EXACTLY my point. IF enough people who can't see the point were to follow those rules, they'd see one hell of a difference. And yes, I know it won't change overnight. But it is theoretically possible if enough people got off their backsides once every five years.
You may be right about a Labour-led coalition, but who would they link up with? Another Lib-Lab pact would only have given them 310 seats - still not enough for a majority.
"It would have been worse because all the damage that Blair and Brown inflicted would have gone ahead, and then you'd have "golden wish" gifts to the minority members,"
I don't doubt that. The idea behind this sort of tactical voting is not to bring in some sort of wonderful, caring libertarian government - that ain't gonna happen - but instead to flip the bird in a big way to the complacent incumbents and (hopefully) make them realise that they can't count on us obedient little sheep to vote how they expect us to.
On that note, you might like to know that if 90% of the refuseniks had followed those rules in 2005, UKIP would have gained 205 seats, followed by the Greens with 83, and the BNP with 79. The Tories would have won 77 seats, the Lib Dems 32 and Labour would have won all of 10 seats. Yep, ten.
"So I come back to why UKIP makes sense. For both parties, they've ignored voters concerns about immigration and about Europe for too long,"
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one :-) My view of UKIP is that they combine the worst aspects of President Blair's Politburo with the more invidious policies of the BNP.
But that is just MHO, of course.
"Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one :-) My view of UKIP is that they combine the worst aspects of President Blair's Politburo with the more invidious policies of the BNP."
So very much a "protest vote" strategy.
But it sounds like an effective protest vote strategy. I salute you (with a beer).
Next question is of course do those generally hacked off non-voters know where to find what the order across the finishing line last time was?
> So I come back to why UKIP makes sense. For both parties, they've ignored voters concerns about immigration
Aha. A bit long winded but you finally came to the point.
But I do agree with you: we're not getting anywhere enough immigrants to maintain a viable economy as the population ages out of working life.
It's far worse than that, the choice is a illusion for most if not all parties; it is just a game of musical toilet seats on a broken system (sewer). This political sewer needs to be replaced with something which is not a turd statute transport; where career politics, party politics, and lobbying are regarded as disgusting treason; where people who pay for the support structures actually have say, so pay a far less via taxes (including inflation and red tape), not the illusion of say via self-interested 'representatives', con artist, fraudster, career politicians. We need proper law, not this fraud called legal. We also need to replace the deeply linked fraud based financial sector, so that never again can politicians have debt based fiat currency to bribe people to stupidly vote in bankrupt socialist ideology, corrupt politicians, and corrupt government, while ripping them off with inflation, fraudulent state debt, and attached debt taxation!
The only time I will vote is when I think it will lead to replacement of the current sewer with something better, otherwise it is a pointless waste of my time; I consider, but am wary that the UKIP could be another fake option.
"'Nigel Farage will lead us out of the darkness! Viva il Duce!' What options are there?"
Well, personally, I'm probably going to vote "Yes" in the Scottish independence referendum if only because it will mean there will be no significant Tory influence in the running of the country I'll be living in for the foreseeable future (and longer than that if the Yes vote is successful, so that I don't have to worry about what the Tories are going to take away next, unless Yorkshire decides to go for it next).
The Conservative Policy Forum did ask me and others.
OK, mostly they asked about policing matters such as CCTV surveillance and stop-and-search. But inevitably, as a free people, we discussed Snowden.
Yes, average age 67, but poking our political bugles into public forums like this one, our consensus was as Cameron stated.
As to what Conservatives think of Cameron, is that fit for the esteemed Register to print?
Not on this story .... compare and contrast the stories on the front of the Guardian/Independent with Sun/Express/Mail. On the one hand 'Ed Snowden announces latest spying outrage' and on the other either 'Some horror story where intelligence services didn't spy enough' or 'Intelligence service success story'.
Now think which newspapers do more of the public read?
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He doesn't have any sense...
I know he would like to think that we think he and his minions are doing a really good job saving us from those awful terrorist.
The reality is the terrorist threat barely exists, if it were more significant he still wouldn't be able to save us from it and overall he is just pissing away vast amounts of our money, privacy, and liberty to support those lies.
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