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On May 08 2015 17:29 Gowerly wrote:This is pretty sad. Conservatives have hobbled the UK's growth out of this recession with Austerity (see http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2015/05/02/britain-for-the-love-of-god-please-stop-david-cameron/) and the UK has decided to vote them back in, it's a shame. And our system is idiotic. Conservatives with 47% of the seats (at the moment) and 36% of the vote. I can't believe we turned down the electoral reform. However, this was bound to happen. With Labour stronghold Scotland going to SNP and a lot of the LibDem seats going back to Tory, the victory wasn't really in too much question. This is going to be a tough 5 years if you're not already well-off.
Yeah the blog written by the student that went viral is hilarious. I work for an investment bank so yes people are very biased, but we also have some serious economic knowledge, and we were laughing at it at work as it was passed round lync chat. A very simplified counter to that post:
Austerity is about cutting the deficit because a) You have to pay debt back at some point, b) Better to pay early rather than later (like any loan) and c) we needed to reduce the deficit to keep our credit rating after the crash, if we spent recklessly it would should we had less intent to pay our debts in a timely manner, hence decreasing confidence in our ability/willingness to pay back debt. This is turn could have affected our credit ratings as well as increased rates at which people were willing to lend to the UK government.
The article misses this and tries to claim that people think Austerity creates growth, which im not sure anyone said. But to then say it actually reduced growth is wrong. It compares us to countries that have different exposure to the US sub-prime mortgage sector, ignore differences in economies by large (ie manufacturing lead), ignores which countries have control over monetary policy (ie EU), it uses GDP as the only pure measure of growth when public spending is included in GDP, fails to contextualise ANY of the data (ie of course austerity is negatively correlated to growth, a country in a better financial sate is obviously not going to need austerity as much as a country in a terrible state), compares pre-crash to post crash (what the actual fuck?) , compares UK to US and implies US had lower austerity which is not universally accepted, compares UK to US, ignores they are different economies and that China helped US recovery by buying US dollars for example, uses GVA (Luxemburg) when trying to make a point about other countries just as exposed to financial services when GDP is used everywhere else (cherry picking data), compares 3 years post crash vs 4 years pre crash consumer spending, fails to provide r^2 value for terrible graph, uses war world 2 debt to argue debt is fine, constantly uses debt as % of GDP to argue points when GDP has MASSIVELY risen, so debt has risen even if its not a percentage of GDP (this is worth mentioning), eventually shows true colours when accusing tory voters of hating poor people/not trusting oxfam (logical fallacy argument).
The list goes on but ill stop there.
Edit: edited out my dyslexia
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
yeah, someone posted that same thing to my facebook recently, and I also criticised a lot of its methodology/data usage. You did it more eloquently though :d
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Northern Ireland22212 Posts
wondered how long it would be before the ignorant ukip bashing began
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On May 08 2015 21:35 ahswtini wrote:
wondered how long it would be before the ignorant ukip bashing began
actually me/my social group/family are all generally engaged individuals, which is probably why no-one I know voted ukip, which I am pretty happy with.
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United States43989 Posts
Hey, not all of UKIP is ignorant.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On May 08 2015 21:47 KwarK wrote:
Hey, not all of UKIP is ignorant.
i see what you did there
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If you look at statistics from countries around the world and even individual states within the US, the larger the gap between rich and poor the greater the social problems. That is education, health, crime and economy among many other issues are all worse in a more unequal society. Regardless of how you actually go about achieving it the best way to improve a country is to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Far from trickling down, money flows upwards unless there are systems in place to better redistribute it.
The conservatives means living standards fall for just about everyone except the most wealthy.
In the UK The richest 1000 have more wealth (£547 billion) than the poorest 40% (£452 billion)
The wealth gained from these 1000 just last year would cover 1,889,963 Living wage jobs, or 1,035,154 jobs at an average salary for a year.
The conservatives are also the least likely to make any meaningful difference to the gap.
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United Kingdom10443 Posts
On May 08 2015 21:45 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2015 21:35 ahswtini wrote:
wondered how long it would be before the ignorant ukip bashing began actually me/my social group/family are all generally engaged individuals, which is probably why no-one I know voted ukip, which I am pretty happy with.
same
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United States43989 Posts
On May 08 2015 21:49 Startyr wrote:
If you look at statistics from countries around the world and even individual states within the US, the larger the gap between rich and poor the greater the social problems. That is education, health, crime and economy among many other issues are all worse in a more unequal society. Regardless of how you actually go about achieving it the best way to improve a country is to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Far from trickling down, money flows upwards unless there are systems in place to better redistribute it.
The conservatives means living standards fall for just about everyone except the most wealthy.
In the UK The richest 1000 have more wealth (£547 billion) than the poorest 40% (£452 billion)
The wealth gained from these 1000 just last year would cover 1,889,963 Living wage jobs, or 1,035,154 jobs at an average salary for a year.
The conservatives are also the least likely to make any meaningful difference to the gap.
I would say the likelihood of Labour changing one of the core results of capitalism is equally unlikely. What you seem to be asking for is beyond even the scope of Old Labour. No major party is going to change the fact that the super rich have a shitton of money.
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Bad result imo. Even though they're terrible, it makes you appreciate what the lib dems did to mitigate the tory vote in the last election. This time their "vote for us and we'll go with whoever wins" = "a vote for us won't decide who is actually in charge" campaign, as well as the realisation that they can't deliver on their policies, has benefited the tories a lot.
Its also quite sad that the greens only got one seat. Bristol west losing by only a small amount to labour. Norwich south getting around the same amount as last time, losing out to labour this time instead of lib dem. It seems people have voted tactically to stop the tories - which has worked pretty well...
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Scotland have a licence to vote without any thought to the consequences, because they can just blame it all on the Tories anyway. They made the wrong decision voting the stay in the union.
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On May 08 2015 20:18 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2015 20:05 sixfour wrote:
equally happy and furious with the result, scotland telling the mainstream parties to fuck off is glorious, labour making no ground whatsoever in england is great, lib dem armageddon is wonderful, at the same time the tories actually sneaking a majority kills a lot of the fun we could have had, and being part of 3.7 million voters who get 1 seat shows what a joke our system is so you voted for the bigotry party? well done
You voted for a bigotry party as well, by the way.
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The liberal democrats seem to have received all the blame for any faults, and the conservatives smartly played on peoples fears of labour/Snp coalition. They played the Game of cards.. House of thrones well.
A large number of people who voted for Snp will have voted against Independence, yet an overwhelming majority seem to have no confidence in the main two parties. You are probably right on labour not doing much for narrowing the gap either, which may have contributed to the Snp sweep.
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United Kingdom10443 Posts
On May 08 2015 22:56 Startyr wrote:
The liberal democrats seem to have received all the blame for any faults, and the conservatives smartly played on peoples fears of labour/Snp coalition. They played the Game of cards.. House of thrones well.
A large number of people who voted for Snp will have voted against Independence, yet an overwhelming majority seem to have no confidence in the main two parties. You are probably right on labour not doing much for narrowing the gap either, which may have contributed to the Snp sweep.
They voted for Scotland at the expense of the United Kingdom
Understandable but a pretty shitty thing to do
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United States43989 Posts
Lib Dems got fucked here. They were the ones who identified in the 80s that ideological capitalism for its own sake wasn't a good thing but that public management of industry and propping up failing businesses for the overpowerful unions also wasn't good. They lost their ground to New Labour after the collapse of Old Labour and retained an identity as a centre left opposition to Labour's mismanagement, particularly with regards to education and Iraq. They spent thirty years being the good guys who got routinely fucked by first past the post, winning a large part of the popular vote but underrepresented in the commons. They desperately needed a shot of electoral reform and a chance to show people that they could be a legitimate third party, that a vote for them wasn't a wasted vote that simply helped a worse party get in, that they could make a difference.
They thought they had their chance with the tactical Lib-Lab pact in 97 with an agreement to go into coalition if needed and a suggestion of electoral reform. Labour won in a landslide and didn't need them and suddenly first past the post looked pretty good to Labour. However in the 2010 hung parliament their time came, people voted for them in higher than before numbers as the apathy for Labour hit record levels and nobody wanted to see Cameron take over. Cameron's offer of a coalition government finally gave the Lib-Dems what they needed, a chance for electoral reform, a chance to get some politicians with real cabinet experience, a chance to make a difference and be seen to make a difference so in a future election the people who would like to vote Lib-Dem but were afraid all it would do was split the vote and help the Conservatives win would know that they were not a wasted vote. If the Lib-Dems refused to enter a coalition in 2010 then they would be admitting that they were a wasted vote, that they would only make a difference in the impossible scenario of them winning an outright majority, that they were afraid of actual government and were nothing more than a third party in a two party system. They had to enter coalition, it had been thirty years since the last Lib-Dem served in an actual government (the gang of four who left Labour), they needed to stop pretending to be politicians and actually do some politics.
Unfortunately they were the minority partner in a coalition and yet people still held them to account. A manifesto is a statement of what you would like to do if you won, what you would do if you had the power. The Lib-Dems did not win, not even close, and they did not have the power. For some reason they, not the Conservatives, got blamed for the Conservative policies, even though the Conservatives won the plurality of the vote. Democracy worked and the Lib-Dems got blamed for it. But what was the alternative. If they refused coalition in 2010 there would simply have been another election in which people would have known better than to vote for the Lib-Dems. The success of the third party would have shown itself to be pointless, simply resulting in a hung parliament because they wouldn't engage in the business of government. There would have been a second 2010 election where they got decimated and we'd have a Cameron majority in 2010.
Lib-Dems got fucked.
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Oh God what a disaster. And now, there will be that referendum for the Brexit.
Having lived in London for seven years, I have to say that the firepower of conservative media, and the extent of their propaganda explains quite a lot about why so many turkeys voted for Christmas yesterday. The fact that so many educated people still believe that the economics policy of the government was good for the country against every single bit of evidence is totally baffling. But what to do...
Honestly, I'm glad to have left that place, and I wish good luck to anyone living there who is not a banker. 
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United States43989 Posts
On May 08 2015 23:53 Biff The Understudy wrote:Oh God what a disaster. And now, there will be that referendum for the Brexit. Having lived in London for seven years, I have to say that the firepower of conservative media, and the extent of their propaganda explains quite a lot about why so many turkeys voted for Christmas yesterday. Honestly, I'm glad to have left that place, and I wish good luck to anyone living there who is not a banker.
I think you hugely exaggerate the degree to which there are meaningful differences between the Conservatives and Labour.
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Only 36% of people voted for them. Even with a referendum on the EU, 100% of Tory voters would have to vote yes AND THEN another 14% of the population.
Even 100% of Conservative and UKIP voters doesn't reach 50% of the population, and if not all of them vote yes on a referendum, there would be no exit. It's very unlikely that even with a vote 50% would vote yes.
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EPT
