Obev

[Kuya]

Serious question: What are the differences between the Labour party and the Liberal Democratic party? I looked up wikipedia, and they don't seem all that much far apart.

Also, what is with all this Clegg and Cameron hoobla? Something about class warfare, what?

[Linliel]

All the parties are much the same, as far as I can tell. The Lib Dems have a lot of hype because people seem to be so sick of the two main parties. Unfortunately for the LDs it won't actually translate into any real power, even if they get more votes %wise across the country in the election due to the way the seats are distributed.

/learning through watching stuff on BBC & talking to British friends since moving to Belgium ;D

[Obev]

Sit on my knee, young colonial, and I shall tell ye the story of your colonizers' former colonizers and your former colonizers' rivals for control of the Orient.

So back in the 19th century when your Puerto Rican savages were getting bandied about in the Caribbean by filthy spics and ugly yanks, there were two main parties in the mother of all parliaments: the Conservatives, and the Liberals. If this sounds similar to present-day characterisations of American politics, it's because America is about a century and a half behind the real world over this side of the pond.

At the start of the 20th century some bright spark unionist or two decided to form some goddamned communist heresy. Sorry, I mean, some people thought that government should perhaps help those at the bottom of the heap and therefore started a party to get with that. Enter Labour. They banded up with the Liberals for a few decades, and it was uh, alright. The couldn't turn into Glenn Beck's biggest nightmare, because irony of ironies they had to acquiesce to Liberals who were less than supportive of full-on socialism.

After WW2, Labour won big time, because unlike the Yanks we don't really believe in that whole "Ah'm a WAR PRES'DENT" hokum and so we kicked Churchill out on his Conservative arse. Good at fighting wars, bad at just about everything else. With the departure of Churchill and the entrance of the (far) Left, we brought in all sorts of heretical commie madness, like socialised healthcare, the welfare state, and bad moustaches. At this point, politics in the UK became a two-horse race, between commies (Labour) and cappies (Conservatives).

Labour got kicked relatively conclusively out of power in 1974 by Ronald Reagan's BFF, Margaret Thatcher. As her reign of terror continued, some bright dickwad in Labour leadership thought that they might do well to tone down the whole "socialism" aspect. At some point between the 1980s and the mid-1990s, Labour drifted towards the centre. Unions were toned down, and some great moron named Blair became leader of the party with the connivance of an insufferable douchebag by the name of Peter Mandelson. At this point, "New" Labour became little more than a shadow of its former lofty goals of socialist utopia, and was generally shit from 1997 to the present. Highlights include joining in the Iraq invasion because Dubya and God told him it was a good idea, a proposal for freedom-sapping identity cards, and converting to Pedobear's favourite religion.

So meanwhile between 1920 and the 1980s the Liberals had been rubbish in the polls. They tried to portray themselves as something of a "third way" party: not conservative, but not socialist either. It didn't really work, they sucked in polls continuously from around the Great Depression onwards. The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 out of the union of the Liberals and a splinter faction of the Labour party, the Social Democrats, who (ironically, given Labour's inexorable shift towards the right) thought that the Labour party was becoming infiltrated by undemocratic ultra-left Trotskyists.

So, we're arrived more or less at today. Given the Labour party's inexorable shift towards the centre, the Liberal Democratic party are more or less the most "left" faction left in terms of economic policy (they want to tax the rich 'til they bleed, they believe in an amnesty on illegal immigrants, they'll give tax breaks to the poorest), and the most "liberal" in terms of social policy (they don't give a shit who you marry, they want our equivalent of a Bill of Rights, and they've had a raging alcoholic as a leader for most of the 2000s).

They're still pretty much centrist, but as the only real "left" contender has slipped towards the other side of the street, that leaves "centre" as the new "left." It's still not as bad as the US consideration of anything leftwards of Mussolini as Stalinist, but it's a little miserable. Plus, their guy for Chancellor is a genuine Economics professor, as opposed to Labour's Trotskyist lawyer and the Conservatives' heir to a baronetcy, so they might have a better handle on what to do with our fucking money.

The Clegg and Cameron hoobla about class warfare is that the Conservatives' policies are mainly tax breaks to the top 0.1% or so. This fuels class warfare as the hundreds of thousands of people in the bottom 20% wouldn't get those tax breaks, and so would be rather miffed with the prospect of billionaires not having to pay their dues. Clegg's party is more of the reverse: tax breaks to the bottom bit, tax the rich 'til they bleed/get us out of the recession/dance.

tl;dr: I don't fucking know. I'm voting Lib Dem because given the relative splendour of our socialist utopia over here, I have the luxury of being single-issue voter on nuclear disarmament, and the Lib Dem's say they're going to cut our nuclear deterrent and spend the money on, y'know, schools and hospitals.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Sit on my knee, young colonial, and I shall tell ye the story of your colonizers' former colonizers and your former colonizers' rivals for control of the Orient.

So back in the 19th century when your Puerto Rican savages were getting bandied about in the Caribbean by filthy spics and ugly yanks, there were two main parties in the mother of all parliaments: the Conservatives, and the Liberals. If this sounds similar to present-day characterisations of American politics, it's because America is about a century and a half behind the real world over this side of the pond.

At the start of the 20th century some bright spark unionist or two decided to form some goddamned communist heresy. Sorry, I mean, some people thought that government should perhaps help those at the bottom of the heap and therefore started a party to get with that. Enter Labour. They banded up with the Liberals for a few decades, and it was uh, alright. The couldn't turn into Glenn Beck's biggest nightmare, because irony of ironies they had to acquiesce to Liberals who were less than supportive of full-on socialism.

After WW2, Labour won big time, because unlike the Yanks we don't really believe in that whole "Ah'm a WAR PRES'DENT" hokum and so we kicked Churchill out on his Conservative arse. Good at fighting wars, bad at just about everything else. With the departure of Churchill and the entrance of the (far) Left, we brought in all sorts of heretical commie madness, like socialised healthcare, the welfare state, and bad moustaches. At this point, politics in the UK became a two-horse race, between commies (Labour) and cappies (Conservatives).

Labour got kicked relatively conclusively out of power in 1974 by Ronald Reagan's BFF, Margaret Thatcher. As her reign of terror continued, some bright dickwad in Labour leadership thought that they might do well to tone down the whole "socialism" aspect. At some point between the 1980s and the mid-1990s, Labour drifted towards the centre. Unions were toned down, and some great moron named Blair became leader of the party with the connivance of an insufferable douchebag by the name of Peter Mandelson. At this point, "New" Labour became little more than a shadow of its former lofty goals of socialist utopia, and was generally shit from 1997 to the present. Highlights include joining in the Iraq invasion because Dubya and God told him it was a good idea, a proposal for freedom-sapping identity cards, and converting to Pedobear's favourite religion.

So meanwhile between 1920 and the 1980s the Liberals had been rubbish in the polls. They tried to portray themselves as something of a "third way" party: not conservative, but not socialist either. It didn't really work, they sucked in polls continuously from around the Great Depression onwards. The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 out of the union of the Liberals and a splinter faction of the Labour party, the Social Democrats, who (ironically, given Labour's inexorable shift towards the right) thought that the Labour party was becoming infiltrated by undemocratic ultra-left Trotskyists.

So, we're arrived more or less at today. Given the Labour party's inexorable shift towards the centre, the Liberal Democratic party are more or less the most "left" faction left in terms of economic policy (they want to tax the rich 'til they bleed, they believe in an amnesty on illegal immigrants, they'll give tax breaks to the poorest), and the most "liberal" in terms of social policy (they don't give a shit who you marry, they want our equivalent of a Bill of Rights, and they've had a raging alcoholic as a leader for most of the 2000s).

They're still pretty much centrist, but as the only real "left" contender has slipped towards the other side of the street, that leaves "centre" as the new "left." It's still not as bad as the US consideration of anything leftwards of Mussolini as Stalinist, but it's a little miserable. Plus, their guy for Chancellor is a genuine Economics professor, as opposed to Labour's Trotskyist lawyer and the Conservatives' heir to a baronetcy, so they might have a better handle on what to do with our fucking money.

The Clegg and Cameron hoobla about class warfare is that the Conservatives' policies are mainly tax breaks to the top 0.1% or so. This fuels class warfare as the hundreds of thousands of people in the bottom 20% wouldn't get those tax breaks, and so would be rather miffed with the prospect of billionaires not having to pay their dues. Clegg's party is more of the reverse: tax breaks to the bottom bit, tax the rich 'til they bleed/get us out of the recession/dance.

tl;dr: I don't fucking know. I'm voting Lib Dem because given the relative splendour of our socialist utopia over here, I have the luxury of being single-issue voter on nuclear disarmament, and the Lib Dem's say they're going to cut our nuclear deterrent and spend the money on, y'know, schools and hospitals.

You just became my new favorite person on BG.

[Colenzo]

holy fucking nigger cock I am not reading that garbage

[Obev]

This is spam though, so I might have just been talking crap to get Kuya's panties in a twist.

[Obev]

holy fucking nigger cock I am not reading that garbage

http://i42.tinypic.com/24obmud.gif

[Kuya]

Trés enchanté, obev, merci.

[Conrad]

Sit on my knee, young colonial, and I shall tell ye the story of your colonizers' former colonizers and your former colonizers' rivals for control of the Orient.

So back in the 19th century when your Puerto Rican savages were getting bandied about in the Caribbean by filthy spics and ugly yanks, there were two main parties in the mother of all parliaments: the Conservatives, and the Liberals. If this sounds similar to present-day characterisations of American politics, it's because America is about a century and a half behind the real world over this side of the pond.

At the start of the 20th century some bright spark unionist or two decided to form some goddamned communist heresy. Sorry, I mean, some people thought that government should perhaps help those at the bottom of the heap and therefore started a party to get with that. Enter Labour. They banded up with the Liberals for a few decades, and it was uh, alright. The couldn't turn into Glenn Beck's biggest nightmare, because irony of ironies they had to acquiesce to Liberals who were less than supportive of full-on socialism.

After WW2, Labour won big time, because unlike the Yanks we don't really believe in that whole "Ah'm a WAR PRES'DENT" hokum and so we kicked Churchill out on his Conservative arse. Good at fighting wars, bad at just about everything else. With the departure of Churchill and the entrance of the (far) Left, we brought in all sorts of heretical commie madness, like socialised healthcare, the welfare state, and bad moustaches. At this point, politics in the UK became a two-horse race, between commies (Labour) and cappies (Conservatives).

Labour got kicked relatively conclusively out of power in 1974 by Ronald Reagan's BFF, Margaret Thatcher. As her reign of terror continued, some bright dickwad in Labour leadership thought that they might do well to tone down the whole "socialism" aspect. At some point between the 1980s and the mid-1990s, Labour drifted towards the centre. Unions were toned down, and some great moron named Blair became leader of the party with the connivance of an insufferable douchebag by the name of Peter Mandelson. At this point, "New" Labour became little more than a shadow of its former lofty goals of socialist utopia, and was generally shit from 1997 to the present. Highlights include joining in the Iraq invasion because Dubya and God told him it was a good idea, a proposal for freedom-sapping identity cards, and converting to Pedobear's favourite religion.

So meanwhile between 1920 and the 1980s the Liberals had been rubbish in the polls. They tried to portray themselves as something of a "third way" party: not conservative, but not socialist either. It didn't really work, they sucked in polls continuously from around the Great Depression onwards. The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 out of the union of the Liberals and a splinter faction of the Labour party, the Social Democrats, who (ironically, given Labour's inexorable shift towards the right) thought that the Labour party was becoming infiltrated by undemocratic ultra-left Trotskyists.

So, we're arrived more or less at today. Given the Labour party's inexorable shift towards the centre, the Liberal Democratic party are more or less the most "left" faction left in terms of economic policy (they want to tax the rich 'til they bleed, they believe in an amnesty on illegal immigrants, they'll give tax breaks to the poorest), and the most "liberal" in terms of social policy (they don't give a shit who you marry, they want our equivalent of a Bill of Rights, and they've had a raging alcoholic as a leader for most of the 2000s).

They're still pretty much centrist, but as the only real "left" contender has slipped towards the other side of the street, that leaves "centre" as the new "left." It's still not as bad as the US consideration of anything leftwards of Mussolini as Stalinist, but it's a little miserable. Plus, their guy for Chancellor is a genuine Economics professor, as opposed to Labour's Trotskyist lawyer and the Conservatives' heir to a baronetcy, so they might have a better handle on what to do with our fucking money.

The Clegg and Cameron hoobla about class warfare is that the Conservatives' policies are mainly tax breaks to the top 0.1% or so. This fuels class warfare as the hundreds of thousands of people in the bottom 20% wouldn't get those tax breaks, and so would be rather miffed with the prospect of billionaires not having to pay their dues. Clegg's party is more of the reverse: tax breaks to the bottom bit, tax the rich 'til they bleed/get us out of the recession/dance.

tl;dr: I don't fucking know. I'm voting Lib Dem because given the relative splendour of our socialist utopia over here, I have the luxury of being single-issue voter on nuclear disarmament, and the Lib Dem's say they're going to cut our nuclear deterrent and spend the money on, y'know, schools and hospitals.

This is what British people actually believe

[Linliel]

YES

[Elvis]

_██_
(ಠ_ృ)

Hello gentlemen, could I interest any of you in fancy top-hats?

[Linliel]

_██_
(ಠ_ృ)

Hello gentlemen, could I interest any of you in fancy top-hats?

[Conrad]

YES

I wish it was also what American people believed.

[Linliel]

British politics is pretty awesome actually. Everyone is so polite, but then occasionally that British humour comes out and it's hella awesome (like that dude in the EU parliament). I do think they need a bit of reform in their voting system, but not nearly so much as the US does for its voting system.

Australia's is still the best. Compulsory voting ftw.

[Conrad]

Yeah I don't really want Jim Bob and his sister/mom Mary May voting for the leader of the free world every four years, thanks.

[Linliel]

Yeah I don't really want Jim Bob and his sister/mom Mary May voting for the leader of the free world every four years, thanks.

It's quite a cultural shift, but it works really well in Australia. You need the infrastructure to support it (education, etc.) but I really think it makes the government more the servants of the people than with a non-compulsory system. Also it means that parties spend less on getting people to vote at all in the first place. Lots of points in its favour. If you really don't want to vote, you can just show up and "donkey vote" (i.e. write some rant on the ballot paper or draw a penis or whatever). But you really get the parties trying to appeal more to the people rather than to their financiers, and I think it's a strong system.

[Conrad]

The problem in America isn't voter turnout, it's voter education. If we get people voting for McCain because the alternative is "a Kenyan who may be the antichrist and will destroy the very fabric of our society" (I have actually had this argument with someone), then people need to learn what the fuck before they go to the ballot box.

[Linliel]

The problem in America isn't voter turnout, it's voter education. If we get people voting for McCain because the alternative is "a Kenyan who may be the antichrist and will destroy the very fabric of our society" (I have actually had this argument with someone), then people need to learn what the fuck before they go to the ballot box.

Yeah, well, we also don't seem to be crazy like you guys are. I seriously don't know what you have in your water over there.

[Obev]

_██_
(ಠ_ృ)

Hello gentlemen, could I interest any of you in fancy top-hats?

William Gladstone says fuck your top hat.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2n13dc.jpg

[Conrad]

Yeah, well, we also don't seem to be crazy like you guys are. I seriously don't know what you have in your water over there.

There's a comedian who makes a joke that Australia is like Alabama with surfing, and mentions an anecdote that an Aussie told him "there was no crime in the world...before America." I don't know who to believe now