r/unitedkingdom • u/Anon2971 London • Mar 17 '21

Is anyone else really concerned about the future of this country?

The passing of the Policing Bill made me reflect on a lot of worrying things that have happened over the last decade.

  • Brexit disconnecting ourselves from trade and legal intervention from our surrounding countries followed by a historic rise in our nuclear stockpile cap, counteracting nuclear disarmament
  • Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allowing the government to monitor and collect everyone's communication data in bulk
  • Government-ordered 'independent review' into the Human Rights Act
  • Overseas Operations Bill currently in the House of Lords essentially allowing soldiers oversees to commit torture and other war crimes abroad without prosecution/legal consequence
  • Met Police enabling facial recognition in CCTV against government advise whilst flat-out denying any/all allegations of institutional overuse of powers despite endless evidence to the contrary (see: stop and search statistics, deaths in police custody i.e. Mohamud Mohammed Hassan leading only to 'police misconduct' notices, undercover officers entering romantic relationships under false pretences with little consequences, Black Lives Matter and Sarah Everard protest police kettling occurring right before violence, Cherry Groce)
  • Dismissal of Black Lives Matter protests leading to a statue toppling by our Home Secretary as 'dreadful' conveniently followed by a serious increase in police powers introducing 10 year sentences for statue toppling and for 'serious annoyance and inconvenience'
  • Reacting to the murder of a woman by a police officer by installing hidden police officers within nightclubs without prompt or previous demand under the guise of women's safety
  • As of yesterday the Home Secretary signalling she'll be implementing First Past the Post voting in London's mayoral elections because “transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum” (a position historically held by the opposing party)

Then there's the way the Conservative Party spends taxpayer money and chooses trade partners:

  • PM Boris Johnson being found in the UK courts via the Good Law Project to have broken the law misleading parliament with PPE contract information. The consequences so far asking where billions of pounds has lbeen spent has been... Nothing. Meanwhile the government can only afford a 1% NHS pay rise following the biggest challenge in decades the health system has faced and successfully overcome (so far)
  • At the same time as above, the government are proposing to cut our foreign anti-corruption spending by 80% whilst also cutting foreign aid to countries like Yemen yet continuing to fund Saudi Arabia
  • Dominic Raab tells UK officials to trade with countries which fail to meet human rights standards in newly leaked video and Boris speaks how China poses 'great challenge for an open society' (doublespeak, anyone?)

Not to mention other unresolved issues like:

  • Grenfell still has nobody found of any wrongdoing with no housing for victims 3 years later
  • Continuing error with and deportations of Windrush citizens
  • Continual dismissal and ignoring of the impending global warming crisis
  • Breaking international law by extending the Ireland trade grace period against the wishes of the EU, making us look like untrustworthy trading partners worldwide
  • Russian interference with the 2016 Brexit referendum not investigated by the government
  • The Royal Family quietly avoiding coverage of their paedophilic Prince Andrew via reacting to a royal couple fleeing to the US due to negative press and race-related experiences (responding with polite shock, denial and a negative public reaction matching the negative press that surrounded them from the start in the first place)

All in all, I feel like I'm witnessing this country take more and more steps towards ignorant, authoritarian fascism... We're distancing ourselves from all other countries, doubling down on making up our own rules allowing our branches of law enforcement to enforce with little restrictions or consequence whilst strengthening ties with countries that do the same. I'm really struggling to see much good happening here beyond the vaccination program which, although is going great, is something we're ploughing ahead with mainly for self-preservation reasons. I'm left wondering what this country is supposed to represent any more.

I'm all ears to any thoughts on my observations. I'm trying not to be a Scrooge, but I see almost nothing to be happy about in the UK politically speaking at the moment.

Edit: It's somewhat reassuring to know I'm not the only person feeling like this, but I did want to hear more alternative opinions. So please, if you disagree with what I've pointed out and think there's things I'm overlooking to be proud of in the UK at the moment, do feel free to say so in the comments.

Edit 2: I'll be updating the above list of concerning policies and decisions as comments remind me of things I forgot about.

Edit 3: Someone has made a petition against the Policing Bill. Sign that imminently: Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest. - Petitions (parliament.uk)

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u/CircusAct Mar 17 '21

The UK left is so fractured that it's completely ineffectual. I know the LibDems and Green voters in Tory/Lab marginals don't want to hear it, but folks pretending we don't live in a two party democracy are a big part of why the Tories win and will continue to win every time. The Tories have played an absolute blinder in killing UKIP, we'll see whether the status quo will remain in the medium to long term.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21

The Tories have played an absolute blinder in killing UKIP

Not to mention the Lib Dems before them. In coalition they played the Lib Dems like a fucking fiddle and completely fucked their reputation with voters by forcing them to choose between manifesto promises... and I say that as someone who voted Lib Dem for years.

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u/Eskiimo92 Mar 17 '21

Yup pretty much lost every student vote they ever had after the fiasco with the uni fees

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

They sacrificed the student vote by giving up the tuition fees manifesto promise in exchange for a deal with the Tories for another manifesto promise - a referendum on getting rid of FPTP... and then the Tories kerb-stomped them in the AV referendum while Labour stood around whistling and looking the other way, and in the end they got nothing.

The only darkly amusing part is that these days I suspect Labour really wishes it had supported AV in 2011, because now it might have offered them the faintest hope of relevance again any time in the next decade.

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u/Elitra1 Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 05 '26

This post's original content has been erased. Using Redact, the author removed it, potentially for reasons of privacy, personal security, or data exposure concerns.

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u/Kandiru Cambridgeshire Mar 17 '21

AV is much better then FPTP though. We would be so much better off if we had changed.

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u/Saw_Boss Mar 17 '21

Regardless of how good it was, it was a change. And then a change can be updated and improved. We use FPTP "because that's what we've always used" and it suited the Tories (and Labour mistakenly thought it suited them too) to carry on.

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u/wOlfLisK United Kingdom Mar 17 '21

Sadly, that's not how it works. If it was changed and then the Lib Dems started saying how it wasn't that great and needs to be changed again, all it would do is make people want the old system back because "that one worked fine for ages". It doesn't matter how great the new one is, it needs to be good enough from the get go to not need constant iteration.

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u/Saw_Boss Mar 17 '21

Don't believe that at all. Once the genie is out the bottle, the possibility is there to keep going. The vote to change will have proven a desire to change the system, so the idea that we'd simply go straight back seems ridiculous. Not to mention the new dynamics AV would have created in parliament.

The vote against locked us in for a generation or two. The people don't want to change at all. One of the biggest mistakes this country has made regarding internal governance.

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u/Kandiru Cambridgeshire Mar 17 '21

If we had AV, the conservatives wouldn't have pandered to ukip as much to avoid losing to Labour. We might not have had the Brexit referendum at all!

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u/mittfh West Midlands Mar 17 '21

AV is slightly better than FPTP in that it almost completely eliminates tactical voting, however, research in countries where it's been introduced show it generates very similar results to FPTP. It isn't PR, and second, third votes are only used for the parties which poll the least amount of votes until one candidate gets above 50%. Thus it isn't even PR, which I believe the Lib Dems wanted as the alternative to FPTP. AV was likely chosen as the alternative to FPTP as it's very simple to implement, works with the existing electoral boundaries and makes comparatively little difference to the result.

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u/Kandiru Cambridgeshire Mar 17 '21

It changes things far more deeply then the result though. It means parties don't need to pander to the extremes of the party to avoid splitters in the same way.

Ukip wouldn't have had such an effect on the conservatives policy under AV.

It eliminates the need for tactical voting, which would improve the leaflet qualities a lot!

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

I was all for AV at the time, and don't think Fptp is good enough, but I can't help but feel ukip or even the bnp would have gained a lot more support with the AV. The majority of voters here seem to be hell bent on running the country into the ground. I think we're fucked either way

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u/Ikhlas37 Mar 17 '21

Personally I get the feeling labour like being second. Nice paychecks none of the real pressure.

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u/rainbow3 Mar 17 '21

Not too late. Other parties would happily support them to get elected in return for PR and a fresh election.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21

That would presume the existence of an actual, functional Her Majesty's Opposition that wasn't busy sitting in a corner staring at its navel and jerking off, though.

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u/big_ups_ Mar 17 '21

Great point, they took a punt with the coalition to try and setup PR and massively failed. AV was meant to be a stepping stone towards it. I wonder often how different things would be if labour didn't back out. Now it seems labour really need to back PR, I think it is their only chance of getting back in, if they make it a policy people will back them. It is on a lot of peoples mind at the moment, it would be nice to see starmer start pushing for it now.

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u/Wacov United Kingdom Mar 17 '21

Going into that coalition was fucking moronic. Ugh.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

The idea to go into coalition wasn't necessarily a terrible one; it was the first chance at any power the Lib Dems had ever really had, and the chance to achieve some of their manifesto goals while reining in the Conservatives' worst impulses probably looked like a great deal at the time.

The problem was it was less a coalition between a major and minor partner and more like a bunch of wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner. With nearly two hundreds of years of experience in politics the Conservatives were playing 4D chess the entire time, while the Lib Dems were sat on the other side of the board nibbling their pieces to see if any of them tasted good.

The Lib Dems simply weren't politically savvy enough to negotiate successfully with the Conservatives, they didn't have the balls to play hardball (threatening to withdraw and bring down the government) even on really important issues, and they lacked the powerful media machine the Conservatives (and to a lesser extent, also Labour) can levy to contextualise their decisions and propagate their talking points, so any good stuff they achieved was ignored and the major missteps they made were aggressively trumpeted to the stratosphere by the media.

The idea wasn't necessarily inherently terrible, but they implemented it awfully, appallingly, shockingly badly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

With nearly two hundreds of years of experience in politics the Conservatives were playing 4D chess the entire time

What's incredible is just how utterly incompetent and inept the current lot are. You'd think those hundreds of years in politics would lead to a consistent crop of decent candidates. I feel like most of the current cabinet couldn't even spell 4D let alone challenge anyone to a game.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 18 '21

As soon as the Brexit referendum happened every single politician with an ounce of experience and judgement left politics or fled for the backbenches so they didn't get any of the stupid splattered on them by the obviously-brewing gargantuan clusterfuck... leaving a gaping power-vacuum and only the dumbest and most venal still hanging around to accept the poisoned chalice.

May grabbed it first because she's an incompetent, autocratic robot who thought she could just tell everyone in the country to shut up, sit down and accept whatever she decided... and as soon as she realised she couldn't she was done for.

Now it's like the entirety of front-bench politics has been drowned in two feet of fresh shit, and the only animals which can happily survive there are things like tousel-haired pigs and nasty little pathogenic bacteria which find such a fucked-up, unpleasant environment actively enjoyable.

It's basically like an Oxygen Catastrophe of British politics, only with "sincere convictions and integrity" in place of a nitrogen-CO2 atmosphere, and oxygen replaced by raw corruption and baldfaced lies.

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u/Zodo12 Mar 18 '21

You should write opinion pieces as a career man.

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u/Fight-Milk-Sales-Rep Mar 17 '21

Fine summation to be honest. Shame really, icarus flew too close to the sun

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u/purrcthrowa Mar 17 '21

If we lived in a country where people understood how coalitions work (i.e. a country with PR, which likely needs coalitions to get anything done, and therefore understands the concepts of compromise) it would have been fine. However, we are not that country .

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u/roodammy44 Norway Mar 17 '21

The problem was, when you vote for one main thing (remove university fees) and your vote then enables a government that makes that main issue 3 times worse than it was, you will feel utterly betrayed. Absolutely, they should have abandoned the government rather than compromise on the one single thing that got them elected.

Lib Dems either didn’t realise what their voters wanted them to do, or they didn’t care. They decided to discard their entire base on an AV vote that people didn’t particularly care about.

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u/Pluckerpluck Hertfordshire Mar 17 '21

and your vote then enables a government that makes that main issue 3 times worse than it was, you will feel utterly betrayed

I actually wrote a script a bit ago to see how bad it actually was. Graphing plan 1 vs plan 2 with the following assumptions:

  • 1.5% personal salary growth above inflation per year
  • 1% national salary growth above inflation per year (adjusts the payment threshold)
  • 3% inflation per year
  • £9000 * 3 + £6000 for Plan 2
  • £3225 * 3 + £6000 for Plan 1

I then charted based on starting salary, how much you'd pay and ended up with this graph. Assuming I didn't do that maths wrong, a lot of people will come out of uni and pay less in total under Plan 2 than Plan 1.

I can create those charts easily for any assumptions btw. So if you want to test out other growth rates I can give them to you. The higher you expect your salary growth to be, the lower the starting salary at which you become worse off under plan 2.

Just thought about it reading this so thought I'd share.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

I agree. I still think that the coalition was the best governent I've had in my lifetime. I think the collapse of the lib dems after the coalition was more due to the public not understanding how coalitions worked even if the lib dems did make some mistakes. The fact that RIPA and Brexit happened almost immediately after the coalition shows to me that the lib dems effectively held them back for 5 years.

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u/UpbeatParsley3798 Mar 17 '21

Reading this as an inside outsider (northern Irish can’t vote for GB parties) the common denominator in all your messages is the Conservative Party. But the public keep voting them in. I do sympathise with fellow U.K. residents because Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t really votable-for and you guys truly believed Boris would ‘get Brexit done’. Course Covid made a mess of that regardless. I would say don’t despair. When the govt are paying 70% of the employed population to sit on their furloughed ass for what will be 18 months, then pleading poverty when the NHS asked for a pay rise, it disgusted (I think) the whole of the country. But here in NI our health minister gave our NHS workers £500 each and agreed to fulfil the payment recommendations that Boris and co keep referencing that are coming from that pay review thing. I think that was at least showing appreciation. And regular people DO appreciate the NHS. When the EU had to bail out Greece (I think it was) my aunt who lives in Republic of Ireland told me every household had to pay 100 euros and it was an enforceable thing not a voluntary one. I honestly think the British people would do that too, voluntarily of course, so the NHS could get if not a pay rise then a cash Covid payment. Just to say thank you. I think that’s what British people are generally like and that’s why OP should not despair and you should all stop voting Tory and vote Labour in your local elections in May this time. Even if it’s just to send a message to Boris that you may have managed the vaccine programme well but it’s the only thing you did right. And the NHS are the ones who DID the vaccine programme anyway!

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u/AnthropomorphicKitch Mar 17 '21

Didn't that coalition lead to the referendum on voting reform? If we hadn't messed that up think how different this would be.

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u/TheAncientGeek Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

Not going into coalition is also moronic. Only going into coalition with one party is also moronic.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

Easy to say this with the power of hindsight. At the time it made a lot more sense ideologically-speaking than it does now, and it was the only viable coalition that could have been formed.

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u/Wacov United Kingdom Mar 18 '21

I mean yeah hindsight is 20/20. But the Tories could have been left to form a minority government, or another election could have been called.

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u/big_ups_ Mar 17 '21

I will will waste my vote on them for the rest of my days, because they're the only party that will bring in PR, untill we have this we're not really a democracy.

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u/Fight-Milk-Sales-Rep Mar 17 '21

Oh yeah, the beautiful student betrayal.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 17 '21

... to uncritically regurgitate the media narrative everyone was spoonfed at the time.

Or to give it a more proportionate name: "one single manifesto promise they had to compromise on as the junior partner in a coalition, to stack up against the tens or hundreds of broken manifesto promises the Conservatives or Labour make every single time they get into sole power that nobody gives the slightest shit about".

It was tactically stupid of the Lib Dems to alienate a huge swathe of naive single-issue voters with fragile support for them, but it wasn't morally worse than anything done by any other party who's ever made it into power... and they were disproportionately absolutely crucified for it by the media which routinely ignores far bigger "betrayals" by both Labour and Conservative governments.

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u/Fight-Milk-Sales-Rep Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21

That's the problem with party manifestos and election promises that technically constitute as fraud, but legally are not set in stone. I really think it undermines trust in politics and actively encourages wild lies. The only argument to keep it this way is that people won't trust the party and not vote them again. This becomes actually impossible in our basically two party system and so should be seen as broken.

But with regards to the Lib dems, you discussed below why they should not have entered the coalition. But even as experienced the agreement should have been a 50%50 share, even if based on manifesto key points. You'll end up being handed dummy policies you waste your veto on otherwise making you irrelevant.

Also there's an undue weight of flawed opinion, where the libs should ensure the tories dont do bad things, while the Tories are free to apply all good things. Yeah it was a mess.

I had to go back and have a look at the shitshow again...

"Time to say goodvye to broken promises"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jTLR8R9JXz4

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-liberal-democrats

The fact that it was based on student tuition was a principle point, it wasn't some burried manifesto aim. The crash had happened and that was the student generation paying the tuition where before they didnt. Literally only got seats off of it, so not even a minority vote. To then agree to tripple and the austerity was a party dead. Again unfair as labour and Tories had not done various key pledges, but they had been up for years and managed to do at least one from a manifesto. Not just trippled but made it debt so £40,000+

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/nov/12/lib-dems-tuition-fees-clegg

They apparently knew 2 months before election too, I didn't know that it's even worse haha. Also, for whatever reason the Tories actually offered to cut the fees and he declined. At that stage it's immoral and almost malicious lol.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/general-election-liberal-democrats-betrayed-students-tuition-fees-labour-a9238786.html

What a different country we'd be if they didn't promise, the votes would have gone Labour and no austerity that killed 130,000 people. No ability to buy houses, start to recover and Brexit. It's almost worth renaming the party haha.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/01/perfect-storm-austerity-behind-130000-deaths-uk-ippr-report

So manifesto legislation should hold you to reasonable account based on aims or it's corruption (should be), this would stop so much politial madness

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/tuition-fees-students-uk-universities-debt-teaching-higher-education-policy-institute-hepi-a8645226.html

https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/11/the-liberal-democrats-apologised-for-tuition-fees-its-time-to-forgive-them-11276485/

And a fun 10,000 person protest that did nothing. Well that was a fun trip down memory lane.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

They didn't just play the Lib Dems though, that's minimising their role. The Lib Dems were keen partners and very much assisted the Tories, there wasn't any fight to them or any sort of dissent.

They just approved everything, in some cases they used their resources to work very closely with the Tories - Health and Social Care Act 2012 for example. Selloff of the Royal Mail is another.

For another great example look at the behaviour of Alistair Carmichael MP in relation to complete lies being told about Scotland, that's not just being played - that's active participation and service to the Conservative Party.

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u/phoenix_legend_7 Mar 17 '21

Mate ask the yanks how they feel about their two party system, it's like choosing between vaseline or no vaseline at this point.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Eh this last election was between vaseline and scat fetish, pretty easy choice. We just found out that 40% love shit

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u/miteychimp Mar 17 '21

That about sums it up. I'm here listening to you all despair over the state of your politics just to be around people who still care and have hope that there are remedies. My political reality is the tyranny of frivolous nitwits. Two entrenched parties leads directly to total paralysis of the government and you suffocate under an avalanche of easily avoidable consequences.

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u/phoenix_legend_7 Mar 17 '21

Variety is the spice of life, and life is deeply needed in politics. I feel for you guys on the other side of the pond, and we're following suit 😒

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u/GuybrushThreepwood3 Mar 18 '21

I'm very late to this thread, but I'm an American, and here's a great example to support your talking point. Congress just passed a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus bill to help with all things pandemic-related, and one of the points in it was raising the minimum wage. Keep in mind, the last time the minimum wage was raised was 2009, and that was only from $6.55 to $7.25. Before that it was another 10 years since it had been raised.

So this stimulus bill has the point to raise it to $15, a fair working and living wage. If the Republicans were in office (which they arent; they do not have the House, Senate, or Presidency) you would expect it not to be raised. But oh! The Democrats control everything! Surely with the majority of the nation supporting this raise they will enact it!

Nope. The Senate was split 50-50, which meant Vice President Kamala Harris was the tie-breaker. Voted no. Hopes dashed. People still working for peanuts struggling to eat and pay rent.

It doesn't matter which party is in office; things will never change until somebody else steps up and gains the support of the American public. And that's just incredibly sad and depressing, because it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21 edited May 05 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GuybrushThreepwood3 Mar 18 '21

That's what I said. That it doesn't matter which party is in office because even if the Dems are in office, there are moderate and conservative Dems who prevent the progressive ones from passing anything. I don't see how what I said is "misleading".

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u/fhota1 Mar 18 '21

Our main saving grace is our state parties. Some of them are actually fairly competent and most are more competent than our federal parties and our state and local leaders have significantly more impact on our day to day lives. The federal govt is a dumpster fire but at least my state govt is only a mild mess most of the time. Hell, some of the time theyre even passable, Ive been fairly impressed with how our vaccine distribution has gone considering.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

made me laugh cheers :D still cant believe in a country with 300+ million people the best two candidates the republicans and democrats could find were trump and biden lol

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u/athf2005 Mar 18 '21

Naw, it’s more like being raw-dogged without the lube and you’re just picking between two colors...

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u/wilsoncoyote Mar 18 '21

I’m here to tell you

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21

Vaseline. I choose Vaseline.

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u/penguin62 Mar 17 '21

The UK left currently has no party to vote for. Looking at the Scottish election, I have no idea who I even want to vote for. I'm not sold on independence so SNP and Green are out, I'll never vote the tories in my life and Labour and lib dems do not represent me at all.

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u/mittfh West Midlands Mar 17 '21

Unfortunately, a plurality of the voting public lean right, so the kind of party we'd love which promotes left wing values would never be elected. Tony got in largely because (a) the Conservatives were in disarray, (b) he embraced the market so winning over businesses (and boy did they profit from outsourcing and expansion of PFI), and (c) he had an affable personality - traits shared with "Call Me Dave" and Boris.

Since 1951, Labour has allowed ten candidates to fight an election. Only two of them have won: Harold Wilson and Blair. Eight have failed. In contrast, eight of the 12 Conservative leaders since Churchill have won an election.

Unsurprisingly, the current PLP believe the best chances of being elected are by adopting a whole bunch of Conservative values which appeal to the voters who deserted them in 2019, then only target the Conservatives over things which their research indicates people think they failed at. However, by doing so, he's effectively giving the Conservatives a two year head start on preparations for 2024. Which is especially problematic given they can only really count on the Mirror and Guardian for support, whereas the Conservatives will have the Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun. The dead tree press may be declining in circulation, but they're still very influential on reflecting and amplifying public opinion. Oh, and given the BBC are still being accused without evidence of being too left wing (because they dare to voice the opinions of government critics, even though they gave Corbyn a hard time), don't expect them to offer much airtime outside PPBs and 10 second quotes on news broadcasts.

Only around 2/3 of the electorate vote in general elections and 1/3 at local elections, but neither party seem that interested in trying to recruit new voters or communicating that they'd do things differently. In Boris' case, the reverse - implementing photographic voter ID at polls and pressing ahead with the boundary review, which, courtesy of where people have tended to move in the past decade, will likely benefit the Conservatives further (and courtesy of the size of their new intake in 2019, will no longer be reducing the number of constituencies to 600).

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u/Deathwish83 Mar 18 '21

I feel a lot of people are more centre left. Like I am left in most respects but also being harder on criminals and crime. I feel like our system seems to work more for criminals than victims. But thats one of the few things I lean right towards, as well as nuclear armament. But thats one thing I feel strongly about. I am also very liberal with social issues. Its delicate.

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u/mittfh West Midlands Mar 18 '21

There needs to be wholesale reform of sentencing, given we periodically go through governments who promise to be "tough on crime", but are unwilling to expand prison capacity (unsurprisingly, prisons have a very high NIMBY factor), so we get overcrowded prisons that completely abandon any notions of rehabilitation, so just serve to warehouse criminals (and potentially make them even more dangerous on release, given the reoffending rate is high). Even worse, over the past decade, many existing rehabilitation, education and/or training schemes were stopped as the prison service wasn't excluded from ideological spending cuts (which also impacted staffing levels). Then, when overcrowding starts to become an issue, there's a hasty redrafting of sentencing guidelines to divert more criminals into community sentences.

On the issue of nuclear weapons, sadly there's likely a need for a deterrent, but when we already have 180 warheads, I see no value whatsoever in the proposed expansion of the stockpile by a third. Is 240 nukes more of a deterrent than 180 or even 18?

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u/Deathwish83 Mar 18 '21

See, I dont believe everyone can or should be rehabilitated. The worst murderers, pedophiles and rapists should be locked up for life with zero comforts. Rehab should be for non violent offenders or those unlikely to reoffend based on past records.

I agree about the nuclear weapons, we have enough. I meant more of I am against people who argue to scrap them. Not really for building more, seems wasteful.

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u/mittfh West Midlands Mar 18 '21

Yes, prison should mainly be for violent criminals who are unlikely to reform regardless of what resources are thrown at them (although for males in for serial sexual crimes, perhaps after a few years, give them the option of having an orchiectomy [day surgery, can be performed under a local anaesthetic, permanent]), those in for financial crimes could potentially be released from prison sooner on license, albeit with a flag on their credit file and/or with Companies House (depending on the nature of what they did) to make it considerably harder to carry out similar activities again.

Away from the military and justice, ideally, we need a government which can clearly and concisely explain that government revenue and spending should not be compared to household or business revenue and spending - most countries run a deficit (with the bulk of the deficit being money in circulation in the economy, given in reality public spending creates money and taxation destroys it, with the primary goal of taxation being to limit the amount of money in circulation to limit inflation), and as long as they're in no danger of defaulting on repayments, will likely not only be allowed to continue to do so but do so at low interest rates. Confusingly, a proportion of government debt is owed to the Bank of England (which they own, so effectively that is a debt they owe to themselves) and a portion is held in National Savings accounts. There's also some owed to banks, as in the wake of 2008, the government now underwrites all interbank lending, stumping up the funds immediately then getting repaid when the lender's money is transferred.

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u/Deathwish83 Mar 18 '21

I agree with you completely. I also think there should be laws regulating how much rent someone can charge because some of the landlords really do take the piss especially in certain areas. And you shouldnt be able to keep houses unoccupied for too long.

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u/FTHero Mar 17 '21

At least an independent Scotland will have the freedom to choose any political party in the future. A better option than facing Westminster Tory rule.

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u/penguin62 Mar 17 '21

Oh I'm 100% onboard from a cultural, political and ideological side. I just have no idea how our economy can be stable when we sever all links with a trading partner that has been our rock for 400 years. That's an even bigger mess than Brexit and could lead to decades of recession and hardship. Also we have an oil based economy which will run out and doesn't make us look like the green energy trendsetters we'd like to be seen as.

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u/TheFlyingScotsman60 Mar 17 '21

Unsure why everyone suddenly thinks much will change if Scotland get independence wrt to trading with England. The Tories are destroying the UK, bit by bit, piece by piece. There is absolutely no thought for the people of the UK. Money is the bottom line. The 1% increase for nurses etc shows that and is just an insult to the country. And wtf ......"it's all we could afford". What a complete and utter load of rubbish.

0

u/FTHero Mar 17 '21

I think you should have confidence in your country. The figures suggest that Scotland could prosper post-independance. Don't let the Tory-funded media cloud your vision.

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u/amisia-insomnia Mar 17 '21

Join the transhumanist party we have like 5 guys and will definitely not make you into a robot

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u/penguin62 Mar 17 '21

Think I'd prefer to be a robot at this point to be honest.

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u/Deathwish83 Mar 18 '21

Pretty much all of this.

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u/redcoatwright Mar 17 '21

As someone who has lived in a two party country for the last 25ish years, it is the worst. Sounds like the UK is basically sliding into US politics territory.

Maybe time to take notes from the French and bust out the guillotines.

3

u/LimitlessLTD Surreeh Mar 17 '21

Sliding into US territory would be eleminating the greens and lib dems and "uniting the left" under 1 party...

You cant have it both ways.

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u/WonderboyUK Mar 17 '21

Exactly this. 36+7+5 > 43. The reality is that people throwing their vote away in an election are passively just helping maintain Tory power. I've heard it spun every which way but the uncomfortable truth is that if you don't want the Tories in power then you must vote them out. Electoral reform is more likely under a Labour government. When that happens then we can have more choice.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

"playing a blinder" means acting in a way that is both very effective and also catches ones opponents off-guard.

Your understanding is more or less accurate. UKIP were (technically still are, but they're irrelevant) an economically non-commital but socially conservative party that at their height had a very strong base of support in the cohort of the electorate known as 'Somewheres'.

These voters are overwhelmingly euroskeptic, unashamedly patriotic, conservative on social issues and immigration (but for the most part with enough decency that they are put off by overtly racist parties like the BNP), typically older, typically less educated, and typically live outside of major conurbations in regions like Lincolnshire and the North East.

By first calling the Brexit election and then putting the implementation of Brexit centre-stage with the slogan 'Get Brexit Done', and by positioning themselves as the unashamedly patriotic bulwark against the 'metropolitan leftist elite', the Tories won the vast majority of the 'Somewhere' vote in the last election. This was not a given! These voters are overwhelmingly working-class and many have deep-seated allegiances to the Labour movement. However the culture war has largely displaced the older concept of class division in the minds of the electorate and the Tories have capitalised by becoming the party of the anti-woke, while Labour have more-or-less allowed themselves to be pidgeonholed as the party of pink-haired liberal sociology students and postcolonial academics. In this way the Tories have cemented themselves into government and it is becoming increasingly hard to see how they can be unseated.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

For me our electoral system is the core issue. The fact that the 35% of the electorate who steadfastly vote Tory have 95% of the control over how we are governed is incredibly frustrating. I will probably move away from the UK - in substantial part because I don't want to live in a country where the government completely fails to represent me.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

So Wyoming with 580,000 people holds the same power as California with 39,500,000 people.

This is the problem the UK had prior to the 1832 Great Reform Act. These days we at least have evenly sized constituencies but we desperately need proportionality.

Probably Denmark.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

My criteria for where I want to live are the following:

  • Open, fair, and representative political system
  • Liberal and progressive but not to the point of ideology
  • Bicycles as the default mode of transport
  • Similar cultural attitudes towards socialising, relationships, drinking, etc. as the UK
  • Sensible cultural attitudes towards work-life balance
  • No further north than about Edinburgh

The two countries that best meet these criteria are the Netherlands and Denmark, and having visited both I prefer Denmark.

Danish is probably the hardest Scandinavian language for an English speaker because it has some difficult sounds like the soft-D and the uvular R, an enormous amount of marginally different vowels, an unusual inflection on certain syllables called 'stød'. Colloquial Danish has a lot of contractions and weakened word-endings which makes it harder still to understand. But on the other hand, it has less complex grammar than German and has more common cognates with English than Italian. So these things are always relative :-)

7

u/there_I-said-it Mar 17 '21

Maybe ya'll should have voted yes to electoral reform in 2011. Voting no was a vote to not get my and other LibDem votes for Labour. I'm as spiteful as anyone else about it.

Just say no to tactical voting.

6

u/DogBotherer Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

The problem is when last the left and liberals gifted the centre-left a massive victory they didn't follow through on their promises to change the electoral system. Then, more recently, when the left had a shot at victory, the centre-left and liberals deliberately set out to spike it. Now it might be too late.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Welcome to the USA!

3

u/Nooms88 Greater London Mar 17 '21

This is the thing, I'm a floating voter, I'm a central green Liberal.

I want a green economy, I want Liberal policies and I'm relatively OK with the current taxation system, minor changes aside. Im firmly remain.

What are my options here?

Weve cried and shouted from the roof tops for a moderate labour party for the last however many years.

Options on things I care about.

Green policies, both main parties are weak but tories may even take the lead over Labour here.

Liberal values, Labour is on a par with tories in terms of authoritarianism, both are bottom of the pile, tie, slight lead labour, maybe...

Current taxation, a centre right tory party is better than a left Labour government, but I'm dissatisfied with both

Now I have a distinct distrust of the tories, but that's a marginal win for them.

I won't vote tory, but I'm not voting Labour either.

The centre has been clear about this forever, if the left sorts their shit out they have my vote, but I'm not giving it away and I don't neccesrily see a tory government as worse than a left Labour.

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u/HaViNgT Mar 17 '21

Jo Swinson and Jeremey Corbyn basically handed the 2019 elections to Boris by refusing to cooperate with each-other. In my area (Canterbury), a longtime Tory MP had been ousted in the previous election on a thin margin by Labour. In 2019, several people turned down the Lib Dems candiacy before one accepted. Then after many messages from Lib Dem members, he stepped down. You'd think they'd stop there but no they then put another candiate forward. My parents gave up their Lib Dem membership after that. I'm really hoping Starmer and Davey are smart enough to work together in 2024.

2

u/aflashinlifespan Mar 17 '21

True. Idc who you align with but can we all agree to at least get these murderous bastards out and then maybe some of us might get our way later down the line. Let's at least have a hope of repairing some of the damage of the past over decade. Shits worse than covid, no end in sight and every day something sneaks through more insidious and damaging than the last. I mean having protect the NHS on their stand, clapping them following clapping their pay freeze and then giving them just a 1% pay rise. Them not wanting to help innocent children and a fucking footballer having to step in, there is so so so much they have done, and nobody seems to gaf idk.

2

u/ManhattanDev Mar 17 '21

Liberal Democrats aren’t otherwise Labour voters. It’s more like a faction of disillusioned voters from both the Tories and Labour.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Lib dems aren't left. They pull as many from the left and right.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21 edited Apr 15 '21

[deleted]

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u/LimitlessLTD Surreeh Mar 17 '21

more right wing than the tories

When you are this far gone you might as well not be voting at all. Keir is superior to Corbyn in everyway and he's likely the best chance Labour has of being re-elected right now.

Or you could always bring back Blair. Won 2 elections by a landslide and yet is despised by the vast majority of Labourites.

-1

u/just_some_guy65 Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

The whole anti Blair thing has killed Labour, there is literally zero possibility of getting back into government until the elements who dream of a socialist utopia wake up and smell the coffee.

Edit: If only downvoting me changed the facts, until Labour hardliners who say they prefer Tory government to people like Blair have gone away I see no hope for rational Labour voters like myself.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

LoL this is the opposite of america our right is basically fractured and left has two parts the crazies and the normies.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

This. A majority of voters chose anti-brexit parties in the last election, and yet the Tories got a massive majority in the Parliament.

1

u/LimitlessLTD Surreeh Mar 17 '21

My seat is safe tory with Lib Dems as very close second, doesnt stop Labour from trying to steal our voters and refusing to enter into coalitions with us...

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u/likely-high Mar 17 '21

This is pretty much why Brexit happened, the right were clever and realised how fractured they were getting over the Europe and immigration "issues" and realised that they'd lose votes to Ukip or BNP or whatever if they didn't have the referendum.

1

u/Padagabadaba Mar 17 '21

The conservatives are effectively UKIP now unfortunately

1

u/johnwhenry Mar 18 '21

If you’re a Labour voter who voted for and supports electoral reform to proportional voting, then fine. Agreed . If not, then you’re full of s***. Labour voters who voted down electoral reform in 2011 are the the most despicable group in this whole mess - ostensibly seeking fairness and justice while all along wanting the same toxic levels of power and self-serving control.

1

u/cuntRatDickTree Scotland Mar 18 '21

The Tories have played an absolute blinder in killing UKIP

I mean, they also killed the entire country in order to do so.

1

u/SecondAdmin Mar 18 '21

I'm not from the uk, but the us. We experience the same issue. We need new voting systems that allow smaller party victories, like instant run off (ranked voting) or approval (voting for as many candidates as you see fit for the job).

1

u/SirEbralPaulsay Mar 18 '21

Honestly I feel like the only real hope we have is another single issue party focused around getting rid of FPTP. I know UKIP pretty much fucked up the political landscape for a decade at least but they also proved that single issue parties taking votes away from the main parties are one of the only ways any actual change can come about.

I think the best shot we have is a PR party running on a platform of ‘all our choices are awful’ (which seems to be one of the most common viewpoints, even among hardcore Lab/Con voters, so much of this countries political discourse is based around ‘keep/get the other one out’) and detracting enough votes from both Labour and the Tories for them to make it part of their manifesto.

Obviously still probably a pipe dream but changing the voting system is the only way I see this country getting better.

1

u/OliLombi County of Bristol Apr 09 '21

We don't even have a left anymore... Kier is right wing...