General Election June 2017

More from Osborne's general hatchet job on May:

Footage shows Mrs May amid mixed charcuterie

Mrs May was pictured during the trip at meat counters as she smiled and laughed alongside butchers in bloodied overalls.

I'm sure that neither of these sentences were composed innocently.

I should've done that for Trump & Brexit & the last election. And now putting money on a Tory win doesn't seem worth it.

What is important is how national support ends up being shared within individual constituencies.

^This. It is how the yougov poll purports to work (the one predicting no majority), but seems too good to be true.

Reports that Diane Abbott is out of the cabinet indefinitely due to ill health:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/07/diane-abbott-to-step-aside-for-the-period-of-her-ill-health-corbyn-says

Whatever the reasons I can't help thinking this might help the Labour vote...

I'm ready for this to be done with now.

There's only so much doublespeak and question dodges you can watch before you just want to burn the whole crumbling edifice of democracy down, piss on the ashes and start again.

I also voted two weeks ago so I feel disenfranchised from all the hoo ha that's gone on since. Enough I say, enough!

I was wondering when that might happen...

1 day to go. I'm going full Corbyn. Fuck it. Fuck checking expectations. Even changed my Facebook picture to show my unending support for the dear leader.

CORBO!

Ant or Dec seems to have gotten a job at Smithfield this morning.

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welcome to the club, I have been quietly flag waving for a number of weeks. certainly my farcebook friends must be sick of me now.

so. fucking. awkward. you can just tell she doesn't want to be there, neither does the big gimp mannequin behind her

Woody Allen looks a bit bored.

Well that went from 0 to 100 very quickly. Yeah sure, let's bring back public hanging for buggery too.

My point, if you read the rest of the post, was that I can't see any way to stop this stuff getting published short of censorship.

In a bid to lighten the mood, a joke culled from Twitter.

Stuck in lift with Corbyn and Abbott. She can't work out what floor
number, he won't press the button.

The breaking up of media empires might be a start. Forcing independence between media outlets, media providers and media infrastructure. Preventing funding from media outlets to political parties. Some practicable, some moon on a stick.

Agreed on all of that. Still don't think it'll stop a determined proprietor from forcing bias onto the front page if they want to. But weakening their control would hopefully at least allow for other voices to be heard.

there's all kinds of ways without resorting to the Turkish method.

Prepare for mad brain fart but my mind is in overdrive:

I don't think you can win over those people who currently believe that Labour fucked the economy, even those who I hear and read who concede it was a global issue believe that Labour should have been saving more money when times were good in case of this huge economic downturn (that nobody predicted save for a few geniuses who made a shit tonne of money out of it).

So you've got this gigantic group of people believing that our only hope is austerity, because we need to reduce that deficit.

My issue, along with other people, with austerity is that public services are being under funded and people are suffering because of it. NHS, schools, social care, all the public services.

The right (as opposed to left) response to this is often, well actually, funding has increased over the last however many years.... but the problem is that it is hasn't been in line with increased demand. well demand wouldn't be increased if we didn't have all these freeloaders and immigrants, Labour are just going to make it more worthwhile for people to live on benefits, why do I have to pay for other people to sit around doing nothing

And I think, personally, to me, what a lot of it comes back down to, and it always will is this:

Some people believe that we have an out of control welfare state that is being abused by workshy druggies and immigrants and they find it distinctly risible that they should fund a free and easy lifestyle for those people with their hard earned money that they've had to work terribly hard to earn. If you can't acknowledge that view point and counter it effectively then I don't think you can ever convince people.

The other, more current issue seems to be the opposing views on the deficit/debt. Spend our way out or cut spending?
At the current rate of austerity, we will reduce borrowing to £0 annually by 2022, in 5 years. Once we're at 0, we will still have an absolutely huge debt. From 2007-2016 we've gone from 36% to 85.9% of GDP, GDP is still rising, but our % debt increase is slowing. Based on back of a fag packet prediction, our % of GDP debt will level around 2022 as well. So from 2022 we can stop borrowing supposedly and start paying back debt, so maybe, by 2030 - 2035 we're back to where we were in 2007.
In that time, how many people have suffered or paid with their lives as a result of impacted public services?

On the Labour supported model there needs to be more discussion beyond public services. How will spending stimulate the economy? I want to see more Economic papers by real experts supporting these theories. I want to see how beyond supporting those in need we're going to create new jobs for those out of work, because right now, to me, it looks like Labour are headed to UBI without talking about it. Is that a good thing? I don't know... is that basically communism? Isn't that what everyone on the right is scared of?

I am also sick of sound bites from both sides, we're all guilty of this.

It's just as bad to bang on about "costed manifesto" as it is about "IRA links". Everyone is just latching onto whatever the media from each side is throwing. Ugh, I just want real, open discussion, with people admitting that they don't know things but they want to find out.

I also really hope the rest of the Labour MPs will see sense after the Conservative majority gets reduced tomorrow and the good MPs are willing to sit on the shadow cabinet and join the serious opposition.

If you enforced any breaking up of the media groups, most papers would fold - apart from the two biggest: The Sun and Mail.

The rest operate on such thin margins they're already at breaking point.

The Mirror will likely merge within Northern & Shell in the next year or so and the Guardian is increasingly toothless. i and Indy already sold off/closed down.

Good, fuck em, if you don't sell enough product keep your company trading, you fold. Simple.

@NurseHolliday

Para 1 - Possible Counter?

Only 17% of benefits (need citation) are paid to people that are out of work. The rest are paid to people in work. Your hard earned money is actually subsidising big businesses, enabling them to pay such low wages that the tax payer has to top it up whilst they reap the profit and then manage to pay little or no tax.

I entered this election cycle knowing nothing. im not ashamed to admit I was one of the disaffected. I cared about it but not enough to actually research and sieve through the bullshit.

I dont know what changed this time. I think the Leave vote and the subsequent uncovering of all the lies was a major factor. I voted remain but didnt push or challenge others to do the same at the time.

Some people believe that we have an out of control welfare state that is being abused by workshy druggies and immigrants and they find it distinctly risible that they should fund a free and easy lifestyle for those people with their hard earned money that they've had to work terribly hard to earn. If you can't acknowledge that view point and counter it effectively then I don't think you can ever convince people.

Yeah this. For me it comes down to an ideological distinction which I can't see any way of discussing, either you feel one thing or the other.

I believe the State has a moral obligation to work against the Capitalist system, and redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom, to even out the lottery of people's birth and upbringing. Any Government which works in the opposite way, of privatising essential services to make a profit and redistribute wealth upwards, is morally bankrupt.

Tax me more and make a better country.

"Benefits" as they are now are a shite system, and means-testing is a horrible band-aid. Scrap the lot, pay everyone a flat amount instead, save on logistics.

Mail

The Daily Mail's readership is literally dying. Each year, it reduces by the amount of people that have died. It does not attract any new readers.

(The Mail Online is a separate business - albeit with the same right wing editorial - and barely makes any money itself)

The Sun, unfortunately, will always be cross-subsidised by Murdoch.