Re: The General Election Thread : Tue May 12, 2015 1:09 pm  

Lord Elpers wrote:

My understanding is that it is not these rights that will be repealed but rather the Act which means the judgement of the highest court in our land can be overturned by an EU court based on by broad stroke so called human rights. To suggest our country will not honour real human rights is a nonsense. We have a proud and well earned history of justice and the human rights in our country are the envy of the world.

The HRA was brought in to do exactly the opposite. Too many cases were being taken to the ECHR to overturn a British decision (and mostly under the 1990s Conservative government...), so the principles Cod'ead listed were brought fully into British law in 1998 to enable British courts to consider them and make decisions. Hopefully this would (and probably did) save the exchequer a few pennies by avoiding government lawyers having to schlepp over to Strasbourg to defend a case when it could more easily be done here.

If the HRA is repealed (unless we also decide to withdraw from the convention and join Kazakhstan and Belarus outside it), all that will happen is that millions of £ of public money will be spent defending HR cases outside the UK. It's a knee jerk policy in response to successful applications by people the government don't like, and those applications are based largely on crappy decision making by the government's own staff in the first place.

We do have a "proud and well earned history of justice and ... human rights". Let's not ditch it for the sake of a political soundbite and media crying.

Re: The General Election Thread : Tue May 12, 2015 1:12 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

What it will mean is that instead of our Supreme Court making decisions, based on ECHR agreements. For as long as we remain a member of the EU, then any UK subject will still have the right to appeal to the European Court of Justice. Repealing the Human Rights Act will just help serve the lawyers.

Yep. Our courts can decide these cases and either losing party can ultimately go to the ECJ. In practice there's little point as a group of senior judges has already considered your case and rejected it so you may as well accept the decision. Repealing the HRA will mean that every case can now go there.

Re: The General Election Thread : Tue May 12, 2015 6:08 pm  

Chris28 wrote:

Yep. Our courts can decide these cases and either losing party can ultimately go to the ECJ. In practice there's little point as a group of senior judges has already considered your case and rejected it so you may as well accept the decision. Repealing the HRA will mean that every case can now go there.

Mind you, with all the restrictions to legal aid introduced by that clown Graying and no doubt to be exacerbated by that bigger clown Gove, who the hell would be able to afford to take any cases to our Supreme Court, let alone the ECJ?

[DaveO]

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 2:30 pm  

EHW wrote:

Would our Parliament be improved by having the 82nd best UKIP candidate in it, or the 24th best Green party candidate (given that the leader could barely string 2 sentences together)? How rigorous are the selection policies of the minor parties? How does the 82nd best UKIP candidate compare in experience, education and intellect to the 243rd best Conservative candidate?

I suspect there are a few of their own MP's that the SNP would rather not have in Parliament now, and would have had a more rigorous selection process if they knew they would win 56 seats.

At least with the current system you know exactly which candidate you are casting your vote for.

What do you mean "the 82nd best UKIP candidate"? I assume you are talking about some sort of list based system where parties MP's are chosen in order of preference from a list drawn up by the parties. If so what makes you think the person at the top of the list isn't the worst candidate of the lot? The fact Farage would be top of the UKIP list rather proves the point.

Also if a party is under-represented compared to it share of the vote, how do you know parliament isn't missing out in the services of some very capable people?

At the moment we have safe seats which are just as bad as list system and require just as much patronage to secure one as getting your name high up on a parties list. Portillo and Balls moments are rare and so the idea FPTP delivers quality compared to a list system doesn't stand up. Safe seats deliver MP's like Grant Schnaps (AKA Mr Green) and Rees-Mogg. With a list idiots like that might find themselves at the foot of it so rather than a list system delivering poor MP's it could do the opposite.

Arguing against PR because the electorate is going to vote in 78 kipper MP's is complete non-starter whether you use a pure list based system, STV, AV or AV-plus. It is just anti-democratic.

In any case just because the kippers got 12% of the vote under FPTP doesn't mean that is how things would have turned out under a PR system. Quite often you see stats published that say "If the electorate vote as they did in 2015 then under PR the seats won would be....". It's total rubbish because under PR you wouldn't get tactical voting.

As to think an MP has to his constituency is this really so strong? I'd never heard of our ex-Tory MP Stephen Mosley (I think he came from outside Cheshire) before he was the candidate in 2010.

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 4:56 pm  

I think some people are getting a bit carried away with thinking the Tories can just push through whatever they want now that they have a majority.

But in a way their position is actually weaker now than in 2010-2015.
The Tory-Lib Dem government had a majority of 33.
The new Tory government has a majority of just 6.

The Lib Dems jumped in with the Tories so willingly that there was never a chance of them bringing down a major Tory proposal, as they'd all been agreed to in the formation of the Coalition and the Lib Dems were determined to not be the ones who broke up the Coalition.

With the Lib Dems licking their wounds and the SNP very anti-Tory, there's probably a much higher chance of a controversial Tory proposal being beaten.

[Kosh]

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:47 pm  

Lord Elpers wrote:

With regard to the Labour - they were routed by a party further to the left in Scotland and in England/Wales well beaten (by 99 seats) by a party to their right. The voters rejected their smug leaders and regarded their policies as too left wing, too anti business, too anti wealth creation, too metropolitan and economically too risky. If Labour do not except this result and move back to the Centre they risk Ukip routing them in their remaining strongholds in the North and Midlands next time.

Actually, most people when asked about why they voted Tory said that they didn't feel that Milliband was Prime Minister material and/or they were frightened of the SNP. Even so, Labour's share of the vote actually increased slightly. Practically nobody mentioned the factors you list.

It's also worth remembering that the majority of UK voters were happy to vote for a party other than the Tories. They may have a narrow majority of MPs thanks to our crackpot electoral system but they command the support of a minority of the population.

Labour lost the election by sitting on their hands for 4 years waiting for the wheels to come off the Coalition, then panicking and producing an ill-thought-out and uninspiring campaign that failed to present a compelling alternative to the status quo.

[Kosh]

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:49 pm  

Him wrote:

I think some people are getting a bit carried away with thinking the Tories can just push through whatever they want now that they have a majority.

But in a way their position is actually weaker now than in 2010-2015.
The Tory-Lib Dem government had a majority of 33.
The new Tory government has a majority of just 6.

The Lib Dems jumped in with the Tories so willingly that there was never a chance of them bringing down a major Tory proposal, as they'd all been agreed to in the formation of the Coalition and the Lib Dems were determined to not be the ones who broke up the Coalition.

With the Lib Dems licking their wounds and the SNP very anti-Tory, there's probably a much higher chance of a controversial Tory proposal being beaten.

Most right-wingers have a weak grasp of the realities of Parliament. And of pretty much everything else for that matter.

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:50 pm  

Him wrote:

I think some people are getting a bit carried away with thinking the Tories can just push through whatever they want now that they have a majority.

But in a way their position is actually weaker now than in 2010-2015.
The Tory-Lib Dem government had a majority of 33.
The new Tory government has a majority of just 6.

The Lib Dems jumped in with the Tories so willingly that there was never a chance of them bringing down a major Tory proposal, as they'd all been agreed to in the formation of the Coalition and the Lib Dems were determined to not be the ones who broke up the Coalition.

With the Lib Dems licking their wounds and the SNP very anti-Tory, there's probably a much higher chance of a controversial Tory proposal being beaten.

The Conservatives have an overall majority of 6 but an effective one of perhaps 15 when you count the Nth Ireland abstainers. On some Bills they will gain the support of other minor parties and so they will push through the difficult stuff early doors while their back-benchers are still onside.

The Tories were supported in coalition but in many respects were a hindrance in that they prevented the Tories fulfilling their full manifesto. This time they are free to try for the full monty. If some Bills get voted down they will just move on.

[Kosh]

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 5:50 pm  

EHW wrote:

[code][/code]It would also impact on the quality of our MP's in my opinion, by letting in the lower echelons of the minor parties.

You think it's possible to lower the quality of our MPs?

How cute.

Re: The General Election Thread : Wed May 13, 2015 6:23 pm  

Lord Elpers wrote:

The latest figures from the OBR show that:
Public sector net borrowing in 2014-15 was £87.3bn (£3bn less than expected in April's budget)
In five years the deficit has come down from £153.5bn that the coalition inherited in 2009-10. This is a drop of 43% or relative to GDP it has fallen from 10.2% to 4.8% by more than half.

These latest figures show the Public sector net debt at the end of March (end of 2014-15 year) was £1,484bn (80% of GDP) up from £956bn at the end of 2009-10. This is a rise of 55% not 100% as you remarked with your repeated "DOUBLED" shout.

If you would like an example of the "doubling" of debt you need look no further than the five years between 2004-5 and 2009-10 when the debt increased from £448bn to £956bn. In fact this was more than "doubling" it was an increase of 113%.

We also now know that "No More Boom and Bust" Brown's supposedly fiscally responsible government was running a structural (or underlying) overall budget deficit of around 5% of GDP in 2007 - before the world economic crash!

So to call call others "thick, economically illiterate" is a tad more than the pan calling the kettle black!

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to change your comic book name from General Zod to the Numskulls - now that would be a 'Beezer"

You really are clueless.

The economically illiterate tories like yourself refer to the "deficit" in pounds and pence as if the international bond market keep tabs on it with a calculator.

1) The budget deficit has been reduced with the aid of printed money of £375B by the Bank of England who have bought these bonds and artificially suppressed interest rates to reduce the deficit whilst this capital finds itself misallocated in the service sector to give a temporary impression that all is well when it is not.

2) The budget deficit is the numerator where as the debt to GDP ratio is the denominator and this trend has continued to worsen EVERY year under this government.

3) One of the biggest indicators that the foreign bond market look at is the current account deficit which has exploded under Cameron and Osborne.

There are already fund managers with short positions against UK Government bonds and the currency because they know that once the bond market starts shifting, then this country gets wiped out.

You really are out of your debt so I'd just give up if I was you.