Does the United Kingdom need to be repaired?

[heavycola]

your a moron luns101 the right wing press count on naive people like you to spread fear,they have you wraped around there little finger.im shocked how stupid some people can be,i realy hope your just young and dont realy get whats going on in the world.just like the silly disillusioned folk in the pictures,your as bad as them

I would question who the moron is. (See bold.)

I don't think there is any question there, HSF. Go back to watching American Gladiators please.

[insertnamehere]

i am england here is my opinion . in commparison to the rest of europe we are a shit on a plate , in comparison to the US we are caviar on a plate , however that is only politically , and obeseity , the only facts i know . we are both ran by IDIOTS , but america moreso , and our lack of death penalty gives us the moral high ground . obese children wise , we are the fattest in europe , and if you dont know about americas problem where have you been in the ;ast 5 years?





also american football is just rugby with armour.

[Titanic]

^ That recieve most random comment of the day.

To the person who said Labour won with 25% last election, its was actually 35% of the votes the won with, and atm in the polls there on around 32, and when Brown takes over it will increase, so if anything there are still in as good a position as they were in 2005.

[insertnamehere]

i am random . you know the only politician i know went to university at loughborough , just even more randomly.

[Stopper]

^ That recieve most random comment of the day.

To the person who said Labour won with 25% last election, its was actually 35% of the votes the won with, and atm in the polls there on around 32, and when Brown takes over it will increase, so if anything there are still in as good a position as they were in 2005.

Yeah, that was me - I agree, it's 37% of the vote, but not of the electorate, as I said. Turnout was 61% - so 37% x 61% = 23% of the electorate voted Labour. Blimey, even less than I thought.

As to your other comment about Labour - don't get me wrong, I'm <cough> a paid-up member and have been for 12 years.

[Guiscard]

Good for you Stopper. To be honest I've thought about joining... What made you join up in the first place and what benefits does it give you now? persuade me

[cowshrptrn]

wow, even when you try to make a purely England thread it ends up turning into an ideological battle between liberals and conservatives!

but a real question for real brits, plz:

what do you guys think about Scottish and possibly Northern Irish sovereignty? now that Scottish parliament has a nationalist majority it looks like it might be a reality!

plus, what did you guys think of Blair and his whole devolution thing, letting Scotland and Ireland having a parliament? even if it is a plurality so its harder to get a nationalist majority i think its idiotic, but I'm not familiar with how much they wanted a parliament.

[edmundomcpot]

When i turn 18 im voting the monster raving loony party

Then you're throwing away your vote. if you're gonna protest at least vote Green and promote some issues.

Im not protesting.... i'd love to see them in power 4 years of really pointless policies, it would be fun

Me and my friend have acctually considered creating our own party

Policy 1. Replace Park and Ride with Park and Fly
Policy 2. Every City must have an elephant zoo
Policy 3. Every City must have a giant Aldi
Policy 4. Wall Every City- only citizens allowed in and out, reducing congestion

[Guiscard]

wow, even when you try to make a purely England thread it ends up turning into an ideological battle between liberals and conservatives!

but a real question for real brits, plz:

what do you guys think about Scottish and possibly Northern Irish sovereignty? now that Scottish parliament has a nationalist majority it looks like it might be a reality!

plus, what did you guys think of Blair and his whole devolution thing, letting Scotland and Ireland having a parliament? even if it is a plurality so its harder to get a nationalist majority i think its idiotic, but I'm not familiar with how much they wanted a parliament.

Take a look at the Scotland thread for this stuff. Not really too likely to be honest.

[Titanic]

Stopper, you count votes as a % of turnout, you cant really include the ones who didn vote.

Inssertname, you even been to Loughborough?

[heavycola]

Proportional representation...

is what is needed IMO. PR would give everyone more of a voice, and could curb the worse excesses of bloated governments.

Billy Bragg ( lovely man) suggested making the upper house elected by PR, which makes a huge amount of sense. And when Sctoland got its own parliament, which system did they implement?

[flashleg8]

Proportional representation...

is what is needed IMO. PR would give everyone more of a voice, and could curb the worse excesses of bloated governments.

Billy Bragg ( lovely man) suggested making the upper house elected by PR, which makes a huge amount of sense. And when Sctoland got its own parliament, which system did they implement?

True, PR in the Scottish parliament does work to allow more minority parties to have a voice (Scottish Socialist Party, Greens, Tory ) We work with a first part the post system for individual seats (to ensure everyone has a local MSP that is accountable to the constitutes [which wouldn't happen if there was full PR]) and a PR second vote top up system (this is pretty complicated but it works reasonably well to more accurately reflect the voting make up).

But...

PR has kind of failed really in Scotland. Its aim was to move away from the sort of party politics you get in Westminster and try to work towards consensual politics by forcing parties to work in coalition governments. Lab/Lib have been in power from the start and it has worked to some extent, but the parliament is often dominated by petty point scoring. More of the same really.

[LewisJB3]

I saw on past posts things about not all muslims being bad. I'll give you that some muslims are nice people. But they don't know what Muslim is all about if that's so. The founder of the Muslim beliefs attacked non-muslims. The muslim way of spreading there beleifes include killing those who won't "convert". So those muslims that you are talking about that are nice don't know what they beleive.

[Stopper]

I'm in favour of PR too. There is no good reason why Westminster & England's councils shouldn't use it, except for the vested interests of MPs and councillors. As already said, it's not as if any of the new devolved governments set up use FPTP - Scottish parliament, Welsh Assembly, London thingy-whatsit, and I believe Scottish councils are going to be using STV (if they haven't already adopted it - I'm not sure.)

I think the fact that no new institution has been set up with FPTP is proof that no politician takes FPTP seriously as a way of electing democratic representatives. After all, it's just a hangover from the days when political parties weren't the organised forces they are now.

And another thing, although no-one seriously expects politics to become all sweetness & light just because of the adoption of PR, I do believe politics in this country would change significantly. For example, I think it would have been much more difficult, if at all possible, for Britain to have followed the US into Iraq. Incidentally, the US is another place that could do with a serious dose of PR, but that's another matter.

Rant over

[Guiscard]

I saw on past posts things about not all muslims being bad. I'll give you that some muslims are nice people. But they don't know what Muslim is all about if that's so. The founder of the Muslim beliefs attacked non-muslims. The muslim way of spreading there beleifes include killing those who won't "convert". So those muslims that you are talking about that are nice don't know what they beleive.

Shut up and get out this thread you idiot. Christianity had the bloodiest past of any religion, and still today people wage war in the name of the Christian God and protecting all that is 'right'. Does that mean that all good Christians are deluded and don't know what they believe??? There's already a thread for ignorant islamaphobic flamers, go post in there.

[Guiscard]

I'm in favour of PR too. There is no good reason why Westminster & England's councils shouldn't use it, except for the vested interests of MPs and councillors. As already said, it's not as if any of the new devolved governments set up use FPTP - Scottish parliament, Welsh Assembly, London thingy-whatsit, and I believe Scottish councils are going to be using STV (if they haven't already adopted it - I'm not sure.)

I think the fact that no new institution has been set up with FPTP is proof that no politician takes FPTP seriously as a way of electing democratic representatives. After all, it's just a hangover from the days when political parties weren't the organised forces they are now.

And another thing, although no-one seriously expects politics to become all sweetness & light just because of the adoption of PR, I do believe politics in this country would change significantly. For example, I think it would have been much more difficult, if at all possible, for Britain to have followed the US into Iraq. Incidentally, the US is another place that could do with a serious dose of PR, but that's another matter.

Rant over

I am still to make up my mind on PR to be honest. The thing which holds it back for me is the fact that PR makes it much easier for fringe extremist groups to get a seat in Parliament. I know we should have an entirely equal democracy, and every party has a right to not be censored or stopped from taking power when it is democratically elected, but it does scare me that my town could (quite easily) have a BNP MP if we had Proportional Respresentation.

[insertnamehere]

BNP is a VERY bad party . "hello we are national party, we rule the world " " we DONT , when did this happen?"

[flashleg8]

I saw on past posts things about not all muslims being bad. I'll give you that some muslims are nice people. But they don't know what Muslim is all about if that's so. The founder of the Muslim beliefs attacked non-muslims. The muslim way of spreading there beleifes include killing those who won't "convert". So those muslims that you are talking about that are nice don't know what they beleive.

Shut up and get out this thread you idiot. Christianity had the bloodiest past of any religion, and still today people wage war in the name of the Christian God and protecting all that is 'right'. Does that mean that all good Christians are deluded and don't know what they believe??? There's already a thread for ignorant islamaphobic flamers, go post in there.

Seconded!

Also your point about the BNP gaining power under a PR system is perhaps well founded. I would however say that this really reflects the failure of our present society to educate people away from these hate filled ideologies. I don't know if the above poster really believes that rubbish about Islam or not but that is exactly the kind of ignorance that we must address as a society to ensure that extremist parties are never more than fringe parties at best.

[The1exile]

BNP is a VERY bad party . "hello we are national party, we rule the world " " we DONT , when did this happen?"

Sad, but true...

[Guiscard]

Also your point about the BNP gaining power under a PR system is perhaps well founded. I would however say that this really reflects the failure of our present society to educate people away from these hate filled ideologies. I don't know if the above poster really believes that rubbish about Islam or not but that is exactly the kind of ignorance that we must address as a society to ensure that extremist parties are never more than fringe parties at best.

Yeh thats exactly what i mean. I know we have no right to deny any legal party their fair share of the vote but it does scare me. People need to see sense and stop spouting inflammatory nonsense. There IS an underlying racism in this country, its all around us (at least in the Midlands and the North - I've never lived in the south) - and we need to deal with that before proportional representation would be workable and sensible).

[heavycola]

I saw on past posts things about not all muslims being bad. I'll give you that some muslims are nice people. But they don't know what Muslim is all about if that's so. The founder of the Muslim beliefs attacked non-muslims. The muslim way of spreading there beleifes include killing those who won't "convert". So those muslims that you are talking about that are nice don't know what they beleive.

Shut up and get out this thread you idiot. Christianity had the bloodiest past of any religion, and still today people wage war in the name of the Christian God and protecting all that is 'right'. Does that mean that all good Christians are deluded and don't know what they believe??? There's already a thread for ignorant islamaphobic flamers, go post in there.

Seconded!

Also your point about the BNP gaining power under a PR system is perhaps well founded. I would however say that this really reflects the failure of our present society to educate people away from these hate filled ideologies. I don't know if the above poster really believes that rubbish about Islam or not but that is exactly the kind of ignorance that we must address as a society to ensure that extremist parties are never more than fringe parties at best.

Agreed. BNP supporters would prolly be better represented under a PR system, as is their right. We can have faith in ourselves and our values, i think, to keep them at the fringes.

[Titanic]

I live in Leicestershire, in the East Midlands, and I gotta say the racism here is actually really low. In Loughborough theres quite a big Muslim Bengali group, and a fair few Hindus, but there is next to none racism. A third of my school is Muslim, the rest mainly white, apart from some other ethnic minorities, and the only racist incidents we had recently (out of a large number of fights every year), was a couple years back when there was fights between Hindus and Muslims, and there was no actual racism from teh shite majority. It could be ebcause we live near Leicester which is going to be the first city in UK to have a ethnic majority, but I find that the South is more racist, as my cousins, their friends and people generally in that area are more racist, especially against Muslims and Eastern Europeans.

[Guiscard]

I live in Leicestershire, in the East Midlands, and I gotta say the racism here is actually really low. In Loughborough theres quite a big Muslim Bengali group, and a fair few Hindus, but there is next to none racism. A third of my school is Muslim, the rest mainly white, apart from some other ethnic minorities, and the only racist incidents we had recently (out of a large number of fights every year), was a couple years back when there was fights between Hindus and Muslims, and there was no actual racism from teh shite majority. It could be ebcause we live near Leicester which is going to be the first city in UK to have a ethnic majority, but I find that the South is more racist, as my cousins, their friends and people generally in that area are more racist, especially against Muslims and Eastern Europeans.

Which part of Leicestershire? My home town is Hinckley and we're as racist as they come... Have had a fair few friends beaten in race-related attacks and we're a bit of a BNP stronghold. I completely agree that Leicester seems pretty tolerant, and has been for a long time, but towns like Hinckley and Nuneaton have constant problems with race, Asian gangs, White gangs etc. etc.

[Ruben Cassar]

Can I ask something a bit off topic to the Britons in this thread? If in the near future, ethnic Britons were to become a minority in the UK, would you have a problem with that or not?

And also do you feel that Britain is losing part of its identity because of immigration...and if yes what do you suggest?

[Guiscard]

Non of us (perhaps bar a few Welsh, Cornish and Scots) are 'ethnic' Britons, just the result of wave after wave of immigration. If you mean 'white' then no, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. 'Culture' and 'identity' are constantly evolving and shifting ideas which are the cumulative result of the mixing pot of all the peoples, religions, colours, attitudes, moral values etc. of everyone who lives in this country. There is no such thing as 'ethnic' people really, even the Native Americans came over from central Asia, and in turn those people came from the middle east, who in turn came from Africa (although that is a very general account of what is an interesting and developing subject).