United Kingdom VII: Taking Pride in Your Success

[Asura]

Whether you or I might not accept or like people's reason for voting for a certain party or candidate, it is their choice ultimately and currently more people are chosing to like people with a blue rossette, whether they're shagging their employees under CCTVs and handing bags of cash to their friends or not.

This sort of thing, in the "information era", makes you wonder if people really should be making these choices en masse. Before I have people saying that I want to tear down democracy; I don't really want to do that. I believe in democracy, as an ideal. But part of me wonders if people, on the whole, are incapable of grasping the issues.

I follow the subreddit LeopardsAteMyFace, named for the meme which says "I never thought leopards would eat my face, says woman who voted for the leopards-eating-faces-party", where you see all these people who voted for one thing without actually grasping what they were voting for. It's like those British expats ("I never thought I'd have to leave the EU-what's that? Yes, I voted for Brexit!") and it really damages your faith in humanity's ability to think critically.

[Dogg Thang]

Democracy is pretty meaningless if it's not an informed democracy. And when politicians are not held to account and can lie endlessly without consequence, this is not an informed democracy.

[Hirst]

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say people are happy with the system based on a graph that shows people voting for two main parties. I've voted for one of the two main parties before as it's been Hobson's Choice either because nobody else has stood or realistically had a chance. If there was an option on the ballot box for "burn down Parliament and start again" I would be choosing it.

[MartyG]

It's true that the higher the education level, the less likely you are to vote Tory (this group makes up around 27% of the UK population)



However, when you break that down into social group, that margin goes away.



We could only let people who have a degree vote

But it's actually age that has the biggest influence (and we have a population weighted towards the older)



So we could just open up on the 19th July and let new Covid variants ravage the oldies

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say people are happy with the system based on a graph that shows people voting for two main parties. I've voted for one of the two main parties before as it's been Hobson's Choice either because nobody else has stood or realistically had a chance. If there was an option on the ballot box for "burn down Parliament and start again" I would be choosing it.

I really don't get this thinking it's a self-fulfilling prophecy you have the power to dispell - if all those people voting Tory/Labour decided to vote for the Greens - the Greens would win, because they'd have to most votes. It just requires people NOT to vote for Tory/Labour. You have the choice not to do that - nothing on the ballot paper says you can only vote red or blue - in the last election, even more people decided the Tories were the ones for them, hence an 86 majority.

I always vote for the candidate I want to win. If everyone does this, the candidate most people like will win in every single election - "tactical voting" just makes everyone unhappy - apart from the main parties that benefit from it.

[wakka]

I feel rather hopeless these days. I think most people in the UK are naturally protectionist and nationalistic, and choose distrust over compassion. The Tories simply play to these inclinations. It makes me rather sad.

[fishbowlhead]

But I don't think the system of electing/removing MPs is broken - if you don't like the candidate and his behaviour, you get to vote in the next election for a different one - the electorate has the power to make that change (well other than FPTP, but different tangent argument, PR would provide way more LibDems which would make me happy).

It's simply that the majority of people are currently happy with the status quo. If they weren't the chart above wouldn't look like it does.

You’ll make a great MP someday Marty 🙂

[MartyG]

I feel rather hopeless these days. I think most people in the UK are naturally protectionist and nationalistic, and choose distrust over compassion. The Tories simply play to these inclinations. It makes me rather sad.

I don't know what the answer is or even if there is one. I'm not sure I'd agree that people are protectionist on a grandscale, more a macro one: that people will look after their own interests first / aspirations first.

You’ll make a great MP someday Marty ��

Without proportional representation, I'd never get elected

[Anpanman]

The idiocy of the general public in this country knows no bounds. Just don’t vote for them, literally all people have to do, but everyone goes out and votes for them and cries why nothing changes.

The problem is that the opposition over the last few years has been ****e, that's why even places like Leigh voted conservative. If Captain hindsight can't come up with some policies to beat egghead Javid and his mates in the next election there is something wrong.
Even worse for me are the sheep that keep on voting the same, why would you have voted for labour after the winter of discontent or the mess Tony War Crimes or his mate retcher Brown got us into. On the other side who would have voted for Grey Major or Cameron again.

The MP job system is rotten - they can have a go at being in charge of a department and if it doesn't work out (due to uselessness or scandal) they can just go back to being an MP and continue to draw that wage until such time that the public has "forgot" and then the process repeats. Imagine if it was like that at a normal job, just becoming a senior manager and knowing the absolute worst case scenario is you can just jack it in and do what you were doing before without consequence. Hancock will be back running some other department within 5 years, guaranteed.

Footy managers springs to mind, manage a club and spectacularly fail, get sacked then lo and behold a few months later try again.

Exactly!

Or take them down in a bloody revolution. One or the other.

Just shoot them.

It's true that the higher the education level, the less likely you are to vote Tory (this group makes up around 27% of the UK population)

We could only let people who have a degree vote
.

Is there a chart that tells us how many prime ministers have got a degree - I'm guessing most if not all, perhaps we should go the other way and give someone else a chance.

[MartyG]

Is there a chart that tells us how many prime ministers have got a degree - I'm guessing most if not all, perhaps we should go the other way and give someone else a chance.

Around 85% of MPs have a degree, so it's likely to be a similar breakdown over the years for PMs too (if not slightly higher).

[Dogg Thang]

We could only let people who have a degree vote

I'm not saying you were honestly suggesting this but, just for my own clarity, I want to make clear that when I talk about an 'informed democracy', I didn't mean to imply that just well-educated people in the degree sense should be able to vote. I mean educated on the actual issues, on what people are standing for, on what they are doing, on what is being voted for and so on. You can get lots of people with degrees who haven't the slightest notion what's going on in a country.

[MartyG]

So an eligibility test of some kind?

Personally I don't think it makes very much difference - if people are uninformed, then surely they're just as likely to vote for any party because perhaps they're simply attracted by the colour of the candidate's hair - to that extent, the randomness of the uninformed should even itself out across all parties, leaving just the informed people to add the influencing weighting to the result.

I don't think we should be decreasing eligibility, if anything would should be increasing it, such as allowing 16-18 years to vote too, even if they're less informed.

[Neon Ignition]

Labour - Install Sean Bean as party leader, call it a done deal

[MartyG]

Labour - Install Sean Bean as party leader, call it a done deal

But he'd be killed off before the 2nd Act.

[Dogg Thang]

Marty, I don’t think you’re reading what I’m writing. You’re the one who is making it about eligibility. I have been talking about accountability. As in, when politicians lie and it’s easily proveable (Brexit bus), this is not allowed to go through as if it’s an informed democratic process because it’s clearly not. When there is no accountability for lying, there is no informed democracy.

[MartyG]

Sorry, I wasn't quite gelling with what you meant, I though you were meaning uninformed (given you said "educated on the actual issues, on what people are standing for" and I don't entirely agree on that, whilst it would be ideal, it's entirely down to an individual's decision on who to vote for whatever reason they choose), not misinformed by politicians, which is something different and they should be accountable for blatant lies.

I certainly agree that the Brexit Bus was aggregious, though if the correct figure of £250 mil had been used it would have been the same - even now after everything that's happen with the fallout of Brexit, recent polling still shows the result is likely to have been the same, so it's really difficult to judge whether this really has as huge a swing on things as we might think - people are more informed about the result of leaving now and haven't changed their minds to any great degree.

But yes, I'd certainly agree that from a messaging point of view, there should be better scrutiny - but I also think the outcome of that would simply be messaging that's more vague and suggestive, rather than being statements that are easily proveable as a lie. Arguably, the Brexit debate wasn't based on facts, but sentiments - that's a much harder thing to legislate on.