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The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )

Who will you be voting for?

  • Tory

    Votes: 38 9.9%
  • Diet Tory (Labour)

    Votes: 132 34.3%
  • Tory Zero (Greens)

    Votes: 44 11.4%
  • Extra Tory with lemon (UKIP)

    Votes: 40 10.4%
  • Lib Dems

    Votes: 9 2.3%
  • Other

    Votes: 31 8.1%
  • Cheese on toast

    Votes: 91 23.6%

  • Total voters
    385
  • Poll closed .
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Which comes back to my point about every child's right to equal ops in society and how they shouldn't be punished for their parents' circumstances. And yet, effectively, they are.

Very difficult to achieve though. Parents are quite probably the biggest influence on our lives, and I'm learning that more and more through the other half's work in pediatric stuff. Sadly there are still too many blokes who don't hang around or who abuse their partner/child. Heck, I'm sure being adopted as a kid influenced me and my brother enormously, despite us only having weeks with our biological parents.

So long as people are capable of making bad choices and mistakes in life, I don't think a state can ever really tidy up (or prevent) after them all.

You might as well just say your point, which is that welfare should be cut for the good of those using it. We could then use the money saved to cut taxes for the higher earners (those that bother paying it) so we can benefit from their hard work.

Easy comrade, there's no point or agenda here. We were talking about welfare, that study got published yesterday so I thought I'd share it. Better to have an open mind over things than have an opinion and look for evidence to support it, right? ;)
 
Very difficult to achieve though.

But not impossible.

So long as people are capable of making bad choices and mistakes in life, I don't think a state can ever really tidy up (or prevent) after them all.

So, sod them, then. The Right-wing "libertarian"* attitude. Give up on people. And you seem to be blaming the children for their own circumstances, yet again.




*"libertarian," my arse.
 
Ukip is like the Tory right on speed combined with the BNP and the National Front.

I don't really understand why people like you think that they're right wing. A party's position on the traditional political horseshoe isn't solely determined by social and foreign policy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's primarily about economics and UKIP's economic policies are certainly not as right wing as people like to believe. I'd argue that they're dead central. Now, taking into account their other policies, they may be right-of-centre, but no further than that and no further than the Conservatives.

As for being "combined with the BNP", well, they're the only party that explicitly forbids any former BNP member from joining...
 

But not impossible.



So, sod them, then. The Right-wing "libertarian"* attitude. Give up on people. And you seem to be blaming the children for their own circumstances, yet again.

Why do you respond that way all the time mate? It makes it hard to hold a discussion. I'd love to know quite how you think conversations go around our dinner table at home, seeing as my partner works in precisely the field you're talking about. It's amazing that she's stuck with such an unsupportive swine for so long.

It reminds me of Bjorn Lomberg when he wrote the Skeptical Environmentalist 15 years ago or whenever it was. All the climate change heavies had a go at him, oil industry stooge and all that, when all he was really saying was that in a world of finite resources, you should invest those resources where they will have the most impact. So fixing indoor pollution from kerosene lamps is more effective than building a wind turbine, that kind of thing. Things are seldom binary, you know? Usually much more fuzzy than that.

Maybe have a read of some of those books I mentioned earlier in the thread. It might give you a better indication of what has influenced me over the years rather than tossing about this tired libertarian label all the time.
 
And to emphasise the difficulty. It's estimated that assortive mating (ie smart professionals marrying smart professionals) increases inequality by around 25%. Those couples tend to be more stable, with something like 9% of university educated women giving birth out of wedlock per year vs 61% of high school only women. When they have children, professional couples tend to expose them to around 32 million more words by the age of 4 than children of parents on welfare.

That's just up until they're 4, and it's not due to money or opportunities (which no doubt come later on when wealthier folks can move to areas with good schools or whatever), but good parenting/life skills.

That isn't saying poorer kids are at fault or they deserve anything, it's accepting that parenting plays an enormous role in the wellbeing of a child, and their future success as an adult (as the rewards for being highly educated are bountiful and the circle tends to perpetuate of marrying other educated people and so on).

It might not be impossible, as you say, but I'm not sure it's at all easy either.
 
Should have 4 debates ,one in each region/Country featuring the parties standing there or just a couple of debates between Cameron and Miliband.
 

Why do you respond that way all the time mate? It makes it hard to hold a discussion. I'd love to know quite how you think conversations go around our dinner table at home, seeing as my partner works in precisely the field you're talking about. It's amazing that she's stuck with such an unsupportive swine for so long.

It reminds me of Bjorn Lomberg when he wrote the Skeptical Environmentalist 15 years ago or whenever it was. All the climate change heavies had a go at him, oil industry stooge and all that, when all he was really saying was that in a world of finite resources, you should invest those resources where they will have the most impact. So fixing indoor pollution from kerosene lamps is more effective than building a wind turbine, that kind of thing. Things are seldom binary, you know? Usually much more fuzzy than that.

Maybe have a read of some of those books I mentioned earlier in the thread. It might give you a better indication of what has influenced me over the years rather than tossing about this tired libertarian label all the time.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Clint makes me look like a passive poster.
 
I don't really understand why people like you think that they're right wing. A party's position on the traditional political horseshoe isn't solely determined by social and foreign policy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's primarily about economics and UKIP's economic policies are certainly not as right wing as people like to believe. I'd argue that they're dead central. Now, taking into account their other policies, they may be right-of-centre, but no further than that and no further than the Conservatives.

As for being "combined with the BNP", well, they're the only party that explicitly forbids any former BNP member from joining...

The political alignment of a party encompasses everything they do, not primarily one thing. I see social policy as being as important as economic or foreign policy when looking at political stance.

If you are solely looking at economic policy, however, I would argue that general income tax cuts, scrapping of inheritance tax and dramatically cutting foreign aid is viewed as being right-wing.
 

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