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Aaaaaand... There, it's official.

David Cameron is the new Prime Minister and The Conservatives are the new ruling party after 13 years of the Labour Party in charge, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
 
This is kind of important, so I thought I'd start a topic. Any views from the UK TIGers?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8675913.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/11/general-election-2010-live-blog

This really does make me sad. Gordon Brown was an incredible politician, and to see the power go to the Tories and Lib Dems is just disheartening. Do you know if the Coalition will go with the Lib Dem's deproliferation?

I would prefer to have a labour govt. I'm not old enough to vote, but if I could, I definately wouldn't vote conservative.

Really? I mean he wasn't as bad as a lot of the hype but to say he was incredible is pretty extreme. I thought he was a good guy, but a pretty dreadful politician, just look at that fake smile he was coached into using all the time. *shudders*

I'm dissappointed, both that we have a tory government under that evil bastard cameron, and also that the lib dems would stoop so low as to align with a party that pretty much has opposing views on most issues, just to get a bit of power.

I hope we have another election within a year.

It's not a Tory government. The Tories didn't gain enough seats to form a government, not even a minority one. It's a Tory/Lib. Dem. coalition government headed by David Cameron, and with Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister. It's probably the most involved coalition government since the Second World War.

ACardboardRobot you're the first person Ive ever seen to call Gordon Brown an incredible politition. IMO he couldn't be further from it, Im relieved he's gone.

What Oddball said pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's a coalition, in which the Liberal Democrats should hopefully curb some of the scarier Tory tendencies. The agreement on policy seems to be a mish-mash of Conservative manifesto stuff that the Lib Dems did/didn't allow, and the Lib Dem manifesto stuff that the Tories did/didn't allow. The parties involved certainly have more differences than they share similarities, but the overall result might well be (well, frankly, HAS to be, given the difficulties the UK faces) something which works.

We're in for an interesting ride. The most interesting election in my lifetime, at least. Collectively speaking, we got what we voted for, and now we get to see exactly what that looks like.

USA moves in a good direction. UK citizens suddenly realize that something has to be done. They have to react quickly! If not, there could be disturbances in the fine-tuned balance of good and evil in the world. Making the ultimate sacrifice, they decide to elect an evil right-wing party to lead them for the next five years. The balance shifts back to the right. The sacrifice has been made and the balance has been restored. The world is once again a slightly less safe place to live in.

:lol:

Yeah i realise it's not a tory government, that was my usual pessimism kicking in! There's no getting around the fact that the tory part of the coalition has far more clout, but you're right in that the lib dems will hopefully stop the tories more fascist motions.

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting ride for sure!

I am pessimistic. Haven't seen any mention of policies I care that much about, being the ones which worried me the most. I think it's too early to say if it's a good thing or not.

I will think more carefully about voting next time. (Or maybe just disregard any optimism I have)


Ahaha, that did make me laugh :D

You know, I always wonder why people hate the Tories so much. As a student I always thought Labour / Lib Dem was the way to go, but having got a job, paying taxes and thinking about the economy... the Tories seem to make more sense (at least to me).

Not that I like Cameron, he's way too smug.

Anyway, this coalition should be interesting. As was said earlier, the Lib Dems will curb the "scarier" policies of the Tories and hopefully the Tories will do the same to the Lib Dems. In the end we'll get some sort of middle road which is often for the best.

The next election, which may be soon, may well be under the Alternative Vote system so that's going to be very interesting too!

Because the Tories have a reputation for racism and homophobia maybe? Maybe it depends on how aware you are of the class divide.  :) (I mean that in a non-sarcastic way.) Maybe it depends on whether you remember the '80's.

Agreed, they do historically have a reputation for that... but I'm kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt this time round. I may well regret it considering that I'm not white or straight... :S

I guess this time round I thought the most pressing concern for the country was the economy and that the Conservative plans for it were the least bad of the three major parties. Whoever won it was always going to be a painful few years, but my initial thoughts are that we're better off with a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition than a Labour/Lib Dem one.

The UK labour party is like what people would call "conservative" in many other countries. I don't know much about their conservatives except for Margaret Thatcher :epileptic:

Good news! I love the orange book! Portal, TF2 and a bunch of halflife 2 shit all for a low low price. what more could you want?

Well I hope the Lib. Dems sort out this ridiculous digital economy act

That's pretty much all you need to know. The PR is just that: a gloss of "hope" and "change" on top of the same old party. They're going to take a lot of delight and pleasure out of dismantling pretty much every system designed to help the poor and down-on-their-luck people whilst rewarding the multimillionaires. They'll privatise anything which isn't nailed down.


One of the nice things (at least in speeches and on paper) is that the coalition seems to want to turn back the clock on the atrocities against civil liberties enacted under the Labour government. I sincerely hope that includes the Digital Economy Act, but given how massively for it the Tories were (and how massively against it the Lib Dems were) we're going to see some fireworks before that one gets resolved.


I'm interested... How old are you? Do you remember the '80s? My memory of it is a country being systematically dismantled, thousands of families' incomes destroyed, in order to better serve the wellbeing of corporations and stockbrokers. I remember riots and strikes and my parents going prematurely grey trying (and failing) just to keep up with mortagage payments on the house we lived in.

Also: I'm interested in which specific Tory policies you thought would be best for the economy (by which I guess we mean dealing with the defecit). You're right in saying that it would be a difficult job for any incoming government, but when I was listening, basically ALL of the parties had NOTHING to say about what would be cut, and when, so it seemed pretty impossible to judge any one party's policy to be better than any others.

Disclaimer: I know politics can be an inflammatory issue, and I'm not trying to start an argument. I'm just curious as to how people come by political opinions which differ from mine.

I fear hopeful is the right word there. I dunno, I'm pretty miffed at how this week has panned out and my faith in our political system (not that I had a great deal anyway but I'm ever the optimist) has taken a right kicking over the past 7 days.

One of those times where you just end up scratching your head wondering how so many people managed to fuck something up so grandly.

Between Labour scuppering any chance of a progressive coalition, first starting with their mutterings about refusing to partner in anything with the SNP then the sniping over the remotest possibility of talking to the Lib Dems and for the kicker, Clegg siding with Cameron resulting in a Prime Minister the majority of the country didn't vote for or more specifically voted to keep out. Then there's the demise of most of the Lib Dem's progressive politics on the same day where they've got an approximation of fuck all out the coalition. Christ, they couldn't even get Cable the job he's most qualified for and instead we get Osbourne. Someone I wouldn't trust with a flannel in case he fucked it up.

With the likelihood of at least 5 years under Tory rule, the Lib Dem's likely throwing out their chances of ever getting elected after Clegg's charade and the only viable choice being Labour I can't say I'm exactly enthused about what lies ahead, y'know?

I guess it wouldn't be quite as bad if I didn't live through the entire reign of the last Tory government and watched them systematically dismantle the country and still we're feeling the "benefits" close to 15 years since they got removed from power.

And for all the good that'll come from the repealing of the more terrible Labour policies like ID Cards and the likes, it'll be no good a time to be either in the public sector, unemployed, old or ill. Or young if they manage to push through the "community service" stuff for 16 year olds. When you're entire plan to solve unemployment consists of slave labour and there's all the signs that they're aiming for the sick also, pretty fucked up times ahead.

The worst thing? This isn't a new conservative government. It's all the bastards we got rid of in 1997. I've seen Tebbit, Hurd, Heseltine all wheeled out over the past few days and I'd hoped I'd never live to see the day where they got a say in this country again.

Bah. Not a happy chappy right now.

Your political views appear to be skewed. The majority of the country also voted to keep Gorden Brown out, and Nick Clegg for that matter. That's why it was a hung parliament. Saying that everyone's vote, who didn't vote Tory, was specifically to keep out Camaron is simply wrong, and as the Labour/Lib. Dem. combined vote went down that suggests that the general voting mood swung towards the Tories, not against it. Just to clarify I'm not Tory, and didn't vote Tory, but I understand that just because I didn't vote for someone it doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to rule. That's what democracy is I guess.

New Labour were also just as bad for systematically dismantling the country as well. I mean have you ever attempted to get a train recently? Personally I think New Labour/Tony Blair were a terrible government. With his illegal wars, vanity projects(Millennium Bridge anyone ::) ), and the erosion of civil liberties, I'd say Labour have done their fair share of damage. Give someone else a chance to make a mess of it now.

I haven't studied enough UK politics to be sure of anything surrounding this election. But this is what I suspected and why I declared them evil. Thank you for confirming.


But.. but.. as far as I understand, the tories are specifically for all those bad things you listed.

I'd wager good money the decisive issue in the negotiations was that Labour wouldn't come to the party on electoral reform. Having the most to lose of the 3 parties.

That said, I'd assume the conservatives would hope to sneak away without changing anything there either.

Ok, still. 53% of people - a majority, didn't vote Tory. We can argue over intent if you want but it's not going to get away from the fact that the majority of people who voted (and didn't get turned away from voting!) did not vote conservative and yet, here we are with a Tory government with a concessionary coat tail that Clegg can hang on to.

Whilst there may well have been a swing to the right (and let's face it, given until this election the BNP have been gaining ground, UKIP actually got votes so I'm not going to argue that point) but the majority of people laying their vote down didn't take a swing to the right. We ended up here because FPTP is a broken system and well, all the stuff I mentioned in my post above about politicians being politicians and self serving fools.

Between Labour and the Lib Dems there were around 5 million more votes than for Tory. Yet we have a Con Dem government. Does that add up to you? And of course, anyone who didn't vote for either pretty much might as well have had their vote thrown down the toilet.


Are we talking the rail network that was privatised under the previous Tory government? The Iraq war that the Tories were all gung ho, chaps about? And vanity projects? Fuck me, when people were down on their luck, when race riots were abound - the Tories built a fucking garden centre in Liverpool. I'd sooner have the Millennium Bridge than an insult like that.

I'm not going to argue that Labour were saints, I'm not a lunatic. Their idea of civil liberties couldn't be more opposed to mine. But there's no arguing that those on the lower end of the earnings scale, those who are sick and those who find themselves one of the many unemployed in a country where the amount of jobless people VASTLY outnumbers the number of jobs were safer and more secure than they've ever been.

These are the people who are target number 1 under the Tories. That's what the Tories are.

And y'know, I don't want to give anyone the chance to make a mess of it. That's why I care so much. I want people to help fix the mess, not fuck it up more.

In summary, yes, my politics are skewed but for good reason. I lived through this once and it was shit.

Your argument that the Tories shouldn't be in government because 53% of the seats didn't go to them is flawed. By that logic we'd have no government what so ever as Labour didn't get 61% of the seats and Lib. Dem. didn't get 91% of seats. Or are you suggesting in the event of a hung parliament we have no government at all?

Rail privatisation may have been started by the Tories, but New Labour didn't reverse the process as they had promised to do. Instead they just half heartedly finished it and let it rot. As for the two Gulf Wars, Tory's was legal, New Labour's was illegal. Whether either was right is a different argument all together.

I'll give you the garden festival, but Millennium Bridge, Millennium Dome, London Eye, Diana Memorial, I'd have rather had the national debt reduced than those disasters.

I'm not sure why I'm defending the Tories as i'm not remotely Tory myself, but I was better off personally before New Labour waltzed in with their 'feel good' manifesto.

I'd doubt that, as Labour (or at least Gordon Brown - I know a few older party members were against it) stated before the election that they'd hold a referendum on electoral reform.  Which is exactly what the Conservatives ended up agreeing to in order to get the Liberals to join them.

RobF, your maths doesn't work out.  You're right that:
Lab + Lib > Con
but it's also true:
Con + Lib > Lab
and most importantly:
Con > Lab

What would really not make sense is if the party that got the most votes (which sadly was the Conservatives) didn't end up being intimately involved in running the country.  Before the election the Liberal Democrats said they'd first try to form a coalition with whoever got the most seats, which is what they did.

My hope is that preferential voting will get put into place sharpish, and more people will start to actually vote for who they want to win.

Preferential voting is generally a good thing. But you're asking a lot of people there.

I've spoken to a couple of minor party candidates (here in Aus.) about this very issue and they explain to me how annoyed they are at constantly hearing "Oh, I would have voted for you but i had to put XXXXX first to make sure they defeated YYYYY. You got my second preference though."

I was born in the early 80s which means that they pretty much passed me by from a political standpoint. Reading about it after the fact is one thing, but it doesn't compare to really living through it. So I take your point that maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.

As for the specific Conservative policies - scrapping the 1% national insurance increase and pledging to make deep cuts this year rather than trying to postpone until next year as Labour or the Lib Dems would have done. Look at the situation Greece is in, there's no reason that couldn't happen to the UK.

Also just to clarify, I like the Lib Dems and I strongly agree with their views on civil liberties and the like. Aside from a few hiccups like their posting an amendment to the digital economy bill almost word for word from the BPI (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/11/digital-economy-bill-amendment-lobbyists though they later tried to repeal it) they've been very good. What stops me from out and out supporting them is the way they want to punish the wealthy. Stuff like the £2500 bonus cap for finance workers just seems arbitrarily cruel and a way to score points with a public that hates "the bankers".

Anyway, that's what I think. It's probably not going to be a common view round here and it may well get me flamed. I kind of regret posting anything in this thread... I should have stuck to indie games :facepalm: I'm still hopeful that this coalition will do good things. If we do get the Alternative Vote system it's probably a harbinger of things to come as it'll be less likely that any party will get a majority.

Salt, which part of "more people didn't vote Tory than did" is it that you're arguing against when you say my maths is wonky?

Anyway, some interesting figures re "vanity projects"

The London Eye cost approx £75 million to build.
The Millenium Bridge cost £22 million to build.
The dome £700 million and The Diana Memorial 5.2 with £250,000 a year to maintain.

The NHS budget for 12 months is (2010) is 104.6 billion.
The deficit for 2009 in the UK was £159.2 billion and a National Debt of 950.4 billion according to the ONS.

So we're into the realms of numbers that on paper (and especially with SHOCK COST HEADLINES) sound really big. In the grand scheme of things, they're nothing. Piss in the oceans. So I couldn't really care less if the worst thing they manage to build is a couple of tourist attractions and a pointless memorial to the Queen Of The Daily Express Front Page that hemorrhages money. Were they not built, the financial difference would be so negligible as to not really matter and y'know, they're not direct insults like the Garden Festival was*

Arguable abuse of lottery funds which could have gone to far more deserving charities/help groups and causes aside, they're a tiny blip in 13 years on the financial landscape y'know? Were they follies? Perhaps and I'd certainly argue that the memorial is one of the most pointless things we've constructed as a nation (and you can't sell that one off to Toussauds ;)). Would the money spent have made a drastic difference to our debt or deficit? Nah, not really.

And Labour's war? Abhorrent, definitely. Illegal? Definitely. Lest us not forget that the Tories were just as for the war (you can check voting records if you need to gather some stats for yourself) as Blair and his cohorts. I fear that regardless of which of the two were in power at the time, the endgame would have been the same. As it was, Mr Auton Smile The First gets the blame but the Tories would have gone for it equally so.

Not to defend Labour here, they've done some awful things whilst in office. Just to get some perspective on what -is- awful and what isn't so much, really.


How very cruel, I'm sure they'll suffer... no wait. The 5 point plan isn't exactly unreasonable.


That's neither arbitrary or cruel, really, is it?

Considering the wages of those in receipt of said bonuses, I can't really see it burning too much y'know? They only get 1/4 of the minimum wage in a yearly bonus? Terrible.

Not because "I hate bankers", just because some perspective is really required here. Even with the bonus cap, that's still a quarter of what (and I'm going from memory here so I might be off mark a tad) around 20% of the population get in a year.

12 months JSA is less than £4,000. What's more arbitrary and cruel? Expecting someone to have a cap on their bonus to £2,500 or expecting someone to live 12 months on a little over that?

*although fair do's, first time I got to meet Jon Pertwee so not all bad...

Agree!!! Incapacity benefit was something stupid like £130 per fortnight...

Which is worse D: as if you're sick, you have more costs!

Much as Oddball also said, you could substitute the name of any single party in that sentence and it'd still be true.  On the basis of that statement you go on to argue against the Tories being in power, or at least expressing incredulity about it.  If you consistently apply your argument then you'd be against any other party being in power too.

Ultimately the Conservatives got the most votes and won the most seats.  It would be a quite odd democracy if that means they didn't get power.

I'm taking into account political alignment, man. The majority of the votes went to (alleged) Centre Left and Left leaning parties not to the right.

So yes, you can argue by shifting around parties for entirely random reasons or you can actually think for a second as to whether a vote for a centre left/left leaning party is a vote for the right. I don't think it is, do you?

And given there was no mandate to lead for any of the 3 parties, you can't just say "Tories got most votes so therefor should lead" because it doesn't work like that in this situation.

If you are talking about absolutes of left and right then yes you have a point. Unfortunately it's far from that straight forward. If it was we'd only ever need two parties left and right. If you look at the party manifestos all the parties straddle the line to some degree, and cross it on a great many issues, in fact Labour themselves are all over the place if you're talking only about left and right wing views. It's a multi-party system and the party with the most votes are now in power, all be it propped up by another party.

Honestly, is it that hard to grasp that the majority of people in the country did not vote for the tories and that in the event of a hung parliament, the transfer of power does not automatically go to the party with the most votes?

Why is this such a contentious issue with you? I'm really struggling to see why something that's plainly and statistically obvious and an argument based on how our political system actually really works has come down to "my politics being skewed" or "my maths being wrong".

To be honest this is shit news. Fuck david cameron. Fuck the conservatives. Fuck FUck FUCK  :mockangry:

Yeah from what I've heard... the conservatives are awful. So are labour but less so. And the Lib Dems... well, I get the impression they're still power grabbing dickheads but at least they mostly have the right ideas. The 5 year limit on bonus stock sale seems particularly awesome to me, because to cash in on it they have to ensure the thing is still around in 5 years. Not perfect, but it doesn't seem bad to me.

Well, didn't take them long to show their true colours.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8681624.stm

and some opinions on the changes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/seealso/2010/05/daily_view_parliament_dissolut.html

 :monoclepop:

Correct, that's what I said. In the event of a hung parliament power goes to the coalition of parties that can form a majority. In this case it was the tories and the lib. dems. I'm not sure why you feel that in the event of a hung parliament that power should automatically go to labour.

It's not contentious for me. You're the one that thinks an injustice has been done. I'm merely pointing out that everything was done well within the bounds of the constitution.

I don't. I'm annoyed that Labour muffed up any chance of a progressive coalition and opposition. There's a massive world of difference between that and implying that they should automatically retain/gain power.


At which point have I argued that what's happened isn't within the bounds of the constitution or that the tories have no right to be in power?

Arguing that there's a gulf between what people voted for and what people actually got as I'm doing isn't even close to the same thing.

I suspect one of the reasons why the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the Tories rather than Labour (despite being historically enemies with completely opposing viewpoints) is that the Tories got more votes than anyone else. For a party whose central tenet is switching the voting system to Proportional Representation to side with Labour (who got fewer votes than the Tories) in order to try to construct a governing coalition party made from the losers in the last election would just make them look like idiots and hypoctrites, and completely undermine what the Lib Dems have been striving for all this time.

Of course, you can still make the argument that the Lib Dems are hypocrites for siding with their traditional enemies, the Tories, but I think it's a much weaker argument given how willing the Tories have been to form a full coalition government (rather than a minority government with some agreed-upon "favours" from the Lib Dems, which would have robbed the Lib Dems of any real power). The manifesto of the coalition is a mish-mash of policies in which the Conservatives have had to concede a lot of points in favour of a more liberal bias (and vice-versa), had to give seats in the cabinet to Lib Dem ministers, and had to agree on a referendum on Alternative Vote (which from what I understand is sort of "Proportional Representation Lite").

Ultimately, if you're pissed off about the outcome of the election, you only have a few options:

1 - To rail against democracy itself, and wish for a new system of choosing governments
2 - To support democracy by rail against the skewed "first past the post" system (in which case, as a de-facto Lib Dem supporter, you should accept that this is the closest thing possible to a positive outcome in this election - it's not radical political change but it's a step in that direction)
3 - To rail against your fellow citizens for having different opinions to you, and for outnumbering you. They have a word for those people in America - they're called "Teabaggers".

I'm not sure you can claim that the Lib. Dems and Tories are historically enemies. David Llyod George, the last Liberal Prime Minister, was widely supported by the Tories. His government was propped up by a coalition with the Tories. Kind of the reverse of what has happened this time. Although it is fair to say that Lloyd George's coalition with the Tories did all but destroy the Liberal party.

So there is no room for disappointment within democracy, huh?  :P People always harp on before an election about how if you don't vote, you have no right to complain. Well I did bloody vote, so I can damn well complain!  :lol:

That wasn't in my lifetime, and I'm embarrassingly ropey about the history of former prime ministers, so I stand corrected. That said, the Tories are a right-wing party and the Lib Dems are left, so they're polar opposites in many areas of policy (although it seems these days they share a little bit more common ground due to all 3 main parties edging towards the centre). For as long as I can remember they've never passed up an opportunity to attack each other, though. Actually, to be more specific, the Lib Dems have enjoyed attacking the Tories, and the Tories have done their best to ignore the Lib Dems entirely in an attempt to create the impression that they're irrelevant and that the UK is a two-party system.


Heh, yes I missed that option. You can indeed complain, in fact complaining is a national pastime ;D Ultimately though, complaining is pretty much option 3 out of the ones I presented, although of course you get to choose how bitter or sanguine you feel about it so you don't have to take it to Teabagger extremes if you don't want to. I suppose my point was that (aside from the overt racism and bigotry), the main thing that seems to drive the Teabaggers is a feeling that they were somehow cheated out of the result they wanted because there weren't enough other people in the country who think the same way they do.

I just remembered an option 4 though, if you happen to not be a resident of the country in which the election took place:

4 - Don't visit there. Deny that country's economy the money you spend on tourism.

It's a slightly crap gesture, admittedly, but it's something. There are a few countries on my list that I won't visit because I'm disappointed that their populace votes for particularly draconian governments (but which otherwise would be a nice place to visit).

AAAAAAAAAAAhhahahahahahahahahahahhahaha*deep breath*hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Man. The internet these days... *wipes tear from eye*