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2019 General Election Poll and Discussion

Which party will you vote for at the 2019 General Election?

  • Brexit Party

    Votes: 4 4.4%
  • Conservatives

    Votes: 15 16.7%
  • Green Party

    Votes: 3 3.3%
  • Labour

    Votes: 42 46.7%
  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 14 15.6%
  • SNP

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • UKIP

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Not Voting/Can't Vote

    Votes: 6 6.7%
  • Not Yet Decided

    Votes: 6 6.7%

  • Total voters
    90
I find it baffling that anybody not even somewhat appalled by the effects of austerity and the continual cuts to public services across the United Kingdom wouldn't want to vote Labour, given the impressive (albeit, perhaps slightly too ambitious?) contents of the latest manifesto. I say that as someone who doesn't buy into the cult of personality that seems to be emerging around Corbyn again recently. I still can't decide on how I feel about the anti-semitism accusations, but I definitely feel they were overblown by the right wing media and even in The Guardian, by way of discrediting Corbyn.

Not to accuse anyone of cynicism, but I find it difficult to believe people who seem to deny that gender or racial bias is even a thing, that there's any need for a women's forum in the government, who are happy with the evidence of domestic ruckuses, threatening journalists and chummy Eton racism filed against our prime minister, nonetheless seem to be suddenly incredibly concerned about anti-semitism in the Labour party. I rather wish they could extend their empathy in the direction of, well, just about anything else?

It's easy to not vote for someone who has stood side by side with terrorists. And I find it VERY easy to not vote for the labour party given every time they have been in power the country has ended up in a total mess both with the economy and getting us in to illegal fake wars.
 
It's easy to not vote for someone who has stood side by side with terrorists. And I find it VERY easy to not vote for the labour party given every time they have been in power the country has ended up in a total mess both with the economy and getting us in to illegal fake wars.
They were in power during a global financial crisis, prior to which national debt stayed fairly constant. Since Tories have been in power it has continued to rise.
 
I find it VERY easy to not vote for the labour party given every time they have been in power the country has ended up in a total mess both with the economy and getting us in to illegal fake wars
A) The current government has accrued more debt than the last Labour government:
fIW4gbJ.png

When Labour left office in 2010, debt as a proportion of GDP was 69%.
In 2019, after nearly a decade of Tory austerity, debt as a proportion of GDP is 85%.

B) How did Boris vote on the Iraq war? Was he a staunch opponent? (Hint, there were only three Tories who voted against it, and none of them were called Boris). You know who did vote against that 'illegal fake war' though? Some chap called Jeremy Corbyn...
 
I think you could do with a fact checking service.

Tada!

So a better comparison to make is government borrowing as a proportion of GDP, which is a measure of everything produced in the economy.

By that measure it turns out that all Labour governments borrowed about 70% of GDP while the governments since 2010 borrowed about 40% of GDP, which is a very different picture
.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/election-2017-39999460

Seriously though , how can so so so many people be contemplating voting for someone who has stood with terrorists?? Even the previous head of MI6 has warned about his links and his past, yet is everyone just choosing to ignore this?

I mean, for enough I wouldn't say I wouldn't vote for labour at some point, but there is no way on earth I could vote for Corbyn, and that seems to be the general consensus in the current poll trackers (well unless your a student, they seem to like him but then they haven't had the opportunity to experience real living under a Labour government, which in turn is quite ironic as it was labour who introduced tuition fees in 1998).
 
(well unless your a student, they seem to like him but then they haven't had the opportunity to experience real living under a Labour government, which in turn is quite ironic as it was labour who introduced tuition fees in 1998).

As an ex Student (I was with the first class to be charged 9,000 a year) I think I can answer this one.

I don't disagree with paying for the education services individuals use, especially when many take university courses to learn about topics they enjoy and want to continue their study of, rather than things that are required for jobs.

What I do disagree with is the unfair and egregious rise of student loans, now runaway with interest far higher than most conventional loans. I'm trapped in a graduate tax for the rest of my working life, so I'm already paying a high percentage of extra tax ontop of other workers earning the same wage.

To triple the loans in one go, and miss sell them too (personal opinion) was bad policy. I don't want future students to have the kind of debt I have.
 
I was lucky as I didn't have to pay for any of my college and university courses. I don't think students should have to pay at all. As a full time worker I am happy to pay towards funding future generations to get good jobs, as ultimately, they will then in turn be paying towards my upkeep later in life. What goes around comes around and the more people we can encourage to get a good education the better.
 
Corbyn appeals to 'students' (jeez), as his vision for the party is more of a return to Labour's socialist roots, many of which were sliced when the party did commit to policies such as tuition fee costs, as you say. To declare you'd never vote for Labour due to the Iraq war is like saying you'd never visit Thorpe as you never agreed with the management who installed X:/ No Way Out. It's exactly like that! (OK, it's not.)

To reaffirm, I think some of Corbyn's politics may be a little too left for some voters, as you've made abundantly clear, and his wishy-washy attitude to Brexit bothers me on a personal level. I won't be voting for him wearing a 'CANS 4 CORBYN' banter shirt. But to dismiss his previous conversations with admittedly bad men as rendering him an immediate danger to the country... I just don't buy it, sorry. It's absolute red top spin.

I sometimes find myself a little bit prejudiced towards the current Labour administration, too. I suppose I also have some borrowed nostalgia of the Blair era, which felt more professional and 'realistic', compared to having a walking cliche lead the country. A bloke who makes jam, loves Billy Bragg and can't tell Ant and Dec apart. But the legacy of that era has been pretty toxic. I sometimes just wonder, when people comb through the apparently endless list of reasons not to vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, do they claim to desire positive change but secretly, are just struggling to conjure the spirit needed to imagine anything actually different? Just caught in the same old, surprisingly reassuring loops of bias.
 
By that measure it turns out that all Labour governments borrowed about 70% of GDP while the governments since 2010 borrowed about 40% of GDP, which is a very different picture.

The ONS report from March 2019 paints a different picture:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gove...nmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/march2019
  • General government gross debt was £1,821.3 billion at the end of the financial year ending March 2019, equivalent to 85.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 25.2 percentage points above the reference value of 60% set out in the Protocol on the Excessive Deficit Procedure.

  • General government gross debt first exceeded the 60% Maastricht reference value at the end of the financial year ending March 2010, when it was 69.6% of GDP.
And what do we have to show for all this debt? The worst A&E waiting times we've ever seen. Hundreds of thousands more children in poverty than when the Tories took office. A *massive* explosion in food bank use. Increased waiting lists for routine operations. Firestations closed, police numbers cut, libraries gone, schools unable to run five days a week... The list goes on.
 
Tada!

So a better comparison to make is government borrowing as a proportion of GDP, which is a measure of everything produced in the economy.

By that measure it turns out that all Labour governments borrowed about 70% of GDP while the governments since 2010 borrowed about 40% of GDP, which is a very different picture
.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/election-2017-39999460

:tearsofjoy:

The article you've quoted from is comparing the TOTAL SUM of all Labour governments versus the Tories since 2010, in response to Corbyn's claim that they've borrowed more since 2010 than Labour ever has.
BBC said:
The simplest way to examine this claim is to compare the amounts in cash terms, add up the amounts borrowed by all Labour governments and compare the total with the amount borrowed since 2010.

By this calculation, the combined Labour governments borrowed a little more than £500bn over their 33 years while the governments since 2010 have borrowed a bit more than £670bn.


Here's the important info:

Full Fact said:
In May 2010, when the Coalition began, the national debt (excluding debt held by public sector banks) was £1.03 trillion. As of March 2019 it had risen to £1.80 trillion.


debt_as_a_proportion_of_the_economy.png
 
Well if people want to vote with someone who stood with the IRA and supports Hamas, that's up to them. I doubt very much he will get in to office however if the polls are to be believed and I pray he doesn't.
 
Well if people want to vote with someone who stood with the IRA and supports Hamas, that's up to them. I doubt very much he will get in to office however if the polls are to be believed and I pray he doesn't.

Perhaps we should start fake wars with them instead, like the one you were against earlier.

There's a difference between being a terrorist and making peace. Our terrorist threat level and previous UK attacks is mainly down to our aggressive foreign policy - something which Corbyn has continuously voted against and Boris has voted for.

I'd suggest spending some time on www.theyworkforyou.com to understand who you're voting for!
 
And that's Daily Mail content!

This one's the winner in the desolation stakes for me. Not sure if this bloke's five pound dog turd license policy is more or less realistic than his hope that Boris will deliver Brexit and "get em' out!"

 
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