Life copies satire

The Daily Mash, 21 November 2014:

TACTICAL voters no longer have any idea who they are meant to be voting for or who they are trying to keep out, they have admitted...

Political blogger Susan Traherne said: “UKIP’s growing power, the Greens overtaking the Lib Dems and the willingness of every party to go into coalition with every other means tactical voting is over.

“Voters are now advised simply to cast their vote for the party they would most like to see actually running the county. Which admittedly doesn’t make the choice any easier.”

The Daily Mail, 30 April 2015:

Baffled voters are switching between all of the main parties or giving up on the election altogether, pollsters have warned...

Gideon Skinner, from IpsosMori, said: "Swing is a very useful concept, but never forget that it is now a misleadingly simple name for a very complex business. Most of the shift in votes these days is unlikely to involve many people who voted Conservative five years ago now having decided to vote Labour instead.

‘Today, most of the movement is between the two big parties and the smaller parties, of 2010 voters thinking they will not turn out this time (or vice versa), or people moving between the smaller parties. Rather than thinking of a swing, it is probably more useful to picture a roundabout - or as an overlapping flow of voters between multiple parties, as we show here."

Why You Should Vote (2)

From the Conservative mainfesto (p65):

continue to increase the State Pension through our triple lock, so it rises by at least 2.5 per
cent, inflation or earnings, whichever is highest

From the Labour manifesto (p48-9)

We will keep the triple-lock so that the state pension increases by inflation, earnings, or 2.5 per 
cent, whichever is highest

From the Libdem manifesto (p49)

Legislate for the Liberal Democrat ‘triple lock’ of increasing the State Pension each year by the highest of earnings growth, prices growth or 2.5%.

From the UKIP manifesto (p20)

The ‘triple lock’ now guarantees the state pension will increase each year by the higher of inflation, earnings or 2.5 per cent.

There's no good reason for pensions increasing by a minimum of 2.5%. If wages and inflation are rising by less than that, it's simply a giveaway. And it's being done for one reason and that is that pensioners vote a lot more than young people. Over 65s had a turnout rate approximately 1.5 times higher than 18-24s and approximtely 1.3 times that of 25-34s (section 2.3 of this).

All that parties care about are people who vote. That's how they win. They might pay lip service to the concern of people not voting, but unless they think it's affecting a group that generally votes for them, they aren't going to care too much.

Voting Thoughts

Bit of a personal post, but I'm looking at all my options, and here's my current thinking:-

Greens: right out. completely hatstand (except CI and a couple of other things)
UKIP: out. A complete mess of policies including things like anti-Greenbelt building and turnover tax. They've even softened their views on smoking in pubs to "smoking rooms".
Lib Dems: Mostly, not too bad. Bit too much of the state expansion, bit too pro-European for my liking. Bit not much chance in my seat.
Labour: In many ways, a competent manifesto. Good on house building, mansion tax, but all this "bankers bonuses" and "tobacco levy" is nonsense. Plus, I'm not at all keen on 16 year olds voting (especially at the same time that we have put restrictions on the choices that 16 year olds can make regarding work).
Conservative: Generally think they may be more competent than any party on economy, but too pro-homey and spending.

I'm almost tempted not to vote, the choices are so weak. So, it's really coming down to the SNP. Labour will have to deal with them, and they won't be that much of a junior partner. If this means they get another referendum and I thought the Scots would do the right thing, I'll vote Labour. But I think they'll still vote to stay in the union, and we'll have a bunch of even higher spending types pushing Labour leftwards.

Any thoughts?

Who Should Vote?

From ITV

A pledge to give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in general elections will be in the next Labour manifesto, Ed Miliband has promised.

The opposition leader said politicians had to address a 'crisis in our democracy' and involving young people more was a 'really important part of that'.

Personally, I think that's a terrible idea. We mostly link rights to being an adult, that by the time you can vote, you can do everything else.At 16 you can't get married without parental consent, buy cigarettes or alcohol, or drive or serve on a jury, appear in pornography, consent to your teacher shagging you, make a will, carry an organ donor card, place a bet in a casino, see an 18 film or get a tattoo. And over the past decade, some of those changed against 16 year olds. When I was a lad, you were considered adult enough to choose to buy cigarettes, appear in Page 3 or shag a teacher.

So, whilst we've revised what we think of 16 year olds as even more fragile creatures who aren't capable of making certain decisions, we're now saying that they are capable of voting. Bizarre.

And what's going to happen to all those laws when 16 year olds can vote? Broadly speaking, this isn't an issue today. Other than adopting children and driving buses, everything else is legal at 18. Most 18 year olds aren't bothered about driving a bus or adopting children. But if you gave me a vote at 16 and a party stood on the ticket of lowering the age of getting in to see The Evil Dead or getting served  cider at Tesco, I'd have voted for them. I couldn't have given too hoots about taxes rising or improving housing at that age.  I was more bothered about trying to get a shag, getting served and listening to the Sisters of Mercy (and at that age, that's what you should be doing).

It'll probably happen, though. Labour are going for it because they see more clients to vote for them, more people who will vote to raise taxes and spend more because they won't pay for it. The Tories know that they'll be accused of hating children if they argue against it and will be too spineless to have an argument.

Bye Bye Nigel Farage

From the IBT:-

When asked if he would stand down in the event of the party not returning any MPs to the House, he said: "I would have thought so, good lord yes. I would be out the door before you could say Jack Robinson."

I'll gladly take a bet with Nigel Farage, and I'll go as high as 1/10 that UKIP won't get a single seat.

Under the FPTP system the way for new parties to win seats in a general election is to concentrate power. So, there's Dr Richard Taylor down in Kidderminster that won a seat by campaigning on a local issue which meant that even though Health Concern won less than 1/1000 of the total vote, they won enough in one place to get the seats. Parties like SNP and Plaid Cymru are likewise based on localised politics. The only exception is the Green Party seat in Brighton Pavillion which was won by the rest of the vote splitting and them sneaking in and even then in was close.

UKIPs small vote is broadly spread. You get 10% in every seat get no seats.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for small parties - it's the only way to express what you really want and is more likely to get you the sort of government you want than tactical voting. If the Tories lose lots of seats and do the math that they could have won far more seats by being genuinely Eurosceptic rather than paying it lip service, they will have to eventually become so or continue to face electoral defeat.

h/t The Boiling Frog