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Poll

What's going on there?

Boris Johnson's going on.
[ 2 ] (18.2%)
Cameron's going on.
[ 0 ] (0%)
The Labourists are going on.
[ 2 ] (18.2%)
Riots are going on.
[ 2 ] (18.2%)
It's raining again. And again.. and again...
[ 5 ] (45.5%)

Total Members Voted: 6

Topic: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies (Read 109693 times)

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #201 –
Quote from: Jimbro3738 on
He's a closet Edinburgher.

They wouldn't have him.  ;)
The start and end to every story is the same. But what comes in between you have yourself to blame.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #202 –
The usual limited brain span from the Luxor mindset. It is the usual lefty argument to fall back on the Daily mail stupidity. At the same time you use a completely ridiculous attitude from your corner on those who are not in your tartan shortbread camp and constantly sneer, abuse and act as if opposition and especially Tory corners are to the point of being ridiculous. Salmond spat out near hate in that direction and constantly abused them. As i pointed out the hypocrisy is astounding,. How do you explain in th last Scots parliament when you did not have a clear majority your Scottish Nose Pickers repeatedly met the Scoits conservatives to get things through the parliament? And that years ago you became the junior partner in a Glasgow Council regime with the Conservatives.

All those crowds who flocked to join after the Referendum have shown to be more crude, obnoxious and need of control. And that Edinburgh MP who slated old people and described non-Nationalists as quislings. That makes half the voters traitors so wow what a lot of quislings! And your favourite hates the Scots Tories who polled over 430,000 votes (as shown an increase) even more emphasises your closed mind.  Your ot like the other parties accepted the Smith report and now think you can demand even more. Well you can  misuse your Smith agreement but Scotland will still get wider devolution and you can mumph and moan as much as you like. In practicality you got almost all the seats with 50% of the votes  and the Tories got a high vote but 1 MP. I don't see them pushing for a change in the first past the post system and show a bit more decency than your emotional midden propaganda.

You will get 2 chances at the weekly PM Question time and a chance to sit on Committees and that is democracy but that is all and you will find that the government still has a majority and will do as it wants and leave your ot of Briagadoons to fume and gnash their teeth. As for the guff abot the Daily Mail with it's high circulation (frustrating eh?) the @National' has gradually declined and that is good news. You can make wide scoffs but you replaced the Scots labour Party by adopting much of their stance as well as leaning left. You would be just as bad as Labour getting a chance to borrow so those Scots who want to be welfare orientated and don't care a damn where the money comes from wil be happy.

When I challenged those two numpties outside my polling station they were a bit at a loss on economics,and the whole world of finance, etc. They were both ex-Labour and that only made their lack even more pronounced! When you folk cannot face an issue properly you fall back on the anti-Mail thinking and be wee Salmondites. You might well be a generally reasonable person in daily matters but Salmond is an arrogant, full of himself and obnoxious twit.At the same time, Sturgeon has been a bit more cautious of recent so maybe someone should get that crude foll a cover for his mouth. And as for making a revolutionary change at Westminster? Son you have nae chance. You can say democracy proved itslef north of the Border but it did so south of it and teeth will be gnashed.  :D
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #203 –
Here's a few tips to brush up on your attempt at a Glaswegian brogue:
1
Familiarize yourself with Scottish slang and vocabulary. Always use the word "wee" when describing something small or young. "Aye," "bonny" and "lassie" are also commonly used and makes your accent seem authentic. Pick up a book of words that are distinctive to the Scottish dialect.

2
Learn to roll your Rs. Scots are the only English speakers to employ the rolled R sound and do it regularly, particularly following the letters D, G and T.

3
Pay attention to your vowels. Analyses have shown that Scottish English speakers use five fewer vowel sounds than any other English speakers. Use the shortened version of vowels. The words "cot" and "caught" should sound the same. Pronounce E as though it has been cut off in the middle, creating an "eh" sound. Use only one form of the letter I, so everything rhymes with "might."

4
Collapse words into as few syllables as possible and drop the G from words ending in "-ing." Replace "not" with "nee." When you are speaking with a Scottish accent, tell someone that you "didnee do anythin' in Ednbrah" instead of saying you "didn't do anything in Edinburgh."

5
Listen to Scottish accents. Watch Scottish films like "Trainspotting" or films that prominently feature Scottish actors using their native accent. Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor, Billy Boyd and John Hannah are distinctly Scottish.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #204 –
Quote from: rjhowie on
All those crowds who flocked to join after the Referendum have shown to be more crude, obnoxious and need of control.

Like the britnats you mean. Now they are more crude, obnoxious and in need of control. Check them out on twitter, they are easy to find as their user name usually has something to do with rfc. king billy, or no surrender.

Quote from: rjhowie on
And that Edinburgh MP who slated old people and described non-Nationalists as quislings.

He didn't. go and check the facts. (hint you won't find them in the unionist press) Easily found on-line though, without much searching.  His quislings tweet was about a spoof article on the spoof web site bbc.scotlandshire. Heck I'll save you the bother of searching. Here's his tweet.


And here's the spoof article. Prizewinners celebrate success at this years Scottish Quisling awards
His old people tweet was in response to a vile twitter user with rfc in his name.

Quote from: rjhowie on
As for the guff abot the Daily Mail with it's high circulation (frustrating eh?)

Frustrating? No. In these days of austerity people have to save money and the daily mail is cheaper than loo roll. Wouldn't even use it to wipe my arse though.
Quote from: rjhowie on
Salmond is an arrogant, full of himself and obnoxious twit.

People in glass houses etc...
The start and end to every story is the same. But what comes in between you have yourself to blame.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #205 –
Quote from: Jimbro3738 on
didnee

That should be didnae.  :P
The start and end to every story is the same. But what comes in between you have yourself to blame.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #206 –
I don't do those things on my own...I just steal text, and everything else, from others. Hoots mon, I'm an American.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #207 –
Quote from: jax on

To be more specific:








































Party
% Votes
Seats
 |
∆%
∆seats
Proportional
UKIP
12.6%
1
 |
+9.5%
-1
82 (+62)
LibDem
7.9%
8
 |
-15.1%
-49
51 (-98)
SNP
4.7%
56
 |
+3.1%
+50
31 (+20)


So UKIP quadrupled their number of votes and got half the number of seats, -1-. In a pure proportional system they would have gotten 82 seats.


I don't understand your 82 seat number. The UK Government has just 550 seats (*). In a proportional system, because of their smaller population compared with the UK, the Scots would have about 8% of that in total, divided proportionately between the different parties there. Of the total electorate the SNP share on that basis was about 35%. How that adds up to seats would depend on how people voted in a PR context, but it would not be 82 seats whicheverwhichway one looks at it.

(*) a too high number in the view of some, including the current UK Government.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #208 –
I give up. Somebody explain the British electoral system to me.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #209 –
Quote from: string on

Quote from: jax on

To be more specific:








































Party
% Votes
Seats
 |
∆%
∆seats
Proportional
UKIP
12.6%
1
 |
+9.5%
-1
82 (+62)
LibDem
7.9%
8
 |
-15.1%
-49
51 (-98)
SNP
4.7%
56
 |
+3.1%
+50
31 (+20)


So UKIP quadrupled their number of votes and got half the number of seats, -1-. In a pure proportional system they would have gotten 82 seats.


I don't understand your 82 seat number. The UK Government has just 550 seats (*). In a proportional system, because of their smaller population compared with the UK, the Scots would have about 8% of that in total, divided proportionately between the different parties there. Of the total electorate the SNP share on that basis was about 35%. How that adds up to seats would depend on how people voted in a PR context, but it would not be 82 seats whicheverwhichway one looks at it.

(*) a too high number in the view of some, including the current UK Government.

650 according to BBC and Wikipedia. Yes, I thought that was excessive. The pure proportional was just a quick multiplication of voter percentage rounded off to nearest representative. In reality it would be slightly more complicated than that, never mind that no assembly uses pure proportionality, it is less practical than the impure varieties. Still good enough for comparison.

It wouldn't lead to the situation like here where one party (SNP) harvesting roughly a third of the total votes of the other (UKIP) end up with 56 times the number of representatives.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #210 –
The next few weeks (let's say 100 days) will prove interesting in the UK because a lot of changes are going to be implemented, not least those involving Scotland. There are 3 main areas:
1  A New devolution deal for Scotland
2  Election Boundary Changes (although this is not Scottish specific)
3  Change of voting rules for MPs such that only English MPs vote for things which are specific to England, mirroring those powers which have been evolved to England (parallel stuff there also for Welsh & N.Irish MPs)

The 1st Item is very controversial. Following the Scottish Referendum there was a special Commission (the Smith Commission) which obtained the opinions of all the protagonists in the Scottish referendum to define further powers that could be devolved to Scotland). The results of that were promised to be delivered soon after the start of the current Parliament. So it is not surprising that the Conservatives will be giving the main points of their Bill to enact this new arrangement in the Queens Speech which is the way things are kicked off. The Queens speech is debated by Parliament and is expected to be passed through the House of Commons.

The Bill will follow very shortly afterwards.

An interesting thing about that is since the Referendum, the SNP has continually since then complained that the proposed powers were not sufficient and have asked for what they call FFA (Full Fiscal Authority) which basically means that ALL income derived from Scottish Sources remains in Scotland and all control of financial "levers" as they call it also. Things like defense and foreign policy would remain at Westminster, paid for by donations from Scotland's budget as the Scottish devolved Parliament saw fit.

Read that carefully and imagine this applied to California.

The trouble is that if that were true then Scotland would start immediately with a budget deficit of something like 15b£ (lack of English subsidies and Scotland's share of the Debt interest payments) plus the cost of deficit reduction. In other words they would be broke. So the SNP has withdrawn from that position and want to be funded (i.e.subsidised) for some years until they can achieve self sufficiency.

In the Smith Commission FFA was originally to be discussed but was withdrawn at the request of the SNP.

Now the original concept of the SNP was to first discuss what should be in the Devolution Package until it reached the scope that they want, in the meantime applying pressure against what they hoped would be a minority Labour Government by not supporting Labour Bills unless or until they got their way.

That ruse was rumbled by the UK electorate and the Tories got in with a working majority. People did not want a chaotic Government. That was interpreted by the SNP as being anti-Scottish, but it was not, although it was certainly not SNP friendly.

So, taking the attitude that the Smith Commission had encapsulated an agreed set of measures (as it was by all participants including the SNP) so that all views that the participants wanted to be discussed had been discussed, the Government will be implementing the Smith proposals. There is still room for amendments but it is not in the power of the SNP to block these as it might have been had their planning worked out. There will be pluses and minuses but nothing major I suspect unless the Government wants it.

So it will be interesting to see how the arguments work out. There will be a lot of charges about the wicked Tories betraying the Scots but I think the SNP have a mountain to climb to make such charges stick in Scotland. The Devolution Proposals are far reaching and wont be sniffed at my most Scots when the issues come out during the debates in the Commons.

This post is already long so I won't drone on about the other issues, at least not at the moment.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #211 –
@Jax - sorry - yes you are right -- 650 -- a slip of the finger I'm afraid.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #213 –
There are some "localists" that want to split up the country into regions with devolved powers. It was an idea that got soundly thrashed in a referendum. It's a but daft in my opinion and would only lead to yet more yacking by a new layer of self important politicians all squeaking for money by whatever local tribe is involved.

The UK is a small country and in US terms, everything is so close it is essentially local.To justify a call for local autonomous regions differences have to be invented and the tribe announced with a sense of faux-uniqueness. Daft IMHO.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #214 –
I knew about the SNP and the failure of the vote, but this stuff about cities is a new one.

There's a group in Texas that's blathering on about seceding from the union. Sadly, that's not going anywhere.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #215 –
With a gun like that you wouldn't have to shoot anyone, you would just poke them in the eye!

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #216 –
@Luxor @rjhowie @String

Thank you all for your responses. All were very informative (and some quite entertaining!).

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #217 –
The earlier comment from Luxor about "people in glass houses" as an answer to the charge against Salmond is really silly. None of us here are important politicians on this forum or in the news regularly so kind of pointless answer. Salmond IS in the public eye and is arrogant, sneering and full of himself. Sturgeon who was dying to be leader obviously knew she had to follow a different tack and she did.

Now the Nats contingent is there for all the Scots and that has an amusing twist to it. Labour and the SNP have been nasty to each other for ages. The Conservatives although not in your face like Labour v SNP have been called all sorts of things and of course the Liberal Democrats dismissed. All those who more recently flocked to the Brigadoons have a very considerable antagonism and they do have themselves in the front position when it comes to disgusting and bad words on the net and social sites. The SNP may say that such behaviour is not part of their constituency but at the same time are in their corner and many have memberships.

I did smile at the Daily Mail stuff here and maybe it is a niggle by the Brigadoons that it does an awful lot better than what passes for that National newspaper which has heavily declined. Hey, maybe they could secretly get some ideas from the DM?!
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #218 –
It seems the former National Party leader Mr. Salmond, and the First Minister Mr. Sturgeon are looking on while Mr. Grayling, M.P. oversees changes to Scotland's government.
What a fine kettle of fish.
 

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #219 –
Rubbish as usual from your understandably warped grey cells. As for the SNP  an interesting corner to note.

There are 4.2 million registered voters and the Nats took 1,454,436 votes and in turn smaller than the situation at the Referendum! They think they have a God given right to speak for Scotland but practical numbers say something else but with 38% of voters they got 95% of seats (!). As I pointed out unlike the childish tt92 brain limit the SNP agreed with the Smith condition along with the other parties so have no right to claim for more powers nor do they speak for all Scots. They can huff and puff at Westminster and the government will grants wide powers but if they don't like the result then they can get stuffed as they cannot do damn all.

I detailed the two-faced attitude and the hard facts but like emotional Nats, tt92 does not want that and instead skip the truth.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #220 –
Quote from: rjhowie on
There are 4.2 million registered voters and the Nats took 1,454,436 votes and in turn smaller than the situation at the Referendum! They think they have a God given right to speak for Scotland but practical numbers say something else but with 38% of voters they got 95% of seats (!).
Mayhaps, something is wrong with Scottish democracy…? :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
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Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #221 –
Well you should be an expert on democracy Oakdale due to it not working wher you live.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #222 –
And it works there because the right people are in charge.

Quote
Adding up the amount of ‪#‎Millionaires‬ in both the House of Commons & the House of Lords - in TOTAL nearly 80% are MILLIONAIRES.

Currently 75% of 'Government Cabinet Ministers' - within parliament are Millionaires. Those that sit in the House of Commons & the House of Lords are Members of Parliament - The figures If you include both Houses TOTAL - members 1462 (650 MPs + 812 House Lords).

In TOTAL nearly 80% are MILLIONAIRES.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #223 –

Quote from: OakdaleFTL on

Quote from: rjhowie on
There are 4.2 million registered voters and the Nats took 1,454,436 votes and in turn smaller than the situation at the Referendum! They think they have a God given right to speak for Scotland but practical numbers say something else but with 38% of voters they got 95% of seats (!).
Mayhaps, something is wrong with Scottish democracy…? :)


That would be the system the US democracy inherited.
Quote from: jax on

To be more specific:








































Party
% Votes
Seats
 |
∆%
∆seats
Proportional
UKIP
12.6%
1
 |
+9.5%
-1
82 (+62)
LibDem
7.9%
8
 |
-15.1%
-49
51 (-98)
SNP
4.7%
56
 |
+3.1%
+50
31 (+20)


So UKIP quadrupled their number of votes and got half the number of seats, -1-. In a pure proportional system they would have gotten 82 seats.


What we see is what happens when First Past The Post meets multiple parties. In Scotland Labour have been stronger than Conservatives, so the latter only got a few seats. Last election LibDem grew on dissatisfaction with the two existing ones (Labour, Conservative). That's not stable, unless LibDem could supplant either of these as the Second Party, which is not going to happen, or election system reform, that didn't happen. In Scotland SNP did not only become party #2, but party #1. In the rest of the country it was a battle of five armies to get first past the post, so the smaller parties LibDem, UKIP, Green dropped off the map.

Re: What's going on in the UK and Crown Dependencies

Reply #224 –
The suggestion that the House of Commons has 80% of MP's being millionaires is really stretching it. Having said that George Galloway that loud mouth and pain on the neck was the MP woith the second highest annual income in the Commons and he was a fanatical Socialist. It was good to see him losing his seat. There are lots of Tories and Labour MP's who are not millionaires and thrown in the 56 SNP members the Ulster MP and Wales MP's which makes the suggestion ludicrous. When you consider the Labour and SNP sides alone that figure is even more daft as they together ere massive part of the Commons.

Anyway, now we have a direct government and I have to say that I was generally content income-wise, etc during the Coalition but happier the way things went at the General Election. Our parliament is far wider than what passes for one in the ex-colonies and caters for the population more generally.
"Quit you like men:be strong"