Britain - The Official Thread

  • Thread starter Ross
  • 13,367 comments
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How will you vote in the 2024 UK General Election?

  • Conservative Party

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Labour Party

    Votes: 14 48.3%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Other (Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland)

    Votes: 1 3.4%

  • Other Independents

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other Parties

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Spoiled Ballot

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Will Not/Cannot Vote

    Votes: 8 27.6%
  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .
The wife of a former Putin ally has paid £90,000 for a game of tennis with Boris Johnson as he continues to sit on a report detailing his party's links to Russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-ally-lubov-chernukhin-russia-report-auction-tennis-boris-johnson-2020-2?r=US&IR=T

Boris-Johnson_2985943b.jpg


Our piece of **** prime minster everyone
 
So Bojo has appointed Lord True as minister for constitutional reform.

Lord True is against modernising the House of Lords (the second largest unelected chamber in the world by the way, behind China's National Peoples Congress), he cites over representation of the Lib Dems in Lords as one of the most glaring problems... and defends peers being elected by a small group of unelected heredity peers...

... and he's the Minister for constitutional reform. Basically he wants more unelected Tories in the upper house. Ace.
 
Budget's good innit? Where's the government been hiding all this money? From the beeb...


Coronavirus response
  • £5bn emergency response fund to support the NHS and other public services
  • Statutory sick pay will be paid to all those who choose to self-isolate, even if they don't have symptoms
  • Contributory Employment Support Allowance benefit claimants will be able to claim sick pay on day one, not after a week
  • £500m hardship fund to help vulnerable people
  • Firms with fewer than 250 staff will be refunded for sick pay payments for two weeks
  • Small firms will be able to access "business interruption" loans of up to £1.2m
  • Business rates in England will be abolished for firms in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors with a rateable value below £51,000
  • Sunak unveils £30bn package to combat coronavirus
  • Business rates scrapped for shops and cafes
Personal taxation, wages and pensions
  • National Insurance Contributions tax threshold to rise from £8,632 to £9,500 - saving employees just over £100 a year
  • 5% VAT on women's sanitary products, known as the tampon tax, to be scrapped
Alcohol, tobacco and fuel
  • Fuel duty to be frozen for the 10th consecutive year
  • Duties on spirits, beer, cider and wine to be frozen
  • Business rate discounts for pubs to rise from £1,000 to £5,000 this year
Business, digital and science
  • System of business rates to be reviewed later this year
  • Entrepreneurs' Relief will be retained, but lifetime allowance will be reduced from £10m to £1m
  • £5bn to be spent on getting gigabit-capable broadband into the hardest-to-reach places
  • Science Institute in Weybridge, Surrey to get a £1.4bn funding boost
  • An extra £900m for research into nuclear fusion, space and electric vehicles.
  • VAT on digital publications, including newspapers, books and academic journals to be scrapped from December
Environment and energy
  • Plastic packaging tax to come into force from April 2022
  • Manufacturers and importers whose products have less than 30% recyclable material will be charged £200 per tonne
  • Subsidies for fuel used in off-road vehicles - known as red diesel - will be scrapped "for most sectors" in two years' time
  • Red diesel subsidies will remain for farmers and rail operators
  • £120m in emergency relief for communities affected by this winter's flooding and £200m for flood resilience
  • Total investment in flood defences to be doubled to £5.2bn over next five years
  • £640m "nature for climate fund" to protect natural habitats, including 30,000 hectares of new tree
Transport, infrastructure and housing
  • More than £600bn is set to be spent on roads, rail, broadband and housing by the middle of 2025
  • £2.5bn will be made available to fix potholes and resurface roads over five years
  • £1.5bn in capital spending on further education colleges
  • £650m package to tackle homelessness, providing an extra 6,000 places for rough sleepers
  • Stamp duty surcharge for foreign buyers of UK properties to be levied at 2% from April 2021
  • £1bn fund to remove all unsafe combustible cladding from all public and private housing higher than 18 metres

The state of the economy and public finances
  • Economy predicted to grow by 1.1% this year, not taking into account the impact of coronavirus
  • This would be slowest growth since 2009
  • Economic growth forecast to be 1.8% in 2021-22, 1.5% in 2022-23 and 1.3% in 2023-24
  • Inflation forecast of 1.4% this year, increasing to 1.8% in 2021-2022
  • Public sector net borrowing set to rise this year to 2.1% of GDP, rising to 2.4% and 2.8% in subsequent years
  • Debt as a percentage of GDP forecast to be lower at end of current Parliament than now
  • UK growth 'to be slowest since 2009'

Nations and Regions
  • An extra £640m for Scotland, £360m for Wales, and £210m for Northern Ireland.
  • Treasury's Green Book rules to be reviewed to put regional prosperity at heart of spending decisions
  • Treasury to open new offices in Wales and Scotland
  • New civil service hub in the North of England, employing 750 staff
 
baldgye
A long as he dosn't hate a minority, it's gotta be seen as an improvment
Click to expand...
Absolutely. Maurice Gran of all people popped up on an ex colleague's FB feed to say Starmer has a Jewish wife and kids.
 
MaxAttack
I have to say, he seems kind of refreshingly squeaky clean...
Click to expand...
He's one of several MPs who resigned from Corbyn's shadow cabinet stating he wasn't fit to run the party, then accepted another job in the shadow cabinet after Corbyn won the leadership election and continued to campaign for him to become PM in 2019.

He was also the DPP who pursued the case - that eventually, after a trial and two appeals, resulted in a dismissal - against the guy who said he was going to blow up Robin Hood Airport on Twitter. He's a remain-and-reformer - he wants a second Brexit referendum, but also wants to end free movement (an EU red line), and was part of the law firm (between shadow cabinets) that brought Gina Miller's waste-of-time-and-money case against the government. While not quite Corbyn levels of pacifism (except for terrorism), he thinks that all military action should pass the Commons first rather than being part of the executive branch's powers.


But then he was also the DPP who pursued Chris Huhne's penalty point-dodging case, so that's a tick in the happy box.
 
MatskiMonk
Starmer's been on record recently talking about electoral reform... might be enough to get me voting Red again...
Click to expand...
Every opposition party pushes for reform... its only when they win via the current system that the think... well, we can’t change it now, otherwise we might loose the next one! :lol:
 
baldgye
Every opposition party pushes for reform... its only when they win via the current system that the think... well, we can’t change it now, otherwise we might loose the next one! :lol:
Click to expand...

I don't believe this is true, but also, any party can look back at their gains and losses and see if they'd do better with electoral reform.. At the moment, Labour have nothing to lose by supporting electoral reform - the Tories do - if you can get in based on votes roughly equating to MP's, then you don't have to fear greater PR, at this stage at least.
 
MatskiMonk
At the moment, Labour have nothing to lose by supporting electoral reform - the Tories do - if you can get in based on votes roughly equating to MP's, then you don't have to fear greater PR, at this stage at least.
Click to expand...
The party in power always has the most to lose by supporting electoral reform, because no party has formed a government with 50% of the votes cast since WW2.

Here's the last three and, as you can see, Labour's 2015 result was dreadful and would have been dreadfuller under PR:

2019 General Election Results vs PR
Conservative - 365 seats, 43.6%; 283 seats
Labour - 202 seats, 32.1%; 208 seats
SNP - 48 seats, 4.8%; 31 seats
Lib Dem - 11 seats, 11.6%; 75 seats

2017 General Election Results vs PR
Conservative - 317 seats, 42.3%; 275 seats
Labour - 262 seats, 40.0%; 260 seats
SNP - 35 seats, 3.0%; 19 seats
Lib Dem - 12 seats, 7.4%; 48 seats

2015 General Election Results vs PR
Conservative - 330 seats, 36.9%; 240 seats
Labour - 232 seats, 30.4%; 198 seats
SNP - 56 seats, 4.7%; 31 seats
Lib Dem - 8 seats, 7.9%; 51 seats

And for comparison, Labour's last win in 2005, under Blair, put into context and massacred by Corbyn's result in 2017:

2005 General Election Results vs PR
Labour - 355 seats, 35.2%; 227 seats
Conservative - 198 seats, 32.4%; 209 seats
Lib Dem - 62 seats, 22.0%; 142 seats
SNP - 6 seats, 1.5%; 10 seats
 
One thing that blows my mind more on what @Famine has shown, is that Lib Dem would massively increase their seats under PR.

And that Conservative and Labour are always fairly close in seat numbers. I wonder how that would change how the government works under PR.
 
Submerged
One thing that blows my mind more on what @Famine has shown, is that Lib Dem would massively increase their seats under PR.

And that Conservative and Labour are always fairly close in seat numbers. I wonder how that would change how the government works under PR.
Click to expand...

Make everyone's vote count and the numbers would be quite different. Instead, 22.6 million voters are ignored.
 
Famine
he thinks that all military action should pass the Commons first rather than being part of the executive branch's powers.
Click to expand...

Do you not agree with this?

I don't necessarily blanket agree with it either but just curious why it was in your tick in the bad box paragraph.
 

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