Look to America for what that looks like!
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Well, we’re on track and on target. Full steam ahead for the cliff edge!
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This is disturbing knowing your background, do you have any more info about why you were removed?
[quote=“Callanyveg, post:298, topic:86909, full:true”]
Well that’s my optimism out of the window. The years & years of nasty rhetoric about evil immigrants and the dark force of the EU is paying off nicely.[/quote]
Yeah, some very worrying council results. The general election is simply about consolidating her power now and when she talks about “saboteurs” and “crushing the opposition” and doubling down forever on austerity i am disgusted the polls are showing how popular she seems to be. It makes me hope the failure of early polling is in effect here as well but labour have lost so many council seats…
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They can remove people from the electoral register if they don’t reregister, but I filled in the form and had it sent off.
Nothing yet. I remember filling in the electoral register form and asking a friend to post it. I doubt he would have deliberately not sent it, as he has talked me down from several anarchism inspired “Why should I vote for any of them, they’re all bastards” rants. He said he did post it and I believe him.
As it turned out, my lack of vote made absolutely no difference to the result. Labour got three times the votes that anyone else did here, in both the county council election and city council by-election, but that’s hardly the point. We had three or four seats in the UK decided by the drawing of lots, and if I had been in one of those seats then I might have made the winning vote.
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Hopefully it’s just an admin cockup given how inept local authorities seem to be and not an early warning of the v for vendetta future we seem to be heading into. Five more years of norsefire conservative rule is all but assured though. I’d partake in a bit of tactical voting if i wasn’t in such a safe labour seat for all my voting life and a considerable time before that. Dwindling support however…
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Larry Sanders will be standing for the Green Party in Oxford East.
There will be no Green Party candidate in Oxford West and Abingdon, they are asking Green voters to vote Lib Dem instead. Despite my issues with the Lib Dem party I think it is a good idea.
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I’ve been repeating myself in various areas but… we just need to get the fuckers out. I’m with Ghilbert on the Tramadol voting for the slimiest of Blairites if there’s a chance of getting rid of them. I’m terrified of the economy fully transforming into the red in tooth & claw, late capitalist shitshow that was seen coming forty years ago.
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I think ideally there should be no tuition fees, but also that far too many people go to university as it stands and that’s a big part of the reason why it’s currently so expensive (it’s the same in the US, even worse probably). It’s seen as a normal middle class thing to do, spend a few years in college, mostly go on the piss and do a load of drugs, squeak by with a passing grade, then end up getting a job that nothing to do with the degree you just took. The Germans have a much better system for example, with far greater focus on vocational education and apprenticeships (with less than 25% of people going to university, which is mostly state funded). We need to move away from the notion that university is a requirement for people, for getting a job. It’s certainly important, and certain people do need it (if you want to be an academic, or you need to study some esoteric and/or complex field, or maybe even you just need that kind of regimented environment to learn), but the current system should not be the default and we need to disincentivize lots of people from taking that route and instead offer more suitable means to acquiring the skills and knowledge they need.
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No, the number of students isn’t the problem, in fact it is well understood that large state universities with moderate-or-less research and no professional schools (ie, not the flagships) scale very well and do better with more students. The books of Chris Newfield (for example) do a good job tweaking out the reasons for high tuition, especially at the major research universities (like his and mine).
The idea that too many people get higher education is tied to the idea that university exists mainly to train students for jobs. Under that assumption then yes, most students probably would do better in alternate votech training. If instead you view higher education as a way to build a better citizenry, where the job training is just one part of the whole, then I disagree.
Germany has become an outlier in Europe as other countries formerly sharing this philosophy have worked hard to open universities up to a larger fraction of the population. As a result, most countries in Europe now have more students getting degrees per capita than the US. I think this even includes the UK, which would have shocked me when I first started working there in the 80s.
I would say rather that too many underprepared students go to university in the US, and opening universities up to more students does not provide an incentive for better preparation at the K12 level. That’s a different problem.
Lord Buckethead (the real one) stood in the first UK election I experienced up close. The Monster Raving Loony Party (aka Screaming Lord Such) was also standing in that election. Either would have been preferable to Screaming Loony Lady Thatch.
Incidentally, the best thing about that election was a wonderful stump speech by Labour Leader Neil Kinnock about being the first in his line to be able to go to university. The speech was so powerful that Joe Biden borrowed it the next year.
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Wait… not the silly party?
We have a tradition of joke candidates in Britain.
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Ah! That certainly makes the Monty Python sketch look a bit different, doesn’t it? Thanks for links.
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The OMLRP’s moment of glory (actually two of them) came in the Bootle by-elections in 1990.
In May they finished ahead of the continuing Social Democratic party consisting of people who disapproved of the Liberal-SDP merging into the Liberal Democrats, surprising even Lord Sutch, and may have caused the disbanding of that party.
Then in November they finished ahead of the continuing Liberal party.
I don’t think they have managed to keep their deposit at any election though.
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My paranoia is kicking in.
One possible reason I lost my vote is because the electoral register is being checked against DWP records.
My DWP records are restricted access because I am a trans person, and at risk of violent abuse if that data were to be leaked. No one can access my DWP record without security clearance, which no-one can get without a day or two of waiting.
Someone has checked my vote against my DWP record, found that they couldn’t access it, and decided that I don’t exist.
My paranoia is that this is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise trans people (or at least those who have restricted access records). I have no evidence of this though, other than previous shitty treatment of trans people by religious groups, TERFs and MRAs.
It may be worth noting that there are several trans people standing for the Green party, Labour and the Lib-Dems at this election (although not in Oxford East), and there have been relatively recent transphobic campaigns against trans people running for election to local councils.
My last attempt to get back on the electoral register has been rejected. I have two days to sort out this mess, and I have to get to a wedding in Newcastle on Friday.
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Hope the visit goes well. It’s not raining here at the moment.
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I really hope you get it sorted. I still want to believe this is a result of incompetence rather than malice but like you say they have a history of disenfranchising minorities and if the tories get a sweeping majority i fear it’ll get so much worse.
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Apathetic bloody planet.
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