Anyone understand why Johnson is so far ahead in the polls? ( 2)

sorry - I wish we had a minute to edit on here. I meant 'female' meaning 'women and men who say they are women', in case the wasn't clear.

Kali2

And Rees-Mogg and Gove 'come over as authentic' - really ?

Authentic something/s for sure- not printable here.

I used to quite like having the odd British eccentric in Parliament but I never dreamt one day we’d have a government full of them.

Why is a party with 36% of the vote able to dictate to us for the foreseeable future ?

This could never happen in a democratic country.

Mollygo

PippaZ no he didn’t. That’s what I mean about not understanding about Nazi Germany and Hitler. He may not have done what he should, but when rules were issued, people chose whether to ignore or adapt them without fear of death or concentration camp.

I can't make sense of this Mollygo or exactly what you are replying to.

varian

Why is a party with 36% of the vote able to dictate to us for the foreseeable future ?

This could never happen in a democratic country.

That will be because we operate a FPTP system. The only chance we have had to change this was during the Nick and Dave coalition. It should have been Nick's price for handing the keys of 10 Downing Street to his mate Dave.

Missed opportunity that some of us will never forgive.

varian

Why is a party with 36% of the vote able to dictate to us for the foreseeable future ?

This could never happen in a democratic country.

1: Because not enough of the voters for other parties voted for their own candidate.
2: Because more people voted for Tories.
Ridiculing people for voting for a party often has the opposite effect.
When turn out is low, that means there is plenty of opportunity to change the result, if only non-voters bothered to vote. They don’t, but they still moan about the result.
A large number of countries have compulsory voting. It reduces the need for spending millions persuading people to vote. Some countries have penalties for not voting. Evidence shows it may not make a country more democratic, but voters could have more confidence in the outcome.
How about here? Although I can already imagine the cries of ‘infringement of my civil liberties’.

Wasn’t there a vote years ago on FPTP v Proportional Representation? I’m sure I remember having one nd it got defeated. Must go and Google ...

The downside of PR is a government of vociferous differences. Yes, in theory, healthy, respectful and bringing a consensus to the table. In reality? Haha! Just look at the mess in Spain for example. It’s frustrating beyond belief so no thank you from me.

We did‼️
It was in 2011.

This from Wiki -

“The United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, also known as the UK-wide referendum on the Parliamentary voting system was held on Thursday 5 May 2011 (the same date as local elections in many areas) in the United Kingdom (UK) to choose the method of electing MPs at subsequent general elections. It occurred as a provision of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement drawn up in 2010 (after a general election that had resulted in the first hung parliament since February 1974) and also indirectly in the aftermath of the 2009 expenses scandal. It operated under the provisions of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and was the first national referendum to be held under provisions laid out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.”

“The referendum concerned whether or not to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method, and was the first national referendum to be held across the whole of the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.”

Seems the majority (who bothered to vote ? ^us lot^) decided they didn’t want to change things.

The only chance we have had to change this was during the Nick and Dave coalition. It should have been Nick's price for handing the keys of 10 Downing Street to his mate Dave.

Do you mean they should not have held a referendum on it, just pushed it through Parliament without asking the voting public, varian?

Would that have been democratic?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13297573
It comes as the Lib Dems suffered a rout in English local elections - and the SNP scored an historic victory in the Scottish Parliament poll.

A rout ??? What nonsense from the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation

On the subject of gender recognition - and public loos. I remember Ally McBeal from way back where they had a unisex cloakroom. In a local town near me in France the cinema has a unisex loo. As you go in urinals are to the left, partially hidden by a wall. No need to see anything you don't want to. 2 cubicles straight ahead.

It doesn't seen to bother anyone.

Quite often, when at motorway services, when cleaning takes place in one designated cloakroom, the displaced are directed to the one of the other sex.

Mollygo

PippaZ no he didn’t. That’s what I mean about not understanding about Nazi Germany and Hitler. He may not have done what he should, but when rules were issued, people chose whether to ignore or adapt them without fear of death or concentration camp.

I still don't know what the "no he didn't" refers to but I will try and answer what I think the rest is saying Mollygo.

Hitler did not come to power because of "fear of death or concentration camp". That was much later. I have not suggested for one moment that Johnson is at that point. I said I believe he has the makings of a dictator not that he is one.

Initially, Adolf abused the law and manipulated the Reichstag to gain power. There are certainly comparisons there. To understand the actions of the people in Germany at that time you really do need to know about more than the fear of death or concentration camp bit.

Where did all those people come from at the rallies? I remember hearing one man, who had been there, talking on the radio saying that although he knew what Hitler was doing was wrong but he still wanted to belong to that feeling in those crowds. Our move towards the cult of Johnson worries me because of this.

Going around the country to get votes Hitler would say one thing to the farmers -that they would get more for their produce - and another in the towns - that they would pay less. Everywhere he used slogans about the place of Germany - just as Johnson is with his Build Back Better and We Want Our Country Back and other three word slogans that sound good but are all things to all people. It was years into Hitler's upward path before the camps were built and then grew in size and efficiency and were more known about - if people even then believed they were as bad as it seemed and many couldn't - even after they had been shown them. If the atrocity is gross enough it becomes too hard to believe.

You also get the feeding of the notion that there are the deserving and the undeserving - and of course if you backed Hitler you were seen as deserving. Do you think that isn't happening here? There was a man interviewed in Hartlepool who said he would vote Tory because if they put a Tory in they would spend money in their constituency. What sort of country does that make us?

I am very aware of the history of the war Mollygo; it was about people who went with their feelings rather than the brains. They had had an awful time economically. We had made it worse by the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW1. It most certainly not a case that the German people put Hitler into power because they were afraid - that came much later.

PS. I can never understand why these days there are often two washbasins in bathrooms - do people really want to do intimate things with their partner in the same room? And those people who use the loo when their partner is washing?

Our Local District Council has 82 Liberal Democrats, 14 Conservatives, 5 Independents and 1 Green Councillor.

What Labour Party???

PippaZ My reply at 14.08 was to your post of 13.48.
You’re right, I should have used BJ instead of a pronoun to make it easier for you to understand.
So . . .
BJ may not have attended meetings or implemented lockdown as soon as he should. I have no problem agreeing with those points, but in Nazi Germany, it wasn’t a case of “the lies were so big that it was difficult to believe they were not true”.
If you were caught breaking the rules, or dissenting, it was not just you who risked death, imprisonment or concentration camps, but you put your whole family in danger.
Thank you, I am perfectly well informed on this matter and it’s effects in my family.
My post is not pro BJ and the Tory party, but anti the inappropriate comparison with Hitler and Nazi Germany.

varian

A rout ??? What nonsense from the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation

I wasn't joyous although ours got in (and a fat lot of use he proved to be) and yes, it was a rout. Perhaps the Guardian's term a drubbing is preferable.

Losing 748 Council seats in 2011 was nothing to be joyous about

Nick Clegg looked very glum indeed:
Nick Clegg is facing calls from the party's local government chiefs to step down as leader after heavy losses in the English council elections.
The Scots leader quit I think.

I have voted for them since but have given up now.

I think partly cos he has good Cabinet ministers - Matt H (Health), Rischi (Chancellor), Dominic Raab, not so keen on Piri Patel - but not a bad tea.

This is not 2011. Nick Clegg has gone but the LibDems still thrive.

Our Local District Council has 82 Liberal Democrats, 14 Conservatives, 5 Independents and 1 Green Councillor.

No Labour Councillors!

The Labour Party can only hope to survive is it rejects the confrontational undemocratic FPTP system and promotes PR

*As you go in urinals are to the left, partially hidden by a wall. No need to see anything you don't want to. 2 cubicles straight ahead.

It doesn't seen to bother anyone.*

It might if the person in a dress is a bloke with an iPhone that he can sneak under the gap at the bottom when the occupant pulls her knickers down.

I'm not sure where you are, the West Country was a good home of Liberals in the old days, then Lib Dems but it seems no longer.
I voted for them in the last GE but they are not thriving generally. Their vote share was down in Wales with just 4.9%.

Oops, we're talking lavatories now.
My post was to varian

If you were caught breaking the rules, or dissenting, it was not just you who risked death, imprisonment or concentration camps, but you put your whole family in danger.

This was simply not the case until he had fully entrenched himself in power. People wanted him and he did many of the things we see happening now. I appreciate that you think you know but the above was not the truth until he had gained enough power. Just think about it - how could it be while he was working his way up? Other parties didn't set up camps ready for him. There were some early on but the industrial scale didn't happen until he could hide it away to some extent - many of those were not actually in Germany, they were in the countries they took over. That way the insurance companies - who complained about having to pay out so much for so many deaths - didn't have to pay. But this came much later in his career.

As I said I was comparing the making of dictators. They all follow a similar path to enough power to start using fear and punishment - it does not come early on if you are one of the dictator-to-be's followers and people do choose to be.

You asked if we lived there. My father was there when the war crimes trials were going on and later when the countries decided it was better if we didn't treat them as we had in WW1. I was there as a baby and small child and, unless you are very old, I imagine your experience of living there was similar. People didn't talk about it a lot but my father did hear from them that they had thought Hitler would be good for Germany and them. As I said many were bemused by the whole thing by the end. We are both, to some extent, depending on hearsay. But the history of Hitler's rise to power is there for all to see and learn from. These were good people easily led for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the population falling for Dictators at the begining is what happens unless we are very careful, or they would not come to power.

Oops. Now it WW2 Calli.
I’ll come back later.

This is the share of the vote according to Sir JohnCurtice