Do you hear that whooshing sound? It’s more like a collage of a week’s splash headlines.
As for ID cards, it’s definitely neither Left nor Right, it’s Statist - it is indeed all about control.
I have great difficultly believing you: it’s easy to say ‘Whoosh’ after you’ve been caught out. It sounded more like a typical socialist mud-sling.
I guess that explains why Ireland’s right wing Minister for Justice plans to introduce ID cards, and why all the objections to them have come from the left.
:rolleyes:
Every day.
Sorry, perhaps ‘Typical’ wasn’t the word. More like ‘Identikit’. Basically every Daily Mail front page headline falls into four categories;
-Someone is going to ruin the value of your home or put your mortgage up!
-The government is going to raise tax rates to 110%!
-Foreigners and scroungers are taking over the country!
-Criminals are running amok and no-one cares!
And the following lead paragraph makes it clear it’s looney left wingers that are to blame.
They used to have five categories of headline, but both the Queen Mum and Diana are dead now.
ID cards, btw, are neither a leftie or rightie thing. They are a ‘government gone mad and think they can do the hell they like’ thing. Any flavour of government would come around to thinking them a great idea given half the chance, because they are all about controlling citizens and making governments life easier. But by the same mechanism they supress people’s rights, and governments aren’t elected to make their job easier. Just one more reason Tony’s not getting my vote.
What? It was obviously not a description of a specific headline. Btw, the Daily Mail is online now?
I took part in my first ever ICM poll on Saturday: yes I’m the bloke who votes Green - you finally found him! I would’ve stood myself, for a laugh, but it’s quite expensive and I think I might have had to temporarily give up my job - maybe next time.
ID cards are an autoritarian thing, socialism is an economic thing. Authoritarian governments can be economically left (Stalin) or right (Pinochet) wing: the BNP are actually economically left of both main parties, but so are the Greens. I honestly couldn’t tell you where the Conservatives are on the Political Compass at all these days, although the Compass places them North East of Labour (ie. more authoritarian and economically rightist).
It’s a sort of typical Daily Mail headline - kind of spoof thing Private Eye would print. The spoof Sun headline ‘Kill An Argie And Win A Metro’ was one of theirs as well.
ID cards have been toyed with by the Conservatives for years - and Labour was always furiously against it. Now they’ve both turned around 180 degrees.
There was a competeition a few years ago on how the various papers would have covered the Christmas story. From memory the winners were:
FT: Shepherds’ action affects wool futures
Mail: Unmarried migrant gives birth
Guardian: Judean homelessness problem grows, Tories to blame.
Sun: No-sex mum in baby Shocka!
As well as the political compass, both Brits and other nationals may be interested in this questionnaire - Brits as a means of confirming/challenging their voting intentions, everyone else for some insight into British politics. It seemed to work for me - confirming my intention to vote Lib Dem, but suprising me by how far my stance now takes me from Labour, for whom I’ve voted in previous elections.
According to that, I’m not entirely uninclined to vote for UKIP. Apart from that, it got things right!
Not British but aware of the issues.
I got
-11 Labour
-29 Conservative
+44 Lib Dem
+10 UKIP :wally
+20 Green
I’m not sure, but I think the UKIP thing may stem from answers about the EU/Euro. If you’re cautiously against them, or even neutral, that might give you a positive score for them, because to that extent you agree, even if it’s for completely different, non-rabid reasons. They do explain the scoring on the site, but not in such detail that you can predict it question by question.
My results;
Labour 10
Conservative -38
Liberal Democrat 42
UK Independence Party -1
Green 17
Guess that’s me sorted then… Though I’m amazed that my UKIP rating is so high at -1. They’ve definitely got something wrong there.
They had me as quite neutral - which certainly isn’t the case. What’s wrong is that there isn’t a weighting - some of those issues are definite deal-makers and breakers (eg europe and Euro for me), others much less important.
My answers to the Europe and immigration questions certainly won’t have given any positive points to UKIP! I guess what’s biasing that result is that, as with all fringe parties, they can promise more pensions, lower taxes, blah blah blah, without any of it adding up.
Well, not that I’m necessarily married to the quiz but:
There are two types of weighting - how important the issue is to you, and how big a gap there is between parties. For the first, it’s up to you to weight it by using the full range of voting options: if you don’t care about something, don’t be afraid to be neutral. Alternatively, if this rather than a mix of ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ was your strategy, you might want to come off the fence a little.
For the second, they have in fact weighted the answers as explained in the page dealing with scoring. Basically, there’s usually a spread of between -6 and 6 but for key issues it’s -9 to 9 and others its -3 to 3. (See http://www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com/scoring.php).
Alternatively, it might suggest that other parties policies are not as distant from yours as you might think.
(On preview) GorrilaMan, I suspect that’s exactly it - they’ve got one plank (insert your own joke here), and aside from that will be as opportunistic as they can be.