UK General Discussion Thread: mayy lmao

[DC Al Fine]

I have question for the forum Brits.

It is harder to win government for the Tories than it is for Labour. e.g. Labour got a larger majority on a smaller vote share in 2005 than the Tories did in 2015. This difference is usually attributed to two reasons.

1) Labour vote collapses to virtually nil in many Tory safe seats, while the Tories still get half decent results in many Labour safe seats, resulting in many more wasted votes for the Tories.

2) The constituency map doesn't reflect actual populations. The Tories hold many overpopulated suburban seats while Labour holds declining rust belt areas.

I understand the first argument but not the second. Didn't the UK have a redistribution a few years ago? Wouldn't that have fixed the discrepancy? If not, how come?

[DC Al Fine]

I know the old ABC1C2DE system is outdated and has little relevance to today's politics, but can someone tell me what the letters corresponded to back when the system still mattered, and how those letters voted?

[DC Al Fine]

Posted on the other place but Corbyn has literally made Seamus "Stalin was unfairly maligned by social traitors" Milne his communications director.

I know some people are complaining about how the media is mistreating him but... he's not exactly acting contrary to the stereotype.

[DC Al Fine]

Why can't England or English EU regions just have their own provincial parliament(s)?

[DC Al Fine]

Lots of hypocrisy being displayed by the left on this, I notice.

I'm still siding with abolishing the house - but I'm glad they opposed this.

The Lords is comprised of:
249 - Conservatives
212 - Labour
176 - Crossbenchers
112 - Lib Dems
30 - Non-affiliated
25 - "Lords Spiritual"
4 - DUP
3 - UKIP
2 - Plaid Cymru
2 - UUP
1 - Green

Which obviously reflects public opinion in the UK...

What's the difference between a crossbencher and a non-affiliated?

[DC Al Fine]

A few questions for you Sibboleth, or anyone else who cares to answer:

The descriptive terms to describe the categories increasingly feel very arbitrary (but then they were always odd: it makes very little sense to class a foreman and a tradesman in the same social category, particularly if you're looking at voting habits,

I assume the tradesman votes more Tory? I have some vague recollection that people like that were fairly pro-Thatcher.

and the distribution of jobs into categories in some cases feels not so much arbitrary as willfully perverse...

Just curious, but how would a Chartered Accountant be classified? I can't seem to find a decent set of examples for each grade, and could see myself fitting anywhere from C1 to A depending on how you defined the grades... which I suppose is why it isn't very useful.

[DC Al Fine]

and the distribution of jobs into categories in some cases feels not so much arbitrary as willfully perverse...

Just curious, but how would a Chartered Accountant be classified? I can't seem to find a decent set of examples for each grade, and could see myself fitting anywhere from C1 to A depending on how you defined the grades... which I suppose is why it isn't very useful.

Chartered Accountant would probably be A or B depending on how senior they are.

A recently qualified one (me! yay!) would be B, but my boss would easily be A.

Congrats! I guess that means I'm a B then.

I assume the tradesman votes more Tory?

Er... no. Other way round

There's a cliché - and as is often the way there's a grain of truth to it - of workers turning Tory the moment they get promoted to foreman.

Oh ok. I was thinking Tradey = Independent small business = Tory, but I guess that's my North American experience talking.

[DC Al Fine]

Wouldn't living costs be greater than tuition savings? Or do most UK students go away to university?