Ask a Brit thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Al, can you field some of these too?

Indeedy

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tell me why is it that Wales and Scotland don't have seats in the European Union or United Nations.  I've often wondered about that.  They have their own soccer teams for say, the World Cup.  Are they separate countries?  Or not?

They are seperate countries in one way (the U.K is official made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) but they aren't independent countries. A bit like Canadian provinces or U.S states (although England doesn't have it's own elected body).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What if anything is actually gained by Britain for participating in the 'Special Relationship'?  Seems like folly to me, since the Continent is so much better than the US.

We have a lot of historic links with the U.S (not just the colonial period; a lot of people emigrated to the U.S in the 19th Century) and importent economic and strategic links with the U.S. There's also emotional links due to WW2. We speak the same language as you and there are a lot of cultural and political similarities.

At the same time, most people here hate the rest of Europe. France and Germany especially. We've hated France since 1066 and Germany since WW1 and (especially WW2).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why doesn't religion play such a large role in politics?

It does and it doesn't. There's no high profile religious right so issues like abortion don't feature much if at all... but there's been a strong (but low profile) religious element within the Labour movement from it's beginning and the welfare state largely get's it's inspiration from it (interestingly some of Labour's most loyal supporters are from the older Evangelical/Non Conformist denominations).
Religion has more influence over actual policy, but is much, much lower profile.

As a historical note, Sectarianism used to play a MASSIVE role in Liverpool and Glasgow. Those days are, happily, gone for good.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How likely is it that a strong showing by the Liberal Demorats will deny Labour an outright majority,

The LibDems are only competative against Labour in a handful of seats. And won't win in most of those. So no.

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Extremely unlikely. Most of the Labour movement distrust the LibDems: on the one hand because the Liberals double crossed them in the '70's, and on the other because of the SDP split.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What are the odds that a combination of weak Labour and strong every other party showing results in no one getting a majority of the seats?

There'd need to be some strange turnout patterns. Could happen, but not all that likely

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You mean in seats, right? No. They probably wouldn't, although weird things can happen if there's a hung parliament.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How well are the various nationalist parties likely to do? (BNP, PC, SNP, UKIP) and which of the main parties do they weaken the most?

BNP are extremely unlikely to win any seats but they have a good chance of getting second place in a couple of seats, mostly in the old textile belt in West Yorks, but maybe a few in white flight suburbs. They tend to take most of their votes from lower middle class "Essex Man" types and what's left of the old working class Tory bloc (the latter is especially the case in Yorkshire).

Plaid might have a fairly good election, they might also have a nightmare; it all depends on turnout. They do best in areas that are majority Welsh speaking (ie: rural West Wales) although, despite popular belief in England, they don't monopolise the area *at all* and of their four seats only one is actually safe.
In the long run they've more or less taken over the old rural Liberal vote in West Wales.

SNP (like Plaid) have been having a rough time of it lately, but if turnout is low they could still do fairly well. They tend to do best in Northeast Scotland (because of their position on North Sea Oil) and isolated pockets in the rest of Scotland. In the long run they've mainly taken ex-Tory areas (northeast Scotland used to be a formidable Tory fortress) but they also do well in a few traditionally Labour areas in the central belt... but have never won a seat there except in by-elections.

UKIP have faded away somewhat from the Euro elections (when they knocked the LibDems into third place) and the Hartlepool by-election (when they knocked the Tories into fourth place) and have been hurt by the loss of ex-Labour M.P, ex-Chatshow host, professional bigot and all round egomaniac, Robert Kilroy-Silk (who leads his own party. See below) but they are still much stronger than they were in 2001 and could stop the Tories from regaining several seats.
They do best in the West Country (especially rural Devon) and retirement resorts on the south and east coasts (especially Frinton). In these cases they take mostly from the Tories, although in parts of the West Country they actually take from the LibDems (the most pro-European party...). In the Euro elections they did very well in the East Midlands, especially in socially conservative Labour areas, but this seems to have had more to do with Kilroy-Silk than anything else and they'll do badly there.

Veritas is Kilroy-Silk's personality cult party. He's standing in Erewash (middle class Derby suburbia) and no-one's really sure how well he'll do (10% is the usual guess). They are standing in other seats. They will lose their deposits in those seats.

Respect is George Galloway's personality cult party and an unholy alliance of Trots and Islamic Fundamentalists (seriously). He's standing against a half black half Jewish Labour M.P in Bethnal Green & Bow (an East End seat with a large Bangladeshi population) and has a longshot at winning due to race politics and anti-sem[censored to avoid being sued for libel]ism. They might do fairly well in some other seats with large Muslim populations, especially Birmingham Sparkbrook & Small Heath, where the local LibDems are furious at them for probably killing the best LibDem chance to pick that seat up ever.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How much is this deposit you speak of and how well does a party have to do to avoid losing it?

A deposit is £500 last time I checked. You have to pay that to get your name on the ballot paper. If you win over 5% (used to be 12.5%) you get the money back, if you don't you don't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's a "British accent"? Never heard of it myself. Get some people from Cornwall, Norfolk, County Durham, Liverpool, Birmingham (or even better: Dudley), Wigan, Huddersfield, East London, Surrey and Nottingham into the same room and you'll see what I mean...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(Obviously it's not going to happen, but:) What percentage of the Electorate is hoping, however silently, for the following result:
Labour Majority Only Slightly Reduced
LD gain Sedgefield

First one... don't know. About a quarter perhaps? Most people (including me) seem to want a majority somewhere between 80 and 40.

Second one... probably a majority of people in Crouch End and similer elitist havens.
Interestingly, Sedgefield is one of the very worst seats for the LibDems in the entire country (although not as bad as nearby Middlesbrough).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, I meant the two together.

5% maybe... although mostly concentrated in (say) Hampstead rather than Crouch End.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The current 'Father of the House', as I understand it, is Tim Dalyell, who is retiring.

Yep. Mad Tam (M.P for East Lothian/Linlithgow since a by-election in either '62 or '63, I forget the exact year) is finally retiring, much to the relief of Britain's Jewish community.

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Prestiege mostly... and they're supposed to be nice to new M.P's... but they do have one power: presiding over the election of a new Speaker.

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No, Alan Williams (Labour M.P for Swansea West since 1964) is (unless no-one votes on the council estates in his constituency, which won't happen).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's up with the TV fees? Every TV owner has to pay a substantial fee to the BBC, and I've heard stories about non-TV owners being harrassed for not paying the fee.

The BBC is a state-owned broadcasting company and is supposed to produce quality programming. It's not allowed to use commericial advertising to fund itself so the Government let's it charge a license fee (which, contrary to to what you've been told, is pretty small) to all households that have a TV that picks up BBC stations (ie: all of them).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In terms of major policy matters, where do the Conservatives differ from Labour of the Liberal Democrats?

How long have you got?

As far as this election goes, Labour are proposing increasing the size of the welfare state while bringing in somewhat authoritarian measures to deal with terrorism, the Tories are proposing some rather strange ideas as far as the welfare state and taxation goes (I'll go so far as to say their plans don't add up) while making a big thing of minor policies on Gypsies, Asylum Seekers etc. and the LibDems are proposing to slash and burn the welfare state (except services that are importent to key voters, like pensioners and students), abandoning economic planning and slightly raising taxes on high earners, while offering a fairly libertarian position on civil liberties (they seemed to have dropped that laughable bullsh*t about "tough liberalism").

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If the lib dems want to "slash and burb" the welfare state, whats the point in raising taxes?

They want to do that to most of it (although the media hasn't spotted this yet)... but they're going to increase it's size in areas they think they can get votes out of (ie: pensions)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If the lib dems want to "slash and burb" the welfare state, whats the point in raising taxes?

They want to do that to most of it (although the media hasn't spotted this yet)... but they're going to increase it's size in areas they think they can get votes out of (ie: pensions)

Still why not just divert the money from the cut programs into the ones they want to mantain?

Apparently they intend to do that, but they also intend to scrap university tuition fees... something that'd cost a hell of a lot of money.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is it true that British women are on average a bit more conservative than British men?

If so, why?

I've looked into this and generally speaking the answer is no; there isn't a great deal of political difference between men and women in the U.K.
But overall women as a group tend to be more conservative than men because one group of women tends to be very conservative in their voting habits, so much so that it distorts the statistics; women over 65 are the most conservative demographic in the country. Not only do they distort the statistics for women as a group they distort the statistics for over 65's as a group; men over 65 tend to lean towards Labour if anything, although because of life expectancy there's a lot less old men than old women.

The reason for the very conservative voting habits of old women may have something to do with life expectancy (middle class women live longer than working class women) and also something to do with a traditional fear of trade unions and so on.

Interestingly this group have been noted as being very conservative for a long time (Orwell often made scathing attacks on "Brighton boarding house ladies", and the stereotype of the little old lady with worryingly right wing views was used by Dennis Potter at least once) which supports the life expectancy arguement.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyone propose actually cutting/eliminating the welfare state?

Tories propose to slash the welfare state in most areas (although they partially deny this) except for pensions.
LibDems propose to slash the welfare state in most areas, but increase the amount on pensions and drastically expand it for students.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Generally most people seem to like them... although the joke is that Australia is a big desert with lots of spiders and convicts but no culture is pretty common (although somewhat affectionate; a lot of people have relatives in Australia because of the post-war emigration).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most people here like Canada a lot. Because you don't beat us in sports we care about there's no point developing carefully affectionate insults

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In your opinion, is Britian closer to the United States or Western Europe in a cultural sense? (i.e. sports, music, etc.)

Both

Western Europe isn't a monolith (far from it). In terms of sport we're clearly closer to the rest of Europe but in other ways we're closer to (say) Australia. No one's quite like us with sport actually...

Culturally it varies, but generally speaking most of the U.K is culturally much more similer to most of America than most of the rest of Western Europe (and for obvious reasons) but in many ways we're not really like anywhere else...

Some more specific cultural questions would be helpful

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is it true that New Labour is to the right of the pre-Thatcher Tories?

No. I'm not sure where that myth comes from (assuming that Butler was a typical Tory perhaps? But even that doesn't make a great deal of sense... he'd be on the right of the Labour Party as it is right now).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On economic issues, absolutely

I'd disagree with that. In terms of state ownership *possibly*, although neither have acted much on that either way (the Tories did privatise Steel in the '50's though) but not in a lot of other ways.

Mind you, economic issues are in many ways very different to the '50's and it's impossible to compare directly.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One thing I should add is that the Labour Party is an extremely broad church and the average views of a supporter haven't changed a great deal over the past... let's say 70, 80 years.
What changes is where the power in the Party is concentrated (as with the dramatic far left surge in the early '80's) rather than the Party moving left or right.

It should be pointed out that in the early '80's most of the old Bevanites would have been considered as being on the *right* of the Party... even Mikardo (who used to be regarded as a far left firebrand) was thrown of the NEC for being too "right wing"!
Looking at things from a historical point of view, Gordon Brown's ideological position is pretty similer to the views George Brown had in the '60's (although he has the advantages of not being an unstable alcoholic...) while Blair has always struck me as being a bit of a Gaitskellite (which is why I'm slightly suprised he didn't head off SDPwards in the '80's like most of them did).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They don't beat us at sports we care about, either

Not until recently anyway