UK General Discussion

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It seems that everyone's approval rating has dropped over the last few months, but in terms of actual voting intention its only really hit the tories. Does this show that Cameron is, for some bizarre reason, the tories main asset, and that most people think that the Conservatives are the party of the rich, but personally like Call me Dave? If so that could be worrying for them come 2015 as I can only see Cameron being hammered even more.

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No. If I want to make money by setting up a better-quality school than the government does and charging students to enter, who's to stop me from making money?

The government and the voting public who don't want you to make money from schooling?

Meh...private schools are a bad idea in general, but the government really shouldn't be allowed to stop me from making money in a way that doesn't hurt anybody.

But it does, people don't exist in a vacumn and there is only a limited amount of anything, so private schools give an advantage to the already rich over everyone else.

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Right, how long before Mr. Hunt stands down?

Well, David Cameron has expressed his full support for him...







I give him a week

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Why won't someone think of the children?

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Yet another brilliant idea from number 10:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18567855

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I don't recall a teacher (or lecturer or whatever) saying 'the welfare state is sacred, we must worship it', but maybe I wasn't paying attention at the time.

You get the general idea.

The only time i've heard anything similar was in RE. From sections of the Bible.

Catholic schooled by the way.

Basically the same for me, my RE teacher has made a few comments about helping the homeless etc but nothing more explicit than that. The only other teacher which I know anything about is my history teacher and even that is quite subtle, and he tries his hardest to be objective (He's mentioned his sympathy for the Greeks and strong dislike of the poll tax). What I'm saying is anyone who thinks there is a widespread plan to indoctrinate children in British schools is deluded at best, because there is no evidence for it.

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Any UK'ers planning on going to their respective Party Conferences this year?

Where are they this year actually?

The tories are in Birmingham, labour are in Manchester and the lib dems are in Brighton.

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Sort of Osbourne related, apparently his political hero is LBJ, which really surprised me. Was I wrong to be surprised?

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Sort of Osbourne related, apparently his political hero is LBJ, which really surprised me. Was I wrong to be surprised?

Woah, no.

What's all that about!?

In case anyone is interested this is the article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/27/which-cabinet-minsters-should-sacked?newsfeed=true

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Labour seriously need to sort out their strategy.

Anyway, there's been a fair bit of polling over the weekend:

Survation CON 29% (-1), LAB 41% (+1), LDEM 10% (n/c), UKIP 12%.
YouGov     CON 34% (-1), LAB 43% (+2), LDEM 8% (-1), UKIP 8%.
Opinium     CON 30% (-2), LAB 42% (+2), LDEM 8% (-2), UKIP 10%.
ComRes     CON 35% (+2), LAB 39% (-3), LDEM 10% (n/c), UKIP 8%.

The YouGov also had some hypotheticals:

Under Cameron, Miliband, Clegg
LAB 41%, CON 34%, LDEM 9%, OTH 16%

Under Cameron, Miliband, Cable
LAB 39%, CON 34%, LDEM 12%, OTH 16%

Under Johnson, Miliband, Clegg
CON 38%, LAB 38%, LDEM 9%, OTH 15%

Under Johnson, Miliband, Cable
CON 39%, LAB 35%, LDEM 11%, OTH 15%

It really seems that the whole lib dem party have been tarnished by the coalition, not just the lib dems under Clegg. Their grand plan of replacing Clegg before the election probably won't work out so well for them then. Shame.

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If this is true (which more than likely, it is) expect to see Sir Jimmy become Jimmy, and everyone to change their mind quite quickly. It only took a few seconds to find gushing quotes from Hunt, Charles Kennedy and Mark Thompson.

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If I were a torie, I'd be thankful that the conservatives weren't pinning their hopes for re election on political genius extraordinaire George Osbourne. Oh wait.

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We can't really know how big a problem UKIP are going to be until the actual election, especially after all the phantom surges recently - and it wouldn't surprise to see a swift fall in their vote if it does become clear they cost the tories a majority.

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If these polls hold up (which I doubt), its going to be impossible to ban Farage from the leaders debates, which should be fun.

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I'd assume their best chance would be wherever Farage is standing.

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Robin Lustig retired from the world tonight (which incidentally, is my favourite news program, easily) after 23 years yesterday, and I'm quite sad about it. Not only because he was a great interviewer, but he also had, in my opinion the best voice in all of British radio. We can only hope that someone equally good replaces him.

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If the polling is accurate, it adds more weight to UKIP just being a receptacle for protest votes (otherwise why would so many left wingers support them?)

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You can just feel the libertarianism.

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ComRes online for Indy on Snday/S Mirror: CON 33 +5 LAB 39 nc LD 11+2 Ukip 10-4

Apparently ComRes have fiddled with their methods for minor parties though (to give such a headline worthy result, I suppose).

Still, no movement from Lab to Con yet.

Makes sense I suppose. All three people who consider europe the top issue weren't voting labour anyway.

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Of the 22 Labour No's, 7 were in Scotland. Of the 16 who did not vote, 3 were from Scotland. My own MP, who has been very helpful in trying to sort out the UKBA's clusterf-ck with Michael's residency visa voted in favour.

Biggest shock? George Galloway actually showed up and voted in favour.

What were Scottish MP's doing voting on a measure that affected only England and Wales (or so I thought)?  I was under the impression that non-English MP's didn't vote on such things.

No, it's only the SNP (and I think plaid in wales, although I'm not 100% sure) who do that, everyone else (labour, lib dem and Mundell) votes on everything.

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I suppose this is yet another example of it being very difficult to tell when there is something dodgy about someone. Just a day ago on the vatican election thread I said how when I, and people I knew had spoken to him he seemed quite nice. Similarly on another forum I frequent there was someone who once had lunch with Pistorius who had raved about what a nice guy he was.  I guess to be able to hide these sort of thing for decades you have to be good at projecting a different public persona.

Obviously if its all true he should be imprisoned by the state and punished by the church- as well as providing yet more evidence that the most vicious homophobes can be in the closet, but we should be very careful about accepting these allegations as gospel.

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That was very quick.

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Mwahaha!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325679/Nigel-Farage-bundled-police-van-barricaded-inside-pub-going-promote-Scottish-election-candidate.html

God bless Scotland.

I thought it was England who had the hooligans, not the Scots.  Or is that only in football since there isn't anything to get excited about in Socttish football.

Scottish football is probably worse when it comes to fans, mainly due to the healthy combination of sectarianism and alcohol.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11787/8682649/Police-investigate-after-three-fans-arrested-at-Rangers-v-Celtic-youth-cup-final
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/the-atmosphere-was-frightening-celtic-apologise-for-fans-behaviour-at-dens-1.62792

[bore]

Mwahaha!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325679/Nigel-Farage-bundled-police-van-barricaded-inside-pub-going-promote-Scottish-election-candidate.html

God bless Scotland.

I thought it was England who had the hooligans, not the Scots.  Or is that only in football since there isn't anything to get excited about in Socttish football.

Scottish football is probably worse when it comes to fans, mainly due to the healthy combination of sectarianism and alcohol.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11787/8682649/Police-investigate-after-three-fans-arrested-at-Rangers-v-Celtic-youth-cup-final
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/the-atmosphere-was-frightening-celtic-apologise-for-fans-behaviour-at-dens-1.62792

Scottish football is noticed for it's lack of violence especially at the international level. We also don't have a soccer casuals problems. I lived near Celtic Park for 3 years on the route that fans took to and from the stadium and never saw anything violent during Old Firm games. The incident at the youth cup final, the first time in a year since Celtic and Rangers faced each other in any form and at the Dens was very much the exception. The best way of stopping little sh-ts from ruining games are the fans themselves. There's also a ban on alcohol at stadiums and a street drinking ban has been in force for over a decade.

It's true that the Tartan Army is generally well behaved and clearly things are better than they were but, especially with the Old (although its really only a one year rivalry) firm, Scottish football has a clear problem. The youth and the Dundee games are not just isolated examples, you've got, for example the UEFA cup final in Manchester as well as charming statistics like these- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-14978841.

With regards to you living on the route to and from Celtic park, are you sure it wasn't due to segregation? Whenever Hibs play Hearts or Celtic the police put up a barricade for half an hour over a part of the exit to the stadium to stop fans meeting.

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It all depends on what you're studying. A guy who does some of the admissions for maths at Imperial college told me that they spend about 3 seconds looking at personal statements, and they make no difference at all- you'd be just as likely to get in if you wrote the lyrics to baby by Justin Bieber as if you wrote the second gettysburg address. It might make more difference in other subjects though.

The 7 a levels is obviously very impressive, but some of them might be freebies- for example, one or two of my friends have Italian parents, and speak it in the home, so they can get (and have got) an advanced higher A for very little effort.