UK General Election 2024

[ritter]

I tried to produce an English translation anyway:

Well done, Poju! Thanks. 

Mafalda, by Argentinian cartoonist Quino (1932 - 2020) was published for 10 years up to 1973, and has achieved iconic status in the Spanish speaking world. It managed to be hugely successful on both sides of the Atlantic.

[71 dB]

Poverty should be reduced rather than subsidized. Just saying.

How do you reduce poverty without granting a subsidy? Somehow people who are doing well don't understand at all the problems poor people face in everyday life. People assume things that are easy for them are easy for everybody.

[71 dB]

Well done, Poju! Thanks. 

I'm glad you think I did well.

Mafalda, by Argentinian cartoonist Quino (1932 - 2020) was published for 10 years up to 1973, and has achieved iconic status in the Spanish speaking world. It managed to be hugely successful on both sides of the Atlantic.

I have never heard about Mafalda before. Do younger people in Spanish-speaking countries know about it  anymore? Perhaps these cartoons are being re-released thanks to the iconic status?

[ritter]

I have never heard about Mafalda before. Do younger people in Spanish-speaking countries know about it  anymore? Perhaps these cartoons are being re-released thanks to the iconic status?

They've never been out of print, and are sold in book form. Many young people know about Mafalda...

[71 dB]

They've never been out of print, and are sold in book form. Many young people know about Mafalda...

I see. 

[Florestan]

I was talking about poverty in relation to health, which tends to require immediate treatment and does not have time to wait around for long term poverty-reducing measures to kick in.

I thought you were talking in general. In the case of healthcare, I agree.

[Florestan]

How do you reduce poverty without granting a subsidy?

It's not about not granting subsidies where and when needed. It's about creating and sustaining economic conditions that will make such subsidies superfluous.

[Irons]

Your point about hospital appointments (several of which I have coming up) is a very good one Lol.

Same here, Jeffrey. My wife is due for a fairly minor op next month.

I don't wish to make the mistake of lighting the blue touch paper on this thread again but I must say after a double knee replacement last year, which was life changing, and as I say my wife's procedure coming up, the NHS have been fantastic. No way political and I fully realise people in other parts of the country are far less fortunate. There are lots of room for improvement which hopefully the next government will address.

[Mandryka]

Same here, Jeffrey. My wife is due for a fairly minor op next month.

I don't wish to make the mistake of lighting the blue touch paper on this thread again but I must say after a double knee replacement last year, which was life changing, and as I say my wife's procedure coming up, the NHS have been fantastic. No way political and I fully realise people in other parts of the country are far less fortunate. There are lots of room for improvement which hopefully the next government will address.

I'm pleased for you and your wife.

You can't judge a system as large as the NHS by anecdotes, you have to look at statistics. Many of those statistics don't look so good. The Daily Mail nails it

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12264717/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Radical-treatment-NHS-100.html


As I said before, I am don't see any reason to think  that there will be significant improvement from Labour.

[Todd]

How do you reduce poverty without granting a subsidy?

You don't.

It's not about not granting subsidies where and when needed. It's about creating and sustaining economic conditions that will make such subsidies superfluous.

Most of the world lives in poverty.  Roughly half of the world population lives on less than ~$7/day per the World Bank, with that threshold itself set for upper middle-income countries in order to have a metric to compare to the international poverty line.  But, yes, creating and sustaining undefined economic conditions will result in outstanding outcomes.

[Irons]

I'm pleased for you and your wife.

You can't judge a system as large as the NHS by anecdotes, you have to look at statistics. Many of those statistics don't look as good as they were. The Daily Mail nails it

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12264717/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Radical-treatment-NHS-100.html

Thanks. Of course the list of NHS horror stories is endless. Please believe me, I wasn't making a political point. I'm done with that. Mail and not Guardian makes a refreshing change.    

[Mandryka]

What's really astonishing is that absolutely no one I've come across takes the Tories seriously. It has become unacceptable to say you'll vote for them, as if only stupid people would trust them. They've gone from hero to zero in five years, entirely by their own doing, as if they had a death wish.

Decline and fall through decadence - like Gibbon said about the Roman empire.

[Luke]

They were never heroes to me! I'm enjoying their fall, I must say.

[steve ridgway]

It's interesting that candidates for other parties are now asking us to vote for them; not as they have any hope of their party winning, but so as to provide some effective opposition to a Labour government .

[Mandryka]

I think I will spoil my ballot paper. I don't want any of them. To hell with them all.

[Jo498]

I think I will spoil my ballot paper. I don't want any of them. To hell with them all.

There is an anecdote/urban legend that people quoted Isaiah 41, 24 (about false gods/idols) to spoil a ballot:

"Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you."

(in the classic Lutheran German translation the last phrase is rendered differently, more like "to choose/vote for you is an abomination", so that fits better.

[71 dB]

I think I will spoil my ballot paper. I don't want any of them. To hell with them all.

That's just stupid. Always support the lesser evil when better options do not exist.

[Florestan]

That's just stupid. Always support the lesser evil when better options do not exist.

Not stupid at all. Some people, including me, are fed up with always voting for the lesser evil. A lesser evil now, a lesser evil five years ago, a lesser evil after five years etc etc etc: sum up all these "lesser" evils over two or three decades and the net result is a "greater" evil.

Until a month ago I was decided to spoil my ballot too but eventually I didn't. This doesn't mean that I love, or even moderately like, the party I voted for in the EU elections, it's just that it was unthinkable for me to vote for any other: I never voted and will never vote for the center-left Social-Democrats (the most corrupt and cronyism-practicing Romanian party whose ancestors are the ex-Communists); it's been a long time since I ceased voting for the center-right Liberals (shamelessly betraying both their principles and their electorate, they allied themselves with the SDP twice in a decade, each time just one year after bitterly denouncing them as a danger for democracy); and I am in complete and irreconcilable opposition to most, though not all, of what the nationalist party AUR stands for. That left me with only one option, the center-right party USR which in the preceding EU elections got 22% of the votes and were perceived back then as a fresh and viable alternative, only to hugely disappoint afterwards: in these elections they got only 9%. And I wouldn't have voted even for them, had they not supported the incumbent mayor of Bucharest, an independent (who actually founded the USR party, to be excluded two years later following shameless internal struggles for power) who just won a second term with 47%, that is 16% more than the votes for the SPD and NLP candidates taken together.

Bottom line, I am with @Mandryka  all the way: to hell with them all. We live not in a democracy but in a partitocracy. Unless and until the vicious circle of cumulative "lesser evils" is broken, things will improve, or even stay as relatively good as they are, at a slower rate than that at which they deteriorate. Otoh, I am fully aware that true and full democracy is an utopian ideal and that corrupt, stupid and inefficient politicians might be the price of liberty. Be it as it may, spoiling one's ballot is as legitimate and intelligent as voting for this or that party.

[Todd]

I just read an article stating that Reform UK, apparently Nigel Farage's party, has overtaken the Tories in polling.  Did the Tories really shit the bed so badly that they have slipped to third place?  Seriously, what did they do?  Or maybe not do?

[Florestan]

Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice like, Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.