GarryP

Or, you know, you could look at it that those dicks fought for something they didn't understand - and today's dicks aren't even bothered enough to understand what they are supposed to be voting on and resent having to go to the polling station at all.

What I said is if you aren't prepared to hold up your half of democracy - to be responsible enough to spend time understanding the issues to the level they need to be understood to to make sensible decisions, then your voice shouldn't be heard as loudly as someone who is.

You want to be heard more loudly, put the effort in.

THAT's real democracy - rights AND responsibilities.

scrubbedexpat098

wow that's quite a response, I'll put the italic statement down to sociopathy or something.

I do hear what you are saying, some people are quite frustrating, but every vote is equal, it's the very foundation of our society. We can't go back to the feudal system Lord Garry.

GarryP

Nope, reality. The poor bloody infantry have never really had a say in what they are fighting for - they just get pointed at an enemy and told 'kill'. The wars themselves are always sold on lies and jingoism because otherwise they'd never get the requisite cannon fodder. It's only after the wars that you get the writings, the songs, the poetry questioning "what are we fighting for?"

Strawman. Who said anything about feudal?

Read what I said again.

scrubbedexpat098

Ingrate. If they hadn't you'd be posting this in German .

You want votes to reflect peoples social standing/ political nouse is what I'm reading. You want people to fight and die in your defence and then deny them the right to a voice. I know that probably sounds a bit soap box, but it's the gist of what you're saying. Everyone does have an equal vote, and that's the way it bloody well should be, whether you like it or not.

GarryP

That strawman of yours is getting pretty big.

Let's just say your characterisation ain't nuffin like what I said; not in the same ballpark, not even in the same country.

scrubbedexpat098

Not sure it is but fill your boots, tell me you didn't say a certain demographic should be denied their right to vote? Stand by what you say or retract it, but don't deny it and shout strawman when it's there for all to see.

GarryP

The strawman is what's there for all to see.

So it's not a demographic, it's people who aren't prepared to spend the time to understand the issues.

And it's not 'denied their right to vote', it's "voice shouldn't be heard as loudly".

Knowledge based, and not deny, but modulated on the basis of that knowledge level.

As I said, you should have read what I actually wrote before you went off on one.

scrubbedexpat098

No Garry, you didn't say anything of the sort before now, this is what's called back tracking

How valued they must be feeling right now

Above is what you actually wrote Garry, and this is the second page, hardly masses to read back on. Surprised you don't remember

BadgeIsBack

Garry I thought you would have preferred the term redneck for the ignorant rather than blue-collar. Surely there are white collar workers who don't understand the issues, anyone who says works in a shop and doesn't read a newspaper.

Bermudashorts

I think your comments are really patronising. Next you will be suggesting manual workers should not get the vote at all, you are one step away from that.

Blue collar workers are not all unintelligent and in any case intelligence is not the only human quality worth having. And if there are enough blue collar workers that want Donald Trump in power then that is democracy in play.

And for the record, I think Donald Trump is loathesome and the idea that he should succeed in his quest is one I find quite frightening for the world.

But your comments on people you presumably believe you are intellectually superior to are pretty unpleasant too.

GarryP

The 'blue collar' came from the analysis of who is actually supporting Trump. Tends to be male, older, manual workers afraid of losing their jobs, etc.

The problem is the policies that Trump has been espousing are just reflections of the bigotries of these supports (thus why he gets that support). As I said, the problem isn't that Trump is a lying car salesman, its that his constituency have those views.

The bit that steveenglish1 won't get (and you too it seems), is that I have NOT said that all blue-collar voters are ignorant, nor that only the blue-collar are ignorant. What I've said is that the ignorant are a problem for democracy in that there are a lot of them, and that they tend to swing the vote, and towards people like Trump and those policies. I also said that I think if you're not ignorant your voice should count for more, but NOT that if you are your vote shouldn't be counted at all.

Let's take a practical example. Take the UK leaving the EU. It's a discussion that gets couched in terms of 'immigrants coming in, taking our jobs' - which is not a particularly good set of reasoning (if someone from Poland, who doesn't speak the language, has no contacts, doesn't know the setup can come in and take your job - you aren't very good at it). It's a simplistic, one dimensional argument, and has ramifications that mean you should be balancing multiple factors before voting.

So if you are going to vote, you should know roughly how large the UK's trade is with the EU. You should know how many Brits are working in the EU, let alone have retired to the south of France. You should know the likelihood of disinvestment in the UK as a consequence of leaving, etc. You should take seriously making such a large decision - not just vote as the Sun tells you.

My rough idea is that you should have something like a set of three randomly selected, fact-based, multi-choice questions to answer, in addition to your vote. Get three right, your vote counts x3, 2=x2, 1=x1 and 0=x1.

It's not perfect I'll grant, but it is also NOT targeting a socio-economic group, and NOT disenfranchising anyone (as stevenglish1 likes to claim). It's about how informed you are of the issues, thus how competent you are to decide on them.

Upshot is a more informed electorate that actually thinks and weighs factors before voting, meaning better, more evidence based decision making, and much less "I like his hair".

If someone thinks me saying you should put some effort into being informed on issues before voting is 'patronising' - well tough, I just think it's sane considering how bad the electoral landscape has got against a backdrop of a more complex world where facts are more easy to come by.

Amazulu

Maybe they didn't but they did anyway and because they did you can sit there in the early 21st century in comfort, prosperity and security and spout this shite on the internet

Your leftie superiority is breathtaking in its arrogance

Amazulu

I hate all these blue-collar, white-collar, professional, young professional terms. They may have meant something a long time ago but in the 21st century are pointless

Plumbers earn more than teachers but are 'inferior' under the old way of looking at things
The working-class no longer really exists and has been replaced by an expanded middle-class and underclass
etc

GarryP

Oh, this is going to be interesting.



The religious, right wing, loony Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, he of the daft statements and obstruction, has just popped his clogs.

Antonin Scalia, conservative US Supreme Court justice, dies - BBC News

Nobody is mourning, and everyone is calculating - this is a US election year and the US Senate is gummed up - yet appointing a new Judge has never before taken more than two months. If the repubs delay and delay this, they will look bad (the narrative of republican incompetence will run and run), yet if they let Obama appoint someone to his liking the rabid wing of the party will scream.

And an even more interesting concept rears it's head. If they don't appoint someone by the time Obama leaves office, then the next Democrat president, supported by a Senate that's likely to turn Democrat, could appoint Obama to the Supreme court (remember, lawyer).



A lot of game plans just got torn up - a new battlefield has just opened.

TheCreature

You were either attempting to take the piss, pissed up, or just an arrogant bastard who probably fancies himself as something extraordinary when you wrote that. I'll leave it up to others to decide which.