[Tufnell_Chimes]

Nadine Dorries, cabinet minister:

"Dorries arrived at a meeting with software giant Microsoft and immediately asked when they were going to get rid of algorithms, according to an official given an account of the meeting."

[Tomsk]

Stupid things politicians have said or done, good thread, this could go on for a bit.

Dan Quayle making the school kid add an 'e' to the spelling of 'potato' in front of the world's media was highly enjoyable.

[TBP]

The quality of MPs has just gone down and down and down. They are now all unbelievably useless. The MP for Portsmouth University, Stephen Morgan, is a particularly useless, nonentity (the local vote in Portsmouth South is irrelevant against the block vote of 18,000 students, i.e. 18,000 students and not one with a mind of their own).

[scouse]

Any algorithms in particular?

Or just all algorithms in general?

[Isaac Hunt]

There must be an algorithm about that could answer that question

[Tufnell_Chimes]

Any algorithms in particular?

Or just all algorithms in general?

Nadine channelling Mel

[DeepBlue]

The quality of MPs has just gone down and down and down. They are now all unbelievably useless. The MP for Portsmouth University, Stephen Morgan, is a particularly useless, nonentity (the local vote in Portsmouth South is irrelevant against the block vote of 18,000 students, i.e. 18,000 students and not one with a mind of their own).

You are of course aware that the last election took place after the end of term so most students will have voted at home.  And why on earth should you think of students as a 'block vote' - the left/right percentages amongst students are not vastly different to the rest of the population.   The uni has been there for thirty years, and the polytechnic before that,  and Labour has only won the last two elections so how does that fit your 'block vote' scenario ? 

But more to the point this thread was meant to be about things MPs have said or done, and you have spectacularly failed to do that.

[Tufnell_Chimes]

Lord Frost, cabinet minister on his negotiation of the NI protocol:

Jan 1st, 2022: “Huge congratulations to everyone from the British negotiating team from 2020 who received an honour this New Year. I'm very glad to see proper recognition for those who worked so hard and did such a brilliant job for our country. They really deserve it.”

March 16, 2022: Former Brexit minister Lord Frost has said that the Tories should make scrapping the Northern Ireland Protocol a manifesto commitment at the next general election if the EU won’t renegotiate. Delivering a speech in Switzerland, Frost called the protocol “temporary” and “not realistic”, adding: “If the protocol isn’t redone, then the poison between us will remain.”

[stayinupforever]

Politicians are absolutely the wrong people to run a country. No training,no commonsense and no integrity.

[Tufnell_Chimes]

Their primary purpose is supposed to be to look after their constituents - isn't that the reason for continuing with FPTP? but looking at the current cabinet, how many of them would you suppose are interested in the social welfare of everyday people.

Their backgrounds: Raab - business laywer, international litigation; Sunak - Goldman Sachs; Truss - Economics Director, Cable & Wireless; Patel - PR, British American Tobacco; Gove - Asst Editor of The Times; Javid - DeutscheBank; and it goes on... business, banking, finance, corporate law or just straight out of University and straight into Conservative Central Office. Where's the background of Citizens' Advice, family law, social justice, etc - where's that experience?

[Isaac Hunt]

The more I consider your dilemma, the more I realize what a crazy system we have.

[stayinupforever]

"I want to bring in a white paper.....let me think how it might affect me personally first though"!

[Pompeyg100]

The biggest problem is having an opposition, they are there to oppose, they should be working with. If the Tories said they were going to implement the labour manifesto, Labour would oppose it.

Everyone should be independent, working for the country and it’s people.

[stayinupforever]

I lived in Weymouth from 1980-87 and the local government was no overall control. It seemed to work well then and did until 2019.

[exgaffer]

The biggest problem is having an opposition, they are there to oppose, they should be working with. If the Tories said they were going to implement the labour manifesto, Labour would oppose it.

Everyone should be independent, working for the country and it’s people.

A government working purely in the national interest, now that would be a novelty.

We can but dream.

[Tufnell_Chimes]

No-one will vote for it - it will demonised by the rightwing press as unworkable. We've been there, or we've at least been closer to there than anytime previously, and by our discredited electoral system most voted for johnson.

And besides everyone has different ideas about what is the national interest - is it in the national interest to have a very strong military? is it in the national interest to eleminate food banks? is it in the national interest to foster a cohesive, multicultural society? is it in the national interest to markedly reduce the national debt? Everyone has a hobbyhorse that is personal to them.

[exterminator]

Nick Clegg was the prime culprit in NOT getting any change in the electoral system - he should have insisted on PR as a condition of the Liberal Demoniacs support to any party. Instead he was weak and let Cameron and the Tories walk all over him.

p.s. I haven't voted in a GE or any Election for years so have no affiliation to any Party, but PR seems the best way IMHO.

In answer to your questions Duffers Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes ........ Next !!

[Isaac Hunt]

liberty equality fraternity

[SW4Blue]

"Nick Clegg was the prime culprit in NOT getting any change in the electoral system - he should have insisted on PR as a condition of the Liberal Demoniacs support to any party. Instead he was weak and let Cameron and the Tories walk all over him."

Well Clegg probably was weak etc but that sort of constitutional change has, I believe, to go to the people (probs to prevent a nut-case with a large Parliamentary majority unpicking the norms of "unwritten" constitution) and it did in May 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Unite...referendum

No region or country in the UK voted in favour, so with 67% voting No to PR at the time it is probably a settled issue.

[Tufnell_Chimes]

The LibDems got well and truly shafted over that referendum. Cameron agreed to it, then made the vote happen on the same day as the May local elections and national elections for Scotland, Wales and NI - all while continually trashing it, so it just got buried. It wasn’t that complex to explain and understand, but it was more complex than the current tick-one-box system, seems that was too much trouble for most.

[exterminator]

"Nick Clegg was the prime culprit in NOT getting any change in the electoral system - he should have insisted on PR as a condition of the Liberal Demoniacs support to any party. Instead he was weak and let Cameron and the Tories walk all over him."

Well Clegg probably was weak etc but that sort of constitutional change has, I believe, to go to the people (probs to prevent a nut-case with a large Parliamentary majority unpicking the norms of "unwritten" constitution) and it did in May 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Unite...referendum

No region or country in the UK voted in favour, so with 67% voting No to PR at the time it is probably a settled issue.

PR or the Single Transferrable Vote wasn't properly explained to the electorate -how it works what it meant etc etc

All Clegg had to say to any party that wanted the Liberal Demoniacs support was you don't get our support unless you back PR - wasn't hard was it?

[bluetagagain]

The  PR system in NI hasn’t solved a thing in decades, people will still vote traditionally. Too many fingers in the pie with PR as deals usually have to be done with single seat parties to get anything passed. What we need is a new stronger central party .

[SW4Blue]

"Nick Clegg was the prime culprit in NOT getting any change in the electoral system - he should have insisted on PR as a condition of the Liberal Demoniacs support to any party. Instead he was weak and let Cameron and the Tories walk all over him."

Well Clegg probably was weak etc but that sort of constitutional change has, I believe, to go to the people (probs to prevent a nut-case with a large Parliamentary majority unpicking the norms of "unwritten" constitution) and it did in May 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Unite...referendum

No region or country in the UK voted in favour, so with 67% voting No to PR at the time it is probably a settled issue.

PR or the Single Transferrable Vote wasn't properly explained to the electorate -how it works what it meant etc etc

All Clegg had to say to any party that wanted the Liberal Demoniacs support was you don't get our support unless you back PR - wasn't hard was it?

It didn't really matter how hard a negotiator Cleggy was. There was no commitment to PR wasn't in the Tory manifesto (for whatever that's worth) so Cameron could not make a carte blanche agreement with Clegg without his MP's having a say. And as most Tories are anti PR then he would have been voted down - not a good look for a PM. The best he could do was to offer the Referendum to get Cleggy's support, and then let his gang (MP's, red-tops etc) go to work on killing it in combination with most people's lethargy.

So then perhaps Cleggy moves on to haggling with Labour. They also didn't have a commitment to PR and funnily enough a sizeable proportion of their MP's didn't support PR at that time. So let's say Milliband gets into Government with Clegg's support and he would then face the same problems on PR. His legislation would fall because the Tories would vote against it and so would some Labour MPs. More to the point, even with Cleggs MP's a Labour coalition would still have been short of an overall majority. So that makes this haggle with Labour approach moot and at the same time strengthened Cameron's negotiating hand.

So a referendum was the only option, and Cleggy chose that, but sadly it got stuffed by the voters, and the Lib Dems then got stuffed in 2015.

On a final point, experience suggests that explaining anything to an electorate that doesn't include telling them what the problem is, and who is to blame for it (whether true or not) does not have a tremendous track record of success in the UK over the last 40 years. That has tended to suit Tories better than anything more, ahem, progressive, with issues like PR suffering as a result.

[Tufnell_Chimes]

Dat true.

[exterminator]

All Cleggy had to say to both parties was - you don't get our support till you agree to PR, not take Cameron or any other party's offer of a referendum on PR.

That would then have probably triggered another GE ... what would have happened after that is guesswork but I would hazard a guess that Labour would have probably joined them.