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I blew it.
You rightly hold SoylentNews to a high standard and I let you down when I merged three different political stories into a single story.
Rushing to get out the door to get to work, seeing the story queue running out, having seen the interest in the UK elections in our IRC channel, having heard much on the radio concerning former FBI Director Comey's testimony, seeing a story appear on a likely nomination for that vacated FBI post, and aware of the guideline on only one Politics story per day — I made a hurried decision to merge all three stories together.
The community rightly pointed out the shortcomings in that decision. Rest assured I won't make THAT decision again!
In retrospect, it would have been much better if I released two separate stories — one with the UK Election vote, and another with a merge of the FBI-related stories with, say, a 12-hour spacing between them.
It is a privilege to volunteer for this site, one that I do not take lightly. I let down the community — you deserve better. Trust that I have taken this lesson to heart and will strive to do better going forwards.
--martyb
[n1: There will be a UK election story coming in the next day or so, when more details are available. The majority of the coverage so far is speculation and reports of agreements have been retracted.]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:27PM (8 children)
Whats up with that? Over here in the colonies the coverage has been limited and weird so more data would be more interesting.
So ... she called elections because she figured her position was deteriorating over time so naturally you call early to get the least deterioration. AFAIK.
Then they lost simple majority but are still in power and unlike in the colonies you'll just make some alliance deal... right? Isn't that what usually happens?
Some folks seem to be blaming her for the bad results, but she was the one who called for the election to begin with because the position was deteriorating, so obviously she did the right thing at the right time the right way, people are just whining that they don't like reality, so she's the bad girl, but in reality its not her fault. Sort of a Trump Derrangement Syndrome but in the UK with someone else.
What we're hearing in the colonies is that mostly a lot of nothing is going to change, right or wrong? Whereas if her party had somehow lost even worse, then things could have been interesting, but no its gonna be establishment as planned all the way with some minor differences.
Coverage has been very ... muted. Much like once it became apparent the Comey wasn't going to result in the impeachment of Trump, he hit the memory hole and is almost already forgotten in the mass media. Sessions is the next victim of the witch hunt, apparently.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:53PM
As i said in my editor's note... There will be a proper UK election story soon, there has been a lot of coverage in the online editorial form, but very little in the way of actual confirmed details of the results... What was confirmed, the 'confidence and supply deal' with the DUP was retracted. The DUP has demonstrated they currently have the leverage... They are a small fraction of the vote and a local party, relative to national government... But they have the power to make or break the Tory government... They may remember what happened to the LibDems, when they entered a deal with the Tories in 2010. They did what they were told for the most part, and lost a lot of their voter base in 2015. The DUP have very narrow interests as a political movement and nothing to lose, the PM and conservative party is in a very different situation. Even the right leaning media in the UK have published many op-eds saying May should stand down, credibility damaged... so much for strong and stable.
We know how many people voted for who, but due to a lack of majority it's increased an already politically strained situation. As with the election campaign itself, and public positions on brexit policy... The current government, lead by PM May has decided to just not talk about it and just sticking to 'we'll do the right thing for the country' type rhetoric without giving any specifics.
There will probably be some announcements on Monday, or not.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by wisnoskij on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:58PM (3 children)
Been following it fairly closely.
May inherited the leadership from Cameron when he was disappointed with the Brexit Referendum result.
May and her party, the conservatives*, had a decent majority. *Think old school Republican's
At this point Corbyn, the leader of the Labour* party, was (quite literally) a laughing stock. *The only major opponent to the Conservatives and analogous to the Democrats.
May calls for an election.
Everyone knows the Conservatives are a shoe in.
"if you are not voting for Labour or the Conservatives, you are throwing your vote away"
Their biggest supporters go completely low energy and don't really feel it is worth putting effort into the campaign.
Labour campaigns like crazy.
No one really wants a woman in charge.
Racism and xenophobia is on the rise, becoming a major voting block and the Conservatives have a history as the most pro-immigration party in UK politics. Major anti-immigration groups endorse Corbyn because of his antisemitism and because anyone is better than the conservatives on immigration policy.
Basically. The Conservatives were so set against Brexit that leader of the country stepped down and refused to do his job when the country voted against him and his parties stance. That should of been a big warning sign that the people really were not big supporters Conservative policies.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 12 2017, @12:17AM
No, Cameron resigned because he nailed his colours to the mast of Remain, and lost. Prime Ministers are selected by their Party, they are not voted for directly. Cameron had lost the confidence of his Party.
Wow, not even nearly.
No, Theresa May, Cameron's replacement takes over the campaign completely, her strategy is to be the face of the Tories nationally and base the whole thing on her offer of "Strong, Stable Leadership" and her ability to negotiate Brexit. No-one is buying that.
True, they also promise to remove the hugely unpopular University fees, which will make everyone better off. Corbyn is also surprisingly relaxed and natural and comes across as a potential leader for the first time.
Bullshit
Both main parties are pro immigration, (at least their policies are). In truth the Brexit Tories are pretty racist and were mostly the ones pushing for the leave vote so that they can get rid of the free labour movement part of the EU agreement.
So set against Brexit that the bloke that will probably wind up the next PM is... Boris Johnston, the guy who ran the whole Brexit campaign. No-one is more pro-Brexit that Boris, and he is in the Conservative cabinet.
I'm glad you've been following the UK elections, but you seem to have misunderstood most of it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Monday June 12 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)
Well, by US standards, politically speaking, the Republicans are a tad right-wing by Conservative standards, the Democrats are roughly equivalent to the center-left portion of the Conservatives and the other parties are what Mom and Pop warned you about in the 1950s. By UK standards, the Republicans are more like the DUP (except bigger... and the name "republicans" would be a problem).
Labour also have the problem that they're the main party for both the acadamic/progressive/socialist vote (the Liberal Democrat party being a busted flush) and the traditional working-class vote (who actually tend to be somewhat small-c conservative).
No. I'm not saying that antisemetism and anti-immigration don't exist in UK politics (and I'm not defending either), but they are not connected (well, except maybe one of the UKIP's poster choices, but that's another story...) The Labour Party are typically pro-immigration, anti-racism but the left is also, traditionally, pro-Palestinian, which gets them into trouble whenever someone oversteps the line on discussing the middle east and re-discovers Godwin's Law by comparing Israel to the Nazis (see: Ken Livingstone).
Labour usually support immigration (on ideological grounds) as do Conservatives (because its good for business) but it has recently been the main dog-whistle for the Brexiteers (whether or not they believe their own propaganda) who have drummed up anti-immigration sentiment amongst both Conservative and Labour voters. Of course, although all the economists seem to agree that immigration is great for business, it might help if some of the proceeds of that went to building and staffing schools, hospitals, affordable housing etc. to support the extra population.
No, the problem is that both major parties are split on Brexit. The hard-right minority of the conservative party want it so they can get rid of all those pesky workers rights so they can turn the country into a low-wage tax haven and hand pork to their own businesses. The hard-left minority in the Labour party want out so that they can get rid of all the pesky enforced free-market competition stuff and take state control of industry.
Cameron went into the 2015 election expecting a second hung parliament. He promised a Brexit referendum mainly to ward off the UKIP threat but also to try and heal the rifts in his own party - assuming "remain" would win easily. Turns out he was wrong about the hung parliament (in 2015) and wrong about "remain" winning. Looks like the days of the Tories thinking that they can call the results of an election are definitely coming to a middle...
Meanwhile, Corbyn is pretty obviously lukewarm on Brexit and was heavily criticised for not doing more in the referendum campaign. In any case, one of the upsets of the referendum was the number of labour-voting areas that voted to leave (guess what: traditional working-class voters aren't actually that progressive!) with immigration being one of the key "doorstep issues".
The problem is, now, the tories are still riddled with a mixture of rabid Brexiteers and rabid Remainers and can't afford to call any vote that won't satisfy both. Don't expect to see too many government defeats, but any bill that actually gets presented to parliament will be heavily watered down to ensure that the issue doesn't arise.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday June 12 2017, @02:51PM
The Left-right dichotomy is completely worthless, especially now, in defining American politics. The two parties have the exact same policies but with different target audiences.
It is particularly ridiculous now since the Republicans just elected a hard core liberal democrat to president, and the only serious democratic candidates were anti-gay marriage. One small government pro-wall candidate who objected to the government legislating marriage and the other a war hungry career politician who spent her entire career stating that marriage is between a man and a woman.
The only notable difference is in their audiences. The Republican's campaign for low to middle income Americans. The Democrats specialize in Academia, Big Business, and Minorities. This is often simplified into the Urban-Rural divide. Something that mirrors UK politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:35PM (2 children)
> Coverage has been very ... muted.
Gee, I wonder where you get your international news? Plenty of UK election coverage on my local NPR outlet (NE USA), and even more after midnight when that FM station switches over to the BBC World Service. I often play this BBC news on the clock radio sleep timer when going to sleep, something about the British accent lets me doze off pretty quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @01:56AM
Plenty of UK election coverage on my local NPR outlet
Pacifica Radio in SoCal for the previous week (and more). [archive.li] (orig; Will age rapidly) [kpfk.org]
Scroll to Friday June 9 and the 2 hosts (Brad and Suzi) who made the effort to type in some comments show evidence of their coverage.
Other hosts (though they didn't supply a blurb specifically for the audio archive) were covering the story as well.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 12 2017, @11:54AM
muted in a relative sense.
news.google.com shows exactly one story about the current UK situation on the right side "Britain's PM May to face her party amid post-election tumult - Reuters Staff"
Meanwhile there's about two dozen Trump Derangement Syndrome rants, two Apple posts one about WWDC last week review and something about foxxxcon, and the PR election and other rando news. Apparently the CEO of GE is retiring, etc.
The UK situation sounds more interesting than "UK's Channel 4 to Tell 'Trump: An American Story' - Variety - 35 minutes ago" I mean, seriously, we're getting more coverage over here of UK coverage of our own politics than we get coverage from the UK of UK politics.