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posted by CoolHand on Saturday May 09 2015, @06:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the surprised-Brits dept.

BBC News reports that the Conservatives have defied pre-election polls and all the exit polls to win an overall majority in the House of Commons. The race was thought to be much closer than the final results have shown, with many predicting either another coalition government or possibly a minority Conservative government being formed.

The Conservatives made gains in England and Wales and are forecast by the BBC to secure 331 seats in the Commons, giving them a slender majority. Sources say [Labour leader] Ed Miliband is expected to stand down after Labour was all but wiped out by the [Scottish National Party] in Scotland. [Liberal Democrat] leader Nick Clegg has already said he will quit, with his party set to be reduced from 57 to eight MPs. [United Kingdom Independence Party] leader Nigel Farage is also quitting after he failed to win Thanet South, losing by nearly 2,800 votes to the Conservatives.

The Conservatives have taken 331 of the 650 seats available. However, when Sinn Fein's continued boycott of Westminster is taken into account, along with the four seats they current hold, 324 is enough for a practical majority. An overall turnout of 66% is expected, marginally up on the previous general election in 2010.

Shortly after the results of the exit polls were revealed, Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated in a live interview on the BBC that he would "eat his hat" if the predicted losses for the Liberal Democrats came true. The poll showed the Lib Dems losing 45 seats - in the end they lost 47. Lord Ashdown mentioned shortly after he made the statement that he had received through Twitter ten offers of hats if he didn't have one of his own.

For those of us not familiar with UK politics, what are the views of the Conservatives we should be concerned about (if any)? How will their viewpoints affect the world political stage and/or the technology world?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday May 09 2015, @05:37PM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 09 2015, @05:37PM (#180812) Journal

    Your situation perfectly illustrates the issue of being held to ransom over trade, this is what fuels the EU monster, it is power and it's not yours. Did you ever wonder why China (and now also Russia) is more popular than the EU locally (i.e. not among refugees/modern slaves) in Africa?

    I'm aware of them but neither of those two descriptions of respectively Scotland and England are anything at all like the EU which is fundamentally anti-democratic and fascist and only cares about the centralization of power and money (and by far the easiest way to achieve that is to be the one who decides the rules, none of this is by accident). If Scotland/the Scottish think they'll be free to become anything at all like Norway across the sea by joining or even associating with the EU they are in for a nightmare. Norway is struggling to remain that way despite all the political parties in their parliament being in favor of only mildly divergent (a few percentages of change in total as measured in the annual budget) forms of the existing system. Scotland would have the monumental task of establishing it under equal or worse conditions.

    All the Nordic countries just like all European countries are in deep shit because of the EU and the centralized megalomania taking place across most if not all topics and that includes Iceland and Norway which aren't EU members but which have become too deeply associated and economically entangled (EFTA [wikipedia.org]) to be able to escape the political dictates out of the non-elected EU apparatus. Pro-EU people can joke about the EU banana myth and so on but examples such as the streamlining of rules and regulations regarding employment and temporary employment in the EU is no joke nor is it in any way worker or union friendly or remotely socially democratic. EU directives that typically does not favor social justice (I mean that in the original non-American meaning that isn't nonsense) nor workers rights nor local accommodations to local contexts nor individual freedoms (at least another example like the EU directive on data retention got struck down by the EU court of justice but that is more of a fluke than anything else, it's not like it won't be back in some form).

    By the way individual freedoms aren't contradictory to the rest: all of the “new right” political parties in western Europe want in their own slightly different ways a sensible and measured combination of these things far more than any of the old parties do, in fact even though they are often called and derided as single-issue parties it's the safeguarding and rehabilitation of such systems to the extent they already exist or existed (a lot has been lost already, one UKIP example would be their aim of reintroducing the support for university students that the Tories and Lib Dems removed) in fact such things are their primary political motivation and source of support (not that anyone would know by listening to “news” or political competitors) but such aims demands no EU as it exists now and no free movement of labor nor money (both flow freely right now), otherwise it is impossible. It demands actual national sovereignty.

    Except for Russia (but to some degree even for them) all European political debate is forced into contexts defined by the EU and all that's left after that are non-solutions: it's a tight noose favoring big power, big money, and big corruption (Ireland and Luxembourg being prime recent examples of gigantic local “international tax heavens” for multinational companies like Google and Apple). In some ways it's even worse than the shit that is the US government (US states have far more independence than EU members, members who are nations in name only), but for now at least the EU is a bit less bloodthirsty (but they want this too, the idea of a bigger EU army and so on is pushed for on a regular basis).

    Now here's the thing: most politicians are aware of all of this, and those in pro-EU/mainstream parties absolutely love it because it means they can simply be truthful and point at the EU directive and say we have to do this because we are part of the EU/subject to these directives etc. while enjoying their insider advantage to misuse the system. They will at some point have to cut the deficit because of EU deficit rules or they will receive EU penalties which means they incur even more expenses paying the EU monetary compensation for the transgression. Their backs are completely free and since there are no actual solutions within the EU system they can do any nonsense they think of: it's not like it will work anyway, doesn't matter if it will cost more to implement than it pays because a crisis is just another opportunity to spend more money and some of that will grease the wheels and if anyone speaks up there's the threat of running afoul of EU directives. Doesn't matter who's in power among them, they'll all face the same non-choices while gaming the system as they see fit and as long as they mostly obey their master (the EU) it's all fine (for them), after all it's only “loonies” and “fruitcakes” and “racists” that oppose the EU because the EU is “free trade” and jobs and equality and so on. It's not a coincidence that nearly all of the EU members are doing the same “austerity” bullshit, they all get the game, they made it.

    (By the way to say the English consensus is social darwinism is a very extreme statement. Social darwinism is pathological psychopathy and/or sociopathy.)

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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:21PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:21PM (#180838) Journal

    By the way to say the English consensus is social darwinism is a very extreme statement.

    It was an extreme statement. I accept that. I just don't think that people fully appreciate what they have voted for. I don't think they realise how luck they were last time to have the Liberal Democrats in coalition moderating the worst of the Conservative cynicism. I feel very sorry for Nick Clegg.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:16AM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:16AM (#180995) Journal

      Yes it will get worse for sure, the Tories started on that only hours (or was it just minutes?) after the results with the proclamation on the new edition/reintroduction of the “Snooper's Charter”. I don't know who/what most Lib Dem voters switched to (if anything in particular) but being a tiny party in a coalition can easily become a recipe for political extinction. It would be strange if Clegg didn't know or wasn't told of that rather large risk, particularly since there was a lot of internal or voter turmoil and disgust with the coalition rather quickly (or at least that's the impression I got).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:36PM (#180903)

    Hint: all the Eurosoeptics (what used to be called Nationalist), from UKIP to FN to Jobbik, are funded by Russia. Russia fears a unified Europe (that doesn't include them in a leading role) more than anything else.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday May 10 2015, @03:13PM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 10 2015, @03:13PM (#181092) Journal

      And you try to pass such a “hint” to someone who is so-called “far right” (a bit more Pim Fortuyn than Geert Wilders but that's details) and that is also pro-Russian or at least pro-Novorussian and strongly anti-EU and more recently also strongly anti-US? I guess next you'll try to claim no one at all knew Pim Fortuyn was openly gay and had homosexual sex as often as possible, maybe it's too hard to understand that just about no one particularly cares about any of that in western Europe, not even ordinary suckers for big boobs, thin waists, and wide hips like me. It's almost as lame as trying to get people riled up about “anti-gays” in the gayest country in Europe: England, the country where cross-dressing is a Christmas tradition you take your children to watch :D (and yes England is even gayer than the Netherlands, good for them).

      I've been against the EU for over twenty years, and twenty years ago I was a military officer in a NATO country. Well I still am strictly speaking, if I say Browning, Glock, H&K MP3, H&K G3, Rheinmetall MG3, M72 LAW, and Bofors recoilless cannons then someone who knows a little about European (well not Browning obviously, but M72 actually is although the US has a license for production just like Turkey has for the MG3) military small (and not so small) arms might notice that I'm ever so slightly dated :)

      As far as I can tell it's the US (and likely CIA) that's trying to buy themselves friends on the “new right” but they suck at being subtle and don't realize what kind of people they're dealing with so all they're left with are people who incorrectly think it's /not/ obvious that they're on the take. I've called people out on it as you might expect.

      The reason why just about all “new right” political parties are pro-Russian is because all the US and EU anti-Russian propaganda is pure bullshit that doesn't make the slightest sense on any level. The only ones who seem to “believe” in the US government are idiot “journalists”, some NATO brass, politicians etc. I mean god damn its funny that the US doesn't realize what kind of reputation lizards like Carl Bildt and Jens Stoltenberg (NATO Secretary General? Awesome joke) have and the instant alienation of sizable groups of people in Sweden and Norway against anything those creeps support (to people like me —and plenty not like me as well— they're worse than what Tony Blair is to most Brits). So yes of course it's noticeable if a person on the “new right” suddenly somehow supports them.

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