General Election 2019

[TimW]

My son has pointed out that, rather depressingly, a tactical vote in or constituency might be tory to make sure brexit dont get in. I think we're saved by the Brexit Party scheme to retain candidate payments no oppose Tories, but it is an unpleasant thought.

Erm, that doesn't make any sense though. Seeing as you don't want either the Tories or the Brexit party in (presumably because Brexit, but could also be because obvs), a vote for either isn't tactical, it's just daft. The tactical vote is for a party that wants to do different things from the tories or the brexit party

Any vote other than for your actual first choice is a tactical vote. And really, of the candidates with a chance of getting in (usually two), you should vote for the least worst of them, even if they're all idiots.

[GeenDienst]

And it'll be on shiny paper. OK for the final buff up, but no use for the early spadework.

[AMS]

Our tally so far is 2 leaflets from the incumbent Tory (one specific to the candidate, one very generically Borisy), 1 from Labour, who have no hope round here, and over 20 from the LibDems.

[gosling]

Two from the Tories, none from the Lib Dems, three from Labour (and I delivered two of those). Was leafleting yesterday and got called a bitch and an anti-Semite. This was after saying I don't like Corbyn, but prefer him to Johnson.

[Bird on a Fire]

I posted my postal vote a couple of weeks ago. If I were in charge, I'd add some feature whereby postal voters get notified that their vote has been received, because I've got no idea. Ho hum.

[Martin Y]

"Best for Britain" teased us with a big Facebook announcement this morning which turned out to be the welcome but underwhelming news that they and "People's Vote" have finally aligned their anti-Brexit tactical voting recommendations. They directed me to Getvoting.org (who annoyed me by demanding my full postcode so I picked some random nearby one) and they told me which town I live in. Thanks.

They also told me their tactical vote recommendation had changed, from LibDem to Labour. Whether this is part of their "alignment" or reflects LibDems sinking prospects was not mentioned. It showed an animated chart of the predicted result and a what-if scenario where 30% of anti-Brexit voters vote tactically.

In this best-case scenario Labour get a barnstorming 33% and our Tory incumbent gets about 53%. Oh, well.

[FlammableFlower]

I was happy to note that my constituency was in the Observer article on wards that can be won from the Tories by tactical voting. I've already voted by postal ballot and I'm glad to see that my vote was in line with their assessment. The Tories only have a 4,000 majority and the incumbent has done very little to endear himself to the locals (amongst other things, it turns out whilst he maintains a house in the constituency, he spends most of his time living in Leeds with the woman he had an affair with).

[Gfamily]

I posted my postal vote a couple of weeks ago. If I were in charge, I'd add some feature whereby postal voters get notified that their vote has been received, because I've got no idea. Ho hum.

About a week after the Euro elections I got a letter from our Council's elections office to say that I hadn't put my correct date of birth on the slip that goes with my signature.
I've just emailed to check that they have the correct details for this vote - fortunately, they do.

I don't think my missing vote had any difference in the Euro elections, as we got our 2x LD and a bonus Green MEP elected.

[discovolante]

I posted my postal vote a couple of weeks ago. If I were in charge, I'd add some feature whereby postal voters get notified that their vote has been received, because I've got no idea. Ho hum.

Señor von Laté, who is currently on holiday, has just messaged me to say that his proxy voting form thing has just arrived, late, at his mum's house, having got lost in the post. He's registered in a marginal constituency. So fingers crossed the Tories dont get in by one vote.

Sorry to concern you. I know you cant avoid postal voting but I just prefer to avoid it if I can even if that's a bit irrational.

[Gfamily]

I posted my postal vote a couple of weeks ago. If I were in charge, I'd add some feature whereby postal voters get notified that their vote has been received, because I've got no idea. Ho hum.

You could email the elections office at your local council - maybe under a pretext similar to mine, that you weren't sure that they had your correct date of birth.
My Council were able to confirm that the date against my signature matched the date on their records, which confirmed that they had received it.

[Lew Dolby]

Had all the leaflets we expected from all five parties standing . . .

. . . plus one from our local Extinction Rebellion group under the heading "Anybody But .."

They don't seem to like the current incumbent - tory science-denier Owen Patterson.

[murmur]

Waaaaaaay more leaflets etc from the Lib Dems than the other 3 put together: they really seem to be going for it.

As usual most of teh meejah seem not to know Berwick exists, talking about the likes of Raab being at risk in seats of the "weigh the Tory votes" variety, and yet ignoring one whic has swung back and forth between Tories and Libs/Lib Dems over the years and in which the sitting MP has also ignored the area and done nothing to keep her previous election promises...

We've put the pegs on our noses, despite not hearing all the things I wanted to, and have voted Lib Dem (postal vote): personal and political animus towards Tory Girl won out and some hints of evidence that the LDs are most likely to do the job. I just cannot find much in the way of positive reasons to vote for anyone.

FFS!

[bmforre]

As I understand it voting for Brexit means going for WTO trade regulation.
Do people know that Trump is actively sabotaging WTO now?
See https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/busi ... e=Homepage

A U.S. offensive against the World Trade Organization will effectively shutter the group’s system for settling disputes, at a time it’s most needed...

The loss of the world’s primary trade referee could turn the typically deliberate process of resolving international disputes into a free-for-all, paving the way for an outbreak of tit-for-tat tariff wars.

It could also signal the demise of the 24-year-old World Trade Organization itself, since the system for settling disputes has long been its most effective part.

Some may prefer that this information is held back until after voting. So "democratic".

[jimbob]

Lot of disinformation on Twitter.

Laura Kussenberg tweeted that Matt Hancock was sent as damage limitation after Johnson's disastrous interview, but that a Labour supporter punched one of Hancock's aides.

That tweet has now been deleted.

The "punch" is nothing of the sort, walking where someone is gesticulating without looking is not the person gesticulating's fault - especially when he had no reason to expect that.



Zac Goldsmith has been very clever in what he said - especially with a lovely video proclaiming his green credentials.

@ZacGoldsmith

Just received a welcome message:
“I was going to support the Green Party but they have stood aside so that means Zac now gets my vote”.

Once again I’d like to reiterate my thanks to the Greens for stepping aside.

Maybe not actually untrue - but to a casual reader, quite misleading.

[Grumble]

Just received a letter from Alistair Campbell asking me to vote Lib Dem. I have also had a letter from a previous Labour MP in a neighbouring constituency (Stockport) asking the same. As well as some random pollster (not a polling company, an individual) and lots from the LDs themselves.

Incidentally, and I’m not sure if this is related to a mood in the constituency or what, but my local Conservative club has rebranded itself as a “Social Club”. I don’t know if they’re trying to get more people through the door or if they don’t want to pay the licensing fees to have the name.

[Fishnut]

I'm at a meeting for our LibDem candidate. We're a Tory safe seat so it's unlikely he's going to get anywhere, especially with the way the libdems have cocked up the campaign, but he's trying hard.

I went to the hustings where our MP did turn up (unlike a lot of Tories, it seems) but he had a very lacklustre performance. He started with brexit despite hardly any of the submitted questions being about brexit and spoke from a national and often international perspective and barely mentioned any local issues. The Labour candidate was incredible. She was so prepared, have excellent answers, knew the local issues intimately and put them in a national context. The Green candidate was awful but it sounds like he was a last-minute candidate who'd been pushed into it. He flubbed their environment policy!

Our candidate was good but seemed a bit amateurish, especially compared to the labour Candidate. He kept referring to how new all this was to him which didn't exactly inspire confidence.

[greyspoke]

Got to agree with you fishy, the libdems haven't done themselves any favours campaign wise. Although partly that may be down to Jo Swinson not connecting with voters, which I find a bit odd, because I find myself warming to her personally.

[Gfamily]

[rant]What is it with our Prime Minister and his compulsion to lie? Is it pathological?

He's talking about how Brexit will cause "Cupid's darts to fly" predicting a baby boom in 2020 in the same way as he claims "after the Olympics, as I correctly prophesied in a speech in 2012"

Except there wasn't any such "baby boom", birth rates fell by over 4% in 2013 - so why does he do it?

Basically all it does is prove that you can't trust a word he says.

His totally needless lies, like this one, shows that he holds the country in contempt - nothing of what he says to us matters, because we don't matter to him.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -factcheck[/rant]

As you were.

[Sciolus]

As Truman said of Nixon, he is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

[raven]

Our tally so far:
None from the Independent running on 'local issues', so I'm none the wiser on what those are.

One desultory leaflet from Labour.

Three from the Tories for the candidate they've parachuted in from London to replace the guy they kicked out, one of which is a mock 'newsheet' that it took me a couple of minutes to identify as electioneering thanks to deviousness and the 'print by__ on behalf of___ party' declaration being too tiny to read.

And 15 from the LibDems, including a personal letter from Sarah Wollaston (ex-Tory), and an ex deputy police commissioner banging on about law&order because, I suppose, we're a safe-ish Tory seat and they think that'll play well. But maybe if your candidate is emphasising his green credentials, don't send half a tree's worth of glossy leaflets, eh?

[jimbob]

Meanwhile, it's good to see that the Express is up with today's most important story about Boris the loveable and shambolic eccentric.

SmartSelect_20191209-225228_Opera Mini.jpg (353.28 KiB) Viewed 5792 times

I thought he didn't actually leave Darius Guppy's planned victim in stitches if only because it fell through.

[Fishnut]

Got to agree with you fishy, the libdems haven't done themselves any favours campaign wise. Although partly that may be down to Jo Swinson not connecting with voters, which I find a bit odd, because I find myself warming to her personally.

I find myself going the other way tbh. I voted for her in the leadership election because of Davey's orange booker past (I was leaning towards him initially) but she's really got on my nerves. She's turned it into a campaign about her, rather than of the LibDem manifesto. Of course, that could be because the other parties are so much about their leaders that she felt the need to, but the "battle bus" with her face plastered over it was too much for me.

I think talking about them forming a government was a stupid move, one they've fortunately backed down from but that of course has led to a feeling of lost momentum. The talk of revoking A50 was also stupid. I got what they were saying - if the LibDems got enough votes to form a government that was a de facto second referendum but that's not a simple soundbite to sell and after 3 years of the "will of the people" bollocks sounded far too much like government overreach. I'm glad they've stopped focusing on it but again it adds to the sense of lessening ambitions and losing momentum.

The sniping at Labour really gets on my nerves as we all need to be attacking the Conservatives if we have any hope of changing the government. More broadly the Remain alliance has been an absolute shitshow and it's left me feeling like we deserve brexit. We've had 3 years to counter the incompetence of the Tories and we've failed at every f.cking step. If we can't mount a feasible attack on the most incompetent government in my lifetime then we don't deserve to win.

[gosling]

The sniping at Labour really gets on my nerves as we all need to be attacking the Conservatives if we have any hope of changing the government.

Ditto for Labour sniping at the LibDems. Got Labour friends in North Devon and I can't persuade them to vote LD, who genuinely are the only option to stop the Tories in that seat.

More broadly the Remain alliance has been an absolute shitshow and it's left me feeling like we deserve brexit. We've had 3 years to counter the incompetence of the Tories and we've failed at every f.cking step. If we can't mount a feasible attack on the most incompetent government in my lifetime then we don't deserve to win.

Pretty much my thoughts as I was leafleting last night. I'm resigned to a Tory majority and Johnson screwing us over for another five years. Sigh.

Great to see you here, Fishnut. Used to love reading your posts in the other place.

[Little waster]

[rant]What is it with our Prime Minister and his compulsion to lie? Is it pathological?

He's talking about how Brexit will cause "Cupid's darts to fly" predicting a baby boom in 2020 in the same way as he claims "after the Olympics, as I correctly prophesied in a speech in 2012"

Except there wasn't any such "baby boom", birth rates fell by over 4% in 2013 - so why does he do it?

Basically all it does is prove that you can't trust a word he says.

His totally needless lies, like this one, shows that he holds the country in contempt - nothing of what he says to us matters, because we don't matter to him.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -factcheck[/rant]

As you were.

It’s straight out the Trump deadcat playbook though. His supporters will think it’s amazing and will be rinsing out there stingvests in anticipation of all the Brexit nooky they’ll be getting, while his opponents waste a news cycle pointing out to each other that the claim is fractally wrong, meanwhile the devious little turd will have moved on to his next nonsensical lie, bridge to NI anyone?

All the while him and his cronies get a free pass on all the terrible sh.t they are doing out of sight.

[Woodchopper]

[rant]What is it with our Prime Minister and his compulsion to lie? Is it pathological?

He's talking about how Brexit will cause "Cupid's darts to fly" predicting a baby boom in 2020 in the same way as he claims "after the Olympics, as I correctly prophesied in a speech in 2012"

Except there wasn't any such "baby boom", birth rates fell by over 4% in 2013 - so why does he do it?

Basically all it does is prove that you can't trust a word he says.

His totally needless lies, like this one, shows that he holds the country in contempt - nothing of what he says to us matters, because we don't matter to him.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -factcheck[/rant]

As you were.

It’s straight out the Trump deadcat playbook though. His supporters will think it’s amazing and will be rinsing out there stingvests in anticipation of all the Brexit nooky they’ll be getting, while his opponents waste a news cycle pointing out to each other that the claim is fractally wrong, meanwhile the devious little turd will have moved on to his next nonsensical lie, bridge to NI anyone?

All the while him and his cronies get a free pass on all the terrible sh.t they are doing out of sight.

They didn't even copy it from Trump.

The £350 million on the side of the Brexit Bus served exactly the same purpose. Distracted his opponents while pleasing his supporters.