Polling: 2017 General Election, Council Elections and Independence

[NotThePars]

Trotsky helped organise the Russian Revolution of 1905 at the age of 25 and that was several magnitudes greater an undertaking than being a politician for a diddy parliament with kiddy on powers. I don't really think being young matters all that much. James Dornan is 38 and is every bit a wee fanny on social media and can't even point to having good politics.

 

Just checked and Pete Wishart is 59 anaw.

Edited April 28, 2021 by NotThePars

[Suspect Device]

 

 

 

[scottsdad]

1 hour ago, Pato said:

I think this about young politicians too sometimes, but then 16 year olds get to vote so isn't it a bit unreasonable to expect parliaments that represent them to contain only people a decade or more older than them? Is their lack of career outside politics disqualifying, or is it better (particularly in proportionally represented parliaments like Holyrood) for some MSPs to be young?

Ross Greer has been an MP since the age of 21. Now, I know that there are 21 year olds and then there are 21 year olds. Some are still kids and some are very adult and grown up. 

Now, imagine he stays an MSP for, oh, 25 years. He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school. Would he then really represent other folk in their 40s, having spent his entire adult life inside the bubble?

[Suspect Device]

18 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Ross Greer has been an MP since the age of 21. Now, I know that there are 21 year olds and then there are 21 year olds. Some are still kids and some are very adult and grown up. 

Now, imagine he stays an MSP for, oh, 25 years. He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school. Would he then really represent other folk in their 40s, having spent his entire adult life inside the bubble?

Probably not but I don't think there are many politicians who represent me and my peers in terms of life experiences.)

 

Most seem to be lawyers or career politicians.

Edited April 28, 2021 by Suspect Device

[Antlion]

30 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Ross Greer has been an MP since the age of 21. Now, I know that there are 21 year olds and then there are 21 year olds. Some are still kids and some are very adult and grown up. 

Now, imagine he stays an MSP for, oh, 25 years. He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school. Would he then really represent other folk in their 40s, having spent his entire adult life inside the bubble?

We need to be upfront here: parliaments are not meetings of the estates for representatives of different branches of industry and walks of life. They are workplaces.

The common accusation that certain people are “career politicians” therefore doesn’t make any more sense than condemning someone as a “career teacher” or a “career fireman”. Being a politician is a valid career route.

We might agree that parliamentary service shouldn’t be an occupation or career, but that’s an entirely different argument. As things stand, there’s nothing wrong with Greer going into parliament for forty years and never knowing another job, just as there’s no issue with a sixty-year-old who’s never known any other job than being a polis, or a geography teacher, or a brewer. 

[Gordon EF]

53 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Ross Greer has been an MP since the age of 21. Now, I know that there are 21 year olds and then there are 21 year olds. Some are still kids and some are very adult and grown up. 

Now, imagine he stays an MSP for, oh, 25 years. He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school. Would he then really represent other folk in their 40s, having spent his entire adult life inside the bubble?

The whole idea of parliament is to have a mix of people with a mix of backgrounds. That's when it works best when it represents society on the whole, at least to some extent. The idea isn't that each individual MP's life experience has to match up to each individual they represent. That's ridiculous. Nobody could possibly do that.

Besides, empathy should be one of the top qualities we look for in members of parliament. If you can empathise with other people and at least attempt to understand their situation then you don't need to have lived the exact lives they have to be able to represent them. Too many parliamentarians lack those qualities.

the idea that a parliament full of 45-65 year olds represents society better than one with some younger (or older) folk sitting in it is daft.

Edited April 28, 2021 by Gordon EF

[NotThePars]

2 hours ago, Antlion said:

The common accusation that certain people are “career politicians” therefore doesn’t make any more sense than condemning someone as a “career teacher” or a “career fireman”. Being a politician is a valid career route.

I think the criticism is less choosing politics as a vocation and more about people seeing it as a way of personal enrichment or whatever. I don't have an issue with Corbyn being a politician all his life but I do with someone like Chuku Umunna. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by NotThePars

[Antlion]

25 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

I think the criticism is less choosing politics as a vocation and more about people seeing it as a way of personal enrichment or whatever. I don't have an issue with Corbyn being a politician all his life but I do with someone like Chuku Umunna. 

Fair enough, but you’ll get people in any walk of life or occupation who choose - even difficult - careers not because they feel a vocational call, but because it pays well or offers perks. I wouldn’t say Greer seems an egregious example of this.

If choosing politics as a means of personal enrichment is the criticism, the issue is not with politics per se but with various parties’ willingness to promote utter snakes (like Umunna or almost every Tory). Again, I don’t think this applies to the Greens or Greer particularly. If the wee man was interested only in personal enrichment, I doubt he’d have gone to the Greens in the first place. In Scotland, the Glasgow Labour mafia was historically where the pocket-liners went; now, he’d either have made a beeline for the SNP or the Tories.

[Baxter Parp]

10 hours ago, wirez said:

Careful now.

Keep this up and there will be a post from Twitter by some random nutjob to back up all of Baxters viewpoints...

You're welcome.

But they're not in the least bit random.

[Glen Sannox]

4 hours ago, scottsdad said:

He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school.

Including getting his end away.

[Baxter Parp]

11 hours ago, virginton said:

If the SNP have been elected in three consecutive elections despite the media - and are certain to be elected a fourth time - then how does the media get to set the benchmark for an independence mandate? 

I said Westminster and the media and I said they would use the lack of an SNP majority as an excuse.  If you can't make your argument without twisting my words and "making stuff up" you can f**k off.

11 hours ago, virginton said:

Well yes, it does help to confirm that you use Wikipedia as the font of your political analysis. 

Says the guy pulling his political analysis out of his arse.

11 hours ago, virginton said:

If the SG wanted to do so then it already had Parliamentary support. Their decision not to go ahead with a referendum had absolutely nothing to do with the lack of an SNP majority, despite the desperate efforts to plug this claim into the utterly dismal 'both votes SNP!!!111!!' campaign rhetoric so far.

So when should they have called it?  Before Brexit?  After Brexit?  When the S30 was turned down? During the second wave?  During the first? Not one of you supermajority geeks has an answer.

11 hours ago, virginton said:

Letting your opponents set the terms of debate is loser behaviour that the SNP is more than big enough to prevent happening.  Vote for us or else Willie Rennie will say you don't get indyref2 is utterly tragic stuff. 

What should they have done?  Have a go at explaining your thinking.

11 hours ago, virginton said:

Were they bozos, weirdos and creeps when they were, erm, serving in the SNP's first government or standing on the SNP's own list ticket until a couple of months ago? Doesn't say much for the party's vetting process for candidates then, but I'm sure there'll be no further skeletons in anyone's closet that'll emerge. 

Alex's Alba Party is definitely a creep magnet. 

11 hours ago, virginton said:

Those who are concerned with Scottish independence and not the perpetuation of single-party rule should be happy with a Parliament that has 80+ pro-independence MSPs regardless of the party that they represent. 

"Single party rule" at a Parliament that hasn't had any party in a majority for the past five years.  Are you Baron Foulkes of Cumnock in disguise?

Edited April 28, 2021 by Baxter Parp

[Baxter Parp]

Fuckin' 'ell.

[betting competition]

 

[Benjamin_Nevis]

5 minutes ago, betting competition said:

 

I suppose the emergence of a party rammed with racist, bigoted and misogynistic candidates, headed up by a pretty well known creep is proving really effective for the Indy cause. 

[SANTAN]

1 hour ago, betting competition said:

 

The comments underneath are brilliant. 

Anyone remember a few months ago when being asked to answer on the inevitability of Independence I would say that the polls would narrow when an actual campaign begun...? 

[renton]

Just now, Stormzy said:

The comments underneath are brilliant. 

Anyone remember a few months ago when being asked to answer on the inevitability of Independence I would say that the polls would narrow when an actual campaign begun...? 

Nope.

Anyway, other recent polls showed statistical ties, and there is some truth to the notion that the Tories are better at whipping up some temporary feeling for No during campaigns as they make it the alpha and omega of a campaign in ways the SNP don't.

However, I agree with Lords, above. The more the public see of Salmond and his moon howlers the more put off they are. YES VI dropped during the inquiry fiasco, then recovered before dipping again into the campaign.

Meanwhile, neither the Tories or Labour are really making up ground on the SNP in the constituency with the SNP still boasting a 22 point lead there, and the Greens up 3 points to 10 on the list - which to be fair might just be ComRes catching up to everyone else.

[SANTAN]

Just now, renton said:

Nope.

Anyway, other recent polls showed statistical ties, and there is some truth to the notion that the Tories are better at whipping up some temporary feeling for No during campaigns as they make it the alpha and omega of a campaign in ways the SNP don't.

However, I agree with Lords, above. The more the public see of Salmond and his moon howlers the more put off they are. YES VI dropped during the inquiry fiasco, then recovered before dipping again into the campaign.

Meanwhile, neither the Tories or Labour are really making up ground on the SNP in the constituency with the SNP still boasting a 22 point lead there, and the Greens up 3 points to 10 on the list - which to be fair might just be ComRes catching up to everyone else.

Ach well, it was one of the main points i would make regularly and faced a lot of criticism for doing so when I first started posting in this section. Earned me minus 2000 red dots too. It appears going by the break in trend over the past few weeks that I was correct though. That's only during an election campaign too, I think it would be even worse if there was a referendum anywhere in the near future.

The Salmond stuff is surely a factor, I've not seen anything from him since the Alba launch tbf though, I'm not sure where he's getting publicity from, it's not very visible. 

[Lex]

Polls narrowed as some remainer no voters bought into all the Brexit catastrophe stories of empty shelves, economic and currency collapse, visa for your EU holidays etc etc and switched to YES.
Almost four months after we left, pretty much none of it has happened, they’ve switched back and polls are reverting to the mean.
Not that it matters, there won’t be another legally binding independence referendum.

[SandyCromarty]

17 hours ago, scottsdad said:

Ross Greer has been an MP since the age of 21. Now, I know that there are 21 year olds and then there are 21 year olds. Some are still kids and some are very adult and grown up. 

Now, imagine he stays an MSP for, oh, 25 years. He'll be in his mid to late 40s having never known anything outside of parliament or school. Would he then really represent other folk in their 40s, having spent his entire adult life inside the bubble?

Stephen Kinnock is another example, now a Labour MP and prior to that working in Brussels with the parliament and then with the British Council.

I'm sure there are other professional politicians around, after all it can be a lucrative career, look how well David Cameron has done financially.

[ayrmad]

Unfortunately the shysters appear to be on the NO side whilst Yes can boast, bigots, weirdos, sex pests, anti trans, anti women and a whole host of other creepy b*****ds, not a reputable party amongst the 3 Indy ones. 

I actually can't believe that Anas fucking Sarwar is looking the best of the lot up here, our Parliament really is rammed with a shower of shite of all hues. 

Edited April 29, 2021 by ayrmad