The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

Fretwired

holnrew said:

I think it's possible for there to be a few closet Labour voters, the reverse of 2015, and I wouldn't discount the young vote. They seem a lot more motivated, in Corbyn there's a politician that finally speaks for them. I don't think it's enough for Labour to win, but it's possible for there to be a reduced Tory majority.

Saw Corbyn on the news .. very credible .. far batter than May in that he answered direct questions.

Heartfeltdawn

One other aspect of today: the Conservatives are hitting Youtube. Haven't had a single ad before today during the campaign. Today watching the British GT, some F3, and the Indy 500, I've had eight come up. The Leave campaign utilised Youtube very well and I would say that the Conservatives have picked up on this, 

ToneControl

holnrew said:

I think it's possible for there to be a few closet Labour voters, the reverse of 2015, and I wouldn't discount the young vote. They seem a lot more motivated, in Corbyn there's a politician that finally speaks for them. I don't think it's enough for Labour to win, but it's possible for there to be a reduced Tory majority.

I'm more of a reluctant labour voter
frankly, I don't want to but suppose I should to be consistent, even though I think Corbyn is incompetent and thick (and beset with dogma)
I'm not sure how I would vote if I thought labour could get a majority, I'd genuinely be afraid of Corbyn as PM

exocet

Fretwired said:

Myranda said:

Arg! 

The UK isn't full. 
Of those 23000 large numbers were probably born her. 
Huge numbers of jobs are done by migrants. 

Angry shouty bullshit isn't truth. 

The BBC are not "traitors",  attacks on the press are for Donald Trump, Mussolini and Hitler... Don't be like them... The press is made up of people and people have opinions.


Elections and politics really bring out the twat in otherwise normal people. 

The UK isn't, but I'd argue parts of England are - the amount of green belt land that's gone where I live is sad. We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

Persons per square KM

Netherlands 497
England 410
Germany 229
Italy 202
Denmark 130
France 121

Source: Eurostat ONS 2012

I'm genuinely surprised by those figures - mainly England and Nederlands. The Nederlands is very densely populated but I wouldn't have thought England as a whole to be anywhere near that. Greater London - yes but outside of other other major conubations I would have put the figure down at 300 ish.

Sporky

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

ToneControl

we should all spread out into Wales

ICBM

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

I suspect it wouldn't even fill all the empty land in cities which developers don't like building on because it's more expensive for them than greenfield sites.

Government could fix this very simply by applying extra tax to greenfield builds and using the money to pay for site cleanup on brownfield builds or give tax incentives for builders there.

ChuckManual

ToneControl said:

we should all spread out into Wales

Now there's a policy I could vote for!

My parents live in Brecon. It's bloody lovely around there...

Axe_meister

The government should give tax incentives to companies that do not setup offices in London.
We are a tiny country, with good internet infrastructure, road, rail and some regional airports.
We don't have to cram everything into London.
My colleagues in the States often have to fly 5+ hours from a New York office to an LA office for a 2 hour meeting.

But why all the bloody spending promises when we have Brexit coming our way and we have no idea what the impact is going to be on the economy. Surely we should be working towards a small buffer for the rainy day we know is just two years away.

TheBigDipper

Because we (technically) vote for a local representative to send to Parliament, and they gang up with each other into political groups and they (bear with me) elect a PM from their gang to run the country, then we might not have Corbyn or May in power at some point after the election. 

In particular, if the Conservatives don't get the whopping majority they thought they would, and end up with the same number of seats or even less, then even forming the government again may not be good enough for them.

Vote for policies, not people. 

guitarfishbay

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

Drove from Manchester to Harrogate, then to York, and back yesterday. There's loads of space up North at least.

Fretwired

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

The town where I live, not the UK as a whole. Just north of where I live is Stevenage and there's a plan to build on the green belt and effectively connect Stevenage with Luton - just bonkers.

holnrew

ToneControl said:

we should all spread out into Wales

Please don't, I like the quiet here

Jalapeno

Fretwired said:

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

The town where I live, not the UK as a whole. Just north of where I live is Stevenage and there's a plan to build on the green belt and effectively connect Stevenage with Luton - just bonkers.

Luton's bloody miles away from Stevenage (14.7 according to Google maps) - that's crazy - it takes a good 30mins or so down the A505 - fields all the way.  Are they going to create an A505 corridor development ?

Sporky

Fretwired said:

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

The town where I live, not the UK as a whole. Just north of where I live is Stevenage and there's a plan to build on the green belt and effectively connect Stevenage with Luton - just bonkers.

Mmm. Retcon.

Heartfeltdawn

TheBigDipper said:

Because we (technically) vote for a local representative to send to Parliament, and they gang up with each other into political groups and they (bear with me) elect a PM from their gang to run the country, then we might not have Corbyn or May in power at some point after the election. 

In particular, if the Conservatives don't get the whopping majority they thought they would, and end up with the same number of seats or even less, then even forming the government again may not be good enough for them.

Vote for policies, not people. 

They'd be mental to get rid of her in the event of a small majority win. A change in PM would mean the third Conservative PM in just over a year. Hardly the act of a strong stable party. 

And there is nobody in the Conservative party right now deserving on the PM role. Hammond is looking like he's on his way out, the quirks of Boris now don't have the same charm to the voters, Amber Rudd is dreadful, Fallon has looked impotent all campaign... 

Fretwired

Jalapeno said:

Fretwired said:

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

The town where I live, not the UK as a whole. Just north of where I live is Stevenage and there's a plan to build on the green belt and effectively connect Stevenage with Luton - just bonkers.

Luton's bloody miles away from Stevenage (14.7 according to Google maps) - that's crazy - it takes a good 30mins or so down the A505 - fields all the way.  Are they going to create an A505 corridor development ?

Yep. North Herts District Council is trying to block it. The idea is for homes offices and industrial space - there's demand for it. Where I live they've already built on loads of green belt land and are proposing to effectively connect Welwyn to Hertford one way and Stevenage the other by building along the A1. You remember what the A1 motorway was like ....

There's a consortium saying they would be better to build a new city to the east between the A1 and M11.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

I suspect it wouldn't even fill all the empty land in cities which developers don't like building on because it's more expensive for them than greenfield sites.

Government could fix this very simply by applying extra tax to greenfield builds and using the money to pay for site cleanup on brownfield builds or give tax incentives for builders there.

It more profitable on green belt land. Find some land outside and existing town, build a mixed development, add a word like village to make it sound exclusive and watch the houses sell out in no time.

Here's an example not far from me ...

https://www.fairview.co.uk/find-your-home/buntingford/

Myranda

Jalapeno said:

Fretwired said:

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

We have to build another 65,000 homes so all the green space between towns will be gone. Just a mass of concrete.

How will increasing the UK housing stock by 0.26% result in all the green space between towns becoming a mass of concrete?

Are you sure you're not several orders of magnitude out on your sums?

The town where I live, not the UK as a whole. Just north of where I live is Stevenage and there's a plan to build on the green belt and effectively connect Stevenage with Luton - just bonkers.

Luton's bloody miles away from Stevenage (14.7 according to Google maps) - that's crazy - it takes a good 30mins or so down the A505 - fields all the way.  Are they going to create an A505 corridor development ?

So... 14.7 miles 23.65km ... average house size for the UK is 76m^2 ... so lets call it a 9m x 9m property (81m^2 so an over-estimate). Assume detached housing with 2m either side (big enough for a garage or just a really wide path between houses...) so, 13m per property.

If you lined the the road between the sites you'd only need 1819.2 properties per side of the road to connect them for a total of 3638 ... so 65000 built only between could easily connect the two... it still wont turn the whole country grey, but the view of anyone driving twixt locations could perceive it to have done

TheBigDipper

Heartfeltdawn said:

TheBigDipper said:

Because we (technically) vote for a local representative to send to Parliament, and they gang up with each other into political groups and they (bear with me) elect a PM from their gang to run the country, then we might not have Corbyn or May in power at some point after the election. 

In particular, if the Conservatives don't get the whopping majority they thought they would, and end up with the same number of seats or even less, then even forming the government again may not be good enough for them.

Vote for policies, not people. 

They'd be mental to get rid of her in the event of a small majority win. A change in PM would mean the third Conservative PM in just over a year. Hardly the act of a strong stable party. 

And there is nobody in the Conservative party right now deserving on the PM role. Hammond is looking like he's on his way out, the quirks of Boris now don't have the same charm to the voters, Amber Rudd is dreadful, Fallon has looked impotent all campaign... 

True. That's why I've been saying policies not people. The figureheads in the parties are individuals at the whim of their backers, which weakens them. Don't vote for Theresa vs Jeremy, vote for one manifesto over another. A PM, after all, is not a president, they are supposed to be "first among equals" and the country should be run by the cabinet (not the PM and his/her unelected special advisors).