The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

octatonic

Theresa May being absent for tonight's debate is a massive strategic error.

holnrew

Amber Rudd is just coming across like a nasty lady

octatonic

holnrew said:

Amber Rudd is just coming across like a nasty lady

Jezza is dismantling her argument.

holnrew

The audience is living Jeremy

ICBM

octatonic said:

Theresa May being absent for tonight's debate is a massive strategic error.

Amber Rudd being present at it is looking nearly as bad...

Limehouse_Blues

I can't watch because bl00dy iplayer streaming is blocked outside the UK. Still, I suspect I'm not missing much.

octatonic

ICBM said:

octatonic said:

Theresa May being absent for tonight's debate is a massive strategic error.

Amber Rudd being present at it is looking nearly as bad...

She is a total disaster.

Heartfeltdawn

"The magical money tree" - good to see Amber sticking to the script. Twice mentioned in the first five minutes. 

Moe_Zambeek

its a bit of a rabble at the moment.

holnrew

"Judge us on our record"

Oh I am amber

Limehouse_Blues

Got it now on radio 5. Pretty uninspiring stuff.

Moe_Zambeek

Could do with better moderation I think. And having Angus in another room.

Nitefly

Moe_Zambeek said:

its a bit of a rabble at the moment.

No surprise there, then.  This is yet another import from American politics that we really didn't need.

Moe_Zambeek

Nitefly said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

its a bit of a rabble at the moment.

No surprise there, then.  This is yet another import from American politics that we really didn't need.

Agree with that. It's really just a forum for people to reinforce the beliefs they held previously, while the broadcasters make hay with the viewing figures.

Limehouse_Blues

Moe_Zambeek said:

Could do with better moderation I think. And having Angus in another room.

Aye to that

ICBM

I'm actually not sure why they have the SNP and PC there in a UK-wide debate really, when 90% of the population can't vote for them.

richardhomer

octatonic said:

Theresa May being absent for tonight's debate is a massive strategic error.

I'm not sure it is. It seems to me that she has a David Brentesque disconnect between her self-perception and that of everyone else. 

In anything other that set pieces - and she's not great at those - she's incapable of delivering any level of well-argued rationale. Perhaps she's gained enough insight into her own short-comings that she knows she'd get destroyed and thought her absence would be less harmful than being shown up again.

Whether I'm right or not - it's incompatible with her 'Strong and stable' mantra - which looked like a meaningless sound-bite, even before her climb-down on the Dementia Tax. 

Jalapeno

It's dire telly that's what it is - dreadful barracking (by the panellists) !  Springwatch is on BBC2 - do yourselves a favour !

ToneControl

Fretwired said:

ToneControl said:

Fretwired said:

Jalapeno said:

But Soviet 5yr plans are a by-word for failure - they never delivered

I think you'll find they did. A lot of people died along the way but Russia went from being backward to being an industrial giant.

eh?
for what industrial products do they dominate supply in the world market?

What? Russia went from a poor backward country to an industrial giant in little over 15 years. They didn't make consumer shit for the west. The country was electrified, railways were built (have you seen the size of the place), factories were built that made goods that Russia needed - cars, trucks, tractors, planes etc. As the Germans found out the Russian armaments industry quickly outstripped the German one. Even now Russia exports loads of things - they are one of the biggest arms exporters in the world along with oil and gas. Go check out Stalin's industrial plan - it scared the shit out of the Americans and the Germans for that matter.

have you been there?
I have
it's a disaster
80% of the country's income was from oil
as soon as oil prices dropped, they were in very deep shit

their agriculture was and is so poorly managed, a lot of food rotted before it could be distributed
they  import vast amounts of food - #3 in the world
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Russia-import-40-of-its-food
even though there is very little industry

Moscow looks like a giant version of Brum
lots of ugly Brutalist concrete architecture
outside that, the poverty is like a documentary from the 19th century
most men never collect a pension because they die young, it is really horrible there

St Petersburg which should be the Jewel in the crown, had not recovered from ww2 when i went in 2006
the poverty is beyond the comprehension of westerners
my mate, a lecturer at a uni in Bratislava, had a one-bed flat with his wife and child, and his granny would turn up in the evening and sleep on the floor in the front room

Their engineering is a piss-poor copy of the west, I went round the space museum, and it was scary - i could not believe they sent people up in those things

oil and gas are the only things they export except to poor, client states: their aerospace and car industries are decades behind the rest of the G7

In short, they are a poor, backward country now

do you know how poor?
Russia has the 12th highest GDP, just behind South Korea, just above Oz

 United States 18,569,100

2 China[n 2] 11,218,281

3 Japan 4,938,644

4 Germany 3,466,639

5 United Kingdom 2,629,188

6 France 2,463,222

7 India 2,256,397

8 Italy 1,850,735

9 Brazil 1,798,622

10 Canada 1,529,224

11 South Korea 1,411,246

12 Russia 1,280,731

13 Australia 1,258,978

14 Spain 1,232,597

15 Mexico 1,046,002

16 Indonesia 932,448

17 Turkey 857,429

18 Netherlands 771,163

by capita, they are 67th, 
after Venuzuala, Romania, Equitorial Guinea, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

The USA GDP is 14 times larger
UK GDP is more than twice that of Russia, with less than half the population

How can you say it's an industrial giant?
S. Korea is richer, with a 51m population, against Russia's 144m

ToneControl

holnrew said:

Amber Rudd is just coming across like a nasty lady

how can that be?