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UK - Election 2015

A subjective impression r.e. density of population from me. I moved from the West Midlands to north Cumbria ten years ago. Down there I was a little over an hour from London,. Birmingham, Cheltenham and in a relatively rural spot in Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire. Google being my friend tells me that the district I live in here in Cumbria has a pop density of 25 per sq kilometre. West Oxfordshire has a density of 148. I notice and really feel the difference. The roads are quieter, the countryside is more tranquil and the pace of things that bit slower. Scotland is only five miles away from here and when you cross the border it feels even less crowded. (Dumfries and Galoway is a much overlooked and very beautiful county).

For me the move was a conscious decision to, amongst other things, find a quieter life. It was very much worth it.

Continuing on the subjective and rather selfish note - I hate every housing estate I see being built in this neck of the woods.
 
MikeG said:
You forgot to mention that:

-England is the most densely populated country in Europe

-South East England is already the most densely populated part of Britain (450+ per sq km)


-amongst many problems of increasing the population by the size of Coventry every single year, the SE of England, where the population pressures are greatest, is also the driest part of the country, with many areas having less rainfall than Jerusalem. Some rivers are so heavily abstracted that they dry up in summer.

-we don't have great swathes of spare land. It is almost all farmed, and the little bit that isn't is wilderness such as woodlands, wetlands or downlands. That this isn't of value to the build-over-everything brigade doesn't mean it isn't of great value to those who work the land or to the wildlife that lives there, or to those who use it for recreation.

-it isn't just the houses. It is the traffic, the new roads, the streetlights, the new shopping centres, hospitals, industrial estates, noise, crime and destruction of historic landscapes and villages, all associated with the new housing.
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We are having the exactly his debate in my part of California,with the Sierra Foothills became heavily surbanized as Sacramento expands to the east.Placerville, 40 Miles Away and once a quiet Sierra town, has pretty much become a bedroom community for Sacramento.
And an Irony is that a lot of the people who are moving into the Foothills move there because they want a more rural "country" lifestyle only to find the by the act of moving there they are helping to wreck it.
Major fight underway over a housing development that will destroy a couple of buildings that go back to the Gold Rush era.
 
Hilarious semi-literate UKIP election flyer from my old constituency, 'marked' by an English teacher. There's more red than writing.

Hope this is straight up :D
 
Information Analyst said:
Hours of distraction!

BBC News: What if no-one wins the election? (hung Parliament game)
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I had a good laugh that the article went on to explain what a "coalition" is.

There's a small flaw in the game: when you're in the phase of selecting small parties, and decide to change the major party for your coalition building, it doesn't erase your choices of small parties. But most of them will only give support to one of the major parties, and not the other.
 
ddt said:
It is indeed bizarre that the Tories would pick up a seat they didn't hold before. It's decidedly less bizarre that Jim Murphy would have a lot of spare time on hands the next parliamentary period.
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It's less bizarre because they would pick it up from the Lib Dems if they did win it. I think the Lib Dems are doomed to destruction, or at least a severe mauling.
 
ddt said:
It is indeed bizarre that the Tories would pick up a seat they didn't hold before. It's decidedly less bizarre that Jim Murphy would have a lot of spare time on hands the next parliamentary period.
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I wonder if there are not people in Scotland who would not mind a independent Scotland, but don't like the policies of the SNP.
 
A general observation -

As a Brit watching from the wings, I can honestly say that I've never seen so many knee-jerk, random bilge, vacuous promises made by so many idiot politicians in such a short space of time.

As UK election campaigns go, this has to be the pits. And soooo much time to go ... *groan*
 
You're probably right, Glenn. The thing that puzzles me is that the entire campaign so far hasn't produced any movement in the polls whatsoever.......and that despite a large number of "undecideds".
 
Information Analyst said:
Hours of distraction!

BBC News: What if no-one wins the election? (hung Parliament game)
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As an expat who really hasn't been paying that much attention this time round, this was fascinating - until I noticed the bit about the results not being predictions and only creating hung parliaments.

Still a good way to get a picture of the smaller parties' opinions on coalitions though, though I get the impression it could have been summed up as "this bunch are too small to matter" and "this bunch matter, but they won't get along with the Tories".

Guess I should go look at the polling and see how likely a hung parliament actually is at this stage...
 
uvar said:
As an expat who really hasn't been paying that much attention this time round, this was fascinating - until I noticed the bit about the results not being predictions and only creating hung parliaments.

Still a good way to get a picture of the smaller parties' opinions on coalitions though, though I get the impression it could have been summed up as "this bunch are too small to matter" and "this bunch matter, but they won't get along with the Tories".

Guess I should go look at the polling and see how likely a hung parliament actually is at this stage...
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Judging from the polls, a hung parliament is a near-certainty. AFAICS, the numbers the game produces are realistic based on the current polls. It's likely that even a two-party coalition (or confidence&supply agreement, or anything in between) is not going to get a majority. So yes, even those very small parties like the NI ones could matter.
 
dudalb said:
I wonder if there are not people in Scotland who would not mind a independent Scotland, but don't like the policies of the SNP.
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There must be, I suppose. But it's remarkable how the two things are correlated. Some Labour left wingers, even those disgusted with Blairism, simply can't bring themselves to vote "nationalist", which they equate with fascist, even though they know the SNP are Left social democratic and non-ethnic-chauvinist. It's an irrational aversion response, as many of them recognise. But these same Labour leftists are almost all hostile to Scottish independence which they perceive as "splitting the UK working class".

So on the left, attitudes to the SNP and to independence correlate quite well, both among supporters and opponents of independence.

What you are looking for are people on the Right who support independence but oppose the Leftist policies of the SNP. There must be such people, of course. They even have a sobriquet "Tartan Tories". But in fact I haven't met them. They must be few in number here in Glasgow. Right wingers are overwhelmingly Unionist. As I have pointed out, the areas that voted Yes in the referendum were not SNP heartlands, but Labour ones. The general correlation between Left wing views and support for independence is striking, except for the (usually older) Labour Leftists I have already mentioned.
 
Darat said:
Lots , just look at the figures for support or not of Trident.
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Do you have figures on how many supporters of Trident renewal also support independence for Scotland, which is the current query? If you have a source for that I'd be grateful if you could link it.
 
Craig B said:
Do you have figures on how many supporters of Trident renewal also support independence for Scotland, which is the current query? If you have a source for that I'd be grateful if you could link it.
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That would be a bit of an odd position. Supporter of an independent Scotland with a nuclear capability? That would make Scotland the smallest nuclear power in the world, in population (5 m. against Israel's 7 m.). Or lease the Clyde to rUK, a la Guantanamo or Diego Garcia.
 
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