Election Year or Fear!

[ramAnag]

maybe his other 11 jobs are all in teaching and so he gets plenty of extra weeks off during the year and only works until 3pm each day giving him plenty of spare time to do his constituency work.....

Well Rog, he’s said to have declared an additional 873 thousand pounds from his second (and 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th) jobs. Know many teachers with such earnings do you? Must have a good accountant.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Well Rog, he?s said to have declared an additional 873 thousand pounds from his second (and 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th) jobs. Know many teachers with such earnings do you? Must have a good accountant.

80k a year per job. The salary would be what, 45-50k given age and experience, assuming not a head who'd be on maybe 100k. Plus index linked defined benefit government backed pension into which employer pays in over 28% of salary! That's gotta be worth 30k a year, so there's your 80k. Plus free pencils, it's a gravy train

[SithHappens]

I wonder how much Harvey & Wheeler were bunged to craft that timely apology?

Probably nothing. Can't see them taking a bribe just to risk business reputation.

[ramAnag]

80k a year per job. The salary would be what, 45-50k given age and experience, assuming not a head who'd be on maybe 100k. Plus index linked defined benefit government backed pension into which employer pays in over 28% of salary! That's gotta be worth 30k a year, so there's your 80k. Plus free pencils, it's a gravy train

[swaledale]

Ha, ha. Sorry to disappoint, but its…I expect those in charge of the country to be more responsible for their own financial affairs although, tbf, the most recent information would suggest that it’s all a bit, much ado about not much more than another excuse for some political mischief making.

I agree, I've only dabbled in politics at a local scale and that was enough with all the papers etc. to go through and meetings plus other commitments. The life of a politician at the highest level is very busy, so inevitably much of the day to day routine life stuff is delegated.

I can quite see how this issue could occur and which of us in our far less hectic day to day lives hasn't overlooked something, such as say renewing the car tax for instance?

It has always been the case that media scrutiny and attacks on Labour are way in excess of those on the Tories or Farage. I mean imagine if a close associate of Starmer had been convicted of taking money to push pro Russian propaganda??? But where is the outrage from a supposedly "patriotic" UK media?


Unfortunately people who in their life times haven't contributed even half a percent to Uk society which Reeves has done then carp on about politicians, whilst it seems being unable to offer a an alternative way of governing. Unless of course these people secretly or even openly prefer a so called benign dictatorship, when their views and opinions will get them locked up or worse, if they then happen to disagree.

I'm no fan of reeves, I had dealings with her in Leeds, but this is just such a non story whipped up by a media funded by ex pat billionaires who know that there is a large proportion of simple, uniformed and frankly stupid voters who haven't a ****ing clue about reality.

Including some on here who really should know better, but seem happy making remarks which make them look really dumb.

[swaledale]

80k a year per job. The salary would be what, 45-50k given age and experience, assuming not a head who'd be on maybe 100k. Plus index linked defined benefit government backed pension into which employer pays in over 28% of salary! That's gotta be worth 30k a year, so there's your 80k. Plus free pencils, it's a gravy train

Which must be one of the dumbest posts I've read from you!

[Geoff Parkstone]

Almost as dumb as someone who thinks it's serious....

[MadAmster]

Interesting end to the Dutch election, the result of which keep rolling on.

Current state of the parties is that both the PVV and D66 have 26 seats with all but 2 "constituencies" counted. Those 2 are Venray which is late because, just after the count started, there was a fire in the fuse box at the Town Hall and an evacuation took place. Fortunately, no ballot papers got burnt. They are counting today. Venray is a solid PVV town. There are just over 31K registered voters. National turnout was 76%. Based on the results from 2 years ago, massaged with the national and regional voting patterns this time, experts expect PVV to poll between 6K and 7K votes more than D66. The current difference is 15155 in favour of D66. Venray should see that reduced by almost half.

That leaves the overseas votes. 136K eligible voters of whom 95K have voted. Historically, PVV doesn't get many votes from the expats, most of whom are well educated and in well paid jobs. The expectation is that D66 will get more votes form overseas. That should see D66 as the largest party on "votes difference". Overseas results expected Monday and will be published on Tuesday. Then the results go to the voting commission who will announce the official result next Friday. Only then can the parties start talking coalition.

Total number of votes cast might not even come into it. We have the "rest zetel", a sort of rounding up/down of the voting. We have 150 seats and it takes around 70K votes to get a seat. Once all the votes are in, each party's vote divided by 150 comes to so many point so much seats. The party with the highest value after the decimal point gets an extra seat and the one with the lowest loses one. Quite how or why I've never understood. Those who understand the system are saying that it's looking like the SP will lose a seat (currently on 3 seats) and D66 will get the "extra" one, putting them one seat ahead of PVV on 27.

Looking at the state of the polls, we'll either be back in 6 months because a workable coalition hasn't proven feasible Or we'll get an unstable coalition that won't last a year... giving us elections in '23. '25 and '26 meaning there's been no real government for 4 years. What a system.

[Geoff Parkstone]

It's interesting to see how proportional representation still can't work in practice despite being a theoretically more democratic process than first past post. I remember when I studied it the Italian system was fundamentally unstable with elections very frequent, so to it seems the Dutch.

Would some form of STV be an improvement, but how could it work with a general election? I suppose if all ballots were online then the process would be easier?

Wont matter in a few years anyway as AI will tell us who won without us needing to actually vote

[ramAnag]

Interesting end to the Dutch election, the result of which keep rolling on.

Current state of the parties is that both the PVV and D66 have 26 seats with all but 2 "constituencies" counted. Those 2 are Venray which is late because, just after the count started, there was a fire in the fuse box at the Town Hall and an evacuation took place. Fortunately, no ballot papers got burnt. They are counting today. Venray is a solid PVV town. There are just over 31K registered voters. National turnout was 76%. Based on the results from 2 years ago, massaged with the national and regional voting patterns this time, experts expect PVV to poll between 6K and 7K votes more than D66. The current difference is 15155 in favour of D66. Venray should see that reduced by almost half.

That leaves the overseas votes. 136K eligible voters of whom 95K have voted. Historically, PVV doesn't get many votes from the expats, most of whom are well educated and in well paid jobs. The expectation is that D66 will get more votes form overseas. That should see D66 as the largest party on "votes difference". Overseas results expected Monday and will be published on Tuesday. Then the results go to the voting commission who will announce the official result next Friday. Only then can the parties start talking coalition.

Total number of votes cast might not even come into it. We have the "rest zetel", a sort of rounding up/down of the voting. We have 150 seats and it takes around 70K votes to get a seat. Once all the votes are in, each party's vote divided by 150 comes to so many point so much seats. The party with the highest value after the decimal point gets an extra seat and the one with the lowest loses one. Quite how or why I've never understood. Those who understand the system are saying that it's looking like the SP will lose a seat (currently on 3 seats) and D66 will get the "extra" one, putting them one seat ahead of PVV on 27.

Looking at the state of the polls, we'll either be back in 6 months because a workable coalition hasn't proven feasible Or we'll get an unstable coalition that won't last a year... giving us elections in '23. '25 and '26 meaning there's been no real government for 4 years. What a system.

It’s a scenario which seems increasingly apparent across the West, MA. So many countries appear so equally and intensely divided. The USA, France, Germany, Holland and, unless I’m very much mistaken, after the next election, the UK too.
Labour’s landslide last year was unusual in so much as it appeared to reflect the electorate’s massive dissatisfaction with successive Tory governments as it did approval of Labour’s policies, but we are already hugely divided, with a near equal split, between in the broadest possible terms, those on the Left and those on the Right.

Not sure how it’s come about. Insidious ownership of influential sections of the media and the undeniable ‘vox-pop’ role of the internet are certainly factors but, with the possible exception of Brexit, I cannot remember a time of such division in this country.
Where does it all lead? Who knows?

Out of interest, are you entitled to vote in the Netherlands or the UK?