UK Politics Thread V: Upon This Blasted Heath

[Wolfmanne2]

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14184287_10154064727223264_6896269637695848905_n.jpg?oh=7df79f3e672de9215e0a65947abed6a5&oe=583E174D

On the subject of the Daily Mail...

...
Please tell me you've shooped the DM header onto a BFNN or Daily Mash headline.

Please?

It actually came out three days ago. Trot Docs folks, Trot Docs.

[Imperializt Russia]

...
Please tell me you've shooped the DM header onto a BFNN or Daily Mash headline.

Please?

It actually came out three days ago. Trot Docs folks, Trot Docs.

"How many dogwhistles can we blow in a single headline?"

Jesus, they say "links to left-wing group" like it's literally ISIS.
"BMA High Command", I'm lolling.

They think there's actually a sleeper cell movement of hundreds of thousands in the BMA junior ranks, this is hysterical.
Or at least, that's what they want to convince their readership, already likely personally convinced about how evil Marx and socialism were, or they wouldn't dogwhistle it in the headline.

[Wolfmanne2]

It actually came out three days ago. Trot Docs folks, Trot Docs.

"How many dogwhistles can we blow in a single headline?"

Jesus, they say "links to left-wing group" like it's literally ISIS.

They're slating people for being in the Labour Party. Not a Corbyn supporter or a Trotskyist or whatever... for being in the Labour Party.

[Imperializt Russia]

"How many dogwhistles can we blow in a single headline?"

Jesus, they say "links to left-wing group" like it's literally ISIS.

They're slating people for being in the Labour Party. Not a Corbyn supporter or a Trotskyist or whatever... for being in the Labour Party.

That too, but "Labour member" means "socialist SJW Marxist capitalist-assassinating sleeper agent" now anyway, so we're all in this together.

[Wolfmanne2]

Remember, these hard left trots are the same hard left trots who called off the five day strike next week (which I myself expressed concern on, being of the centrist type that most juniors doctors outside 'BHA High Command supposedly are).

[Ifreann]

"How many dogwhistles can we blow in a single headline?"

Jesus, they say "links to left-wing group" like it's literally ISIS.

They're slating people for being in the Labour Party. Not a Corbyn supporter or a Trotskyist or whatever... for being in the Labour Party.

Party of dangerous socialism. *nods*

[Mad hatters in jeans]

Step out of the information bubble, love.

So in favour of pornography that they ran a campaign called Block Online Porn, in favour of the UK "porn blocker".
Which I've never opted into and never once noticed, so well done Mail with your top-quality and effectual moral crusading there.
https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/C ... l_campaign
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 25074.html

You realize the Daily Mail as a norm simultaneously runs articles for and against various issues. It's a broadly right-wing paper with a variety of viewpoints expressed from a variety of writers who often strongly disagree with each other. What you're complaining of is that the Daily Mail provides a wide range of perspectives instead of being run through an ideologically rigid lens like the Guardian.

It's quite strange you view it as noble for a paper to limit itself to a very narrow range of thought. Offering positions from across the entire spectrum? You seemingly cannot stand that. Personally I much prefer a news site that will provide articles from different sides on the same issues. That's how proper debate should be.

Mostly perspectives on what clothes celebrities wear and if they're having a wardrobe malfunction.

While it is useful to get different perspectives on things (yes even from tabloids) and use different sources the daily mail (DM) is one that should be avoided regardless of your political affiliation.
If you want a paper with right wing news go to the daily telegraph.
Mixed/right would be "The times" and "financial times". Although obviously the financial times is limited to the finance side more often than not.
Guardian, The independent and Observer are left leaning.

As for the BBC people generally view it as mixed. Personally I would say it's shifted to the right but they make an effort to be balanced. At times.
They seem better balanced at reporting foreign disasters than domestic politics.

to what extent do you guys prize directly electing the leader in democracy

random question

It's a good idea in principle, but in practice it's open to a great deal of problems that make the whole thing look like a charade.

Along with giving the electorate anymore powers to choose who is in control in X position. Many people are simply not qualified to understand what is necessary for any government post.
That's not to say the public opinions on government policies are bad but I think the experts should be deciding who controls X post, not the random folk on the street.
That way lies the American system and weird lawyer adverts.

Sometimes I feel The British public are better informed about US politics than our own. They certainly seem better at grabbing headlines.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14184287_10154064727223264_6896269637695848905_n.jpg?oh=7df79f3e672de9215e0a65947abed6a5&oe=583E174D

On the subject of the Daily Mail...

Make capitalism history? They say this like it's a bad thing.

Remember, these hard left trots are the same hard left trots who called off the five day strike next week (which I myself expressed concern on, being of the centrist type that most juniors doctors outside 'BHA High Command supposedly are).

Are the medic strikes about trying to get the doctors working 7 day weeks or something?
And the docs are going "aaaaaaaaaaa".

They're slating people for being in the Labour Party. Not a Corbyn supporter or a Trotskyist or whatever... for being in the Labour Party.

Party of dangerous socialism. *nods*

Socialerous.

[Souseiseki]

All democracies differ in exactly how much power they give to the people and how this power is allocated. It is therefore not surprising that even today there is debate over how our democracy operates and exactly how "democratic" it is, if it is even possible to objectively quantify such a thing. More specifically, David Cameron's resignation and Teresa May's transition into power, several changes to the United Kingdom's electoral system reopening the old wounds of the AV referendum and the status of the democracy as a key issue in the Brexit referendum ensure that democracy remains a key issue in the public mind.

The United Kingdom is on paper and in practice a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is the very Westminster from which the Westminster model takes its name and form. However, for the past few decades it has become increasingly presidential in character, something which the media has actively fostered and with which the parties themselves have been all to happy to go along with. When a new PM gets into power without a general election the media slam them as "unelected", or least, they do when they think it will benefit them politically and they wish to force a new election as soon as possible.

As seemingly random their judgement of who is and is not "unelected" is it nonetheless helps to cement in the public mind that our prime minister must be "elected" even though this is without question not how the system actually operates mechanically. We also have American-style party leader debates. Elections have become to a great extent framed on voting for who should be leader of the country not who should be the MP for your constituency, with the media directly attacking Ed Milliband for not being able to take Vladimir Putin in a one-on-one fight and possibly helping change the course of the election based entire on the merits of how he personally, a man of Jewish descent, does not live up to their standards of proper bacon sandwich etiquette. We can see a similar effect with Jeremy Corbyn today with people saying they would never vote "for" him in spite of the fact the vast majority of the country are not even eligible to vote in his constituency and the public and media making arguments about not voting for Labour based on his personal merits as a prospective prime minister.

We have in effect seen the silent death of an element of what makes British democracy British, the transition of the prime minister to a laughing stock to first among equals to the de facto president of a pseudo-federal constitutional omnishambles. There is a disconnect between how the system works in practice and how it works in the public and in a new climate where people are of "experts" it is unlikely people will change their mind on how they have decided things will be. We have made our bed and we must lie in it. Oddly enough, this leaves us in a position where we could reasonably compare the current British system not only to other Westminster models but also the presidental parliamentary systems of France and Germany.

As mentioned above, Teresa May is the most recent British prime minister and should, were the media not holding back, suffer greatly from this new status quo. She has not only been brought into power without a general election but has done so through a combination of backdoor deals in which her party attempted to prevent the membership getting a vote on who became the next prime minister. That tiny amount of people themselves being only a small fraction of the country. Even worse is that this was done after Brexit, giving her a mandate to do things which would have been flat out illegal at the time of the last election, questioning her full mandate to exercise this new breadth of power.

So we have a party in power after gaining the support of 25.25% of eligible voters, giving them 50% of the seats in the House of Commons and therefore ultimate power should they be able to convince all of their MPs to vote as one. The next prime minister would be decided not by popular national vote but by the 149,800 members of the Conservative party, 0.33% of the population. However, due to the aforementioned internal politics this election never happened and the voting pool for our new prime minister was whittled down to 0.0007% of the population. Of that group she earned the votes of slightly less than 2/3 of them, meaning that in the end our new prime minster was decided by the votes of 0.0004% of the population. Democracy indeed.

While not everyone can agree on exactly how much of a problem any of the issues I just mentioned are (indeed, some people may be perfectly ok with all of them) it seems clear that there are several flaws in how democratic our system is. Some systems tout their non-democratic elements as a feature instead of a bug. The House of Lords does, for example, actually do a relatively good job of limiting the excesses of the Commons.

It is therefore tempting to look at and compare to other countries and see how we measure up. Does our unelected second chamber help us defend against populism? Does FPTP truly return strong governments and a connection to constituency voters as is claimed by its champions? Does Teresa May have less of a democratic mandate than Adolf Hitler? Were the past 800 words of this post just a thinly veiled excuse to get this point? Yes, no, maybe, Souseiseki.

While it is rather uncouth to attempt to rate the very organs of democracy like a game of tennis, in part because of its difficulty and in part because of the inherent nonsensical nature of tennis scoreboards, I will attempt to create a rough framework by which we can judge the relative merits of each system. There shall be a maximum of three points and a minimum of zero awarded at each turn with points deducted for serious failures or misconduct.

While the the prime minister has in many ways become a toy president as covered before it is still hard to directly compare a presidential system and a Westminster system, especially with a gap of 75 years. However, we can still make a good effort at doing so.

The first measure is fairly easy to measure, the extent to which the votes of the populace line up with the seats allocated. Again, this is something that can be depending on your view positive or negative. Is a system where 12.5% votes gets you 0.2%, 30.5% gets you 35.7% and 35.8% gets you 50.8% (and therefore, in theory, the ability to do anything) really fair? This is even more pronounced in older elections. Indeed, in 1974 the nightmares of the anti-AV campaign became true and the loser won. The party with 37.2% of the vote got more seats than the party with 37.9% of the votes! The same in 1951! It becomes rapidly apparent the correlation between getting votes and getting power exists but is very very loose. Teresa May herself depending on how we measure things either got power with 36% of the vote or got power with 0.0004% of the vote and therefore gains a measly 1 point.

Comparatively, the July 1932 the NSDAP received 37% of the seats in return for 37.27% of the vote. In 1930 they received 24% of the seats in exchange for 24% of the votes. In November 1932 they gained 33.06% of the votes. Can you guess what percentage of the seats they gained? Yes, 33%! Wonderful, it's an almost 1:1 line up between how the people vote and how much power the people they vote for get. 3 points for Hitlerdor!

MAY: 1
HITLER: 3

The next point is very very complicated. May became prime minister through backdoor deals with 0.0004% of the vote and thus gets 0 points. However, she gains a strong 2 points for her 65.8% in the Maidenhead election. However, as a tiny electorate of 38,000 it is hard to gauge whether this translates to a national mandate and as this is effectively a discussion of their legitimacy as a head of state she cannot be awarded the 3 points she may have otherwise gotten in a more direct comparison. While people never had a chance to vote for Hitler directly as a constituent their votes for him as president, enough to gain him a seat in the UK, cancel that out.

Hitler also became chancellor through backdoor deals but also gained 30% in the presidential election along with his party's 36% in the Reichstag, establishing there was a clear desire for Hitler. Since his personal vote and national vote (25% of eligible voters in 2015 general election vs 30% of eligible voters in July 1932 federal election) is higher than May's it would be disingenuous of me to not award him an equal 2 points.

MAY: 3
HITLER: 5

Hitler soon took ultimate power, accomplished with a national referendum. However, May herself could easily vote herself ultimate power without a referendum. Of course, parliament could in theory just vote that away since parliament is sovereign unless she made truly significant changes. Since technically Hitler was voted ultimate power this makes it technically democratic, the exact circumstances of which shall be covered later. There is also little to stop May from attempting to take over completely except that she requires the constant support of her party, complicating the matter. (If parliament said there were no more elections, what are you doing to do about it? Challenge them in the courts which have no authority to do so? Military coup?) It is therefore difficult to decide how many points should be allocated here and shall be skipped.

Speaking of military coups, the United Kingdom is extremely lucky it is not docked points for the repeated allusions by military leaders that they would preform a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

There is then the question of how these elections are handled. The Conservative party at current rams legislation through with as little oversight as possible, prioritizes boundary changes that will benefits them based on political self-interest, threatens the upper house if it does not play along and changes the electoral register in such a way that it conveniently disenfranchises voters of other parties to their benefits. For this, they are deducted 1 point. Elections in Nazi Germany were plagued by voter intimidation, threats of violence and lies for which they are deducted a whopping 5 points.

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

Whew, it was close there May. If good ol' Adolf wasn't such a thug you'd have been right up shit creek!

We could also, while we are here, examine their domestic policies. Hitler was extremely homophobic. However, this was considered normal at the time and the United Kingdom was little better in its treatment of homosexuals. People also like to excuse Thathcer's bad elements with "she must be judged by the time!" and therefore Hitler receives no deductions for this. They both receive -5 points for wanting a heavily controlled society, a surveillance state, their contempt for human rights and taking the next step in cracking down on "decadence" like drugs, even if they need to lie to get it done. Hitler however gets a point for his amazing steps forward in terms of animal welfare unlike May's black heart which has no compassion for animals outside that which the media forces on her through cat memes.

MAY: -5
HITLER: -4

As before, Ms. May is off to a bad start. We are not using golf rules. They also both hold a disdain for international order and international organizations coming in and telling them they cannot torture whoever they want. May also receives -2 points for sending LGBT people to their death and covering up rape at Yarl's Wood because rape is bad for business. However, Hitler also killed 6 millions Jews in his policies along with 6 million others. We can also reasonably blame all of the deaths in Europe on his hands due to his sheer aggression in starting it. However, we will exclude the Pacific Front to an extent. For the sake of brevity we shall place this at 40 million deaths.

It is tempting to give Hitler -40,000,000 points but this is technically unfair as we have not tabulated an exact death toll for Teresa May. However, there is little doubt that his death toll far exceeds hers. He also left Germany in ruin whereas we have yet to see the comparatively light even in the worst scenario fall out of Brexit. In light of this, we will give him a very rough estimate of -20,000 points and give May -5 points to fully cover everyone that has died or had their life destroyed as a result of her policies.

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

To an even more profound extent than before, May has started off bad only to have Hitler fall off a cliff at the final hurdle. And again, it was very close. Lucky break, Teresa.

Let us create a final scoresheet.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY:

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP:

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

In conclusion, Teresa May is not Hitler.

-Souseiseki, Ph.D. in Theoretical Bantology

[MERIZoC]

Read all of that and I don't regret it.

[Imperializt Russia]

I skimmed like three lines and I regret it.
Regret not having read all of it, that is.

[Mad hatters in jeans]

All democracies differ in exactly how much power they give to the people and how this power is allocated. It is therefore not surprising that even today there is debate over how our democracy operates and exactly how "democratic" it is, if it is even possible to objectively quantify such a thing. More specifically, David Cameron's resignation and Teresa May's transition into power, several changes to the United Kingdom's electoral system reopening the old wounds of the AV referendum and the status of the democracy as a key issue in the Brexit referendum ensure that democracy remains a key issue in the public mind.

The United Kingdom is on paper and in practice a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is the very Westminster from which the Westminster model takes its name and form. However, for the past few decades it has become increasingly presidential in character, something which the media has actively fostered and with which the parties themselves have been all to happy to go along with. When a new PM gets into power without a general election the media slam them as "unelected", or least, they do when they think it will benefit them politically and they wish to force a new election as soon as possible.

As seemingly random their judgement of who is and is not "unelected" is it nonetheless helps to cement in the public mind that our prime minister must be "elected" even though this is without question not how the system actually operates mechanically. We also have American-style party leader debates. Elections have become to a great extent framed on voting for who should be leader of the country not who should be the MP for your constituency, with the media directly attacking Ed Milliband for not being able to take Vladimir Putin in a one-on-one fight and possibly helping change the course of the election based entire on the merits of how he personally, a man of Jewish descent, does not live up to their standards of proper bacon sandwich etiquette. We can see a similar effect with Jeremy Corbyn today with people saying they would never vote "for" him in spite of the fact the vast majority of the country are not even eligible to vote in his constituency and the public and media making arguments about not voting for Labour based on his personal merits as a prospective prime minister.

We have in effect seen the silent death of an element of what makes British democracy British, the transition of the prime minister to a laughing stock to first among equals to the de facto president of a pseudo-federal constitutional omnishambles. There is a disconnect between how the system works in practice and how it works in the public and in a new climate where people are of "experts" it is unlikely people will change their mind on how they have decided things will be. We have made our bed and we must lie in it. Oddly enough, this leaves us in a position where we could reasonably compare the current British system not only to other Westminster models but also the presidental parliamentary systems of France and Germany.

As mentioned above, Teresa May is the most recent British prime minister and should, were the media not holding back, suffer greatly from this new status quo. She has not only been brought into power without a general election but has done so through a combination of backdoor deals in which her party attempted to prevent the membership getting a vote on who became the next prime minister. That tiny amount of people themselves being only a small fraction of the country. Even worse is that this was done after Brexit, giving her a mandate to do things which would have been flat out illegal at the time of the last election, questioning her full mandate to exercise this new breadth of power.

So we have a party in power after gaining the support of 25.25% of eligible voters, giving them 50% of the seats in the House of Commons and therefore ultimate power should they be able to convince all of their MPs to vote as one. The next prime minister would be decided not by popular national vote but by the 149,800 members of the Conservative party, 0.33% of the population. However, due to the aforementioned internal politics this election never happened and the voting pool for our new prime minister was whittled down to 0.0007% of the population. Of that group she earned the votes of slightly less than 2/3 of them, meaning that in the end our new prime minster was decided by the votes of 0.0004% of the population. Democracy indeed.

While not everyone can agree on exactly how much of a problem any of the issues I just mentioned are (indeed, some people may be perfectly ok with all of them) it seems clear that there are several flaws in how democratic our system is. Some systems tout their non-democratic elements as a feature instead of a bug. The House of Lords does, for example, actually do a relatively good job of limiting the excesses of the Commons.

It is therefore tempting to look at and compare to other countries and see how we measure up. Does our unelected second chamber help us defend against populism? Does FPTP truly return strong governments and a connection to constituency voters as is claimed by its champions? Does Teresa May have less of a democratic mandate than Adolf Hitler? Were the past 800 words of this post just a thinly veiled excuse to get this point? Yes, no, maybe, Souseiseki.

While it is rather uncouth to attempt to rate the very organs of democracy like a game of tennis, in part because of its difficulty and in part because of the inherent nonsensical nature of tennis scoreboards, I will attempt to create a rough framework by which we can judge the relative merits of each system. There shall be a maximum of three points and a minimum of zero awarded at each turn with points deducted for serious failures or misconduct.

While the the prime minister has in many ways become a toy president as covered before it is still hard to directly compare a presidential system and a Westminster system, especially with a gap of 75 years. However, we can still make a good effort at doing so.

The first measure is fairly easy to measure, the extent to which the votes of the populace line up with the seats allocated. Again, this is something that can be depending on your view positive or negative. Is a system where 12.5% votes gets you 0.2%, 30.5% gets you 35.7% and 35.8% gets you 50.8% (and therefore, in theory, the ability to do anything) really fair? This is even more pronounced in older elections. Indeed, in 1974 the nightmares of the anti-AV campaign became true and the loser won. The party with 37.2% of the vote got more seats than the party with 37.9% of the votes! The same in 1951! It becomes rapidly apparent the correlation between getting votes and getting power exists but is very very loose. Teresa May herself depending on how we measure things either got power with 36% of the vote or got power with 0.0004% of the vote and therefore gains a measly 1 point.

Comparatively, the July 1932 the NSDAP received 37% of the seats in return for 37.27% of the vote. In 1930 they received 24% of the seats in exchange for 24% of the votes. In November 1932 they gained 33.06% of the votes. Can you guess what percentage of the seats they gained? Yes, 33%! Wonderful, it's an almost 1:1 line up between how the people vote and how much power the people they vote for get. 3 points for Hitlerdor!

MAY: 1
HITLER: 3

The next point is very very complicated. May became prime minister through backdoor deals with 0.0004% of the vote and thus gets 0 points. However, she gains a strong 2 points for her 65.8% in the Maidenhead election. However, as a tiny electorate of 38,000 it is hard to gauge whether this translates to a national mandate and as this is effectively a discussion of their legitimacy as a head of state she cannot be awarded the 3 points she may have otherwise gotten in a more direct comparison. While people never had a chance to vote for Hitler directly as a constituent their votes for him as president, enough to gain him a seat in the UK, cancel that out.

Hitler also became chancellor through backdoor deals but also gained 30% in the presidential election along with his party's 36% in the Reichstag, establishing there was a clear desire for Hitler. Since his personal vote and national vote (25% of eligible voters in 2015 general election vs 30% of eligible voters in July 1932 federal election) is higher than May's it would be disingenuous of me to not award him an equal 2 points.

MAY: 3
HITLER: 5

Hitler soon took ultimate power, accomplished with a national referendum. However, May herself could easily vote herself ultimate power without a referendum. Of course, parliament could in theory just vote that away since parliament is sovereign unless she made truly significant changes. Since technically Hitler was voted ultimate power this makes it technically democratic, the exact circumstances of which shall be covered later. There is also little to stop May from attempting to take over completely except that she requires the constant support of her party, complicating the matter. (If parliament said there were no more elections, what are you doing to do about it? Challenge them in the courts which have no authority to do so? Military coup?) It is therefore difficult to decide how many points should be allocated here and shall be skipped.

Speaking of military coups, the United Kingdom is extremely lucky it is not docked points for the repeated allusions by military leaders that they would preform a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

There is then the question of how these elections are handled. The Conservative party at current rams legislation through with as little oversight as possible, prioritizes boundary changes that will benefits them based on political self-interest, threatens the upper house if it does not play along and changes the electoral register in such a way that it conveniently disenfranchises voters of other parties to their benefits. For this, they are deducted 1 point. Elections in Nazi Germany were plagued by voter intimidation, threats of violence and lies for which they are deducted a whopping 5 points.

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

Whew, it was close there May. If good ol' Adolf wasn't such a thug you'd have been right up shit creek!

We could also, while we are here, examine their domestic policies. Hitler was extremely homophobic. However, this was considered normal at the time and the United Kingdom was little better in its treatment of homosexuals. People also like to excuse Thathcer's bad elements with "she must be judged by the time!" and therefore Hitler receives no deductions for this. They both receive -5 points for wanting a heavily controlled society, a surveillance state, their contempt for human rights and taking the next step in cracking down on "decadence" like drugs, even if they need to lie to get it done. Hitler however gets a point for his amazing steps forward in terms of animal welfare unlike May's black heart which has no compassion for animals outside that which the media forces on her through cat memes.

MAY: -5
HITLER: -4

As before, Ms. May is off to a bad start. We are not using golf rules. They also both hold a disdain for international order and international organizations coming in and telling them they cannot torture whoever they want. May also receives -2 points for sending LGBT people to their death and covering up rape at Yarl's Wood because rape is bad for business. However, Hitler also killed 6 millions Jews in his policies along with 6 million others. We can also reasonably blame all of the deaths in Europe on his hands due to his sheer aggression in starting it. However, we will exclude the Pacific Front to an extent. For the sake of brevity we shall place this at 40 million deaths.

It is tempting to give Hitler -40,000,000 points but this is technically unfair as we have not tabulated an exact death toll for Teresa May. However, there is little doubt that his death toll far exceeds hers. He also left Germany in ruin whereas we have yet to see the comparatively light even in the worst scenario fall out of Brexit. In light of this, we will give him a very rough estimate of -20,000 points and give May -5 points to fully cover everyone that has died or had their life destroyed as a result of her policies.

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

To an even more profound extent than before, May has started off bad only to have Hitler fall off a cliff at the final hurdle. And again, it was very close. Lucky break, Teresa.

Let us create a final scoresheet.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY:

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP:

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

In conclusion, Teresa May is not Hitler.

-Souseiseki, Ph.D. in Theoretical Bantology

I did nazi that one coming.

Seriously though, that was a damn fine bantology lesson.

[Parti Ouvrier]

All democracies differ in exactly how much power they give to the people and how this power is allocated. It is therefore not surprising that even today there is debate over how our democracy operates and exactly how "democratic" it is, if it is even possible to objectively quantify such a thing. More specifically, David Cameron's resignation and Teresa May's transition into power, several changes to the United Kingdom's electoral system reopening the old wounds of the AV referendum and the status of the democracy as a key issue in the Brexit referendum ensure that democracy remains a key issue in the public mind.

The United Kingdom is on paper and in practice a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is the very Westminster from which the Westminster model takes its name and form. However, for the past few decades it has become increasingly presidential in character, something which the media has actively fostered and with which the parties themselves have been all to happy to go along with. When a new PM gets into power without a general election the media slam them as "unelected", or least, they do when they think it will benefit them politically and they wish to force a new election as soon as possible.

As seemingly random their judgement of who is and is not "unelected" is it nonetheless helps to cement in the public mind that our prime minister must be "elected" even though this is without question not how the system actually operates mechanically. We also have American-style party leader debates. Elections have become to a great extent framed on voting for who should be leader of the country not who should be the MP for your constituency, with the media directly attacking Ed Milliband for not being able to take Vladimir Putin in a one-on-one fight and possibly helping change the course of the election based entire on the merits of how he personally, a man of Jewish descent, does not live up to their standards of proper bacon sandwich etiquette. We can see a similar effect with Jeremy Corbyn today with people saying they would never vote "for" him in spite of the fact the vast majority of the country are not even eligible to vote in his constituency and the public and media making arguments about not voting for Labour based on his personal merits as a prospective prime minister.

We have in effect seen the silent death of an element of what makes British democracy British, the transition of the prime minister to a laughing stock to first among equals to the de facto president of a pseudo-federal constitutional omnishambles. There is a disconnect between how the system works in practice and how it works in the public and in a new climate where people are of "experts" it is unlikely people will change their mind on how they have decided things will be. We have made our bed and we must lie in it. Oddly enough, this leaves us in a position where we could reasonably compare the current British system not only to other Westminster models but also the presidental parliamentary systems of France and Germany.

As mentioned above, Teresa May is the most recent British prime minister and should, were the media not holding back, suffer greatly from this new status quo. She has not only been brought into power without a general election but has done so through a combination of backdoor deals in which her party attempted to prevent the membership getting a vote on who became the next prime minister. That tiny amount of people themselves being only a small fraction of the country. Even worse is that this was done after Brexit, giving her a mandate to do things which would have been flat out illegal at the time of the last election, questioning her full mandate to exercise this new breadth of power.

So we have a party in power after gaining the support of 25.25% of eligible voters, giving them 50% of the seats in the House of Commons and therefore ultimate power should they be able to convince all of their MPs to vote as one. The next prime minister would be decided not by popular national vote but by the 149,800 members of the Conservative party, 0.33% of the population. However, due to the aforementioned internal politics this election never happened and the voting pool for our new prime minister was whittled down to 0.0007% of the population. Of that group she earned the votes of slightly less than 2/3 of them, meaning that in the end our new prime minster was decided by the votes of 0.0004% of the population. Democracy indeed.

While not everyone can agree on exactly how much of a problem any of the issues I just mentioned are (indeed, some people may be perfectly ok with all of them) it seems clear that there are several flaws in how democratic our system is. Some systems tout their non-democratic elements as a feature instead of a bug. The House of Lords does, for example, actually do a relatively good job of limiting the excesses of the Commons.

It is therefore tempting to look at and compare to other countries and see how we measure up. Does our unelected second chamber help us defend against populism? Does FPTP truly return strong governments and a connection to constituency voters as is claimed by its champions? Does Teresa May have less of a democratic mandate than Adolf Hitler? Were the past 800 words of this post just a thinly veiled excuse to get this point? Yes, no, maybe, Souseiseki.

While it is rather uncouth to attempt to rate the very organs of democracy like a game of tennis, in part because of its difficulty and in part because of the inherent nonsensical nature of tennis scoreboards, I will attempt to create a rough framework by which we can judge the relative merits of each system. There shall be a maximum of three points and a minimum of zero awarded at each turn with points deducted for serious failures or misconduct.

While the the prime minister has in many ways become a toy president as covered before it is still hard to directly compare a presidential system and a Westminster system, especially with a gap of 75 years. However, we can still make a good effort at doing so.

The first measure is fairly easy to measure, the extent to which the votes of the populace line up with the seats allocated. Again, this is something that can be depending on your view positive or negative. Is a system where 12.5% votes gets you 0.2%, 30.5% gets you 35.7% and 35.8% gets you 50.8% (and therefore, in theory, the ability to do anything) really fair? This is even more pronounced in older elections. Indeed, in 1974 the nightmares of the anti-AV campaign became true and the loser won. The party with 37.2% of the vote got more seats than the party with 37.9% of the votes! The same in 1951! It becomes rapidly apparent the correlation between getting votes and getting power exists but is very very loose. Teresa May herself depending on how we measure things either got power with 36% of the vote or got power with 0.0004% of the vote and therefore gains a measly 1 point.

Comparatively, the July 1932 the NSDAP received 37% of the seats in return for 37.27% of the vote. In 1930 they received 24% of the seats in exchange for 24% of the votes. In November 1932 they gained 33.06% of the votes. Can you guess what percentage of the seats they gained? Yes, 33%! Wonderful, it's an almost 1:1 line up between how the people vote and how much power the people they vote for get. 3 points for Hitlerdor!

MAY: 1
HITLER: 3

The next point is very very complicated. May became prime minister through backdoor deals with 0.0004% of the vote and thus gets 0 points. However, she gains a strong 2 points for her 65.8% in the Maidenhead election. However, as a tiny electorate of 38,000 it is hard to gauge whether this translates to a national mandate and as this is effectively a discussion of their legitimacy as a head of state she cannot be awarded the 3 points she may have otherwise gotten in a more direct comparison. While people never had a chance to vote for Hitler directly as a constituent their votes for him as president, enough to gain him a seat in the UK, cancel that out.

Hitler also became chancellor through backdoor deals but also gained 30% in the presidential election along with his party's 36% in the Reichstag, establishing there was a clear desire for Hitler. Since his personal vote and national vote (25% of eligible voters in 2015 general election vs 30% of eligible voters in July 1932 federal election) is higher than May's it would be disingenuous of me to not award him an equal 2 points.

MAY: 3
HITLER: 5

Hitler soon took ultimate power, accomplished with a national referendum. However, May herself could easily vote herself ultimate power without a referendum. Of course, parliament could in theory just vote that away since parliament is sovereign unless she made truly significant changes. Since technically Hitler was voted ultimate power this makes it technically democratic, the exact circumstances of which shall be covered later. There is also little to stop May from attempting to take over completely except that she requires the constant support of her party, complicating the matter. (If parliament said there were no more elections, what are you doing to do about it? Challenge them in the courts which have no authority to do so? Military coup?) It is therefore difficult to decide how many points should be allocated here and shall be skipped.

Speaking of military coups, the United Kingdom is extremely lucky it is not docked points for the repeated allusions by military leaders that they would preform a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

There is then the question of how these elections are handled. The Conservative party at current rams legislation through with as little oversight as possible, prioritizes boundary changes that will benefits them based on political self-interest, threatens the upper house if it does not play along and changes the electoral register in such a way that it conveniently disenfranchises voters of other parties to their benefits. For this, they are deducted 1 point. Elections in Nazi Germany were plagued by voter intimidation, threats of violence and lies for which they are deducted a whopping 5 points.

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

Whew, it was close there May. If good ol' Adolf wasn't such a thug you'd have been right up shit creek!

We could also, while we are here, examine their domestic policies. Hitler was extremely homophobic. However, this was considered normal at the time and the United Kingdom was little better in its treatment of homosexuals. People also like to excuse Thathcer's bad elements with "she must be judged by the time!" and therefore Hitler receives no deductions for this. They both receive -5 points for wanting a heavily controlled society, a surveillance state, their contempt for human rights and taking the next step in cracking down on "decadence" like drugs, even if they need to lie to get it done. Hitler however gets a point for his amazing steps forward in terms of animal welfare unlike May's black heart which has no compassion for animals outside that which the media forces on her through cat memes.

MAY: -5
HITLER: -4

As before, Ms. May is off to a bad start. We are not using golf rules. They also both hold a disdain for international order and international organizations coming in and telling them they cannot torture whoever they want. May also receives -2 points for sending LGBT people to their death and covering up rape at Yarl's Wood because rape is bad for business. However, Hitler also killed 6 millions Jews in his policies along with 6 million others. We can also reasonably blame all of the deaths in Europe on his hands due to his sheer aggression in starting it. However, we will exclude the Pacific Front to an extent. For the sake of brevity we shall place this at 40 million deaths.

It is tempting to give Hitler -40,000,000 points but this is technically unfair as we have not tabulated an exact death toll for Teresa May. However, there is little doubt that his death toll far exceeds hers. He also left Germany in ruin whereas we have yet to see the comparatively light even in the worst scenario fall out of Brexit. In light of this, we will give him a very rough estimate of -20,000 points and give May -5 points to fully cover everyone that has died or had their life destroyed as a result of her policies.

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

To an even more profound extent than before, May has started off bad only to have Hitler fall off a cliff at the final hurdle. And again, it was very close. Lucky break, Teresa.

Let us create a final scoresheet.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY:

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP:

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

In conclusion, Teresa May is not Hitler.

-Souseiseki, Ph.D. in Theoretical Bantology

Ok, interesting, and we do not have a presidential system in the UK, which is why May is PM. May got over 50% of the vote in her constituency as MP and won the leadership of the Conservative to become PM this year. Whilst I have issues with the FPTP system, Theresa May is also correct to say she has the mandate from 2015. That said, I wouldn't rule out an election early next year and this would obviously require repealing the fixed term parliament.

[Ifreann]

All democracies differ in exactly how much power they give to the people and how this power is allocated. It is therefore not surprising that even today there is debate over how our democracy operates and exactly how "democratic" it is, if it is even possible to objectively quantify such a thing. More specifically, David Cameron's resignation and Teresa May's transition into power, several changes to the United Kingdom's electoral system reopening the old wounds of the AV referendum and the status of the democracy as a key issue in the Brexit referendum ensure that democracy remains a key issue in the public mind.

The United Kingdom is on paper and in practice a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is the very Westminster from which the Westminster model takes its name and form. However, for the past few decades it has become increasingly presidential in character, something which the media has actively fostered and with which the parties themselves have been all to happy to go along with. When a new PM gets into power without a general election the media slam them as "unelected", or least, they do when they think it will benefit them politically and they wish to force a new election as soon as possible.

As seemingly random their judgement of who is and is not "unelected" is it nonetheless helps to cement in the public mind that our prime minister must be "elected" even though this is without question not how the system actually operates mechanically. We also have American-style party leader debates. Elections have become to a great extent framed on voting for who should be leader of the country not who should be the MP for your constituency, with the media directly attacking Ed Milliband for not being able to take Vladimir Putin in a one-on-one fight and possibly helping change the course of the election based entire on the merits of how he personally, a man of Jewish descent, does not live up to their standards of proper bacon sandwich etiquette. We can see a similar effect with Jeremy Corbyn today with people saying they would never vote "for" him in spite of the fact the vast majority of the country are not even eligible to vote in his constituency and the public and media making arguments about not voting for Labour based on his personal merits as a prospective prime minister.

We have in effect seen the silent death of an element of what makes British democracy British, the transition of the prime minister to a laughing stock to first among equals to the de facto president of a pseudo-federal constitutional omnishambles. There is a disconnect between how the system works in practice and how it works in the public and in a new climate where people are of "experts" it is unlikely people will change their mind on how they have decided things will be. We have made our bed and we must lie in it. Oddly enough, this leaves us in a position where we could reasonably compare the current British system not only to other Westminster models but also the presidental parliamentary systems of France and Germany.

As mentioned above, Teresa May is the most recent British prime minister and should, were the media not holding back, suffer greatly from this new status quo. She has not only been brought into power without a general election but has done so through a combination of backdoor deals in which her party attempted to prevent the membership getting a vote on who became the next prime minister. That tiny amount of people themselves being only a small fraction of the country. Even worse is that this was done after Brexit, giving her a mandate to do things which would have been flat out illegal at the time of the last election, questioning her full mandate to exercise this new breadth of power.

So we have a party in power after gaining the support of 25.25% of eligible voters, giving them 50% of the seats in the House of Commons and therefore ultimate power should they be able to convince all of their MPs to vote as one. The next prime minister would be decided not by popular national vote but by the 149,800 members of the Conservative party, 0.33% of the population. However, due to the aforementioned internal politics this election never happened and the voting pool for our new prime minister was whittled down to 0.0007% of the population. Of that group she earned the votes of slightly less than 2/3 of them, meaning that in the end our new prime minster was decided by the votes of 0.0004% of the population. Democracy indeed.

While not everyone can agree on exactly how much of a problem any of the issues I just mentioned are (indeed, some people may be perfectly ok with all of them) it seems clear that there are several flaws in how democratic our system is. Some systems tout their non-democratic elements as a feature instead of a bug. The House of Lords does, for example, actually do a relatively good job of limiting the excesses of the Commons.

It is therefore tempting to look at and compare to other countries and see how we measure up. Does our unelected second chamber help us defend against populism? Does FPTP truly return strong governments and a connection to constituency voters as is claimed by its champions? Does Teresa May have less of a democratic mandate than Adolf Hitler? Were the past 800 words of this post just a thinly veiled excuse to get this point? Yes, no, maybe, Souseiseki.

While it is rather uncouth to attempt to rate the very organs of democracy like a game of tennis, in part because of its difficulty and in part because of the inherent nonsensical nature of tennis scoreboards, I will attempt to create a rough framework by which we can judge the relative merits of each system. There shall be a maximum of three points and a minimum of zero awarded at each turn with points deducted for serious failures or misconduct.

While the the prime minister has in many ways become a toy president as covered before it is still hard to directly compare a presidential system and a Westminster system, especially with a gap of 75 years. However, we can still make a good effort at doing so.

The first measure is fairly easy to measure, the extent to which the votes of the populace line up with the seats allocated. Again, this is something that can be depending on your view positive or negative. Is a system where 12.5% votes gets you 0.2%, 30.5% gets you 35.7% and 35.8% gets you 50.8% (and therefore, in theory, the ability to do anything) really fair? This is even more pronounced in older elections. Indeed, in 1974 the nightmares of the anti-AV campaign became true and the loser won. The party with 37.2% of the vote got more seats than the party with 37.9% of the votes! The same in 1951! It becomes rapidly apparent the correlation between getting votes and getting power exists but is very very loose. Teresa May herself depending on how we measure things either got power with 36% of the vote or got power with 0.0004% of the vote and therefore gains a measly 1 point.

Comparatively, the July 1932 the NSDAP received 37% of the seats in return for 37.27% of the vote. In 1930 they received 24% of the seats in exchange for 24% of the votes. In November 1932 they gained 33.06% of the votes. Can you guess what percentage of the seats they gained? Yes, 33%! Wonderful, it's an almost 1:1 line up between how the people vote and how much power the people they vote for get. 3 points for Hitlerdor!

MAY: 1
HITLER: 3

The next point is very very complicated. May became prime minister through backdoor deals with 0.0004% of the vote and thus gets 0 points. However, she gains a strong 2 points for her 65.8% in the Maidenhead election. However, as a tiny electorate of 38,000 it is hard to gauge whether this translates to a national mandate and as this is effectively a discussion of their legitimacy as a head of state she cannot be awarded the 3 points she may have otherwise gotten in a more direct comparison. While people never had a chance to vote for Hitler directly as a constituent their votes for him as president, enough to gain him a seat in the UK, cancel that out.

Hitler also became chancellor through backdoor deals but also gained 30% in the presidential election along with his party's 36% in the Reichstag, establishing there was a clear desire for Hitler. Since his personal vote and national vote (25% of eligible voters in 2015 general election vs 30% of eligible voters in July 1932 federal election) is higher than May's it would be disingenuous of me to not award him an equal 2 points.

MAY: 3
HITLER: 5

Hitler soon took ultimate power, accomplished with a national referendum. However, May herself could easily vote herself ultimate power without a referendum. Of course, parliament could in theory just vote that away since parliament is sovereign unless she made truly significant changes. Since technically Hitler was voted ultimate power this makes it technically democratic, the exact circumstances of which shall be covered later. There is also little to stop May from attempting to take over completely except that she requires the constant support of her party, complicating the matter. (If parliament said there were no more elections, what are you doing to do about it? Challenge them in the courts which have no authority to do so? Military coup?) It is therefore difficult to decide how many points should be allocated here and shall be skipped.

Speaking of military coups, the United Kingdom is extremely lucky it is not docked points for the repeated allusions by military leaders that they would preform a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

There is then the question of how these elections are handled. The Conservative party at current rams legislation through with as little oversight as possible, prioritizes boundary changes that will benefits them based on political self-interest, threatens the upper house if it does not play along and changes the electoral register in such a way that it conveniently disenfranchises voters of other parties to their benefits. For this, they are deducted 1 point. Elections in Nazi Germany were plagued by voter intimidation, threats of violence and lies for which they are deducted a whopping 5 points.

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

Whew, it was close there May. If good ol' Adolf wasn't such a thug you'd have been right up shit creek!

We could also, while we are here, examine their domestic policies. Hitler was extremely homophobic. However, this was considered normal at the time and the United Kingdom was little better in its treatment of homosexuals. People also like to excuse Thathcer's bad elements with "she must be judged by the time!" and therefore Hitler receives no deductions for this. They both receive -5 points for wanting a heavily controlled society, a surveillance state, their contempt for human rights and taking the next step in cracking down on "decadence" like drugs, even if they need to lie to get it done. Hitler however gets a point for his amazing steps forward in terms of animal welfare unlike May's black heart which has no compassion for animals outside that which the media forces on her through cat memes.

MAY: -5
HITLER: -4

As before, Ms. May is off to a bad start. We are not using golf rules. They also both hold a disdain for international order and international organizations coming in and telling them they cannot torture whoever they want. May also receives -2 points for sending LGBT people to their death and covering up rape at Yarl's Wood because rape is bad for business. However, Hitler also killed 6 millions Jews in his policies along with 6 million others. We can also reasonably blame all of the deaths in Europe on his hands due to his sheer aggression in starting it. However, we will exclude the Pacific Front to an extent. For the sake of brevity we shall place this at 40 million deaths.

It is tempting to give Hitler -40,000,000 points but this is technically unfair as we have not tabulated an exact death toll for Teresa May. However, there is little doubt that his death toll far exceeds hers. He also left Germany in ruin whereas we have yet to see the comparatively light even in the worst scenario fall out of Brexit. In light of this, we will give him a very rough estimate of -20,000 points and give May -5 points to fully cover everyone that has died or had their life destroyed as a result of her policies.

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

To an even more profound extent than before, May has started off bad only to have Hitler fall off a cliff at the final hurdle. And again, it was very close. Lucky break, Teresa.

Let us create a final scoresheet.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY:

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP:

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

In conclusion, Teresa May is not Hitler.

-Souseiseki, Ph.D. in Theoretical Bantology

Thoroughly enlightening. 5 points to Souslepuff.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

All democracies differ in exactly how much power they give to the people and how this power is allocated. It is therefore not surprising that even today there is debate over how our democracy operates and exactly how "democratic" it is, if it is even possible to objectively quantify such a thing. More specifically, David Cameron's resignation and Teresa May's transition into power, several changes to the United Kingdom's electoral system reopening the old wounds of the AV referendum and the status of the democracy as a key issue in the Brexit referendum ensure that democracy remains a key issue in the public mind.

The United Kingdom is on paper and in practice a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is the very Westminster from which the Westminster model takes its name and form. However, for the past few decades it has become increasingly presidential in character, something which the media has actively fostered and with which the parties themselves have been all to happy to go along with. When a new PM gets into power without a general election the media slam them as "unelected", or least, they do when they think it will benefit them politically and they wish to force a new election as soon as possible.

As seemingly random their judgement of who is and is not "unelected" is it nonetheless helps to cement in the public mind that our prime minister must be "elected" even though this is without question not how the system actually operates mechanically. We also have American-style party leader debates. Elections have become to a great extent framed on voting for who should be leader of the country not who should be the MP for your constituency, with the media directly attacking Ed Milliband for not being able to take Vladimir Putin in a one-on-one fight and possibly helping change the course of the election based entire on the merits of how he personally, a man of Jewish descent, does not live up to their standards of proper bacon sandwich etiquette. We can see a similar effect with Jeremy Corbyn today with people saying they would never vote "for" him in spite of the fact the vast majority of the country are not even eligible to vote in his constituency and the public and media making arguments about not voting for Labour based on his personal merits as a prospective prime minister.

We have in effect seen the silent death of an element of what makes British democracy British, the transition of the prime minister to a laughing stock to first among equals to the de facto president of a pseudo-federal constitutional omnishambles. There is a disconnect between how the system works in practice and how it works in the public and in a new climate where people are of "experts" it is unlikely people will change their mind on how they have decided things will be. We have made our bed and we must lie in it. Oddly enough, this leaves us in a position where we could reasonably compare the current British system not only to other Westminster models but also the presidental parliamentary systems of France and Germany.

As mentioned above, Teresa May is the most recent British prime minister and should, were the media not holding back, suffer greatly from this new status quo. She has not only been brought into power without a general election but has done so through a combination of backdoor deals in which her party attempted to prevent the membership getting a vote on who became the next prime minister. That tiny amount of people themselves being only a small fraction of the country. Even worse is that this was done after Brexit, giving her a mandate to do things which would have been flat out illegal at the time of the last election, questioning her full mandate to exercise this new breadth of power.

So we have a party in power after gaining the support of 25.25% of eligible voters, giving them 50% of the seats in the House of Commons and therefore ultimate power should they be able to convince all of their MPs to vote as one. The next prime minister would be decided not by popular national vote but by the 149,800 members of the Conservative party, 0.33% of the population. However, due to the aforementioned internal politics this election never happened and the voting pool for our new prime minister was whittled down to 0.0007% of the population. Of that group she earned the votes of slightly less than 2/3 of them, meaning that in the end our new prime minster was decided by the votes of 0.0004% of the population. Democracy indeed.

While not everyone can agree on exactly how much of a problem any of the issues I just mentioned are (indeed, some people may be perfectly ok with all of them) it seems clear that there are several flaws in how democratic our system is. Some systems tout their non-democratic elements as a feature instead of a bug. The House of Lords does, for example, actually do a relatively good job of limiting the excesses of the Commons.

It is therefore tempting to look at and compare to other countries and see how we measure up. Does our unelected second chamber help us defend against populism? Does FPTP truly return strong governments and a connection to constituency voters as is claimed by its champions? Does Teresa May have less of a democratic mandate than Adolf Hitler? Were the past 800 words of this post just a thinly veiled excuse to get this point? Yes, no, maybe, Souseiseki.

While it is rather uncouth to attempt to rate the very organs of democracy like a game of tennis, in part because of its difficulty and in part because of the inherent nonsensical nature of tennis scoreboards, I will attempt to create a rough framework by which we can judge the relative merits of each system. There shall be a maximum of three points and a minimum of zero awarded at each turn with points deducted for serious failures or misconduct.

While the the prime minister has in many ways become a toy president as covered before it is still hard to directly compare a presidential system and a Westminster system, especially with a gap of 75 years. However, we can still make a good effort at doing so.

The first measure is fairly easy to measure, the extent to which the votes of the populace line up with the seats allocated. Again, this is something that can be depending on your view positive or negative. Is a system where 12.5% votes gets you 0.2%, 30.5% gets you 35.7% and 35.8% gets you 50.8% (and therefore, in theory, the ability to do anything) really fair? This is even more pronounced in older elections. Indeed, in 1974 the nightmares of the anti-AV campaign became true and the loser won. The party with 37.2% of the vote got more seats than the party with 37.9% of the votes! The same in 1951! It becomes rapidly apparent the correlation between getting votes and getting power exists but is very very loose. Teresa May herself depending on how we measure things either got power with 36% of the vote or got power with 0.0004% of the vote and therefore gains a measly 1 point.

Comparatively, the July 1932 the NSDAP received 37% of the seats in return for 37.27% of the vote. In 1930 they received 24% of the seats in exchange for 24% of the votes. In November 1932 they gained 33.06% of the votes. Can you guess what percentage of the seats they gained? Yes, 33%! Wonderful, it's an almost 1:1 line up between how the people vote and how much power the people they vote for get. 3 points for Hitlerdor!

MAY: 1
HITLER: 3

The next point is very very complicated. May became prime minister through backdoor deals with 0.0004% of the vote and thus gets 0 points. However, she gains a strong 2 points for her 65.8% in the Maidenhead election. However, as a tiny electorate of 38,000 it is hard to gauge whether this translates to a national mandate and as this is effectively a discussion of their legitimacy as a head of state she cannot be awarded the 3 points she may have otherwise gotten in a more direct comparison. While people never had a chance to vote for Hitler directly as a constituent their votes for him as president, enough to gain him a seat in the UK, cancel that out.

Hitler also became chancellor through backdoor deals but also gained 30% in the presidential election along with his party's 36% in the Reichstag, establishing there was a clear desire for Hitler. Since his personal vote and national vote (25% of eligible voters in 2015 general election vs 30% of eligible voters in July 1932 federal election) is higher than May's it would be disingenuous of me to not award him an equal 2 points.

MAY: 3
HITLER: 5

Hitler soon took ultimate power, accomplished with a national referendum. However, May herself could easily vote herself ultimate power without a referendum. Of course, parliament could in theory just vote that away since parliament is sovereign unless she made truly significant changes. Since technically Hitler was voted ultimate power this makes it technically democratic, the exact circumstances of which shall be covered later. There is also little to stop May from attempting to take over completely except that she requires the constant support of her party, complicating the matter. (If parliament said there were no more elections, what are you doing to do about it? Challenge them in the courts which have no authority to do so? Military coup?) It is therefore difficult to decide how many points should be allocated here and shall be skipped.

Speaking of military coups, the United Kingdom is extremely lucky it is not docked points for the repeated allusions by military leaders that they would preform a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

There is then the question of how these elections are handled. The Conservative party at current rams legislation through with as little oversight as possible, prioritizes boundary changes that will benefits them based on political self-interest, threatens the upper house if it does not play along and changes the electoral register in such a way that it conveniently disenfranchises voters of other parties to their benefits. For this, they are deducted 1 point. Elections in Nazi Germany were plagued by voter intimidation, threats of violence and lies for which they are deducted a whopping 5 points.

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

Whew, it was close there May. If good ol' Adolf wasn't such a thug you'd have been right up shit creek!

We could also, while we are here, examine their domestic policies. Hitler was extremely homophobic. However, this was considered normal at the time and the United Kingdom was little better in its treatment of homosexuals. People also like to excuse Thathcer's bad elements with "she must be judged by the time!" and therefore Hitler receives no deductions for this. They both receive -5 points for wanting a heavily controlled society, a surveillance state, their contempt for human rights and taking the next step in cracking down on "decadence" like drugs, even if they need to lie to get it done. Hitler however gets a point for his amazing steps forward in terms of animal welfare unlike May's black heart which has no compassion for animals outside that which the media forces on her through cat memes.

MAY: -5
HITLER: -4

As before, Ms. May is off to a bad start. We are not using golf rules. They also both hold a disdain for international order and international organizations coming in and telling them they cannot torture whoever they want. May also receives -2 points for sending LGBT people to their death and covering up rape at Yarl's Wood because rape is bad for business. However, Hitler also killed 6 millions Jews in his policies along with 6 million others. We can also reasonably blame all of the deaths in Europe on his hands due to his sheer aggression in starting it. However, we will exclude the Pacific Front to an extent. For the sake of brevity we shall place this at 40 million deaths.

It is tempting to give Hitler -40,000,000 points but this is technically unfair as we have not tabulated an exact death toll for Teresa May. However, there is little doubt that his death toll far exceeds hers. He also left Germany in ruin whereas we have yet to see the comparatively light even in the worst scenario fall out of Brexit. In light of this, we will give him a very rough estimate of -20,000 points and give May -5 points to fully cover everyone that has died or had their life destroyed as a result of her policies.

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

To an even more profound extent than before, May has started off bad only to have Hitler fall off a cliff at the final hurdle. And again, it was very close. Lucky break, Teresa.

Let us create a final scoresheet.

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY:

MAY: 2
HITLER: 0

DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP:

MAY: -10
HITLER: -20,004

In conclusion, Teresa May is not Hitler.

-Souseiseki, Ph.D. in Theoretical Bantology

2 things.
1. Are you Alyakia?
2. This is the most serious and elegant I've seen you in more than 3 lines. Aq'd. Awesome analysis!

[Lamadia III]

They're slating people for being in the Labour Party. Not a Corbyn supporter or a Trotskyist or whatever... for being in the Labour Party.

Party of dangerous socialism. *nods*

Its membership are, yes. Most of its MPs have, marginally, more sense.

[Vassenor]

Revenge porn: More than 200 prosecuted under new law

More than 200 people have been prosecuted under a new revenge porn law, a Crown Prosecution Service report on crimes against women shows.

Data for England and Wales also show rape, domestic abuse and sex offences account for almost a fifth of the total CPS workload, with prosecutions and convictions at record levels.

The CPS says improvements are due to extra resources and better training.

But charities say more needs to be done to encourage reporting of offences.

The CPS's annual Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) report, which incorporates data on men and boys, has been conducted since 2007.

It became an offence to share private sexual photographs or films without the subject's consent in England and Wales in April 2015.

---

UN human rights chief condemns Western 'demagogues'

The UN's human rights chief has launched a scathing attack on Western populist politicians, branding them "demagogues and political fantasists".

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein singled out Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, saying he used bigotry as a political weapon.

He said he and others, including US Republican Donald Trump and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, used the same tactics as so-called Islamic State.

Mr Hussein was addressing a security conference in The Hague.

In an election manifesto published last month, Mr Wilders said that if elected he would close all mosques and ban the Koran and Muslim immigrants.

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UK 'hacker' Lauri Love fears death in US prison

A British man wanted in the US for allegedly hacking into government computers says he fears dying in jail if he is extradited.

Lauri Love, who has Asperger's syndrome, worries he will be sentenced to up to 99 years.

"If I went into a US prison, I don't think I'd leave again," he told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.

A judge will announce next week whether Mr Love, from Stradishall, Suffolk, should be extradited.

Mr Love, who could face trials in three different US states, is accused of hacking into the FBI, the US central bank and the country's missile defence agency.

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Sports Direct admits 'serious shortcomings' at Shirebrook

Sports Direct has admitted "serious shortcomings" in working practices at its Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire.

In a report commissioned by the firm, it apologised for conditions at the warehouse, which have been likened to those of a Victorian workhouse.

It also pledged to offer casual retail staff at least 12 guaranteed hours a week, instead of zero-hour contracts.

But almost all staff at the Shirebrook warehouse are agency workers making them ineligible for the new contract.

The firm said it had already commissioned a second review of working practices to monitor progress.

The company has been under mounting pressure to overhaul the way it is run.

Last year an investigation by the Guardian newspaper revealed that the firm's staff were subject to lengthy security searches which, in some cases, resulted in their pay falling below the legal minimum wage.

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Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

All flights at London City Airport have been disrupted after protesters gained access to the runway.

The Met Police said it was called to the site at about 05:40 BST after nine protestors "locked themselves together" on the runway.

The Black Lives Matter UK movement has confirmed it is responsible for the protest.

The airport said inbound flights were being diverted and it hoped to "resume operations as soon as possible".

[Vassenor]

Party of dangerous socialism. *nods*

Its membership are, yes. Most of its MPs have, marginally, more sense.

That's a subjective statement right there. If they had sense they wouldn't be trying to split the party over a petty disagreement.

[The Huskar Social Union]

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14184287_10154064727223264_6896269637695848905_n.jpg?oh=7df79f3e672de9215e0a65947abed6a5&oe=583E174D

On the subject of the Daily Mail...

Fair and balanced news, for fair and balanced people.

[FelrikTheDeleted]

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Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

All flights at London City Airport have been disrupted after protesters gained access to the runway.

The Met Police said it was called to the site at about 05:40 BST after nine protestors "locked themselves together" on the runway.

The Black Lives Matter UK movement has confirmed it is responsible for the protest.

The airport said inbound flights were being diverted and it hoped to "resume operations as soon as possible".

Are they out of there bloody minds.

Hopefully they were fined thousands for doing so dumb.

[Vassenor]

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Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

Are they out of there bloody minds.

[FelrikTheDeleted]

Are they out of there bloody minds.

Why are you eyebrowing?

EDIT: they were sitting on a airport runway.

[Philjia]

The CPS's annual Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) report, which incorporates data on men and boys

Could I sue the CPS for false advertising?

Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

All flights at London City Airport have been disrupted after protesters gained access to the runway.

The Met Police said it was called to the site at about 05:40 BST after nine protestors "locked themselves together" on the runway.

The Black Lives Matter UK movement has confirmed it is responsible for the protest.

The airport said inbound flights were being diverted and it hoped to "resume operations as soon as possible".

Black Lives Matter: "It's about racism™"

[Great Nepal]

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Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

Are they out of there bloody minds.

Hopefully they were fined thousands for doing so dumb.

Wonder how many of them have enough assets to make up ~£500k+ cost to airlines and passengers...

[FelrikTheDeleted]

Are they out of there bloody minds.

Hopefully they were fined thousands for doing so dumb.

Wonder how many of them have enough assets to make up ~£500k+ cost to airlines and passengers...

Now it will be a burden for what I assume as a majority of their lives.

[Minzerland II]

Black Lives Matter protesters close London City Airport runway

All flights at London City Airport have been disrupted after protesters gained access to the runway.

The Met Police said it was called to the site at about 05:40 BST after nine protestors "locked themselves together" on the runway.

The Black Lives Matter UK movement has confirmed it is responsible for the protest.

The airport said inbound flights were being diverted and it hoped to "resume operations as soon as possible".

Black Lives Matter UK said: "Whilst at London City Airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants are known to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean.
"Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly, in this racist climate crisis.
"We note, however, that the UK is willing to charter special flights to remove black people from the country based on their immigration status."
It added: "This action was taken in order to highlight the UK's environmental impact on the lives of black people locally and globally.
"As the largest per capita contributor to global temperature change, and yet among the least vulnerable to its deadly effects, the UK leads in ensuring that our climate crisis is a racist crisis."

Their reason for committing stupidity is unsurprisingly stupid to say the least