Cycling UK Forum

Cugel wrote: ↑30 Jun 2024, 9:28am

pete75 wrote: ↑30 Jun 2024, 1:55am
An MP is meant to represent all his constituents but not all their views. They will (mostly) be representing the views of their political party and, presumably, of those who voted for them as a representative of that party. It's called democracy aka the tyranny of the 51%..

That's a shallow view of the duties of an MP, although probably representative (!) of how things are. In fact, its worse than how you describe it as what a lot of MPs are representing are the often highly damaging (to the nation and most of its citizens) interests of a tiny clique of bung-givers, media barons and others who pull the MP-puppet's strings. The voter who thought they were voting for policies in a manifesto or as printed in some campaign leaflet was, basically, lied to .... again.

One of the reasons I'm fairly sold on STV being one of the best voting systems. The FPTP myth of local representation simply doesn't hold up to reality because of the reasons discussed. It's often not even 51% as it's a plurality voting system.

Multi member seats means that it's far more likely at least one of them will have sympathies for a constituent's concern* and it's also about the best system for removing safe seats. No lists and multi-member constituencies means even in 'safe' areas a party candidate will still be competing against others from his/her own party, can't see the rees-moggs of the world surviving long in that sort of setup.


*of course there is the wider constitutional question of whether MPs really should be doing this sort of surgery stuff or whether their role is better focused on being actual legislators. It's perhaps a reflection of the overcentralised nature of particularly England that MPs waffle on in a national parliament about a matter that is being dealt with, or should be being dealt with at a local or regional level.

hmm, not convinced it's too long to build support. That would imply that there's actually support for Biden and it's not just an anti trump/GOP vote that's doing some substantial nose holding. My limited impression of US politics is it's far more the latter.

Sure no alternatives currently do any better vs trump in polling but that's a really really stupid way to try to measure that. No previously popular leader would have ever been allowed a shot had that been the determining factor as someone with minimal exposure simply isn't going to outpoll the known name (unless they're genuinely hated). Overreliance on polling/focus groups telling parties what to do rather than actual leadership is one of the major issues with modern anglosphere politics in my view.

Nerdy me loves a good poll but party activists and politicians are some of the worst at interpreting the results as they see the results through their own world views and levels of political attention and significantly overestimate how much attention the average person on the street actually pays to politics.

Of course if they pick the wrong new leader the candidate could easily crash and burn to worse numbers than biden. A good one should be able to do far better though.

Well the helmet is larger than your head also so messes up internal proprioception. Hence why we tend to hit heads/feet whatever more when in protective gear, particularly if not very used to it.

Hence not sure it's good mitigation against hitting your own head on low stuff and unconvinced that's the actual design purpose.

Have a pretty mixed view about the man but I have a much dimmer view on the freedom of press implications. Also tend to have a fairly strong view that it's a state's responsibility to keep what it considers to be secret as such and vengful prosecutions of third parties because of your own security snafus, particularly of other nationalities is poor form.

Jdsk wrote: ↑25 Jun 2024, 9:33am A question: how many people here could be persuaded to replace an existing car with a microcar? And would that be a second car and you'd still have something bigger available to you?

Feel like I'd probably just get an ebike if I had significant need for the sort of trips those would serve.

fwiw my actual car is a first gen c1/107/aygo that, while surprisingly large in comparison to 80/90s small cars is pretty tiny in comparison to the vast majority of modern cars yet has carried more than most of them in building materials from the local builders/timber merchants.

In general yes, not that the more tribal wings of parties like to admit that. Starmer's 'ming vase' approach is certainly making his vote share more efficient, but he's got such stupidly large projected seat margin that to me all he's doing is causing himself pain once in power. The reality something pitched around the 2017 manifesto level of tax/spend/investment would still easily be seeing a landslide majority.

I see two outcomes here:
a) He's just selling cautious and going to be more 'radical' once in power - good for economic outcomes, bad for political trust.
b) He's actually doing cautious - nothing will improve and they're not getting a second term, worse it could lead to the rise of reform should tories properly disintegrate as the efficiently distributed under FPTP swing voters that starmer is ruthlessly targeting (re)abandon labour by mid term.

The nature of the economists that have recently backed him suggests more a) but I won't hold my breath (and as noted a) is hardly great anyway)

pjclinch wrote: ↑21 Jun 2024, 10:10am and I never see helmeted people on stairs aside from e.g. firemen on duty.

Which are of course a different type of helmet anyway. Construction hard hats are primarily designed and intended to reduce damage from lower mass higher velocity objects, not attempt to reduce peak head acceleration during a lower speed impact against a very high mass object (e.g. the planet)

He was sportsing and quite possibly pushing his luck (unclear what the exact circumstances of the crash were?) and as such we have the usual conflating of celeb indulging in high risk activity trying to apply their risk mitigation to any sort of activity involving the broadly the same device (a bicycle).

As usual, those who think wearing a helmet for utility/touring cycling is essential risk mitigation should also be wearing one walking and for a whole host of other daily activities.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑11 Jun 2024, 9:09pm That’s why landlords have to be subject to so much regulation in order to get them to provide sanitary and safe accommodation, at a not-too-riotous price, and without evicting tenants on a whim. If the regulation was to be removed, the shortage of supply would put immense power in the hands of landlords, resulting in naked exploitation of tenants - its a an unfree market due to supply constraint.

Supply of course being the key problem that needs resolving. The UK is hugely short of homes and hasn't been building anywhere near enough for years.

The planning system needs a massive overhaul but I think it needs fairly tough regulation at the same time. There a section of self proclaimed 'yimbys' who think that market competition will mean that if planning restrictions are mostly removed then competition would automatically produce good quality homes, like a lot of free market purists they don't actually realise how the market works. It is far more likely that developers would initially just build ~1m utterly rubbish homes and competition would only force quality up once the supply backlog has been mostly cleared.

Jupestar wrote: ↑30 May 2024, 2:58pm

TheBomber wrote: ↑30 May 2024, 2:15pm Now I wonder why anybody would make bicycle brakes that use DOT

DOT has a higher boiling point, so it performs better under extreme use. but needs servicing regularly.

Depends on which specs are to be believed. Several mineral oil boiling points are listed as being in the same range as dry DOT5.1

Quite, continuation national front party has always had an incoherent grab bag of economic policies designed to do nothing other than tempt the odd voter in.

The idea that farage would so something so remotely economically left wing as tax banks or anyone wealthy is a complete fantasy. His inevitable corruption levels would make the tories look squeaky clean.

I have seen some (relatively left leaning) economists argue that better to simply address the matter through taxes though rather than complicate monetary policy by not paying but I guess it more or less works out the same in the end. Depends on how purist they are about keeping monetary matters separate/independent.

But it can also mean never do anything that might be initially unpopular but subsequently successful (e.g. most things that involve tackling car dependent transport) as there's zero chance for anything to bed in.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑9 Jun 2024, 9:45pm For PR to be safe from parties with small percentage support exerting disproportionate influence requires something extra, especially in our system, where the PM and cabinet effectively become the king.

Things might be safer if the government, as in the PM and cabinet, were more effectively accountable to all of the MPs, who after all are the ones we elect to represent us, but accountability is usually a time-consuming business, and one advantage of our system is that it can act swiftly and decisively.

I keep coming back to the idea of scrapping general elections, and having a rolling election system, maybe 1:5 seats each year up, which would dampen-out extreme swings (at the price of political pundits being in permanent hyperbole mode, until they got exhausted).

yearly elections tends to result in the parties being in permanent campaign mode so nothing happens at all. We often see this in local authorities that still use the by thirds method so have elections 3 years out of 4.

pwa wrote: ↑9 Jun 2024, 9:34pm
I see the theory of PR giving the people exactly what they want. But in practice the choosing doesn't stop at the ballot box, and what happens after the ballot box can lead us on to most of the people getting something they very much did not want. It moves on to deals done around tables and small minority groups demanding things that maybe 85% of the electorate oppose, but will still get as the price of allowing a Government to form. In the UK right now Reform could end up being the King Maker, dragging the new Government in a direction opposed by most people. The only bit of that which is more "democratic" is the initial process at the ballot box. What follows inevitably ends up as a game of chess, with democratic thoughts given a back seat. Most people are more likely to get a Government they can tolerate in a system that favours centrist politics, which is what we have now.

and in practice where has FPTP not resulted in the PM being decided by the tiny % who are paid up members of the party in question, extensive backroom dealing within both of lab/con which are really just pre-formed coalitions (except the relative balance of power of centrists vs far wings is decided by members, not the public) and an extreme party getting demands enacted?

as I've pointed out previously, BNP/UKIP/Reform or whatever they are this year are the most successful 'far right' party in recent western/northern european democratic history and they've done that whilst barely ever winning a seat. Indeed they've been so sucessful with the eurosceptism part that most of their continental equivalents have quietly dropped/severly toned down their leave EU policies as we've demonstrated what an incredibly stupid idea it was.

geocycle wrote: ↑9 Jun 2024, 3:41pm

djnotts wrote: ↑9 Jun 2024, 2:56pm "As you say, no way Conservatives are getting back into power this election so Labour winning a majority is a foregone conclusion without tactical voting....."

Dangerous complacency IMO with nearly a month to go and a Tory media willing to play all sorts of very dirty tricks.

Totally agree, after the Brexit fiasco I am taking nothing for granted. Some of my left wing friends voted to leave in protest against what they viewed as an undemocratic EU and looked what happened.

What brexit fiasco? Almost every single poll was pointing to 'too close to call', the popular narrative of it being a polling failure is a product of the media having convinced itself it couldn't happen and the fact that most journalists have no understanding of statistics or often basic arithmetic.

I think we have a similar media failing here in that most of them don't realise quite how badly screwed the tories are. The kind of polling miss required to even get the tories out of landslide terrority would make the genuine polling misses of 2015 and 1992 look as if they were accurate.

Obviously there's the potential for voter movement in the second half of the campaign but there's a reasonable amount of indepth polling on the undecideds and only a minority of them appear as if they might revert back to tory, and that would still leave them demolished, even if all the current DKs moved back we're still looking at 1997 territory in terms of majority.

The tories could well be reduced to under 100 MPs, they have zero chance of anything other than losing this election very badly.

If you're going to vote labour out of fear of letting a tory who has no chance in then labour are going to keep preferring FPTP in order to get your reluctant vote.

UKIP/reform got their polices enacted by forcing the tories to cover that flank out of fear of losing voters, the same tactic needs to be appleid to labour.