h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

- http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-23.htm

Americans seem to think this is all well-known stuff in the UK. It seems to me that only those few who really care know about this. Am I wrong? Why did the British people re-elect President B. Liar? Perhaps the alternatives were too gruesome to contemplate.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"Perhaps the alternatives were too gruesome to contemplate."

Got it in one.

Morning P C

Too late now !!!!

Many of us anti war posters were trying to get the point of Blairs complicity in the US decision to go to war anyway across on the Election Forum Board but to no avail.

Perhaps you are right in your assumption that the alternatives were too unplatable.

Novo

No British government since WWII has actually condemned US military action, and the last one to refuse to back/participate in it was Wilson's government over Vietnam. This includes such actions as Korea and Greneda (when Mrs T famously 'wasn't there when the decision wasn't made' to invade a British Protectorate.)

It is UTTERLY irrelevant which of the big two were in power, so in terms of the Labour/Conservative fight it was an utter non-issue, as Howard recognised by not really raising the issue.

Howard actually said (in the run up to the election) that he would have gone to war even he'd known there were no WMD.

MY issue on this wasn't the going to war. Had TB said we're sick to death of Saddam he's a despot - I'd have said well there's plenty of others but OK.

He didn't. He made up a story - because HE KNEW BEST - and that's my problem - he lied, and when he was caught he denied it, and then he tried to say that he changed it because HE KNEW WHAT WAS RIGHT.

The arrogance of it scared me - still does.

What really surprised me is that I perceive Brits and Europeans in general to be much further to the left than the average American. Of the three viable UK political parties, the one that gathered the fewest votes is the only one to the political left. The right-wing party is in the minority, with the slightly-less-right-wing party in the majority.

Bush got in by knocking down the straw man of gay unions. How did Blair do it?

>>"Bush got in by knocking down the straw man of gay unions. How did Blair do it?"

Partly by the country not having an obviously broken economy, since a poor economy has been one of the major historic reasons for a change of government.

Partly due to the supposed opposition not really being trusted by moderate voters.

Blair is right-wing enough to keep many non-left voters happy, but the Labour party still manages to occupy sufficient left-wing territory to prevent a huge challenge from that end of the spectrum.

<>

That was my impression too. It seems to me that America is one of the farthest-right democracies I can think of. But the States has a *very* vocal right-wing minority - in fact, if the election figures are any clue, the political split seems to be about half-half.

The US right has a cohesive organization that the left lacks. This is why their voice is heard louder. They really are a minority. The centrists are more prevalent than either polarity.

In the UK, the BBC is rather more 'fair and balanced' than other media organisations I could point [up] at. They do at least get criticised from both extremes as being biased, and they are in fact probably somewhere near the centre, and relatively apolitical as well.
The BBC also has a serious influence on radio broadcasting, and the independent (ie advertising-funded) *terrestrial* TV channels also seem to be largely balanced as well.

In short, in broadcast-media terms, the UK is probably not like the USA (and is certainly not like Italy).

It's very difficult to make any sweeping generalizations about the US media. There is so much of it, and each presents the news in its own way. The only parallel we have to the BBC is PBS, which is only partially supported by government... the rest of its support comes from viewer donations. PBS sets the standard for television and radio news coverage, but they're playing to a very small audience, and one which overwhelmingly leans left. The corporate entities are more interested in sensationalism than balanced journalism on the whole, though there are definitely places where getting it right counts for more than anything. The best sources are print sources, particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Times are possibly the last investigative journalists left in America, and they actually outed the story of recon missions in Iran and forced the White House to come clean on it.

That said, the conservative media machine is highly organized, and the way that they do business causes their stories to end up in mainstream outlets. If every conservative talking-head is spouting the same catch-phrases (eg: "flip-flopper"), then after a while the story becomes so pervasive that the mainstream media is forced to address it in some fashion. It's ingenious propaganda, and would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

I think portraying the Labour Party as particularly right-wing is inaccurate. Obviously they're not left these days, but they are increasing the money into the NHS and education (although I'm not sure how significant the amounts are). Being between the Tories and the Liberals they're basically the centre party. The Tories are slightly to the right, and the liberals slightly more than that to the left.

But anyway, if there's a European shift to the left then its across all of the parties, and its also less noticable in Britain than France, Germany, Holland, Belgium & Scandanavia.

BtM:

EMR:

Yes, I think it's been true (in general) for as long as I can remember. I have always felt that the British far right (Conservatives, not the real extremists) is still to the left of the American left. In Americans, I think this attitude stems from their very strong connection to individual freedom, and resentment of (state) authority, rather than a need to rob from the poor so that the rich may have even more.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Bouncy: <>

Republicans have traditionally added budget to education and health as well. Bush's farcically-named "No Child Left Behind Act" is illustrative of that. That doesn't mean they've got left.

<>

I doubt that very highly. Your Conservatives appear to me to be similar to the US neocons. The Dems are actually similar to New Labour. If these links are an accurate indication, John Kerry is actually further left than the Labour party... and as a former serviceman, he comes down a bit further on the authoritarian scale than his peers, making him overall more moderate than his party.

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/extremeright.php
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/uselection.php

<>

Agreed. There is also a strong perception in America that poverty is caused by poor choices rather than uncontrollable circumstances. I have found a few exceptions, but generally I find this statement to be true... though, since this comes from perception, my only evidence is anecdotal. My own family was very poor when I was a child, and I can point to some stupid choices my parents made as the primary cause. Given the same opportunities as my parents (or significantly fewer opportunities, depending on how you look at it), my life has a superior quality to theirs at this same age in every way, finances being just one of them. Other friends and family I've known over the years who struggled financially have generally done so because they were holding themselves back or had limited themselves in some way.

Your first link begins:
"Once you accept that left and right are merely measures of economic position, the "extreme right" refers to extremely liberal economics that may be practised by social authoritarians or social libertarians".

Well many of us measure left and right by freedom versus morality, while still others measure it by degrees of centralisation. Its really a bit arbitrary as some things have been packaged and we pick the scale to fit which issues are important to us.

For example, I can see your point on people getting where they do by their own choices. Personally I think that in the vast majority of cases where people end up is hugely depedent on how they start out - and I think the stats would back me up on that one - but I can definitely see where you're coming from.

Meanwhile, on questions of personal freedom, as a quick example in the UK the gay civil unions bill went through pretty easily. There were some people protesting outside churches, but not very many. All the main parties supported the bill. Meanwhile, in the US...

I didn't agree with the war, but I voted for Blair anyway purely because if we didn't vote for Blair we'd have got the alternative - Micheal Howard.

He supported the war as well and he would have cut taxes and therefore public spending, which I disagreed with.

I don't see the point of kicking out a prime minister because of the war to replace him with someone else who would have done the same thing anyway.

And the way he lied wasn't an issue ?

<>

Since "left" is a label associated with Democrats, and "right" is associated with Republicans, I measure left/right divides according to their polarities. Democrats believe in liberal social values and economic control (redistribution of wealth, etc). Republicans believe in free market economics and social control (so-called "moral values"). By that definition, on those graphs I referenced earlier, the left -> right line would actually run along a line which would be graphed by the function Y=X, with the right being represented by positive values of X and the left represented by negative values of X.

Thus, the observation that Labour is simply less-right than the Conservatives. Looking at the historical graph, it's amazing how far they've moved. They appear to be clear leftists in 1972, slightly more centrist in 1982, clear rightists in 1999, and slightly further right in 2005.

<>

If the subject of this conversation is any indicator, UK social policy is nothing to write home about. F135418?thread=645211

The idea that baseball caps and hoodies are on the government's agenda isn't very liberal. You have video cameras monitoring all sorts of public places, your guns have been taken away, and fox hunts are being banned. I also understand that there aren't any real legal protections for free speech. These are things that are just coming off the top of my head. Regardless of whether you feel that these changes are beneficial or not, the fact remains that these are restrictions on social freedoms, and therefore not consistent with a leftist platform.

Our guns haven't been taken away. We never had them in the first place, except in very few numbers.

It's a small but crucial point and probably leads to more misunderstanding between UK and US citizens on the arms ownership issue than any other.

Otherwise, I'd agree, though the camera issue isn't a big one for me. The ridiculous fact that a major shopping mall has reported a 10% increase in attendance since banning hoodies is both depressing and indicative of how sucessful this (and previous) governments have become at 'selling the fear'.

And I don't think it's an issue that the British political scene as a whole has lurched violently to the right since Thatcher's day. And that isn't even her fault, it's the fault of the other parties who gave up trying to put an alternative position.