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

No Mckay, the fact he lied doesn't bother me, politicans lie, it's part of their job. I don't belive for a second that Michael Howard would have acted differently.

The most important thing to me is the NHS, and it's improved under current government so I voted for them.

Voted because I didn't like a leader would have got someone who would have caused damage in the future - that's selfish.

>Since "left" is a label associated with Democrats, and "right" is associated with Republicans

One thing is that this is probably in American terms. A lot of Europeans, I think, would put Republicans as right (some would say to the right of Ghengis Khan ) and Democrats as center.

Another is that the traditional left and right terms are steadily dropping in relevance. The very same voter, at least around my parts, can be very much 'right' in personal freedom terms and equally 'left' on, say, environmental issues.

>your guns have been taken away
Agree with Blues Shark - not taken away. I rather think that Americans were let loose with them. And I also - personally - do not believe that it's a good things with that amount of guns loose in a society. Whatever reasonings, I will always feel safer when there are very, very few guns around and far the most of these in the hands of the police than when 'everyone' can draw one and start shooting.

I'll go with the hoodies & baseball caps thing being pretty idiotic.

Cameras in public places have been shown to reduce crime.

Fox-hunting is banned because its seen to be cruel. Which is fair enough, its why torture is also banned. Some might argue that its not cruel or that animals don't count, but the majority don't agree with those arguments.

Guns, well I suppose it is about fear. Most people in the UK (myself included) don't understand much about guns and are pretty scared of them. Maybe this is paranoid, but they are objects designed solely to kill.

Freedom of speech is not explicitly protected by law, but I could still go and demonstrate in a peaceful manner outside say Buckingham Palace and no worries.

But no, the UK is not left in the same way as mainland Europe.

>Freedom of speech is not explicitly protected by law, but I could still go and demonstrate in a peaceful manner outside say Buckingham Palace and no worries.<

Well, thats debatable. Try protesting the arrival of a Chinese Government Official and see how far it gets you.

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Putting them all on the same scale, if Democrats were characterized as centrists, and Republicans as extreme rightists, then New Labour would be only slightly center of right from the Republicans, and the Conservatives would be right next to the Republicans.

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Hence the two-dimensional grid on which these things are mapped. A voter who supports social and economic control (interpreting environmental issues as generally coming in conflict with business, and therefore an economic issue) would be mapped into the top-left quadrant, polar opposite to the Lib Dems and shared by the BNP.

As for the individual issues of cameras, gun control, etc., it was not my intention to discuss the merits or shortcomings of these measures. It was merely to point out their effects along the social axis of the political grid, as examples which indicate the UK is actually much more right-leaning than is generally perceived.

The Tories would have walked the last election if they hadn't been so compromised on the Iraq issue. If they had allowed themselves to slot in to the left of Blair, (and let's face it, there was a lot of room there with regards to this issue,) and had had the balls to stand up and say "it was wrong and you knew it was wrong" then they could have batted New Labour all over the park, and even suppressed some of the Lib Dem protest vote as well. Unfortunately for them, Michael Howard somehow managed to make their policy on it so tortuous and obscure that it ceased to be a policy at all and started changing every day to fit in with whoever was explaining it and whatever they were talking about. He somehow managed in his 'Newsnight' interview to position them to the RIGHT of the government, by pretty much saying that he would have invaded whatever the circumstances. That's not a policy, that's more like the bragging of a drunk. That New Labour, and especially Tony Blair, were not punished more for their actions is frankly one of the saddest reflections on our political system that I can remember.

This was always going to be a difficult issue for the Conservatives, as the WMDs that everyone was assured Saddam had were partly sold to him with the approval of Conservative ministers from Margaret Thatcher's government in the first place. When the weapons inspectors were withdrawn, I'm surprised that they didn't meet up with Tom King to see if the stuff they'd found matched up with the receipts. If they'd have thought long and hard enough about it, though, the Tories could have come up with a coherent and consistent policy to deal with this, at least for long enough to do enough damage to Blair's image that he would have found it impossible to take that pious, holier-than-thou attitude with them at the despatch box. Instead they..... well, I don't know what they did, but they made a complete dog's breakfast of it and ruined their only opportunity to crystallise all the anti-Labour sentiment out there into a possible victory. Opportunities like that come rarely, if at all, and they will rue this one for a very long time.

As for the relative positions of the parties, I don't think that Labour are that far off the Tories in terms of rightwards orientation. When someone suggested the idea of university top-up fees to Thatcher, she dismissed it as 'too extreme'. Since this was the same Margaret Thatcher who systematically destroyed the mining industry in this country because she had a political point to settle with the unions, (as opposed to an economic policy to follow), for her to say it was too extreme means it must have been pretty much off the scale. Blair introduced them without a thought and with relatively little opposition, considering it was supposedly a Labour government he was leading. Likewise it was Blair who brought in the PFI system to finance new government capital projects, a huge Treasury tax dodge that will have terrible repurcussions somewhere along the line once it becomes clear what it is actually costing.

It is said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Blair rules more absolutely than any leader we have had since the war. He does what he does because he thinks he can get away with it. And at the moment, he can, because we have no effective opposition and his MPs are hand-chosen to follow the party line. We went to war because *he*, (not cabinet or parliament,) thought it was 'morally the right thing to do'. 2 million people turned out in London to protest, by far the largest protest of any kind ever seen in this country, but his personal moral vision counted more than the will of the people he supposedly represents, so the protest was ignored. That's absolute power for you.

Gun-control and fox-hunting are particularly weird ones though, being supported by the further right party despite being issues of freedom and rights.

Well, sticking too rigidly to left-right doctine isn't necessarily a good idea. That's why we try to weigh the individual issues and come to a conclusion on where a party stands in the balance.

The fox hunting bill is a weird bit of legislation. It somehow manages to be one of those terrible pieces of law that tries to please everyone but turns out to not please anyone. It is very hard to see who is going to benefit from it. A lot of hunts will close, so the people who attend hunts don't benefit, yet foxes will still be killed, and possibly in even greater numbers, so animal rights campaigners (and foxes) don't like it. Although chasing foxes and allowing the dogs to kill them is now theoretically outlawed, it is OK to chase a 'drag', or artificial scent, with the dogs. Here's the fun bit, though, because if whilst drag hunting your dogs pick up the scent of a REAL fox and start chasing that, that's OK.

It's also OK to use your dogs to chase foxes on to guns to be shot. It's also *obviously* fine to just shoot foxes without using dogs at all. The problem is that none of this can or will be enforced, and hunt people and hunt sabs know it. To fully enforce the law, the police would have to follow the hunts, but they don't have the resources to do it. I very much doubt if there would be the will to prosecute anyway, considering the unlikelihood of a conviction. Essentially it's a really bad law, and the foxes get it whichever way.

Would people consider communism to be left wing then? And where do you put liberal on the spectum?

I think there's two spectrums one on top of each other - there was website with a graph somewhere...

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/analysis2.php

Communism would be in the Authoritarian Left quadrant, but you'd have to clarify what you mean by liberal. Liberal in the classic sense similar to UK's Lib Dems and US Libertarians would be in Libertarian Right. Liberal in the common sense (at least in the US) would fall in the Libertarian Left quadrant.

Its the classical Liberalism (Whigs)/new Liberalism (champagne socialists) split.

Well no wonder I'm so dis-satisfied - there's nobody even in my quadrant of the grid.

I did the test and came one square to the right of Ghandi .

It does seem to be quite a well researched site.

Just done it too, hide head in hands!

Novo