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Why the lib-dems are shit

DotCommunist said:
for in principle, against in the manner proposed?

I suppose you CAN play that one in good conscience but its still off. Why not just No it entirely
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How? :D

In this case they voted both for and against the motion stating that the govt should have the option of military action. They are in some kind of quantum superposition where they both agree and disagree with the motion at the same time. Perhaps at some point in the future, they will decohere.
 
frogwoman said:
so cameron lost a vote even with the help of the lib-dems? that's amazing.
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It's been a rather tricky one to sort out, in terms of what it all means. 9 libdems and 30 tories voted against, so roughly similar proportions in both parties - tories marginally more bomby. Around 30 labour mps didn't vote against, but I'm guessing many of those just weren't there.

So despite his mealy-mouthed amendment, Milliband at least came out and voted against this motion, and he largely carried his party with him. Or should that be the other way round - his party carried him with them?

Cameron and Clegg, meanwhile, could not carry enough of their respective parties to win the vote. But they carried roughly the same numbers.

The difference between being in and out of govt is interesting to me here. In govt, New Labour were similarly bomby to the libdems. Out of govt, they are similarly non-bomby. This tells me that the same people are voting very differently on a question ostensibly about principle depending on where they see their own personal career interests lie. It's an interesting way of gauging the proportion of principled MPs in parliament. Between 10 and 20 percent - and many of those only rediscovering their principles when a government position is no longer a realistic ambition for them.
 
I think there is probably a thing about being the party in power and not being. Bear with me here.

When your party is in power you have a massive hard on for your role in The Mother of Parliaments and your Soverign Duty to do things that Affect the United Kingdom.

when you aren't you just like the salary and spend more time on bread and butter constituency work rather than pretending you are in some grand Game of Thrones internationalist schemeing.

thats just my theory anyway.
 
Maybe. And my estimate of principled mps is probably an overestimate, given that many of those voting against their party leader are those who have already given up on ambitions to be in government themselves.

Looking at New Labour and Iraq, where precisely one government minister was prepared to put principle above career, perhaps the real figure is less than 10 percent. I don't believe for one second that a majority of govt ministers actually believed in the Iraq war. That they were prepared to vote for it anyway shows that they didn't really believe in anything except being in power. Same can now be said for the majority of the libdems.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Abstention/not voting on this kind of question is rather extraordinary. I can imagine votes where you might abstain in a principled way - perhaps it is something you genuinely don't care about, or you think the way the debate has been framed is so wrong that the question is meaningless, or you think that it is a matter of only regional relevance and those from the affected region should decide.

But that can't apply here. Either you agree with allowing the government the option of attacking Syria or you don't. If you can't have an opinion on that, you have no place being an MP.
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Sinn Fein have taken a stance for many years, do you think they should participate playing politics within the British State ?, if they did wouldn't that be some form of acceptance ?.....hmm
 
littlebabyjesus said:
How? :D

In this case they voted both for and against the motion stating that the govt should have the option of military action. They are in some kind of quantum superposition where they both agree and disagree with the motion at the same time. Perhaps at some point in the future, they will decohere.
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MPs do this when they want to register their abstention as an active abstention, rather than them simply not being there for the vote. Or being too drunk to know what they are doing ;)
 
A chapter written by the president of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron ( Back Page Interview, 20 May 2011), makes a case for the intellectual credibility of Christianity. If the stories in the Gospels weren't true, he says, "there were hundreds of people to contradict them - but they did not do so."
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Wow. That's not a case for the "for the intellectual credibility of Christianity" - that's a bizarre truth claim about the four canonical gospels that appears to be based on ignorance of the historical provenance of the same and of the history of interpretation of the gospels. I would suggest a reading of people like John Dominic Crossan, Bruce Chilton, E.P sanders, John Gager, Marcus Borg and many many others before putting pen to paper next time Tim.

edit: there were literally hundreds of people in Galilee and Jersualam in the first century eh Tim? :D
 
butchersapron said:
Here we go, going to have to keep out eyes open for this stuff over the coming period. Lib-dems push through a bill to stop the NUS being able to campaign against lib-dems in marginal seats.
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Aw, poor lib dems. I don't remember them giving a toss how much the NUS was spending when this was going on.

Nick-Clegg-holds-up-the-plegde-copyright-nus.jpeg
 
littlebabyjesus said:
looking at New Labour and Iraq, where precisely one government minister was prepared to put principle above career, perhaps the real figure is less than 10 percent.
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not so. One cabinet minister (cook), and a few junior ministers (denham, for one). would have been 2 in the Cabinet, 'cept Clare Short made a complete bollix of it.
interestingly though, 145 Labour MPs voted against. Now given that all govt members (whips and PPS's included) had to vote for the war, that meant taht some 40% of Labour backbenchers voted against
 
butchersapron said:
Wow. That's not a case for the "for the intellectual credibility of Christianity" - that's a bizarre truth claim about the four canonical gospels that appears to be based on ignorance of the historical provenance of the same and of the history of interpretation of the gospels. I would suggest a reading of people like John Dominic Crossan, Bruce Chilton, E.P sanders, John Gager, Marcus Borg and many many others before putting pen to paper next time Tim.

edit: there were literally hundreds of people in Galilee and Jersualam in the first century eh Tim? :D
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Does tim farron not quite understand that media, opinion polling and publishing weren't all that sophisticated in Judaea and Samaria, c. 0AD - 200AD? Or in fact, that nothing was?:eek::eek:
 
butchersapron said:
...and they can't even keep their stupidity honest:

Lib Dems 'freezing out Christians'
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In his contribution to a new collection of essays by Christian Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrats Do God, published by the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum, Mr Mulholland argued that religious views were being increasingly seen as unwelcome within the party.
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I don't know about anyone else but that one goes right to the top of my reading list.
 
co-op said:
Not sure why you think it isn't.
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Because far from being the attack on the encroachment of mercantilism into social life of popular myth it was rather an aggressive violent attempt to re-impose externally formulated hierarchical and authoritarian notions of the scared and the profane on a populace who were moving beyond such restrictive practices and the processes that produced them. Pure social conservatism and defence of the status quo - the sort of thing Simon Heffer or Peter Hitchens would do.
 
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