Been seeing outraged posts all day about the recent UK election.

[conuly]

I'm so sorry, guys.

Comments

[hudebnik]

Yeah. My take (not that I know anything special about British politics) is that the whole subject of Brexit has become so tiresome and divisive that voters went for whomever promised to put the subject behind them the fastest. There's psychological research showing that committee meetings held when the participants are hungry are more likely to take "what the hell, let's try it" sorts of actions, just so the meeting can be over sooner.

I gather there's also a representation problem, similar to what we have in the U.S.: Tories and other strongly-pro-Brexit parties got something like 46% of the popular vote, but won something like 60% of the seats because the pro-Remain voters are an overwhelming majority in some places and a minority everywhere else (although I don't know of any evidence that the "packing and cracking" is intentional, as it is in many parts of the U.S.)

There are probably more pro-Remain and Brexit-dubious parties than pro-Brexit parties, which could also produce the above effect, but I gather the parties on both sides made agreements to avoid splitting the vote (e.g. if there's a strong Brexit-party candidate in this district, we won't run a Tory there, in exchange for the Brexit party running nobody in that other district, and similarly on the other side). Still, part of the lesson is that winner-take-all single-representative districts work really badly when there are more than two candidates.

[thewayne]

It'll be interesting to see how many move to Ireland before and after the merde hits the rotary impellers.

[cynthia1960]

I have been hearing reports of companies shifting to the Republic from the UK for a while now. I worry about Ireland having the Troubles come back.

[thewayne]

It's amazing to look at how many people have been killed in the name of religion, you'd hope that "we" as the human race could rise above it.  I would hope that the Troubles would be gone for good, but just in the last year there's been killings. Sadly I'm a pessimist about the human race maturing.  Some countries seem more mature than others, few of them English-speaking (Canada and NZ seem more mature than the other English-speakers to me, which isn't to say they're flawless).

[conuly]

To be fair, it's not like atheists don't murder for stupid causes too.

[thewayne]

Very.  Stupidity and murder often go hand-in-hand.

[cynthia1960]

I have a feeling that if the Troubles flare even hotter, the drive is going to be economic with sectarian trappings.

[smokingboot]

Cheers.

It feels pretty awful.