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[Owlbread]

"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

I don't know if that comment is directed at me personally/the Yes movement/the SNP (remembering what you said during the referendum campaign); I'm well aware that I'm not exempt from intellectual influence and with my very basic understanding of economics I'm probably enslaved to Keynes himself.

I'm just saying that I don't know if you can reduce this to economics at its root. There are too many factors at play; considering that the forces that drove the elite to botch the country's economic policies may very well be cultural rather than economic. I don't know what kind of government economic policies would have avoided the Thatcherites and New Labour and now the Con Dems.

[mainiac]

Well without the cultural history there wouldn't have been a notion of Scotland in the first place.

[Owlbread]

Oh the joys of a First Past the Post election with multiple parties riding high in the polls. This is what it looks like when the powers-that-be (Labour/Conservatives) are absolutely shitting themselves at losing core support to the minor parties; vote banana, get tractor. I wonder if people in America will ever experience this any time soon.

[Helgoland]

The majority of overweight people in the UK, Scotland especially, are from the poorest backgrounds.

I'd be interested in the mechanism from which this correlation originates - it pretty much rules out genetic reasons. Is it really just fast food being cheaper?

-beautifulsongsnip-

I love the way the last line sounds when sung~

[scriver]

It's not just fast food as in mcdonalds or kfc or whatever (allthough that certainly plays a big part) but more the cheap food in grocery stores being cheaper, and that food generally has a lot of sugars and such added to it.

[Helgoland]

What 'cheap food' precisey though? I'm big on home-cooked meals, so I really don't know. Some of my co-students eat a lot of pre-cooked stuff that needs very litte preparation time - is that what you mean?

[smjjames]

Oh the joys of a First Past the Post election with multiple parties riding high in the polls. This is what it looks like when the powers-that-be (Labour/Conservatives) are absolutely shitting themselves at losing core support to the minor parties; vote banana, get tractor. I wonder if people in America will ever experience this any time soon.

I thought you guys didn't have a FPTP system?

As for it happening in America, the third parties aren't powerful enough. Unless you mean losing core support to the minor parties? No idea. The whole FPTP system kind of pre-empts it.

Also, to NOBODYS SURPRISE, the rebels kept fighting, broke the ceasefire, and captured a key city. Ceasefires NEVER work unless all parties agree to it.

[Owlbread]

I thought you guys didn't have a FPTP system?

As for it happening in America, the third parties aren't powerful enough. Unless you mean losing core support to the minor parties? No idea. The whole FPTP system kind of pre-empts it.

In Scotland we have a mixture; list seats are elected based on proportional representation for regions, constituency seats are elected as FPTP.

In Westminster, which is a completely different system, there is only FPTP - which basically guaranteed a two party system in some form or another, with one other party thrown into the mix as a minor. At the beginning of the 20th century it was Liberals vs Conservatives with Labour as a minor party representing the poorest, working class districts. As time went on it shifted to Labour vs Conservatives with Liberals as a minor party, predominantly representing rural areas which aren't wealthy enough to vote Tory. Now the Liberals are facing oblivion and huge tracts of Labour and Conservative support bases may go in strange directions; leading to potential UKIP gains and a big SNP presence. The parliament will be fractured as a result and will look very different.

If we had some kind of PR system in Westminster god knows what it would look like. Down south there would be a LOT of UKIP seats, that's for sure. A few greens too. Pre-2010 there would have been quite a few BNP seats as well but the racist vote has gone straight to UKIP these days. It would look very different in Scotland though - lots and lots of SNP seats in places like Glasgow where they tend to come in second place.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler: I should probably keep track of how many times I end up making great walls of text in xpol threads. (click to show/hide)

I thought you guys didn't have a FPTP system?

We tried (well, libdems tried) and ultimately failed to change the system largely because people either didn't know there was a vote to change the system, or labour and con media campaigns got to voters before the nonexistent libdem media did. Quite sad really, it was the 2nd of the 3rd libdem step into oblivion - undeservedly so.

Also, to NOBODYS SURPRISE, the rebels kept fighting, broke the ceasefire, and captured a key city. Ceasefires NEVER work unless all parties agree to it.

Kinda goes without saying. Sauce on who broke the ceasefire first?

The majority of overweight people in the UK, Scotland especially, are from the poorest backgrounds.

I'd be interested in the mechanism from which this correlation originates - it pretty much rules out genetic reasons. Is it really just fast food being cheaper?

Oi oi
Why do you rule out genetic reasons? That's an arbitrary decision. Look to the newish field of epigenetics, many are doing lots of research on obesity and research on the survivors of the dutch famine and their children. Obesity could beget obesity, that’s even without considering the actual genes that increase risk of obesity.

It's against stuff like that that I take comfort in the fact that, somehow, in a country like mine we managed to convince 45% of the population to vote for independence. How we even did that I'll never really understand.

I don't even understand how 55% were convinced to stay; the no campaign was apocalyptic, international public support was significant and it's much easier to campaign for change than not.

You can reduce it to that, but I'm not sure if misguided economics alone is responsible for everything e.g. the enormous divide in this country between certain parts of England and the rest of the Union. That divide is socio-economic, political, cultural... the measures taken/are taking to deal with the economic crisis just widened the divide and made it more obvious.

[Laughing Boris Johnsons intensify]

I'm not saying Scotland is virtuous, or better than England or something; polling results across the board show that we're a socially conservative country (in favour of the death penalty, tighter control on immigration etc) but economically quite left wing, even Socialist. I think we're harkening back to the post-1945 Welfare State that the London elite are hell bent on eroding or something. We don't really have a "metropolitan elite" similar to or anywhere near as powerful as the London one, and "middle Scotland" is quite different from middle England in some ways. They do have similar attitudes but I think there's a marked swing towards left-wing economic policy in middle Scotland when compared with middle England. Of course nobody wants to pay higher taxes, even though they want the railways nationalised and the energy companies and so on, but that's to be expected.

The old London elite is very much dead. The new social elite are the public figures, the new economical elite are rich Arabs, Russians, Chinese and French (surprisingly more than the Americans) and the political elite are all public school boys and girls turned Oxbridge students turned MPs (with exception to UKIP, many of whom didn't even go to Uni) and the children of the old elite have all either moved abroad or to areas of zone 2 London gentrified to Starbucks and back, further contributing to gentrification. London itself is not a single cohesive entity, battles for influence happen between political strongholds for funding and programs in their constituencies, the councils likewise do so between councillors. Economic struggles between the eastern and central financial districts, or the political dickwaving going on between Westminster and the City of London Corporation. Even within the parties individual MPs are very conflicted with one another. The Corporation of London is of particular note for being an authority in its own right, and arguably the greatest concentration of power in London - moreso than Westminster. Their influence is incredibly hard to gauge because they're very good at keeping secrets, they're probably the closest we'll ever get to having an iloominate - an ancient secretive entity that might control the world, or at the very least nudge it this way and that.
The Corporation of London do not care about social welfare. It's a safe bet to make that they find their way out of taxes easily enough. They're much like the apathetic elite of Hong Kong in that regard - as long as capital continues to flow, their mission is fulfilled. Granted they do keep the capital flowing and keep attracting foreign elite to London, but they're very shifty and they are less democratic than America. The Westminster elite are terrified of losing support to UKIP, the SNP and the Greens, so they're eager to jump on any topic that will garner public loyalty quickly. Immigration is always a hot issue (especially with London being an estimated 5% illegal immigrants), so are benefits - with one particularly news worthy story being that of the couple 'too fat to work' funding their marriage off of benefits and false benefit claimant stories are common enough in the media. Drag queens who claimed they were unable to move, immigrants who have a half dozen kids and seek no job, women who use the benefits to get breast implants e.t.c... These stories are designed to gather rage during a slow news week, and politicians are quick to harness that rage for political points.

But unlike people like the working class or immigrants, fat people claiming benefits are a demographic that a politician can attack without fear of being controversial and risking anything. Obesity costs the NHS £6,000,000,000 a year and about half a hundred million a year in benefits. If you're cynical it's an incentive to force the obese to change their lifestyles or starve until they are no longer obese, of if you're even more cynical it's a quick political grab for the anti-fatty vote.

Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said: “Successive governments have made life too easy for too many obese people.
“If the obese have a legitimate cause for their fatness – and there may be medical or genetic reasons – benefits should not be denied to them.
“But getting long-term benefits ­simply for over-eating is an insult to society.”

Source, mirror. The mirror is also one of those tabloids that likes making you angry. Consider it Daily Mail lite.

Geesh! I knew David Cameron was an asshole. I didn't know yet he was a nazi fascist fuck.
His new idea: force people that depend on social security, who are fat, to lose weight, or they lose their income (and their home, and everything).
Now I'm not fat, but I do know that there are a lot of fat people out there who really cannot help being fat. (Even though I admit there also are some who can help it).
Cameron should be put on trial in the Hague for this.

It's obviously your fault if you're fat though. I mean, it might have something to do with the fact that junk food is cheaper than healthier options, minimum wage is still lower than Living wage so you have to work long hours to afford anything useful and are thus too tired to prepare a balanced meal, or even weight gain in response to other health issues, but you're obviously just a weak person if you can't keep your appetite in check. Obviously.

I grew up on what translates to 'poor people food' in English, with food recipes from a broad range of immigrant foods. Cheap, delicious and nutritious, with lots of opportunities to recycle last night's dinner into today's porridge. Marketplace food prices can be phenominally cheap for a stupendously excellent quality, one can find venison, wild boar, finnish and french bread and quail's eggs and whole trouts and salmons often cheaper than plain beans, dried sardines and bleached bread at Lidl or Aldi. But such places are rare (I've only seen two in my life in London and one recently closed down), and for many often very hard to reach. So instead look at these foods prices from Tescos, which even offers a delivery service so you wouldn't even need to leave your house to stock up on food: rice at £0.45 to the kilo, bread at £0.60 to the kilo, pasta at £1.20 to the kilo, potatoes at £0.70 to the kilo, pork sausage at £0.70 to the kilo, carrots at £0.60 to the kilo, chicken at £3.75 to the kilo. Say, instead of getting spuds and pork and cooking itself yourself you bought a microwavable bangers and mash, it'd cost you round about £2.50 to the kilo - with that same money you could've bought yourself several days worth of spuds, peas and pork for a whole family, or perhaps gotten a dozen jacket potatoes and fine cheddar cheese and beans to eat - with the same effort as would be needed to cook bangers and mash. Pop holes in potato, pop in microwave - enjoy. Food choices don't even need to necessitate even that much miniscule effort in cooking to attain value, I was bloody damn surprised to find that corn flakes (which has the quality of sawdust) was more expensive per gram than Alpen (which is of a superb quality).
Once you step away from cooking and the pricey but still value enough instant meals, you enter the realm of fast food.

Needless to say, fast food is just beefier corn flakes. It is not a good staple food (though corn flakes at least can be a good staple food, just not preferable) and masquerades shit value as good value whilst using the lowest quality ingredients to maximise profit. Needless to say, instant food outclasses fast food in value the same way cooking outclasses instant food and low market ingredients can outclass supermarket pricing. And on the topic of corn flake fast food - look no further to Mc Donalds, where for £6.18 you could get a large bic mac and large fries or for £5.05 you could get twice as much meat in a gourmet burger king classic or for £6.45 have such a burger with blue cheese or gorgonzola - the difference in quality being unlike GBK, McDonald's meat quality is so low that when rotten meat is ground up and served with fresh meat no one notices and unlike GBK they use synthetic cheese instead of real cheese. And on that same vein of pricing for £7.00 you can get half a chicken done at Nandos, and their chicken is really fucking good. If you want to go fat at least choose the lesser of all the evils, lesser on your heart and your wallet and you'd enjoy yourself more.

'Cheap food' that is believed to be cheap is often ripping you off blind. Actual cheap food tends to be pretty god damn awesome. Now while I regard Mr. Cameron as of a regard as trustworthy as a Somali Pirate politely asking for your engine keys, I think calling him a Nazi Facist Fuck might be a slight overstatement. One thing I do find quite pricey is fruit; most berries are per kilo so expensive as to render them mostly limited to their harvest season, for special holidays or devious moments on a farmer's farm where you guzzle yourself juicy whilst no one is looking like a true Daily Mail caricature. In all seriousness though, apples can be as low as £1.15 per kilo and bananas as low as £0.60 per kilo (God bless the banana node of Ireland), seedless grapes at £4.00 per kilo and oranges around £2.00 per kilo. And these are prices I'm just taking off of Tescos, I haven't even bothered searching for the most value foods within Tescos or the most value foods out of all the competing supermarkets. I understand that in America since corn starch foods with corn syrup flavourings are so ubiquitous, subsidized and cheap and regular ingredients are marked off as 'organic' and marked up in the same way that giving your food french names doubles the price, but in Europe there are many many options for cheap, wholesome and varied foods.

*EDIT
I have found berries selling in the range of £1-£3 per kilo. Not in supermarkets near me, which is unfortunate. But they're out there!

[Owlbread]

I think there's a tendency among people of my political stripe in Scotland to refer to a "metropolitan elite" or the "London elite" or "Westminster" like it's the death star and the root of all evil and the rotten heart of the broken British system. I see now that kind of thinking is wooly and inaccurate.

Thank you for educating me on the fascinating power struggles going on down there - if more people in Scotland understood the power the City of London Corporation has over us both as Scotland and as the UK and the comparative lack-of-influence found in Westminster then I think our arguments would be a bit more nuanced. Maybe next time I find myself on a doorstep trying to convince someone about this sort of thing I'll explain to them that Westminster is basically Darth Vader, while the City of London Corporation is like the Emperor. But yes, to answer your question about why the No campaign actually won when they were so terrible, the answer is that the No Campaign didn't really exist. They had no activists, no ground presence. They were just a front for the Scottish financial elites (insurance companies, banks, supermarkets, oil companies) who have their interests vested in (...) the City of London! Who'd have thought it?

We were ahead in the polls right before the vote until the whole "shock and awe" thing happened where it seemed like every single day for about a week the biggest corporations in Scotland threatened withdrawing and moving to England because that's where all their customers were. That's what shifted the polls against us, not the No Campaign or the Vow or anything like that. The tragic thing is the SNP have absolutely no idea how to combat them, and that's what worries me more than anything. When I go to SNP constituency meetings we discuss the devolution of more powers, we discuss the Vow, we discuss what the Labour Party are doing, we discuss new proposals for policy. At the top level, Nicola Sturgeon's going down south banging on about austerity and Alex Salmond talks of "holding Westminster's feet to the fire".

I'm sorry folks, but what the hell are we doing? In the space of a year or so, reaching an almighty crescendo in the final week of the referendum, we saw the most powerful forces in the whole of Scotland and the UK at large rear their ugly heads as one against our movement. They were the ones that swung it - through their control of our media, our newspapers (still read by hundreds of thousands), our livelihoods, our economy. Scotland had a gun put to its head... and nobody's talking about it. What are we going to do about it? What the hell can we do about it? Even without the referendum we're still getting held hostage on a regular basis by the energy companies over fracking - this just simply cannot go on.

It often feels to me like we're fighting the wrong enemy, they're just puppets. I have no idea how to fight the right one.

[smjjames]

You sound like the City of London should become it's own city state.

Though that'll happen as much as NYC is likely to become a city state.

[Owlbread]

You sound like the City of London should become it's own city state.

Though that'll happen as much as NYC is likely to become a city state.

I don't think the City of London even has a static population worth the name. It's not really a "City" from what I can tell, it's an entity. I mean, does Wall Street have a static population?

[mainiac]

Maybe instead of looking for a "gun to your head" you should listen to the voters who voted against?  Pretty much every faction that has lost an election ever is tempted to say "we really had a majority but X happened".

[Sheb]

Just to clarify: Owlbread is not talking about London, but about the City of London Corporation, a weird cross between a local authority and a medieval merchant guild that rule over about a square mile of central London, is elected by residents and local businesses (which may appoint a certain number of electors) and de facto serve as a trade body for the London financial industry.

[Owlbread]

Maybe instead of looking for a "gun to your head" you should listen to the voters who voted against?  Pretty much every faction that has lost an election ever is tempted to say "we really had a majority but X happened".

We're only appealing to the 5-10% of the No voters we can actually reach, who were motivated to vote No by the Vow/out of fear. Where did that fear come from if not the 12 months of corporate threats? Nevertheless it did concern me that we didn't sit around and have a meeting on "what went wrong" or went canvassing on No voters to find out why they voted No - what swung them etc. We know who they are - we have their addresses. Why aren't we using that info? I suspect that the post-referenum focus is on the Vow and the need for more powers to take scrutiny away from the flaws in the economic case (e.g. currency union) that needed revising for the future.

I maintain that regardless of what people on the doorsteps say we will face the exact same monsters next time which could be in the next 5 years. We need to find a way of playing their corporate game and getting a body of them on our side - I think the Eurosceptics winning the EU referendum may force the corporations our way, but I don't know.