General Election 2015 (UK)

I havn’t been following the general election so I don’t know much about the parties and policies.
I’m just curious if any of the parties have benefits for new game developer companies/studios or just video games in general.

If your already decided, who are you voting for and why?

I’ll probably spoil my ballot. The last election demonstrated perfectly that there’s zero accountability for an elected party, and that they are perfectly capable of doing the exact opposite of their campaign promises / manifesto pledges.

There was the promise there would be no cuts to the emergency services? We’ve lost 6,000 nurses, 1/3rd of ambulance stations, 5,500 firefighters and 7000 police officers since that election. Sounds like fairly drastic cuts to me.

Our VAT rate was 17.5% before the election and it’s 20% now - it took them until the end of the election year to break this promise. I guess it was on the cards the whole time after all.

The Universal Child Benefit scheme was set to be scrapped in October, just six months after the election. They introduced means testing to it, and froze the value of it for years, rather keeping value in line with inflation.

In the past few years we’ve witnessed the biggest top-down reformation of the NHS in it’s entire history. Granted, it took less than a year after the 2010 election for the Health and Social Care Act bill to arrive in the House of Commons, and it was put into action a year later.

Educational maintenance allowance was scrapped just five months after the election.

Pledged to protect the Sure Start childcare center scheme the day before the general election. Since over 500 Sure Start centers have been closed and half of those that remain open no longer work with any children on-site.

Scrapped on the 24th May, just two weeks after the general election. Ouch.

I’m sure we all remember the bank bonus hysteria of a couple of years ago. What you might not know, is that whilst George Osbourne is quoted as being against them entirely in the run up to the 2010 election, he is in fact currently taking legal action against the EU for introducing a cap on those bonuses. That’s a bit of a change of stance.

This from the party who are actively trying to censor the Internet and hide their manfesto and speeches from the previous election. Nice.

If a party can say anything they want in order to obtain power, do something completely different once they’re there without any incentive to do otherwise or even repercussions whatsoever - what is the point of voting for anyone at all? To top it off, the same people that lied about their election promises five years ago have been caught actively trying to censor the Internet in order to remove all evidence of them in time for the current election - because they can do that. ******* brilliant.

I guess you can vote on who do you dislike the least :stuck_out_tongue: The problem with a lot of these policies is that they just seem simply unrealistic but they sound good so they’ll get peoples votes. Sometimes it seems the big problems that are dragging the economy down are being actively ignored because the solution actually involves cuts and isn’t ‘create money out of thin air’. But no-one will vote for that solution because it has no short term benefits. Needless to say there needs to be more strict rules on making the party in power actually carry out their policies without having some excuse to do otherwise.

I’ve found this site: https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/ which seems a pretty neat idea. But again all these policies can just be a bunch of words strung together…

You can always cancel out someones UKIP vote :cool:

It’s pretty neat, and I do know where I stand (I apparently lean entirely Green, which is unsurprising really since they’re now the only significant non-right-wing-authoritarian part left) - but at the end of the day, if these policies count for nothing as we’ve seen, how useful is it?

I wish this were true, but sadly the ‘first past the post’ system we use actually mean the majority of votes count for nothing. To top it off, my constituency is Manchester Central, meaning my vote is actually 4.2 times less valuable than the average vote (and 11 times less valuable than someone in Penrith) :confused:

Wasted votes in the 2010 election:

Vote value by postocde:

And finally, here’s a nice site for spotting the ■■■■■■■■ - tells you who voted which way on certain key policies (e.g. Banker Bonuses). Pays to be informed what your local candidates really stand for:

I dont live in britian but i know the situation is getting pretty dire there for some people, it was a real eyeopener watching the series skint which focused on scunthorpe in the first series and grimsby in the second series, no matter who gets voted in they will almost certainly do nothing for these and other such affected towns…gordon brown leaving his microphone on and insulting that old woman is probably the only truth you will hear come out of a politicians mouth

Okay I’m bored so here is my own party that I’m making up on the spot. :slight_smile: It shall be called the ‘The United People Who Are A Little Smarter Than The Other Parties’!

Our policies:
Make UE4 the National Bird. :slight_smile:

I made an earlier post with real suggestions but my friend said it might offend people. so there you go! :slight_smile:

Vote Tegleg!

Vote Green!! It’s the only party who actually give a shirt…All the rest are puppets to the machine

Vote for a party that supports free markets and limited government, otherwise don’t.
Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” Jerry Garcia.

exactly

i voted once, i added my own name at the bottom with a box and ticked it. unfortunately i didn’t win, oh well maybe this time :slight_smile:

Vote Tegleg!

EvilCleric, you are brilliant! Less government And free markets! Also ULLS, Shirts are nice… but if you vote wrong you will never be able to buy a shirt again! (or not as many as you would hope)
And tegleg, I’ll vote for you if you make UE4 the national bird. To bad I can’t vote in England. :slight_smile:

I have a dream…

478a110eea380e7ae6325ab430501299f2241c4b.jpeg

I dream of sucking less in photoshop

Exactly! I can barely afford to buy a shirt at the moment…These F*ing tories are evil and if they had their way they would leave us to starve to death while they bask away in their wealth…also I heard they have been in talks with the royal lot, attempting to change the democratic system so they can stay in power (some VICE article (I know, I know)). This worries me tremendously. The greens are the only party that speak with common sense. The major parties have all been taught how to persuade the masses by north American advisers. It’s all a game to them and they don’t give a flying **** about anyone but themselves. The Greens do actually care, their policies make sense but they will never get in power because they have nothing to offer the corrupt and the greedy. Ugh!!!

is monster raving loony party running this time? maybe it would be for the best if they won.
them or Guy Fawkes anyway

Or Vandal…

According to VFP I’m primarily Green Party. I’d sooner vote Monster Raving Loony party over Conservatives. If I’d registered at my new address that’s who I’d have gone for. again, I also REALLY like the Lib Dems’ idea of ‘Renting into Buying’ for new home owners. Something particularly appealing to me right now.

Who am I kidding, sod all will change anyway. Still have a fair amount of respect for Cameron though, he ran for office while one of his kids was dying which seemed mad. That said, he doesn’t half embarrass us at times:

Slight OT: I really like Obama.

Meh. The green party is nothing but another Torie party. They will give nice sounding promises, … BOOM! we lied. That’s what happend in America. The democrats promised the same thing and did the exact Opposite of what they promised. They will push there agenda forget all their promises. Also America owns England now. I hate saying that but it is sadly true. Maybe it’s time for a new party? One that will lift the people up. Not one that only caters to the rich. But also is fair to the more well of people. We can’t just say they are evil because they have money. If I had the chance I would make it so Politicians only made the minimum wage. And would also block all donations to the parties from companies, banks, foreigners, Etc… maybe we would see some improvements in the Government. (Also why should we pay the Royals money? They don’t do a @%! thing.)

EDIT: I hope I removed all typos. I suck using an phone keyboard. :frowning: