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Oaka wrote: It's getting to the point where if I see Marneus Calgar and the Swarmlord in the same unit as a Riptide, I probably won't question its legality.
A tsunami that hit Bavaria would probably cause a few other problems...
Dakka Bingo! By Ouze "You are the best at flying things"-Kanluwen
"Further proof that Purple is a fething brilliant super villain " -KingCracker
"Purp.. Im pretty sure I have a gun than can reach you...."-Nicorex
"That's not really an apocalypse. That's just Europe."-Grakmar
"almost as good as winning free cake at the tea drinking contest for an Englishman." -Reds8n
Seal up your lips and give no words but mum.
Equip, Reload. Do violence.
Watch for Gerry.
I probably won't be voting. Primarily because I don't believe that in this election, my vote really makes the slightest bit of difference. I don't elect the European President, or any of the senior appointments. Not one single 'European' candidate has actually bothered to come to Britain to canvas. There are no 'European' policies advocated by any candidates, only individual national objectives and personal power grabbing. None of the parties who would like my vote have even laid out a manifesto as to exactly what policies they would fight for in Europe, for Christ's sake.
In short, it's all a bloody waste of time.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/05/20 01:07:11
Da Boss wrote: Greens usually do much better in EU elections than in local or national ones, which is nice. I'm fairly pro Green, though I wish they'd stop being anti nuclear and anti GM.
On not knowing about this stuff, well, on the one hand, it is out there to read about if you like, but it's rather dry. On the other hand, our various national media outlets do a pretty poor job of keeping people informed. As an outsider, all British media, even the BBC, has a Euroceptic slant. You can find Eurosceptic articles all over the BBC, and they don't (as far as I've noticed) particularly cover the various parliament groupings or European institutions very well. I don't entirely blame people who don't know this stuff- I only became marginally well informed because I was unemployed and bored during a couple of important referenda in Ireland an an EU election, so I looked into it and spent a week reading about it. Still, it's good to know, and even better, to discuss with your friends to raise awareness generally.
Is the Green party in England the same as the Green party here in the states?
Who I vote for is between me and the ballot box...
But that said I am amazed that anyone would vote Green.
But then I do live in an area were half the community centres were either shut or had the rents hiked to beyond affordable levels for community groups in order that the Greens could push through a proposal for loft insulation. Which sounds great, except the houses they were insulating - or rather their mates were insulating out of rate payers money - were gerry built victorian red brick terraces that were not losing heat through the roof, but through the single skinned walls
I'm sure to the Greens this was a nice little earner but it is little consolation to the mother and toddler groups, pensioners coffee morning, wargamers, alcoholics anonymous etc or indeed to the council staff that got laid off from caretaking jobs.
Still,the lady potters - who no doubt voted Green - who sip latte in the remaining community centres - having driven out the riff raff - are pleased.
The Greens will probably net a lote of votes for having positioned themselves as "the more dynamic social democrats", coupled with a pronounced pro-European stance that still acknowledges there's need for improvement. They are trying to offer something for everybody, and they need to, because their core-credos of environmental protection and sustainable economic behaviour have become so mainstream that they are hardly USPs anymore.
How well this translates to the policies of their national constituents is another story.
BTW, did anybody else watch that cringeworthy Eurovision "debate" with the candidates?
Oaka wrote: It's getting to the point where if I see Marneus Calgar and the Swarmlord in the same unit as a Riptide, I probably won't question its legality.
Pirate Party. Not much faith in other options that are running.
it's a damn shame it doesn't get covered better by our various media outlets.
The most I've heard was few propaganda commercials on the radio and few posters. Not much talk with the people too, most of them are fairly uninterested. I'm rather certain most of the people I've talked to won't vote.
I can honestly say if it wasn't for the steady stream of articles about UKIP on BBC News, I wouldn't even be aware there was an EU election.
As for me, I'm voting apathy. Whatever choice I make isn't going to make a blind bit of difference, as whoever gets in is just trying to fuel some self-serving agenda, and doesn't have their population's best interests at heart anyway.
I dunno, I've just always felt that the purpose of voting is to decide the colour of the t-shirt worn by the guy that bends you over and gives you one until your eyes water...
And that is why you hear people yelling FOR THE EMPEROR rather than FOR LOGICAL AND QUANTIFIABLE BASED DECISIONS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE MAJORITY!
Phototoxin wrote:Kids go in , they waste tonnes of money on marnus calgar and his landraider, the slaneshi-like GW revel at this lust and short term profit margin pleasure. Meanwhile father time and cunning lord tzeentch whisper 'our games are better AND cheaper' and then players leave for mantic and warmahordes.
daveNYC wrote:The Craftworld guys, who are such stick-in-the-muds that they manage to make the Ultramarines look like an Ibiza nightclub that spiked its Red Bull with LSD.
Dakka Bingo! By Ouze "You are the best at flying things"-Kanluwen
"Further proof that Purple is a fething brilliant super villain " -KingCracker
"Purp.. Im pretty sure I have a gun than can reach you...."-Nicorex
"That's not really an apocalypse. That's just Europe."-Grakmar
"almost as good as winning free cake at the tea drinking contest for an Englishman." -Reds8n
Seal up your lips and give no words but mum.
Equip, Reload. Do violence.
Watch for Gerry.
Unfortunately it looks as if UKIP are going to dramatically increase the number MEPs they send to Europe in order to claim expenses, whilst not bothering to actually do anything.
Of all of the parties in all of the countries in the whole of the EU, UKIP representatives have the worst attendance record, worst voting record and worst work performance of the entire lot.
UKIP MEPs don't do anything to represent British interests in the EU, they just make grandstanding speeches and claim expenses. On the rare occasions they turn up, they belligerantly vote against every piece of legislation, no matter how worthy, and with no consideration of how the legislation would affect British interests. All the while they claim expenses, and even, in some cases put their non-British family members on the taxpayer funded payroll.
In this article I'm going to provide two clear examples of how UKIP are an appalling party, that behave in a shamefully unpatriotic way, whilst simultaneously harping on about what a wonderful band of loyal British patriots they are.
Ivory
In January 2014 six UKIP MEPs, including party leader Nigel Farage, voted against an EU motion to clamp down on the illegal ivory trade. Aside from Farage, the other five UKIP MEPs to vote against this motion were Paul Nuttall (the deputy leader), Gerrard Batten, John Stuart, William Dartmouth and Derek Roland.
Thankfully the motion passed by 671 votes to 14, but for me, it is a source of national shame that half of the votes against this motion were cast by British MEPs (6 of them the aforementioned UKIP members and the other one Nicole Sinclare, who was elected as a UKIP member in 2009 but defected to set up her own We Demand a Referendum party).
Not only are UKIP MEPs the laziest in the whole of Europe, when they do bother to turn up to vote, they vote in a way that the vast majority of British people would find abhorrent.
The UKIP excuse for voting against the Combating Wildlife Crime motion is that they have an ideological obligation to vote against any piece of legislation that would give the EU more powers. I could write my own explanation of why it is bad to rigidly adhere to an ideological stance, even when doing so would cause you to do something appalling, but I'll leave it to the notoriosly Eurosceptic historian and Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to state the case:
"[I] expect Ukip to explain that they always vote against anything that expands EU power. As a passionate anti-EU conservative, I appreciate that stance. But when it comes to taking action against something as squalid as the ivory trade, even this rabid patriot would compromise my anti-EU principles. What next? Refusing to uphold a ban on child labour?"
If you head off to the polls to vote for UKIP, be sure to remember that they are the laziest of all European political parties, and in all likelihood they're going to continue voting in appalling ways, that bring shame on our country.
Fish
The 2014 UKIP European election video contains a section attacking the EU for the damage that has been done to the UK fishing industry, and the practice of forcing fishermen to sling perfectly good fish back into the sea to be eaten by seagulls because of arbitrary quota requirements.
I actually agree with their argument that the EU fisheries policy has been a complete shambles for decades, that the discard policy wasted countless millions of tonnes of perfectly good fish, and that the British fishing industry has suffered appallingly as a consequence of this mismanagement.
There is one glaring problem with UKIP harping on about how terrible the EU fisheries policy is. That problem is that a certain Mr Nigel Farage was a member of the European Fisheries committee for three years, yet he only ever bothered to turn up to one single meeting out of 42*.
So UKIP are happy to use the suffering of the British fishing industry as part of their Vote UKIP propaganda campaign, yet when Farage actually had an opportunity to stand up and fight for the British fishing industry in a place where he could have made an actual difference, he couldn't even be arsed to turn up to 97.6% of the meetings.
To put this absolute lack of effort into perspective, we can look at a celebrity chef called Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This guy is not a politician, and he doesn't have access to the EU fisheries committee, however what he does have is a determination to fight against the appalling waste caused by the discards policy, and a commitment to stand up for the interests of small scale British fishing operations.
Hugh was so incensed by the insanity of the EU discards policy that he set up Hugh's Fish Fight, got more than 870,000 people all over Europe to sign his petition against the discards policy, and eventually got the EU discards law changed.
It really is a shameful performance from UKIP. They harp on about protecting the British fishing industry in their party political broadcast, but when it comes to the crunch, some liberal, environmentalist celebrity chef has done infinitely more to make a positive difference than the supposedly patriotic leader of their party who was actually signed up to the EU fisheries committee (which has the power to table amendments to existing legislation and table new legislation), but couldn't even be arsed to turn up.
What is even worse is that the UKIP party political broadcast harps on about discards as a stick to beat the EU with, as if they are completely ignorant of the fact that some borderline hippy celebrity chef went and did what UKIP MEPs couldn't be arsed to do, and has already got the stupid discards law changed.
Working against Britain's interests
There are two very significant ways in which the behavoiur of UKIP MEPs work against Britian's interests.
Sometimes legislation is proposed that would actually work in Britain's interests, yet their ideological voting habits mean that they end up voting against it, on the grounds that they don't want to EU to have more powers. An example could be legislation to allow EU member states to impose import taxes on products that are produced in conditions that would be illegal in the UK. Putting a tax on pork products from caged pigs, or eggs from battery hens in tiny cages (both illegal in the UK but widely practiced elsewhere in Europe) would help the British farming industry by preventing foreign farmers from undercutting their prices with barbaric animal welfare conditions. UKIP would probably belligerently vote against such a motion, even though the outcome would be positive for UK farmers and the UK economy.
The other way that UKIP work against the British national interest is their appalling attendance record, which means that they often don't bother to turn up to vote at all. This means that legislation that is bad for British interests can scrape through simply because UKIP couldn't be bothered to actually vote against it.
The former UKIP deputy leader Patrick Bannerman (who quit through the revolving door between UKIP and the Tory party) criticised UKIP for their ideological stance and their lack of participation saying "I believe in leaving the European Union, but it is important to engage as much as possible . . . Not engaging is not helpful".
Alternatives
If you are Eurosceptic there are other parties you can vote for to get the outcome you want.
The Green party has a manifesto commitment to a referendum on membership of the EU, but you can guarantee that their MEPs will also work tirelessly to make the system better for Britain and more democratic too, rather than bagging millions in expenses despite being the laziest party in the whole of Europe.
If you don't like the idea of voting Green, there are several other Eurosceptic parties such as No2EU and New Deal that have strong anti-EU philosophies, but don't come with all of the toxic Thatcherite ideology, failed Tories and complete raving nutcases (the gay equality causes floods chap, the single finger salute woman, the my political opponents should be hung guy, the we should shoot a "poofter guy, the gays have sex with animals woman, the "is Tuna a real fish like one that swims in the sea?" woman and the guy that calls the police on bloggers who fact check spoof UKIP posters).
Conclusion
You might think that voting UKIP is good way of expressing your discontent with the EU, but it isn't. There are plenty of other anti-EU parties that offer us a referendum on the EU without being the laziest political party in Europe, voting against British interests for purely ideological reasons and shaming the UK by voting in appalling ways that virtually nobody in the UK would actually support.
Voting for UKIP is wasting your vote in an incredibly belligerent manner.
The promise of the EU referendum is basically the current political climate equivalent of the pavlov's dog experiment
Every party will ring that bell time and time again, watch us get all excited and salivating, while knowing full well there no bowl of winalot at the end.
And that is why you hear people yelling FOR THE EMPEROR rather than FOR LOGICAL AND QUANTIFIABLE BASED DECISIONS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE MAJORITY!
Phototoxin wrote:Kids go in , they waste tonnes of money on marnus calgar and his landraider, the slaneshi-like GW revel at this lust and short term profit margin pleasure. Meanwhile father time and cunning lord tzeentch whisper 'our games are better AND cheaper' and then players leave for mantic and warmahordes.
daveNYC wrote:The Craftworld guys, who are such stick-in-the-muds that they manage to make the Ultramarines look like an Ibiza nightclub that spiked its Red Bull with LSD.
Voting Green because too many people are voting UKIP as a protest vote, and I don't want to risk accidentally giving them any semblance of power.
That said, I'd rather pinch one off in the ballot box if it counted rather than vote.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
Sigvatr wrote: Fully agree on the nuclear energy point. It's pretty safe and gets us a lot of cheap energy. I don't understand Germany's decision to ban all nuclear power...even if there was a nuclear accident in any neighboring country with Radioactive plants, the fallout would devastate Germany just as well. The only consequence is higher energy cost for the average German citizen.
Lol, from one of the news articles I read when I was stationed there, most of the nuclear plants were being shut down for "security" reasons, rather than fallout safety and those sorts of issues?
Also, I should point out that during my time in Germany, I always felt that the US should adopt similar campaign laws to Germany and other countries (ie. you are only allowed to run campaign ads, place signs out, etc. during a set period of time in the run up to the election), as it is now, the US campaign system is a fething nightmare.
Sigvatr wrote: Fully agree on the nuclear energy point. It's pretty safe and gets us a lot of cheap energy. I don't understand Germany's decision to ban all nuclear power...even if there was a nuclear accident in any neighboring country with Radioactive plants, the fallout would devastate Germany just as well. The only consequence is higher energy cost for the average German citizen.
Lol, from one of the news articles I read when I was stationed there, most of the nuclear plants were being shut down for "security" reasons, rather than fallout safety and those sorts of issues?
Also, I should point out that during my time in Germany, I always felt that the US should adopt similar campaign laws to Germany and other countries (ie. you are only allowed to run campaign ads, place signs out, etc. during a set period of time in the run up to the election), as it is now, the US campaign system is a fething nightmare.
I get the impression that politics is pervasive in the USA. Presidential elections every 4 years. Mid-term elections. Candidates announcing that they're running for election a full year or two prior to an election - preceded by months of rumours and hype over who is going to run. Then campaign fund raising, and then actual campaigning.
It seems like the American political system is one long never ending electoral cycle.
I get the impression that politics is pervasive in the USA. Presidential elections every 4 years. Mid-term elections. Candidates announcing that they're running for election a full year or two prior to an election - preceded by months of rumours and hype over who is going to run. Then campaign fund raising, and then actual campaigning.
It seems like the American political system is one long never ending electoral cycle.
It is... and it bugs the gak out of me... Which is why I was amazed and quite happy to see in Germany the campaign season, you'd only see the signs up for a few weeks or whatever. IIRC, you guys in Britain have a fairly limited window for announcing and running campaigns as well, right?
I get the impression that politics is pervasive in the USA. Presidential elections every 4 years. Mid-term elections. Candidates announcing that they're running for election a full year or two prior to an election - preceded by months of rumours and hype over who is going to run. Then campaign fund raising, and then actual campaigning.
It seems like the American political system is one long never ending electoral cycle.
It is... and it bugs the gak out of me... Which is why I was amazed and quite happy to see in Germany the campaign season, you'd only see the signs up for a few weeks or whatever. IIRC, you guys in Britain have a fairly limited window for announcing and running campaigns as well, right?
Err...I'm not sure. I think we always hold elections around may, and usually on a Thursday. It used to be that a Prime Minister could choose to dissolve parliament at any time and trigger a general election, but our current Coalition Government did away with that by introducing Fixed Term Parliaments. We now have have regular general elections every 5 years, similar to the USA.
Yeah.. I'm not even gonna bother voting on this. I've done only a little research and it clearly showed me, there was no choice here, every single one gave me just as many pro's and con's. So, who the hell cares what happens.
Da Boss wrote: Sad to see people not voting- engaging with the process is the only way to change it.
Let's be serious here.. this is the EU we are talking about.
An EU of of sovereign nation states, each of whom send an unelected commissioner to do their bidding and to make the real decisions.... assuming our American overlords allow them.... the parliament has next to no power on making decisions and the elections for the parliament are effectively rigged... certainly in the UK... yeah I will vote... and I will take my kids along to the voting station so they at least get a notion of the process... but let's not kid ourselves, I know what party I am voting for, but I have no idea of the place'person' they will send to pick up the expenses check.... who they are, what they think, if they are any good or not. It's a total sham.
It all rather reminds me of the situation in late 19th century Germany with the Frankfurt parliament and the Kaiser... and that can hardly be said to have turned out well...
I must be the only one on dakka who supports the right wing. Mind you that I am talking about Finish politics, as I am unfamiliar with politics of the other EU states.
The reason why I think those are the best option is becasue the other options are in my opinion not as good. The four big parties are the only onews which are somehow powerful and here are they summed up by me, and why I do not support/support them.
Keskusta. The Center Party. Generally has no strong opinions, exept will do all it can to defend the rural areas. In my opinion, the farmers already get enough support, and their idea of economy, which is to cover the whole country with social services, is in my opinion economically bad, as the country is too large to have all services everywhere.
SDP. The social democrats. No longer a true socialist party, but rather has an ideology similar to the greens, but is a bit more right. I think thay are to liberal and their economic ideas don't seem to be good in my opinion.
Perussuomalaiset. Basicfinns. The party that I would go with. Has a kind of economic policy of mixed Keskusta and SDP, which I don't like, but they have a conservative ideology, which I support. They are also Somehow anti EU, which I support, as I want EU to stay as an economic union. Also, while they have also some not so sensible members, thay do have few ones who argue using facts and provide sensible solutions.
Kokoomus. The Conservatives. From all the parties these are the most right wing one, and they are conservatives, and in my mind, they have the best economic policy, but the reason I do not support them, is that they are heavily pro EU, and generally can "sell" their ideology to have more power.
So, what are your thoughts?
Spoiler:
Here is a political test for those who are interested in how will they be based on the political spectrum: http://www.euvox.eu/language-select.php .It gave me FPÖ as the most recommended party out of all EU. Can anybody Austrian tell me what are they kind?
I was going to vote but I realised there's not one party or candidate I could vote for to make things better. I think every option would either make no difference or make things actively worse.
" -KingCracker
Now That I've Said it, It Must Be Canon 
