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Originally Posted by cfg83
Ha ha. When I finish talking politics to a lot of my friends, I often end with saying "because we're right and they're wrong!".
Question: How many different parties are there in Scotland/UK with real influence on the government? What I am asking is, how much political diversity is tolerated in your country and has "a seat at the table"? My colonial (ha ha) perspective would assume it's the Conservative and Labour parties and not much in between. But this is wrong, yes?
CarloSW2
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Yes and No. My view of our politics at the moment can be summed up below
In terms of what is tolerated, anything you like. We have a full spectrum from hard-line central control comunists to full on libertarians, anarchists, facists, racists - the lot.
In terms of who gets control then for the UK there are 3 main parties from "left to right" are Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives / Tories (2 names, same party). There is a lot of overlap in them and not much seperating them. Additionally there are some regional parties in Scotland, Wales and NI which also get seats - each MP is voted in a local constituency so local preferences have an influence. There are a few fringe parties but because of the system of electing MPs they rarely get a seat - the one exception is a single Green MP.
In the UK parliament the current government since last year is a coalition between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. This replaced a Labour government which had been in since 1997. Debatable as to how well they are doing. The government doesn't control all MPs and that is where the regional parties can have an influence on votes.
In Scotland, Wales and NI we also have regional assemblies which tend to be controlled by the nationalists and Labour / Lib Dems - for
the tories don't have much of an influence in them.
The current Scottish government is a minority one with the SNP in charge which means they have to negotiate with the other parties on each issue. There are elections in Scotland this year.
Like a lot of people I'm not a member of a party and no longer support a single one as I have in the past. This has resulted in all of the parties losing support and membership. The Tories are more or less financed by large business, Labour by the Unions and the Lib Dems by large benefactors. This of course means that apart from our votes we don't have much influence.
You could see their seperation from us in the expenses issues the other year - it was like they couldn't care less what we thought and even the ones eventually brought to trial tried to claim they had immunity from justice as MPs.
Mr Jefferson was right when he said or wrote
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When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
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