Do you take in interest in your countries politics?

admin

Retired Administrator
Its amazing how many people don't, some people in this country don't know which party is in charge, how the system works, even who the leader of the opposition is. More worryingly a small percentage don't know who the PM is!

Do you know about the politics of your country, who is in charge, how they got in charge, their cabinet and who the general system works?

Here in the UK we have quite a simple system. In short we have, like every other country in the world three parts to governing.

The Executive (Govt)
The Legislature (House of Commons House of Lords)
The Judiciary (Law Lords)

The government unlike the US system is made up of people from the legislature. The party with the most seats on the Commons becomes the governing party. The seats are decided using an electoral system called First Past the Post. There are 646 different constituencies and all but one (the speakers) is contested. The winner of that constiunecy has a seat!

The House of Lords (now this may scare some of you :D!) is unelected, it has 92 heritary peers and the remainder are actually nomiated by the Prime Minister!
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I've been trying to post in this thread for a few days. But every time I start collecting my thoughts I go off on a little mental rant! So I guess the answer is yes:). I'll try to find a way to elaborate without ranting:).
 

NeCoHo

Retired Mod
@admin- The US Supreme Court is in it till they die. And sometimes it seems like that for Congress.

And for those of you who don't know, The US also has 3 branches, Executive, Legislature, and Judical. Hmm, I wonder who had that first? :D Never mind. President (Executive) is elected through the Electoral College. Citizens vote for electors, and each state had a certain number of electoral votes. Who ever wins that state's popular(citizen) vote, gets the electoral vote. So, like with Bush Jr., You don't need the popular vote to win the presidency. Congress(Legislature) has two houses, aka bicameral house. Senate has 100 reps, House of Representatives has 435. Judical is Supeme court, elected by President, voted on by congress, get a job for life.
 

MITM18

New member
Yes of course and international, I believe its very important to know whats going on with the world.
 
One of the major differences between US & UKexecutive, legislature and judicary is the fact that in the US no individual can be in more than one of these sectors/groups- as stated in its codified constitution, however within Britain there is no such rule, as Lord Falconer stands in all 3 sectors! I think we should adopt this really, stop old Falconer from becoming power mad and taking over the world!:D Then again I guess its more important in the US, they have more power mad people- BUSH!!

Isnt this supposed to be a Malcolm in the Middle Forum, rather than a place to discuss A Level Politics??
 

MITM18

New member
The Grotto is mostly just the ETC part of the forum, where users can talk about anything they like other than you know the obvious no nos
 

Jimmy Junior

New member
I wouldn't say I'm fanatical about politics (I'd rather not pay council tax than be able to vote) but I like to keep abreast of what's going on around me.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Waste of time to monitor it; we can't do anything about it. It will just be interesting to see who Bush picks to suceed O'Connor; sounds like one other person could be resigning, and if Rehnquist ever dies, that's quite a few spots up for the picking by one person.
 

Emrysgirl

New member
What do people think of this Karl Rove-Valerie Plame thing? I thought Rove should have been fired long back, and this is just icing on the cake. I know you support Bush, yardgames, so I'm particularly interested in you're opinion.
 
Could I please have another US perspective (other than that of Michael Moors) on Bush, because from what I know he seems like an idiot. But I don't feel I know many other perspectives.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Ok, Emrysgirl, I won't give you my opinion, lol.

It's not that I support everything Bush does or everything Kerry wanted. For me, I believed in more of what Bush was trying to do than Kerry. I disagreed, and still do disagree, with certain aspects of the War in Iraq, for example. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have gone there in the first place. Bush messed that up, and he loses points. But now that we're there, we need to do it right, and Kerry would get it dun instead of getting it done.

On the political spectrum, I'm pretty moderate. I was actually leaning towards Kerry for quite a while. Ironically, what made me make up my mind decisively was hearing Kerry's speech at the Democratic Convention. He seemed very cocky and arrogant; and he didn't seem to care about anything other than getting soldiers out of Iraq. Not that that's not important, but if that's the only thing you care about, you're bound to do it wrong.

Bush seemed more sensible, he had better domestic ideas, and, for me, he had already proved himself on September 11, 2001. He proved he could lead our nation through good and through bad, and in a nutshell, I think 9/11 is one of the biggest reasons I was, and still am, a Bush supporter.
 

Emrysgirl

New member
Deweyrules! said:
Could I please have another US perspective (other than that of Michael Moors) on Bush, because from what I know he seems like an idiot. But I don't feel I know many other perspectives.
I agree with Michael Moore's intention and with what he said, but I think some parts of the film took it too far. I don't think Bush is an utter idiot. He's not the brightest person in the world, and I definitely don't agree with his decisions, but he's nowhere as stupid as they show him. I do notice though that, as shown in the film, he's ALWAYS on vacation!

yardgames said:
Ok, Emrysgirl, I won't give you my opinion, lol.
I think you misunderstood, I said I WANTED to hear your opinion. Given the fact that you support Bush (sometimes:) ), what do you think of this scandal? I don't think anyone in their right minds would argue that he didn't leak the info. But, do you think he should be fired for it?

yardgames said:
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have gone there in the first place. Bush messed that up, and he loses points. But now that we're there, we need to do it right, and Kerry would get it dun instead of getting it done.
I agree with everything except for the last part (and Kerry...). Bush messed up badly, but now that we're there, we need to stay. One of the very few things I support Bush on is the 'no withdrawal date' thing. I'm sure that, despite what he said to win public support, Kerry didn't plan on just leaving. But I think that Bush not only entered the war for wrong reasons, he's still handelling it badly. I don't know what Kerry would have done, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been that bad.

yardgames said:
Bush seemed more sensible, he had better domestic ideas, and, for me, he had already proved himself on September 11, 2001.
Oh wow really? The main reason I supported Kerry was not Iraq, but the domestic stuff. As far as 9/11 is concerned, to give an almost cliche argument: children...storybook...7 (or was it 9?) mins to respond. Even after that, Bush had no idea what was going on. It was either Cheney or Rumsfeld who ordered the war planes out etc. I would attribute the NYC reconstruction etc to Guilianni. And, don't forget all of Bush's resistance to the director of intelligence. After 9/11, Bush had an enormous amount of support that he could actually have used to do something. Instead, he wasted it on Iraq.
 
I would like to commend tony blairs actions in recent days- i.e. since the london bombs- do you think it was necessary for him to leave g8 and go to london? I think he had a duty to his country to be there, however technically its the secretary of state that deals with incidents like this.
 

Emrysgirl

New member
Yes, I think it was necessary. It WAS an emergency and people didn't know if it had ended. Also, there wasn't much else Blair could do at the G-8 Summit. He had already talked to the leaders. They knew where he stood.
 

Alfista Junior

New member
Of course I'm interested in politics, especially in the US. The decisions the country takes have fallouts on our life wherever we are living.;)
Maybe we should have the right to vote for the US president next time. :D
 

NeCoHo

Retired Mod
One thing that turned me off of Bush was when he re-named French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and French Toast, talk about stupidity.... but no one calls them Freedom Fries or Toast, it just proves what kind of leader he is. No, I'm not a democrat, or a republican for that matter. I wouldn't classify myself as a socilaist, facist, or even an anarchist, either. I won't post a website on here, so PM me if I've sparked your interest, or if your curious. It's got like 20 people in it from New Jersey. and the surrounding states... That's all I'll say.
 

Alfista Junior

New member
Concerning the French fries:

French ambassador in the US said something brilliant during the crisis: "We are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes."

Even if we don't eat French fries a lot here (because it's considered as junk food), we were offended. At least, I was.

Socrate said in Gorgias, "It's worse to commit an injustice than to undergo it" and he was definitely right.

Mr Jones who is responsible for this change recently apologized in The Guardian and said : "I wish it had never happened."
I appreciate but honestly I think it's the work of the future government (not the current one) to give back to French fries their right name celebrating in the meantime friendship between our both countries.
 

Wildcat

Retired Moderator
J. said:
One thing that turned me off of Bush was when he re-named French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and French Toast, talk about stupidity.... but no one calls them Freedom Fries or Toast, it just proves what kind of leader he is.

Are you serious? I've never heard that before. Now that's just stupid. :rolleyes:
 
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