Salaam Revivalers!
It has been a long time. The General Election has brought the Digest out of hiding for a quick issue.
Much of the content below is political and that is on purpose because we need to make sure we take aprt in tomorrow’s General Election and use our votes in ways which we think will have a positive impact.
Labour with Jeremy Corbyn is the only choice we have in this election. He has opposed wars in the Middle East, had lobbied for the Palestinians and even vowed to recognise Palestine immediately after he is elected.
Who else has promised us this? For those of you who do not believe in voting, how are you going to change the system if you don't play by the system. Other minorities have a greater say in the country than we do even though we are one of the biggest minorities in the U.K.
1.) £10 minimum wage.
2.) No increase in N.I. or Income Tax if earning less than £80k a year (those earning slightly above receiving a modest increase - 5% of the working populace).
3.) Scrapping tuition fees.
Dont believe the opinion polls which suggest that the Conservative lead is slipping. My blog posts on The Secrets of Democracy and Voting and The Secrets of Electoral Opinion Polls will explain my views on how the system works and what the polls are really saying.
In short, Conservative voters are more likely to actually actually turn up to vote than Labour voters, who will be busy tweeting and posting on facebook telling others to vote.
With the narrowing of opinion polls recently in the UK General election, I think people need to question what they actually show.
An opinion poll of voting preference is not simply asking 20 people (or 200 or even 2000) people what they think and then publishing the results.
They are a lot more involved than that and depending on the assumptions used the results can vary greatly.
Firstly a simple example.
To simplily matters and ignore opinion, consider an election on a factual basis where a person would vote whether they are old or young. Based on the criteris there are 20 participants that can vote – 10 old people and 10 young people
We all know and understand the democratic system.
In theory multiple ideas are floated by charismatic politicians and the best idea wins. In practice? not so much.
The major benefit of democracy in my opinion is not the theoretical idea of people choosing their leaders, but that it allows an orderly transition of power.
People eventually get annoyed by their governments and often people close to power too long start to reek. Democracy allows those people to be replaced, probably by younger less reeking politicians with the same views, but sometimes with those with slightly different views.
Unless the outgoing government has been catastrophic, the replacements are rarely a radical departure from before.
and unfortunately it is likely to do the job.
Last week a major story all over the press was how Corbyn had driven over a BBC cameraman’s foot. They didn’t focus on the fact that it was a police car being driven by a policeman. It was all about Corbyn.
The week before when Simon Danzuk resigned from Labour after the party decided not to let him stand on the Labour platform due to him using a position of power when trying to solicit a 17 year old girl, it was apparently troubl for Corbyn.
Before (and since) then it is troublesome that the potential leader of the UK doesnt like the idea of nuking hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to death.
