While the big majority of people actually vote for the party, the cockeyed system that we run is that you actually vote for the person. So in theory it doesn't matter what party they belong to, you vote for them because they are a good person.
As I have been fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to know the candidates for all the elections in the last 60 years I have always voted for the one I think would be best for the constituency. There was even one that I didn't like at all but he was a brilliant constituency MP.
@shiney The problem with voting for a great constituency MP, even if they are in the 'wrong' party, is that they will in all likelihood still vote the way they are told to in Parliament. That won't necessarily gel with their constituency priorities. The views of individual MPs seem to be pretty much ignored unless they agree with the party line.
I agree to a certain extent that they follow the party line but if our local MP does something that I think is not in our best interest I speak to them about it and then get it into the local press if nothing happens. We're quite lucky that our MP's tend to work hard for the constituency. At the last election we had a new MP, previous one retired because of ill health, but I have already chatted to him a couple of times and he seems to be working at doing the right things.
Our mp is useless, you can't even contact him and if you do you don't usally get a reply and then the reply are words that come out of a windy pudding
The only useful purpose I ever knew local MPs to have was helping constituents who were being mucked about by DWP. I worked for DWP for a few years and the standard advice we gave people who were having problems with claims was to get their MP to phone DWP. It was amazing just how quickly problems were resolved after a single phone call.
The picture shown on the news of the US jet fighter carrier apparently heading for Iran ? The size of that thing is really quite staggering. I thought some of these Cruise ships were bad enough but that beats the lot. How does it manage to stay afloat let alone sail ???? Just imagine someone dropping a bomb/s on that thing. Not beyond belief given the current climate.
Aircraft carriers always sail with a fleet for protection, that one is nuclear powered and staying afloat is just science, probably wrong word but it was all science when I was at school, its about displacement.
This is Trump's biggly Armada sailing to Iran. Trump promised to help the Iranian protestors, unfortunately he didn't get round to doing anything while they were still alive. So now the "Armada" is repurposed to bombing Iran back to the dark ages if the Iranians don't agree to give up the nuclear programmes. These are the same programmes that Trump's forces bombed into oblivion last year.
No they actually did exist until Israel and Trump bombed them to destruction (allegedly) including the nuclear enrichment programme.
America can always be relied on to do the right thing, after all other possibilities have been exhausted.
Modern cruise ships are roughly the same size as aircraft carriers but can weigh almost double. Carriers are stripped out and designed to be out at sea for a very long time whereas cruise ships are carting around ballrooms, swimming pools and all kinds of other crap. I've never understood why people haven't campaigned against them from an environmental prospective. They are basically sailing a city. The US had a war game scenario depicting China invading Taiwan and if they stepped in to help. I think most of their conclusions were that they would win but suffer heavy loses including the destruction of a couple of aircraft carriers.
