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boh_thrashsody, where I invite you all to come along and holla.
metal_community is the finest music discussion forum on the entire internet. And it's all dedicated - hip-hop there's little you can get which doesn't focus almost entirely on the biggest acts, indie publications and websites tend to encompass all matter of genres. Metal makes it easy to continue down the dark path, and it's become apparent that I'm good at writing about metal, and apart from incorrectly guessing in early 2008 that Death Magnetic would be worse than St Anger, I've not been proved wrong about metal in the last few years. I know metal and still love it, in an open relationship kind of way. But I'm not a metalhead. I can't define myself by a style of music, especially not when two-thirds of the time I'm listening to something else. To reject the sublime pop of the Beatles, the intense emotion of Radiohead, the limitless gleeful energy of Daft Punk, the dirty, dreamy pulse of Massive Attack, the contrasting smoothness and brutality of the Wu-Tang Clan, and thousands of other artists simply on the basis of being "not metal" is foolish. And yet it's what I did and thousands of other metalheads still do. Oh, I know, you've all got a few token names you can rattle off - Rush and a couple other prog bands here, some 80s hardcore there, Public Enemy as the acceptable face of hip-hop and maybe some harsh electronic which you read about in Zero Tolerance - but you're not fooling anyone when you do that. Only listening to metal is far, far, far dumber than listening to everything but metal.Take the Who Should You Vote For? UK General Election quiz
| Green | 33 | |||
| Labour | 21 | |||
| Liberal Democrat | 9 | |||
| UK Independence | -17 | |||
| Conservative | -37 |
You expected: GRN
Your recommendation: Green
Click here for more details about these results
Obviously, the Greens in the UK, even more than the Greens in most places, are notoriously anti-development. But given the state of your three majors (and I might expand on it more later, but I'd like to compliment you on this, while not as good as the 8+ parties you tend to see with the Scandinavian model it's the best you see in the Anglosphere), the Greens are who I would vote for. Incidentally, the Greens got my top vote in the recent Tasmanian state election, but they're far more centrist and professional in my state than they are in most of the rest of the world - something which has been forced upon them, as these days they pick up over 20% of the vote in their own right. From what I understand of the UK:
New Labour: Corrupt, nanny-state, had the opportunity to wean the UK off the dick of the American Right in the post-Thatcher era but did the exact opposite. I'm surprised that Labour appeared as my second preference, so either that survey is based on traditions rather than current policies, or they're not as bad ideologically as I thought - just inept and shit at running things.
Lib Dems: I remember going to my favourite political discussion forum a couple years ago and asking what the deal was with the Lib Dems. Nobody knew - and neither did the Lib Dems. They seem to be very similar to what the Tasmanian Greens are now: a party which runs itself like a minor party who exists to hold the balance of power rather than to run shit, which has suddenly found itself in a power-holding position. And that's even before the current split between old-school social democrats (who, as I understand it, make up the majority of the party membership) and the neoliberalist "Orange Bookers" (who make up the majority of the leadership). No prizes for guessing which lot I'd rather side with, but the split combined with the party's perceived general ineptitude is enough to cause a serious worry for any traditional socialist voting for them.
UKIP: This lot tend to come across as rather right-wing, which doesn't really surprise me: I'm sure I'm typical of many on the "left" who promote regional integration in the hope that it will perhaps temper the often fearful and insular ideologies of right-wing groups. I'm very much pro-EU, so a generally right-wing party whose main platform is being anti-BARMY BRUSSELS BUREAUCRATS is never going to sit right by me.
Conservatives: They're fucking Tories, what did you expect? They're even more right-wing than the Australian Liberals under the Mad Monk (or indeed any leader since Menzies, who completely remodeled the party based on the Tories), and while they're at least based around traditional conservatism with much less neoliberalism than most conservative parties (the combination of which has led to most of the world's worst leaders in the last 50 years), they're still Conservatives and still anathema to a functioning, progressive society - so, they don't really belong in this century. The only reason I could conceive of voting Tory is if they were led by a strong moderniser with a good hold on the party and they look like being more competent leaders of the country, whatever direction it may be going, than whatever Labour or the Lib Dems might throw up. And it's a sad comment on the state of politics in the UK that that looks like it might be the case.
ADDENDUM 1: Get rid of First Past The Post, you primitive thickos.
ADDENDUM 2: Dear seppos who will come into a political discussion on another country asking "who are the republicans and who are the democrats": The Tories are the Democrats, the BNP are the Republicans, everyone else is to the left of you because despite the best efforts of a few outstanding individuals the US is still a neoimperialist paleocon hellhole.
