Talk:1983 United Kingdom general election/ Archive 1

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The Alliance figures (and presumably the Labour figure) looks quite dodgy, considering the SDP had 29 MPs in 1983 before the general election! I presume this is counting from the 1979 election, and only including the existing Liberal MPs as Alliance MPs in 1979. Does this strike anyone else as wrong? Morwen - Talk 18:02, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The SDP's 29 MP's was at dissolution of the 1979 parliament, the 1979 figures quoted are based on published notional figures for 1979 on the 1983 boundaries Harry Hayfield 23:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It's tricky. I reckon we need multiple columns - Total MPs at the previous election, total MPs at the dissolution (which can get messy when party lines blurr around this time - Liberals in 1931 is a big mess for instance) and MPs elected after the election. And to complicate matters further, 1983 (and 1997, Feb 1974, 1950, 1945 [part], 1922 [part], 1918, 1885 and 1868 for that matter) had boundary changes so where possible we should also acknowledge the notional results under the new boundaries. Timrollpickering 07:44, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"far-left thinking dubbed by Gerald Kaufman as "the longest suicide note in history"" - I think that it was Denis Healey who said this. Anyone know for sure? Badtypist 23:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Googling gives many references to Kaufman and none to Healey. Warofdreams talk 03:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Article overstates the "Falklands factor"?

Many studies have estimated that increased popularity due to the conduct of the Falklands campaign added only a small amount to the Tory vote in the 1983 election. For example, "Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment", British Journal of Political Science 1987, argues that the so-called Falklands factor "produced a boost to Conservative popularity of at most three percentage points for a period of only three months". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.146.64.5 (talk) 16:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

-- As argued above, the article really does overstate the impact of the Falklands war. The article referenced above states 'This article argues that the Falklands war produced a boost to Conservative popularity of at most three percentage points for a period of only three months. Government popularity waqs already accelerating as a result of macroeconomic factors before the outbreak of the Falklands crisis.' Either the article should be amended to make reference to this, or I shall edit the whole thing myself. Mitchell, Grant (talk) 10:37, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

'Pro-Labour' Guardian

Longlivefolkmusic, I've taken your advice and checked the talk page, but there's nothing referring to this issue (apologies if you were planning to write something here and I've jumped the gun). The simple fact is that the Guardian is not an out-and-out pro-Labour paper. It's certainly left-of-centre, but at election time its leader articles tend to ambiguously express sympathy for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. As for the position in the early 1980s, Michael White himself has written recently about how the paper had to stay true to its "Lib-Lab" traditions at this time, because of the split in its ranks between supporters of Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance (which as you can see from the article were in a healthy fight for second place in the popular vote). Therefore, as I said before, to simply label the paper pro-Labour in this context is, without question, an over-simplification. "Liberal" or "left-leaning" or "left-wing" would all be fine in my view. If you're really determined to re-insert "pro-Labour" without any qualification, I have to say the onus is on you to justify that properly. Now, whooaaa horsey...deep breath...sheesh! Sofia9 03:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The Guardian on M Foot

(or, "how I learned to stop 'sheeshing' and embraced article objectivity")

• • to Sofia9 -- I wrote what you'll see below immediately after I edited the page, but in my tardiness I was too slow on the draw, apparently. I must say your overwrite speed is indeed impressive. In any case, I will simply copy as-is what I was about to write on this talk page, and then I'll try to respond to what you wrote (really, i have changed nothing here, including my subtitle. Catholic's honour. Though your involved take on me calling the Guardian pro-Labour will most likely make my musings on that paper come across as, er, cowboyish?). Do not fear, more to come. Here goes. Cheers**

I just reinserted the phrase "pro-Labour" in front of a quote from the Guardian that reads: "There was something magnificently brave about Michael Foot's campaign — but it was like the Battle of the Somme."

Setting aside for a moment opinions on that (opinion) sentence, some of us may have a problem with those two words, pro-Labour. It is not up for debate whether the Guardian is actually pro Labour in this case. [Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a British paper having an obvious and specific political allegiance, ask Bill Deeds]. So, apparently the attack on the insertion of the words "pro-Labour" comes from the fact that by including that tag, a WikiP entry is now stating a newspaper's political inclinations.

Well, if we want to keep a citation that was added by some individual contributor, from a Guardian writer that is calling somebody's 1980s political campaign 'magnificently brave' and also comparing it to the Somme, some kind of modification would appear to be completely reasonable. The Somme?

If you think that the cited quote about Michael Foot and his 'magnificently brave' 1983 party manifesto belongs in this (ostensibly 'neutral') article without the political tag, then I say that this article should then have an offsetting citation immediately before or after from a Tory paper likening Thatcher's victory to, oh, maybe, the Battle of Britain, or, for a more contemporary reference, Mons. Does my suggestion sound insane? It sounds insane to me. And that is why the entire Graniaud quote should be either canned, or introduced by the tag, "pro-Labour".

PS...I feel some pressing and sheeshy need to state that I am not a fan of the 'Thatcherite' legacy (for a fascinating take on that legacy, see the Intelligence Squared's fantastic debate, on the motion 'Margaret Thatcher saved Britain'). Yet I guess stating that opens me up to all kinds of sarcastic possibilities. Oh well.

longlivefolkmusic 03:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

And now for something in the correct time line

So Sofia9, let's say it is true that the Graniaud was not simply "pro-Labour", based on you saying that the paper in the 1980s was attempting a balancing act between Labour and the Alliance. I guess an official rundown of Guardian endorsements in general elections over the last 30 odd years would help here. Alas I do not have it handy. But, nothing we've said here changes the point about the need for some kind of tag, does it now? (yeehhaaaw!).

So, it is not the 'pro-Labour Gaurdian', but maybe the 'pro Labour and SPD/Liberal Alliance Gaurdian'. God that's ugly. Stylistically, of course. The Gr in this period could also be refered to as the 'anti-Thatcher', or 'anti-Tory', or 'anti-Conservative' paper. Not much better. Or Michael White most certainly could be called a "pro-Labour" writer. I dunno, maybe that's better. Much better, even. I'm sure we can agree on this somehow. M White's short WP page, for what it's worth, paints him as a Labour supporter. longlivefolkmusic 04:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for a fact that Michael White is an open Labour supporter, but if he is that might be the best solution. To be fair to him, I think all he's really saying in the 'Somme' remark is that Michael Foot - as an individual, nothing to do with the Labour manifesto - showed strength of character during the campaign by persevering when everything was falling apart around him (sometimes literally, if you have a look at the footage). Cecil Parkinson (the Tory chairman in 1983) has in the past paid tribute to Foot on the same basis - so in itself it's not really a particularly partisan point to make. Sofia9 05:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

As I said, White's WikiP pages states that he is a Labour supporter. And though you very well might be right that White was simply paying respects to a poltiican who was in his opinion showing strength of character by sticking to his left-wing guns in the middle of the storm (or, 'high noon', if you will), in the end, this is a page on the election itself, and a casual read will pick up that statement as an opinion on the election. But more importantly I do not think it matters if White personally meant to praise the party, the campaign, M Foot, or anybody else or all of the above. The exact phrase is "...something magnificently brave about Michael Foot's campaign — but it was like...". This sentence turns on the noun 'campaign', and the pronoun 'it' refers to that noun. So if for now this is where we stand — and as long as you don't want me to find in the Telegraph archives a balancing quote on how Thatcher's campaign in 1983 should be compared to the 1918 Battle of Amiens — I would like to ask permission from you and the WP gods to insert the phrase "pro-Labour" in front of the Michael White's name. Yeehaw. longlivefolkmusic 19:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine with me. Just for the sake of it, however, I'd like to clarify my own point a bit further before we finish. As I understand it, your argument is that if something is being quoted that comes from a clearly biased viewpoint, it's necessary to flag up the nature of that bias in order to maintain the article's neutrality. I'd agree with that. But in this case I actually think the political tag will be fairly superfluous, because the quote is taken from what reads to me like a politically neutral piece. Yes, it's penned by a Labour supporter, but he's wearing his more impartial 'hat' as a newspaper's political editor in doing so. His article comprises a series of fairly innocuous anecdotes about past election campaigns, and reflections on the personalities involved, without any commentary on – or even much reference to – their policies or ideologies. I think you're reading far too much into what is a fairly casual use of the word 'campaign'. However, I can also see your point that, taken out of context, the quote on its own could be misinterpreted as referring to the Labour campaign more broadly. So, as it seems to be perfectly accurate, I've got no objection to what you want to add. Also feel free to add any Telegraph reference to Amiens you might dig up – I'd admire your dedication to the cause and it would probably make quite funny reading. The only other thing to say is that it's just as well that 'Wikipedia isn't paper', otherwise between us we'd have just wiped out half a rainforest in a discussion about two words. Now that really would be worth a 'sheesh'! Sofia9 00:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Final, and much too long, thoughts on 'neutral' cited articles

[First off, I thought we were getting along well enough in this little exchange…but, it is completely inappropriate to throw in a snide remark about me on an unrelated article's edit summary box -- awful.]

And yes we are writing all this stuff over 'two words', on imaginary trees, apparently. A few things though. I do not normally engage in drawn out debates on talk pages. I usually write a discussion paragraph or two once every few months. Yet I do think that if a person is *not* willing to discuss their edits when a serious disagreement arises on a controversial and subjective topic (e.g. politics), than he or she should not edit and revert-edit WikiP campaign entries.

Okay, now my last thoughts on this stupid thing here. I just re-read the entire Guardian piece in question. It is charming, nice, whimsical, witty, very Grauniad, and so on – and if you think this piece is ‘neutral’ than I question my own judgment in spending any time at all writing everything I have to you. Neutral?

A few juxtapositions. Harold Wilson is introduced as a representative of a bygone and more fun era, low tech and “strangely reassuring” with his pipe. Ted Heath, on the other hand, was some guy who was expected to lose in 1970, but didn’t, apparently because of some strange mumbo jumbo jet purchase and ‘very bad trade figures’. And in any case Ted soon after accession as PM had an angry woman voter throw red paint on him, for good measure. Moving on. Margaret Thatcher is seen ‘bearing down’ on both the electorate and the reporters, and, um, ‘hated trains’ [Ah yes, the mortal sin in the eyes of the Guardian metro London readership, hating mass transit. I happen to love trains btw, and I honestly doubt if Mrs T ‘hated’ them. Although she very well may not have liked the fact that trains run on fixed rail routes and do not go everywhere one needs to go during a campaign). But even worse, Mrs T took media cues from those big-R Republicans in the US in the 1980s. Apparently Harold Wilson didn’t exploit the media in the 1970s and put on his own show, that ‘telly with the sound off’, you see. But Thatcher's antics ‘worked, of course’. And Clinton learned from Kinnock, but Blair didn’t learn from Clinton -- especially that little gem about how important it is to believe in little but staying elected. Oh, and in case the reader was wondering about the Conservatives in the internet age towards the end of the article, Mr. White just got a tip about a ‘racist Tory’s website’. What was the site? Who cares. Just be rest assured that it is out there, in the scary swamps of Tory blogland.

Everything I have quoted above can seem 'neutral' of course, as long as you swallow the Grauniad's presumptions and prejudices before you start reading.

Oh, wait, this is a debate on what to include in the WikiP 1983 UK campaign entry. And the piece in question has exactly four lines on Foote's 1983 campaign. Yes, the piece has lots and lots of other lines about all kinds of other campaign trails and battle busses and fax machines over the last 35 years, but I do think that our disputed entry concerns one particular campaign. Therefore, the piece’s inclusion and citation in the article cannot be defended as a worthy addition for the purposes of further research on the 1983 campaign, or as a source of more involved commentary on the ’83 campaign, or as a means of fleshing out the particulars of a subject without overloading the 1983 WikiP campaign page itself, and so on. Yes, linked articles from WP oftentimes are only partially related to the subject at hand and certainly do not need to be dry encyclopedia references simply running down lists of pertinent facts. Although in this case, the Gr link serves as nothing but a quote-base for our little ‘magnificently brave’ Michael Foot. And it has that great one line about the Somme. The Somme.

This Gr article was dredged up and cited because Michael White included in it a nice soundbite complimenting Foot and his political party. And because it is a subjective soundbite that really, no matter what you say, does not belong here, the tag, pro-Labour, is the very least of what is necessary. By the way I disagree with you about how you think that a Telegraph reference comparing Thatcher’s campaign to Amiens would be ‘funny’. It wouldn't be funny, it would be ridiculous, and mildly insane. That is why the whole sentence from White doesn't belong here either. Yet I realize that once any quote — no matter how inappropriate — makes its way into WikiP, especially of course if it can slander the Tories and make the Left look grand, then the heavy burden of proof sits against the person making a case for deletion (i.e. yours truly). No matter how superficial, subjective, vulgar, or pointless the quote may be. Cheers. longlivefolkmusic 21:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

"If you think this piece is 'neutral' than I question my own judgment in spending any time at all writing everything I have to you. Neutral?"

Yes, I know, I know. Engaging in debate with someone as demonstrably stupid as me must be a demeaning experience for someone of such self-evident stature and intellectual rigour. But there are so many of us simpletons around to try your patience. And since I impertinently consider myself to be the equal of any other contributor to this project – yes, even those all-seeing, all-knowing contributors who live on some Olympian height several thousand feet above New York - I'm afraid I'm going to have to dare to respond with my own point of view again.

1) Yes, I genuinely believe the Michael White article is politically neutral – I actually didn't say it just to make you spit your corn flakes out in a fit of righteous indignation. But please notice that the phrase I used was politically neutral, which is rather different to your caricature of what I said. "Politically neutral" means balanced between different political parties or political philosophies, which is precisely what the article is. It's a light-hearted piece that occasionally pokes fun at figures from the Conservative, Labour and Alliance parties – all three in roughly equal measure. Therefore, it's politically neutral. But of course by ignoring the phrase I actually used, you're able to synthetically claim astonishment that I could possibly characterise the article as neutral. If I had simply said "neutral", then clearly on the literal meaning of that word I'd be wrong. As you picked up, White expresses a number of personal opinions in his article. They're completely innocuous, but no article in which the writer expresses any sort of subjective opinion would technically qualify as entirely neutral. But that wasn't the claim I made. I meant what I actually said, not the meaning you imposed on my words. It's on exactly the same basis that you've managed to convince yourself that White’s article is horrifically biased in Labour's favour. Thatcher's "antics"? A dislike of trains being a "mortal sin"? Tory blogland being a "scary swamp"? These are all your words, the product of your fevered imagination, and none of them are even remotely supported by the article itself.

2) I can't read the mind of the contributor who added the quote in the first place, but then neither can you. Yes, I'll concede that it's theoretically possible that what was at work here was the dastardly left-wing conspiracy of your imagination to skew the content of these pages at all costs. But did it ever occur to you that it's possible - just possible - that the contributor in question was, in fact, innocently trying to improve the article? You question the relevance of the quote. I've already agreed with you that the context it's placed in is potentially misleading, but it's not hard to think of perfectly innocent reasons why it might have been seen as a relevant addition. In 1983, the Labour party suffered its worst result since the Second World War, and almost slipped into third place in the popular vote. An uninitiated reader of this Wikipedia article might well be interested in gaining a flavour of how the party leader's role in the defeat was perceived. A simple way to achieve this is to quote from an opinion piece, and as far as I can see the one selected is representative of an opinion that is widely held across all the main political parties, ie. that the 1983 Labour campaign was an unmitigated disaster (hence the 'Somme' remark – how on Earth can you interpret that as a compliment?), but that Michael Foot himself was an honourable man who in a personal capacity showed courage in impossibly difficult circumstances. I'm convinced that the vast majority of people who read Michael White’s article – from whatever political persuasion – would have understood that to be the meaning of his words, rather than the somewhat fantastical interpretation you’ve placed on them. A disclaimer of my own – I've never voted Labour, I doubt if I ever will, and I actually find Michael White's views quite irritating at times. But that doesn’t change the fact that in this case he's being politically neutral.

3) Even if you truly believed that the quote compromised the neutrality of the article, it really doesn't help matters to add a phrase that is, at best, highly misleading. If you want to know what the difference between the Guardian and a genuinely "pro-Labour" paper is, take a look at the Daily Record some time.

4) You seem to have taken extraordinary umbrage at my passing reference to "imaginary trees" which a) was just a frivolous way of trying to draw my remarks to a close and b) was directed at me as much as you – perhaps more so, since I was the one that raised this whole issue in the first place. I’d suggest there are some good American expressions that would probably apply here – like "lighten up" or "chill out".

5) As for the hypothetical Telegraph quote about Amiens, what I meant was that if it actually existed it would be funny almost by definition, because - in contrast to White's ironic reference to the Somme - it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which any newspaper would make that particular comparison. The fact that it almost certainly wasn't made by the Telegraph is exactly the point.

6) In a way I'm glad that you’ve chosen to launch into such a hysterical tirade in response to the fairly constructive tone of my comments above, because I think it justifies me in saying something else in passing. It’s frankly a bit rich to be accused of making an "awful" and "inappropriate" comment by someone who regularly goes around dismissing other people’s hard work in building up the content of this encyclopedia as "ridiculous", "bad writing", "juvenile" and "crap" – all in edit summary boxes, let's remember. It's, shall we say, intriguing to be accused of being "snide" by someone who frequently patronises people – again, in edit summaries – with phrases like "whooaaa horsey", "good God" and "sheesh". This is the kind of behaviour that drives many decent people away from this project, and I would normally never engage in it myself – except that, in your case, I believe that if you’re going to exercise the right to dole it out, you should be ready to take a little back now and again when you get something wrong. A few days ago, you curtly demanded that someone "proof-read" their edits in future, and yet your own edits are often littered with spelling mistakes and, occasionally, quite serious factual errors which other people have to clean up after you. Nobody minds doing that – in many ways it's what makes this project tick – but I’d be willing to bet they’d mind even less if they weren’t being subjected to a running commentary of pure condescension along the way.

7) What does "Grauniad" mean? Serious question. I'm probably being thick here, but I’d be interested to know.

To wrap my side of this up (and this time I’m determined not to respond again whatever the provocation, except perhaps in edit summary boxes!), I see that you haven’t actually added the political tag to the article yet. I'm therefore going to take the liberty of adding "left-leaning" before the name of the Guardian, because for me that's the best solution, and should satisfy any concern you have about bias. As I said, I have no objection if you want to replace that with "the pro-Labour political journalist Michael White", but in my view that would be a mistake for the reasons I've given above. For the record, I'm now less convinced than I was that he's an open Labour supporter, because his Wikipedia biography seems to be relying for that information on an article in which he never explicitly says anything of the sort. However, it's your call. Sofia9 05:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not intending to get involved in this discussion, but thought I'd point out that "Grauniad" is a humorous term for the Guardian popularised by Private Eye, in reference to the Guardian's reputation for errors. Warofdreams talk 12:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[to Sofia9]

Oh dear.

You asked at least one question in your nice post above. Admittedly the question has already been answered, and I cannot use it as a reason for responding, though I'm surprised you never heard of the term 'Graniuad'. More importantly, you leveled all kinds of accusations at me which require some kind of response: about being "hysterical", about err, "grave factual errors", and about supposedly 'driving new contibutors away'. That last tidbit is complete crap and it is a WikiP cheap shot, and you damn well know it. And so on. This leaves me with little choice but to say, something. How about some more numbered lists?

1. Yes, I tried to add some colour above by throwing in some phrases (e.g. 'swamps') that in retrospect I shouldn't have, if for no other reason than that it allows Sofia#9 to build up some cute straw men. But the quotes etc are not fabrications. I beseech any reader of this talk page to read the article in question yourself, and tell me how Mr. White is "balanced", and doles out his jabs "in equal measure". And the splitting of 'neutral' versus 'politically neutral' is absurd here. Indeed it is one more straw man. Please, dear reader, read the article again.

2. I do not throw out "fantastical interpretations". And you ask how I could think the comparison to the Somme is a compliment....In White's view, it is most obviously a compliment since the campaign is both 'magnificently brave'; and comparable to the ...Somme. I guess (big sigh) I see it as a compliment in the sense that tens of thousands of young men gave their lives in it during World War I with a sense of duty that few if any of us could ever even imagine -- I am truly sorry to have to spell that out. *They* were magnificently brave to be sure. And that is why the White quote does not belong here. And if people such as yourself maintain that it does, than the quote you defend must have a tag -- a tag considerably better than the affectionate 'left leaning' thing.

3. In response to your #3 -- please give me the Graniaud's electoral endorsements over the last 30+ years. Maybe in time I will. Would that change your mind?

4. "Extraordinary umbrage" does not consist of half a written sentence. And, of course, you brought up the imaginary trees in the first place.

5. If White's Somme reference is meant to be ironic than it does not belong in an encyclopedia, online or not. Unless you would like to label the comment as 'ironic'. But you won't.

6. About my 'hysterical tirade' as compared to your 'constructive tone'. Nice one. If you are apparently ready to start going through my edit history (actually, 'stalking' my edit history), I would first like to say that you shouldn't bother, my edits are not that particularly influential. Then after I say that, I guess I should look at your own edit history, and point out that your user name's edits begin the around the same day as our whole little debate. Since you obviously know your way around WikiP this most likely means that you are using multiple user accounts. I am not familiar with WP policy on this, and indeed maybe there is nothing wrong with it in the letter of the law, so to speak, but I believe it is against the spirit of our project.longlivefolkmusic 04:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but since you've levelled quite a serious allegation at me (based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, which I'm beginning to discover is not untypical of your general approach), I am going to respond again for one last time. Sofia9 is my first and only user account in the English Wikipedia. Of course there's absolutely no way I can prove that, which is rather convenient for you in making that particular insinuation, but it happens to be the truth. The reason I know my way around is that I've been making occasional anonymous contributions since 2004, which of course I'm quite entitled to do, and which show up under several different IP addresses. I do have a user account at the Scots Wikipedia (which, yes, has a completely different name), under which I've made several hundred edits, and I have an account at the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia called 'Sofia', under which I've made a bare handful. Now can I make a more open disclosure than that? I chose to set up an English user account because I could see I was in danger of getting into a dispute - it began when I made a sharp comment in the edit summary box on the Alex Salmond page - and I thought it would be, to coin a term, "inappropriate" to do so as an anonymous user. The reason that I started checking through your previous edits is that I was quite startled that anyone would have the arrogance to dismiss an entire full-length article - which I had contributed a few snippets to - as 'badly written' and at the same time dare I say snidely imply that the whole piece had been deliberately put together as a 'campaign page' for the politician in question. Once again, the impugning of people's integrity on the basis of no evidence, in much the same way you impugned the integrity of the person who made the addition to this page - whatever happened to 'assume good faith'? Frankly, I felt insulted, which is why I'm in a very good position to be able to tell you that this kind of behaviour can sting, and has the potential to drive even long-standing contributors away (let alone newbies). And far from 'stalking', I think it's quite a human reaction in that situation to want to see whether the person who's made that complaint can actually back it up, ie. is their writing standard so much better than the 'bad writing' they've attacked? Do they show exemplary NPOV? The answer - certainly to the latter point - being in many cases no, I've tried to rectify some of the problems I uncovered, which I think is a perfectly constructive thing to have done, and after all we're all free to turn our attention to any (unprotected) article we choose, aren't we? Actually a lot of what I've been clearing up have been spelling mistakes and factual errors - which I was genuinely surprised to see from you, since you seem to have a true passion for British politics. You're surprised I didn't know the Private Eye nickname for the Guardian (that's probably because I occasionally read the Guardian, and never Private Eye), but I'm very surprised you thought that 1992 was Labour's fifth successive general election defeat. That's pretty basic, and there have been a quite a few as bad as that (although most were picked up by others before I got there). The only other complaint you can really have against me is that I've made snide remarks in edit summary boxes, but since I've modelled them entirely on your own personal style (like the delightful example this very evening at the 1992 UK election page), I don't think that complaint holds much water.

Finally, getting back to the real topic, could I gently suggest to you that instead of spending your precious time working through the political endorsements of the Guardian newspaper for the last three decades - where you'll find the name 'Liberal Democrat' figures prominently alongside Labour - you take a moment to properly consider whether the 'left-leaning' tag I've put in is not a) more accurate, and b) perfectly sufficient to address the concerns that you've raised? As far as I can see the Wikipedia article for the Guardian itself never calls the paper 'pro-Labour' (presumably because it would be the over-simplification I've suggested), so why on Earth would we want to do it here?

As for people re-reading the Michael White article and judging for themselves - that's a very, very good idea.

PS - How is the left-leaning tag "affectionate"? That's your most bizarre one yet! Sofia9 05:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

First, you must understand that by looking at your edit history as Sofie9 it appeared to me that you created a new account just to have a go at me. If not, fine.

And now, listen. I am really, truly, sorry if my edit some time ago to Alex Salmond offended you, or if you thought my edit comment on the entry was generally overly negative, etc....but the entry when I came across it honestly did look like a campaign/fan page. I happen to like Mr. Salmond and have a good deal of respect for him. But a politician's WP entry should be balanced, as we all know, and if it is high profile enough, which his is, it should also contain proper criticism.

My two little paragraphs here above have gotten us ever further away from the supposed point of this talk page, a point by now churned over ad infinitum. I do the best I can to not make personal attacks, and instead stick to the subject at hand (and when I critique writing or pov in the comment boxes I do *not* single out individuals). And, and, in the space above you have accused me of almost everything imaginable really, as if I were some kind of small WikiP malevolent spirit. No, just a human. Among the goodies is, of course, a charge of 'grave factual errors'. What garbage. Yes, it is true that at one time i meant to write 'fourth' and instead wrote 'fifth' for the 1992 election. I guarantee you that was an honest slip and was neither a sign of complete idiocy nor a 'conspiracy' of some kind (you used the word first!).

A casual reader might see my last (this) post here and think "my, he's spending the whole time explaining himself, with some apologies to boot". Yes that is also true, true because I have just read a very, very long page full of all kinds of accusations pointed at yours truly, some of them not very sporting. I ask that you, Sofie9, also consider what might turn people off to this site. I never imagined getting into one of these long bouts that I see sometimes on WikiP. Well, I had no choice really.

I stand by what I said above about this particular article. The citation comparing Foot's political campaign to The Somme should either be deleted, or the term 'pro-Labour' inserted in front of the journalist's name.longlivefolkmusic 04:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou for what you've said, and I also apologise if I've gone a bit over-the-top (which I probably have). The only thing I'd say concerning the business about singling out individuals is that I wonder if you realise quite how direct you're being sometimes - eg. the 1992 election page edit summary box - "who else supports 'electoral reform'? Labour? No way. Cons? Nope. You? Maybe." It would be difficult for the person who made the original contribution (who I believe was actually trying to correct bias themselves at the time) to see that as anything other than a personalised comment. I also appreciate you're making an honest endeavour to 'reel in' POV across Wikipedia, but I think in doing so you're unwittingly in danger of producing different kinds of bias, for example by assuming that anything that is non-Conservative has to automatically be pro-Labour, which is where my issue about this article comes in. Labels like that don't really take into account the complexities of the British party system, with the Lib Dems and many smaller parties also in play - in other words left-of-centre and non-Tory (which the Guardian certainly is) does not necessarily equate to support for the Labour party. I'm also genuinely concerned that Michael White may not actually have declared himself a Labour supporter and if we put that in we might be doing him a disservice. However, I really am going to take a break from it all now, so I'll leave you and others to judge what is most appropriate. Best wishes.

PS. I really can't help myself, it's like picking at a scab, but I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't actually accusing you of a conspiracy in making factual errors - just of making factual errors, that's all. There were others than the one I mentioned - like an MP who you said was a member of the House of Lords, and the idea that the Conservatives would have won the October 1974 election if the UUP had still been taking the Tory whip. I'm not trying to dredge it all up again, just to explain what I was getting at earlier. Anyway, that's it. Sofia9 05:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A 'scab'? — I daresay it's all more like 'the Somme'. I am having a hard time remembering what this talk page is about, but please stop referencing sentences of mine out of context from other entries and then misrepresenting what I wrote in them. Granted, in retrospect the wording of my small addition to the Oct 74 UK election article was not the best (yours is better), but apparently I have at least one dedicated WikiP'er swiftly editing behind me. This is all pretty pretty close to WP stalking, though, and it is much harder for me to do the same since many of your edits are not under one name (not that I would, mind you). The different user id's in your case of course is fine but it still puts me at a disadvantage during your example giving. And for what it's worth, if the UUP had taken the whip in the first 74 UK election and given Heath his plurality, there's a very good chance that he would've formed a minority government and immediately called another election, and fairly recent history has seen those immediate elections usually reinforcing the original marginal winner (much to Harold Wilson's amusement, to be sure). I gotst a feeling my little theory may be tested very soon in the UK....longlivefolkmusic 02:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe this. There is absolutely no reasoning with some people, but I suppose I'm just going to have to keep on rebutting your points from now until kingdom come.

1) "A 'scab'? — I daresay it's all more like 'the Somme'". This is one of your customary bizarre comments, but if it's supposed to mean "I don’t know what you’re talking about – is it some sort of insult?", then I'm quite happy to explain (it is possible to just ask, you know). The dictionary definition of a scab is "the incrustation that forms over a sore or wound during healing". This incrustation is something that people are inclined to pick at, even when it would be much better to leave it alone. Therefore, when I said it was "like picking at a scab", I was mocking myself for my unhealthy inability to let this issue drop. Quite clear?

2) Every time I have changed one of your edits I have used my user account - with just one exception which was an oversight. An "honest slip" to use your words.

3) As for this bee you've got in your bonnet about 'stalking', I think you'll find there's nothing unusual about a user working through the previous edits of another contributor to correct similar types of errors – some large, some minor – that they've discovered recur again and again and again. It's happened to me in the past, and it's a perfectly constructive process that improves the quality of articles. That is all I've done. As I said before, the repeated mistakes in your case are mainly spelling and factual errors. Nobody's perfect, absolutely, I'm not having a go at you for that. So I did everyone a favour and corrected some of the errors. Where is the problem with that? Would you really prefer that the spelling mistakes had stayed there forever?

4) You accused me of "referencing sentences out of context". I defy anyone to read everything that's been said above and not spot that it was you that set the pattern for this whole discussion with the line - "it is completely inappropriate to throw in a snide remark about me on an unrelated article's edit summary box – awful". That had absolutely nothing to do with the issue we were discussing, but it was an extremely nasty comment, and anyone with any self-respect was bound to want to rebut it in full. The only way I could possibly do that was by referring to your own edits and edit summaries on other articles.

5) You then accused me of misrepresenting what you wrote in those sentences. I specified three of the factual errors you've made (there have been plenty of others) – and you've now admitted to two of them, so it can't have been much of a misrepresentation, can it?! To be fair, all that you actually admitted about October 1974 was that my wording was better. The wording after your edit was - "Prime Minister Harold Wilson, having taken power in a minority government after the February election, returned to the polls and won a tiny majority of 3. Both of these results were due to the Ulster Unionist Party no longer willing to sit in a coalition government with the Conservatives". This is a factual inaccuracy, there's no other way of looking at it. Labour won 319 seats out of 635 in the October election, which was an absolute majority of three seats over all other parties. The relationship between the UUP and the Conservatives made no difference. If you’re trying to justify your original edit by saying 'oh, but the Tories might have won in October if only they'd had the chance to form a minority government in February', then surely with your claimed – but rather questionable - zeal for NPOV you should have been the first to jump on that and say that such speculation and editorialising had no place in an encyclopedia article in the first place.

While I'm at it, I may as well take up your challenge from earlier, and point out some of the jibes directed against Labour in Michael White's article that demonstrate the piece's balanced approach between the parties -

"Many Labour voters...appear even less well disposed towards [Blair] than most of Fleet Street."

"Just Tony face-to-face with the voters, sort of. He even did some text-messaging." (this is sarcasm, in case it needs to be pointed out)

"[Harold Wilson] would fiddle with [his pipe] when he wanted time before answering a question."

About Michael Foot in the 1983 election - "There were balloons and a loudspeaker, but hardly anyone watching, let alone cheering."

"It was meant to look grown-up and responsible. I wrote that Neil and Roy's entry looked 'like a gay wedding'."

I await with baited breath your inevitable insistence that, contrary to all appearances, the above quotes in fact "slander the Tories and make the Left look grand"! Sofia9 17:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Believe me , I cannot believe *this* either. I have tried over and over again to diffuse the hysteria and make up, so to speak, but I see it is impossible, with you piling up more and more @$*! on this talk page. I am not going to respond over, over, and over again to your repetitions.

And, the dictionary definitions of the word 'joke' are: "Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement; an amusing or ludicrous incident or situation; something not to be taken seriously; a triviality..."longlivefolkmusic 18:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The Sofia9 definition of the word 'joke' - "something that actually succeeds in evoking laughter". I did my best with my imaginary trees and look where that got me. For the record, I did finally work out what you meant by the 'scab' remark, but it took me a very long time. I'm getting a bit worried about myself, actually. First my appalling ignorance about Private Eye terminology, and now this...but I suppose it could have been worse. I could have done something really silly like placing it in the main text of a Wikipedia article without checking my facts first.

If this really is the end, all I can say is Hallelujah. For my part, the evidence of my own eyes confirms that I've tried to bring this to a close about seventeen times by stating that I had no objection to what you wanted to put into the article - I even said I would leave you to make the judgement yourself - but it seems that even abject surrender isn't enough for some.

PS. Sorry, I should have checked - you've finally done it! Well done! Completely the wrong decision, but well done - maybe now I can get some sleep. Sofia9 22:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone (ie you) who early on wrote, "that might be the best solution", now finds it fit to call that same disclaimer tag the "completely wrong" solution. Since I am not dealing with a schizophrenic, it rather must be just someone who, after all this, gets apparently great pleasure out of sarcastic remarks followed by some exclamation points. And for what it's worth you also said — just a few lines above mine here — something about leaving the "judgement" to me. My "judgement" is that the biased quote from the Guardian does not belong in this article. So, this, m'lady, is a compromise. If I cannot be spared the sniping I should at least be spared those exclamation points.--longlivefolkmusic 02:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Grrrr...we'd got through three whole weeks…

With your long track record of edit summaries, to accuse someone else of taking "great pleasure out of sarcastic remarks" is absolutely breathtaking. Re-arrange the following words in the appropriate order – black calling the pot kettle. Looking at all this in the cold light of day, I was obviously guilty (as you were) of straying from the topic of this discussion page – but you left me with little choice but to respond to your baseless criticisms and accusations (I was fully on-topic until your 'snide' comment). I perhaps should have taken the extraneous stuff to another talk page, but in one sense that's a bit of a technicality. The more salient points are that I was fully entitled to make those rebuttals, and that they are all entirely valid – apart from my misinterpretation of your 'joke' (the wording of which utterly baffled me).

Now, since you still seem to be confused about it, I'll once again take you through my argument about labelling Michael White as "pro-Labour" step-by-step – it's not very complicated, and it's remained fairly consistent throughout. I initially thought it might be the "best solution" because I actually thought at that stage we were both working in good faith towards reaching an agreement. I never believed that a political tag was necessary, because I didn’t – and don’t – see either the quote or the article it was taken from as politically biased. But because you were insistent a tag was essential, the only available compromise seemed to be to ensure that whatever you eventually put in had more basis in factual reality than your original "pro-Labour Guardian". But please note that right from the outset I had reservations about switching the political label to White as an individual – I said "I don't know for a fact that he’s an open Labour supporter". In my next post, I was trying to bring matters to an amicable conclusion, so I firmed that up and said it was "fine with me" – partly because I'd checked White’s Wikipedia biography, and I assumed that the double reference to him being a Labour backer must be fairly authoritative. But these assumptions are always fairly dodgy – after all, many readers could easily have been duped into thinking that Lady Sylvia Hermon goes by her middle name of Eileen and spells her surname with an 'a', couldn't they? (Or that the football European Championships are known as the "Eurocup" – loved that one!) I later became more sceptical about White's political affiliation because, if you read his Wikipedia biography carefully, it seems to base that claim entirely on a specific article in which he supposedly outed himself as a Labour supporter – as far as I can see he didn't actually do that, at least not explicitly. Frankly, the idea surprised me – I don't know how much British television you've had access to, but Michael White has made regular appearances on political programmes over many years. It's not uncommon for newspaper columnists to be introduced on these programmes as, say, "the conservative commentator". Polly Toynbee is always the "liberal columnist" – and her role as a cheerleader for certain strands of New Labour thinking is legendary. But White is never introduced in that way, and I've never even once heard him allude to any affiliation he has to a particular party. I have noticed in recent times that he's tended to defend the Blairite tendency in the Labour party against criticism from leftist commentators (often in the Guardian itself) – but that just makes your protestations of bias in this instance look even sillier. A Blairite sympathiser would never act as an apologist for the 1983 Labour campaign – Tony Blair himself never does. I have also (in case it conveniently slipped your notice) given precise quotations that demonstrate the White article is politically balanced. So those are the reasons why I believe your addition of 'pro-Labour' is "completely wrong" – and on reflection I actually think I would have every justification in reverting it. But life's too short, and as I originally gave my blessing, I don't think it would be fair to go back on my word now. I have all along tried to be reasonable on the substance of this issue – while of course reserving the right to respond in kind to the patronising/sarcastic/snide remarks you endlessly make wherever you go in this project. Looking back over this discussion, it seems to me that just for a while you were also prepared to be reasonable and work in good faith towards a resolution – until I had the impudence to question your underlying premise that a newspaper article you didn't much like simply 'had' to be politically biased. It's as if everyone has to sign up lock, stock and barrel to your paranoid worldview before their opinions (and mine were initially very constructively expressed) can be deemed worthy of your consideration. Sofia9 05:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

PS - Are you accusing me of not being a schizophrenic? How very dare you! Sofia9 05:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Triple Grrr. It should be noted that it took me two weeks to gather the strength necessary to read your latest pastiche above, which as it happens is full of more written self-compliments than I think I have ever seen in own my short WikiP life. To mine eyes, on this page you quickly veered away from talking about the article wording in question once the case was made to keep the 'pro-Labour' tag, and instead starting going through my edit history, apparently line by line, for some nice cheap shots. Are you a good writer? Yes, obviously. Were you more exact in your corrections of typos than I? Yes, obviously. But this little discussion page is not about either.

And your attempt to paint the 1983 and 1997 Labour parties as two separate unrelated entities in order to give M White some extra credibility while you call him 'impartial' — as he calls one side's political campaign The Somme — is obfuscation at best. Same party, m'Lady. Yes, socioeconomic realities change, and with them a politician's stance (e.g. Cameronism), but still, same party.

All in all you can be quite proud of yourself because this entire exchange has in the main turned me off (for now) from editing WP. I guess you'll see this as a big victory, for your views on politics do not coincide with mine. Especially with my, err, 'paranoid' world view (thanks for the personal attack, again). And as far as your criticizing of my editing, I should like to say that individual spelling/typo errors aren't exactly as grave as this little gem of an entire article [1], with its fan-page attitude and garbled style. (Since we're attempting to undermine each other's WP reputations, so to speak). I really, really, did not want to stoop to mentioning something like that, but what should I do? Agree to entries for Alex Salmond and the 1983 UK election that are little more than one-sided campaign opinions while I have my username smeared? Do you detect anger in what I'm writing here? Well, you're damn right. At least in that. Please shoot me.longlivefolkmusic 01:18, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

For the record - and I thought this was fairly obvious - I had read through some of your previous edits and made a few corrections before this argument ever began.

The case was never 'made' for retaining "pro-Labour" except in your own mind. You stated it was necessary and as far as you were concerned that was the end of the matter. You actually said "it is not up for debate whether the Guardian is actually pro Labour in this case" - well that was quite a claim, considering that I was clearly ready to debate precisely that point. At one stage you challenged me to produce the Guardian's election endorsements for the last thirty years to support my case, but I'm afraid if you want to insert such a contentious claim into a Wikipedia article the onus must be on you to provide the supporting evidence. Which you have failed to do. Which you will continue to fail to do, because the Guardian's editorial stance is not unambiguously pro-Labour. And again, when you wanted to switch the political label to Michael White as an individual, it didn't even seem to occur to you that it was necessary to first establish that he actually is "pro-Labour" - in your mind he just 'obviously' is. I still don't know whether he is or he isn't - I think the eminently sensible thing to do in these circumstances would be to remove the tag and revert to the "left-leaning Guardian" (which, by the way, was also a compromise wording, m'lud), but unfortunately I've talked myself into a position where it would be very difficult for me to do that - because I was stupidly trying to be reasonable earlier on! Hopefully someone else will come along who is actually in full possession of the relevant facts, and can establish whether or not Michael White has declared a political affiliation - and if he hasn't, I hope that even you would accept that the label should be removed. "Compromises" are all very well - but there's no valid compromise between fact on the one hand, and invention or guesswork on the other.

As for your 'paranoid worldview', I think you've just gone some way towards proving my point by implying you know what my political views are. On what basis do you make that startling claim? I said I wasn't a Labour voter but apart from that you have zero information to go on. And where was your evidence when you made the following astounding claim about the sentence we have been discussing - "this Gr article was dredged up and cited because Michael White included in it a nice soundbite complimenting Foot and his political party". The contributor in question (an American, by the way) simply said that he had found a 'cool' quote to put in. Unlike you, I don't claim to be a mindreader so I don't know any more than that - certainly not that he was trying to "slander the Tories and make the Left look grand".

As for the Alex Salmond business, I never said the article was perfect - just that you were on extremely dodgy territory in airily dismissing it as biased and "badly written", given the rather variable quality of your own edits. Funnily enough, your reworked version of the Alex Salmond page contained a line that struck me as being ridiculously 'pro-Labour' - it could virtually have tripped off Tony Blair's tongue. And although most of your error-ridden edits were probably made in good faith, I can't resist pointing out that you did once inform the world in a Wikipedia article that William Hague's debating skills are "unmatched". I must say I was unaware that there is an objective and broadly accepted method for measuring politicians' debating proficiency. I'd be interested to know what it is. Sofia9 04:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Just finally - and I really, really hope it is finally this time - I perhaps should address the point you keep making that the White quote has no place in the article at all. It clearly isn't essential, but if we stripped out everything that isn't essential, all that would be left is "there was an election in 1983 and the Tories won". I do, however, think it's a very useful addition to the article, because it provides a touch of balance and context after two unremittingly negative comments about the Labour campaign. Incidentally, everyone knows the biased viewpoint that Roy Hattersley and Gerald Kaufman were speaking from - they were both very much on the right-wing of the Labour party in 1983 - so why isn't it just as important to flag up that fact to balance out their biased quotes? And, by the way, if you really think that Labour is a single-headed beast, why does Gerald Kaufman regard the 1983 manifesto as the "longest suicide note in history", while Michael Foot and Tony Benn still defend it to the hilt? If Labour is still basically "the same party" it was in the early 1980s, how has Roy Hattersley suddenly become regarded by the Labour leadership as a dotty left-winger when, with exactly the same views, he was regarded in 1981 as being so far on the right of the party to be a prime candidate to fall off the edge altogether and defect to the SDP? Shirley Williams left Labour in 1981 because it had drifted too far to the left - she now seems relieved she made that decision for precisely the opposite reason. Sofia9 13:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Too funny

this talk page is making me chuckle more than Uncyclopedia, thanks for the lulz. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.222.235 (talk) 19:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

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Few

The popular vote for Labour in the box on the top right has too few digits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.19.232.207 (talk) 14:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thatcher photo

Brucejoel99 insists on reverting my edits of Thatcher's photo despite it the photo he keeps on removing is from the time the election was held (1983). Instead, he keeps on adding a photo from Thatcher in the 1990s. It would be good if there was not any other photo from the time period available, but there actually is.

Furthermore, in the UK 2015 general election article, I have seen this user change Milliband's photo from June 2015 to one from when he was still Opposition leader, on the grounds that "Photo should be of Opp. Leader Miliband, not FORMER Opp. Leader Miliband". Which is good, reasonable and understable. However, he seemingly doesn't want to apply that for Thatcher in the 1979, 1983 and 1987 articles and insists in putting a photo from her when she already left office, which is unnecessary given that there are contemporary photos available.

I would like some explanation on the issue, and why Brucejoel99 is using different criteria for those articles. Impru20 (talk) 18:20, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

The photo of MT that I keep reverting to is the one that's always been used, as was the case w/ the Miliband one. Futhermore, the previously used photo of MT is in color, whereas the proposed new photo is in black & white. And as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Brucejoel99 (talk) 20:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

is the one that's always been used And? That's a justification for not changing it? The photo you keep on posting was originally uploaded in 2008, and that's why it has been the one used the longest, as there were no other better pics before. But in the last years, other, more accurate pics have been uploaded. Obviously, a pic from Thatcher during the 1980s is more accurate for these articles than one of her in the 1990s.

I don't see any problem with the black & white photo. It was 1983. Of course it's b&w, that was how photos were made back at that time. But that b&w photo (which, otherwise, has an high resolution quality) depicts Thatcher as she was in 1983, a much more accurate depiction of her at that time than a photo from her in the 1990s. Images contemporary to the time period in question are usually prefered over older pics, unless quality is in such an horrendous state (which is not the case here) that, obviously, the newer photo becomes the prefered one. Impru20 (talk) 21:07, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

It is always best to use a contemporary photo, even if it is black and white. I think the black an white photo is an improvement on the out of time photo that was there before. Why revert to something that was not as good, just because we have had to make do with it in the past? Graemp (talk) 21:13, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

'Before' seat numbers

Is there something wrong with the 'before' seat numbers? I'm not sure where Thatcher got the extra 20 from, though I may have simply missed something on that. However shouldn't the Liberal-SDP seat numbers in the before section of the box be 29 and 12, not 11? The SDP had 29 members at the point of dissolution, and the Liberals 13, not simply 11 Liberals (as 27 SDP members had defected from Labour and the Conservative, a further 2 had won by-elections, and the Liberals had picked up 2 from By-elections). — Preceding unsigned comment added by BitterGiant (talk • contribs) 00:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay I mucked up and missed 'untitled' at the top there, but I do think it is worth addressing, and I feel that perhaps using the format that was used in the 2010 box (where there was a boundary commission) would be a better solution, as the current box is a bit of a mess when it comes to relaying the pre-dissolution makeup of Parliament.

And also those 29/13 SDP-Liberal members should be in there. BitterGiant (talk) 00:37, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

As is traditional in discussions of UK elections, changes are shown from the previous general election, ignoring subsequent defections and by-elections. Warofdreams talk 00:38, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay. But even disregarding the change of seats, shouldn't the before seat numbers be the seat numbers at the point of dissolution, instead of the 1979 results on the 1983 seat boundary? Because as it stands it's just confusing. I acknowledge there is a tradition of only showing the change from the last election, but surely at the very least the before numbers should be what there were before the election itself, instead of the BBC approximation of what '79 would have looked like on the '83 boundaries.BitterGiant (talk) 15:34, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Every reliable source shows either changes since 1979, or changes since the 1979 result projected onto 1983 boundaries - there's no precedent for showing changes from immediately before the election (presumably because it would give an unrealistic impression of the party's changes in support). Warofdreams talk 13:20, 16 April 2017 (UTC)