Because what we all needed was another vote on things.
Who will you vote for? Poll to follow (not the last one, alas).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etr-Jr-ou1M
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Because what we all needed was another vote on things.
Who will you vote for? Poll to follow (not the last one, alas).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etr-Jr-ou1M
I'll either waste my vote and go liberal or Labour and stick with Emily in Islington.
Same as Kikó, but I realise its a bit of a pointless exercise. Caroline Lucas will run away with it here.
GS just heard the news.
https://i.warosu.org/data/3/img/0004...5805031872.jpg
Dunno.
I align with most of what the red team say but i don't know if i could vote for Corbyn. Might help if he stopped pretending to love Europe.
I live in Glasgow Kelvin though so it really couldn't matter less. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lol better get some childish confectionary and binge food ready so I can do an all nighter and watch the results come in! Will have to postpone my sex arranged for that night! Can't wait!
A dominant woman decides to capitalise on her advantage over an unpopular man trapped in an unhappy situation in order to strengthen her position still further and gain the upper hand in the inevitable exit deal to be signed in a couple of years' time. And then there's also the election.
A harsh but acceptable retort.
Lol Tories about to wreck shit
So, nobody cares that the repeated denials of an early general election turned out to be lies? We're post-cynicism now I suppose.
You can't exactly say "we'll have a general election in about six months' time, depending on how it goes". It creates uncertainty, by spooking markets, and it puts every party on an election footing in case it's called. Nothing would get done. It would have been far more damaging to intimate repeatedly that you may have one and then not call it, frankly.
That said, it's very interesting to see continued adherents to the Red Menace claiming it's a 'nakedly political act' to call an election. Of course it is. As it has been every time ever before the constitutional abomination that is the Fixed Term Parliament Act. What they mean is that Jezza is about to be annihilated and that's going to be a particularly unpleasant reality to confront.
Anything described as 'post-' anything can just get to fuck, as well as the clown using it.
So, business as usual then?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
No bollocks telly debates as well. :drool:
Please refer me to a historical era in which politicians didn't lie.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
I won't, but does that make it acceptable when they do?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Why do you care what the reasons are? Surely you should be thrilled at the idea that there's an opportunity to kick the Tories out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
He votes Green, mate.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Some immediate polling data here, gentlemen. It suggests that the Tory lead is around 20% (consistent with two other polls over the weekend), and the public are supportive of another general election being called.
Perhaps more indicative of the final result, May has a massive lead over Corbyn on leadership and perception, whilst May/Hammond also have a huge lead on economic competence. These were the two key drivers in 1992 that helped to bring Major back into power, and that was without an already huge poll lead and Labour's numbers being a bit soft.
Assuming nothing goes hugely wrong for the Tories before the 8 June, then it could well be a massacre.
Quote:
Majority of voters think May right to change her mind and call an early election, poll suggests
Voting intention
ICM has carried out a snap poll today on the general election announcement. The state of the party figures are very good for the Conservatives, although that is not particularly surprising because other recent polls have produced similar results.
What is potentially more significant is that the poll shows strong support for Theresa May’s decision to call an early election. Voters accept her argument for doing a U-turn on an early election, and do not seem to mind being dragged to the polls only two years after the last general election.
Here are the key figures.
Conservatives: 46% (up 2 from Guardian/ICM over the weekend)
Labour: 25% (down 1)
Lib Dems: 11% (up 1)
Ukip: 8% (down 3)
Greens: 4% (no change)
Conservative lead: 21 points (up 3)
This is the joint highest Conservative lead in Guardian/IMC polling, matching the Tory lead in June 1983. And, at 46%, the Conservative share of the vote is also at its joint highest, matching its figure in the 1992 general election.
Snap Guardian/ICM poll suggests Conservatives have a 21-point lead over Labour, their joint highest lead since this polling series started in the 1980s.
Reaction to snap election
People were asked if they supported or opposed Theresa May’s decision to call an election.
Support: 55%
Oppose: 15%
Most voters support an early election, the poll suggests. Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem voters back the early election in broadly equal numbers (64%, 65% and 60% respectively). Those least supportive are Ukip voters, only 49% of whom back holding an early election. It was then put to respondents that May used to be adamant that she would not call an early election. They were asked which of these three statements they most agreed with.
The situation has changed, and May is right to change her mind: 54%
Nothing has changed and May is wrong to hold an election: 21%
Don’t know: 25%
A majority of voters think May is right to change her mind on an early election.
Expected outcome
Respondents were then asked what outcome they expected.
About a quarter of respondents said they expected the Conservatives to win a majority of more than 100.
People were asked if they would treat this as a normal general election or as a second Brexit referendum.
Normal general election: 67%
Second Brexit referendum: 17%
Personal ratings
There was a question about which team is best able to manage the economy.
Theresa May and Philip Hammond: 51%
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell: 12%
May and Philip Hammond have a 39-point lead over Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell on economic competence, the poll suggests.
And finally, there were questions about whether leaders are doing a good or bad job.
May
Good job: 57%
Bad job: 24%
Net score: +33
Corbyn
Good job: 13%
Bad job: 61%
Net score: -48
May has a massive lead over Corbyn in terms of general approval ratings.
ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 18+ online immediately after the announcement that a general election had been called on 18 April 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
There's a second poll showing support for calling the election, so it won't be an effective attack line to say she shouldn't have called one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entr...e9848ec795?iqk
Make it happen.
Probably Terry May but with absolutely no pleasure in doing so.
Alright, mate.
She said she wouldn't comment on the announcement until tomorrow, then had a pop at Theresa May for lying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
What a self important cunt.
It's a pity she ruined such a joyous and happy occasion.
It's almost as if dead relatives of unimportant MP's didn't factor in the decision.
Won't somebody please think of the poor mums! :(
Ironic this snap election is happening with a local council election just 2 to 3 weeks away.
Corbyn will probably walk into number 10 with TTH pointing fingers and lolling at him.
With the Polls performances in the last few outings Corbyn will win all of the seats. Including the Queens throne. I for one welcome our new Communist overlord.
Corbz is going to get absolutely felt up here.
It's about as easy an election to call as there's been in my lifetime. May might as well go for it as there's no way she'll lose, it gives her credibility (#mandate) and settles things down pre-Brexit.
Tenner on Corbz? Lol.
I don't even think an election defeat would boot Corbyn out of leadership.
Tony Blair campaigning for (sorry, 'alongside') the Liberal Democrats would be all sorts of lol.
The problem for Labour is not so much that Jezza is an idiot, but the fact that they as a party are completely unprepared to run an election campaign. They don't have any candidates currently, for example, except for whichever brave souls are prepared to run as incumbents. Then you'll have all the Momentum entryism and process-driven wank getting in the way as well, and that's before you've even started to think about forming a coherent policy platform, let alone one that will defeat the Conservatives.
It wouldn't surprise me if they lost 100 MPs and the Conservative majority after this was around 250-300.
Tim 'I hate the gays' Farron running alongside Tony 'I led to the deaths of millions of brown people' Blair to unite the country would be quite the sight.
Oh and lol at someone coming up with a 'Tim Farron hates homosexuals' narrative already.
He thinks it's a cureable disease.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Yeah, it all got dredged up pretty quickly. Wasn't his position basically what dela cried off over expressing? I don't see much wrong with it, but if you imagine what would happen if Nigel Farage said it then balls to Tim Farron.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9sI5WYXgAA4O2r.jpg:large
'They' tells you all you need to know before we even get to the gay frogs, at least Nige would have thrown a French joke in at the end.
He, of course, claims he was hacked.
Is there a Lib Dem who hasn't had some sort of gay related scandal lurking under the bedsheets?
A group of us once got told off once for turning a part of a school assembly hymn (so weird now I think about it) into Paddy Pantsdown. I assume he had one?
IIRC, it was year 4 or so so our satire must have been pretty high level.
Outstanding.
That's game over for him then.
It would be if game over if he was exposed as the massive insubstantial charlatan he is, but never underestimate a Lib Dem's ability to come back from a scandal. It's basically a right of passage.
You would think that the sort of perma-outraged wally liable to be put off by that is probably a demented remainer anyway, in which case it will just win them Bradford East back.
That Mail front page is, erm... Yeah.
Couldn't you post it?
EDIT: Just seen it on Facebook. Fucking hell.
They almost certainly believe it as well, which is the worrying part of it. It's representative of the nutter fringe.
Newspapers need to do ridiculous front pages now in order to draw attention to themselves. 'May calls snap election' isn't going to sell many copies.
Do you think that sells papers?
Can't wait to be crushed.
Jesus :D
That's actually quite funny. Not so offensive as their usual.
The Guardian have reached peak seethe over this. Some of the hand-wringing in the articles is absolutely belting. Their position boils down to the people shouldn't be consulted because they'll vote for her.
:harold:
It's not even about the Labour Party. They remember 1997-2005, and now they're on the wrong end of it.
Well looks like my only option are the Greens. That said, Norwich South is one of their target seats, they finished third behind Labour (Clive Lewis) and Norwich South is peak lefty territory.
Reckon the Greens might get 3 seats overall. Brighton Pavilion, Norwich South and Bristol West.
Why are Greens your only option?
The idea that Remain voters are all going to cross over to the Lib Dems en masse is going to be one of many disappointments to an already disappointed Twitter.
Some will go but we're talking parliamentary seats here, they can't win more than 60-80 even if they had a stormer.
If they recover to about 30 seats, that would be a great effort. They'll be hampered by significantly less TV time than they would have had last time out and a leader who nobody knows.
Meanwhile, the meltdown continues:
"Theresa May is a disgrace-she called an election because she rejects the idea of an opposition on our democracy. We are not some dictatorship."
Chuka Umunna, there.
What with Dictators being famous for their love of elections.
Most of the good dictators (as in good at being dictators, not benevolent ones) hold elections, they just fix them.
Parliament has to vote it through, on a two thirds majority no less. Good old Parliament, with its sovereignty. Bloody dictator Theresa May.
ITV confirm they're going to have a leaders debate whether May says yes or not.
With Corbyn, Farron et al on stage, May would look significantly more heavyweight just by not turning up.
I disagree with that. I think the majority of people would be pissed off at her not turning up.
Leader debates should be outlawed. They are utterly awful. It's not a presidential system.
At best there could be issue specific debates involving the relevant party spokesmen.
Exactly. Nobody is going to think Jez is worth a vote after watching him screech his way through a debate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
So I might have a vote again by the time this happens. It will be for the Greens if they're running, and probably SDLP otherwise.
As regards the UK generally and the apparent impending Tory mudslide, one must unfortunately recognise Corbyn's lack of competency as a big problem. Any left-winger who attains a prominent position is going to have everything stacked against him, and needs to be able to manage his message and the media very well, in addition to coming across as personally charismatic. Whatever about his wider philosophy, Corbyn fails in those areas badly. One looks at someone like Bernie Sanders (who still didn't win, but made a better go at it) as an example of what Labour should aspire to. If/when they're beaten and if/when Corbyn quits, they aren't going to achieve anything if they return to being Tory-lite in a bunch of empty suits.
I've developed a theory that voters don't actually give a shit about ideology or policy, and just vote in whoever comes across as least useless, regardless of policy platform.
This also explains incumbency advantage.
I reckon if 2001 Hague and 2001 Blair swapped their rosettes and manifestos, then Blair still pisses it.
Yeah but then Trump blows your theory out the water with 59 tomahawk missiles.
I'm not talking about Americans, Christ knows they are a rule unto themselves.
I think it holds up over here.
Does he?Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I'd say Shillary appeared even more useless.
Hilary was boringly competent. They voted for Trump because he was a loose cannon.
:cab:Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
At what?
Hillary and Trump are both liars and both extremely fake people, but Trump had the bravado and confidence that made it all a bit of a joke so he was likeable. Hilary was just weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q29F1jPvNkQuote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Governance. In CV terms she was just about the most qualified person ever to run for the office, and the only person in the country who could run with a better CV would be Colin Powell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
To be in jail, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by John
There's another piece on the news about the old lady who didn't want an election.
Get back that lady Brown called a bigot.
She's probably dead. Shame, she'd have loved Bexit. 'Kickemaat! Ooo yoo callin racist?'
That MP moaning that Theresa May ruined her mum's funeral only won her seat through a by-election because the last bloke died. You think she'd have more respect for out of step elections.
https://www.gofundme.com/whats-best-for-britain
Give it up, love.
'We need to prevent the people being given the thing they voted for.'
In that analogy Corbyn gets cut in half while May wins in a big way for many, many years.
And presumably Boris then overthrows May and defects to the Labour party?
I just don't think it suits them to admit that a bigger Tory majority = softer Brexit because she doesn't have to worry about Peter Bone torpedoing her Commons votes anymore.
She won't row back from her commitments to come out of the single market / customs union, as she shouldn't, but I suspect there'll be a longer transition period than the hardcore leaver will be comfortable with. That and some sort of deal on immigration, no doubt, which she'll pass off as "control, lads".
Gina Miller really thinks she's some sort of modern-day revolutionary, like Che Guevara with a Twitter feed. The level of self-importance is startling.
She's worth millions as well, if it's really as desperately important as she says what's she doing trying to crowdsource fifty grand to fund it?
Like many on the left, she's firmly decided that she wants something but has decided even more firmly that other people should pay for it.
Stop confusing liberals with the left.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist...
Aye, your vote is at a local level. It just happens that the party with the most seats gets to plug a government together.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Given ITV put Farage up in the "debates", irrespective of Leave.EU not being the designated group for the campaign, you have to wonder what shite they'll get up to this time. They'll probably bring out Ken Clarke as a 'representative of the Conservative party'.
That has raised about ten grand since I posted it, even though you would think that anybody liable to vote solely on the issue would have done so anyway. Still, it keeps her in the news.
https://s9.postimg.org/b2drdj0zz/Untitled.png
I would actually like to talk to somebody of this mindset. Even if you like the European Union, how do you get to that sort of point?
:|
Tough shit, sir. Your kids are studying in Britain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
If they play their cards right (which they probably won't) I wouldn't rule out a 300 majority.
It depends on how brutal the Crosby campaign is going to be, as you'd imagine it might annoy tentative Tory voters. Then again, what other option do most of them really have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
It's why I don't get this "unelected leader" thing. The people didn't elect David Cameron to be leader either, they just happened to vote for his party.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
Actually that's being fairly obtuse, but I'm curious (because it's so different here) - when you guys vote, are you voting more for the party, the leader of that party, or the local representative?
The 'unelected PM' thing is horseshit. No PM has been 'elected' in the history of the British Isles nor will one ever be.
It's just a convenient thing to beat your political opponent with without having to actually use reasoned argument.
In a general election I think you're voting for the party really, unless you have a particularly strong view on your local candidates (if there was a great local MP for Labour/LDs I'd consider voting for them, even though I'm generally a Tory supporter).
Voting some way because you love Corbyn, David Cameron or Paddy Ashdown would be a bit weird.
Myriad of different reasons why people vote they want they do (e.g. Douglas Carswell could stand for the Nazi Party in Clacton and still win because he's (apparently) a top class local MP, some people will vote Labour because they always have and always will etc.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Spoonsky
As an indicator of which party is going to do well, the two key metrics are generally 'leadership' and 'economic competence'. People do vote for a party based on who the best PM would be, but that's irrelevant once the parliament is elected. It's a parliamentary system, not a presidential one.
As Floyd eludes to, it's politically convenient to have a moan about it because you know the new leader almost certainly won't call an election in their first month. The last four Prime Ministers 'elected' all handed over power mid-parliament (Blair to Brown, Thatcher to Major, Wilson to Callaghan) and they didn't bother going to the country. The only time it's happened in recent memory was 1955 when Churchill handed over to Eden, but then the last election was in 1951 and they were due one anyway.
That line of attack, plus this TV debate nonsense, is an attempt to push things into some sort of bizarre middle ground between our system and the American one. It's fucking stupid, really. We should blame Tony Blair, with his "Supreme Court" bollocks and his ignorance of cabinet government as starting it all.
I've always thought a great monster raving loony equivalent would be someone fielding a bunch of candidates as 'The Nazi Party' complete with uniforms, swastika armbands, toothbrush moustaches and comical German noms de plume - and manifesto items like 'We will gas all the juice'. Doubt Twitter would approve of the joke though so it's probably not a goer.
Were it not for the 2008 CHANGE train, the 'Hillary' cult would have been the most sinister thing in recent history.
I loved this shit:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h-42YsYWZM
They don't even realise which is the best bit.
How is everything in the world Tony Blairs fault if the leader of the party doesn't matter?
It's weird how you're all pretending the 'unelected prime minister' thing was only ever levelled at May.
It was fucking massive when Brown was in. I've hardly seen it mentioned with regards to May except for your strawmen on here.
It's good, but this will never be topped. David Cameron shitting himself in Steve Hilton's allotment just can't compete.
To this day I still devote at least an hour a week to lolling at that Labour one of people in Chiswick having their kids confiscated and hospital torched.
Christ, that hasn't aged well. Obama the President took himself far less seriously than that as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcRXbsPafBM
Such innocent times when the main election issues were MP expenses and the bankers the bonuses the bankers the bonuses. RIP ginner.
I think Jezza should re-create this, but with a Morning Star, and a Trabant, and so on.
Ken Loach selling balloons instead of Paterson Joseph, Diane Abbott at the flower stall.
I really am looking forward to the Jezmania aspect of this campaign, it'll be class. The man is a living legend.
Can we have 'Things Can Only Get Jezza' as the thread sub-title?
Your damn emails. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
He lost the primary in that moment (which Trump called immediately, funnily enough).
As another Five Live breakfast politics thing turns into another North - South debate (which the beeb can't be fucked with for time constraints), I've realised we're always going to get fucked over. "I've made more funding for X" quickly becomes, "There's not much need for X in the North." Makes me realise most political policies have the all the precision of a hammer operated by a child.
That's the one thing that infuriates me about all governments. 'We've made an extra £xbn available'
Well how do we know that's enough and it's being spent properly you cockwombles?
Surely you're voting for the party as led by Cameron/May/Corbyn/whoever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The leader has a lot of influence on the direction of the party. The Conservatives under May are different from the Conservatives under Cameron. It's easy to see why people want to have a say on whether they like the new direction the government is taking when the leader changes.
We vote in representatives to the Parliament and then it's up to them to sort themselves out. The makeup and priorities of the government / opposition are inevitably going to change within a 5 year period and sometimes that includes the leader.
It's more the media circus and desperation to be like America with a presidential system (because personalities sell papers) that drives the stuff about party leadership, rather than anything constitutional.
Just voted in my local council election.
1. Lib Dem
2. Labour
3. Tory
:harold:
What a mong
The wife just voted as well, and because I'm learning Portuguese right now (fuk u Enty) I just went through and asked her if she knew what the first/second/third person is and she replied:
Oh I can't remember, didn't I put Labour/Lib Dem/that guy from round the corner?
LOL.
They may want to, but they have no intrinsic right to. Ultimately the governing party is effectively bound by their manifesto.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yeldoow
The Salisbury Convention dictates that the Lords won't block anything that was included in the manifesto, but if it wasn't then they are free to do so. It's why May wouldn't get grammar schools through in this parliament without a fresh mandate.
Hammond wanted to increase NIC, and couldn't because of the outcry over a manifesto breach. Changing PM doesn't change any of this, so it's not a relevant trigger for a new election. People voted for a party, and their programme for government. The leader is irrelevant.
On a side note, the Liberal "Democrats" are on record as saying they won't abide by the Salisbury Convention any more. Effectively they're using their Lords in lieu of being roasted in the general election. When you consider that in the context of their clear policy breach on tuition fees, and their Brexit stance, they're probably the most anti democratic party in the UK.
https://i.makeagif.com/media/12-14-2015/41ylpj.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by GS
Them too.
I look forward to our one party state.
No they aren't. They violate their manifesto promises all over the place.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Yes but the people elected them KNOWING they would break their manifesto promises, so can you stop protesting about it please?
For the first time ever I'm considering taking the Friday off work and pulling an all-nighter.
I remember reading stuff like that on here before and thinking how unbelievably sad you'd have to be.
Why would you do that for the most boring election of all time?
P.S. Carswell is going to step down. BOTTLING the showdown with Arron Banks.
Poor old Arron Banks has been rather blindsided by all this I think. The wanker. No time to get his personality cult properly off the ground.
Yes, they are. Certainly in the context that we're discussing. Some promises obviously become redundant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
You do get the odd material exception (Lib Dems on tuition, or Labour refusing to have a vote on the Lisbon Treaty) but they get their comeuppance when they go back before the public.
It's not a perfect system, but it's as good as you're going to get.
We could, of course, have stayed in the EU where there are no manifestos and no mechanisms for booting out the wankers. But there you are.
Actually, I might chuck Jezza a sympathy vote. The Conservatives always win round here anyway. Bless him and his little 'anti-Establishment' pitch. UKIP have already pocketed that card, Jez.
The list of manifesto promises broken is endless. There is no mechanism to bind anyone to them. You're talking shit.
Your failure to understand the constitutional settlement in the UK remains a source of constant fascination.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Perhaps you've been spending too much time looking at Twitter trends.
This guy has helpfully catalogued 21 manifesto promises that have been broken by the Tories since 2015. You could come up with similar lists for other governments. It's quite clear that these are regarded less as things they intend to do but as a vague wish-list that may or may not change depending on what suits.
Clearly any constitutional measure intended to hold them to their promises is defective.
He's helpfully catalogued a list, but more unhelpfully has catalogued a list that includes fundamental errors.
Not that I have time to go through the whole thing, because why would you, but even a cursory look demonstrates this. Obvious examples include the single market (superseded by the referendum), grammar schools (which haven't gone ahead and would be blocked by the Lords).
I'm sure there are many other discrepancies in his list, but it clearly cannot be considered credible.
The promise about the single market is that they would stay in regardless of the referendum. You, Tory boy, are the one who isn't credible.
It says "yes to the single market... Yes to a family of nation states all part of the European Union". The discussion is in the context of European Union membership, but then it says, later on the same page no less, "we will hold that in-out referendum before the end of 2017 and respect the outcome".
This is consistent with what they did. Cameron renegotiated, they held a referendum, the government's official position was to stay in, but they lost and are now implementing the result.
If you want to fabricate your own view, that's fine, just spare the rest of us your fiction.
Manifestos should be binned as well. We should be electing representatives to make the right choices on the issues of the day, whatever those issues may be.
Manifestos are fine - you need to have some sort of programme to put to the country, and we'd end up having the American shite of the opposition packaging together interview clips to try and claim they've lied.
Basically what Henry is doing now, only on YouTube.
The referendum was not about the single market, and it's quite clear that it's still possible to stay in - except that the Tories are prioritizing other things and making that impossible. Having made clear that you have no problem with politicians lying reflexively, one wonder why you're bothering to pretend that they haven't in this instance. Probably just the partisan blinkers.
The referendum was about everything the single market and customs union entails. Leaving the EU means leaving its institutions. This isn't hard.
There's quite a lot of debate and discussion about what leaving the EU entails. You don't get to declare it from on high.
Thought I'd have to wait another 3 years for this. :drool:
EDIT: GS and Henn0rz, that is.
Technically it's your local representative, but in reality most people base their vote on the leader of the party.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spoonsky
I was too young to really appreciate The Troubles, is this pretty much what it was like?
Don't be so fucking stupid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
This is way worse.
Well, I do feel like I have shrapnel in my eyes.
I'd rather be bombed shopping with my family rather than read Henry and GS having banter.
Flanter
They're counting in the Unite leadership election today. Early returns indicate that Gerard Coyne is ahead of Red Len McCluskey.
Unite have suspended Coyne as of about fifteen minutes ago.
Outstanding.
Pikey and Tragic banter > BS and Lenny Henry.
I dunno, your dick seems pretty hard for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Not quite, but the impending destruction of the socialists will be most enjoyable.
When do you concede that the electorate want nothing to do with it and move on?
'The electorate' :sick:
Lads, you're both wrong. The EU referendum was about a member of the public having a gut response to having, "Do you want Britain to remain in the EU?" bluntly put in front of them. There was fuck all nuance about it. A person sits there and says, "My perception of the EU is thus ... hence YES/NO."Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
So Dimbleby and the swingometer is back then?
The swingometer belongs to Peter Snow.
Just seen some shit about virgin care. Anyone know anything about this? Tempted to vote labour now
I knew she wasn't yours.
I'm...I'm sorry was that an attempt at a joke? :sick:
:harold:
If they lose Barnsley you might as well shut the party down anyway.
Polly will be more at home in the Lib Dems tbh.
Farage saying he won't stand 'even though it would be really easy' despite having lost seven times is top, top stuff.
She QUIT Labour and stood for the SDP in their first election after Limehouse. It takes a nerve to be that hypocritical, really.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39657843
I would normally be in favour of the dribbling old cunt fucking off, but Huw Edwards is far too nice a man to front political coverage.
Clive Lewis there, attempting to charm Tory voters into voting for Labour instead.
Clive Lewis voted against the election because it's messed up his wedding plans. Not even making that up.
That flow chart has really helped me. Thanks for sharing.
What if you're poor, but care more about rich people's welfare than your own?
Probably a surprisingly large chunk of the pie chart, that one.
.....
Well it's better than making up a reason to vote against the election when the reality is that your majority is tiny.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I have no qualms with it, weddings cost a lot of time and money and this close to it hell stand to lose between 50-75% of what he's put in.
That vote is mad, why have the majority so far voted for Labour?
I'm sure it's a pain in the arse, but I wouldn't make decisions at work based on the fact that my oven had blown up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
Dennis Skinner voted against it because of TORY ELECTION FRAUD. I reckon people who reckon that's the reason behind the election should be put in a home.
And we're off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBt5wfJci18
'I'm Enver Hoxha, and I approve this message.'
I just played that in the living room and started lolling at it, but my mum heard it and shouted THAT'S FUCKING IMMORAL!
Top spot as well that they papered over an expensive interactive whiteboard.
I hadn't seen that 'Corbyn's Ten Pledges' from the related videos. Good heavens. :D
North that shit up, Jeremy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
"Kids, we've ran out of money. Here's a letter to show your parents."
Labour's election broadcasts are fantastic entertainment.
The right-wing press are SEETHING over foreign aid being protected, the impending refusal to announce locks on pensions, and no manifesto commitment on tax rises.
It's fortunate that Labour are so utterly dreadful, really.
One cause for optimism is that she seemed to suggest that it wouldn't all just continue to get sent (with no oversight) to Ugandan lesbian outreach programmes like it does now, but that it might overlap more with foreign and defence policies (although that will just mean showering Islamists with money on current form). As for pensions, if ever there was an election in which you could take the biddy vote for granted, so using the next four/five years to reform pensions is potentially the most useful thing any government will do in our lifetimes (which inevitably means they will somehow make it all worse).
.....
That isn't bad actually.
I really want to take over from Seumas Milne and run his campaign. Stops will include:
- Stopping off in care homes and homeless soup kitchens ALL THE TIME
- Playing chess in the street with a homeless man
- Visit the troops in Cyprus and hand out some jams and chutneys he has made
- Go for a swim in the sea
- Maybe a guest spot on Saturday Kitchen
- Refuse to turn up for the TV debates (nobody's a winner there) and go and volunteer at a bingo hall somewhere while it's on
No set pieces, crowds or stupid slogans allowed. Keep it real.
When's Nick Clegg making his WWE inspired return then?
He'll be in the gimmick battle royal with David Mellor and Derek Hatton, who can't bump in case his facelift comes undone.
Is a SNAP election an actual thing or just some bullshit word someone used and everyone clung on to? The media don't fucking half love saying it and really emphasising it.
What's snap about it, or is it S.N.A.P?
It's an actual thing. Snap as in sudden, unexpected.
So it's not an actual election or political term, but a word the media are beating to death. Was it ever used before?
I could understand the likes of the Sun using snap instead of unexpected to dumb it down for their readers, but the proper media are using it too.
It's an actual political term, and has been for years.
Grand job, makes more sense then.
Listening to my auntie and girlfriend (both teachers) it really is tragic what's happening in the education system.
Lewis and Jimmy just come in and pass it off as "teachers moaning" so I don't bother posting about it any more.
This whole thread is just detached twenty something males not caring about anything because they don't need any public services at this stage of their life.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
Its pretty much just Jimmy, Lewis and GS that are the Tories, isn't it? Admittedly they make up most of the posting in here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
.....
The way funding is allocated to schools has always seemed like lunacy to me. I see already wealthy schools getting government-funded sports venues while I know of teachers who have to purchase books out of their own pockets. At the current rate in Australia, private schools will get more government money per student than public schools by 2020. I assume there must be a logic to it, but it just seems like madness to have so many schools that are so poorly funded, and so much money going to schools with independent revenue streams.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Is it crazy that I think any school that charges admission fees should be locked out of government funding? They already have a way of making money, after all. I feel like I'm missing something, to be honest, because it just seems so obvious that it could only be missed for very good reasons.
This perfectly encapsulates the problem on the left, I think. People don't vote Tory because they "don't care about public services". I care about them, but Labour's record is a bit grim and the solution of throwing money at the problem whilst simultaneously working out how you're going to fund it isn't exactly a winner. The shadow education secretary was on Daily Politics yesterday and he couldn't explain how any of their proposals, however reasonable they may sound, were going to be funded.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Labour did this from 2002, running a significant budget deficit for current expenditure and borrowing to plug the gap. It's a bit cruel to offer people public services that aren't sustainable from a funding perspective, because at some point they're going to have to be taken away again.
Tax increases never yield commensurate returns. You could try, but the likelihood is that you're almost certainly going to have divert money from other departments to meet Labour's proposed spending increases. Which is perfectly reasonable as an approach, but when you get into the detail of it you're in a bit of bother trying to work out where it's coming from. The three biggest areas of government spending are health (Jeremy wants to increase funding), pensions (Jeremy wants to keep the triple lock), and welfare (Jeremy wants to significantly increase its scope).
So after he's implemented significant increases in funding for the three largest departments, where do you find the money to increase the education budget to the extent you need to for his policies? He wants to remove tuition fees as well, which would be another heavy increase in cost (excluding any social impacts like reducing access for poorer students).
It just doesn't add up, in any way whatsoever. The Tories are hardily world class economists, but there's not exactly a choice to make between the two approaches.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-AiM-GXUAA_703.jpg
Marvellous effort. It escalates to a point I didn't think it could every other sentence.
I don't think that's crazy.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
It's like the ravings of a lunatic (golf courses?) or something off Brass Eye.
I also understand the cold, hard logic behind the North / South divide, sadly. Spend more on the south because their cost of living is higher. Get more southern plebs in work because they'll provide more for the treasury in tax and generally spend more money. Spend in the North if you want some figures to look good. Spend in the South if you actually want cash back.
I vote for them as the least rubbish party, and had the referendum gone the wrong way I would probably have sat this one out in a sulk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
You were sitting and sulking anyway. You still out of work?
I am, but I'm well past sulking about it.
The party of the job creators.
You jest, but it's a necessary evil.
Imagine the carnage if Corbyn implemented his policies. Slashing the tax base whilst massively increasing spending. :drool:
Theresa May's Conservative Party is on fifty per cent with ComRes. I expect the eventual result to be nearer to forty than fifty (beating 1997 would be nice), but fucking hell the protests on the Saturday after. :drool:
Fifty percent. :D
As well as this. Fucking hell, it really could be a massacre.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-CwBwnXkAEs_eb.jpg
I saw a Jock poll earlier (albeit using a small sample) that had them on thirty-two up there. Progressive Majority.
There's an exclusively Jock poll out tomorrow that has the Tories SURGING, apparently. There's no details as yet beyond the below, but presumably it'll be out shortly:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-CxfR3W0AE2C10.jpg
Team Krankie getting anything less than fifty per cent will be the biggest kick in the bollocks possible.
If they lose five or six seats, it might be quite hard for them to claim MANDATE. An erosion of the vote share and a handful of losses is the best you can hope for up there.
Meanwhile, here we have the European Parliament's chief negotiator throwing a wobbly and attempting to influence a national election in a member state. :harold:
We should have a national holiday when we leave.
The impending facebook meltdowns against old people will be worth the wait.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Do we have to have the polls? It's so dull. It's like if football arguments were based around xG.
Lads. We're into surreal territory here:
Apologies for the storm of posts lads, it's not deliberate. This, however, could be fucking spectacular if it holds until election day:
Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Theresa May: 'Some cat; some fight.'Quote:
Originally Posted by Belgian Twat
*entire English-speaking world marks out*
Imagine how boring your life must be to get as excited as GS does over this shit.
Go bum a roulade mate.
Hopefully it'll be FUCKING SPECTACULAR.
Politics is interesting. General elections with the sort of implications this one has especially so.
Interesting perhaps, but you're practically climaxing in this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
If you want to know why I care about the Scottish poll, it's because the last thing that Northern Ireland needs is more constitutional agitation from the Scots. It just gives succour to the Shinners, and the inevitable civil war that would unleash itself if there was a serious danger to the border. It's already been dreadful because they increased their vote by 3.9% in the last assembly election.
You make Cholcolate and post pictures of it on the internet.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
Nobody on this board has any right to judge how somebody spares their free time. There were a few times where I looked forward to playing FM and browsing this place. How sad is that? GS' polls are much more interesting than RL's chocolate, too.
Maybe if we could eat the chocolate, you'd have a point.Quote:
Originally Posted by leedsrevolution
.....
And you think that's not sad?
We've all failed. Every single one of us. At least we're not ISIS.
I definitely spend more time chatting on Facebook than here, but that's only because the board is DYING.
.....
What'sApp killed the forum star.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
We've all benefited in some way from the relative (though lessening) anonymity and this place not actually being 100% wankers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smiffy
Not since they all defected to WhatsApp.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/1...s_on_gorillas/
Now THAT is spectacular.
The Communist Party of Britain (Not the Communist Party of Great Britain, or the Communist Party of Great Britain [Marxist-Leninist]) endorsing Labour for the first time in history is pretty funny. What was it about Clement Attlee and Michael Foot that put them off?
.....
Don't think there's any danger of that here. The pit lot will be backed by the students to stay Labour.
Swansea will remain a pointless seat where everyone gets 20% and they split the seat. I never understood how it worked and never cared to tbh.
.....
New Scottish poll out this evening on independence. You can decide for yourself how reliable it is, but the headline figures are:
- The Brexit issue does not appear to have given wings to the independence movement, according to Kantar's survey of 1,060 adults carried out after Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called for a referendum to be held in autumn 2018 or spring 2019.
- Of those interviewed, only 26 percent thought an independence vote should be held on either of those dates, while 18 percent thought it should take place later. But 46 percent thought there should be no referendum at all.
- Kantar found that of those who said they would be certain to vote in any independence referendum, 55 percent would vote against it, while 37 percent would vote in favor and another 8 percent were undecided.
Full story: here
Effectively a 60/40 split when undecideds are removed. It'll be interesting to see if that holds in any way in the coming months.
This is a good post.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smiffy
Arron Banks has cucked it.
He's such a tit. This election has come far too soon for him to have his ego vehicle mobilised and so he's crying off.
Saint Daniel Hannan predicted he'd chuck it at the time, so he was goading him yesterday for being a cunt.
He must have been seething when Carswell decided not to run.
Tony Blair reckons that people should vote for the Lib Dems or Tories in some places. And for that, he needs to be thrown out of the Labour party.
If Labour threw party members out for occasional disloyalty (implicit), then Jeremy would have been kicked out of the party years ago having voted against the party whip over 500 times (explicit disloyalty).
Still, nothing better than watching a good purge on the left.
Voting against the whip isn't against the membership rules. Advocating for other parties is.
Only if you do so explicitly, which he didn't.
The absolute state of Zac Goldsmith crawling back to the Conservatives to try and win selection in Richmond. Hopefully they tell him to fuck off.
Somebody with that much money should have better hobbies.
I suspect he's not particularly bright.
.....
Yeah, he's just a rich bellend looking for some plebs to boss around. Totally transparent.
I have reports through a friend of a friend of a friend that knows him (I know, right?) that he's well meaning but thick as pig shit.
Clive Lewis put up some seat poll to say that only he could beat the Tories. It seems he made it up and the pollster he accredited it to has been onto him to take it down.
One of the favourites for the leadership, there.
A friend of mine was sitting next to Paddy Ashdown on a train yesterday and was chatting with him.
As well as helping him fix his laptop he got talking to him about the election. They were interrupted when he got a call from some journalist, who Ashdown gave a bit of a bollocking to. :cool:
Ashdown ran the Lib Dem campaign at the 2015 election, so you have to ask what some of these people need to do to be discredited.
Ryan Coetzee or Andrew Cooper, as examples, shouldn't be allowed to work in politics again. Unless your aim is to lose and lose badly.
https://i0.wp.com/order-order.com/wp...ng?w=540&ssl=1
That is a good graph. But once those Conservative voters start to die...
Yeah but real socialism hasn't been tried.
It's not fair on young people. If only they could vo.... Wait.
Yes it has. The NHS is socialist to give one glaringly relevant example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The worlds highest revenue sport, the NFL is also socialist as fuuuuuuck.
I must have missed something here. Why has Tim Farron, recently off his whistlestop tour of telling people 'Yes I think homosexuals are disgusting but they shouldn't be sent off to re-education camps" sacked a bloke for saying Israel is bad for Palestinians?
Looking at his CONTROVERSIES, the worst ones tend to come from him using Israelis/Jews interchangeably, and he seems to have accepted that he does himself no favours doing so. The shitstorm that his rocket comments (for example) provoked was just mass idiocy, given the history of Jewish settlers' own violent responses to their perceived occupation by the British Empire.
I just read about this guy... So it seems to be ok to support Israel bombing Palestine, but not the other way round?
Terrorism mate.
#JeSuisVictims
This sums THE MOVEMENT up, really. It's easy to pay three quid, but ask them to go out knocking doors on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke and they can't hack it.
Is that James?
Mutton-headed mugwump is quality Borissing :D
In the context of an election it's pretty lol because what it has generated is about 9 light hearted comment pieces investigating exactly what sort of an idiot they think Boris is claiming Jezza to be.
I preferred "benign Islingtonian herbivore".
It's a great way of keeping the narrative on Corbyn's unsuitability for office.
It's just complete wankery from a try hard gobshite.
Suitability for office isn't something Boris has any right to bang on about.
In the same way that Corbyn and his supporters have no right to complain about lack of support from colleagues or failures of message discipline by the PLP. But there we are.
It's proven highly effective because not only is there considerable coverage about what a mugwump actually is, the analysis then details Corbyn's faults against the definition. Meanwhile, more substantive comments are glossed over.
If Jezza was serious about going down in flames he would have said something along those lines.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
This line about Theresa May being "out of line" by calling an election really is a laugh. These people fucking hate the electorate.
lol Jo Swinson. You forget how crap those Liberal Democrat stiffs were.
This is absolutely fucking lamentable. The more you see of the general public, the more you have to wonder if the Reform Acts and universal suffrage were really worth it.
The panel are also displaying a genuinely dreadful lack of understanding of constitutional convention, or they're just wilfully misrepresenting it.
A dreadful panel all round really.
Some belting highlights here.
- Only "30%" is the electorate voted for Brexit, therefore it's illegitimate. This includes children and babies who will be affected by the referendum vote and were denied their say.
- "You haven't given us policies." Green says wait for the manifesto out in ten days' time. Audience member says "you called the election and surely you should be able to get your policies out quicker than Labour." Which they are, because Labour's isn't out for about a week after that.
How do you get to the point of being that thick?
You absolutely can't go on a platform like this and hide behind a manifesto that isn't due for a week. The cunt's done it twice now.
What's he meant to do? He's in the cabinet, and will be after the election, so he can't be in a position of making policy pledges that he doesn't know about it.
He can offer a personal view, but that's equally pointless in the context of what the policy commitment will actually be.
This should be the manifesto, along with however many pictures of Jezza palling around with Gerry Adams they have saved.
Hold on. I've just seen on the Twitter that the Tories (Conservative and Unionist Party) are going to privatise the NHS. Is that right?
I don't know, but this SNP wanker appears to have suggested that there should be no bombing in Syria and the only solution is to get everybody round the table. Presumably this includes ISIS, but in the event that this went ahead one assumes they'd immediately denounced "TORY SCUM" for engaging with terrorists.
Has there always been such a demonstrable dearth of political talent or is over saturation simply exposing their latent incompetence to the masses?
They're rigging the system is all I know.
Yep. They've called an election and are asking people to vote for them. If they win enough votes, they might increase their majority. It's outrageous, as I'm sure we can all agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
"Blessed are the peacemakers" from Clive Lewis, there. Presumably that's Jeremy's condoning of the IRA excused.
"King Jong-Un is clearly bad, but..." from Jo Swinson before launching into a huge rant about how much of a cunt Donald Trump is.
She's now suggesting that Trump should have obtained international clearance before launching missiles against Assad. Because the Russians wouldn't veto it.
My friend made the point that it'd be interesting to see how the Lib Dems would go if they basically went all in and said "we have one single policy - we will immediately repeal article 50 and stay in the EU, if elected".
Obviously they'd get nowhere near winning, for a variety of reasons (not the least, throwing the entire party behind a policy that has at best significantly less than majority support), but currently they're just drifting badly and don't seem to serve any real voting niche. It would certainly be enough of a point of difference with the two major parties that it would attract interest.
I doubt anything is too crazy to try given their current death spiral.
EDIT: Said friend is also non-British. This was just some hypothetical discussion about the upcoming election.
That basically is what they're doing isn't it?
I expect them to gain a decent number of seats, although when you're on 8 then any number of gains is a decent number.
Yeah, that's pretty much what they're doing. If you're still advocating to stay in at this point, then you were probably a Lib Dem voter pre-coalition anyway. You might return to the party this time around on Brexit alone, but they're still sitting on less than half of their vote from 2010.
I don't actually think they have a huge number of places to go. They might gain a few seats in ultra-Remain strongholds, but part of the Lib Dem "gameplan" is to have a massive ground operation in by-elections. Sarah Olney won Richmond in December, but that was because they threw absolutely everything at it. That's impossible to do in a general election, obviously, and they just don't have the weight of support, activists, or money at the minute to do a huge amount outside core target seats. Plus if you look at the votes on a seat by seat basis in England and Wales, the vast majority of constituencies voted to leave. There's not a huge number of competitive ultra-Remain seats to target:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C960C47UQAAH0W4.jpg:large
The Guardian have done some decent analysis and it actually looks fucking bleak for them: here. To be honest, I think their credibility is still shot. It's impossible to make the argument against "the Tories" and "Tory policy" when it was your party that propped them up for five years and voted with them on things like austerity and tuition fees.
Farron doesn't help them. He's not exactly a figure of national significance, and most people don't even know who he is.
I'm doing a full spreadsheet again for a prediction (I underestimated THE TORIES last time, to my eternal shame, was about 30 seats out).
There are so many unknowns and four-way dynamics in this one (for example, where do all the 2015 kippers go? Tory, Labour, stay with UKIP, stay at home?) that it should be pretty unpredictable, on a local level at least.
The problem with the Progressive Alliance putting all of their h'eggs in the single market basket is that Theresa May whomping them is - according to their logic - a Hard Mandate for a Hard Brexit. Then what can they possibly complain about?
They'll always be able to argue that the public didn't vote for a Hard Brexit, a) because nobody knows what a Hard Brexit is and b) because that there isn't a ballot paper that says 'Hard Brexit' on it.
This Liberal Democrat advert is a bit odd. The idea seems to be that the shit news keeps coming, but the people in it don't seem to be having any problems (other than Tim Farron being in their street suspiciously early, as if he has been out bumming all night).
Labour are promising to ban zero hour contracts and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. This is good.
They've also gained on Tory scum in the polls.
I wish you'd stop referring to them as scum. You've never been governed by them.
What? Yes I have.
As much as zero hour contracts are a load of wank, banning them won't solve anything and will probably make it worse. If you want to ban capitalism, fair enough.
What is the "it" they would be made worse?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39775693
Fuck it, let's run with it. Jez4PM.
At least under the Tories we can guarantee a strong and stable NHS, police force, teaching sector, economy, welfare system, after care provisions, mental health provisions, prisons...
.....
Twitter is full of 'OMG Theresa May is terrible' and OK maybe she is, but to think the alternative is better is completely deluded.
Guy Verhofstadt was trolling STRONG & STABLE yesterday, and fair play to him; but the reaction to the other European business was a bit lol. What do you know, it's actually them that want the hardest of landings. It's almost as if they are a bunch of fanatics.
Watching them gradually cave in will be one of the funnier things in my lifetime.
I was lolling at 'Commission sources' briefing things and Ian Dunt wanking himself into a coma.
They have no real reason to cave in though so I'm not sure I share your optimism.
They need to sell their stuff to Britain. Early in negotiations (or before they've even started) there's obviously going to be daft sabre rattling on both sides. Typically each side chooses its favoured sabre rattling and says 'I told you so!', while ignoring the other side's.
This Corbyn response to Diane Abbott's cock up is why he is so great. No rapid PR sweating and Malcolm Tucker bullshit, he just stands outside a Co-op somewhere and calmly chats away like the High Sparrow himself.
Other than something formalising the status of citizens here and there, we're not getting anything out of Europe. They're like the waxworks running the Soviet Union during the eighties, and all they will do is prove exactly why we had to leave.
If that Conservative Party broadcast is anything to go off, Theresa May is significantly more popular than the party as a whole, and they want to flatten everybody.
You still have to adhere to their standards to sell to them anyway and their standards will have to apply to anything you buy. You now just don't get a voice to influence the direction of the giant boat.
In which case the European Union should merge with China.
:D that is bang onQuote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I rather enjoyed that even without understanding the actual reference.
This Tory strategy of saying absolutely nothing that isn't claiming anyone who isn't them would plunge the country into chaos is alright when your strongest foe is the policy obelisk blokes Twitter feed but what happens when someone even vaguely competetent comes along and/or Brexit doesn't cure all the worlds ills? They're fucked, no?
Camerons platform was shite for my personal politics but at least I knew where he stood on 90% of things. All the people left seem to be giant morons (Davis, Boris, Fox) or charlatans (May, Gove).
They'll get done in about 15-20 years' time when people are ready for another Blair.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-5Je1hXoAArIy9.jpg:large
As I was saying.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39790805
If he comes round and washes my car I'll definitely think about considering voting for him.
The Labour campaign so far has shat on the Tory one from a great height. Luckily campaigns make no difference.
His Twitter feed is excellent it must be said. Was he trying too hard to be taken seriously back in the day or did he always have that sense of humor?
It seems he got told how to be 'likeable' and became unlikeable.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Political consultants trying to make people likeable is always hilarious considering I don't think there's a more distasteful job in the world.
Funny you should mention political consultants, it's been a quiet afternoon in Seoul so I've been re-reading this and trying to think about its lessons for the current campaign.
The main one, being as I am a rabid consumer of 'SW1 media', is that the Tories will piss it with a Blair-sized majority.
I don't think they tried to make him likeable. They tried to make him 'tough', and less of a gimp, which was always doomed to failure due to him being a gimp.
ITV is having a laugh with this 'debate' of theirs. Theresa will dodge it and Corbyn will, correctly, also dodge it so we should get a good 2 hours of Tim Farron and Paul Nuttall re-running the shitter end of the EU referendum arguments.
The Prime Minister giving an official speech telling Europe to fuck off is the peak of so many things.
I'd love to produce some sort of quantitative table mapping various commentators' reactions to the PM's speech earlier and the line of their comment pieces during the 6 month run up to the referendum.
UKIP. :harold:
If this is anything to go by, the Tory majority next month (sorry, Theresa May's strong and stable majority in the national interest) will be pushing 300.
So the Lib Dems just won a seat because the Conservative member literally drew the short straw.
Why is Fred West your avatar?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
15% turnout in Dundee in some places. :|
I didn't even turn out for mine (which is a first). These were the candidates:
Conservative: vile, caked up old bitch who runs for the county council on what she falsely believes to be a personal vote.
Lib Dem: mad, evil cow who has just defected from the Tories over Brexit and now spends her days spamming Twitter with Tim Farron pictures and videos.
Labour: mate, you're running for Labour in Surrey.
UKIP: idiot.
Conservative will win with a Kim Jong-Un style majority.
I guess Chinny is probably out of a job soon then.
Worth it for BREXIT. :cool:
Lefties everywhere pushing this line it seems. When will they learn?Quote:
Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond says the Conservatives have "eliminated UKIP by becoming UKIP".
He told BBC News: "One very interesting trend when you see the disappearance of UKIP from English politics, and Welsh politics for that matter, is the extent to which the Conservative party have become UKIP.
"They have eliminated UKIP by becoming UKIP. And the sort of extreme language that Theresa May used in Downing Street the other day - I mean that could have come from Nigel Farage."
SNP losing to Tories all over the place in Scotland. So much irony that they are responsible for the Tory resurgence.
Ferguslie Park, recently named most deprived part of the UK, electing a Tory council. :cab:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7718161.html
This stuff I just find hilarious. Focus groups must be having Theresa May themed orgies or something.
Interesting that they're saying vote for TM rather than the Tories. The election is going to be an absolute massacre nationwide.
Staunch unionists (see: orange scum).Quote:
Originally Posted by dino
I heard Caroline Lucas on the radio saying that the silver lining to their own failures was UKIP tanking. Where exactly does she think those votes are going?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
lol at the Theresa May and Unionist Party winning this West Midlands mayoral bollocks. Not just because it's the West Midlands, but Sion Simon is one of the biggest wankers in England.
EDIT: And the Tees Valley as well. Harold Macmillan is back baby.
Jezza was just on the news putting his faith in people who never voted in local elections, and the 'very large number' of people who still need to register. Brilliant mate.
Rangers fans, eh.Quote:
Originally Posted by dino
Durham's a comfy Labour hold with an defections going to Independents, Tories and Lib Dems.
Lol, the Lib Dem cow from hell nearly lost to Labour. Our area voted Remain as well. Lib Dem fightback seems to have work to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
When will people stop reading into by-elections?
Hasn't the line about the Conservatives getting immigration down to the 'tens of thousands' been in every manifesto for about a decade and they never, ever, ever get anywhere near it?
What is the point?
Sounds good, innit.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
#gains.
They might actually do it this time, when the banking industry leaves London :henn0rz:Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
It's a stupid claim and played a big part in Dave losing the referendum. I still don't think the ELITES understand what people's problem with immigration actually is. It's not the stats, it's the actual transformative effect on their communities and local areas, something they weren't asked about.
I think Paul Nuttall is legitimately a worse politician than Jeremy Corbyn, which I didn't think possible. UKIP will be back to their old 3% levels and almost every one of those votes will go Tory.
He strikes me as being a bit thick. I suppose he was always over-promoted on account of not looking/sounding like the 'typical' UKIPer (that is to say a Nigel Farage clone), but now it has got out of hand.
If there's anything guaranteed to cause a massive Tory landslide, that is it.Quote:
Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas says she's detecting "enormous enthusiasm" for the idea of "progressive" anti-Tory alliances among grassroots activists and the public at large.
They see it as “grown up politics", she says, and a recognition "that if we want to avoid a massive Tory landslide we can do that, but we need to act now, not wait until June 9th to wish we had done things differently".
The Labour and Lib Dem leaderships, however, have been “less forthcoming” about the idea, which Ms Lucas calls “desperately disappointing”.
Ah, now Labour want to ban 'junk food' advertising.
It's all getting a bit Goodbye Lenin.
There would be a good case for Ed Miliband's Labour and the Liberal Democrats teaming up under current circumstances, but why would you need to involve the Greens? Their best performances are in rock solid Labour seats (and you would have to assume that that is only enabled by people knowing Labour will piss it), so lol at the thought of Labour giving them a free run in somewhere like Western Somalia, and they would have nothing to offer in their third place cathedral city wanker seats if the resident smug tossers had better options TO STOP BREXIT.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I don't think I want anything to happen more than a British attempt at the Emmanuel Macron Party after this election from a PLP breakaway (and maybe the Lib Dems), ideally involving Tony Blair.
Called 'Together Britain', or 'Tolerant Britain'.
Ah we're bringing back fox hunting. Christ. These people are absolutely useless.
You realise it never went away right?
It was only 'banned' in the first place to appease Tony's left in about 2001.
As for this attempt to unseat Jeremy Hunt in South West Surrey, I'm not sure if they realise quite what sort of electorate they're dealing with here. Everyone in Godalming probably has their own private hospital wing stuck to their house, let alone BUPA.
Wouldn't say that's true of a large amount of the people I went to school with there. The only people there who outposhed me lived next to Charterhouse.
Farncombe crew represent.
I forgot Farncombe, what a shithole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_..._constituency)
More chance of Halley's Comet hitting the count than Hunt losing.
Your face is a shithole.
And capping energy prices. How Marxist.
Are they really wanting to bring back fox hunting or theonion?
Labour are fielding a 20yo Sussex student in Brighton Pavillion to go up against the Greens. Probably won't vote tbh.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experi...bf5d8900f1.jpg
Did Austen Chamberlain used to do this stuff and have someone draw it?
Say what you like about him, the guys an absolute legend when it comes to street campaigning.
The LEAKED Labour manifesto is a bit lame. Why not go all out you fanny?
'Union leaders' don't exactly sound like they're driving a hard bargain.Quote:
They added that union leaders have been bought off with special pledges including promises to look again at pensions, scrap driver-only trains and offer an inquiry into the battle of Orgreave during the 1984 miner's strike.
If there's anything unions like to avoid it's unnecessary effort.
It's fucking great.
On a SERIOUS note, wouldn't taxing the sort-of-wealthy more accelerate the hollowing out of London, thereby creating a Conservative ring of steel around it forever and ever?
There's already a Conservative ring of steel around it forever and ever. He'll just lose more soft left ponces to the Lib Dems this way.
The 'sort of wealthy'?
The people earning over eighty grand (or whatever it is) but aren't quite in the top bracket, which probably makes up half of the Labour vote in some of those inner London wanker seats.
Ah yes, the top 5%.
There would be a famine anyway, so it doesn't really matter, but it seems a bit dense and lazy from their perspective.
We really should be running as political candidates up and down the country. We'd get at least a UKIP size share of the vote.
Leicester East
Keith Vaz (Labour) 28,421
Bob Wank (Conservative) 11,321
Lee Pervert (TTH) 4,210
Steve Cunt (Lib Dem) 824
Chinny Hill (UKIP) 9
We could build a voter base for sure. Might get a couple of newbies on the board too.
Just dawned on me that I don't live in Vazeline's constituency anymore :(
Pity, it's a real hot point.
It's pronounced Pur-vay.
I reckon I'd do alright in Brighton Pavillion unless somebody managed to dig up some slightly racist social media posts, then I'd need to start looking to run in Kent or Essex.
The Lib Dems are legalising weed. Bit of a core vote strategy, that. Will alienate A LOT of people.
Is it really that big a deal? If America are doing it, its surely only a matter of time for the UK?
It'll do the opposite tbh. It's them trying to grab the student vote like they did with tuition fees and look how that went.
I don't really know, I just think it's crap politics at this juncture. Not that following American policies is really a route to a pure and just society.
No, but once Americans are smoking weed in every film and TV show I think old people will be a bit more open to it. I'm pretty sure that's been a Lib Dem policy for a while anyway.
It was Green policy (lol), not Lib Dem.
I don't often get involved with politics but I'm really eager to see more of official Labour manifesto. I do like Jeremy Corbyn as a person but as good as the leaked manifesto comes across I feel that the damage has already been done over the last couple of years with all of the infighting and senseless media attacks on the man. He might not be everyone's idea of a leader but I just can't get behind Theresa May and how secretive she appears to be about what sort of Brexit the country shall have.
I understand that Brexit means Brexit but it appears her policies (or lack of) are based on blind faith and her refusal to debate on television rubs me up the wrong way.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/liberal_de...annabis_marketQuote:
Originally Posted by phonics
At least a year then.
I think Corbyn's main downfall at this point is his cabinet, especially fucking Diane Abbott. I'd much prefer Corbyn to May, but its never going to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abelxaviersdodgyhairdo
I fully agree with you, mate. I was saying only the other day that I believe Diane Abbott is one of the rats in the party and is deliberately sabotaging things especially after that train wreck of an interview regarding policing. I also don't like the fact that she bottled voting on Article 50 and the reason she gave for it. It was just as petty and ignorant as the one she gave last week.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
If that wasn't bad enough her voice drives me absolutely potty. You can see the clogs working overtime as she um's and ah's.
"Well, you see, what I'm about to tell you is the real reason that why we're....the real reason for all of this, you see is basically that um, we're....let me start again so I can be 100% clear."
Yeah, she's a total mess. Why do you think she's deliberately sabotage things?Quote:
Originally Posted by Abelxaviersdodgyhairdo
I can't see anything other than a huge Conservative win although I am hoping that that isn't the case. Andrew Percy was our elected candidate but he's been there so long now that I think most just went with what they know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I believe voting in this country should be compulsory but then I do wonder whether those who don't register themselves to vote are the sort you wouldn't want to do so anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
This is one of my major problems with Theresa May. She is asking us to believe in her strong and stable government but she was the home secretary for long enough and consistently failed. She mentions deporting about her success in removing Abu Qatada but fails to mention it took over a decade to do so. I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her but then that was the same for the last PM too.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I agree. I think the entire party should now disband as I feel it has served its purpose. Paul Nuttall does seem to fit UKIP like a hand in a glove.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I would take it with a pinch of salt until the official document is released but there are some very good ideas in the leaked version and I think a large portion of the country would support. As to whether they would support Jeremy Corbyn or Labour given how dirty both names are though is another thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I won't go through the entire thread and up posts but I'm still relatively undecided as to which way I'll vote and I haven't for a fair few years now. It's all got rather stupid.
I couldn't say for sure why I believe that but she just strikes me as the sort who goes against the grain regardless. She did the same thing with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I think she's a bit too self serving if I'm honest. I don't trust her for no other reason that she just rubs me up the wrong way, rather like Theresa May actually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
Any drug reform sounds like a bit of a gimmick in a country that shits itself about sugar in cereals.
I don't think the United Kingdom is ready for that sort of stuff although I could see the merits in it if it was doing properly. I think the war on drugs failed many years ago and it's not something you're going to be able to stop. I couldn't trust the Liberal Democrats again after slipping in to bed with the Conservatives anyway.
If you had to roll three politicians into one to create a monster, which three would you choose? The thought of David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and Nick Clegg is enough to give me nightmares but there's so much more scope for worse.
The Lib Dems have retreated firmly into 'core vote' territory. Which is fine, but it's doubtful whether they'll even manage to add a handful of seats.
I did enjoy the Labour manifesto, mind you. It's hard not to be fascinated by their continued belief in the Magic Money Tree. I know people joke, but he'd literally bring the country to ruin if he was allowed to implement such nonsense.
I want to vote labour but it's pointless where I am. If you don't want independence you have to vote Tory. Simple.
I saw the Labour manifesto as more of an investment in the future and providing it is all costed (that's where I have my doubts!) then is there not a possibility that it could be just what Britain needs? I do like Jeremy Corbyn and many of his ideals. What part of the draft copy do you believe to be nonsense? I personally got excited by it even if I have taken it with a pinch of salt. It is a draft copy after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I firmly believe that if the final copy is anywhere as good as the draft edition appears to be then the public are going to have one hell of a decision to make but then good decision making has been in short supply by the electorate for a long time now so I would take that with a pinch of salt too.
He did. Arising from the economic situation in 2010:Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
http://www.economicshelp.org/wp-cont...11-600x471.png
Of course it's not costed. The corporation tax increase, for example, would be totally counterproductive. The Tories cut it from 28% under Gordon Brown to 19%, with further decrease planned. It led to an increase in the tax take over that period (see: here), and companies invested the money in job creation. If he reverses it, he will not generate commensurate returns on that increase and there will almost certainly be a significant decrease in FDI and jobs in the UK market. It's the absolute last thing to be doing when there's no clear Brexit deal - we should be prepared to cut corporation tax fast and hard, if needed, to ensure continued competitiveness if the EU try to play silly buggers. The less said about its proposals on trade unions the better. You don't want to end up like the French.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abelxaviersdodgyhairdo
The free tuition policy is also a nonsense. It's basically subsidising rich kids to go to university (see the lower access there is for poorer students in Scotland compared to their counterparts in the other component nations of the UK).
To be frank with you mate I don't understand a lot of the figures as politics isn't something I concern myself with a whole lot. I have only really paid it a little bit of attention in the past seven years or so. I would say the only thing that I have noticed on a personal level in that time is the bedroom tax as that had a direct impact on me but I would be lying if I was to sit here and say I understood what half of these figures and graphs meant.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I would like to know what the plan is for Brexit but then again, I have wanted to know that since before the referendum, after the referendum, I wanted to know that when David Cameron even offered a referendum given how vocal things appeared to get under UKIP.
It would appear to me that nobody knows what the future is going to entail and it's all just guess work. At least the Labour party have presented 'something' which is better than nothing. I even asked our local MP before getting fobbed off. You appear to know what you're talking about so would I be right in assuming you will be voting for the Tories? I ask because so far I have heard absolutely nothing from them other than sniping and mud slinging.
I would vote Conservative. Not on the grounds that they're any good, but they're by far the least worst option.
:sick:Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Them surpluses. What could have been,Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I believe that to be the case too which is a sad indictment. I do believe that citizens of this country only have themselves to blame though.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I await the day that somebody comes an rips up the script. I do think Jeremy Corbyn might be looked at in future as the person who got the public thinking differently as whether the manifesto is costed or not, it appears to be very popular with a lot of people.
After Brexit, Donald Trump and the farce of the French elections I wouldn't be overly surprised if there is another shock awaiting the world.
It helps when you're turning a blind eye to the excesses of the capitalist corporatist scumbags as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Are you under Dundee east or west?Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Labour were 2nd in east last time by about 2000 votes more than the tories but I wonder what the Corbyn effect will result in.
Excellent. The Tory attack lines won't work unless it looks like Labour are gaining.
It's a tough one. Do you want them to get blasted, or would them improving their 2015 vote share be better because it would give the headbangers all the arguments they need to stay on [long enough to stitch it up for another one]?
The ideal scenario would be for their vote share to increase marginally from 2015, but concentrated in safe seats. Corbyn would use it as grounds to hold on (it's not as if anybody can force him out), surely prompting some sort of split between the moderates and the nutjobs.
The Tory majority would therefore still be sufficiently vast to justify the early election, with their sweeping up the UKIP vote. Of all areas, a Tory surge of some worthwhile substance is imperative in Scotland.
I do wonder whether there's a deliberate line of thought in The Bunker that losing about sixty seats wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for them. They're not going to get the McDonnell amendment through the NEC, and they've managed to plant 'loyalists' in safe seats owing to the accelerated selection process, so if they lose a whack of MPs the threshold to get on the ballot for a new leadership election would be low enough that they might be able to squeeze their nutter candidate on. It would then let Jezza step aside to be replaced by someone less inept. The nightmare scenario here would be John McDonnell - not because he would ever win an election, but because he strikes me as being really a rather dangerous character.
UKIP rolling at three per cent with YouGov is pretty lol, but is the Liberal Democrats being stuck on nine loller?
Elections would be so much more fun if we didn't have political polling.
It makes suggestions that the FIGHTBACK is a real thing laughable, if nothing else. I maintain a big part of the problem is Farron. He's shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Has there been any polling on who the most SEETHING of SEETHING European citizens actually vote for? I mean the real bitter-ender sorts. The idiots buying that sad newspaper and nodding along to Ian Dunt. They probably number about twenty-ish per cent (48% lol), but I can't help thinking that most of them will be Jezza voters, which always made drawing them across a bit of an uphill struggle.
There was some polling recently that split the Remain vote up, i.e. into those who voted that way but think the result should be implemented, and those who somehow want to stop it. There's around 40% - 55% of Remain voters (depending on which poll you read) who want a second referendum or the government to just ignore the result, with the rest thinking the result must be implemented regardless.
So it's not really a "48%" strategy - it's more of a 21-25% strategy, at absolute best. A decent number will be Lib Dem voters already, so the remainder are probably Jezza voters and/or people under 25. Yet these are the people who will never forgive the Lib Dems for going into coalition with the Tories, or for hiking tuition fees. The FT also did some good analysis the other week showing that the Remain vote, in areas where the Lib Dems weren't already the MP, would require a serious swing towards them that is quite unlikely.
I read "How the Tories won" recently, which detailed the Black Widow strategy for taking out the Lib Dems. The same arguments you had in 2015 to destroy the Lib Dems in the south-west (i.e. the SNP / Lib Dems propping up a shit Labour leader) are even more potent.
You have that, Farron either being unknown, disliked or not considered a heavyweight, and a general sense that the Lib Dems are a 'ruined' brand, and it's very, very difficult to see how they make any sort of inroads. Some of the recent polling has them winning back a couple of their Scottish seats, but that's probably because the unionists those areas (e.g. in Jo Swinson's former seat) simply see them as the best bet for beating the SNP there.
This is a very neat summary of where the Continuity Remain vote is going:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_yEJPCW0AUTKaa.png
That is the sort of thing I was after. Cheers. It seems quite obvious really, which is probably why the Liberal Democrats failed to appreciate it.
How the fuck can there be any hard remainers that will vote UKIP?
Because of the stupid.
It looks like a huge strategic error on Farron's part, given they've went unashamedly for Continuity Remain. They'd have been far better saying "we accept the result, but our goal is the Norway model". You could at least pretend that it respected the result (it doesn't, but whatever) without alienating 75% of the electorate. When you throw in the aforementioned Tory coalition deal, tuition fees, cannabis legalisation - what vote are they aiming for exactly?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
The real swing is the Conservatives keeping the vast majority of their own voters from 2015 and starting to sweep the Hardcore Leave vote from UKIP (and, seemingly, the majority of Lib Dem leavers). Ruthless electioneering.
Link to the analysis on the FT, @Lewis
https://www.ft.com/content/76037a34-...3?desktop=true
Subscribe to read. Never!
You get one free article a week. If you go into 'incognito' mode, or whatever the equivalent is on your browser, you should be able to get into it.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&ct=clnk&gl=ukQuote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I was lolling at the Labour Party broadcast on after the local news, and it turns out Ken Loach made it. It's just Jezza spouting off in cutaways from crowds adoring him, and the odd voice-over of something like 'I ACTUALLY THINK HE IS A STRONG LEADER!' and 'WHAT WAS SO BAD ABOUT THE IRA ANYWAY?!' Give it a watch.
He's hired someone as his "election chief" who was a member of the Communist Party until December, and thinks Stalin and North Korea are both alright. Some of the leftist commentators on Twitter have been going MENTAL about how it legitimises it. I assume it's Milne, given he's probably devastated that Russia didn't win the Cold War.
The IRA thing is unforgivable (McDonnell was even worse), so I'm rather surprised there are people of a supposedly sensible disposition (like Boydy) who are able to overlook it.
The more I see, the more I think Labour are going down to double figures in MPs.
Their vote seems to be holding up surprisingly well, but apparently Wor Jez's strategy is to drive it up in safe seats and not worry about actually winning marginals.
This is why the 'moderates' made a massive error spitting their collective dummy. When they lose, but nevertheless pile up votes in safer seats (which happen to be the only places Jezza seems to be bothering with), the headbangers can claim that if everybody had pulled their weight and campaigned as hard then they might have stood a better chance. Had they been clever they would have at least gone through the motions, taken the inevitable defeat (even a 2020 election would have been a defeat, if not quite a tanking on this scale), and said you had your chance lads we've done two elections on Stalinism now and bollocks.
But no, they shit the bed and now lol at them.
The thing I'll give Jeremy credit for is he has ideals that he sticks to. And the guys behind him are all so weak, they'd stand by it all in government. Trump-ish.
'on Stalinism' :D
30% isn't 'holding up' if the Tories are in the high 40s.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Post election Labour will be reduced to such a narrow subset of the country (city seats and only the grimmest of post industrial hellscapes) that rebuilding their appeal will be incredibly difficult and take forever. There will inevitably be an agitation among people who never leave London to form a new centrist Macron party (whether through the Labour apparatus or otherwise) because they just have no idea what's going on.
The Tories are going to start winning places like Hartlepool, lots in Yorkshire, old mining areas in Wales. New territory for them.
I can't wait for the 2022 Conservative manifesto to pinch all of his wacky communist ideas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
What I don't understand about this 'progressive alliance' is why they don't just join one party. If your views are so aligned that you can simply step aside in certain seats and not allow the electorate to make the choice themselves, then what is even the point of your party existing? Does anybody really need the Greens? The Lib Dems are barely relevant. There's basically one serious centre-right party, and the left are split into various factions of the Judean People's Front arguing over who should step aside for who. It's utterly preposterous.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I meant purely on a percentage basis relative to where you'd expect them to be with the reds in charge. They were plumbing the depths of 25% for a while, with the expectation being it would probably erode further when there was even more scrutiny on them. It's obviously not indicative of what seats they're going to win, but somehow clinging to the same percentage as Red Ed with the current wasters in charge remains a surprise nonetheless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Miliband got 30.4% and I'll offer anyone a bet that Jeremy doesn't come within 3% of that.
I don't think he ultimately will either, for what it's worth.
Just been reading a bit. The Labour manifesto isn't even that radical. It doesn't go much further than Ed Milliband did.
Tory scum are going to level the same criticisms regardless of what the case is.
It would destroy the economy, so those criticisms are quite valid.
Fuck the economy. I'd well vote Labour if I was English.
Depends what you mean by "destroy" and what you mean by "the economy". The Tories are doing a poor job on that by most measures that ought to be important.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
It's a weak manifesto, but where the current Labour leadership is concerned I think it's perfectly legitimate to go ad hominem rather than on policy. Nobody wants those wankers running the country.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Labour Party at 0% in latest poll!*Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
*Sample size: 1
It's impossible to fund massive increases in public services by hammering the private sector and the middle class from all angles.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
The result will be job losses, economic stagnation, increased borrowing and misery for everyone. I really don't understand how many times it has to fail before the left accept it's a complete non starter. It doesn't work.
At least three of those are already happening. And tempted as I am to berate you for your standard boilerplate, I'll ask a question instead. Do you consider the outcomes of the current economic model a success?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
The Scandinavians seem to be doing alright taxing the shit out of everyone.
If you have 4 million people and a shitload of trees, life is a little bit easier.
The banks will all move abroad once the finance passports run out so may as well tax them at 90% until then.
Ah yes. Trees!Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I consider it to be a moderate success. Job creation is sound, unemployment is low. Earnings have stagnated, but comparing it to 2008 is a nonsense given everything that happened up until then was built on air.
Unemployment is the lowest since 1975 or something, I read yesterday. You can't just conjour the idea of job losses from your imagination.
When successfully getting the drones to work in shit jobs is a success, you know on whose behalf you're speaking.
This Robin Hood financial transaction tax of 0.5% that Cons are suggesting is going to crush the financial sector even more and make it even easier to leave the UK.
Great politics though even if it's awful economics. People out there in the country fucking hate London and financial services.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Indeed even though it's the thing (services) that gives us as a country the competitive advantage over others. At least we don't need to worry about that when we leave Europe and we can look at the Irish with all our old jobs.
At least they have jobs, which means tax income to the exchequer from companies and employees. The private sector pays for public services.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
The idea that everyone should have a "good job", or that it's achievable, is ludicrous, by the way. What do you classify as a non shit job, exactly?
This is it. Companies have used the corporation tax cut to invest in expansion and job creation. It's led to an increase in tax intake.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
If Labour increase taxes by about 10% overnight, who do you think is going to lose out exactly? You're certainly not going to have companies ploughing FDI into a "hostile" business environment. Totally counterproductive, and would lead to significant impact on jobs.
Still, I suppose Jez can just employ them all in the public sector.
£11bn to subsidise rich kids to go to university.
Superb.
Isn't this a Labour policy? Or are the Conservatives suggesting it is going to crush the financial sector? Confused. Have they committed to one as well?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Anyway, leaving could be interesting seeing as a FTT is a desired policy of the EU/Eurozone, even if it is miles off being agreed.
No one should be particularly worried about a Labour government wrecking the economy seeing as you aren't going to have one.
Works ok in Scotland.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
and Wales.
Where it has greatly increased the difficulty of poor students getting into university. So no it didn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Has it? Every cunt is at uni these days so I doubt it.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc...s/amp/36392857
Funding fees means limiting places. That means demand outstrips supply, so grades go up. If grades go up, rich kids are far more likely to get those places. Hence the gap growing bigger, and it will continue to grow whilst the policy is in place.
There's also the £120m a year the SNP spend on giving EU students free tuition, for reasons passing understanding.
Ok but does nobody take in to account that poor kids are mostly thick as fuck?
Looks like I've got the wrong end of the stick there. You are right - it's Labours.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
The Welsh Wales party have been launching their manifesto.
Do centre left parties in other countries freely chuck around such language about centre right parties?Quote:
Her party's "action plan" was designed to withstand the risks of a "cruel and reckless Tory party", she said.
Leanne Wood is completely out of her depth anyway. This all comes back to the Judean People's Front. It's a crowded field for the progressive vote, so they just try and outdo each other.
It would only be remotely feasible if it was a global tax, so no company could just move elsewhere etc. Without it, it's just a waste of time and completely counterproductive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
It did not.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
https://www.ft.com/content/ca3e5bd2-...8-168383da43b7
Appealing to the Laffer Curve ought to disqualify you from any discussion of this kind.
A shit job is one that is unstable, poorly paid, in unsocial hours and so forth. A non-shit job is one that avoids these things, or compensates for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
If making things better for people is ludicrous then we might as well all give up - unless again, you don't give a shit about anyone but the well off.
The modern [mainstream] left is almost wholly defined by what it's against, rather than what it's for. The referendum exposed it reasonably well, since all of their big talk over the past few years fell to bits as soon as it meant indirectly agreeing with Nigel Farage, but you can probably trace it back to Margaret Thatcher donning them.
Yep. It isn't voodoo economics. Companies had more capital, and the unemployment rate decreasing, more investment and further tax intake increasing are direct consequences of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Question - how do you expect private enterprise to invest in " stable, well paid" jobs if you're proposing to take more of their money in CT, make it unattractive as a place to do business, and then hammer the private incomes of the wealthy who are actually going to invest / run these companies?
It's a preposterous programme for government, and it really could only come from the intellectually dense who developed a view of the world in the student union and never changed it.
I notice you've managed to overlook the deeply unpleasant views that Corbyn and McDonnell share on the IRA. Perhaps you'd like to offer a view on why it can be overlooked by the electorate.
Did you bother to read the FT link? (Hardly a bastion of socialism.) It specifically says that there was a fall in business investment, and offers various other reasons for the increased take.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Do European's do small c conservatism?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
It's either total deference to the state and/or church or fascism isn't it?
I've read it before, on account of not being chained to positions on account of ideology.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Lower taxes leads to positive outcomes, and I think that is especially pertinent post Brexit. We compete globally for business, and lower taxes and favourable allowable expenses regimes encourage investment (see: Ireland). This is the way forward, not baying at the moon for the socialist paradise that will finally work "if only it's done properly".
I dunno, what's Merkel, I'm sure Martin Schulz doesn't go around calling her evil and cruel.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Why collect tax at all then? Why not just let the corporations and individuals spend their money where they see fit if that's how you feel?
Then why have you decided to ignore it and the evidence it presents, in favour of repeating your ideological babble?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
What a completely ridiculous point.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
"Ignoring the evidence" is an apt description of your entire world view.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Have you decided why the Corbyn/McDonnell views on the IRA aren't important or are you just going to keep ignoring it and hope nobody remembers?
What's a low tax rate that doesn't lead to positive outcomes? 4%? 12%?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
That's nice. But I'd prefer you defend your position rather than lobbing insults about this or indeed the IRA.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
You keep going on about low taxes leading to higher revenues and cited the corporation tax cut. The FT says that there were other reasons for higher revenues in that case. It list them and provides various figures, including one figure that shows that business investment (which you say increased) was in fact lower following the cut.
Do you disagree with what the article is saying? Is there something it doesn't mention? Or am I misrepresenting it?
If you can't or won't answer it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that you are simply repeating ideological bullet points.
You could ask the same thing about high taxes, i.e. why let anyone keep their money at all when the state could spend it more usefully for them (I'd love a crate of BRITISH PRODUCE food rations delivered to my door every Friday morning, and no child would go hungry).Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
You could, which is why there's no simple answer. In mathematical terms, an economy is a complex system with lots of feedback loops and changing circumstances. Sometimes it is good to lower taxes, other times it is good to raise them, and it is very hard to predict the effects whatever you do. Anyone subscribing to a model where there's some sort of smoothly curved relationship between tax rate and tax receipts is blinkered, to put it politely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Which is why bollocks to the models, and let's get philosophical (that is to say ideological).
You're misrepresenting it and not considering like for like.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
My points throughout have been based on the period 2010-2016; that is, the period with a Conservative chancellor and where the rate fell from 28% to what is now 19% (that is, tolerably medium term to overlook the one year comparison with its one off effects / exceptional items which the FT article is predicated on).
Your points re a decrease in business investment (of 2%, no less) relate only to 2016 and not the full period. Further, my point on "investment" was particularly relevant to FDI (a personal favourite). According to government statistics, 390k jobs have been created by FDI since 2010, with 116k created or safeguarded in 2016 alone. The UK remains the top European destination for investment from emerging markets. This is a boon to the economy, and tax rates / relief regimes are particularly prevalent for companies making these decisions (see: Ireland, where surveys of international companies clearly indicate that these are key drivers).
Intake was 36.6bn in 2010, increasing to 44.4bn in 2016, an increase of 21.2%. The unemployment rate when they took over was 7.8%. It's now 4.5%, which economists consider to be full employment in the modern sense of what is possible. Income tax receipts increased by 16.3% (to 168.5bn) despite an increase in the personal allowance from £6,475 to £10,600 and an increase in NIC (including employer NIC) of 19% (to 113.7bn) in the same period.
Steep cuts to corporation tax overnight don't work, in my view. Volume can't compensate for the sudden drop in tax revenues. However, this has been a staged decrease in the headline rate with accompany relief for lower earning workers through personal income tax relief. The cut in the upper tax take was offset by freezing the higher threshold repeatedly.
For this six year period, the tax intake has increased despite reductions in headline rates. Almost 44% pay no income tax. The top 1% more pay 27.5% of all income tax (up from 24.4% previously).
It's a medium term strategy and it works, and it needs to continue post Brexit with further cuts to ensure competitiveness with other developed economies.
The BBC have got a mini focus group with Labour voters in Bradford, and the non-Asian bloke is actually called 'Dusty Rhodes'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39942573
What an embarrassing load of core vote wank, or 'the 8% strategy' as I would call it.
Then I need to point out (see the very first graph on the FT times article) that corporate tax revenues had been basically constant during that period, before last years increase.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
And I also need to point out that you were referring to business investment resulting from corporate tax cuts, and an associated increase in revenues. Not to income tax or anything else you might like to change the subject to: you said "Companies have used the corporation tax cut to invest in expansion and job creation. It's led to an increase in tax intake."
This manifestly isn't so. What's the explanation? Could you possibly be peddling discredited and simplistic propaganda that serves only the very rich?
As for increases to FDI, I'll just quote you on this - "comparing it to 2008 is a nonsense given everything that happened up until then was built on air. "
No, they have not been constant. Net CT has increased from 36.6bn in 2010 to 44.4bn in 2016, as I outlined.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
See: https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...nt-august-2015 - in the attached PDF, figure 1 on page 10.
Yes, I was talking about business investment, including FDI. Both have seen positive trends. I didn't change the subject to income tax, or anything else, rather pointed out the trend that lower rates have brought higher revenues and that a headline CT rate cut doesn't mean you lose all revenue deriving from business (I.e. private sector) as they continue to pay employer NIC and the state takes a chunk of the cash going to an employee they've hired with the cash instead. This is part of looking at taxation holistically - in terms of liabilities and associated tax receipts across a number of areas.
It is, therefore, manifestly true that in the period 2010 to 2016, CT rates were cut and an increase in revenue was noted. It is, further, true that unemployment has drastically reduced in the same period. This suggests the rate cut led to investment in job creation. It is also true that the Tories have provided a significant tax cut to lower earners, and driven higher receipts out of the rich. This additional taxation income from private individuals instead of private enterprise further illustrates that compensating incomes to the exchequer can, and have been, achieved.
I don't want to be unkind, but I'm genuinely not sure you grasp how the taxation system works or how the liabilities are arrived at. You're displaying an unfortunate degree of ignorance here. I don't really want to have to explain the same point three times whilst you claim that a point made to reinforce the argument is somehow changing the topic.
Now, answer the question on Corbyn, McDonnell and their views on the IRA. I'd also like your views on why it is okay that their election campaign will be run by a Stalinist sympathiser.
"You should have your say on the Brexit deal in a referendum," he will say. "And if you don't like the deal you should be able to reject it and choose to remain in Europe."Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
What if I don't want either? Twat.
It's where I am on this. How do you actually frame a referendum once a proposed agreement is in place? And do you just keep running them until everyone is in agreement? What about if you agree with some of the agreement but not other parts? Who pays for the constant referenda cycle?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Plus it would hand even more incentive to the European Union to come up with a shite agreement for us to reject. They should just say either 1) 'Norway Model' mate; or 2) bin the vote. It would at least be honest, and you could even claim the WILL OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE if you won an election off the back of it.
Now you're either being dishonest or unable to keep track of the discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
To quote my last post, they were "constant during that period, before last years increase."
The FT showed that that increase was not due to extra business investment. Meaning that there was at no point an increase due to business investment.
Claiming that the revenues showed up in income tax (or holistically across all tax revenues instead) is a completely different argument. If you want to switch to that, then fine but it's not "reinforcing" the claim that corporate taxes increased, and it's much more difficult to prove, particularly as you've already noted that the only way was up from 2010 anyway. Show me any source that posits such a relationship.
I mean, this...
...is utter nonsense. One thing happening after another thing is not evidence of causality. Everyone knows that unemployment is always "drastically reduced" following a recession. Are you pretending that it would not have fallen without a cut to corporation tax?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
And no, I'm not going to talk about the IRA or something else, since that's just an excuse to get away from the lack of justification for your simplistic claim.
Surely the question in a second referendum would have to be: ACCEPT or REJECT a deal, with the REJECT option meaning you go back for another deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Then you could have a third referendum if there was no deal, going back to LEAVE or REMAIN.
Such a fucking idiot is Farron.
Henry, you're not reading the article properly. You're making arguments that they've applied to financial year 2016/17. My points have been on 2010-2016.
The point on business investment, therefore, is somewhat moot. The 2% decrease noted therein would appear to relate to 2016 - calendar year, not financial year. Therefore nine months in the last FY and mostly in the run up to and aftermath of the referendum. I would suggest that as a key reason for any temporary slowing.
:wall:
And again, their first graph shows corporate tax revenue from that period. It was flat until 2016, despite the rate cut. Are you not seeing that?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Ms May said she was "very happy" to "endorse" Mr Hammond but shied away from saying she would keep him in post.
She added: "We’ve worked together over the years for many years, longer than we could care to identify. That’s an age-related comment, nothing else, just in case you try and relate anything into that."
She's so crap at this sort of stuff. She's clearly politically aware enough but when she does the 'HERE IS CLARITY PLEASE DO NOT MISCONTRUE' ends up sounding so desperate, like the other day when she felt the need to tell us that her dish washer was a machine and not a live-in slave.
Despite being an awful hag of a woman, as PM she's growing on me a bit. She is much more representative of how people think than a braying twat like Cameron.
That might explain why the Twitter SEETHE seems so much more intense with her. It was almost too easy to mock him.
And then we vote to leave again and we can have another referendum about the type of brexit people want.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
FOREVER.
Yep. Scotland has to have an independence referendum after all of those as well.
I'm seeing it, but again this shows your wholly superficial understanding. You need to look at the hard data, not the line of one graph in one article. You need to consider the difference between onshore and offshore, and also payments made v liabilities incurred. If you want to be very accurate, figures for CT payments are thus for onshore:Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
2010: 31.6bn
2011: 36.2bn
2012: 34.3bn
2013: 36.0bn
2014: 36.8bn
2015: 40.9bn
2016: 43.9bn
Increase for onshore only: £12.3bn (+38.9%)
Offshore only:
2010: 5.0bn
2011: 6.9bn
2012: 8.8bn
2013: 4.4bn
2014: 3.6bn
2015: 2.1bn
2016: 0.5bn
Decrease for offshore only: (£4.5bn)
Total:
2010: 36.6bn
2011: 43.0bn
2012: 43.1bn
2013: 40.5bn
2014: 40.3bn
2015: 43.0bn
2016: 44.4bn
Increase for all: +7.8bn (21.2%).
Offshore has struggled, understandably, given the oil price collapse and lack of profitability of north sea oil fields in the face of the Saudis pumping it onto the market to undermine American shale. For onshore, despite a headline cut from 28% to 19%, receipts still went up by almost 39% for those 'revenue' streams.
It has nothing to do with superficiality, and everything to do with examining what you said, rather than what you wished you'd said. Your claims weren't about onshore revenues, they were about revenues in general.
And whereas you're perfectly willing to dismiss the drop on one set of figures due to extraneous factors, you'll seize on the set where you find an increase and just as quickly dismiss those factors - despite the huge elephant in the room that they were starting from recession-levels and could only go up. At this point you're going to have to provide some evidence that the increase (any increase, since you keep switching the one that you're talking about) was related to the rate cut. Otherwise you're just arguing from a conclusion.
Here is a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (again, part of the neoliberal establishment) which concludes the obvious that the rates being cut led to lower revenues than would otherwise have been obtained.
You have an ideological commitment to the Reagan-Thatcher idea of the job creators unshackled by the burden of taxation, unleashing their resources. You are declaring this to be a great truth, denigrating anyone who doesn't accept it uncritically, and then when challenged, scrabbling around desperately for some half-assed correlation which you can, using whatever logical fallacies are required, twist into some sort of justification.Quote:
Corporate tax receipts as a share of national income are set to be at the same level in 2020–21 as they were in 2010–11. This is not evidence that cuts to corporation tax rates have not reduced revenues. Instead, it reflects the effect of other factors, including the ongoing recovery of financial sector (and other) profits following the Great Recession. Corporation tax receipts are forecast to be 2.3% of national income by 2021–22, substantially below the pre-recession high of 3.2%.
No, the issue is that you don't understand the topic. I didn't change the topic, nor did I change the parameters therein. I simply provided further detail and expanded the supporting argument. The onshore / offshore was worthwhile highlighting in the context of explaining the increase you denied point blank existed. It provided context and, in my view, supported the argument further particularly with reference to global trends in oil.
You're just being dense. You've yet to offer a single substantive point.
"This article explains there's a big increase so ha!"
"That's the wrong financial year, Henry."
"Oh. But the graph! It's flat!"
"Here's the hard data showing that's not the case for the reference period, Henry."
"You've shown onshore! You never mentioned that before!"
"It's the same healing figures with further context to support the argument, Henry."
"Tory! Tory!"
How fucking dull. We'll end the discussion there, since you'd argue that black was white on this.
When you're ready to justify supporting an IRA apologist, you can explain why. Until then, you'd be best refraining from moralising given you have to adhere to a particularly unpleasant moral bankruptcy to overlook it and pretend it never happened.
This is an interesting pathology. We go from simplistic propaganda and sneering at anyone who doesn't swallow it whole, to abandoning the discussion as "dull" whenever someone doesn't just revert to trading insults and challenges the detail.
Your original claim was that the cut to corporate taxes had led to increased revenues.
There was no such increase from 2010-2015.
There was an increase in 2016 but this was for other reasons, fully understood.
This being pointed out, you've variously tried to switch your claim to income tax, FDI and to onshore corporate tax receipts.
These things are expected to increase in the aftermath of a recession, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that there's been a decrease in what was expected due to cuts.
So you've offered no evidence whatsoever linking a cut in corporate tax rates to increased investment.
It's appallingly obvious that you've got an ideological position and are sticking to that, whatever reality might say. It's pretty much a religious faith for you.
I'm genuinely flummoxed here. You're arguing that black is white, and have apparently not fully grasped that you're looking at incorrect financial years, that onshore revenues are a component of the full CT revenues (the point standing on the latter irrespective of the additional detail provided to aid your understanding) and to continue asserting that there was no increase noted despite the data being in front of you directly contradicting your claim.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
If you want to argue about the merits of the cut in FY11-FY16 and the reasons for the increase in CT (aggregated), then fine. But that is absolutely impossible if you continue to assert factual untruths.
It's an illogical position. I think there was a spell immediately after the vote where a significant minority of the hardcore Remain vote thought it might be over-turned / ignored / somehow discredited to stop it happening. May going full throttle finishes it, so he can call for another referendum now knowing full well it's never going to happen. It's just a campaign strategy to try and steal Continuity Remain but it's looking like a terrible strategy the more it plays out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
He's just delivered the manifesto with an EU flag on the stage and equated the highly-popular Theresa May to Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. The imagery is terrible, really. Joe Public aren't exactly going to love the idea that there's a party who seemingly want the EU to succeed before the UK does.
I reckon they're going to lose seats next month, never mind win them.
They'll win back Bermondsey & OS, Cambridge for sure. Maybe a couple in Scotland. Probably hit about 12-15.
Nick Clegg has to be in serious trouble, seeing as he only remained (arf) last time because of borrowed Conservative votes, and Norman Lamb must be bricking it with all the Norfolk leave nutters.
I think Cleggers might be alright. Norman Lamb has probably had it unless he has the mythical 'personal vote' up there.
I've noticed, looking at a lot of these seats, that UKIP do/did much better in the eastern half of the country (all the way up) than they do/did in the western half. I wonder what the historical reason for that is. Hanseatic League truthers? Viking raid anxiety?
Because the electorate is Essex Man, seaside towns, and the sort of people who make their own sausages. Proper ones at that. Not ones that taste of things. Outside of Norwich and Cambridge it's an absolute ponce-free zone.
This Cricking is quite good: https://www.channel4.com/news/farron...oking-cannabis
Farron is so bad at politics, strategically doesn't have a fucking clue. He needed to move into Blair territory and adopt some broad tropes of the Regressive Majority, even if that risked making Dr Evan Harris cry at dinner. Instead he's just doubled down on what Charles Kennedy was doing about 20 years ago, but with none of the charm or know-how.
Past leaders going into polling day have had a bit of national clout, but half the country doesn't know who he is and those who do think he's shit. Clegg got a lot of help with the first TV debate suddenly catapulting him into the stratosphere, though.
The coalition has clearly ruined the Lib Dem brand, perhaps for another ten or fifteen years. It's a bit difficult to sweep up the student / progressive anti-Tory votes after you've hiked tuition fees and gone into coalition with the Tories. Our own Lib Dem contingent never recovered from the very act of forming the coalition in the first place.
The Tories are apparently going heavy on Farron's seat.
I always lol when I hear the tuition fees BROKEN PROMISE being used as a reason not to trust the Liberal Democrats, as if they are the only people to have ever gone back on a manifesto pledge. Oh well. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
I think it carries weight because it was a significant part of their 2010 offer, with a heavy vote amongst students. It's not as if they didn't implement the PROMISE, they actively did the complete opposite to the tune of trebling it to mightily aggrieve a significant chunk of their core vote already REELING from the coalition in the first place.
They deserve to be annihilated, anyway. Sanctimonious bastards.
That Northern Ireland bit on Newsnight was a bit special, with added comedy lighting. Quite liked the UUP chap making a bid for Irish unification the other way. The biggest Brexit lols are definitely to be had over there.
Our political parties have collectively shit the bed over it. The political discourse has been absolutely dreadful, although that's hardly an exception.
I've reached a point where I want the local assembly to be shut down permanently and direct rule resumed. They shouldn't be allowed to earn a living here.
I think I asked this before, but if you devolved significant powers (education, health) to actual local government, would the terrorists be open to shutting the assembly down and reverting to direct rule? You would think they would jump at the opportunity to run their own little areas.
The IRA aren't interested in local government any more, at least not seriously. The long-term plan has been to get into government in both north and south at the same time, to demonstrate credibility and, if you're in power on both sides of the border, ease the path to unification. Their big problem in the south has been their IRA connections, so they needed the credibility of working in government up here to show that they weren't just a collection of terrorists-turned-politicians and were serious.
The issue for them, in terms of the constitution, is that if people are happy with the status quo then they're not going to vote for unification - because why would you. They seem to have realised this. They've "made it work" for ten years, giving them credibility. Now they can collapse it, claim "the north" is being shafted and other solutions must be looked at. Other solutions meaning a border poll and unification.
It doesn't really matter what you offer them at this point, they'll continue to game it in their long-term interest of breaking the country apart.
I think they're trying to do the opposite of breaking the country apart.
Belfast would go up in flames if there was a vote for unification by a 51-49 margin. Even the prospect of holding a border poll (which they wouldn't win) is fucking terrifying.
It might even be 52-48. It'd be THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE then.
As if it would be remotely comparable.
Remain terrorism would be pretty amazing. Manbag bombs left in roadside cafes and newsagents. A. C. Grayling on hunger strike. Tim Farron doing his shuffling 'just don't shove it down my throat' routine for each new atrocity.
'But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and a subtitled film in the other, we remain an open, tolerant nation?'
I was thinking the other day, there's no good left wing 'terrorists' about any more.
The Ulster Covenant transfers over a bit too perfectly for leavers as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmo..._constituency)
I just wonder whether this one will be close, but I imagine he'll hold on unless Mr Fishfinger splits his vote.
Is someone standing in for Tezza May tonight? Or is it going to be a Labour vs Lib Dem vs Green bore off?
Labour aren't participating either, so it's going to be a record low viewing figure for a primetime terrestrial tv event.
Corbz isn't going either (rightly). It's just SNP, Lib Dems, UKIP, the Greens and the Welsh.
Farron yet again massive error going on and reducing the Lib Dems to the level of the other listed bitters. His campaign is one of the most incompetent I can remember. Jezza/Milne donning it in comparison.
The Standard say Labour up by 8 points so the GAP with the cruel and evil tories is only 15 points now.
Jezzalution is on.
Lulz. Fuck watching that then.
If it wasn't for nationalism, four of those parties would pretty much be saying the exact same thing as well. He's not going to be able to distinguish the message, unless it's a case of trying to out-outrage the others on UKIP.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I'm sure I saw one of the Lib Dem policies was for TV debates to be "mandatory". The state of it.
Lol at the Conservatives social care program for the elderly. Labour should just lead with 'We're demonised for wanting to nationalise public infrastructure, the Tories want to nationalise your nans house'
Fuck old people*. The sooner they carc it at sto hoarding the houses they bought for 50p the better.
Toggle Spoiler
Whats the argument against the debates at this point? You could say 'This isn't America, we aren't electing a president' but then Theresa May is going up and down the country in a bus emblazoned with 'Theresa May for Britain' that doesn't even mention she's a member of the Conservative Party so that argument's out the window.
1/5th of the country watched the debates the first time round so surely that's a good thing?
Both the presidential thing (regardless of how individual candidates choose to campaign, we do NOT have a presidential system) and also it takes an unwarranted amount of attention away from actual campaigning. The whole thing is a horror show, spin doctors in the briefing room afterwards, everyone focused on spun out lines and who 'won' (no one ever wins) rather than actual issues.
Debates are television entertainment only, they have nothing to do with politics.
How does it take unwarranted attention away from campaigning? And what does it lose anyway, a good 90% of the country will never see or attend a political campaign rally/event.
You're setting the campaign up to be a pre-scripted soundbite fest on telly instead of anything that involves interaction with voters.
The clamour for them as far as I can see is entirely from SW1 media whose interests it most serves.
The strong and stable campaign sponsored by Theresa May for Britain would be reduced to meaningless soundbites? Can't have that, it'd destroy democracy.
The short answer is that we're a parliamentary system. You vote for a party on the basis of a manifesto.
You can "vote for Theresa May" if you want, but that's not how it works.
You're only saying that because (like me) you're a politics nerd who obsessively follows every story. To everyone else that stuff is mood music at best. They'll pick up their dosage via a (relatively) third party reporter in the paper or on TV news who will present both sides, unless it's the Sun/Mirror in which case lol. TV debates are propaganda straight to the people, backed up by more propaganda in the spin room.
The new Ipsos poll is hilarious. Tories on 49 (-), Labour 34 (+8), Lib Dem 7 (-6), Green 3 (+2), UKIP 2 (-2).
Seven percent. Two percent.
There isn't a paper in the land that does actual both sides reporting though is there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
From the last election totals, that is:
Con 49 (+13), Lab 34 (+4), LD 7 (-1), UKIP 2 (-11)
Labour are getting fucking slaughtered.
Yep. Seven percent means the Tory/LD swings are safe, with potential for gain. Eating the UKIP vote puts plenty of Con/Lab marginals into the Tory column in England.
With gains in Scotland, it could be a massacre.
There's a line in the Tory manifesto that they're going to scrap the FTPA. :cool:
It's almost like the Lib Dems never existed.
There are a lot of Labour held seats where the Labour vote could hold steady (personally I doubt it will) but the MPs will just get washed away by the 2015 kippers crossing over to blue en masse. UKIP aren't even standing in a lot of these seats.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Particuarly up north.
My GP friend has a very low opinion of how the Tories have dealt with the NHS (does anyone in public services have good things to say about them?). He sees it going down the road of heavy privatisation, starting with paying a fiver to see your GP, and eventually everyone needing insurance.
I was chatting to a doctor in February and I thought he was gonna cry when I brought up the NHS.
I liked the debates last time, but the 'This isn't America' argument holds up pretty well for me. Look at the shambles that US politics is. Shouting matches and one-upmanship wins out over reasoned policy statements every time. I for one am not ready for Prime Minister Piers Morgan.
Mate, have you seen PMQs?
It's not a debate on prime time TV with the aim of winning votes in an up and coming election. It's also nothing compared to some of the stuff that went on in the Presidential run in.
The 2015 debates were tragic. The seven way one was balls, and the one where Dave and Ted Miliband went up consecutively in front of a 'town hall' audience (fuck off again, Uncle Sam) was an atrocity. Mainly because of 'Hell yeah I'm ready!'
2010 ones were fun but mainly because of the novelty factor.
Whether they're good or not, they do have an affect.
The 2010 ones were really interesting, I thought. But that was the first general election I was allowed to vote, which probably helped.
They were interesting because of the aftermath. The first one was, anyway. By the second and third, they'd started to handle it better. The parties hadn't a clue how to handle it at the first debate, so you had Cameron embarrass himself with transparent anecdotes, Brown seething at Clegg for not just joining Labour to form a progressive alliance, and Clegg basking in publicity that Cameron should never have agreed to.
The fallout, such as it was, was great as well in terms of the Lib Dem vote.
Last time out the parties were wise to it, which is why Cameron refused to participate until there were so many people that it was a complete waste of time. You'll never have it be anything other than a painfully scripted, damage limitation exercise.
It also means that the left-left will interpret this as the platform for at least another crack, and possibly an even more leftist approach in future. If they can get closer to 2005 than 2015 the lines write themselves. :drool:Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
This Green Party broadcast is seriously the worst ever. What were they doing?
This debate is seriously embarrassing for everyone concerned. Grotesque incompetence from Sturgeon and Farron to take part (the others have nothing to lose).
The media on Twitter are incredulous that May didn't turn up. It's great.
Sturgeon would eat May alive.
Sturgeon has fucked up massively with her second referendum pledge and knows it. Scottish nationalism is over as of a month's time.
Their position is a complete mess. The numbers simply aren't there, and it's actually quite likely that there won't be a pro-independence majority in the Scottish parliament after 2021 either.
They've been trying to row back on it, but the Tory SURGE is important because it makes it very difficult for Sturgeon's "the Tories don't have a mandate in Scotland" to hold.
I saw earlier, in true Judean People's Front fashion, that there's now a Scottish Referendum Party because the SNP aren't pushing for it with enough gusto. You couldn't make it up.
There have been various independence parties popping up for a while now. My favourite is RISE, standing for 'Respect Independence Socialism Environmentalism'. They got about a thousand votes across the country in the last election, despite standing someone in every seat in Scotland, and have since become a truly hilarious circus.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Quote:
In September 2016, RISE announced plans to make politics more accessible, including regular political-themed dance club events and a new website.
lol at '#IAgreeWithTim' being tweeted by about a dozen fannies.
The Lib Dems are in serious trouble as a 'brand'. Farron would need to go after the election if their performance is as the polls currently suggest - the big strategic decisions have been his.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
There was a question about political party leaders born in the 20th century on Pointless earlier. Farron was a pointless answer.
Sounds about right.
It'd end up being Clegg again, which would be amazing.
Comrade Dacre doing his part to crush the saboteurs.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAI52bTXUAAq9Yr.jpg
Sturmbannführer Dunt was saying earlier how everyone seems to have shifted economically left and culturally right. No, mate, you've just finally looked up from your mocha latte.
People have only been 'culturally left' because Blairism ultimately sought to shame them into being so.
Classic QT moment with Labour lady lambasting the Tories for cutting winter fuel allowance (for rich pensioners) only to be told by Dimbers that that very pledge was in the 2015 Labour Manifesto. Where do they find these idiots?
Probably a Tory councillor in disguise.
"Kez" suspended nine Labour councillors for forming a coalition with the Tories in Aberdeen, which is the whole point of local government.
I lol when people pretend she isn't useless because they need all the prominent not Jezza bodies they can find.
Thank god for Lord Portillo, perfect antidote to QT.
Only 1.66m bothered to watch last night.
Hopefully that finished them.
I'm voting Tory because I think it's our responsibility to eliminate the deficit by *checks notes* 2015... Wait no, *scribbles* 2017? Not buying it? How about 2020? Alright fuck off then, 2025 it is.
Wait I just saw the internet part of the manifesto. Fuck me. Mon Jez. Although reporting Magics posts here to PoPo could be a laugh?
The reaction to means testing the winter fuel allowance is about as intelligent as could be expected. Labour have gone with 'sick and sneaky', where as the SNP have called it 'robbing Peter to pay Paul', which is sort of the entire basis of taxation. Tim Farron also said something but nobody was there to hear it.
The Greens are running away with it here with the Tories in second and Labour's 20yo gimp in third. I'm in a tricky position here because I want to support Corbs, but at the same time I don't want to support this 20yo nonce.
http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/...20005a58d9.png
I'm not voting for that. Fuck sake.
Why would you put him forward as a prospective MP? He must know zero about anything. Caroline Lucas may be wrong about everything but at least there's the base knowledge and experience.
What makes it worse is that the Greens pulled out of Brighton Kemptown so Labour could have a clean run at the Conservatives, and in return asked Labour to do the same in Brighton Pavillion. Labour told them to go fuck themselves (which is fair enough) but then they put forward this bloke? Ridiculous.
By the way, if the Tories did get through their proposed internet bill and what happened with Smiffy last week happened, this site would be shut down and one or more of us would have been under arrest. As he claims he reported posts from here to the Police and they could take the view that it was harassing the mentally ill. At the moment they don't have the power to do that unless you explicitly stated his full name, address and threatened to murder him.
It's an absolute nightmare of a law before you even get to the other stuff.
To be fair, it's sometimes difficult to get non-embarrassing sacrificial lambs for seats you haven't a hope of winning.
Wait. Having declared that he wouldn't respond any further, it seems that you did.
No such denial was made and you're being very slippery. The £36.6 billion figure is from 2009-2010 and obviously not what I'm including when I talk about 2010-2016.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
The relevant figures are as follows.
2010-11: £43 billion
2011-12: £43 billion
2012-13: £40 billion
2013-14: £40 billion
2014-15: £43 billion
2015-16: £44 billion
That's statistically flat. There was no increase in that period.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...2016_FINAL.pdf
Of course, one might have expected an increase as the economy was still recovering from recession. But as the IFS argues, even that didn't happen since the rate cut led to lower revenues that otherwise expected. So trying to interpret flatlining reciepts during a period of economic recovery as vindication for the Laffer Curve is just ludicrous.
It's actually worthy of a Marxist - rigid adherence to simplistic models in the face of whatever evidence exists.
(Contrary to what you might think, I detest Marxism for this very reason. Many neoliberals started off as Marxists before switching sides.)
I'm afraid this comes back to you not understanding the difference between financial year and calendar year, what should be considered "base year" for comparative analysis, and time lag in the payment of CT across different financial (not calendar) years.
He's banned now so whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
It certainly does come back to you wanting to bog the discussion down in irrelevant minutiae and accountancy jargon as a get-out from addressing the economics.
Was talking about the election to a friend last night, I reminded him he needed to re-register at the new address. He'd completely forgot. Told me he was voting Tory 2 minutes later. Fucked it.
No, it really doesn't. '2010' does not mean FY11. If you're analysing the conservative record, you don't do it from FY11. You do it from FY10, being the last financial year under Labour and owing to the emergency budget Osborne presented in June 2010 which cut headline rates and thus already effective for most of FY11.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
You do it because payment regimes mean that large companies are paying half their estimated tax burden in their own financial year owing to the quarterly payment system, and small companies have nine months grace after the end of their accounting period - so the effect with large companies was immediate in the payment schemes.
A better measure, frankly, is liabilities incurred in the year. The latest available data is for 2014/15. Total liabilities in FY10 were 38.4bn versus 43.7bn in FY15. Excluding offshore as being due to global trends in the oil market, it was 32.9bn versus 41.2bn.
You simply can't discuss it without some recourse to accounting jargon, and understanding liability versus payment, payment schedules, periods of impact, and periods of accounting relative to the tax year.
If you want to discuss the mitigating reasons why a tax cut led to an increase up to FY16, fine. If you want to complain that there was some flat lining during the period under discussion before further increase was noted through compensating volume of taxable profit, fine.
What you can't do is set an arbitrary start date for the discussion of the Tory record, use incorrect terminology to refer to those years, deny the relevance of the onshore/offshore segmentation, and then try and pretend that the introduction of additional detail and analyses is, somehow, changing the subject. What you also can't do is deny the data is fundamentally showing what it shows.
I don't blame you for not being up to speed on the intricacies of the tax system, because I can't imagine it's particularly interesting to non-accountants, but you are literally wasting your time here.
I note again, as I did at the beginning of the discussion, that I don't favour cliff edge decreases. Volume can't replace lost revenue overnight. However, this has been a moderate, staged decrease over the medium term which has generated activity and thus compensating volume.
I've booked the Friday morning off.
Just deciding on the snacks.
Just read the summary of the Conservative manifesto and feel disappointed they've decided to include students in the immigration numbers. It's something I was really hoping they wouldn't do and they've also specifically come out and said they expect foreign students to leave unless they can match even higher requirements. The standards for getting a visa after graduation were ridiculous before so it's pretty sad that they're basically going to push skilled kids that they've spent years educating straight out the door.
It's a shame, because I've seen the US system and it's very easy for foreign students to stay here after graduation.
Nor did I claim that it did. It was a shorthand reference to a part of the graph from 2010-2015 which is statistically flat, and which I present again.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
There was no reason for you to seize on the figures for financial year 2010 other than to sidetrack things.
https://i.imgur.com/5RRcFto.png
You'd like that, since it again ignores the recession/recovery dynamic. Why not compare it to the long-term trend, or the pre-recession figure? Why cherry-pick the one year that there'd been a sudden drop, which you'd expect to be followed by an increase? Are you actually claiming that there'd have been no economic recovery if it wasn't for the corporate tax cut?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
This is a significant climb-down, and it's still unsubstantiated.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Your claim was not "compensating volume". Your claim was an increase in revenue due to investment.
Nevertheless, the IFS don't agree that this happened. They state that there were lower revenues than otherwise would have been taken. Why?
And where's your evidence that there was extra investment due to the cut at all? When was the investment and why were revenues flat throughout the staged decreases?
These questions have been open for several posts now, but all I'm getting is irrelevancy of various kinds.
EDIT: Oh wait, missed this.
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
We established right at the start that there were one-off effects responsible for the increase in 2016 and that business investment decreased that year. Now you're back to pretending this fits within your model of increased investment.
Jesus.
This Twitter campaign to ring your nan and gently explain to her why she should vote Labour is lol. The SEETHE when the landslide comes is going to break records.
Henry - your 2016 is FY17 i.e. not FY16. So no, that's a factual misrepresentation AGAIN. FY10 is the base because it had no Conservative stewardship / Tory policy implemented at all, AGAIN. This isn't fucking difficult. Are you honestly not grasping this?
My claim was increased revenue through volume of taxable profit generated, this being the obvious end result of investment to begin with. Otherwise why on earth would anybody invest anything for growth. This is so basic that it shouldn't require being spelt out.
This is really going to have to finish here, because there's only so many times that such things can be pointed out.
This Henry - GS argument is still going? Fucking hell :D
He can't understand the basics of tax years, and what applies when.Quote:
Originally Posted by 7om
The way this works is not that you declare things, for others to "grasp". I explained why that ought not to be the base several times now. There. Was. A. Recession.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
And once again, I'm not interested in what financial year it was. There was no increase due to extra business investment in that year, and you've failed to produce evidence of it for any other year either.
It's "basic" according to the idiotic model that you're determined to hold to. In the real world, what appears to have happened is that rates were cut and extra cash was collected by shareholders at the expense of the exchequer. Who the fuck knows what they did with it? Probably bought themselves some more yachts.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
http://37.media.tumblr.com/01e93ce99...719lo1_500.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by GS
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAM4ztTXsAAkXsr.jpg
It must be seriously depressing if you live in Glasgow.
I've just seen it an four of the five points in the UKIP party political broadcast are designed to appeal to racists.
Progressive.
lol at the 'but universality' arguments in the replies. Flat tax then lads yeah?
Elsewhere:
https://s1.postimg.org/63nti2xrj/DAR...s_AAu_Ah_H.jpg
Have you seen the news recently mates?
Is that Vince Cable looking incredibly pleased with his photoshopping?
Vince 'The Power' Cable is literally the only way my brain can process that man's name.
Also shown are the four and a half Lib Dem voters left in the country.Quote:
Originally Posted by John
Vince got into a dreadful muddle on the idea of a second referendum the other night. I actually quite like him, so it's a shame to see it.
The Huffington Post has focus groups which suggest that Lab/Con swing voters are fully behind means testing the fuel payment and school meals, and also think that free tuition is bollocks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
250 seat majority. :nodd:
The professional (middle class) left are probably more out of touch with their supposed base on benefits/welfare than they are on immigration. They could pander to what they perceive as racism as they really had to, but the idea that working class people don't consider a universal welfare state the be all and end all seems to cause them serious discomfort.
It's because they patronise them, and think that their base's goal in life should be to be more like them.
Wobble weekend just in time for the postal votes.
It's perfect timing, because it makes the "he really could win" argument appear credible.
Corbz taking the stage at a Libertines gig. :cool:
'I know you came here tonight to watch a group torn apart by its idiotic leader and trading on former glories, but in three weeks time...'
Returning again to the question as to why people like Boydy and Henry would support the party knowing that IRA supporters would be running the government.
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2017/05/20...ge/#more-21610
It'll be interesting to see how many of these "big names" the Tories manage to take out. I'd be surprised if the social care policy, which unless it's explained in detail sounds like a bastard's trick, doesn't allow Labour to turn the conversation. Then again, the Tories can always turn it back to 'Brexit, mate' so let's see.
Seriously, why doesn't she just join one of the other parties?
I've voted for Sinn Fein in the past. I love the RA.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Hail hail. Corbyn in.
Boydy voting for the IRA is a surprise, if nothing else. At least the mask of moderation has slipped.
Well, returning to that question, we're apparently okay with the supporters of Saudi Arabia and the Iraq War running the government. I have more of a problem with that.
Of course you do, because criticism of the IRA can only be entertained when equivalence is established with the British state.
It's a repugnant stance, frankly.
Add Myanmar and Turkey to the list of shame.
Not equivalence. The destruction of Iraq was a crime on a scale far surpassing anything ever even attempted by the IRA.
True, and everyone associated with that should probably be killed; but, in terms of looking to run a country, a record of having undermined its territorial integrity is worse than simply being a dickhead.
Precisely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Meanwhile in Scotland, the leaders' debate was on this evening. Nicola Sturgeon was BLASTED by a nurse for her NHS pay policy, and was evidently uncomfortable. The drones aren't comfortable when the Supreme Leader is publicly challenged, and since summary execution isn't possible until after independence, they set about trying to vilify the audience member.
They accused her of being a Tory councillor's wife, and ergo a plant. They basically made it up, and ended up having to backpedal furiously after the Beeb confirmed it was a lie.
True tinfoil hat territory, yet they're still going to get 40% of the vote minimum. Free battered Mars Bars for everyone.
They're looking like proper bellends here. Mass character assassination attempt all over twitter.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Amazing how quickly people will share a meme believing everything at face value to suit their BBC conspiracy narrative.
That's how the SNP operate. They're a contemptible band of utter cunts. I'm amazed more people in Scotland can't see through it.
I think I only joined Twitter after the last election, but the sheer level of impotent rage floating around is just baffling. The referendum SEETHE was all concentrated on the bus, and there was lolling at PROJECT FEAR to be had, but everyone is just lashing out in all directions at everyone.
It's an echo chamber. They did some analysis recently (fuck knows how) that suggested that the popular vote, based on Twitter, would see Labour with a ten point lead. It means these people think their message is getting through (alright, Henry, mate) whilst all the old people who aren't on Twitter have a turnout of about 180% and all vote Tory.
It's great in the aftermath of electoral defeat, because it's just a load of deeply upset leftists retweeting each other about the impending nuclear holocaust.
I don't use Twitter.
All these votes recently have made it even sweeter for meltdowns. The most seethe up here had to be the Independence one but the EU one did run it close.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Never mind Twitter - my Facebook feed was fantastic after the referendum result.
I may have posted this one at the time but it was my favourite from my news feed-
https://s15.postimg.org/z82hznkx7/fud.jpg
Theresa May out today to claim 'FAKE NEWS' on her social care policy that very clearly stated that they will take the value of your house down to 100k. It was possibly the most clear policy in the whole manifesto outside of the 'we'll definitely get immigration down <100,000' and 'we'll definitely clear the defiicit by 20xx' lies they've been telling for a decade.
edit: lol so the 'FAKE NEWS' is that there will be a cap on it which wasn't stated in the manifesto whatsoever. Someone clearly saw the 5 point Labour bump over the weekend.
The problem with manifestos (of all parties really) is that they're written by 23 year olds who have no idea what they're doing.
This care stuff is pretty lol in that it has managed to make supposed left-wingers suddenly realise the value (economically and socially) of inheritances, and supposed right-wingers expecting the state to guarantee inheritances. It seems like a pretty reasonable compromise on the issue to me.
Anyone sticking money on Corbz? Remarkable turnaround, can feel something special away to happen.
Only sticking point is these cunts up here. People feel if they don't want independence they have to vote Tory, even if they absolutely disagree with their policies.
If the SNP didn't exist I'd say that GS would be crying into his sash.
edit: PS this is embarrassing across all sides.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAa0UI9W0AA_YMJ.jpg
It was a terribly explained policy, but executing a sharp U-turn in this fashion makes it worse.
It's a good job that Corbyn is so uniformly dreadful.
Theresa May is fucking dreadful :D
Sadly for the Jezmobile it'll need something a lot more than a policy u-turn that no one understands to make him look like a credible PM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
"You're using quotes from the Labour Party to try and scare people in this country"
That's in the last 24 hours.
I can't wait for the inevitable 'Tories steady/up in polls despite social care fiasco' headlines in a couple of days.
They're spineless and the opposite of stable. Any time they get a bit of a backlash their trousers brown and a reversal happens. It's a shame the Tories can get away with it because it's embarrassing.
The Tories quoting The Daily Mail, Telegraph & Daily Express in the ad there. What was that about echo chambers?
Of all the things that would bring about a mass seethe, a coalition of the England haters and the gay hater, led by Jeremy Corbyn would top it all.
Bring it on, for the lols like.
It would be pretty funny, tbh, or at least for the couple of months before the inevitable 'fresh election'.
What seems to be overlooked is that Jez couldn't command the confidence of the house. Even if Labour managed to win 330 seats, the backbenchers who have refused to serve with him etc etc have basically said he's not up to it. Have the Tories draft a motion of no confidence, and see how many of them have any nerve.
What seems to overlooked is the second Maybot came out of her shell and actually talked policy she's had a nightmare and potentially knocked a few points off the lead. Strong and stable.
That hasn't been overlooked, though. If anything, everyone following politics expects it. She's not a media performer ala Blair / Cameron, so it's hardly a surprise.
In other news, Jez called IRA murderers "brave" earlier. Also, George Osborne's schadenfreude is remarkable to see.
The idea that anyone who does something dastardly has to be automatically a coward is pretty bizarre, and underlines the one-dimensional groupthink that the establishment tries to enforce. I'm sure there were brave Nazis and brave suicide bombers as well.
There's nothing heroic about planting a bomb and then detonating it when you're a safe distance away. The potential Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should not be suggesting that murderers who actively sought to kill British citizens (including MPs and the entire British government itself in Brighton) were "brave".
Your equivocation on this matter is most unseemly, yet entirely expected.
Shooting into a crowd. Now that's bravery.
Your stupidity is also entirely expected. Nobody has singled out the Brighton bombers or claimed that all IRA members were brave. You've chosen that misrepresentation because you can get on your high horse about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Corbyn said that there was "bravery both in the unionist community and the nationalist community". The horror.
There's no need to get on the high horse when his IRA supporting mates are digging themselves into holes.
Why not just admit you're a sympathiser? At least that would have a degree of honesty to it.
Because refusing to play ball with your myopic, rabidly sectarian, triumphalist nonsense is not "support".
History is more complicated than the comic book that you portray it as.
His precise choice of words is irrelevant. He wanted them to win. That makes him a traitor.
There are myriad quotes and evidence from the time to prove it. No one can seriously argue against it, so they're forced into equivocation and evasion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
If the quotes were so damning, one wonders why you're forced into the logical contortions that you are about how the nationalist community is the same thing as the Brighton bomber.
She's going to announce what the cap is AFTER the election. What a joke. Clinton was crap but this one deserves to lose.
It's a complete fuck-up, and an unnecessary one at that. That said, it's better they u-turn quickly and unashamedly than potter along with a shit policy.
No one deserves to lose to Corbyn.
She isn't doing very well here, but knowing that Jez will be torn apart on Friday means it's completely irrelevant.
And some people still accuse Andrew Neil of bias.
Brillo is top class - he's brutal with everyone without resorting to the sort of Faisal Islam SHOUTING and SHOWBOATING.
He's so much better (and less of a twat) than Paxman ever was.
And as Dan Hodges (RIP) says on twitter, this is much better than a debate for putting the leaders under scrutiny.
Agreed, he's absolutely savaged the Strong and Stable May and Jez is soon in line for the same treatment.
I'm watching Emmerdale.
This format works much better than a debate - there's proper scrutiny, and nowhere for the politician to hide.
Not having an audience to cheer for cheap points is welcome.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Indeed.
Imagine the absolute carnage when Brillo gets stuck into Corbyn about the IRA on Friday. The one thing you can say about May here is that she's kept her cool under serious pressure - you suspect Jez will get angry when he's pushed.
Oh Christ, he's doing Paul Nuttall tomorrow. That's like Real Madrid against a group of fat, drunk pensioners in Torremolinos.
Tim Farron on Wednesday, Durgeon on Thursday and Jez on Friday.
Some of these interviews are going to need to be broadcast after the watershed. :drool:
May is going to fucking bottle it. Hilarious losing to an UNELECTABLE LEADER.
Right, now that the horror is over, let's consider. It was a terrible day for the Tories, but they've managed to stick all the shit into one day. They've u-turned quickly and unashamedly, and the story will move on as the other leaders are shredded. I imagine the whole clusterfuck will have had an impact in some of the more ambitious target seats, where the swing required was unlikely but possible, but beyond that the Tories are still hoovering the UKIP vote and that's what'll give them a big win.
Unless there's some other policy disaster, but you'd imagine this marks the low point with plenty of time for recovery before polling day.
She won't. Her majority will be based on continuing to run riot in former Lib Dem strongholds and hoovering up marginal seats with the hardcore UKIP vote who are flocking en masse to the Tories. Nothing you've seen here is going to stop that, because the LDs are terrible and former UKIP voters only care about Brexit definitely happening and cutting immigration. Jezza doesn't offer that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40005257
Savage.
She looked totally rattled.
There's an argument to make for it, but the problem is nobody wants to hear it. Outside Core Group Marxist, people like the idea of passing their wealth onto their kids. Most people are, broadly speaking, happy with the idea of inherited wealth.
What the reaction suggests is that people want to pool responsibility for funding it, rather than take the risk/reward of doing it themselves. Which is fine, but they need to also realise that they're going to have to pay for it at some point. It can't just be passed onto 'someone else'.
lol even my parents are shitting themselves that Jeremy will now win. It's total bollocks. The majority will be crushing, campaigns have no effect on results. Just ask Ed Miliband (and Nick Clegg).
That's useful this far out, because it makes people realise (for lack of a better word) that they can't give Labour a vote because it "won't matter".
It won't, but the narrative writes itself at the minute.
I reckon Corbyn will get the 'fuck it!' vote that made Brexit/Trump possible, though it won't be enough to win. Saying that, May is such a shallow, diddering mess that there has to be a couple more slip ups to come, so let's just hope they're big'uns.
Brexit wasn't caused by that and neither was Trump, which is where our noble friends in the luvvie classes get it so wrong.
Brexit/Trump was about identity. A man who won't sing the national anthem, supports the killing of British citizens, appears to revile the Union flag, and wouldn't object if the country was run from Moscow is simply not going to win over the 'so-called' working class.
If you've got a duff hand and it's stick or twist, you're not going to stick. I was pro-Trump and pro-Brexit, but I'd much rather take the risk on Corbyn than face another five years of crap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Bloody hell it didn't even take the collapse of the SNP.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I'm really not saying anything controversial. There's no way that Jez can win. People decided a long time ago that he wasn't up to it, and you simply can't turn that around with a spend-free manifesto and a couple of high-profile Tory fuck-ups.
Polls always close during the campaign, but there will still be a heavy Tory win on June 8th. Lyndon Crosby knows what he's doing, although I imagine he's fucking FUMING at the minute.
There was some 'throwback' earlier today to this period in the 1997 campaign, where the Labour lead supposedly wobbled and the Tories thought they had a "fighting chance" to turn it around. Three weeks later and the Lord Blair was sauntering up to Number 10 on the back of a 180 seat majority.
If you were pro-Brexit, you're also not going to vote for a Labour party who are somewhat equivocal on Brexit and a leader who is non-commital on immigration. The Tories are taking about half of the 2015 UKIP vote alone, and you'd expect they'll hold onto that (perhaps even increase it) in the closing weeks. UKIP aren't standing in plenty of constituencies, and if the Tories take half of their vote across the board then plenty of Labour seats which were nominally safe are well in play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
I don't see such a turnaround when you've had fresh local elections.
Jez has had four tests at the ballot box since he became leader. Two sets of local elections (one poor, one dreadful), the EU referendum (where his official side lost and 'many' think it's his fault for clearly not giving a fuck), and the Scottish election where Labour contrived to finish behind the Tories.
There may be mitigating factors for all of these, but he's had 20 months in the job and every contact with actual votes has not gone well. It's not going to change now, particularly with crushing Tory leaders on economic management, Brexit negotiation and leadership (which, if May was up against someone half-competent, wouldn't be the case).
Opinion polls are fine, but actual votes matter - and he's been shit at that part.
I guess this time around he's actually in campaign mode. He might as well not have existed for the referendum. We actually get to see what the frig Corbyn's about.
He's always in campaign mode, that's his problem.
With expected timing, the Tory dead cats begin to make their way firmly onto people's tables:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAdi-SvXYAA4uDO.jpg
Jezza is gaining in the polls, and is celebrating by blaming the terrorist attack on UK foreign policy.
:face:
The wallies are out in force with the 'How can it be our fault when 11/9 was BEFORE Iraq?' argument, as if Osama bin Laden was some mug who struggled with dates, and 'How come most of the victims are Muslim?', as if all non-state violence done anywhere is all for the same immediate tactical and strategic reasons. Basically, anyone who struggles with these things should be disqualified from holding any position of influence.
Anyway, wasn't Ed Miliband leading the polls until he wasn't? Still, you would lol if a load of greedy pensioners won it for Jezza, if only to watch the mimsy class having to square it with wanting them all dead eleven months ago.
That YouGov poll has probably caused Lynton Crosby's head to explode.
Looks a pretty soft surge to me (driven by non voters), however I think the one thing that really will damage May if it gains traction is the police cuts thing. Whatever other heinous stuff Corbyn will get up to, he won't cut the police and I think there will be a huge crime problem in the next 2-3 years (quite apart from terrorism) because of what she's done as Home Sec.
There's no way it holds. It's driven by non voters and young people, who'll presumably get bored of it all closer to the election. Labour MPs have also been able to get away with saying you can vote for them without worrying about Jez becoming PM. Tightening polls changes that. The Tories will still win a very solid majority, given there's very little evidence their own vote is fluctuating massively from within the margin of error at 45% average.
That said, there's clearly an issue with May not being very good. The social care thing was a disaster from start to finish, and completely unnecessary. She's lucky the choice is her or Jez, really.
I find a lot of how you lot talk to be pretty disingenuous. I can't quite put my finger on why though.
In what way disingenuous?
I can't quite place it. None of it reads much like a conversation of any kind, but a disjointed series of obfuscated observations and references that seem largely self-serving in a back-patting, "we're proper knowledgeable, us lot" kind of way, rather than being any kind of honest attempt to actually discuss anything.
As I say, I can't quite pinpoint it and maybe I'll put it better later, or maybe someone else can express it better.
We've spent the last 7 years being right about elections on here (GS's pathetic Labour supporting phase aside), cut us some slack.
Statistically, one poll can be an outlier, so I wouldn't take too much notice unless there are others. Still, nice to see Tories sweat.
That was more than seven years ago, I'm pleased to say. I was still a student when I was pro left. It was actually going to work and going out to various companies etc as part of the job that made me realise it was all bollocks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Hammer - it's not disingenuous. We follow polling, know historical turnout for different segments etc. None of this is rocket science. The warning signs are all there for the Labour vote being very soft.
Incidentally I think the social care nonsense will lose her about 5-10 seats, and the Manchester attack will have no effect either way (unless Jeremy really ballses it up).
I'm a big one for people's jobs informing their political views (which is why arts people, who rely on government handouts, are all lefties as are charities, academics and public sector workers).Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
People scrapping for their own money out there in the big wide world tend to be more likely to vote Tory.
The positive from the poll tightening is that it prevents Tory complacency. They'll go very, very heavy on his views on defence, security and terrorist apology now. Plus they can leverage the unpopularity of the SNP and Lib Dems dictating terms to him to swing votes in the marginals.
I think the two key stats here are 1) that the 65+ vote for the Tories is steady in the late sixties, suggesting little actual impact from the social care policy, and 2) they're now getting over 50% of the 2015 UKIP vote.
She'll win by 13, I think.
It's not just that, but you go out to a big company and see how well their internal controls are working, that it's not run by robots determined to shaft the proletarians and, more importantly, the sheer number of people they employ.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
You stop buying the rhetoric that you did when you were at university and didn't know any better. It's why people like Corbyn make me suspicious. Holding the same view you did at university suggests a lack of intellectual rigour.
If you were that arsed about LAW AND ORDER that your vote hinged on it, why the fuck would you vote for Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
You wouldn't, hence May will get away with it, but she won't get away with it mid term onwards next time.
There is a crime surge coming.
She'll go in three and a half years, I reckon.
I don't know. She seems like the clinging on in the bunker type.
They'll knife her. It's not as if you could let her lead you into the next election on the evidence of this complete clusterfuck.
And they say the left enjoys virtue signaling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
It also may, just possibly, be the other way around, with them having values and, just perhaps, seeking out jobs that are in line with those values.
What is a value? I probably have identical 'values' to you.
I believe in fairness.
They have ideas about how they want to live their lives and the kinds of things they want to spend their time doing in return for a wage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Lots of people, if not most, don't have a massive degree of choice in the matter. Bit of both, as ever.
Oh right, so it's both. Ok.
Do you even try to be consistent?
I said above that one thing happens. That doesn't mean that another thing doesn't also happen.
Cats exist, and so does rice.
You could say they aren't mutually exclusive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
@John have I got that right? This is my moment to shine.
It's a great example of what I was referring to earlier, really. How about just expressing your perspective?
I said that earlier, but my actual point isn't that, it's actually that with elements of this
Um ok.
I also think nurses should earn more than footballers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
It's a case of recognising people have self interest. Parties of the left are looser with public money, ergo if you rely on it for your job / livelihood then you're more likely to support the party who are going to give you more of it.
If you're in the private sector, policies which make it easier for your business / employer to grow and spend their money on you through development, promotion, and pay increases are going to sound better. The money goes to you as an employee and not too the exchequer to be redirected to the aforesaid public money recipients. You'll also be less interested in arguments about welfare etc. when you're the one whose taxes are paying for it.
I would imagine this is quite normal.
An honest wage for an honest days work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I am. It's an election thread and I'm expressing my perspective about why many people vote a certain way. There will, even if I'm right, also be people who vote the way they do for other reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammer
It's almost like having people understanding precisely what is meant isn't even the point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I've assumed it was due to stupidity, and then due to poor expression. I'm starting to think that even if it's a throwaway, half-baked observation that adds very little to anything, people really think that's it's worth something and that people are interested. Self-absorption, then? Or a complete lack of any self-awareness whatsoever? Do people really think that their perspective is important, in and of itself, even if it adds nothing to the conversation? That's the only explanation I can think of for people expressing themselves in this way.
GS's post further up is a good example of it too. I mean, he's basically just parroted what you've said and added literally nothing to conversation that wasn't there already. Why would he post it? I don't know. I don't think anyone will know.
And then you look through the thread and wonder why it's become a circle-jerk between about four people rather than an interesting conversation about an important subject. I'm guessing most other members chat about this stuff elsewhere.
I posted it because you appeared to be incapable of understanding his quite basic point.
There are only five posters in the thread with more than fifty posts. One of them is Henners, one of them is some bot that reproduces shit Twitter snark and Guardian extracts, and the others - with over a hundred each - are GS, Floyd, and me. Is it all that surprising that we might tend towards addressing each other rather than the wider universe?
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by GS
Don't let your inability to read get in the way of your desperate need to talk down to people. Anything that makes you feel better, right?
Lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammer
No, you're right, the employed welcome high taxes to fund free tuition and high welfare payouts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Or maybe people who are less self-interested are both more likely to work in the public sector and more likely to vote for the left.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I don't even understand the bit about taxes/welfare, public sector workers still pay taxes.
I'd wonder why it's become like that in the first place, as one of the things about this place is the variety of opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
You've addressed my point though. Nice one.
Evidently.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Doctors aren't altruistic, mate. We've been through this.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
Fucking.
Keep reading Hammer's posts as Giggles's because of the avatar for some reason.
What am I supposed to post, other than my own perspective?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammer
No, you're right. Only unemployed people have ever cared about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I can assure you Hamster that other members don't talk about this bilge elsewhere. We're more interested in cat gifs and leaked celebs.
With that criticism in mind, why do you do that 'New Page :cool:' thing. Do you feel like it adds to the conversation?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammer
Stop being a cunt.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
I thought the second one there was me at first but then I checked the numbers of posts. Phew.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
:D
There will be live blood sport on BBC at 7pm, if anyone is interested.
He is literally incapable of answering a straight question on the RA. "I never met the IRA" has to be a new low.
GS, you really are genuinely incapable of coming to terms with the concept that anyone might do anything for reasons which aren't self-serving. It's a bit sad to be honest.
Hardly, but they're always going to be a minority when it necessitates a material sacrifice.
:( Lad
Serious question, how do you compare Corbyn with the fact that the Conservative government of the 80's and 90's was almost certainly meeting the IRA in secret?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Nailed it. Did I read once you used to be a Labour supporter, GS?Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
They were meeting with them even back in the 70s.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
Some context is important, as I suspect the general knowledge of this period of Northern Ireland is somewhat scarcely spread these days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
The Conservatives met the IRA secretly in 1972, when Willie Whitelaw was Secretary of State - here. 1972 was the worst year of the Troubles, with nearly 500 people killed. Their key demands at the meeting (which was also attended by Martin McGuinness who was already second in command in Derry) included an immediate amnesty for all "political prisoners" (that is, terrorists in normal language) and full withdrawal of British forces by 1975. This was clearly unworkable in a modern democracy, and they were rightly told no - so they continued the campaign.
There was a border poll in 1973, which the nationalists boycotted because they knew they couldn't possibly win - here. There was also the first attempt at a negotiated settlement with the Sunningdale agreement - here. The elections were boycotted by the republicans, who continued the campaign of violence (Paisley's role in this was equally stupid, but we're focusing on the IRA here). So attempts at resolving the issue 'constitutionally' and / or 'democratically' failed.
So it was very clear from the early seventies that the IRA were not interested in 'proper' negotiation. The government may have had certain back channels to the IRA at various points over the following years, but we had no devolved administration and security was therefore their direct responsibility under 'direct rule'. Given the IRA weren't going to stop unless they forced Britain out of Ireland, the government had two choices: 1) they could concede the point, which would have been monumentally thick, or 2) not concede the point and set about beating them.
They did the latter. They may have negotiated with them through back channels (for example, at the height of the hunger strikes in 1981), but they were also simultaneously infiltrating the organisation, seizing its weapons, and, where necessary, outright shooting their members before they could undertake attacks. The IRA ultimately came to the table because the British state successfully reduced its operational capacity to such an extent that it simply couldn't carry on. When a deal was reached under Blair, accepting that the constitutional status of the north could only change through a referendum was basically their official recognition of defeat (not that they'll ever admit it was anything other than a draw). The south also revoked its constitutional clauses claiming jurisdiction over the 'six counties', so it recognised the border officially.
So ultimately the government talking to the IRA whilst simultaneously beating them into the ground meant the troubles ended. There's also the quite clear distinction that the government are actually in a position to implement decisions and / or make concessions. What the fuck was Jeremy Corbyn going to do exactly? He was an obscure backbench MP who liked a bit of romantic terrorism. He had absolutely no power whatsoever (Labour weren't in government the whole of Corbyn's parliamentary career until 1997), no influence, no substantial intellectual weight behind which anybody could fall. This leader from the Guardian, no less, is really quite scathing of Corbyn's relationship with the IRA at the time:
This is also the sort of thing he was saying and doing publicly at the time (this is merely one example):
‘I’m happy to commemorate all those who died fighting for an independent Ireland’.
He quite blatantly supported the IRA campaign. He supported an armed terrorist group seeking to kill British citizens, to destroy the territorial integrity of Britain against the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, and he did so repeatedly over many, many years despite continued IRA bombings and atrocities. Comparing that to legitimate government back channels (whilst they simultaneously smashed them into defeat) isn't a line of debate that needs to be pursued further. There is no comparison.
By the way, I'm aware this may not exercise huge numbers of people under the age of about 50. Which is fine. What I simply can't hack is the attempt to rewrite the history of the thing. At least recognise him for what he is in respect of the Troubles. If you still think it's worthwhile voting for despite his blatant IRA apologist stance, that's fine - but pretending it doesn't matter or doesn't represent a dreadful black mark on his personal judgement is taking the piss. It doesn't really matter it he's offering free tuition - the man is a tool who is singularly unfit for public office, never mind as Prime fucking Minister.
(Apologies for the long post, but it's a complex issue and deserves to be treated as such.)
I'll be voting for him because I hate northern Irish people.
Unless we ever met them to discuss our unconditional surrender, any comparisons with the British state are stupid.
It's like I said a few pages back, Hammer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammer
Virgins.
That Michael Fallon footage is sort of lol, but he could have just said Boris Johnson was wrong and got out of it, so it's not quite as bad as people are making out (although he is prone to coming out with shite, which probably robs him of the benefit of any doubt).
SoMe cOnTeXt iS ImPoRtAnT, aS I SuSpEcT ThE GeNeRaL KnOwLeDgE Of tHiS PeRiOd oF NoRtHeRn iReLaNd iS SoMeWhAt sCaRcElY SpReAd tHeSe dAyS. tHe cOnSeRvAtIvEs mEt tHe iRa sEcReTlY In 1972, wHeN WiLlIe wHiTeLaW WaS SeCrEtArY Of sTaTe - hErE. 1972 WaS ThE WoRsT YeAr oF ThE TrOuBlEs, WiTh nEaRlY 500 PeOpLe kIlLeD. tHeIr kEy dEmAnDs aT ThE MeEtInG (wHiCh wAs aLsO AtTeNdEd bY MaRtIn mCgUiNnEsS WhO WaS AlReAdY SeCoNd iN CoMmAnD In dErRy) InClUdEd aN ImMeDiAtE AmNeStY FoR AlL "pOlItIcAl pRiSoNeRs" (tHaT Is, TeRrOrIsTs iN NoRmAl lAnGuAgE) aNd fUlL WiThDrAwAl oF BrItIsH FoRcEs bY 1975. ThIs wAs cLeArLy uNwOrKaBlE In a mOdErN DeMoCrAcY, aNd tHeY WeRe rIgHtLy tOlD No - sO ThEy cOnTiNuEd tHe cAmPaIgN. tHeRe wAs a bOrDeR PoLl iN 1973, WhIcH ThE NaTiOnAlIsTs bOyCoTtEd bEcAuSe tHeY KnEw tHeY CoUlDn't pOsSiBlY WiN - HeRe. ThErE WaS AlSo tHe fIrSt aTtEmPt aT A NeGoTiAtEd sEtTlEmEnT WiTh tHe sUnNiNgDaLe aGrEeMeNt - hErE. tHe eLeCtIoNs wErE BoYcOtTeD By tHe rEpUbLiCaNs, WhO CoNtInUeD ThE CaMpAiGn oF ViOlEnCe (PaIsLeY'S RoLe iN ThIs wAs eQuAlLy sTuPiD, bUt wE'Re fOcUsInG On tHe iRa hErE). So aTtEmPtS At rEsOlViNg tHe iSsUe 'CoNsTiTuTiOnAlLy' AnD / Or 'DeMoCrAtIcAlLy' FaIlEd. So iT WaS VeRy cLeAr fRoM ThE EaRlY SeVeNtIeS ThAt tHe iRa wErE NoT InTeReStEd iN 'pRoPeR' nEgOtIaTiOn. ThE GoVeRnMeNt mAy hAvE HaD CeRtAiN BaCk cHaNnElS To tHe iRa aT VaRiOuS PoInTs oVeR ThE FoLlOwInG YeArS, bUt wE HaD No dEvOlVeD AdMiNiStRaTiOn aNd sEcUrItY WaS ThErEfOrE ThEiR DiReCt rEsPoNsIbIlItY UnDeR 'dIrEcT RuLe'. gIvEn tHe iRa wErEn't gOiNg tO StOp uNlEsS ThEy fOrCeD BrItAiN OuT Of iReLaNd, ThE GoVeRnMeNt hAd tWo cHoIcEs: 1) tHeY CoUlD CoNcEdE ThE PoInT, wHiCh wOuLd hAvE BeEn mOnUmEnTaLlY ThIcK, oR 2) nOt cOnCeDe tHe pOiNt aNd sEt aBoUt bEaTiNg tHeM. tHeY DiD ThE LaTtEr. ThEy mAy hAvE NeGoTiAtEd wItH ThEm tHrOuGh bAcK ChAnNeLs (FoR ExAmPlE, aT ThE HeIgHt oF ThE HuNgEr sTrIkEs iN 1981), bUt tHeY WeRe aLsO SiMuLtAnEoUsLy iNfIlTrAtInG ThE OrGaNiSaTiOn, SeIzInG ItS WeApOnS, aNd, WhErE NeCeSsArY, oUtRiGhT ShOoTiNg tHeIr mEmBeRs bEfOrE ThEy cOuLd uNdErTaKe aTtAcKs. ThE IrA UlTiMaTeLy cAmE To tHe tAbLe bEcAuSe tHe bRiTiSh sTaTe sUcCeSsFuLlY ReDuCeD ItS OpErAtIoNaL CaPaCiTy tO SuCh aN ExTeNt tHaT It sImPlY CoUlDn't cArRy oN. wHeN A DeAl wAs rEaChEd uNdEr bLaIr, AcCePtInG ThAt tHe cOnStItUtIoNaL StAtUs oF ThE NoRtH CoUlD OnLy cHaNgE ThRoUgH A ReFeReNdUm wAs bAsIcAlLy tHeIr oFfIcIaL ReCoGnItIoN Of dEfEaT (nOt tHaT ThEy'lL EvEr aDmIt iT WaS AnYtHiNg oThEr tHaN A DrAw). tHe sOuTh aLsO ReVoKeD ItS CoNsTiTuTiOnAl cLaUsEs cLaImInG JuRiSdIcTiOn oVeR ThE 'sIx cOuNtIeS', So iT ReCoGnIsEd tHe bOrDeR OfFiCiAlLy. So uLtImAtElY ThE GoVeRnMeNt tAlKiNg tO ThE IrA WhIlSt sImUlTaNeOuSlY BeAtInG ThEm iNtO ThE GrOuNd mEaNt tHe tRoUbLeS EnDeD. tHeRe's aLsO ThE QuItE ClEaR DiStInCtIoN ThAt tHe gOvErNmEnT ArE AcTuAlLy iN A PoSiTiOn tO ImPlEmEnT DeCiSiOnS AnD / Or mAkE CoNcEsSiOnS. wHaT ThE FuCk wAs jErEmY CoRbYn gOiNg tO Do eXaCtLy? He wAs aN ObScUrE BaCkBeNcH Mp wHo lIkEd a bIt oF RoMaNtIc tErRoRiSm. He hAd aBsOlUtElY No pOwEr wHaTsOeVeR (lAbOuR WeReN'T In gOvErNmEnT ThE WhOlE Of cOrByN'S PaRlIaMeNtArY CaReEr uNtIl 1997), No iNfLuEnCe, No sUbStAnTiAl iNtElLeCtUaL WeIgHt bEhInD WhIcH AnYbOdY CoUlD FaLl. ThIs lEaDeR FrOm tHe gUaRdIaN, nO LeSs, Is rEaLlY QuItE ScAtHiNg oF CoRbYn's rElAtIoNsHiP WiTh tHe iRa aT ThE TiMe. ThIs iS AlSo tHe sOrT Of tHiNg hE WaS SaYiNg aNd dOiNg pUbLiClY At tHe tImE (tHiS Is mErElY OnE ExAmPlE): ‘i’m hApPy tO CoMmEmOrAtE AlL ThOsE WhO DiEd fIgHtInG FoR An iNdEpEnDeNt iReLaNd’. hE QuItE BlAtAnTlY SuPpOrTeD ThE IrA CaMpAiGn. He sUpPoRtEd aN ArMeD TeRrOrIsT GrOuP SeEkInG To kIlL BrItIsH CiTiZeNs, To dEsTrOy tHe tErRiToRiAl iNtEgRiTy oF BrItAiN AgAiNsT ThE WiShEs oF ThE PeOpLe oF NoRtHeRn iReLaNd, AnD He dId sO RePeAtEdLy oVeR MaNy, MaNy yEaRs dEsPiTe cOnTiNuEd iRa bOmBiNgS AnD AtRoCiTiEs. CoMpArInG ThAt tO LeGiTiMaTe gOvErNmEnT BaCk cHaNnElS (wHiLsT ThEy sImUlTaNeOuSlY SmAsHeD ThEm iNtO DeFeAt) IsN'T A LiNe oF DeBaTe tHaT NeEdS To bE PuRsUeD FuRtHeR. tHeRe iS No cOmPaRiSoN. bY ThE WaY, i'm aWaRe tHiS MaY NoT ExErCiSe hUgE NuMbErS Of pEoPlE UnDeR ThE AgE Of aBoUt 50. wHiCh iS FiNe. WhAt i sImPlY CaN'T HaCk iS ThE AtTeMpT To rEwRiTe tHe hIsToRy oF ThE ThInG. aT LeAsT ReCoGnIsE HiM FoR WhAt hE Is iN ReSpEcT Of tHe tRoUbLeS. iF YoU StIlL ThInK It's wOrThWhIlE VoTiNg fOr dEsPiTe hIs bLaTaNt iRa aPoLoGiSt sTaNcE, tHaT'S FiNe - bUt pReTeNdInG It dOeSn't mAtTeR Or dOeSn't rEpReSeNt a dReAdFuL BlAcK MaRk oN HiS PeRsOnAl jUdGeMeNt iS TaKiNg tHe pIsS. iT DoEsN'T ReAlLy mAtTeR It hE'S OfFeRiNg fReE TuItIoN - ThE MaN Is a tOoL WhO Is sInGuLaRlY UnFiT FoR PuBlIc oFfIcE, nEvEr mInD As pRiMe fUcKiNg mInIsTeR. (ApOlOgIeS FoR ThE LoNg pOsT, bUt iT'S A CoMpLeX IsSuE AnD DeSeRvEs tO Be tReAtEd aS SuCh.)Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2...lity=100&w=650
What the fuck?
Do you even meme bro?
Am I high?
:D
Is he drunk?
That must have taken some effort.
All that education finally paid off, Stephen.
If he hasn't converted that somehow I'm repping. Can you confirm Toid?
There must be a website that does that for you, otherwise in terms of willpower required Boydy has pretty much ran a marathon.
Lovely seethe. Just what I needed to kick start my Friday night.
Is that our Chrissy that just popped up on Newsnight?
Website or not, that Boyd post is great :D
I wrote a small Python program to do it for me. I've been pissing around trying to learn some coding and that was the main motivation for doing it.
Nah, you wouldn't put that much effort into anything.
It was only 11 lines. Plus, I learnt something out of it. And I thought it was funny.
Corbyn did well in the interview I thought, claims from the bigoted section of our membership that he was insufficiently vitriolic in his attitude towards the IRA notwithstanding.
May is going full on with the terrorism stuff too, in the aftermath of the Manchester attack, blatantly lying about Corbyns position. Hopefully people understand nuance better than she thinks, and the implication that you're either unquestionably behind middle-eastern wars or a supporter of ISIS won't stand.
It's worth noting that this has happened before, when the Spanish government tried to use the Madrid bombing for political gain on much the same grounds, and it backfired.
Meh, I'll be voting Labour anyway. They're the only one canvassing in our area. I've seen maybe two Tory leaflets in my time here and they're both either, "Our candidate's in a band." or "Yeah but Labour proper did all those school cuts that the Tory government definitely had nothing to do with."
Our Labour mainstay is taken credit for the building I work in and the regeneration of the city centre. Fine, I guess. That's the thing I get from local politicians. You're never really sure how much they actually do or how far their power reaches. Ultimately, the decisions are made by people with far more influence than them.
Can someone explain how 'yes but the loyalists killed lots of people too' is as offensive as the dick heads on my Facebook seem to find it? I mean, it seems a simple declaration of both sides being murderous cunts to me.
The loyalists killed more, often in collusion with the British state.
But that's consigned to the memory hole, apparently.
Loyalists didn't kill more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Corbyn took the battering well, but ultimately anybody that watched it will have witnessed 20 minutes dedicated to reasons to not vote for him. The best he could do is not lose votes.
Apologies. They killed more civilians. I remembered that wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Yeah, that sounds more accurate although I don't know the exact figures on that.
What I get from the Irish is that both sides of the conflict were massively shit.
Henry and Boydy refusing to acknowledge the issue / pretending it doesn't exist / equivocating proves the point perfectly here. Exactly as you'd expected from the fully-paid up tinfoil hat brigade.
Quite fitting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Powell, March 1971
So now we're on to defending loyalist terrorism. Nice.
You could pretty easily argue that the IRA were committing crimes in the belief that they were helping to preserve the integrity of their country.
But what I think is more fitting is this:
OnE Of tHe mOsT DaNgErOuS WoRdS Is 'ExTrEmIsT'. A PeRsOn wHo cOmMiTs aCtS Of vIoLeNcE Is nOt aN 'eXtReMiSt'; hE Is a cRiMiNaL. iF He cOmMiTs tHoSe aCtS Of vIoLeNcE WiTh tHe oBjEcT Of dEtAcHiNg pArT Of tHe tErRiToRy oF ThE UnItEd kInGdOm aNd aTtAcHiNg iT To a fOrEiGn cOuNtRy, He iS An eNeMy uNdEr aRmS. tHeRe iS ThE WoRlD Of dIfFeReNcE BeTwEeN A CiTiZeN WhO CoMmItS A CrImE, iN ThE BeLiEf, HoWeVeR MiStAkEn, ThAt hE Is tHeReBy hElPiNg tO PrEsErVe tHe iNtEgRiTy oF HiS CoUnTrY AnD HiS RiGhT To rEmAiN A SuBjEcT Of hIs sOvErEiGn, AnD A PeRsOn, Be hE CiTiZeN Or aLiEn, WhO CoMmItS A CrImE WiTh tHe iNtEnTiOn oF DeStRoYiNg tHaT InTeGrItY AnD ReNdErInG ImPoSsIbLe tHaT AlLeGiAnCe. ThE FoRmEr bReAcHeS ThE PeAcE; tHe lAtTeR Is eXeCuTiNg aN AcT Of wAr. ThE UsE Of tHe wOrD 'eXtReMiSt' Of eItHeR Or bOtH CoNvEyS A DaNgErOuS UnTrUtH: iT ImPlIeS ThAt bOtH HoLd aCcEpTaBlE OpInIoNs aNd sEeK PeRmIsSiBlE EnDs, OnLy tHaT ThEy cArRy tHeM To 'ExTrEmEs'. nOt sO: tHe oNe iS A LaWbReAkEr; ThE OtHeR Is aN EnEmY. tHe sAmE PuRpOsE, tHaT Of rEnDeRiNg fRiEnD AnD FoE InDiStInGuIsHaBlE, iS AcHiEvEd bY ReFeReNcEs tO ThE 'iMpArTiAlItY' oF ThE BrItIsH TrOoPs aNd tO ThEiR FuNcTiOn aS 'kEePiNg tHe pEaCe'. tHe bRiTiSh fOrCeS ArE In nOrThErN IrElAnD BeCaUsE An aVoWeD EnEmY Is uSiNg fOrCe oF ArMs tO BrEaK DoWn lAwFuL AuThOrItY In tHe pRoViNcE AnD ThErEbY SeIzE CoNtRoL. tHe aRmY CaNnOt bE 'iMpArTiAl' ToWaRdS An eNeMy, NoR BeTwEeN ThE AgGrEsSoR AnD ThE AgGrEsSeD: tHeY ArE NoT GlOrIfIeD PoLiCeMeN, rEsTrAiNiNg tWo sEtS Of cItIzEnS WhO MiGhT OtHeRwIsE Do oNe aNoThEr hArM, aNd dUtY BoUnD To sHoW No 'PaRtIaLiTy' ToWaRdS OnE LaWbReAkEr rAtHeR ThAn aNoThEr. ThEy aRe eNgAgEd iN DeFeAtInG An aRmEd aTtAcK UpOn tHe sTaTe. OnCe aGaIn, ThE TeRmInOlOgY Is dEsIgNeD To oBlItErAtE ThE ViTaL DiFfErEnCe bEtWeEn fRiEnD AnD EnEmY, lOyAl aNd dIsLoYaL.
https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2...lity=100&w=650
You could. But you can't then run the country that you wanted to lose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Not for me, Clive. Not when the divisions are so clear and present.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
I trust Crosby is now driving the train without Team May attempting to tell him where to go.
I might need to be educated here, but how does someone seemingly so principled in all other areas of violence end up in a situation where he refuses to condemn the IRA?
He didn't refuse to condemn the IRA.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...-saying-he-did
https://sluggerotoole.com/2017/05/22...-and-the-rest/
The second one's a good read.
Boydy has drunk the Kool-Aid, evidently.
Excellent article, and this is worth highlighting, a similar point to the one I made above.
Quote:
Corbyn’s comments are more easily read as a refusal to condemn the IRA by an audience that either defends the actions of loyalist paramilitaries or – likely in the case of many of the English viewers of yesterday’s interview – cares little or even knows nothing about the violence carried out by loyalist paramilitaries and the British state.
Because his principles include supporting terrorists against "oppressive western governments". You can see it in his language towards Hamas, Hezbollah and his fraternising constantly with unsavoury terrorist types. He's surrounded himself with people who hold similar views (Seamus Milne, as an example, wrote an article in the week after 9/11 basically telling the Americans it was their own fault).Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
It's his world view. Which is fine if you're prepared to acknowledge that's the case and you're going to vote for him despite all of it, but pretending it's not and / or desperately equivocating to get out of acknowledging it is seriously lol. Just look at Boydy and Henry, who are so utterly determined to apologise for him they can't bring themselves to call a spade a spade. Much like Jez, really.
He hasn't refused to condemn the IRA. Stop lying.
Everything he has said and done suggests that, at best, he was merely too thick to fully comprehend what he was doing, but was still content to wave the unionist (and non-violent nationalist, lest we forget that John Hume consistently out-polled Gerry Adams during the period in question) majority off without their having any say in the matter; and, at worst, he saw anti-British violence as a regrettable necessity. What makes it difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt is things like having IRA members over for a buffet two weeks after their attempt to mass murder the British government, which you wouldn't really do if you were genuinely committed to a peaceful settlement. Unless you were thick, of course. Either way, he shouldn't be running the country.
"Occupation."
He said IRA bombing was wrong earlier because it killed civilians. Again, it either implies a certain thickness in his approach, or a belief that coppers and soldiers were fair game.
Anyway, as far as these latest polls go, I would take 44/35-ish as basically the ideal result (those 50/30 polls were always stupid). The Theresa May and Unionist Party would coast home with a comfortable majority, and the Jezza bunker would get twenty feet deeper and a new set of lead-lined blast doors.
That video is fucking retarded :DQuote:
Originally Posted by GS
It's like an intro to a reality TV show.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "legitimate target".
The IRA once kidnapped a man's family, chained him to a van and told him they'd shoot them if he didn't do what he was told. They forced him to drive a bomb to an army barracks at which point it was remotely detonated, obliterating him and five soldiers. Apparently using a human bomb was acceptable, because the bloke worked in the kitchens of an army barracks and was thus a "legitimate target". This was in 1990. McGuinness was the IRA's northern commander, and approved the attack.
If ISIS did that, they'd be - rightly - denounced as barbarians plumbing new depths. When the IRA did it, Corbyn continued to apologise for them, to equivocate, and to refuse to condemn them. He continued to share platforms with IRA members. Not once did he denounce them in public at the time.
This is what you're dealing with. McDonnell, Abbott, Livingstone were all the same. It's just part of the hard-left mindset that any 'armed struggle' against a western occupying force (as they see the British role in Northern Ireland) is fair game.
Agreed. A Tory majority of c 80 with a clear manifesto pledge to pull out of the single market and customs union effectively puts the Liberal Democrats and associated whingers out of business for the next ten years. Corbyn being able to cling on to ruin Labour forever on the back of increasing the vote share would make the early election worthwhile.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
It's an attack ad - what are you expecting. It doesn't have to do anything other than replay things Corbyn has actually said. Unless you think his views on defence, security and terrorism are irrelevant when he's pitching to be Prime fucking Minister.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
DRAMATIC MUSIC. ZOOM IN.
BIG.
CAPITAL.
LETTERS.
It's all so childish.
If you're looking for something less childish, perhaps we could just put pictures of IRA bomb atrocities on the screen and interlace it with pictures of Jez standing for a minute's silence to honour the people who carried them out.
Childish? How about photos of Theresa May mingling with the Saudis a few weeks before another (recent) terrorist attack, with the caption 'ISIS ENABLER!'
Do you believe terrorist attacks are our own fault, then?
No. I believe they are the fault of terrorists.
Do you believe denouncing terrorism one day and getting in bed with Saudi Arabia on another is acceptable behaviour?
There are good reasons not to be buddies with the Saudi Arabians, but, unless their actual government is directly supporting the people attacking us (and Theresa May knows about it), it's not equivalent to backing the IRA.
Dealing with Saudi Arabia is unpalatable, but dealing with them is the difference between being the Prime Minster and continuing to indulge faux outrage student union-esque gesture politics. The Prime Minister should only be interested in doing what is right for the UK's national interest.
We would achieve absolutely nothing from internationally ostracising Saudi Arabia, by the way. Rather you'd encourage them to fight further proxy wars as they sought to achieve compensating influence. See: Putin/Russia. We'd also immediately lose any intelligence provided from one of the key regional players. As an example, we ostracised Gaddafi and he retaliated by supplying semtex and other powerful weaponry to the IRA.
It's not the equivalent to anything, but it's still a blot on her character and all of those before her. I appreciate the Saudi Arabia situation is complicated, but to continually address the Corbyn IRA links whilst the Prime Minister is day tripping to the Middle East is slightly hypocritical. The way in which she (falsely) attacked Corbyn following Manchester was, at best, in very poor taste too. Considering you could argue, and excuse the extreme nature of the statement, she's indirectly financing ISIS herself.
Theresa May, as Prime Minister, dealing with the legitimate government of Saudi Arabia is within the acceptable parameters of "being wrong". You may not agree with it, but you can see why she has to do it when she's running a country and not putting her day in at Stop the War rallies.
Supporting the IRA armed campaign is outside the acceptable parameters of "being wrong".
This is the key distinction.
Yeah, wrongness vs treason. It's a bit like me thinking that Trident is a waste of money. I might be wrong, but, as long as my reasons for binning it aren't so that it helps the Chinese take over, I'm merely stupid.
You say "within the acceptable paramaters of being wrong" like it's a fact. It isn't. As Lewis alludes to, it depends who is supporting ISIS both financially and logistically. I wouldn't be surprised if that was known and being kept hush because of the implications, but the question is why aren't the Saudi government, who we're dealing with, prosecuting them? Why aren't we pressuring them to prosecute?
It's all mental Islamic charities and wealthy idiots (some of them are probably quite prominent), like when the IRA and Sinn Fein used to receive goodwill packages from their deluded American cousins. There is obviously a large amount of stupidity and dishonesty in our foreign policy (us issuing that joint statement accusing Russian bombing [and Russian bombing only] of radicalising Syrians was a classic of the genre), but you can draw a reasonable distinction between who is and isn't directly seeking to blow up the people you now want to vote for you.
This is the best satire the BBC has produced in about ten years.
The IRA were directly targeting British civilians and actively sought to wipe out the entire cabinet in the Brighton bombing. They specifically targeted British soldiers, members of the security services, Members of Parliament and the Royal Family. It's just not the same as the Prime Minister engaging with the Saudi government because she deems it to be in the UK's national interest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mellberg
Supporting the IRA, who were actively seeking to destroy the integrity of the UK against the majority wishes of the people in 'the north', by bombing them into submission, probably does classify as treason. If you wanted a united Ireland, there was always the SDLP under John Hume - someone who holds deep respect on all sides. He didn't bother with them - he chose the terrorists. Again, it's completely outside the acceptable parameters of "being wrong".
Lol at the excuse making for enabling Islamic terrorism.
So, under what circumstances would you people support a couple against Corbyn were he elected?
https://andrewgilliganblog.wordpress...the-documents/
You wonder how much more of this there's going to be.
She could be the Home Secretary. :harold:
https://order-order.com/2017/05/28/c...cre-terrorist/
The state of him.
Fucking hell :DQuote:
Originally Posted by GS
It's like he thinks he's God or something.
Do you even understand what the discussion is about?
I can read, yes. I'm sure I don't understand as much as you do though, oh mighty one!
:hail:
I for one would like to hear more about what precisely constitutes acceptable levels of wrongness, and how one can know if they have crossed the line into unacceptable levels of wrongness. Next time I get something wrong, I'll then be ask myself "Am I wrong, or am I unacceptably wrong?"
Can you explain the basic principles of the difference, and how a individual person can know which category they fall into in any given situation? I hope there's a .pdf file somewhere that I can use as a frame of reference. I'm sorry to take time out of your very important day.
Put it this way, according to our great oracle, if you vote Conservative you are correct, if you vote Lib Dem, you're naive and our you vote Labour, you are not only wrong but unacceptably wrong.
Again, I'll stress to all outside of Britain, a vote in the election is not for your eventual Prime Minister.
...but it also kind of very much is.
No, I said that supporting the IRA was unacceptable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
There is no way to sustain the argument that publicly supporting an organisation with the stated aim of destroying the United Kingdom through an armed struggle is acceptable. It would be the equivalent today of a politician supporting a sustained IS bombing campaign because of perceived historical grievance.
You cannot lead the country when you were happy to see a part of handed over to a foreign power without the democratic consent of the people who lived there. You certainly cannot lead the country when you wanted that country to lose to a terrorist organisation determined to bomb you into submission by killing your citizenry in sufficient numbers to make it too unpalatable for you to stay.
I'd like to hear odds on GS being a bot.
It's nobody's fault other than your own if you can't follow the argument enough to understand it. We can only hope that repetition might hammer the point home. You can decide for yourself if that's a pun or not.
Paul Nuttall being willing to execute nonces and terrorists himself is pretty lol.
I fear for Nuttall when he's interviewed by Brillo.
Nicolas Turgeon lasted about three minutes here.
Is he ripping her apart? :drool:
I don't think she did too bad. All of these interviews are just accusations and denials, though.
"Same question?"
"Same answer."
Same question?
"Same answer."
Same question phrased differently?
"I defer you to me previous answer."
"Thank you for your time.
Sturgeon's problem is that the SNP are absolutely shit at governing and their entire programme is founded on blaming other people.
It's amazing that that boron gets a platform of equal billing to Mrs May and Sir Jezza.
Such a missed opportunity at the first referendum.
They'd be bankrupt if they'd voted yes as well, which would have presented the satisfying spectacle of the Scots rioting in the streets in the face of impending economic catastrophe.
How dare someone challenge the status quo of the British empire.
I feel I need to distance myself from GS a bit, so I've stuck The Proclaimers on my Sonos. Really is decent stuff.
I wouldn't usually mind, but listening to Alex Salmond claim that they'd be the fifteenth richest country in the world on the back of record oil production and record prices was a bit much. Then again, we're scamming more money out of the south east than even the Scots are, so there you go.
Meanwhile:
Cutting through. :nodd:
This is the story of our first teacher, Shetland made her jumpers and the devil made her features.
Why don't the snips just run on this sort of lyrical genius.
Various things that weren't worth posting for their own sake suggest that the IRA stuff only cuts through with older people, but it does so reasonably well, so expect them to bore the shit out of us all week hammering that. I saw that Labour apparently coast the election quite comfortably if nobody over forty-five was allowed to vote (which you would hope is down to housing rather than any enthusiasm for communism [at least in anyone over twenty]), but there stands to be another blinding seethe against the biddies whatever happens.
It's only people over 45 (over 60, in fact) who remember the last time the reds were in charge.
The generational split between under 45 and over 45 suggests it would be a landslide for Labour and the Tories respectively. It's around 68/15 both ways. Apparently the difference in the Tory poll leads is whether or not the pollster is using stated 'intention to vote' this time round or historical turnout for the demographics. The naive youth vote going in for a bit of communism isn't exactly new, but unless they decide to buck every trend ever and turn out in huge numbers then it'll just turn into yet another massive pissing into the wind exercise for the reds.
We probably need a new reds government somewhere soon, just to remind everyone how useless it is. Hollande looked promising, but like every French manoeuvre since 1918 he ended up giving up when he encountered resistance.
I saw earlier that the gap between May and Corbyn in terms of PM preference is +65 amongst pensioners. Still. That, plus voting intention, plus a relatively stable Tory vote percentage suggests the social care fuck up isn't resulting in a complete haemorrhage of the vote.
That said, the Maybot interacts with real people again this evening so hopefully they've had a chance to upgrade her software beforehand.
'May v Corbyn' on channel 4 at 8:30 tonight.
What time does it finish? That's when the action really starts when this thread goes mad.
:D 10pm.
This reminds me of that passage in the Mr Bean film where everyone is convinced he is a famous art expert and they can't believe he isn't until the bitter, bitter end.
Seems to be making sense to me, in honesty.
"We're all better off when everybody is better off"
:D spoke too soon there
He's talking like a human being though, which is a massive plus point.
He's doing alright. He's not actually answering any of the questions asked, but he's at least talking confidently and fluently enough. If May does her usual stuttery warbling he'll come out of this a lot better off.
He's doing alright here, but this next bit could see it all falling apart.
He's at his best when he gets to rant passionately about justice and all that. When it comes to the IRA stuff he's a lot weaker - we all know he loved the Irish cock, just come clean.
It's times like this when not actually following MPs and that on the Twitter comes into its own.
I've gone the other way and have become a slavish Dominic Cummings disciple. 'None of this will have any effect'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
These Paxo bits will probably be pointless, because Paxo is rubbish.
Brillo is miles better than him.
I think Damian McBride finished him off when he just admitted to everything and scrambled his brain.
This Paxo attack line (so far) has been a bit wet.
Thus far he's doing well again. Paxman's hectoring doesn't really work when he's basically shouting as a guy who, at least on the surface, is just a reasonable genial old man.
Paxman's weird focus on the manifesto not just being a list of Corbyn's personal convictions is letting him off the hook a bit.
Jez's least comfortable territory is security, defence and terrorist apology. Paxo has ignored it all to try and come at him from the left. He's lost it.
Oh no Jeremy, you were doing so well, don't fuck up on the Falklands.
There we go, finally landed a punch.
Paxman's interviewing style is shite. You can probe information without accusing someone like they've just been chuckling while running over a cat.
This stuff on terrorism/foreign policy is awful for Corbz. Has to make weak excuses every time. Luckily for him it will have no effect.
His best moments are when he steams back in and says 'But this is what really matters...'
He's absolutely terrible on these issues. You might as well just turn an entire interview into smashing into him on these topics.
Having the question up on the screen the entire time they're answering is something that should be done across the board.
Someone really should take Nick Timothy out the back of CCHQ and have him kneecapped.
She managed to navigate the social care thing well enough there. Thankfully.
The first thing May should do is wipe the shit-eating grin off her face.
Can you imagine the blessed Margaret doing this, she'd pepper the bastards, albeit without understanding a single joke along the way.
"They're a weak lot some of them in this audience... Weak. Feeble."Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
"I voted to leave because £350m."
Unlucky, love.
She can probably arrange that on her way out.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
"Jeremy, are you still in touch with Gerry?"
I presume someone has paid off this crowd to clap after every answer. She's just talking in her usual shit platitudes.
To be fair to May, I'm not sure why she has to account for £350 million. They should drag King Dom and Govers out for that one.
She clearly doesn't - it was a terrible question that shouldn't have got through vetting. There's plenty of other legitimate things to bollock the Tories for.
May did very well there. Thank fuck for that.
If somebody ever uploads the full four hours (or whatever it was) of him stonewalling that select committee I'll make a night of it with crisps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
EDIT: Woah mate it exists. :cool:
She was crap on the Brexit/NHS question and even crapper on the second NHS question. The audience laughed ffs.
This question from Paxman is absolutely shit again - what the fuck is she meant to do after the referendum result.
He's completely past it.
The crowd laughing at her was a bit good.
The best bit about this (she is pretty crap, though not as crap as the Brillo one) is that Twitter is starting to BELIEVE.
I was watching that the other day. If you understand how he thinks (i.e. thinks they are all a load of irrelevant narcissists) it really makes it quite entertaining.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
This has been a bit of a dry bumming for the last 5/10 minutes.
She's all over the place and he's not even going in that hard on her. Shambles
The big difference between May and Corbyn in this format is that the latter can afford to be wooly and promise the world knowing it's unlikely he'll have to deliver it. It's much more difficult for May to defend the status quo unless she pretends she's going to piss the economy up the wall for it.
This is good stuff on Brexit though.
The Brexit argument is easy for her - she can just repeat the lines about "will of the people", "fuck the EU" etc. and people like me will give her a standing ovation.
I reckon there literally won't be a single vote move in the entire country, in any direction, as a result of that programme.
I can't imagine viewing figures would be particularly high. It's just a case of minimising the risk, really.
The last debate had a big effect on young people. I know this wasn't one of those debates, but yeah.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The single market exchange is amazing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The BBC cut Corbyn's time down to equivocating on the IRA and his refusal to say he'd take out a jihadi with a drone. :nodd:
If the question is security and / or Brexit in the closing days, then he's fucked. I do wonder what Jim Messina's targeted advertisements are focusing on in the marginals, mind you. It's alright driving vote share up in a small number of areas, but this sort of stealth targeting campaign is what destroyed the Lib Dems.
It's the effortless way he provokes deep and immense seething based on their own egomania.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Did it? Do you have evidence for that in terms of votes?Quote:
Originally Posted by Reg
Read it somewhere else which I can't find now, but here's a(n admittedly not very big) study. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35050075Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
PS I know that doesn't address your earlier point quite, but a Google didn't lead me anywhere really.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DA--lcPWAAAWls7.jpg
Youth turnout was down in 2015 from 2010.
It went up in 2010, but that's more likely to do with it being a tight election compared to 2005's Blairist victory parade.
Well the first significant problem crops up in the first ten words:Quote:
Originally Posted by Reg
The rest of it basically says people who previously knew nothing about politics knew more about politics after watching the debates, which I'm sure is true but that would be equally true of any television programme on any subject. Whether it moves votes or has any impact on the result compared to a non-debate campaign (or a campaign without interview programmes such as tonight's) I am pretty sceptical, having followed 2010 and 2015 and the EU referendum.Quote:
We would like to thank ITV for funding this research
Sent my postal vote for labour away to today. Let the riots begin.
The only evidence anyone can point to that these set pieces have an impact on polling is Cleggmania. That the spike disappeared completely by election day suggests it had no measurable impact on actual voting.
You lazy cunt :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Postal votes are bloody brilliant.
On the ropes.Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
Okay, this is the first time I've heard of the Young People's Party but apparently they'd like to decriminalise foxhunting, controlled substances and brothels. Also their leaflet contains a "I'm not this namesake who is also a paedophile." disclaimer.
The Sun are being made to print a front page apology to Jeremy Corbyn. Cunts.
Again? What about?Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
I knew it happened a year or two ago but didn't know they're having to do it again. The one they did last time was fucking disgraceful too.
Source? Seems like FAKE NEWS to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
Yes, that's what I was referring to. Dated December 2015.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
Edit: But all the comments at the bottom have been within the last 24 hours. Weird.
lol at Labour having their proposed land value tax (good idea) dubbed the 'Garden Tax'. Wankers.
I enjoyed last night. Corbyn came across relatively strong and stable, whilst May had more of an erratic badger aura. I see she's gone back to Maybot in her speech in Wolverhampton today. Need to get her on TV more. She's a liability and the lid may come off at some stage.
Yeah, that 2015 story seems to be doing the rounds on social media. That's where I'd seen it and assumed it was new.
I notice it's no longer 'Theresa May for President' but 'Theresa May & The Conservatives Present Strong And Stable' which sounds like the worlds shittest jam band.
It's the hope that's going to make the impending loss great.
The Tories are going big on the IRA links, so they clearly have evidence it's cutting through. YouGov had a poll that only one in five were aware of it.
There's a rather good article in the Spectator on the topic, which summarises it rather neatly.
She's quite reminiscent of Gordon Brown in many ways. Not quite as useless but also not as intelligent. Fortunately unlike Gordon she's up against some crank grandad and the remnants of the 1985 Oxford communist society.
Also, I've noticed the various UKIP/Arron Banks vehicles have started backing Labour hard in the last few days (UKIP even pulled out of a seat somewhere saying they were backing Labour). What is their game?
The theory goes that a Conservative landslide will allow them to get complacent on Brexit (probably because half of the new MPs will be fannies), and come up with a crap middle ground, whilst a narrow win will keep them worried about UKIP enough to Brexit properly.
ICM has 45/33. This is like the good old days of 2010 with Lee posting them all. No Lib Dem Tide to deal with this time though.
I've had some money on the majority falling between 125-149.
Increases to a fifteen point leave when undecideds are split on leadership. Crosby has this.
The smaller leads are apparently down to thinking eighty per cent of young people will vote so lol at that.
Michael Gove needs to be brought back into cabinet.
Go on, entertain us. Why?Quote:
Originally Posted by GS
'Needs' is a stretch, but it would be good for entertainment purposes if you put him somewhere crap like DEFRA and he tried to reform trees.
Because it should be all hands on deck after the Maybot wins a bigger majority.
Jez sez 'Only Labour can be trusted to unlock the talent of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, who have been held back by the Conservatives'.
The mother (the father is obviously absent) of all fake OUTRAGE storms coming in 5, 4, 3...
Another poll says that the gap has closed to six, motherfuckers.
Do you (try to) use "motherfuckers" in real life, Henners?
This Labour broadcast is bemoaning the decline of the coal industry.
It has closed to six assuming that the Communist Youth League turn out in numbers unheard of in British political history, which simply won't happen. Still, if it scares the core Tory vote into storming the polls ala 1992 then happy days.
Even then, it hardly matters if they're piling up votes in safe seats in Islington. They're still going to get annihilated in many marginals owing to vacuuming the 2015 UKIP vote. It'll probably wobble in advance, but a heavy campaigning line on Brexit in the closing days will see it home.
Do you have evidence that said poll was skewed toward the communist youth league?
He probably won't win, but it begins to look like Corbyn could have a chance if things continue as they are. The gnashing of teeth alone would be glorious.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40064009
The first four paragraphs of that really are quite repulsive.
'The quality press.' :sick:
I'm sure whoever wrote that considers himself part of that group.
The gap in the polls (i.e. six points versus fourteen points, which has been the upper end of the post manifesto launches) has been down to the pollsters' assumptions on turnout. YouGov et al have simply applied the 18-25 'stated intention to vote' from the survey, which suggests a turnout of about 80% can be expected. Given they're voting something like 70/15 for Labour, it massively increases the Labour vote. In contrast, ComRes / ICM have taken a different view which is modifying the surveys for historical turnout as opposed to stated turnout. This is why you see much bigger Tory leads. Basically the polls' key sensitivity is 18-25 year old turnout.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
It could well be that the youth will finally turn out en masse and make it close, but it would have to be at levels not seen for decades and in complete contradiction to every precedent the demographic has exhibited for ages.
Corbyn has no chance. For all the Labour increase in the polls, the Tory vote looks remarkably stable. Labour are squeezing more votes out of smaller parties (the Greens are basically non-existent, and the Lib Dems should basically be closed down) sure, but a lot of it is down to "don't knows" and previous non-voters suddenly saying they're a) going to vote for Labour and b) definitely turnout. It's a recipe for crushing disappointment if their passing enthusiasm doesn't manifest itself in a massive rush to the polls.
In contrast, the Tories are taking some 70% of the 65+ vote and their turnout will be over 80%.
There's an unfortunate headline on the BBC at the minute: "Is Chancellor Merkel looking to the East?"
For lebensraum, presumably.
That's a point. Where is Farage? He should be defecting to the Tories at this point and trying to infiltrate it.
Doesn't want to give up his Brussels salary.
He is a media personality now.
'Now I'm sorry. *that weird hand thing he does* I'm sorry. But we have to talk about...'
Lads, YouGov have a projection out that has the Tories retreating behind the Oder in the face of the Red Army's advance - they chuck 20-odd seats and it results in a hung parliament. :drool:
The sense of disappointment when she ends up with a significantly increased majority is going to be marvellous.
For balance's sake, there's a ComRes projection which has a Tory majority of 100+ - but nobody cares because who doesn't want to try communism again.
I'm not sure how YouGov have got to that unless they think about 90% of the 2015 kippers are staying at home.
As for the actual night, should I have an Independent Brexit Britain theme for my food (sausage rolls, jam tarts, offal), or should I stuff my head with the soon to be inaccessible foreign muck that we take for granted?
Well, this is it. It's very difficult to reconcile with their published headline polling data. They were a full 45 seats out in their final projection in 2015, as well as completely fucking up the EU referendum final projection, so one assumes a perfect hat-trick would put them out of business.
British Food for British People.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
That's next Friday booked off. Something I never thought I'd waste a holiday on.
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Alan Shearer The 2nd
You sad cunt
I'd have even less self-respect left if I tried to deny that, even from yourself.
He'll just waste his on an actual wasted holiday.
It's never going to happen but I'd enjoy a Jezza win just to post 'MANDATE' in massive letters every time GS moans.
His government would collapse when he failed to get the budget passed. It's being overlooked that even if he, somehow, managed to become PM in a coalition, he wouldn't be able to maintain the confidence of the house.
Every smug GS post makes me feel like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXpUdBlRZe8
Mostly because I think he's depressingly right. Oh well.
Even I'm not blowing a day's leave on this. Power on through like a bastard.
I don't think the morning after the referendum will ever be topped, though.
Why?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Shearer The 2nd
It was hilarious at Glastonbury. My mate, the one that London has turned into a self-conscious bellend, said it "ruined my weekend" and he even shouted "fuck Farage!" attempting to get a cheer, but it was ignored. Except for me calling him pathetic. Loads of people were pretending to be upset so there were easy targets everywhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The moment Keith Vaz came on the TV at 5am pretty much in tears was the moment I realised it was going to be absolutely hilarious, and it hasn't really stopped ever since.
I had a moment of clarity at about 11pm when I realised Leave was going to win (think it's recorded in the thread) when it was 14/1, but absolutely bottled putting the life savings on it. Pathetic.
I was in the same boat. You could even have had 4/1 when it was clearly all over. With that and POTUS, I could be sat typing this from a £2m house now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
There's a lot of money to be made if you really believe there's going to be a hung parliament, or if the Tories are getting 300-349 seats.
I'm still on a majority of 80+.
A hung parliament would require the Tories to lose ground on 2015. Given that UKIP are going from 13% to nigh on zero (not even running in half the seats), I don't see how that's possible.
I missed the Paul Nuttall Andrew Neil interview? Were there any good comedic moments worth reliving?
It goes against all polling fundamentals. Yougov have got every poll fundamentally wrong since Scottish independence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
There's an article in the Telegraph from a bloke who got the major votes right to within about 0.5% saying the Tories are on for a majority of 103-108 and Yougov's analysis, to put it bluntly, is horseshit.
The question would be at what point major media outlets stop using them. There's only so many times Peter Kellner can abase himself before his peers and say they'll do better next time.
I think the worst they can do is 60 and the best (if everyone has a collective epiphany about Corbyn on the 8th, as usually happens with shit party leaders) about 180-200.
Jezza is going to the debate this evening. Wrong move from him IMO (though a gamble he probably has to take). He'll just end up getting sucked down a Tim Farron shaped wormhole.
I think it's the right move, but might not make any difference, as I'm not sure how much these things do.
Why do people get so annoyed about the increase in tuition fees? Do people still not understand that it largely only negatively effects the graduates who go on to be big earners? And still calling it debt ffs.
I'll probably end up voting Labour but meh.
Also, is Farron the least inspiring politician of all time?
He has to be seen to win if he takes part. Big gamble, but one he probably needs to take at this stage. May is right not to bother. Rudd can just steamroller into people without it affecting perception of Maybot 2.0
I'm not sure about that one. Much like the rest of the cabinet, Amber Rudd is horribly incompetent at the slightest amount of pressure.
She's not - she did very well in the EU referendum debates for the remain side. Whether that works in a seven way (fucking seven way) debate is different.
Not that it really matters anyway. It might impact the fabled narrative, but it'll have no serious impact on anything. The broadcasters obsession with them does a bit of a disservice to the campaign. Question Time set pieces / Andrew Neil interviews are miles more worthwhile.
You have to start paying tuition fees when you earn over 15/16 grand. Hardly big earners. You then have to pay interest on it every month for the next 30 years/till you pay it off. It's very clearly debt.Quote:
Originally Posted by AyDee
Wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
You only start paying back at £21k. The interest rate is lower than that which you'd expect to see on a commercial loan and if you don't earn enough, you don't pay it back.
It's not debt.
21k? It was deffo 15k when I was at uni but that was the year before they tripled them.
I'd bloody well hope that the interest is lower than a commercial loan. It's an investment in people to create a stronger workforce. They make more money down the line if you have a better/are better at your job.
Well yeah, I'd agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
That point was more in supporting evidence of it not being debt - it's much closer to a tax.
And to further my point, I'd hardly say someone earning 21k a year is rolling in it. After tax that's what, a grand and a bit per month? Chuck in rent, internet, phone and food, student loan, and transport and how much do you have left?
Which is why you pay next to fuck all at that level of earnings.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Quote:
You only start repaying your loan once you've graduated and you're earning more than £21,000 a year. After that, you'll pay back 9% of anything you earn over £21,000. So if you're earning £26,000 a year, you'll lose £450 in loan repayments - £37.50 each month.
One of the biggest issues with tuition fees is that people legitimately don't understand how the repayment schedules work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
It's a tax (not debt) because you're not required to repay it unless you're in work.
And the interest on what remains pushes up your total owed by how much per month?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
It doesn't matter, because if you stay at that level of earnings for your entire career you won't pay it back, but I'd suggest anyone who's deterred from going to uni because they'll have to pay £37.50 a month for life (while they're working) really has no place being there.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
For fuck's sake. You don't have to pay it back.Quote:
Originally Posted by leedsrevolution
How hard is this concept to grasp?
I've tried before. People genuinely don't get it. It might be they simply don't want to get it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
ftfyQuote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah