Yes, but the payoff's nowhere near as big as the Sadiq Khan payoff will eventually be. Currently he seems to have attained a status somewhere between Lech Walesa and John the Baptist.Originally Posted by Lewis
Yes, but the payoff's nowhere near as big as the Sadiq Khan payoff will eventually be. Currently he seems to have attained a status somewhere between Lech Walesa and John the Baptist.
That's a great line. It's true as well. What's he done apart from walk about on red carpets and be Muslim - yet people love him.
My 'David Davis is a fucking joke idiot' portfolio not looking badly placed at the moment either.
Also, lol at Donald Tusk suggesting we might decide to stay in after all whilst pushing for 'hard Brexit' or 'no Brexit', as if that's somehow a deal breaker.
As I reject the doctrine of punishment after death, my watching Question Time provides me with one hour a week of what purgatory must be like.
Isabel Oakeshott is fighting a heroic stand against the utter bollocks being spouted, but Emily Thornberry is comfortably the worst shadow cabinet member of all time with the sole exception of Diane Abbott.
Today I have mostly been enjoying reading about the plight of Irish mushroom farmers.
Imagine what it'll be like when there's a 10% import tariff on the little beauties.
Honestly, if they can't even secure a trade deal with the Canadians then what's the fucking point.
Nick Clegg is having the same medium-term nervous breakdown as Paddy Ashdown.
Unlucky, Cleggers, mate.
The 'Breniers' thing is indicative of his cringy social media awareness, and can fuck off, but like Ashdown it would be a great shame to see his voice be lost and unlike Ashdown, I still regard him a credible leader of the nation.
I suspect history will be kinder to him than the 2015 election was, but his credibility is still shot nationally. The Lib Dems will be lucky to have 5 MPs by the next election, assuming the boundary change go through.
I sincerely hope so (the former statement rather than the latter). The positive tempering of the Tories in the coalition by picking their battles and toeing the line where required was always going to bring about a fall from grace as to casual observers the Lib Dems, and Clegg in particular, had abandoned their principles. He took one for the team, and converted me (not a fan of the guy pre-2010).
There was a poll after the 2010 election where the majority of people a) didn't agree that the Lib Dems should have went into coalition with the Tories yet a majority also b) were glad they had. Ultimately we needed a government in May 2010, and it was the only mathematical majority that could be formed. He did a good job keeping the show on the road - and they did get some good policies through, particularly the increase in the personal allowance. That said, their list of 'successes' is thin. The big fuck up was, clearly, the tuition fee debacle - he, and the party, haven't really recovered from the fundamental breach of 'trust' there. He also got onto quite sticky ground when he was citing 'tempering the Tories' as evidence of his success - it looks quite small-time, mainly because it is.
Ultimately they didn't do a huge amount in government that they can point to, but the successes were a) forming a government at a critical time given market uncertainty and then b) keeping the coalition together for a full five years. In time, he'll come to be respected for that as I do tend to think it was 'country first'. Regardless, the tuition fee debacle, the perception of 'collaborating with the enemy' and what is going to be his new pet hobby of thrashing about over Brexit isn't a combination which is going to restore his credibility. It's a bit unfortunate, but such is life. He might fare better if the Lib Dems weren't useless, but Tim Farron is legitimately hopeless (and widely disliked in the Commons) as a national party leader and, for all the local government successes, it's not going to translate into a sustained national presence for the party until Clegg is looking at retirement - if ever.
He'll still get press coverage as "Former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg", but that'll be as a slightly discredited statesman who you indulge because they were once important. See: Michael Heseltine, John Prescott.
Don't disagree, but they never, ever had the cache to achieve much more.
The Tuition fees were a fuck up, and actually one of the reasons I opposed him and turned my back on the Lib Dems in the run up to 2010. At the time I had a couple of friends in as NUS officers I vehemently opposed on this too - I could spend a great deal of time criticising the various student and education bodies that failed to see the fallacy of opposing tuition fee rises whilst not acknowledging that it is the unsustainable HE entry volumes that are the cause of the inability to subsidise them in England (lower participation in Wales and Scotland being their saving grace as much as anything). Anyway... Point being, I wasn't offended on their backtrack as frankly, the fuck were they gonna do?
You may not have been offended, but it's a bit difficult for the national party to make a whole song and dance about opposing it - with pledges and everything - and then immediately bin it off in coalition where it looks as if the hated Tory enemy are pulling the strings. It's not something you can recover from, as it's not as if it was a minor manifesto pledge.
That said, I agree with you that there's a complete fuck up on the handling of tertiary level education. You can't have access at the levels we have and expect it to be fully, or heavily, subsidised by the state.
Granted, but it speaks to the naivety of the electorate (and particularly the young and idealistic types that supported Clegg so vehemently) that they took it seriously. All manifesto pledges were delivered on condition of a Liberal government, not a minority presence in a Tory coalition.
Agreed, but their valid counter-argument is that the Lib Dems should have said "we're not voting for this because we pledged otherwise, therefore we're going to veto it". He claims to have vetoed other legislation he didn't like, after all - so why not that? Again, it wasn't a 'standard' manifesto pledge hidden away in the document - they made a whole song and dance about it. You'd have reasonable grounds for expecting that to hold, not be tossed away for political convenience.
That said, there was a section of their support who were never going to forgive them for collaborating with the enemy. I'm sure we had some LD activist posting on here at the time who was absolutely adamant they'd never go into coalition, and then had some sort of meltdown when they did.
Fair play to whoever came up with the killer idea of referring to the Leave leaders as 'chancers and opportunists', and more fair play to whoever thought that Nick Clegg (as in Nick Clegg) was the man to road test it.
Dr Barry or Ginner. Probably the former.
It's a shame we've lost that 'irresistible force, a sight to behold' post from Ginner.
Dela was another one who was broken by the coalition.
Top class trolling from Cameron and Osborne, all things considered.
Woolfe has quit UKIP and joined the Conservatives. I'm shocked that getting his head caved in failed to change his mind.
Well, there's no indication that he's joined the Conservatives and he says he's going to sit as an independent MEP.
Woolfe is a talent - the Tories have privately admitted that Woolfe is 'a kipper you can work with' - so I wouldn't be surprised to see him join the Tories and do well.
Does make you respect Farage a little more when you think that he held this absolute shambles together.
No. That's like being the best child molester.
'Nigel' clearly did a great job running the party - he seems to have been in almost permanent standoff with the NEC for years, but it's run by charlatans and people who've seen its rise to national prominence pass them by.
You get the impression that UKIP have missed the bus somewhat here. They had a great opportunity after the referendum to 'rebrand' and attack Labour in the north, but they seem to have completely lost the plot. I suspect part of it is losing a dominating figure like Farage and the other part is losing their raison d'être. I mean, if you want to control immigration why wouldn't you just vote for the Tories?
Tories up by 18 points in the latest Ipsos poll.
The real story of which is Jezza only being a point behind what Ed Miliband achieved.
I think May's struggling a bit as well, so this really is a terrible indictment of the other parties who are all varying degrees of awful.
Douglas Murray has come off his summer holidays, and how the fuck has that woman qualified for a career (black female barrister on the telly) which is at least partly based on your ability to form logical and consistent arguments?
Jesus Christ. I nearly turned it off at the first "How dare you?!?".
This long account on the referendum by one of David Cameron's gimps is sort of interesting, albeit mainly for the insight it provides into their mindset. For example, you can't write a billion words on how dysfunctional everything is, and how massive your effort was to get shit all out of all the stiffs, before referring to 'an EU in the process of reforming'. Swivel-eyed, you might say.
I would very much like to hear precisely what Gove thinks "slut-shaming" means.
Where the fuck do you even start with this? By her logic, we'd end up accepting everybody who claims to be 'fleeing war' and says they're under 18. We had this discussion last year during the CRISIS, and the points made then still stand - we owe nothing to anybody in Calais.
I think he's fairly deluded if he thinks anyone gave a shit what the result of the 'renegotiation' was.
It ended up just being a national debate between those who do well out of the status quo and those who do not, with the latter winning.
It's an alright article, but I find it a bit lol to be suggesting that either the budget rebate or the Juncker appointment somehow laid the groundwork for wider dissatisfaction wit the EU. His points on the shite renegotiation are probably fair, mind.
I think his point that Cameron probably did get a good deal (in the context of "rules, mate") but that it was still shit and couldn't be sold are fair enough. That it disappeared from the platform quite quickly is evidence enough that it was all a colossal waste of time in the context of selling the monstrosity that is the EU.
I read yesterday that throwing dinner parties in Notting Hill has become a nightmare for people who know Michael Gove and that.
It was summed up best for me when on the morning of the result I saw a facebook or tweet from someone I know who is 24, works in banking and (I found out via illicit means) is on £55,000, which said 'This is a scary day for me and everyone in financial services'. I bet it is, old boy, I bet it is.
That is pretty definitive. Wankers.
It's basically plebs voting to leave because all their jobs have been replaced by Chinese workforces.
I'm surprised at the co-op being so Remain. Is it only black single mothers and freelance journalists who shop there?
Mate.
Also, the state of under 100 "socialists" in Wallonia torpedoing the free trade agreement with Canada. It sort of sums it up really.
The only thing worse than Belgium is the French bit of Belgium.
It's basically an artificial country, but there we are. The Canadians are SEETHING, apparently.
Denmark.
[The] Co-op is actually quite expensive if you buy more than custard creams and fresh bread (which I try not to do). Their milk prices are a disgrace when you consider the sterling work the others have done to crush dairy farmers.
Genuine question here.
All these children in the Calais refugee camp - why aren't they being assimilated into France?
Are these desperate kids really choosing to stay in a squalid refugee camp in France then actually become part of the French system?
The only thing I can think of is that they have family in the UK already and want to hold out for that.
I think it's partly that. Some have family. I think some of it is the language barrier and they speak English rather than French so would rather assimilate here.
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