How’ll Labour do without all-postal voting?
March 9th, 2009
Has the bar been set even higher for Gord?
At the last Euro elections on June 10th 2004 the national polls shares (excluding NI) had Labour in second place on just 22.6% a full four points behind the Tories. UKIP beat the Lib Dems into the third place slot.
These were the 2004 shares: CON 26.7: LAB 22.6: UKIP 16.1: LIBD 14.9: GRN 6.3 In spite of the performance, it should be said, Tony Blair led Labour to its third successive general election victory only eleven months later.
But there was one element which was in place then which we won’t have in the next Euro elections in June - all postal voting which was staged in half the English regions as part of an experiment. In the run-up to this vote Labour got itself into a row with the Electoral Commission and the other parties over the scale of experiment. Tony Blair, perhaps believing that Labour would do better, wanted it to be as wide as possible. In the end he got his way.
On the same day, of course, there were local elections over large parts of England, particularly in the metropolitan boroughs which, then, were Labour dominated.
The table below shows the proportional change in Labour’s vote share in 2004 compared with the previous Euro election in 1999.
Although the figures are distorted by the extraordinary performance by Robert Kilroy-Silk for UKIP in the East Midland the broad picture is that where all postal voting was in place the party losses were contained more.
Now the question for this June is whether the absence of postal voting this time is going to have an impact and whether that will be detrimental to Labour?
This could be crucial. This will be the last national election prior to the general election and all eyes will be on Labour national vote share. A very bad performance - maybe down to below 20% - could have a serious impact.
No betting markets yet but let’s hope we see something on the party shares.
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Seventh!!!!!!!
I notice that you’ve done your usual trick of putting up a new thread literally seconds after I’ve done my messages at the end of the last thread. I was wondering when the new thread was going to appear. I might have suspected you of lurking deliberately, except that you didn’t wait for me to write “Last?” or whatever.
(from the end of the previous thread) Who is Nick Clegg anyway?
(Back on topic)
The collapse of the UKIP vote will mean that all the other main parties will go up abit - Labour by 2% or 3%, and Con by 4% or 5% (and BNP and Lib Dem by perhaps 1% or 2% each) before one starts doing swings and so on.
I just can’t imagine Labour going below the 22% of last time, but there may well be a much bigger gap between Conservative and Labour. I think the BNP will get about 6% or 7%, Greens will be squeezed a bit, Lib Dems will go down, Respect will flop with about 1%, and Libertas / Jury Team will get about 0.4% of the votes between them (if they’re lucky).
I suppose part of the answer depends on the extent to which postal vote fraud benefitted each of the main parties in the past. Labour have more form here than the other parties - so will suffer disproportionately.
The table doesn’t mention Wales or Scotland.
The average for the “Yes” regions is -20.7%, and the average for the “No” regions is -26.1%. What are the figures for the other parties? How much difference would it have been otherwise? There must have been other factors involved anyway. Postal Voting probably made extremely little difference to the overall pattern of results or seats.
As a control test, the average for the regions named A to R is -26%, and the average for the regions named S to Z is -21%. The three regions with the longest names have an average of -19.7%; the two with the shortest have an average of -32.1%.
When Nick Clegg came on the TV news last night, my first thought was my instinctive Pavlovian response to Nick Clegg whenever I see him on TV, which was immediately to shout “Oh Fffk off, you t*t!” at the television.
But my second thought was “Who’s that?” His hair was so different that I wouldn’t even have recognised him if he had been out of context.
But my third thought was “How many people know who he is?”
If an opinion poll were to be conducted of 1000 ordinary members of the public, asking them “Who is the leader of the Liberal Democrats?” I think that most people would say Charles Kennedy or Vince Cable, or “Don’t Know”. The proportion of people who would be able to answer the question correctly, without prompting, and without a list to choose from, is probably now the lowest it has been since, er… ever.
6 Is it not Paddy whatsisname?
6 John
Agreed. Clegg has negligible brand recognition, especially north of the border where Tavish Scott has a far higher profile.
This, perhaps counter-intuitively, is good for the Lib Dems, as Clegg plays poorly with Scots.
Did you know that ‘clegg’ means ‘horse-fly’ in Scots?
9. No, but I do know that “each” means “horse” in Gaelic.
6 - I guess most potential voters COULD name Nick Clegg. But, yes I agree they might not identify his mugshot. For the two real parties that would be a problem. But here the Lib Dems are Tim Farron. District Council election - vote Tim Farron. County Council - vote Tim Farron. National Election - Tim Farron. European Elections - keep quiet and pretend there aren’t any elections. I imagine in June they will try to get their vote out for the county and let them cast their euro vote as they will.
On Topic: I think the Milibands told Tony that Labour voters would magically appear if there were all postal votes. There is no doubt fraud was widespread if fraud includes handling papers etc.
I do not think there will be movement UKIP > Lab. If voters were so dissatisfied in 2004 as not to vote Lab they are hardly going to go back now. UKIP > Con, yes; UKIP > no vote, yes; UKIP > BNP, a little.
The Tories should pick up most of the 1999 seats lost to UKIP in 2004.
The results of the 2004 Euro elections bore no relationship to the results of the 2005 GE and the results of this year’s Euro elections will bear no relationship to the results of the 2010 GE either .
9 - I think you will find it is the other way around. Cleggs are apparently called horse-flys in the effete South of England.
On Topic: This will be the last set of Euro Elections on this basis. Sould Cammo go for STV, AV or should he go back to FPTP to starve the LDs of representatives ?
Was there any notable difference in turnout between the all-postal areas and the others?
7. At the European elections count in 1999, when news arrived that Paddy Ashdown had announced his intention to resign as Lib Dem leader, I overheard some elderly Conservatives speculating about who they thought might be the new Lib Dem leader. One of them suggested David Penhaligon.
13. This will be the last set of Euro Elections on this basis.
What basis? Who says?
Last Euros on the basis of party lists as the method of voting is in the gift of the government of the day.
Clegg inevitably doesn’t have much brand recognition. It goes with the job to an extent I think, I suspect more people know him than knew Campbell. It will improve with time. Also partially down to Vince having a much higher profile than previous front bench spokesman.
On postal votes, leaving fraud claims aside, at a local level I’ve been told that Labour were much quicker off the mark and better organised in terms of postal votes than the other parties were. I think that’s probably true and at least partially accounts for their benefit from where they were used.
8. Care to suggest some reasoning for this?
12. Probably true. Or at least the relationship will be a loose one.
Would anyone bother fiddling the vote in the Euro elections?
19 Is the Labour party a Catholic? Does Peter mandelson shit in the woods?
Corporeal - I have registered on Diplomacy if there is a game going.
I thought at the time the Regional Postal voting was immoral and surprised that more was not made of the blatent attempt to rig the ballot in favour of Labour in usually strong Labour supporting regions in terms of National vote share.
Parodixically this could be very good for the Tories this next time round as they could almost potentially double their vote proportion in the right circumstances. I doubt UKIP will have the traction of 2004. However, it could be the case that the BNP become the Euro election protest repositry of preference this time around. If neither UKIP or BNP get protest votes and it is a straight choice between main parties, then the Tories could get the perfect platform for 2010.
17-Saw something on Euronews (yes, was that bored!) that said the method of election had to be “proportional”. Is this:
-EU misinformation
-another EU law through the back door
-other
I thought it was in the gift of the government of the day, and it was “recommended/advised” it were “broadly” proportional, or some such legalese.
18. Clegg is ruining out of time as is Gordon Brown.
Clegg has been defined as a gaffer and a joke by many folk from is 30 shags to £30 Pensions. The plane gaffe just ceiled the Hapless Clegg’s fate - “The Tories are unlikely to lose the next election”.
LD’s = Doomed!
18 “I suspect more people know [Clegg] than knew Campbell”
I suspect you are wrong.
18 - Corporeal, why do you think “Brand Clegg” will receive more recognition over time? He’s not a particularly impressive man and, perhaps more importantly, isn’t particularly likeable when he is seen.
So maybe the more important question is do you really want him to be recognised more or do you just want floating, confused voters to just have a grey, foggy vision of someone who heads up this party that allows them to cast a protest vote for, well, who knows what for really but that’s not the point it’s just a protest vote after all.
As for leaving aside evidenc of generally Labour-inspired postal vote fraud, why? Postal voting to allow electoral advantage (often by nefarious means) is just another element of how Labour cheats to gain what it wants.
The government lied to enter a war whilst knowing that it was going to go anyway despite what anyone thought.
Gordon lied about managing the economy effectively whilst willfully bankrupting the nation.
Jacqui Smith, the Balls and other lied to gain taxpayers money to pay for their houses.
The instances of fraud are totally inkeeping with their character and to not recognise such gives legitimacy to a failed voting system that they foisted upon the nation for narrow party advantage and no better reason.
o/t-Looking at the photograph, does anyone recognise a name? There were 3 Tories, 1 LD and 1 Labour elected from this region (and 2 UKIP - including RKS), and all these can be seen in the photograph. Duff rings a bell, but is there a LD MP by that name? Guess that leaves me with RKS who is not shown in the photograph.
Guess it shows the low profiel the EP has in the UK. Is it the same overseas?
27-Apologise! RKS was not in this region!!
26. Well, basically familiarity. The longer here’s there the etc.
I couldn’t comment on postal fraud, I don’t know anything about it really. I do know that Labour have apparently been better than the other parties at getting postal votes distributed etc. So any advantage might not solely be down to alleged fraud.
21. PB#1 just finished, post-game analysis chit-chat going on now.
PB#2 in mid-progress. PB#3 is as of yet just an ambitious glint in someone’s eye.
29. The trade Unions are very much into organising postal votes both in 2004 and very much more so in 2005. I was a member of a trade union in this period and was shocked to find offers of dealing with my vote for me by signing the relevant forms!
They did not ask which way you wanted to vote either! If i had sent them back this would have been a Mark Senior moment, where he would ask for the soap on the way into Rod Crosby’s showers!
Gordo wont be please to read Tevor Kananagh in the Sun. Nokia time methinks
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/kavanagh/article2306216.ece
31. I liked the bit “But when ex-minister Peter Hain pops up with helpful advice on winning an election, Gordon must surely know Labour are doomed.”
Labour are doomed - DOOMED at the next election! When they installed Gordon they were Turkeys voting for Christmas!
Talking of postal votes and alleged fraud, has anyone found the Glenrothes marked register yet?
9 Did you know that ‘clegg’ means ‘horse-fly’ in Scots?
Did you know that “Clegg” means “horse’s arse” in English?
O/T Ali Bongo has died. He had a magic life…
Boris talks sense
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/03/boris-tells-pan.html
Off topic, but the Guardian has an extraordinary story today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/09/lib-dems-coalition-game-theory
If this is true, rather than Lib Dem spin, they are being terribly advised. Let us assume for the moment that there will be a hung Parliament after the next election (something that I don’t believe, but a perfectly respectable view). This still does not justify the statement that: “Key strategists believe it highly likely the Lib Dems will have to choose which party forms the next government”.
If either Labour or the Tories fall just short of an overall majority, the Lib Dems will be unable to deprive them of Government. They will either form a minority Government or be able to govern with the support (whether formal or informal) of other minor parties.
Even if both Labour and the Tories fall well short of an overall majority, the Lib Dems may still not be able to decide who governs. Say the result is Tories 305, Labour 265 and Lib Dems 50. The Lib Dems can take the Tories over the line, but even if they throw their weight behind Labour, the Tories may be able to form the next government in a superficially unlikely alliance with assorted Scots and Welsh nationalists and Northern Ireland unionists.
In short, the number of hung Parliaments where the Lib Dems decide who governs is not as great as all that, even if there is a hung Parliament.
The story also doesn’t work as spin. The Lib Dems really don’t want us to concentrate on how they will jump in such circumstances. They will scare off either Labour-inclined tactical voters or Tory-inclined tactical voters. What on earth are they playing at?
36. I suspect it is true. It’d be foolish not to plan for such possible outcomes.
The statement I suspect is the Guardian talking up the article. “Decide who governs” is more interesting than “takes over the line”.
36. At a guess trying to appeal to all people!
LD’s are a bunch of schisters: Chris Huhne is unlikely to be even in the next Parliament!
Jacqui Smith on BBC News “we have halved the incidence of domestic violence over the past 10 years”
How the hell can she claim this? I can’t imagine it’s something any government can have much of a handle on.
Judging by post 12, it would appear that the Lib Dems are resigned to a poor showing in the Euro elections.
A classic hint of the all time best Lib Dem spin for a bad night “if you ignore where we do badly we do well”, but this time it is in advance.
38. I was amused by the title for Huhne of Shadow Home Secreatary.
As ever the LD’s have delusions of importance and granduer!
36. I entirely agree with you: the Lib Dems being in a position to choose between the two main parties is possible but very far from “highly likely” - psephelogically illiterate.
The final paragraph of your post is the most important one. What the hell are they doing releasing the story. The Lib Dems should be doing everything possible to stop speculation about what they’d do in that scenario (though they’re right to think about it, just as they - and the other parties, for that matter - should spend at least some time thinking about what they’d do any all the realistic scenarios). The more talk of them backing Labour against the Tories OR the Tories against Labour but not being clear beforehand which could lose them tactical votes each way. It also distracts from their own message and undermines their credibility as a party by reinforcing that ‘Only the Tories and Labour can win here’.
40. I agree the LD’s are on the crushing Machine convey belt in the Euro elections: I cannot see the unique Brand of LD selling out National Interest for Party Interest going down well with the electorate.
In a simailar fashion these musings by the LD’s on who they will allow to form a government will backfire. It is the electorate who decided, not a bunch of the self-indulgent.
43 “these musings by the LD’s on who they will allow to form a government will backfire”
Nail. Hit. Head.
On topic. Badly.
Postal voting is all about getting the votes in of people who rank as about 3-6 in the likelihood to vote stakes. Labour has a lot more of these than the Tories and minor parties at a Euro election. The pilot areas were also (conveniently) in areas of Labour strength, so they have more votes to lose. By contrast, the Lib Dems are less likely to suffer from the change for the reverse reason (though they’ll still do badly as they won’t have access to their dustbin vote with so many minor parties standing, at least three of which will harbour realistic hopes of winning representation).
44. Bollocks. It’d be idiotic to risk turning up the day after a hung parliament is elected saying ‘well, what do we do now, wish we’d planned for this’.
This being released (if it was intentionally released) is dubious judgement. Undertaking it is sensible.
So much for the infrastructure projects - it is all p1ss and w1nd from Gordon Brown and the bankrupts.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090309/tuk-rail-engineering-work-deferred-6323e80.html
46 I’d be more interested in hearing about the Nationalists’ contingency planning for supporting a minority Govt. Will their price be the end of the Union? A timetable for that? Or pragmatic working arrangments?
However, if Alex Salmond started shouting off ahead of time who he would allow to form a Government, I suspect the LibDems would be whining loudest.
46. “dubious judgement”
So if the judgement is that dubuis why would the electorate want to get shot of Brown and his dreadful decisions to give a band of self-interested schisters with bad judgement as you admit to be the pivotal decision makers?
Nick Clegg = Neil Kinnock!!!!!!!!
morning all, on the topic of Euro elections, is the real challenge for Labour to ensure they beat the BNP in every region? I do not ask this question as a joke. The white working class in some parts of England, especially ex-mining areas tc are so sick of Labour and still dont trust us and would never vote for those politically correct university lecturer types, the Liberal Democrats leaving only the BNP. News this morning on the BBC of an estimated 3/4 million illegal immigrants will only fuel the flight to the BNP from Labour.
Separately is Jackieboots about to support Hattie the Harpy? This morning she announces a review in England and Wales on the law relating to domestic abuse of women. Listening to her, only men assault women in relationships. No sane person condones assault by any person on any other, however:
Woman stabs partner to death= he must have driven her to it so she gets a light sentence or suspended sentence following a conviction for manslaughter/culpable homicide.
Man stabs partner to death= he must be an evil bas*ard so found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
I know these are generalisations but how often do the media headlines etc vary from that.
A young woman can chat a guy up in a pub, no knickers on, skirt half way up her backside and offering herself on a plate. Most Labour female cabinet ministers and their ilk already have him guilty of thought rape. The behaviour of the young woman is rarely criticised.
A man accused of rape has his name plastered all over the media before any court hears a shred of evidence. If he is acqutted, he will be lucky if it is reported on page 25 buried in the middle of an article on tractor numbers. If it transpires the woman made the whole thing up, nothing happens to her but he might have spent a year in jail on remand with no recourse and no compensation.
As I said at the beginning, no person should be assaulted but before female Labour politicians start firing off allegations and complaints and making yet another piece of bad law we need a major law reform commission throughout the UK looking at the question of domestic violence and violence on others in ALL cases including assaults on men and on same sex partners. 1 woman being killed each week by an abusive partner is 1 too many but someone needs to stand up also for all the other victims.
9.”Did you know that ‘clegg’ means ‘horse-fly’ in Scots?”
Yes, it has caused me some amusement when I think about it, annoying sods when they swarm around you.
51. ChristinaD, I think the Electorate have stocked up with Fly killer, the LD’s are guilty of nesting in the Labour feaces since about 1995 and spreading their poison about!
48 Mark you are almost a year behind the times. Having changed his party’s constitution so the SNP can work with we Tories, Alex Salmond announced last summer that in principle he would support a David Cameron minority government on an issue by issue basis. As their respective people speak regularly to one another, I suspect plans are already in place.
30 “If i had sent them back this would have been a Mark Senior moment, where he would ask for the soap on the way into Rod Crosby’s showers!”
Martin Day, at the risk of information overload, what is a Mark Senior moment? And what is a Rod Crosby shower?
Gordon Brown!
Gordon Brown!
Gordon Brown!
54. Mark Senior has blind faith in what Labour say!
Rod Crosby shares views with senior ex-cumunicated church figures who have been recently re-admited on German WWII factories of death. I combine the two as MS seems blind to the reality that Labour lie on the econmy and said if MS had lived in WWII and was orded to go to the showers he would have asked for soap because he would think the authorities were telling the truth! 
56 Superb!
36.Have the Libdems learnt nothing from Scotland 2007!
53.Canny wee Eck has taken a page out of Annabel Goldie’s campaign strategy from the previous Scottish elections.
48. Then get the Guardian to manufacture a story about them. The second paragraph
“Key strategists believe it highly likely the Lib Dems will have to choose which party forms the next government but expect the decision to be so “fluid” it requires scenario planning of the kind developed during the cold war by Nobel prize-winner John Nash.”
is spun out of someone saying they think the post-election situation could be fluid. Anyone who follows politics knows that this sort of planning goes on and is common sense to undertake. The protestations on here are laughable.
49. I’m amazed how everyone knows this was a press release from top brass. All I see evidence for is one frontbencher making an ill-advised comment. I said a single quote from a single front bencher was dubious Martin, so you painting me into declaring Nick Clegg and all the front cabinet as incompetent is par for the course for you I suppose. Still confident in your Sheffield Hallam predictions?
Yes I would support the move by the Tories to axe the FSA:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/4958263/Tories-could-ask-Bank-of-England-to-take-over-bank-regulation-from-FSA.html
FSA = Bag of B0ll0cks!
61. Best news for months.
46.”44. Bollocks. It’d be idiotic to risk turning up the day after a hung parliament is elected saying ‘well, what do we do now, wish we’d planned for this’.”
Rubbish, its totally self defeating.
53 Easterross, I was aware that all options are now open to the SNP. I hadn’t read that as being Salmond would only work with Cameron though. It makes more political sense for the SNP to do all they can to undermine Labour (as the dominant force in Scottish politics).
But would Labour never be able to deliver a package acceptable to Salmond, if it meant keeping the Tories out? Maybe…Salmond has just raised the bar that Labour would have to jump, that’s all.
60. Yes - Nick Clegg will get despatched in the Yellow Taxi as the LD’s are defeated in many English seats!
The LD’s might as well pack up and go home now! I was merely doing to you - what wage slave has recently started doing to me in copying a few words and twisting it. The LD’s are doomed - DOOMED at the next election as they are tarred with the Labour brand they have sought to hide behind since the mid 1990’s.
Your are quite right Corporeal, It could not possibly have been Nick Clegg as he thinks the Tories will win the Next election!
It would show dubious judgement for him to recant so quickly on what he thinks! 
33. mirthios:
‘Human error’ to blame for Glenrothes register loss
- A report into missing documents relating to the 2008 by-election rejected any ‘malicious intent’ in their disappearance
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/80546-human-error-to-blame-for-glenrothes-register-loss/
LabourHome - Can Labour ever win in Scotland?
23: I’m not sure it’s a law, but there’s certainly an EU-wide agreement that all countries will use a PR system. None of the parties are proposing to change this, AFAIK (for parties wanting to withdraw altogether it’s obviously irrelevant).
I’m not sure the table is that useful, since it departs from the usual way of measuring swing (drop in proportion of the overall vote) to use drop in proportion of the previous proportion. There are well-established psephological reasons why this isn’t recommended which we’ve discussed here before (e.g. if you drop 500,000 votes and gain 500,000 votes in successive elections, this method ’shows’ quite different swings) It distorts the table by showing a big drop in the E and SE where Labour actually had a comparable driop from a lower base. If someone were to put up the figures using the usual swing formula, and also show comparative turnout (which would settle the ‘all-postal voting increases turnout’ theory) it’d be interesting - no time to do it myself.
60 - I don’t believe that anyone is saying that the Lib Dems shouldn’t plan for these circumstances. Obviously, they should. However, to talk about the plans seems daft to me.
Unlike you, I don’t believe that the Guardian would have spun this story out of a generalised statement that the post-election situation could be fluid. It seems more precise than that to me.
I note that the story particularly emphasises Vince Cable’s role and capabilities, and impliedly criticises Nick Clegg’s lack of preparation for a hung parliament to date. It also stresses the poor relations between the Tory and Lib Dem leadership. Joining the dots, “friends of Vince Cable” appear to have been doing the talking.
re 19. Icarus - Local elections are being held in many areas on the same day and this is where most election fraud seems to take place.
Remember that the Birmingham case came out of the June 10 2004 elections when there were Euros at the same time.
69. Yes - Maybe they are going to go for a last minute coup against Calimity Clegg!
No leaders Bonus in Sheffield Hallam then!
Of course people say National exposure is good for a candidate but if people think the person a tool surely it will be counter-productive?
69. ChristinaD apparently does. Why she dislikes such contingency planning I don’t know.
I agree with your assessment generally though. Someone from the leftier side not overly happy with a shift to the right re:spending cuts is how I’m interpreting it. I think “A lot of us see Labour as the competition and the Tories as the opposition” is the key quote. The rest has been built around a convo involving that.
Incidentlaly, for those interested, the Dip game finished with a 3-way draw betweeen HurstLlama, Andy Cooke and me. Very enjoyable game.
58. You mean when we lost the same number of MSPs (1) as the Scottish Tories?
72 One view is that in the early 20th century Labour saw the Liberals as competition rather than opposition and planned how to supplant them, while the Liberals looked to Labour as allies against Conservative opposition.
That’s a decision the Lib Dems need to make, at present many of their leaders seem to look at alliances to stop Tories rather than competing for votes from Labour.
I have discovered why Obama did not do the photocall on Brown’s visit!
http://delivernothinglabourparty.blogspot.com/
72.”69. ChristinaD apparently does. Why she dislikes such contingency planning I don’t know.”
Because it damages the party doing the contingency planning before a GE, and it becomes the story instead of their own campaign and manifesto. The Scottish Conservatives closed down any idea of a coalition, and they talked up the legitimacy of the largest party being able to form a minority administration. They turned a negative into a positive, the SNP have already copied that strategy for the next GE. Parties shouldn’t stitch up deals before the voters have made their choice on election day.
The Libdems appear to be falling into that well known trap of talking up their own importance in a hung Parliament before the voters decide. I think that it weakens, rather than strengthens their ‘incumbency’ in the seats they already hold, and those they are targeting. Its electorally toxic for the Libdems to allow this kind of speculation on a hung Parliament to get a hold in the media or with the voters.
75. They are aggressively competing for certain parts of the Labour vote - ethnic blocks, students, pacifist guardianistas - in certain parts of the country. But there is no stomach for a full frontal assault.
re 68. Conventional swing analysis where you do not take proportional vote changes but actual percentage numbers is fine, I have to agree, for changes between parties.
Here we are not discussing that but trying to measure the impact of a particular voting system on one party - Labour. This is the least worst way that I have seen of producing comparisons between the regions.
77. Easterross at 53 seems to disagree about your assessment of SNP strategy.
These things should go on, but behind firmly closed doors. The problem here is someone has gone running their mouth rather than such things taking place.
Thanks Mike for the article which indicates that Labour have at least 5% more to fall in areas where they had full postal voting.
Meanwhile I did listen into the “westminster half hour” this morning and Mike came over clearly. The Labour Lord spouted his nonsense and was clearly back on message. Anything to do with his lucrative pro Heathrow job?
PS When will the westminster hour be the full hour and not lose 10 mins to news and 15 mins to another segment, often nothing to do with westminster politics? Or why not call it the “half hour at westminster”?
In which part of the UK are the LDs likely to perform well or even hold their ground?
My impression is that would be just the North West and North East.
In Scotland, Wales and London the Lib Dems have lost ground in recent elections.
They are down in the polls in the South East and have lost Councillors and Councils. In the South West, they have lost ground in Devon and Somerset and have challenges in Cornwall. Several of their MPs in this area are standing down which reduces the number of incumbents.
As to East & West Midlands the impression I have is also gains for the Conservatives rather than a strong LD position.
Which leaves the East and Yorks /Humberside.
Hmmm.. Labour seems to have been punching above its weight in by-elections recently, probably because they have an excellent get-out-the-postal-vote operation - and more history of postal voting fraud than other parties, who are nevertheless have less than angelic records.
Whilst there may be a small effect in this one region, broadly I can only assume Labour will be even more effective this time round. Yet another reason Harman might be very shrewd/lucky to be handed the poisoned chalice.
The LibDems under Nick Clegg are making a big strategic error IMO. It’s one they repeatedly make, to such an extent that it almost defines them. The mistake is to spend so much of their time (and such media exposure as they can get) worrying about whether they should be the ‘not-Tory’ party or the ‘not-Labour’ party, or some mixture of the two.
As a result, there’s no clear picture emerging of what voting LibDem actually means, other than protesting against some other party. Other minority parties such as the Greens or the BNP don’t seem to have this mindset.
I genuinely wish the LibDems well - I’d much rather have their less authoritarian and less nasty version of left-of-centre politics than Labour’s - but I just don’t see them grasping the opportunity they’ve got.
We’re often told by our LibDem friends that, in a general election campaign, the LibDem vote share will increase because of the increased media exposure. This may have been true in the past - but is it not possible that in current circumstances, and with Nick Clegg as leader, increased scrutiny might actually decrease their support?
[OK, I've lit the blue touch paper.. I'll stand well back]
79: Mike, I agree that neither way of looking at it is ideal, but in general you would expect swing with this approach to show larger swings in weaker areas, such as the southeast.
Leaving that aside, do you have the comparative turnout figures for each region? We spend so much time debating the merits of easier or even compulsory postal voting that it’d be useful to know to know whether this experiment did in fact show a significant difference. One could imagine that it might even make turnout drop, especially in areas where literacy levels are lower - the system is tricky and I once spoiled a ballot myself by using the wrong envelope.
85. That’s why you need to send your party workers round to each house in the areas of ‘low literacy’ to make sure everyone has voted properly, isn’t it?
85 ‘ the system is tricky and I once spoiled a ballot myself by using the wrong envelope.’
Why not make it easier then? Oh, sorry I forgot - party workers wouldn’t have an excuse to help ‘confused’ voters fill out their ballot papers.
67. Chris - LabourHome - Can Labour ever win in Scotland?
Thanks Chris. That is fascinating reading.
http://www.labourhome.org/story/2009/3/6/102334/8452
87. snap…..
84. I agree - Nick Clegg might show a new election polling trend in deminishing the vote: Clegg is Crap!
Nick Clegg = Neil Kinnock!
re 85. Nick see page 12 of this PDF
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2004/rp04-050.pdf
The all-postal voting areas had the highest turnouts.
89 Spooky. Are you my split personality?
86. Nah, since the staggering success of their immigration policy, they just need to send the community leaders around instead, and they only need to speak to the man in the house.
I remember when postal voting was just starting, and the disgraceful way Labour behaved. In their own guide for candidates they recommended making a fake ballot box, and carrying it door to door, encouraging supporters to put their envelopes in the box.
A banana republic seems to be something to aspire to.
An analysis of Westminster voting samples month by month shows the SNP neck and neck with Labour for February as Labour’s vote crashes in Scotland in the face of Gordon Brown’s recession. The analysis of all poll samples for February shows both the SNP and Labour on 31%.
http://www.snp.org/node/14959
93. Indeed - it seems Labour are quite happy to reinforce the archaic and oppressive social structures they claim to be against if it wins them a few votes. Postal voting should be restricted dramatically.
Banks are getting killed on the FTSE this morning. But I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by the reasons cited in the financial press. Apparently shareholders are unhappy, thinking the government has “too good a deal” on the insurance scheme for Lloyds assets. But then, the “shareholders” in Lloyds are basically us… A very weird situation.
94. A couple of awkward details there for you though, Stuart - SNP share flatlining and Lib Dems actually the main gainers from Labour…
re 68 Nick P if you want actual numbers they are here (not sure how well this will format)
1999, 2004, Difference
North East 162753, 266057, 103304 (postal)
North West 350511, 576388, 225877 (postal)
Yorks and H 233024, 413213, 180189 (postal)
East Midlands 206756, 294918, 88162 (postal)
West Midlands 237671, 336613, 98942
East 250132, 244929, -5203
London 399466, 466584, 67118
South East 292146, 301398, 9252
South West 188362, 209908, 21546
So overall in all postal areas the mean change in the Labour vote was +149,383, in the non-postal areas the average change was +38,331. If we compare with the non-Labour vote the mean i nthe all postal areas went up by +601,823 and in the non postal areas by +556,017.
Thus Labour’s average vote was up by over 100,000 in the all postal areas compared with the non postal areas, For non Labour the difference was 45,000.
Pretty convincing support for Mike’s thesis I would have said.
This is shocking - I am surprised at these findings. You would think that in an age of mass communication, flows of data and online archives in this “Information Age” historic events like this would not be forgotten?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160503/The-children-think-Auschwitz-brand-beer.html
Given the possible rise of the the BNP and Nationist German parties that Hail Hitler etc. A more effective approach at remember the tragedy of the second world war civilian deaths would be attempted.
82.In Scotland, Wales and London the Lib Dems have lost ground in recent elections.
=================
Erm, what are you talking about? When did we lose ground in Wales? I’d expect to see a Lib Dem MEP there after the European elections.
[85] Presumably after spoiling one, you managed the other ninety nine OK! - Sorry, Nick, couldn’t resist.
99. The poll also found that six out of ten of the pupils did not know that the Final Solution was the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish population. A fifth thought it was the name of peace talks held to end the war.
I think that, as important than Labour’s poll share will be the Tory poll share. Although they were in first place in 2004, their share of 26.7% was also pathetic.
I’d expect the Tory share to be in the 30s this time. Clearly there will still be a tendency for more splitting of the vote [hence less than 40% for the Tories], to UKIP perhaps, but I’d have thought the Tories would pick up more of the “I’m not voting for Labour” vote this time.
Of course, watching Labour slip to below 20% and into third or fourth place will be more entertaining.
99. It’s not so surprising. A large proportion of kids get taught virtually no history in schools, and a large proportion retain very little of what they are taught.
Hang on a minute Martin - only 2% thought Auschwitz was a brand of beer. More people than that think Carling is a brand of beer, which is just as daft!!
27. Yes, there is a Lib/Dem MEP for Eastern Region, Andrew Duff MEP
105. It’s ok - Mark Senior probably thinks it a brand of soap.
This speaks volumes for the mentality of Brown.
1. May be able to make some political capital out of this http://tiny.cc/IDYKV
2. What I really do and have been the driving force behind for 12 years.http://tiny.cc/qpOYK
This man is sickening. He is also totally deluded to think the armed forces hold him anything other than the deepest contempt.
84
An editorial in the Indy on that very subject.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-party-ahead-of-the-ideas-curve-1640169.html
Different conclusion though!
106. Nice guy who thinks the English have to be ‘defeated’. Cheers all round if by some chance he gets the boot.
Re. the Tories it seems to me they need to be aiming for a vote share over 40% and anything less will be a relatively poor result.
104. WWII, the holocaust etc is generally a GCSE History topic. The 6 out of 10 pupils between 11-16 corresponds (assuming they had a uniform age spread) to the proportion who probably wouldn’t have studied it in school yet.
109 - Yes, but the article by Michael Savage in the same issue expresses the same worry as I posted:
But Mr Clegg made his pitch to the nation amid concerns among his top team that the party still lacks a unique selling point with which to attract voters at the next election.
…
But with the next election less than 18 months away, concerns also emerged over the weekend that the party is struggling to find a coherent sales pitch with which to win voters. “We still don’t have our own tune,” said one member of the front bench. “It needs to be something that offers the public a clear alternative, but the old issues that have benefited us in the past such as Iraq have now slipped down the agenda.”
Party insiders are particularly concerned about losing seats to the Conservatives in the South, a fear Mr Clegg has attempted to counter by pledging to cut taxes for nine out of 10 taxpayers. “We are now a tax-cutting party,” said one of Mr Clegg’s inner circle. “I think we share the mood of the country that tax and spend has gone too far now.”
http://tinyurl.com/7qw6qh
However, if they really want to stop voters shifting from LibDems to Conservatives, a policy to limit tax relief on pension contributions is definitely not a good way to go about it.
100. ‘When did we lose ground in Wales? I’d expect to see a Lib Dem MEP there after the European elections’
I fear you will be sadly disappointed. The wonderfully named Mr. Butt-Phillip has very little chance of election.
Gerry “Adams said that those behind the attacks had “no popular support”. He also said that he and his Sinn Féin colleague Martin McGuiness were seen as legitimate targets by the dissident republicans.”
Well, isn’t it time they improved their aim?
Was at University with Mr Butt-Phillip - he was a don at Nuffield - frighteningly bright!
The basic mistake the Lib Dems make is their failure to recognise how much the other two parties detest them - far more than the ritual dislike between Labour and Tory and probably greater than towards the extremes of left and right.
113. In theory Adams & (especially) McGuinness ought to be the biggest traitors of all, and therefore major targets. If, that is, we accept that the ‘dissident republican’ groups really are the kind of organisations they purport to be.
This is allegedly an item from the News of the World according to a comment on guido, unable to find a link to it (grateful is someone could verify it one way or the other). However if true there is an awful lot of egg on faces both at the Whitehouse and No10.
McGuinness, now Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland, flies to America tomorrow (MONDAY) with First Minister Peter Robinson on a ten day tour.
And the pair will enjoy two hours of talks with the US president and a luxurious gala reception on St Patrick’s Day, in nine days’ time.
Mr Brown was forced to use a side entrance at the White House and spent just 30 minutes in private talks with the new US President.
Mr McGuinness will walk in through the front door and be given the full State Visit treatment, and will party into the small hours at a special Irish-themed party.
In contrast, a joint press conference with President Obama and the Prime Minister was cancelled by President Obama’s team and the pair had a brief working lunch.
But McGuinness and Robinson will be given a grand reception and will be guests of honour at the star-studded party.
113. In theory Adams & (especially) McGuinness ought to be the biggest tra*tors of all, and therefore major targets. If, that is, we accept that the ‘dissident republican’ groups really are the kind of organisations they purport to be.
114. How did he end up in the Lib Dems then?
I probably should have called him Dr. Butt-Phillip. I’ve actually read some of his work.
[50, Eastercross] - I think it’s important to move the debate beyond anecdote and remembered newspaper headlines.
I don’t have the inclination to hunt out statistics now, but I think you’ll find that the majority of domestic abuse is suffered by women at the hands of men. There is probably a problem of under-reporting of male victims, but then there is a problem of under-reporting for domestic violence in general.
I’m really not sure hat to make of your comments regarding rape. There are vast numbers of cases where the crux of the case rests on whether consent was given. At the moment these mostly fail, since it is hard to prove, in each individual case, that consent was not given when there are no witnesses, or physical evidence.
However, I find it very hard to believe that the number of these allegations that are false and malicious is above the 5% makr. Thus, many rapists are left unpunished. I’m not sure of the solution for this.
I think these are more important problems than moralistic posturing about skirt length.
100. The Lib dems in Wales have not recovered from the “Rainbow” debacle which made them look both irrelevent andd incompetent.Both of their MPs are in some danger at the next election,which is no mean feat in Opik’s case as it ought to be one of their safest seats anywhere.
Incidentally,I saw Clegg on the news last night and I genuinely did not recognise him immediately and my wife did not recognise him at all.Perhaps we are both gaga but I suspect that this may be indicative.
113. Your logic for this? UKIP are currently a complete shambles and the Labour vote seems very likely to decrease enough to give us the fourth seat. At least that’s my assessment of it. It’s not a certainty but I’d say we have a good chance to say the least.
116. Hardly. Any animosity between us and the other parties pales in comparison with the feelings many on the left have for Thatcher for example. Look up thread for examples of people saying they’d prefer us as opposition to their chosen party than the other of the big two.
124. There are certainly parts of the country where the Lib Dems are indeed detested by both local Tories and Labour people to a remarkable extent. There are also areas where the local Lib Dems and Labour are essentially two wings of the same outfit. Usually the latter seem to be areas where Labour has suffered major long-term decline.
36 I believe Vince Cable has already said they would go with whoever wins the most seats - I put a link up yesterday but haven’t got time to search now.
I was surprised as I thought it must have occurred to them that they could be supporting Labour, possibly with a vote share well behind that of the Tories.
Odd for a party of proportional representation. I think Mike has already identified a fundamental split in their ideology which has the potential to be exposd every time they get a sniff of power.
I have been in non-anorak mode for a few days, having been busy. And much of the coverage of the LibDem spring gathering is not helpful to their need to face two ways at once.
The BBC particularly have been doing a great job of telling us about the anti-Tory rhetoric coming out of the LibDem conference.
That should worry them more than the leaking of the fantasy government building in the Guardian today. All those southern seats are vulnerable without sounding like Labour lite.
119, rape’s very tricky. Not just because it tends to happen with just 2 people behind closed doors but also because of the complicating factors of age and alcohol/drugs.
I really think a 16 year old and a 15 year old having sex should not be considered ’statutory rape’. It just isn’t in the same league as the stereotype of a man viciously forcing himself on a helpless woman.
Also, alcohol’s difficult because the woman (assuming it’s a bloke doing the raping) can say she was too drunk to give consent… but what if the bloke was too drunk to give consent too? Did they rape each other?
Also, domestic violence is mostly done by men on women but there’s an awful lot of women on men too. It’s even more underreported than violence against women and seriously underestimated as a problem. The typical view that only men rape only women and that only men are guilty of domestic violence is completely unjustifiable.
Am I alone in finding very irritating the LibDems’ failure to seize the chance to kill off Labour for good?
Glenrothes, easy peasy.
He was a Liberal then (late 1960s)
In my experience in the rural south, if you’re left wing and interested in local politics you join the Lib Dems. The local CLPs are for people more interested in national or international politics.
re 113 a disgustingly weasley statements from Adams this morning on the Today programme. They probably had people arguing for hours over what they were going to say rather than come straight out and condemn the murders.
In fact, while I’m on anti-men things it reminds me of the Corston Report, by Baroness Corston regarding women in prisons. I think the old link (I read it several years ago) is now dead but I may be able to find a post on another forum…
from March 14th 2007 [I've altered it slightly for reasons of brevity and taking out certain naughty words]:
Jail is harsher on women than men -
So sayeth Baroness Corston, reported in the Daily Mail today.
Bollocks. She’s written a report for the Home Office which makes for, uh, interesting reading.
She wants only the severest female offenders (ie murderers, rapists, foxhunters) to be given custodial sentences, and wants community service to become the ‘norm’ for women offenders. These so-called custodial sentences would involve units of 20-30 women living together, organising their own budgets, cooking and shopping trips. Ooo, how severe!
Her claim that men and women are different is one women acknowledge when it’s in favour of them (female physical inferiority meaning they get easier fitness tests to join the army) and ignore when it’s against them (the ultra-biased custody rulings following divorce settlements). Apparently ‘equal treatments does not mean equal outcome’. It bloody well does. A person should be sentenced according to the circumstances of their crime not their bloody gender.
Women are twice as likely as men to have psych tests pre-trial. Why? Because the fairer sex are still seen that way and a psych disorder is a big mitigating circumstance (like the fictional kleptomania).
The report states there are many women in jail with children under 16. Well, tough shit. A child is a responsibility, not a get out of jail free card. Maybe there would be more men with kids if divorce rates weren’t so high and the courts not so biased against them.
Looking at the summary - here are a few points from the list on page 5 -
Most women do not commit crime - true. Which is why out of tens of thousands of prisoners only 4k are women.
Women with histories of violence and abuse are over-represented - I’d be willing to bet that applies to men too. Yeah, the idea a man could be a victim is shocking, isn’t it?
Biological difference between men and women has different social and personal cosnequences - what, women have breasts and should therefore get lighter sentences? Piss off.
Relationship problems feature strongly into women’s pathway into crime - ….so what? You can’t say “But my husband told me to” as a bloody defence.
Coercion by men can form a route into crime for some women - aye, and it can for some men too.
Drug addiction etc - Men are addicts too, baroness dumbass.
Mental health problems are far more common amognst women in prison than the male prison population or general population - no shit. I suppose this would include the 90% false PMS [I actually read a psych paper on this by feminist psychologists], and the depression that just occasionally follows being locked up in jail, right? Not to mention the twice as likely stat for psych tests pre-trial for women compared to men.
Women are more likely to be primary carers for children than men - diddums. Give men equal custody rights instead of financial responsibility and no rights and maybe that would change.
Prison is disproportionately harsher on women because the practices inside it have been designed for men - wtf? Like what? Pissing contests? How is being locked up a lot a more masculine than feminine punishment?
Levels of security in prison were put in place to stop men escaping - ……are you mad, Baroness Corston? Do no women ever escape or attempt to do so? Stupid bitch.
131, searched a bit, found a link: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/corston-report/
121. To get a Euro seat in Wales the Lib Dems firstly need to come fourth, which I grant you is probably achievable this time. But they also need to get more than half as much of the vote as Labour, the Tories and Plaid to even stand a chance.
Labour had over 32% last time and the Lib Dems 10, so a big swing is needed there. Even then, a rise in the Tory vote (19% last time) or Plaid (17%) could scupper the Lib Dems. I suppose you might argue that a disastrous day for, say Plaid, could lead to the Lib Dems coming third.
But the Welsh LDs are hardly talking things up.
121. By have not recovered you mean increased votes and councillors at last years local elections? Last GE we went up. Last Assembly we pretty much stayed the same iirc. Last Euro we were up. This claims of losing ground 82 made seem hard to backup, which means I question the credibility of their claims about other areas I don’t have off-hand knowledge of.
Which 2 of our 4 MPs do you mean by both? I assume Ceredigion is one, the rest have at least 10% leads, so will take some shifting (Lembit indeed sitting on an over 20% one, talk of him losing is foolishness imho).
Apart from the PM and Opposition leader almost all politicians have low picture recognition rates. Call me skeptical but somehow I don’t think Nick Clegg’s haircut will make much of an electoral impact (insert Martin Day joke about the rest of him being the same here).
105. I have actually had a beer *in* Auschwitz, in a little cafe just across from the extermination camp. It was very nice - a very well kept pilsener.
I guess you have to work that little bit harder if you are running a pub in that kind of place. I mean, how do you advertise? “Best beer in Auschwitz” is a tough sell.
135 I wonder who drank there back in the 1940s.
re 133 not so. With 4 seats then all the LDs need to do is get more than half the leader’s total (presumably Labour). The totals for the Tories and PC are irrelevant as they will only win 1 seat anyway.
133. Hardly surprising. Adams is an evil man.
No postal votes? Labour wipeout!
134. Corporeal - the broader comment on the Welsh Lib Dems was not mine. IMHO the situation with the Welsh LD MPs is unpredictable (apart from Cardiff Central) and I’m not going to be so bold as to predict the demise of any of the 4.
You are right to say that the Lib Dems increased their number of councillors in Wales in 08, but their assembly vote went down in 07 (triggering quite a nasty bout of infighting) although the number of seats was unchanged.
134. I calculate the swing at about 2.5% direct swing. Neither the Tories or Plaid will top the poll (or if they do, then get high enough to change much) so they don’t really matter in the calcs. I don’t think us improving by that % compared to Labour is unlikely.
116 Don - the planned St Patricks Day visit by Robinson & McGuiness has been delayed if not cancelled as a result of yesterdays murders.
It’s always a big affair so Irish politicians (North & South) are feted and get preferred treatment. There are votes in it.
119. Well you are just totally f*cking wrong, Timothy. I know more about this subject than anyone else on earth.
There have been very few reliable investigations into how many rape accusations are “false”. This is partly because the notion of a “false allegation” is itself very slippery in a crime like rape. i.e. a woman may honestly believe she did not consent, and a man may honesty believe she did - let’s say both were very drunk - how are we to know if this is a false allegation?
Many alleged rapes must fall into this category. Do you know how many of them are false? No. So shut up.
Nonetheless some attempts have been made to get at the truth. Feminists always quote one survey done once in the 70s in one New York police district by some left wing feminist academics - which showed a false reporting rate of about 3-5%.
However since then bigger and better surveys have shown a false allegation rate of 20-40%. i.e. 20-40% of rape allegations are *provably* false - the woman either later retracts, or the man has a cast-iron alibi, or the medical evidence contradicts the claim, etc.
This does not mean the remaining 60-80% of rape claims are true. Many of these will fall into the category I first cited: drunken or drugged-up date-rapes where both sides honestly believe they are right.
That leaves 40-50% of rape allegations being true, maybe? Funnily enough, at the moment the conviction rate for rape cases that reach court is about 40-50%, I believe.
There is no crisis of thousands of known rapists walking the streets unconvicted. It’s all bollocks. Like your ill-informed post.
137. Yes, that’s what I mean. Sorry if I was unclear. If you think there’s going to be a 7%ish swing from Lab - Lib Dem, AND that the the Tories are sure not to increase their vote by substantially more than the Lib Dems, fine. I just don’t agree that that’s likely.
Ted thanks for that, it would have taken a particularly hard faced politician to go through with that. The alleged former commander of the Derry brigade must be gutted.
141. Having checked we went down <0.4%. I don’t have any real knowledge of infighting since I wasn’t really involved at the time of those elections.
Morris Dancer - Surely the conclusion should be that prison is a stupid punishment for either sex.
A prison population of about 20,000 should be all that is needed.
[131] - I’d agree that there are certainly some elephants in the room - drugs policy for one - that are more important than analysing everything through the prism of “are women/men being treated more/less fairly in the criminal justic system.
I don’t think that’s mutualy exclusive with saying that there’s a large nu,mber of crimes - such as rape and domestic violence - that do disproportionately affect women and are going unpunished.
145. Where are you getting 7% from?
147, I do think prison should not be used for certain types of crime. Surely it would make more sense to give a fraudster a huge fine and a permanent or longterm increase in income tax (a criminal bastard tax if you like) then putting them behind bars?
Likewise GBHers and the like should be slung in jail for decades.
Corporeal, in Wales I was referring to the Assembly regions vote of the LDs which dropped 1% to 11.7%. Is a drop of almost 1 in 10 voters not a decline?
Are you seriously saying that Wales is a stronghold of the LDs? You have no MEPs and your 4 MPs are likly to reduce at the next GE by 1 or 2. Opik has become a joke and the Conservative candidate is well known.
As to your MEP chances they remain remote since Wales dropped from 5 to 4 MEPs in 2004. The LDs would need to increase their vote by a half to get into the 15% range that is likely to be the minimum for an MEP. There is not much of a welcome in the hillsides for the descendants of LLoyd George.
153. How many professional fraudsters do you suppose pay signficant amounts of income tax???
[143] - “i.e. 20-40% of rape allegations are *provably* false - the woman either later retracts”
I expect that New York study is the one I’ve read about where I have my 5% number. Thanks seant.
I don’t think the woman retracting an allegation proves that it was false to start with. There are many reasons that women choose not to press on with a case. Mostly this is due to wanting to get on with their life and the recognition that there is such a small chance of conviction in a “he says, she says” case.
Also, your post appears to suggest that a drunk man is not responsible for his own actions. Society doesn’t accept this for some crimes eg drink-driving. Would you find it reasonable if a drunk-driver said they were so drunk they couldn’t stop themself from getting in the car? That they found the urge to drive home so strong they couldn’t resist? It’s absurd. Drunkeness is no excuse.
149. Ugh, working out swings when you’re trying to calculate what you’d need to get half of another party’s total does my head in. You could maybe envisage a scenario where Labour go down 8% (to 24) and the Lib Dems up 2 (to just over 12) - then assuming the Tories don’t get to 25 you’re there.
It’s concievable I grant you, but my view is that it won’t happen. The 04 elections were on the same day as all-out locals, which may well have boosted turnout for the LDs (and to a certain extent Plaid) so the task is trickier than it might seem.
It should be remembered that at the 2009 EU elections, that the UK seats are reduced from 78 to 72.
The following regions each lose one seat(the party who held the last seat allocated in 2004 is given):
Scotland (Cons),
North West (LD),
East Midland (LD),
West Midlands (Cons),
London (LAB),
South West & Gibraltar (Cons).
147 - The cliché goes that 75% of prisoners should never have been put inside gaol and 25% should never be let out. The problem is that there is relatively little correlation between the offences of which the prisoners have been convicted and the perceived need for incarceration.
For what it’s worth, I do not support the cliché. Sentencing is not simply about dealing with the convict’s needs, it is about deterrence, punishment, rehabilitation and maintaining the confidence of society.
Where we go awry is in seeing sentencing as the end of the process. Following that, prisoners need to be sifted into categories such as the violent, the perverted and the crooked. They then need to be treated (and separated) accordingly. Without such sifting, prisons corrupt rather than improve. In the short term, making proper attempts at rehabilitation would be expensive, but in the longer term they should pay for themselves.
At present we treat prison like a rubbish bin not a re-education camp. It is hardly surprising that what comes out of the rubbish bin is more soiled than when it went in.
Ben Brogan has just posted this about Fred the Shred’s pension
http://broganblog.dailymail.co.uk/2009/03/browns-clawback-plan.html
160. The slide into wild headline-hunting populism continues…just what we need in the grip of the worst recession since the 1930s.
158 Runnymede
Got Weds. lottery No.s?
Sam Coates has this on the Red Box blog - What could happen if there is a hung Parliament
” Let the war gaming begin. Over the coming months, a group of senior Lib Dem MPs will be scenario planning for a hung Parliament. They have form. Nick Clegg used to be a professional trade negotiator, Chris Huhne conducted city negotiations and Vince Cable was a professional scenario planner when he was Chief Economist at Shell (the company was a world leader in horizon planning).
They will be using whiteboards, mind maps and the game theory principles of John Nash.”
The rest of the article goes into the detail of various scenario’s being considered….will they never learn?
“153.Drunkeness is no excuse.
by Timothy (likes zebras) March 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am”
You’re not even thinking, are you? Of course drunken-ness is an excuse - if neither side can properly remember what actually happened.
Most alleged rapes have no witnesses: so we rely on medical evidence, and the accounts of the plaintiff and the accused.
All too often, both sides have a dim and hazy recollection of what happened, due to having consumed sixteen tequila slammers on the might in question. If you were a juror, would you condemn a man to five years minimum in jail, and say he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt of rape, on the basis of a woman’s drunken memory?
The woman might be telling the truth; equally, she might be subconsciously ashamed of having said yes, and in the morning prefers to think of herself as a raped victim than a drunken slut.
That’s the problem in many rape cases. Feminist attempts to bend the law so that the woman is no longer responsible for her actions if she’s had too many gins are absurd, and infantilise women.
Basically, if you don’t want to get in a mess, don’t get very drunk.
160 ChristinaD - Yes, there is only one salient answer to the question “What could happen if there is a hung parliament”.
Five more years of Brown.
Indeed, as has been said, the Lib Dems should plan - in private. And I still think that one of the possibilities they should consider is a Labour Tory arrangement excluding the Lib Dems, and everyone else.
A genuine question: I just got into an argument with my ex over whether partisanship bickering can be alienating. There seems to be some body of conventional wisdom - from God knows where - that “partisanship”, “bickering” and “point-scoring” always end up damaging its protagonists.
Is there some sort of evidence for this, academic or otherwise? Because try as I might, I just cannot conceptualise of this being possibly true. I like arguing - in fact I adore it and I think there’s very little better entertainment. I like it when I hear someone successfully making a cheap remark about another, and particularly when it really hits the target. I like being rowdy and cheering a side. I like hearing rhetoric and drum-banging in politics or anywhere else. I like causes and the occasional mindless support of another - as one senator remarked during the Falklands conflict - “not because you’re right; just because you’re British!”
Can I REALLY be alone in this? When I look about the streets, I don’t see a people softly tut-tutting about how PMQs is childish or how one politician is being too confrontational or opportunistic. In fact a well-timed bitchy remark lasts much longer in the public mind than years of well-intentioned co-operation.
People, especially this Anglo-Saxon electorate of ours (culturally, not racially, before anyone jumps on that with any PC nonsense!) LIKE to see fights. They do NOT like to see hours of considered deliberation over policy. I demand that a stand be taken - for partisanship and cheap shots!
33. It has been well and truly lost, guaranteed that it will have been burned and the ash buried.
167. Peeple say they don’t like confrontational politics either because they think that’s the ‘nice’ answer they should be giving or as a proxy way of saying they don’t like politicians.
164. Well said Sir! Tedious consent is the mark of dictatorships.
Loyal but angry opposition is the lifeblood of our politics: and we have been democratic for longer than most, so it obviously works.
That’s why Brown’s constant ducking of PMQs - and elections - is so crap and revealing. Just get up there and argue your case like a man, you one eyed Scottish etc.
The other element that needs to be considered are the relative standings of the parties going into the 2004 Euros.
The average in the ICM polls in the 2004 months before the vote was = C 34, LAB 37, LD 22.
The average in the 2 ICM polls this year are =
C 42, LAB 30, LD 19
The changes are, Conservatives up almost a quarter, Lab down a fifth and LDs down by 1 in 7. Labour are therefore heading for a double whammy of lower support and the postal vote factor.
Overall in the UK the LDs are also heading for fewer MEPs.
160 - Following the article in the Guardian (linked at 36), it appears that far from being one frontbencher being loose-lipped, this is consciously being leaked. While this piece borrows from the Guardian piece, it has new information also.
What is being described is a neutrality that is friendly towards Labour, as friendly as possible in the circumstances.
I regard the strategy as unwise and talking about the strategy as especially unwise.
162.”Five more years of Brown.”
Yep, the opposing scenario’s that the voters could ponder are extremely negative for the Libdems right now. And do they really want the media to be focussing on this with all that evidence of how they dealt with the issue in Scotland over the last 10 years in the devolved Parliament? In fact, do they realise just how damaging this might be for them North of the Border where they have plenty of form?
” 124. There are certainly parts of the country where the Lib Dems are indeed detested by both local Tories and Labour people to a remarkable extent. ”
Derby City?
160. LOL! What a sad bunch the Lib-Dems are. Alawys sitting around waiting for a hung parliament to show up. And of of course, they hardly ever do. The Lib-Dems are the eternal bridesmaids of British politics.
Instead of running through carious scenarios for if a hung parlament shows up, wouldn’t they be better concerntrating on coming with effects scenarios for handing on to as many seats as they can at the election?
169 antifrank - I find it very hard to believe that Clegg, Huhne and Cable could possibly be so stupid as to allow the line ‘A vote for the LibDems is a vote for Gordon Brown’ to gain any traction.
Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that they are indeed being that stupid.
176. It seems they just can’t help themselves.
Well said Anatole! Gets my pip every time someone in the audience of QT goes on about us all working together instead making cheap shots or being bitchy. God, could you imagine it, the activists have got to have some fire in their belly to keep them warm when they go out leafleting or canvassing.
171. This being the reason http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4FtPWTTOOk
Runnymede you are a bit ahead of yourself today, your post was no 174 on my screen
173 Yup. There is only one sure way to prevent PM Brown until 2015.
Vote Conservative.
Which is why (to use up my self-imposed monthly ration) at the next General Election, the LibDems will gain just 13% of the votes.
173.This is just the kind of misguided defensive strategy that will undermine the incumbency factor in their seats. When a government is unpopular, you don’t give the voters a reason to vote for the main opposition instead of you.
176 God that you tube clip is AWFUL> No wonder the LD’s are so “poplular”
Bl**dy Guardian- Total Bull*** article. Nothing like this is being discussed at any level.
Meanwhile, please can we make sure that Martin Day is NOT allowed at the Sunny D again- he needs to be restrained when the e-numbers hit his bloodstream.
To complete a jolly morning I find myself agreeing with SeanT for a change…
Obviously need to take a break…
164. Quite right, IMO.
Most entertaining sort of argument - flat statement, followed by a flat contradiction, followed by personal abuse.
Much more fun than all this reasoned, persuasive discussion - which never works anyway. When was the last time you heard anyone say - “Yes, you are quite right and I was totally wrong in what I have believed for years”?
Nope, what happens is the one on the defensive goes googling for more evidence to refute the facts offered. And if none can be found does their damnedest to confuse the issue in order to claim a few unjustified points.
But you would get Cameron and those nasty Tories he has gagged until after the election.
173 - On today’s evidence, yes they are being that stupid. It’s a stupid subject for them to engage with publicly and a vote-decimator for them.
In any case, the likelihood of it mattering is rather remote: Both the Tories and Labour need to be in the 260 - 310 seats range before the Lib Dems’ role becomes highly influential. The chances of such a well-hung Parliament are really rather small. If either the Tories or Labour score more than 310, I can’t see how in practice they can be prevented from forming a minority Government, regardless of what the Lib Dems do. Any rival coalition would be too unstable to survive.
I actually have time to post, this time;
REPOST
160.
LOL! What a sad bunch the Lib-Dems are. Always sitting around waiting for a hung parliament to show up. And of course, they hardly ever do. The Lib-Dems are the eternal bridesmaids of British politics.
Instead of running through various scenarios for if a hung parlament shows up, wouldn’t they be better concentrating on coming up with effective scenarios for holding on to as many seats as they can at the election?
94. It’s nice to see the SNP trying to make use of the polling subsamples, as I have asked for on several occasions.
Unfortunately, they go and spoil it by taking naive monthly averages. This is an ideal task for the Kalman filter!
I doubt Labour really are as low as 31% in Scotland…
186 have they had a swingback Rod?
172. Far from being their glorious opportunity, a hung parliament is in fact the Lib Dems worst nightmare.
A large part of their success rests on them holding three generally mutually incomparitble positions:
- Anti-Labour in Labour-held or -challenged seats
- Anti-Tory in Tory-held or -challenged seats
- Anti-negative politics at a national level.
Having to choose between Labour and the Tories would scupper at least one of the first two positions and tar them with the stain of legislation if they ever did manage to get into coalition (or something approximating to it). Their support for Labour in the ’70s and in Scotland more recently has hardly done their support any favours.
In addition, they would face a second dilemma:
- Support the Tories and annoy many of their activists, members and voters in otherwise Tory seats (which make up the bulk of their current representation)
- Prop up an unpopular tired Labour administration that’s lost a majority of 170+ over two parliaments and will almost certainly have fewer votes than the Conservatives, and especially in those areas in which most of the Westminster legislation applies.
Maintaining their current coalition requires that they never have to make the Big Choice - unless they can get something so big in return (PR) that the damage is overcome. A hung parliament would force them into maknig that choice.
178. Indeed. Well, I don’t think the Libs will poll just 13%, but I do think in a “time for a change” election, where there will be massive desire for a change of government, the Lib-Dems are silly to flag up the possibility of a hung parliament.
People will want to be sure they get rid of Labour, they won’t vote Lib-Dem if it means a hung parliament and the possibility of Labour/Brown hanging on.
Re. the Lib Dems it would seem that the CC elections in the SW could prove a very interesting test of their likely GE losses. There are complicating factors - turnout, who controls the council etc. but potentially this is still the best indicator we may get.,..
Even where a rape allegation is not malicious, it will often be the case that what is complained of is not, legally, rape. It may be some other form of sexual assault; or it may be a case of a man getting a woman drunk, and having sex with her which she would never have consented to had she remained sober.
And it’s not unknown for a woman to be in a relationship with the man who’s accused of raping her, and deciding not to press charges for that reason.
173 184
The LibDems being stupid?
Why is anyone surprised? The Party is full of internal inconsistencies ( like other parties), chooses the wrong leader (like other parties) and does not throw him out (like one other party).
Given the above, ANY coalition is going to exaggerate the inconsistencies.. and make things worse.
If I were a LibDem Leader, I’d take a pragmatic view, refuse to discuss it and make my mind up after a General Election.
That would, in my view, be the most sensible option and I would also stamp down hard on any discussion in the media..”too early, voters decide, who knows..”.
Instead we get this rubbish which only goes to show what a naive and weak leader Clegg appears to be (he may not be of course, but that is the perception)
189. If there is a hung parliament, it can only come about by a significant fall in support for the Tories from their current polling level.
Not sure if this has been posted: study says unemployment to continue to rise to 3.2 million into the second half of next year. So unemployment continuing to increase right through the next GE campaign, whenever that is. Toxic to Labour, whose USP was painting the Tories as the party of 1 in 10 unemployed:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7931289.stm
Ultimately I fear we will move to more postal voting and other systems in the future. The ballot box has served us well and has few drawbacks, but the corrupt will find a way to get rid of it. I predict in the near future there will be no secret ballot, voting by dodgy computer systems (who’s in charge?) or post - with plenty of shenanigans involved in the latter. On the secret ballot abolition, I suspect this has been a long term aim for Labour, so angry did they get in the 80’s with people saying one thing publicly and doing another in the privacy of the polling booth.
O/T. The markets, having had time to digest the news on both Lloyds and QE have sterling down against every currency on the Beeb’s market tracker except the Malaysian Ringgit.
James Forsyth at the Coffee House Blog - Will Darling bite?
“In her column today, Jackie Ashley asks why Brown is letting his henchmen savage two of his friends, Darling and Harriet Harman. She, and all the more dammingly given her support for Brown, comes up with a condemnation of Brown’s whole approach to politics:
“The root problem seems to be that Brown sees politics as being about defining your enemies, then defining yourself against them, and then attacking. It’s constant positioning.”
One wonders what a liberated Darling would say about Brown’s approach to politics and his record as Chancellor.”
Talk about stating the bleedin obvious! That has been Gordon Brown’s modus operandi towards colleagues within the party and the opposition for years. Most high profile example has got to be the way he behaved to Tony Blair! Mike Smithson and and one or two other journalists have been banging on about how this approach to the Conservatives have been damaging Brown’s premiership for a while now.
Here is Jackie Ashley’s article - Why pick fights with friends? Brown must ditch his pride
“Lord Mandelson may insist, smooth as ever, that the government is one strong, happy team, working away together, faces turned towards a brighter future. But the stories of private dismay just keep coming. And the root of the problem may be not the economic crisis but the prime minister’s style of doing politics.
There are two key people who, under endless pressure from journalists, keep refusing to diss Brown, despite provocation. They are Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, and the chancellor, Alistair Darling. Both were long-term Brown supporters and counted him as a genuine friend. Both are getting a horrible kicking in the papers, with endless hostile briefings, said to be coming from those around the prime minister. Why? What’s that supposed to achieve?”
This article is yet another sign of how this government has moved from being simple dysfunctional, to now breaking down completely.
195. Hopefully the Tories, as part of the radical constitutional reform that this country needs to fix Labours terrible constituational vandalism, will enshrine the right of voters to be able to vote in secret and at a ballot station is they wish. This is needed along with some from of PR and fewer MP’s - Particularly Labour ones.
185. Provided the LibDems get about 19% or more, about 50% of hung parliament scenarios show them being the Kingmakers, able to form a majority with either large party.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2006/12/page/6/
By all known measures:
Tory lead required
Tory swing required
Tory seat gains required
Tory by-election swing thus far
swingback from current position
a hung parliament is very likely…
193. No, just 1 or 2%, which is probably within the adjusted margin of error…
199: Lots of if’s and butts there I think. Not least Lib Dems getting 19%. Then of course there is a possibility of the party being split. I would have thought, especially in the SW there would be much appeitate for LibDems propping up a Brown government.
200. Is that the ’seasonally adjusted’ or the ‘Crosby adjusted’?
There will be NO hung Parliament after the next GE. The surest pleasures of the election night broadcast will ‘Crosby moment’ after ‘Crosby moment’ as the Conservatives, first, achieve a majority then increase it by seat after seat until the final results are in.
There are no known measures, only Crosby-invented ones.
Farmy Farm at Risk ?
The PM is now risking making the same mistake on a much grander scale. He is, in the phrase now popular in Government, is “betting the farm” on the London Summit on April 2.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_kirkup/blog/2009/03/09/the_perils_of_gordon_browns_great_expectations
188.David, for the Libdems to keep progressing electorally, they have to do the opposite of what they are planning right now. They need to keep their equidistant from both parties, and that means ripping up any grand plans of coalitions with either the Tories or Labour. They should have bluntly and categorically stated that they would not entertain any deals, but would in stead vote on an issue by issue basis in the event of a hung parliament, end off.
Shut down the debate with the media, and concentrate on getting yourself into a more powerful position by gaining seats, not playing fantasy politics or doing deals before the voters have made their decision.
And yes, that means kicking PR into the long grass for now, its one of those membership rather than vote winners. Concentrate on the bread and butter issues of the day contained in your manifesto, and makes yourself a relevant but independent voice within a Parliament in your own right, and not as someone’s little partner.
203. How many farms are there to risk? He risked on on the visit to Obama, earlier we had them at Bail-out 1, Bail-out 2, Autumn Statement etc, etc.
After last summer’s break Clegg came up with his strategy of targeting Labour seats. Now we have a strategy of equal distance. So they are rolling back a bit from their strategy for how resources are to be deployed in less than a year.
Frankly Clegg looks all over the place and I am expecting them to carry on fighting the last GE rather than the next. LDs to get badly squeezed at the GE, possibly below 17%?
Is there a market on Betfair for how many LD MEPs?
205 “How many farms are there to risk?”
How many properties do most senior Labour people have?
206 “LDs to get badly squeezed at the GE, possibly below 17%?”
I’m saying nothing…
198. Yes, it would be good to enshrine the privacy of the ballot box in law forthose who choose it. However I’m also concerned about those who choose to vote in different ways. Ideally everyone should be voting in private (though there may need to be special circuumstances for some). I can understand why some in the labour party don’t like private voting, it’s not how trae unions generally like to do things.
201. Glad you’re paying attention!
As you can see from the graph I have covered pretty much the entire spectrum of likely results. What happens after such a result was outside the scope of the discussion…
O/T - Sterling dropping like the proverbial stone against the dollar, and appears to have set a new 52 week low. Also falling against the euro, but by rather less. Is this related to QE announcement last week, or Lloyds rescue or something in the US. If Ken is there…..
Ouch !!!
Company in line to take over Royal Mail’s privatisation work is at the centre of a financial scam
TNT has been forced to repay tens of millions of pounds of unpaid tax in an alleged financial scam.
Employees of the company falsified and backdated documents, according to telegraph.co.uk
Details of the scam come at a time when the UK government is planning to sell 30% of Royal Mail. It is thought much of this work will go to TNT.
TNT has reportedly conceded that an internal investigation took place, and this in turn led to the discovery that ‘illegal acts have taken place
211 - For Lloyds rescue, read robbery!
211 £1 = $1.38
SeanT will be chuffed….
212. Democracy is a bourgeois trick meant to divert the working class from acting in their real interests, which are of course only understood by their ‘leaders’….
Afternoon all,
I don’t think the lack of all postal regional votes will be a significant consideration at the Euro elections. If you look at the regions that were involved in the pilot, 3 of them could be considered as strong Labour areas. Unsurprisingly these feature among the regions where their vote best stood up.
More important I think is Labour’s performance compared with the change in overall turnout. Overall turnout increased 14% between 1999 and 2004 (some 6.5 million) exceeding the previous high turnout of 1994 by some 2%. The 1999 turnout stands out as an anomaly in Euro elections going back to 1979 (can anyone remember why?).
However, if you examine the actual vote turnout for each party you can see that whereas both Conservative and Libdem vote figures in 2004 returned to something similar to what they received in 1994, Labour’s didn’t. It hardly improved from it’s 1999 turnout.
If one looks at the comparative performance of each of the significant parties between the two elections it amplifies Labour’s failure to tap into the 65% growth in turnout in 2004 (net % change of vote 2004 / net actual vote change 2004)
BNP +765% (c 700k)
UKIP +282% (c 2 million)
Libdems +94% (c 1.1 million)
Greens +64% (c 400k)
Conservatives +57% (c 1.5 million)
SNP +25% (c 45k)
Lab +4% (c 140k)
PC -40% (c -110k)
Given the changes in polls since and the possibility that turnout could increase again (Lisbon Treaty not fully resolved, the recession, BJ4BW and immigration, and the election being the commencement of General Election year) it does not bode well for Labour.
199 Rod - Surely the most telling thing about your interesting article from 2006 is this note by Mike: “The current price on the hung parliament option is 1.38/1 - so if Rod’s approach is right this makes a great value bet.”
Things have moved on, and in retrospect that’s not looking such a good bet - for the very good reason that the graph needs to be shifted upwards from the 0-11% Tory lead of 2006 to the leads we are seeing today. Since the start of the year, the range has been 7% and 20%, with most polls showing leads of between 10% and 16%.
197 yesterday in the Independent’s report on Peter Hain’s insurrection, sorry his advice, they reported that Gordon Brown had spent 10 minutes at strategy session telling off the Cabinet for leaking & briefings and demanding discipline.
This was of course then leaked to the press….
Wondered myself how much it was real and how much Macavity Brown trying to distance himself from the anti Harman & Darling briefings, saying “it’s not me, stop it” publicly while his agents stirred things up.
217 .. the range has been between 7% and 20%…
211. John O. My bet would be that QE having forced rates down is now hitting the currency. Lloyds wont have helped - as all the newspapers analysis shows that the bailout is bad for taxpayers (thus more issuance).
This is interesting Mike.
As many other posters have mentioned, the collapse of UKIP means Labour should not do worse then before. Last time it scored extremely badly, after taking into account the astonishing UKIP performance. If Labour does do worse then before we are probably in for Labour meltdown at the GE.
I think the odds are strong that Gordon Brown will be replaced this summer. He is too much of an electoral liability. Every time they give Brown publicity the Labour vote goes down. Brown seems to be the extreme opposite of Cameron. Every time Cameron gets publicity the Conservative vote goes up. This is why Labour will replace Brown this summer.
Peter Hain’s attack on Brown is interesting. He’s never talked about as a future labour leader, but he’s been cleared of any wrongdoing in the DL race. He has radical intincts and a real history of left-wing politics with the anti-apartheid movement. I’m not convinced Cruddas will stand and I’m not sure the left will fall behind Harman either, who, don’t forget, was elected as the best compliment to Gordon. Running for the leadership will be quite different. Hain is a more credible leader and I can envisage him taking the fight to Cameron. He must be worth a bet at long odds.
223. Just to finish, Peter Hain is at 66/1 with ladbrokes. I don’t see him listed elsewhere. He can’t lose in Neath and being outside government atm he can effectively start campaigning straight away.
217. Of course, the “in running” odds have changed, and they will mostly-likely change again.
But there is a good chance the Tory lead will fall back into the “chasm” that produces a hung parliament.
Hain has been cleared by who? I haven’t cleared him! And I don’t trust those that have. Do you?
Hain strikes many as a devious and sinister politician. Almost as sinister as Brown. Although Hain has a bit more charisma than the wooden Brown.
224. Frank Booth. Yes, if a leadership race occurs after the election, Cruddas may not have a seat. Harman isnt the natural left wing candidate. Hain was a cabinet minister and had a fair amount of name recognition. What are the odds on Hain?
What happens if Populus doesn’t show a Brown bounce even when Cameron has completely withdrawn from public life over that period?
For obvious reasons I am really interested in what the Lib Dem strategy is.
I am politically literate, obsessively up-to-date on politics in the UK and read anything and everything I can get my hands on about them, and I haven’t really got a clue what they are standing for any more.
All the really easy to digest stuff (a penny on your tax to pay for education, 50p top rate for people earning £100k, abolish council tax, anti Iraq war) seems to be off the menu and we are left with… well, what?
The *only* media spokesman they have left (dear Vince) knows too much detail for his own good and though he makes a brilliant soothsayer on the banking crisis he doesn’t manage to send out simple single strand messages about what the Lib Dems stand for/would do in the way that Simon Hughes, Charles Kennedy, Paddy Ashdown and even Ming Campbell did.
So if I don’t understand Lib Dem policy and direction what chance is there for the disinterested floating voters out there?
That is why 17% is about the best they can hope for come the next GE.
226 Currently, the next election is an on/off switch. “Gordon Brown: Five More Years - Yes or No?” That result will be a decisive “No”. If the “chasm” looks like not being bridged, additional votes will crawl out the woodwork to get the Tories to the other side. Former sit-on-their-hands Tories, disquieted LibDems, unconvinced Labour folks.
Of course, Labour still has time to change the question - by getting rid of Brown. OR by Brown stepping down, with Mandy/Campbell milking sympathy for Gordon’s “health-related” departure for all it is worth…
222 - Ken, Ta. Much appreciated. Pity that your line-by-line refutation yesterday of Brown’s ludicrous ‘It wannae me’ outburst on the plane back, was swallowed by the horrid spam thinggy. I was hoping you would do one, and was looking forward to it! Any chance of another go??!
Will L
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5295334.ece
223. UKIP’s collapse as a campaigning organisation will harm them but not as much as for the general election.
The European election is their moment; it’s the one time they’re relevant. They have a well-publicised and distinctive message that they’ve largely made their own and this is the election where people who like that message are much more likely to make that protest against EU membership. There is no government at stake and people feel freer to use their vote in less orthodox ways.
UKIP could probably win 8% without doing any work at all.
#211 Dollar gaining in strength:
The USD is climbing across the board Monday as risk aversion builds and the greenback gains on its safe haven status. USD/JPY has pushed back above 99.00 for a 100 sen gain on the day, while GBP/USD is down over 2 cents to 1.39. EUR/USD just printed the day’s low of 1.2574 from 1.2728 while the commodity currencies - AUD, NZD and CAD - are all at the day’s lows against the USD.
Clegg:
As Pretty Woman would say:
“Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.”
Sky News reported that Brit Insurance is leaving the country for tax reasons. Super.
European Elections, turnout etc. - it is quite difficult to predict what will happen.
Much of the change from 1999 to 2004 was because the 1999 European election was a stand alone election six weeks after the locals but on the same day as the locals in 2004, as well as the postal voting in some regions.
This year it will be a very different pattern. Many of the unitaries and mets, as well as London, which had elections in 2004 will not have this year. Many County areas that did not have elections in 2004 will have this year. How will County turnout affect the result? We don’t really know.
The other big factor in 2004 was UKIP. They had a lot of momentum compared to 1999. How will they do this time and how will that affect the other parties? Again, we don’t really know.
Here in the South East how will the lack of local elections in Brighton and other urban areas affect the Green seat? Again, we don’t know yet.
On the Lib Dems - there was little sign over the weekend of discussions about hung parliaments dominating. There was jubilation amongst the activists over the decision to stick with the policy on tuition fees, even more so amongst the welsh. There was a general veiw that the combination of education policies would play very well for the party and help win support across the board.
The Electoral Commission said Hain was guilty, but the government controlled CPS refused to prosecute Hain. Hain was not cleared at all. The government refused to prosecute one of it’s own former members! Are you surprised?
‘Hain is cleared’ is a highly misleading claim. I personally believe Hain is as guilty as hell, as does the Electoral Commission. He was caught red-handed.
235. Safe haven flows are once again dominating everything, it seems. From 2004-2007 US residents bought US$800 billion of foreign securities. They have repatriated around a quarter of those in the last six months - could still be a fair way to go.
‘caught red handed’ - what with?
I’ll fully accept that I’m a lazy person who believes what he reads in the Times, but what is Hain guilty of?
Hain is another one to add to the list of Labour criminal wrong-doing. Hopefully a future government will replace corrupt CPS beaurocrats and bring these evil Labour ministers to trial.
Obama will be worst than W. Bush
That’s my prediction.
Realpolitik begins already to replace the humanistic rhetoric.
The Americans were just too tired of being spit at the face by all the losers of the planet, from the extreme nothing to the extreme idiot, while they, the Americans, are de facto the fortress of the free world (and they know it).
I look forward to the departure of U.S. troops Iraq, for it will be entertaining: there will be a large civil war between rival religious factions, with interesting twists and turns between Iran and Pakistan.
In comparison, Gaza City will look like a punk dancing club in the morning. Quiet and desolated.
And when the Western forces will leave Afghanistan, the Talibans will return to power in less than a month. And it will be sickening to look at all those who voted for Obama (or wanted to) crying hot hypocritical tears on the plight of stoned women, of women being executed publicly in stadiums fully packed by bearded idiots.
31 (MTF) - ouch, but spot on.
The Electoral Commission has found Hain guilty of criminal misconduct in having accepted under-the-table undeclared donations from donors during his leadership campaign which he failed to report them within the 30 day deadline, breaking the law.
The CPS has simply refused to prosecute Hain, and the Times article has made clear the CPS have offered no credible explanation for there refusal to prosecute. The law is clear, and Hain has broken it.
245. He didn’t declare on time. Hardly a hanging offence is it?
Remember Hain took over £100,000 which he never intended to declare until caught. There is acres of coverage on the subject. The Electoral Commission was right, the CPS wrong.
246, He didn’t declare it at all, until caught. Then belatedly declared it, then as is usual with NuLab blamed someone else. No it is not a hanging offence, however, it is an offence that would disbar an honourable man from further high office. So that means Hain will be back in high office soon.
If politicians take money, which they hide from the public, the probability is that they are trying to hide favours they have offered to do in return.
Remember the famous example of Tony Blair taking £1,000,000 from Bernie Eccelstone, and then reversing the ban on tabacco advertising. Corruption lies at the heart of this Labour government. The sooner it is buried the better.
243- Effectivement, it is worth notihng that in FDR’s first eight weeks in office, the Dow rose 48%, while it has declined by over 20% during the first seven weeks of the Obama presidency. Even Newsweek, historically one of Obama’s most sycophantic defenders, is starting to talk about how Obama’s flaws are undermining the economy:
“Uncertainty (too much) and confidence (too little) define this crisis. Investors have surely noted the gap between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.
Barack Obama is a great pretender. He constantly says he’s doing things that he isn’t, and he relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made “responsibility” a personal theme, and the budget’s cover line is “A New Era of Responsibility.” He claims that the budget begins “making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline.” It doesn’t.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/188261
250- “worth noting”…
Nuclear in the News, today:
1) Israeli Major-General: Iran past ‘nuclear threshold’… :
Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.
– OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin
***
2) “N. Korea warns intercepting ’satellite’ will prompt counterstrike+”
“We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means.”
–Spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army
248. ‘honourable’ and ‘Peter Hain’ in the same post…hmmmm
252, why would anybody bother to intercept a north korean satellite. The likelihood is that it will be of exceptionally low technology akin to the sputnik, as was the Iranian Omid satellite. if anything they are a bit of an embarrassment as it shows how far behind they really are.
246 The CPS said that PPERA demanded evidence directly connecting Hain with the cash and this couldn’t be proved. The HoC committee found him at fault but didn’t impose any real punishment.
Another GOAT goes seriously off-message.
Mark, duck….now! Too late.
http://tinyurl.com/bl685v
Remember this :
‘Labour’s General Secretary quits over ’secret’ £400,000 donations to party’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-496388/Labours-General-Secretary-quits-secret-400-000-donations-party.html
And if you doubt Hain is guilty read this (also an article from the Times)
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3168511.ece
255 You don’t read guido do you? Can’t be bothered with laying out the chain of evidence for you. You will not be convinced however strong the evidence is, so why bother coming on here making spurious ill founded arguments when it is obvious there is no potential for you to change your mind?
256 - Harrumph. Try this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/4961897/Gordon-Brown-should-say-sorry-over-economy-minister-says.html
254 It’s not the payload - it’s the launch vehicle that’s the problem. Swap the satellite for a nuclear warhead, and you have an ICBM.
250 — In fairness, one might look at this point of view:
Nate Silver, a Democrat, wrote this recently: on “the stock market’s perceptions about near-to-medium term economic growth”
. If we could look at the relative performance of cyclical stocks versus more durable ones, we could get a better sense for where the stock market thinks we’re headed in the business cycle.
…sector SPDRs (’spiders’)… are essentially just mini-stock indices consisting only of certain types of companies. Two SPDRs are particularly useful for our purposes. One, which goes by the exchange symbol XLP, is a spider of companies that produce consumer staples, and includes stocks such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Campbell’s Soup. The other, XLY, is an index of consumer discretionary products, and includes things like Home Depot, Carnival Cruises, and Ford Motor Company. … The number I’m going to show you is simply the ratio of XLY to XLP — that is, the ratio of the share prices of consumer discretionaries to the consumer staples. I will multiply the result by 100 for ease of reading, and call it the CEI, for Cyclical Expectations Index. Higher CEI’s indicate positive expectations about the near-term performance of the economy, whereas lower CEI’s indicate bearish, recessionary sentiment. It appears that when the CEI dips below 100, this indicates recessionary expectations. The CEI fell below 100 on October 11, 2000, about five months in advance of the recession that began in March 2001 (it also briefly dipped below the 100 mark following the events of September 11th). The CEI also began falling significantly as of about August 2007, losing 25 percent of its value in the second half of that year in advance of the current recession, which dates back to December 2007 .
…On inauguration day, the CEI stood at 85.5; yesterday, it closed at 85.1……. And since Election Day, the CEI is down about 10 percent ….
—> There is also some evidence that the CEI responded favorably to the stimulus package. On November 24, 2008, the CEI jumped by 6.5 percent, its largest single-day increase since April, 18, 2001, when Alan Greenspan cut interest rates by a larger-than-expected margin. What happened that day? Obama made it clear that he wanted an “aggressive” stimulus package. … …The CEI is down about 10 percent since Election Day, is up about 10 percent since the last day of trading before Obama announced his “aggressive” stimulus, and is essentially unchanged since Obama’s inauguration.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/what-stock-market-really-thinks-about.html
[254] - I think the point is that if the North Koreans can launch a satellite, they have the technology to launch a nuclear bomb to anywhere on the planet, though probably not with a high degree of accuracy [how much accuracy do you need with a nuclear bomb headed towards New York or Tokyo?]
The Americans and Japanese would love to be able to show that they could knock such a payload out of the sky, though I have my doubts whether they are able to.
Correction you have an unguided ICBM, the seperation and re-entry are the important things for ICBM neither of which will be proved by this satellite.
Police have lost a memory stick containing details of hundreds of investigations. Why isn’t encryption on by default on all government hard drives and operating systems?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7932228.stm
261- I saw when you posted that before, Philippe. I only wish that the GOP had had such a gifted analyst back in 1932 who could have found some insect upon which to base an analysis showing that the economy was really doing great.
I think Silver really is a one-man band at this point. Even Obama’s team doesn’t try to pretend that things are improving, or have even been stabilized.
262. was typing at the same time as you. The Americans have shown they can hit an incoming ICBM on numerous occasion previously. They even brought down one of their own satellites (not the same thing I know) using a modified standard missile. They do have and have proved the technology.
The CPS claiming there was no evidence against Hain was bizzare as even Guido could find some.
http://www.order-order.com/search/label/Peter%20Hain
But the CPS seems to be reluctant to follow up on sleazy Labour politicians, doesn’t it?
What happened to the Abrahams enquiry, or that into the Harman contributions? Jack Straw and the Verminagate four? The Vermingate four themselves? Cash for Coronets?
The investigations by Yates and colleagues cost millions but the result is……..?
263 Getting the payload into a successful orbit is half the battle.
267 CPS HQ = “Little Harare”
264. Especially after the HMRC fiasco you think they would have learnt their lesson. Oh silly me! This is the public sector of course! I really should know better saying as I work in it!
getting a payload into orbit is about a tenth of the battle. The hard part is seperation, guidance and re-entry non of which is being tested with this satellite. If the Americans were going to intercept it would be at a much later stage of development in ICBM programme.
The CPS decision not to prosecute Hain was very oddly based.Although the Electoral Commission had found that he had unlawfully failed to register the £100,00.00 donations on time (and until after they had become public knowledge),as he said that he had delegated registration to a member of his staff,the CPS said the intent could not be proved.
The logic is bizarre.It was Hain’s legal responsibility to register.The excuse goes to mitigation not the question of guilt or otherwise.
267 - Hain’s connection with the dodgy non-thinking think tank, the one has no permanent office of its own, no staff, and never published any reports, was the thing I can’t believe hasn’t been properly investigated!
From an outsiders perspective it didn’t half look like a conduit for shifting money, but few questions were asked about this opaque arrangement.
@268:
It’s the key to a successful marriage.
265 —
Silver’s not saying that “the economy is really going great”, only, that basically, the market did not really change its perception of Obama since It’s flesh was infused by the Spirit of the Presidency. But why am I writing this? — since you surely know it, — I donno…
Messare reçu : I’ll try not to repost previous post from now on!
—> Meanwhile… Buffet is sweating, commenting on CNBC’s blog:
“6:05a: Economy is “close to the worst case.” Can’t imagine it being much worse … The economy “has fallen off a cliff.”
6:06a: Buffett says consumers are “scared and confused.” He hasn’t seen consumers, or Americans in general, as fearful as now. American people “feel they don’t know what’s going on” so they’ve pulled back.
…
6:32a: Buffett says credit conditions are tightening again, but aren’t as bad as they were last September.”
Via http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/
***
Nuclear News were from http://drudgereport.com/ , of course!
@266:
Are you sure that’s true? I might have to hit you with a [citation needed].
BOOF!
252. Personally I think the North Koreans are worried that this missile will, like their last long range missile test, end in a big splash. So they’re trying to get their excuses in first and claim that the Americans shot it down.
31 - It does seem like the Currant Bun are at all out war with the government now. They are running a piece like this every single week, where they attempt to spray gun Labour failure not simply around the current banking crisis, but the whole platform that New Labour was elected over 10 years ago.
“But once Gordon started saying sorry, where would he stop?”
Benefit culture, immigration, gold, power generation, crime, education,
“That would be to confess Labour has misspent more than a decade in power.”
Jacqui Smith accused of gimmicks and spin over domestic violence proposals:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4961828/Jacqui-Smith-confronted-over-domestic-violence.html
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3230325.html?menu=
oddly though the BBC report is headed “Tougher powers to target abusers” and leads with the spin before reporting the attack from Refuge about halfway down, without prominence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7932080.stm
277 The Watcher
Yeah but won’t their posturing then mean they have to invade S.Korea, Japan and the US?
Bit of a tall order…
276 your wish is my command
http://www.gizmag.com/pac-3-anti-ballistic-missile-successfully-tested/10038/
will look up a better one later if have time, this is a first google
275- I was indeed exaggerating a bit for effect! But I’m not really sure what Silver is trying to prove given that all credible analysts at this point are indicating that both the economy and markets have worsened, not improved, since Obama’s election and since the inauguration. If he wants us to believe that the stock market’s opinion of where we’re headed is not worsening, I have to say that he is in fact following an old motto of shifty lawyers: ‘If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullsh*t instead.’
Balls just ticked off by the speaker for constantly referring to the Conservatives in his answers.
The idea this man could lead a political party is surely ludicrous.
279, impossible. The Refuge person claimed a database wouldn’t stop crime. She’s clearly mad. And shall be added to the databases for the Mad and the Disloyal immediately!
283, *coughs politely*
*points to the incumbent*
285. Very fair point
Standard missile v satellite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-3
280. Can’t be discounted given Kim’s erratic behaviour but I think it’s unlikely. If NK did attack the South with spurious provocation then there is no way that China would come to their aid like they did in 1951. Any war would be very bloody and destructive but in the end the US and SK would prevail.
279 - I can’t even see it on the BBC website anymore. No sign of it on the main page or main bit of Politics section. BBC burying stuff, surely not!
Looks like Mike has given Labour an excuse (yep they’ve started) for doing worse in these coming Euro elections:
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/03/tom-watson-tries-to-reduce-june-poll.html
For obvious reasons I am really interested in what the Conservative strategy is.
I am politically literate, obsessively up-to-date on politics in the UK and read anything and everything I can get my hands on about them, and I haven’t really got a clue what they are standing for any more.
All the really easy to digest stuff higher taxes, cut services, cut pensions for public employees don’t seem very popular….
with apologies to Marcus [230].
Looks like Frum will have to become something like an American Morus, running campaigns (mediatic and political) outside the main Parties…
Hot Air and The Corner called him “nasty”, “arrogant” and too willing to flirt with Lefties…
And Rush was even more virulent…
Following the earlier observations in the Guardian and by Sam Coates, I have just caught up with the FT’s take on the Lib Dems’ strategy in a hung Parliament:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e9710fc2-0c37-11de-b87d-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
The BBC has nibbled at the story too:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7932321.stm
Can anyone seriously doubt that all this is based on a briefing from some senior Lib Dems?
This from Toenails blog suggests that Clegg is a clot. Why refuse an invitation as talk across the divide is part of democratic politics? But to boast of it afterwards smacks of sixth form yah-boo politics.
“The Lib Dems are, we learn, “war gaming” to prepare for the “auction for power” they will stage in the after the next election. The negotiating team is to be Cable, Chris Huhne and - oh, I almost forgot - their leader Nick Clegg, who let it be known at his weekend conference that he had turned down a dinner invitation chez Cameron.”
This ploy by Clegg looks ever more clumsy and sad. The Toenails analysis, if true, is good for some targets but not at all good for many southern incumbents of the ‘third party’.
291.”All the really easy to digest stuff higher taxes, cut services, cut pensions for public employees don’t seem very popular….”
Have fun boys and girls, ciao.
Another Firm looks to relocate to cut tax bill
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5873450.ece
Any clue on why Labour do better with postal voting? There could be an honest reason?
What makes seanT so singular, hence quite interesting as both a character AND an author, I guess, is his astounding level of honesty.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article2968706.ece
267. Yes it’s very odd isn’t it? Assault, corruption, electoral irregularities all appear to be no longer criminal matters if Labour figures are involved. One wonders whether even offences like bank robbery would be properly pursued.
298, you missed off death by dangerous driving.
287 Blimey. You really don’t want to be the target for an Aegis cruiser!
@299 (Morris Dancer)
To be fair, Ahmed was convicted of dangerous driving for texting while driving. The texting was well before the crash, and it had no part in causing the death.
I think the sentence he received was more or less fair - comparable with the sentences for driving while drunk, but not with those for causing death by driving drunk.
267. Witan, the list of Lbaour corruption you describe is so overhwleming, I think we know why so many Labour members are resigning their memberships in disgust. The current Labour government has got to be the most corrupt in the last 150 years. Their cronies in the CPS have been colluding in their crimes.
The British people are the real victims in all of this - they have been treated with total contempt.
Is Chris A about? I was looking for the details of our confectionary based proposition on the performance of the G7 economies because I couldn’t remember what we agreed as a deadline, and discovered I’d deleted the relevant emails!
Rather depressingly, I fear that the global demand crisis and the horror that is the japanese economy has significantly tilted the odds in my direction. I’m willing to consider being bought out at a reasonable rate if Chris wishes to cry mercy!
wibbler, how do you know Ahmed’s texting didn’t cause his crash? Were you there?
Something that has not been commented on is the response to Jacqui Smith’s latest wizzo wheeze regarding battered women.
In a joint press conference, one of the representatives of the organisations that help battered women labelled the latest ‘register’ as a ‘gimmick’ and basically said ‘All we’ve heard is spin and we’ve had enough of it. We want action’. When Smith tried to interrupt she was politely told that the speaker ‘hadn’t finished’.
See the video on Skynews. I’m not sure if it is online yet. Smith is sitting there with a face like a slapped *rse. It is priceless truly priceless!
‘Smith is sitting there with a face like a slapped *rse’
Bit more comely than usual, then?
288 “in the end the US and SK would prevail”
But there might not be much of SK left. I am sure I have read that NK has 80,000 conventional artillery tubes pointed at Seoul. NK could flatten the place on the signal for one co-ordinated volley.
@303:
Have you two secretly cooked up a plan to replace the global economy with a new one based on yum yums and mini eggs?
305.Didn’t this whole fiasco start today with headline grabbing figures that Smith was trying to peddle?
And those looking for a bargain, look no further.
Perfect summer vacation for druids, in need of modernisation.
A rather big vintage clock for sale, and a castle North of the border which is great for any young family. Dizzy has the details.
test : credit
308. It would be a happier economy… No, we agreed that if the UK was worst performer on GDP growth, I’d send him chocolate, and if we weren’t he’d send me chocolate. We then had an extensive email discussion about how to measure this to see who was right (in which Chris was very reasonable, and I kept looking for ways i’d be tricked by stats) - it’s that agreement I’ve now lost!
305 Labour seems quite incapable of rolling out an initiative these days. Wasn’t the return of Mandy and Campbell supposed to have called time on Amateur Hour?
James Surowiecki : “credit-c@rd companies are trying to get rid of customers”
They’re shutting down accounts, shrinking credit lines, and, in some cases, actually paying customers to go away.
–>American Express recently offered some of its customers three hundred dollars if they would pay off their balance and close their account.
…According to Fitch Ratings, credit-c@rd chargeoffs—debts that companies determine they will not be able to collect—rose to almost 7.5 per cent in December, up forty per cent from a year earlier. And, as unemployment continues to rise, so, too, will the number of people who are unable to pay their bills.
…credit-c@rd companies have created a strange business…Their best customers aren’t those who dutifully pay off their balance every month; instead, they’re the ones who charge a lot and pay only a little every month, carrying a sizable balance and racking up interest charges and late fees.
…The lower the minimum payment the less people pay off each month and the longer they stay on the hook.
… Many c@rdholders don’t have enough money to pay off their balance in full, so when interest rates rise they aren’t able to just close their account and get a different card. Effectively, they’re captive customers. And since credit-c@rd companies, unlike most lenders, are allowed to change the terms of their lo@ns at any time, people who borrowed a big chunk of money at, say, nine per cent may now be paying seventeen per cent on the loan.
…the high price of credit-c@rd debt meant that billions of dollars in interest and late fees went to credit-c@rd companies instead of to more productive uses. Smaller credit lines and less borrowing make sense.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/03/16/090316ta_talk_surowiecki?printable=true
311 I bet Mark Senior is wishing he’d only bet me a big shiny chocolate coin!
Re 305: Here’s the link to the Sky story including video. Smith has now denied that the register is planned even though it has been in all the newspapers…….
http://tinyurl.com/d8pd4j
@304 (Lancelot)
No, I wasn’t there. But that was the judgement of the court, and the CPS, police, etc. if I recall correctly. If there has been a cover-up involving all those people then as a society we are screwed and our problems are far greater than winks and nods for Labour politicians.
I’m not enough of a conspiracy theorist, and so I’m happy to take the word of all these people, and believe that the texting occurred 2 or 3 minutes before the crash.
I can’t stand Labour right now, but I think it is a mistake to automatically assign the worst possible interpretation to events, and that unfounded criticisms end up being counterproductive.
272. We must remember that Peter Hain also attempted to defraud the Labour Party. The party insist that a percentage of any donations goes back into central coffers. Not only had Hain ‘forgotten’ to declare the donation, he ‘forgot’ to pay the monies due to the party.
Just timewasting on LabourList and read this from the article entitled: This is what separates Labour from the rest in Europe - and what makes me so proud
“They [evil Tories] failed to vote to make rape within marriage a criminal offence or to end so-called ‘crimes of honour’ or female genital mutilation.”
Call me an uninformed gnome-thief, but I was under the impression that rape within marriage is a criminal offence.
[305] - This article has some good criticisms of the gimmick policy to warn women of abusive men:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/09/domestic-violence-women
Another indication that this government long ago entered terminal decline
New thread - Are the LDs misreading the public mood?
If you read the CPS decision on Hain, it will make your blood boil.
Corrupt Stephen O’Doherty at the CPS says NO ONE had a duty to declare the donations. The CPS is utterly discredited. The Electoral Commission and the British people have been betrayed.
One of the first acts of a future government should be to reform the CPS. It seems the CPS is a club that harasses members of the public for petty offenses, while at the same time over-looking serious crimes carried out by government ministers.
The CPS is corrupt and should be abolished. Prosecutions should be devolved, and the government monopoly on prosecutions abolished. Only then will justice be restored to Britain.
‘We are born free, yet everywhere we are in chains’.
‘Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem’.
wibbler, the 2 or 3 minutes before the accident only covers the incontravertible evidence that a text was known to have been sent. There would be no way to know if a text was being composed, or other texts being read, after that. So - no evidence either way. All you have is the word of a member of the House of Lords. Who would be going to jail for years if he incriminated himself by admitting that he was distracted by fiddling with his phone.
So what was REALLY going on in the seconds before the crash - that led to the Lord driving his car into a parked vehicle? Insert personal theory here….
While I believe Gerry Adams and Mcguinness to be criminals you cannot call them traitors it not the right term as if they ‘believe’ whether accurately or inaccurately to be of a culture/people that were present before English/British imperialistic colonialisation of Ireland. I abhor any violence, especially as I have been bullied but it was always going to cause trouble planting hundreds of thousands of settlers in what was the most gaelic part of Ireland at one time and surplanting the residents. Hence how can you call people traitors in what is basically an english colony (in guise of the ‘UK’)
304
I detest Labour as much as the next sane man - and Ahmed is a scumbag for threatening a riot over the Dutch MP case.
But.
The case apears very clear. Ahmed hadn’t made or received a text for about 3 minutes when he hit the other vehicle. As such I think the only sensible conclusion that can be drawn is that it was not a contributory factor in the incident.
As to whether he should have been done for causing death by driving without due care and attention that is another matter but given that he collided with another car which had already clipped the crash barrier and span around, that he was not speeding and that the driver of the other car had been drinking I reckon anyone trying to prove that one would have been hard pressed.
We should not start trying to pin criminal stuff on people just because we don’t like them politically. We should leave that particular nasty trait to Labour who do it so well.
315. Good grief, a complete mess. The return of Campbell and Mandelson was always a mirage. Both of them are good at bullying the media, but now they aren’t the only game in town. Instead of pushing and squeezing the journo’s, who were then stuck between reporting the labour line or nothing, all they do now is push them into publishing negative stories about the government. Mandelson and Campbell are now reduced to making blogs or just spouting off garbage (like over the Damien Green affair), neither of which have any effect.
I am not taking sides, the irish have been imperialistic themselves in Britain. LOL.
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Sarah
http://www.lyricsdigs.com