Take part in the PB user survey
March 11th, 2010
All views are welcome especially from lurkers
In conjunction with Woodnewton Associates we are carrying out a survey of PB users to find out more about ourselves, how we might improve the site and also to get a feel for the political make-up of the PB community.
This is the first time we’ve ever attempted anything like this and the more people that take part the better it will be.
If you’ve got five minutes then please fill in the survey by clicking here.
Mike Smithson
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Mike S - as you are around what are your thoughts on the issue of people not registered to vote?
The Electoral Commission says over 50% of 18 to 24 year-olds are not registered. Surely pollsters should be factoring this in? Do you think you should raise this issue with pollsters?
You do not need to be Einstein to work out that Labour supporters are more likely to not be registered than Conservative supporters.
re 2. I’m planning a thread on it.
3. OK, great, thanks a lot.
I’ve done the survey Mike, when are you hoping to publish results ? I thought maybe you could add something to encourage lurkers to complete it in the header.
If the population is 61 million, there should be about 46 million people on the register, but actually it’s about 44.5 million.
6 Andy, some people can vote in local elections but no GE’s iirc, which number are you referring to?
6. Interesting. But I guess there may be people still on the register who have died, meaning the number not registered would be greater than your numbers suggest.
7 - sorry ignore that daft question, I guess what I wanted to say is not all registered will be able to vote in GE.
Just done the survey.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but aren’t UKPR and Anthony Wells one and the same thing? They have separate boxes in the survey.
I read nearly all of the newspapers regularly - but online. The only one we actually have is the Sunday Times. That’s probably true for a lot of people these days I would guess.
If it comes back with less than 60% Tory supporters and more than 10% Labour, I’ll eat my hat…
O/T:
Michael Gove aged 24 on TV with David Baddiel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ3VrC5xZ5E#t=4m44s&
2, 3 You might also look at Brits overseas.
It is difficult, verging on impossible to vote back in the UK. I was advised that I would have to apply for a postal vote form but that this can only be sent a short time before the elction is called - and there is basically not enough time to send, conmplete and return. So although I am British, own a house in the UK, my pension is in the UK I don’t get a vote.
There are literally milliions of Brits not living in the UK right now who nonetheless have paid tax throughout their lives in the UK or who will return after an overseas posting who are effectively disenfranchised.
I’d be fascinated to see how the expat crowd split politically.
11. Rod, I think in your unofficial poll, there were fewer Labour supporters than SNP ones? That’s how ridiculous it’s become.
I always think the trouble with these ‘level of satisfaction’ surveys is that some of the questions can be interpreted in more than one way, and as a result I kind of end up splitting the difference in my answers. But things like voting intention and newspaper readership are much more straightforward, so the results of that will be interesting.
Nearly filled in the survey but it asks which papers I buy regularly. I don’t buy any but read most of them
If Mike found 20 per cent Labour readers, you’d dismiss it as a rogue poll for your collection of data anyway!
16. If it gets even close to 20%, it’ll be down to lurkers. Which would beg the question of why more of them don’t feel comfortable about posting - it can’t be put down just to the ‘winning side shouting the loudest’ anymore, because it’s now far from clear that the Tories are winning.
11 Rod. I think there are a great many PBers who are anti-Labour and politically right wing but are not ‘Tories’. Most of them will probably vote Tory at the GE but I suspect you either confuse or conflate those who will vote Tory to get Brown out and those who are Tories (either by membership or lifelong voting habit).
If I could vote I’d certainly vote for Dave - but I’m equally sure he’ll disappoint me to some extent thereafter by being more Heath than Thatcher.
17 James - I noticed a new poster delurked yesterday after, I think, 2 years no-one replied to him. Well I did when catching up on the thread. That’s enough to put someone off.
14. Yes 4 Labour, 5 SNP… out of 174 responses, before OGH slapped a superinjunction on the whole exercise…
17 - They’re probably just embarrassed, James.
I look forward to see the results of this.
I just realised I’ve not bought a newspaper in ages. Internet with my laptop or my mobile feed my needs and hunger when I’m not home.
To get political news, I use googles.news, mostly. And pb. I don’t directly log into any newspaper per se.
18. Hair-splitting. They were specifically asked how they would vote, and the response was overwhelmingly Tory. I never claimed these “Tories” all had membership cards or were PPCs, but nonetheless the proportion of Tory-supporters was way out of kilter with that of the population at large. And Labour-supporters were underrepresented to a similar degree.
19. Kristin, I think new posters automatically have their first post sent to moderation, so that might explain why nobody responded. But it’s very unfortunate all the same.
My own theory of course is that very few Labour supporters post because they can’t be bothered facing down the ‘charm’ of the Welcoming Committee.
Lurker here, planning on voting Labour to prevent the Tories from taking my constituency. Obviously not speaking for all lurkers here, but I don’t even read comment threads because I just find them hostile environments full-stop, not even just to my point of view. They’re not very welcoming to newcomers, very insular.
I cannot vote in Scotland these days so my vote changes to a Tory one in Shrewsbury.
Does that make me a Tory Rod? I think not.
Better to vote for least worst option than not vote at all. (If I could vote SNP even in Shrewsbury I would, as would 2 others in the family!)
James is right, it can get feral. Most people are ok but some are clearly not sure what reasoned argument entails.
Completed the Survey.
Decided to rank Prime Ministers during my lifetime. Completed exercise whilst driving up to St Augustine today.
In order of preference. All views expressed are retrospective except of course for the idiot Brown; often didn’t hold the view whilst they were in office. From first to worst:
Attlee
Macmillan
Major
Wilson
Heath
Callaghan
Douglas-Home
Churchill [Peacetime]
Eden
Brown
Blair and Thatcher - equally awful
Not terribly interesting but there you are.
Out of interest, what did people put as suggested improvement to site on the survey? I asked for an ignore button
East Lothian news:
‘Moffat faces deselection as local party is granted ballot’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7057617.ece
Only 10 SLAB MPs chickening out? I think that they are missing out Labour MP Jim Devine, who is due to appear at Westminster magistrate’s court soon (today?)
I wonder if Lothian & Borders Police will have to control a new riot at Prestonpans Labour Club when the CLP holds its meeting? How many were arrested last time?
Bookies’ best prices - East Lothian (incumbent: Anne Moffat, Lab maj over Lib Dems = 7,620)
Lab 1/3 (Lad)
SNP 7/2 (PP)
Con 14/1 (PP)
LD 16/1 (PP)
(Note: Ian Dale tips East Lothian as a Lib Dem gain! He ought to nip over to Paddy Power pronto!)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8561045.stm
If Moffat is kicked out, as now appears certain, I just have a feeling that Labour may parachute Iain Gray in as the Westminster candidate, in order to get him as far away from Holyrood as possible.
If Labour go into the Scottish general election in May 2011 with Iain Gray as their candidate for First Minister then they are going to get slaughtered. They desperately need a candidate with an ounce of credibility, probably a woman.
Gray’s media profile has been next to non-existent for more than 6 months now (Jim Murphy has lead the attack on the SNP). This hiding from the press cannot continue much longer.
If Iain Gray stands, and gets elected, as Labour’s candidate for East Lothian at the UK GE, then will we be having a by-election in Scotland in the autumn? After all, Labour and the Tories have both criticised Salmond non-stop for his dual-mandate, yet both parties are putting up MSPs as Westminster candidates. So, the honourable thing to do would be for any Labour or Tory MSP elected to Westminster to immediately stand down from Holyrood, n’est pas? Unless, of course, they are immense hypocrites.
Result - East Lothian - Scottish GE 2007
Lab (Gray) 12,219
SNP 9,771
LD 6,249
Con 6,232
28 - I suggested more active moderation. It’s a shame, but some threads degenerate into abuse and there’s more insulting than discussion. But of course, it would take more effort and probably a larger team helping Mike. It could also totally bugger up the numbers!
Iain Gray makes IDS look like a winner.
I suggested a “mad hour” to discuss quirky politically incorrect topics where if you took part you ought to expect a little bit of a tougher response.
More robust, the other 23 hours a day could be as is. A sort of 20-20 version compared to test cricket.
35 - Good lord. Can I suggest that the mad hour is at 9am! I don’t think I could cope
I suggested numbering the moderated posts, and not displaying them, so the numbers never change. We see so many posts here like 35=*Smile* and it is quite often impossible to work out who they’re referring to.
On improvements, I didn’t know. Hope that helps. On the online newspaper section I was a bit concerned that ticking Daily T. might be taken as a sign of approval. There should have been a box with “Read it snarling with resentment”.
ps
What is the point of going to bed early when you wake up too early and spend the rest of the day tired ?
I thought we already had a mad hour, from midnight to about 6 am UK time, when the thread is generally inhabited by Scots throwing insults at each other….
I asked for an ignore button
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-nothing-incriminates-mr-brown-like-his-contempt-for-the-army-1917815.html
…”You’ve ruined my life” he once yelled at Tony Blair. What nonsense, what pathetic nonsense. But lives have been lost, because Mr Brown would not do his duty and Tony Blair would not make him…
“I suggested numbering the moderated posts, and not displaying them, so the numbers never change”
May I second that suggestion. It is nigh on impossible trying to navigate an old thread and figure who is referring to what.
Even on current threads it proves a disadvantage, because when the moderated post does appear, it is somewhere upstream and therefore unlikely to be read.
The latter also applies to de-lurkers, who also become abandoned upstream once their initial post is released.
38 - I read lots of papers online. I think that most of them are utter rubbish. I don’t shell out my hard-earned readies for any of them, and there’s a good reason for that.
11 - I hope that you wear a pork pie. Ten gallons might be hard to stomach.
I asked for a penalty button on each post where if 10 other users tick it the poster is prohibited from posting for the next 30 minutes.
unlikely but would amuse me - cant think who would be caught out most?
“cant think who would be caught out most?”
I can!
45 The idea appeals but, if implemented, the resident PB commiebots would spend their whole time in the Sin Bin (tim, BenM, Lily Allen, etc, etc). Inane and robotic though they are I don’t like the idea of blackballing anyone - otherwise PB com would become a tyranny of the majority.
I didn’t put it in the survey but there is one area that would appeal to me as a suggestion - and that would be more posting about policy.
PB is THE place to come for who’s up, who’s down, winners, losers, gains, movements, polls, leads, etc - the contest of politics.
But what it lacks for me is more opportunity to argue about policy - the impact of what governments do, and what they should do.
We often hear from the lefty side of the commentariat expressions like ‘the nightmare of Thatcher’ or from the righties ‘the moral abyss of New Labour’ - but we rarely delve beyond the simple mudslinging. The entrenched camps show little interest in exploring the enemy mind. I’d like to know exactly why some lefties have a visceral hatred of Maggie and to fisk their arguments - and to let them do the same to the righties.
Politics is, after all, about policy. I think that’s where the very word comes from. But for a leading politics site all we ever address is the contest side not the content.
There are many, many brilliantly insightful posters here from across the political spectrum (and for all his irritation I include tim in that list). It would be good to argue politics in all its glory rather than just the psephological aspect of politcs’ retail side.
Well filled that in.
Can’t wait to see the result of who people are planning for in 2010 and who they voted for in 2005.
I wonder what the swing will be?
Quite an important day today, 4 law makers up in court arguing parliamentary privilege as a defense. Let’s hope that travesty isn’t allowed to happen.
Mike. As with other surveys, can you publish ongoing details of at least some of the answers, as the survey proceeds? Or do you think this would tend to lead late answers?
48
I can see it now - punters at the bookies, “I’ll have £2 each way on Saucy Sue at Epsom and £5 on the nose of “post neo-classical endogenous growth theory” .
49. I’d expect a pretty small one.
grr defense = defence
24. They can’t face the ill bred barking dogs. No wonder Alan Johnson wants compulsory licensing.
Can you imagine the arrogance we’d all have to face if this lot actually got in? It almost makes you want to canvas.
42 - ouch
“But this is not his worst offence. Raising and dashing the hopes of families who had earned their nation’s gratitude, trampling on the military contract in pursuit of a cheap stunt: those are merely among the 183 other offences to be taken into consideration. The real crime is homicide. Mr Brown is guilty of corporate manslaughter”
” Within hours, two former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, Michael Boyce and Charles Guthrie, had accused him of dishonesty. Such eminent persons would only speak in that way under intense provocation and in response to gross violations of the truth. By the time of their castigation, the PM was in Afghanistan, vote-hunting. To assist in this, it was announced that there would be an order for 200 armoured vehicles to replace Snatch. There is only one problem with that. The announcement had already been made, 18 months ago. Then, the figure was 400. What is a strong word for “shameless”?”
“That was enough to provoke Mr Brown. He would regularly turn on ministers who enjoyed Mr Blair’s favour. For the same reason, he turned on the armed forces. It was an insane way to run a government”
5 more years?
I will do the Survey as soon as I get to the office - can I assume that someone has already complained about the methodology, regardless of what it might be?
48 - If the dimmer Tories hadn’t been in the ascendant for the last year then betting would have been less profitable.
Please don’t ban them because they know nothing about politics or betting, who else would provide the betting ballast and 100% wrong judgement calls?
Although the present treatment of new posters is explained by the narrowing in the polls.
Those who have nothing to contribute enjoy finding trolls rather than explain the Tory decline.
Those nasty generals are just being mean…
Gordon Brown says the criticism he has received for visiting Afghanistan a day after giving evidence to the Iraq war inquiry is “incredibly unfair”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8561227.stm
52 Cynic! I was thinking thread titles like ‘ Was that a budget for recovery or a naked pre-election giveaway?’ would do.
I fully accept that the betting opportunities for the content side of politics are close to zero - but then perception of policy does drive people’s views on politicians and their parties to some extent. The sort of thread I suggest on the budget might help shine some light on that.
57 - Wait for the spiral of silence and uk polling report disloyal adjustments.
It’ll show we’re all Lib Dems.
Off topic but highly relevant to my interests: could someone post the text of the sky news story about the fire on Tabernacle Street? I can’t read it on my blackberry. Thanks.
58. 100% wrong judgement call would go to ‘Weathercock’ who ‘heard’ just a month ago that the stock market was going into meltdown. ‘Get out fast’ said our indefatigable stock market expert.
Yesterday it closed at its highest level for 18 months
62
Firefighters Tackle Major Blaze In London
More than 100 firefighters are tackling a blaze at a restaurant and office in Shoreditch, east London.
London Fire Brigade said the ground floor and part of the first floor of the building in Tabernacle Street were alight.
The Metropolitan Police says a number of roads in the area have been closed including part of City Road south of Old Street, Bloomberg Square and Worship Street.
Crews were called to the address in The City at about 4.30am.
A spokewoman for London Fire Brigade said officers are investigating reports that people were inside in the building.
More follows …
60
Cynic. Moi ! The answer is “a naked pre-election giveaway”, by the way.
62 - Antifrank, here you go
Firefighters Tackle Major Blaze In London
More than 100 firefighters are tackling a blaze at a restaurant and office in Shoreditch, east London.London Fire Brigade said the ground floor and part of the first floor of the building in Tabernacle Street were alight.
The Metropolitan Police says a number of roads in the area have been closed including part of City Road south of Old Street, Bloomberg Square and Worship Street.
Crews were called to the address in The City at about 4.30am.
A spokewoman for London Fire Brigade said officers are investigating reports that people were inside in the building.
More follows …
The survey is being led by Mark Gill of Woodnewton Associates who used to be at Ipsos-MORI as one of the leaders of the political team.
His firm will draw up a report which we will then make available
60. I wouldn’t mind discussion of policy but I prefer it to be kept within the context of the contest. Will such a policy win/lose votes, and knock-on effects.
The focus on contest etc is what I think marks out PB as special and makes it easier to remain non-partisan. Judging everything by its electoral effects.
Going into the side of is this policy “good” or “bad” would compromise the impartiality I think, and would damage PB.
63 - To be fair, he’s been walking up and down his cyber Oxford Street with an “The FTSE End is Nigh” sign for a year or more.
My favourites at the moment are the Crucible re-anactment posters who shout “Witch” over and over at Sarah Brown and have assured us that SamCam would remain in the background.
O/T
So now we have a date for the budget. Announced by GB. He couldn’t keep his hands off the announcement which should have been Darling’s to make.
Is it too fanciful to imagine he’d contrive circumstances to actually deprive AD of his big day and present the budget himself? He is First Lord of the Treasury and AD could ‘fall under a bus’.
Is there a precedent for a PM delivering the budget? Gladstone?
Saint Vince losing his shine?
The City AM/PHI panel of City workers, specially recruited by City AM to represent a cross section of London’s financial community, were asked to pick their top choice from a list of six possible candidates for Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Clarke, who held the role from 1993 to 1997, was the first choice of thirty six per cent of the City panel.
George Osborne was in second place, with the backing of twenty three per cent of respondents.
Vince Cable was a close third, supported by twenty per cent.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/6454/city_prefers_ken_clarke_to_george_osborne_as_chancellor.html
When Darling opens his red box, Ed Balls will pop up on a spring.
TSE, many thanks. I can hope my flat is still standing when I get home from Leeds tonight. Memo to Sky: Finsbury Square hasn’t yet been renamed.
Popbitch were having a quiz night in that venue last night. Someone must have been a very sore loser.
re 20. You proceeded to use my site to carry out your survey without having the common courtesy to ask me first.
Also it was only seen by those who follow threads who make up less than a third of PB visitors.
For something like this to be valid in needs to be properly promoted and be carried out by external professionals.
This site is described(perhaps correctly) as over-whelmingly Conservative- we shall soon know. UKPR is rapidly going in the opposite direction, in to-day’s blogs, there is only one obviously Conservative post and the attitude towards AngusReid makes no attempt to take a balanced view of what they are doing.Their polls are rejected with contempt but without argument. Conservatives seem reluctant to take part - no Tims, Gabbles or NPMPs there! AW operates a “no partisan” rule which does not always seem to apply to the Labour bloggers. Strange.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has called for a £10bn “down payment” in the next financial year in a bid to cut the UK’s record post-war deficit.
Mr Clegg told the Independent he hopes this would calm financial market nerves if there is a hung Parliament.
The BBC understands he will make clear at his party’s spring conference that he favours paying down debt entirely by cutting spending rather than tax rises.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8561339.stm
Wasn’t Laws ring fencing Education, health and Int Development on Newsnight last night, off message ?
73 - I think it’s under control now, so your flat should be safe.
re 63. Remind us Roger of your predictions following the spot of bother that Northern Rock got into.
Remind us also of your predicted likely reaction to Brown’s election U-turn in October 2007. You said it would all be forgotten in a month.
Kristin, thanks also.
As a long-standing lurker who has just filled in the survey, I’ve finally decided to become an ex-lurker and look forward to active participation from now on.
This site being predominantly Conservative is the very reason it attracts gabble etc.
Morning all and well done Mike a very well balanced survey. The only thing I perhaps noticed, were we asked to choose from virtually every LibDem blog on the planet? I hadn’t heard of most of what I assume are pro LibDem blogs and I didn’t see some run by PBers like fitaloon.
71 - Scott P.
But this poll for the first time lends credence to the often reported view that the City harbours doubts about George Osborne’s ability to make the transition to Chancellor in a Tory government.
Ken Clarke was the preferred choice of Conservative supporters as well as non aligned panellists.
Osborne, the weak link amongst a panel that wants a Tory Govt.
I think discussion of policy really belongs on another blog. Perhaps one of us could set it up.
If it became as good as PBC it could become seriously influential but would require some seriously impressive running which would have to be by cross-party committee…
OK it’s not gonna happen
@71 ScottP - poor old Ed balls, unloved at zero.
81
I think the picture of us all linked together on the net is a myth. We find a small niche and stay there, just like we did with newspapers etc.
What time should I tune in for my dose of ARS today please?
I vote for a mechanism to auto-highlight my pre-selected personal preferred posters on each thread (there are some must reads imho, including our POTY, NPMP, OGH natch) - this would be positive ‘filtering’ rather than negative blocking of those we have ‘issues’ with (you know who you are).
Great day for IHT-loving IFA’s btw.
Sheffield Abuse case:
Yesterday there were some rather distasteful comments trying to link child abuse with Labour councils.
I am reluctant to make comments on this subject as I do not feel they warrant ‘political debate’. However I would like to point out that from 1998 – 2004 which was the period of the worst abuse, the time the children became pregnant, they were actually residing in Lincolnshire not Sheffield.
Personally I do not think this has any bearing on such harrowing cases, but there obviously are some who do. In future perhaps they could get their facts straight before posting? Or is that too much to ask??
Kirstin, perhaps Ed Balls would have scooped up all Ken Clarke’s supporters’ second preferences.
63/78. Roger, markets could still be in meltdown and go pear-shape anytime, and most American pundits who count agree with me.
It is mainly the banks that kept the Markets afloat after being bunged billions of taxpayers $, £, and €’s.
Thanks for the lopsided defence Mike.
Filled in the Survey and hope it helps.
69. That’s interesting–in “The Crucible” the reason the girls start yelling “witch” is because they want to bump off the older ladies and get to their menfolk. So, according to your comparison, there are a lot of people on this board just jumping for a chance to make Gordon Brown a free man once more.
Oh, dear, I’m sorry I ever said a word against Sarah Brown. She’s a saint.
sorry forgot link http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/10/daughters-rape-father-authorities
SNP’s chances in Livingston must be rising this morning. Every half hour the 2 minute slot from BBC Scotland is beginning with Jim Devine appearing this morning charged with false accounting.
81 I think they’re the ones from the side bar. I’ve never heard of many either.
92. Will we ever get to hear who the Whip was who told him to do what he did I wonder?
@88 antifrank March 11th, 2010 at 7:56 am
Is that you making a positive case for PR ?
RedRiding, this Government made Margaret Hodge Minister for Children. How much more distasteful can you get? Pontius Pilate as Justice Minister?
@92 Easterross March 11th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Didn’t Devine feign sickmness over another case recently ? Will he turn up or send in a sickie ?
Don’t forget that much of the FTSE companies’ business is not Sterling denominated - they’re pretty much all big internationals. When the pound tanks we see a short term FTSE gain. Just today one of my staff asked why my own employer’s share price was going up. I pointed out that the Euro and USD denominated elements were flat or down but that the Sterling denominated A and B shares were up solely on the back of Sterling weakness.
The market cap of the FTSE has not risen if measured in pretty much any other currency.
84. He even lost to Mandelson. Which is only right and proper, because the Chancellor does have to give a very long speech every year and so he should be able to elocute. Also, rich people like Mandelson enough to let him stay in their converted carriage houses or extra summer home or whatever. Where is Balls staying? He probably can’t even get a discount on a caravan.
Poor little flower… guess who? Someone is showing a weak and so delicate side it seems, is that what the focus groups say is needed?
“I think they are wrong and, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to criticise us for not providing what we did provide.”
“I find it quite unusual for people to criticise me for doing what I consider to be my duty.”
“This was nothing to do with partisan politics.”
Filled in the survey.
Since East Lothian was mentioned up list, interesting possibility that if Anne Moffat is dumped by Labour in the next week, as suggested Ian Gray gets parachuted in to hold the seat from the SNP. Ian Gray then has a dual mandate until next May. Labour then parachutes Jim Murphy, likely loser in East Renfrewshire into East Lothian for Holyrood and he takes over the Labour leadership at Holyrood.
Incidentally Margaret Curran and Cathy Jamieson (Labour) and John Lamont (Tory)have said if they win their respective Westminster contests in May they will keep the dual mandate until next year, just as Alex Salmond has done. OF course not one of the three has any prospect of serving as PM or as Stuart likes to say FM of Westminster as from May unlike Mr Salmond who has held a triple mandate as WEstminster and Holyrood MP and First Minister, a role Alun Michael of course discharged for Labour in Wales.
Mentioning Alun Michael made me realise what an enormous queue is forming among soon to be ex Labour politicians for Peerages. Lots are going to be disappointed.
http://order-order.com/2010/03/11/gordons-claims-no-different-to-harry-cohens-fiddle/
99 - Any explanation why, amongst a group of strongly Tory supporters, there’s so much distrust of Osborne?
P1 is this time tomorrow
Also, the F1 website’s been updated. As well as the time until P1 there’s now a handy forecast. Apparently it’s going to be sunny in the desert of Bahrain
Done the survey Mie and hated myself forbeing truthful.
When I got to thenewspaper section I had to put that I (that is the household) gets the Grauniad. This is the wife’s selection, not mine. The bl00dy thing reflects her political views as well. From my sig you can probably tell we have quite an animated life, especially after a bottle of wine.
Something must be working as we’ve been together for over 25 years
more jobs going - 750 redundancies at Toyota Manufacturing UK
http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/businesslatest/2010/03/11/toyota-set-to-shed-another-750-jobs-65233-26007086/
Seems kidnapped boy in Pakistan found.
The best way to reply to a specific post is to refer to the poster by name and then add the *time* of the post.
104. Is there really Tim. Why dont you tell us.And what are your views on the tax at death,not the IHT one, the new much improved one.
Just watched Nick Herbert on straighttalk. Didn’t think much of his performance which I was surprised by. news night was very amusing.
110 richard dodd
he won’t want to talk avout death taxes, it only highlights the chronic failure of NuLab. They have taxed everything, borrowed a fortune and still nothing works.
I do enjoy a good ad temperantiam fallacy to wake me up in the morning and Andy Burnham’s latest on social care is a classic. We’ve come to call this sort of thing “triangulation” too, but it is essentially the falsehood of the middle ground argument, and I’ll be very surprised if we don’t hear someone from Labour use the term “middle way” or “middle ground” to argue in favour of their latest wheeze.
…
Triangulation; ad temperantiam; appeal to moderation, false compromise, call it what you will - it’s still bollocks.
http://dizzythinks.net/2010/03/death-and-taxes-and-more-taxes.html
Sick notes are interesting in the context of courts, in that they have to be court specific. A broken leg may prevent a bricklayer from doing his job, but it wouldn’t prevent him from entering a court room.
This time last year (more or less), I wrote this:
Some two centuries ago, a Russian minister erected a whole series of fake villages, so it is said, to trick Catherine the Great into believing that the lands he had conquered for her were rich and full of bustle and commerce, rather than desolate and empty. This budget’s tricks don’t even rise to the level of “Potemkin villages”, though, because no sentient being could ever imagine that they’re looking out onto a landscape of plenty when in reality it’s scorched earth from here to the next election.
No, what we have here is a Potemkin Prime Minister; initiative follows relaunch follows fightback, but there just isn’t anything behind it. A facade; hollow, empty, fake.
I was employing the idea of “Potemkin villages” as rather strained metaphor. In Brown’s Britain, though, the word is made flesh.
Fake businesses are to be used to lessen the impact of the recession on high streets in North Tyneside.
http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2010/03/history-repeating.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8561227.stm
I have no pity for Brown, I pity the poor troops he underfunded.
@114 Gadfly March 11th, 2010 at 8:29 am
here’s the excuse
A letter from his GP states he is suffering from “marked anxiety”.
It adds: “This has affected his concentration and memory. As a result of this, I believe he is unable to acquit himself adequately in court.”
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/03/07/expenses-mp-jim-devine-too-sick-for-court-says-doctor-86908-22091845/
117 Kristin
perhaps a short visit to Libya could help, it’s well-known for its recuperative climate.
117 - He thinks that is stressful?
Patrick @13: “It is difficult, verging on impossible to vote back in the UK.”
Vote online.
Here’s how you do it:
1) Register to vote, and register a proxy at the same time.
2) The proxy scans the ballot paper and e-mails it to you.
3) You make whatever mark you want on the ballot paper.
4) The proxy reproduces the mark you make and mails it in.
It’s a shame that one person is limited to only being a proxy for two other people; Otherwise we could jerry-rig relatively secure, transparent, secret online voting into the system using unmanned scanners. Also very odd that the electoral system goes to so much trouble to ensure a secret ballot, then completely unnecessarily makes it impossible for large numbers of voters to use it and forces them to share their vote with someone else.
Not enough Jacobite threads and barely any mention of Scottish issues !!
2. The figures really are quite preposterous, the electoral commission is either bare face lying or extrapolating dodgy statistics.
Kristin
Attending court causes anxiety in most people and it’s an excuse we hear all the time. Eventually justice has to be done.
123 - yes but the specific mention of his memory being affected is a master stroke
123. Eventually justice has to be done.
Clearly you’ve never been to court.
26 …it can get feral…
This is one of the most polite and reasonable sites that I visit. People here can be passionate and bloody minded, but very rarely do you see outright nastiness. Sure there are a few trollish types, but nothing compared to other places.
People here should be proud that they are able to engage in political debate without tearing chunks out of each other.
121 - Jack, given the tightening in the polls, what does your ARSE poll show?
Is your ARSE tightening too?
“the specific mention of his memory being affected is a master stroke ”
Indeed it is, but the case could possibly proceed in his absence.
GPs now have to be very careful when writing such notes.
There is a moment in every war when it becomes necessary to wheel out the big guns, the heaviest weapons in the armoury. In the continuing war in Afghanistan, it is time to deploy the moral firepower of William Howard Russell, the greatest Times war reporter of them all.
In 1854 the 34-year-old Irishman began reporting on the Crimean War for this newspaper. Nearly two years later he returned home, having survived three fierce battles, witnessed the siege of Sebastopol, and penned the enduringly vivid description of the Charge of the Light Brigade that inspired Tennyson’s poem.
…
Russell’s dispatches demonstrated that an ill-equipped, neglected army was not only inefficient but immoral and unacceptable, and his journalism instilled the idea that never again would British soldiers be sent into battle without adequate weaponry, medical and logistical support.
What would Russell have made of this week’s finding by a British coroner that troops killed in another foreign war lacked the necessary equipment? Where Russell pointed to shocking medical treatment and lack of essential supplies including field ambulances, David Masters, the assistant deputy coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon, ruled that the special forces had been sent into battle with unsuitable vehicles, insufficient training and not enough mine detectors. The implication is the same: lives have been lost by trying to save money.
…
Like his Victorian predecessors, Gordon Brown has done his best to ignore and deny the problem, telling the Chilcot inquiry that no request for military equipment has been turned down, conveniently sidestepping the fact that insufficient defence spending when he was Chancellor has led directly to today’s equipment shortages.
…
If Billy Russell were alive today, he would surely be inveighing, once more, against a British Government that has sent an Army into battle that is scandalously underequipped and underfunded. But not until after the election. Disgracefully, the Ministry of Defence is planning to ban journalists from the front line for the duration of the election campaign.
In his determination to ensure that the reality of war does not intrude on the overriding demands of politics, Gordon Brown has achieved what even Lord Raglan could not, by banishing truth from the battlefield.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article7057286.ece
104 tim - An easy one to answer. Firstly, he looks and sounds too young, and people form superficial impressions based on that. Secondly, the press have amplified that impression. Thirdly, there is always a tendency to under-estimate the new guy, who is (by definition) unproven.
If they ask the question again in a year’s time (assuming he is Chancellor after the election), I guarantee he will get a very high rating.
111. Newsnight was funny. Paxman seemed to have a real disdain for Ed Balls.
128 - I hope it does go ahead, The fact that that case was only last week one can’t help but wonder if he will have made a miraculous recovery for today’s main event.
Gordon whining that people criticize his trips to see the troops is pathetic. Whether or not he did so in this case, he has form; re-announcing troop withdrawals from Iraq to draw attention away from DC’s conference speech set the tone for his regime. He cannot now call the ex CDS’s intervention partisan. He’s sown the wind. He’s going to reap the electoral whirlwind
131 - Well who doesn’t have a real disdain for Ed Balls?
130. Of course from the list presented, the ONLY guy they would rather have is the one with the proven track record of sorting out Labour’s mess.
Current chancellor? No thanks.
Inventor of endogenous growth theory? Not a chance.
But what about the economic genius who foresaw the crash, has been right about every call since and is lauded throughout media land? Yeah, right…
134. True.
49.”Well filled that in.
Can’t wait to see the result of who people are planning for in 2010 and who they voted for in 2005.
I wonder what the swing will be?”
Eagles, survey done, and looking forward with interest to the results being published.
From memory (as a result of reading Roy Jenkins book about Chancellors in the first half of the 20th century) I think the last PM to do his own budget was Chamberlain, as he had been preparing it previously. I may be mistaken.
@129 Scott P
The former head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, campaigned hard for infantrymen to be fully trained in the use of combat gear before heading to the battlefield; the Treasury, however, did not agree. This week’s inquest heard that soldiers had received less than 20 minutes training in using an Ebex metal detector. In short, they did not know how to defend themselves properly against the enemy’s principal weapon.
I had to read that twice. Shameful.
“Clearly you’ve never been to court.”
I am sitting this morning. Sadly, this won’t be in Westminster.
128 - doctors should be very careful about giving such opinions but I get to see quite a lot of them and I find them far too willing to write whatever is most in the interests of the patient.
136 - Actually Ed Balls is one of those people who divides opinions.
There are some people who want to punch him in the face all day long.
The rest of the people want to kick him in the knackers all day long.
126
Hmmm you’ve obviously missed my posts.
Good to see the Armed Forces are very well prepared and tooled up for the one type of warfare they excel at: fighting each other!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/11/defence-spending-relevant-lord-guthrie
122. Reading the report on the electoral commission. I was right they are using a slight of hand that would make Peter Kellner blush:
“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be
found in metropolitan areas, smaller towns and cities with large student
populations”
Remember, they extrapolated all these bold statistics from sampling eight local authorities, yes, eight.
“Only a minority of home-movers in each local authority appear to be
making use of rolling and late registration provisions”
Thats because the annual canvass carried out by the local authority will get them soon enough. The surveys carried out by the EC were done ten months after the annual canvass and as such likely to be the least possibly accurate, as anyone who has moved in or out the district, or even within a district, is unlikely to be on unless they specifically added themselves on.
Here is the clincher:
“The eight case study areas are not a nationally representative
sample of electors and cannot be used as a proxy for a representative
survey.”
= we made it up to a predetermined agenda. I wonder if they have any connection with the UEA. Their conclusion surprisingly suggests a solution is more resources, fancy that?
142, Mr. Eagles, was most amused to see Balls being told off for being a wazak for the first 10 minutes of the Newsnight thing. Didn’t watch it all though. Paxman’s ego is too big for him to be a chairman rather than interrogator.
Oh!
There is a much bigger story in the Financial Service Authority’s Financial Risk Outlook than the new stress test which I wrote about yesterday.
It is that the UK’s banks have to find £440bn of loans and finance between now and 2012 to replace maturing debt.
…
Where else could the money come from?
Well there is only one other place: taxpayers.
…
Finally it is probably worth pointing out that one bank, Lloyds, is much more exposed to this problem than others.
It has received £157bn of taxpayer finance via the Special Liquidity Scheme and the Credit Guarantee Scheme.
Quite how it would reduce this to nil by 2012 without closing its door to new lending is somewhat intriguing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/03/why_a_new_government_may_exten.html
Benedict Brogon today in the Telegraph says Brown wiped the floor with Cameron at QT.
Did not get that impression when Mike Smithson said easy win for Cameron.
Believe the total opposing views shows the owner of this site has lost any fair balance .
145 - He was being a prize wazzock. Agree about Paxman, Simon Mayo or Eddie Mair would have done a better job
147, either that or it shows Brogan’s entirely wrong.
Is the answer to “Why did you assume the total war cost would be hundreds of millions when the cost for a single year is £4bn?” Lord Ashcroft thrice, followed by a smirk?
THE LABOUR POLL BOUNCE IS OVER!
Chilcott and troop underfunding
The appalling economic figures yesterday
The impending Alice in Wonderland Budget
…. And oh - has anyone spoken to anyone who is going to vote Labour?
Labour are at best 30% icm and that’s probably 1-2% overstated!
It’s all over for Labour
Cameron and co have had a poor few months, but the next two will be dynamic and rewarding!
147. It seems attitudes to Camerons Rage is very subjective. Some people thought he lost the encounter (Brogan) other thought it was magnificent (Daily Mails Q Letts and Mike S)
Personally I thought he wiped the floor with Brown and those people complaining about Cameron showing his anger are the same people that for months and months have been moaning that Cameron doesn’t have any fire in his belly.
It increasingly seems to me that being leader of the opposition is a bit like being England manager - You really can’t win with a lot of journo’s.
Mike, I’ve just completed the survey and although I think I may have posted once or twice in the past I am probably best described as a lurker.
However I thought I would post today as I feel that you and all of the regular contributors to this blog deserve a huge round of applause (and I do mean all - even if I don’t agree with the views of some of the posters).
I love the intelligence and humour that is regularly on display and the political banter is top. I’ll try to post more often in future, you never know I might one day get a much coveted ‘first’
127 Scream. My ARSE 2010 General Election coverage will start next week. It will include :
1. ARSE Daily Polling Index
2. ARSE Daily Seat Index
3. Regular ARSE Betting Tips
4. PollyB ratio - Tory Wobble Bottom Feature.
5. ARSE recipes for the more rounded politicos
6. ARSE malt whisky recommendations for election night
7. ARSE Wholesome Gossip Feature
8. ARSE/Defarge gallery of the near political dead
And much much more !!!!!!!!!!!
131 - “Paxman seemed to have a real disdain for Ed Balls.”
Whilst that’s fair enough, Paxman has real disdain for everyone who isn’t Paxman to be honest.
Brogan still doing the bidding of his old drinking pal, Damian MacBride.
Is this the 2010 version of Sion Simon’s Magnum Opus?
Douglas Alexander and Ed Miliband are not only spearheading Labour’s election campaign, but leading the post-Brown generation.
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/03/labour-alexander-miliband
[Jack W, 9:14] - There’s going to be strong demand for humble pie on pb for election night, whichever way the votes are cast.
Excellent idea. We should surely be able to exceed the 1000 odd responses for most polls, and whilst we would still be a self-selecting sample and horribly unrepresentative of the UK as a whole, it’s hard to see how we could be more out of line with the truth than the youGov polls
Sunday Time appears twice (once with a “the” at the front) and there was no opportunity to say I buy a weekly local non-Sunday paper, but these are v minor issues
I would also reword the question about “one thing you would change” about pb.com to
“One thing you would change apart, obviously, from sorting out the fecking numbering”
Also would it not make sense to allow overseas posters/visitors who cannot vote in an election here, to indicate as such, so that the voting intentions questions can be bypassed and not counted?
13
Patrick, could you not arrange for a proxy vote with someone you trust voting on your behalf?
re the survey, perhaps you should ask which party you will vote for and which party you support, it may not be the same answer!
interesting to see how many people vote “differently”.
Interim data from the survey
I’ve been promised some numbers this weekend.
150
Cameron and co have had a poor few months, but the next two will be dynamic and rewarding! Who for?
Wayne, you’re like one of those strange people who you see hanging around shopping centres holding a bible and giving out leaflets.
Do you have pictures of Dave, tucked away in your undies draw, next to those lavendar scented bath cubes mum gave you?
What time AR today - tea time or 10pm ?
156 Timothy (likes zebras). My Auchentennach special edition line of ‘Election Pies” will include a juicy “humble” variety.
Can’t promise any African stripey mammal recipe as per your moniker !! …. Zebra not that common in the Highlands …. apart from the black and white concrete variety !!
160, good to hear.
I’ll probably be going out for lunch on Saturday (a combined Mother’s Day and birthday thing) so I think I’ll miss qualifying. Shouldn’t make too much difference, though the pre-race pb2 post will be later in the afternoon/evening.
Morning all.
Survey completed.
163 – Jack, will your daily ARSE have a page three pin-up..?
My assets are at your disposal if so.
Benedict Brogon today in the Telegraph says Brown wiped the floor with Cameron at QT.
Did not get that impression when Mike Smithson said easy win for Cameron.
Believe the total opposing views shows the owner of this site has lost any fair balance .
by dez March 11th, 2010 at 9:00 am
He just hates Cameron, and has made himself look a fool to write that.
One slight gripette on the survey - it wouldn’t let me tick two boxes for which region I’n registered to vote in. I can’t be the only one in such a situation.
I’m also amused by the focus on buying newspapers. Just look at their circulation figures - anyone who buys a paper is in a minority these days. If I see someone on the tube reading anything other than the Metro in the morning it is unusual. Is this really a good way to divide up the population these days?
So how many labour MP’s with expenses dramas will use the “Purcell stress excuse” to avoid being done for fraud or other misdemeanours.
Devine tried anew tack and claimed memory loss and anxiety, any bets that Morley for example will also pull stress out of the hat?
Maybe ALL criminals can go for that excuse and trials can just be abandoned, after all going to court when you may be guilty would always make one a tad anxious!
166-He may well hate Cameron, but he hates Gordon more.
“But rather than match Mr Brown’s dishonesty, they need only remind us every minute of every day why, when he tells us that “for better or for worse, with me: what you see is what you get”, what we see is truly terrible, and far, far worse than any alternative”
151. Yes its a difficult job and I think being shadow chancellor is even worse. You are supposed to give expert and thought through instant responses to the issues of the day without offical advice or proper access to the facts. I try to remember that every time Osborne is criticised. The clincher for me is that the Labour party clearly hates and fears him. The “labour has done it again” response to the budget 2 years ago was a real turning point in the credibility of this Government’s economic policy. I think he will grow into being a fine chancellor but there has to be an element of uncertainty at this point.
Done the survey. Mentioned the number of new posters that have appeared and Robert’s comment about multiple posters using the same IP addresses.
Some troughers in court today and will they be joined by Harry Cohen?
http://order-order.com/2010/03/11/gordons-claims-no-different-to-harry-cohens-fiddle/
Sorry I seem to have been caught out with a number switch again. 172 responds to 152 (for the moment). I am going to try to adopt the name and time suggestion above.
171. Brogan is the trainer in the corner who is slapping Cameron’s face to come out fighting.
I agree with him - get on the front foot and shake the country out of its sleepwalk into an even bigger Brown hole.
171
Yep, that’s the same trick tim and roger use.
Jon C at 9.23. That made me laugh out loud (or lol as my daughters would say).
61.That is so “Tim” coldstone. Are you deputising for him today..
I go each day on to NewsNow, and pick out the news headline that takes my eye, so I could finish up reading the “Morning Star” !!!!
I think I did read a letter in there once from some guy called “Tim” !!!
155
The piece lacks the sweeping breadth of Sion Simon’s poetry; the sheer breathlessness of fin-de-siecle; the glittering paramilitary political allusion; the swagger and bravado of towering hubris - and of course the ACME 100 ton weight about to fall on the head of the erstwhile Wile E Coyote…
This just looks like a delusional missive from the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ just before the final onslaught.
Just completed survey as a long-time lurker, may now start posting !
178
I don’t recognise the number, but I don’t doooo deputising.
Think it could be a good idea too ‘bone’ up on this.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-big-question-are-we-heading-towards-a-hung-parliament-and-how-would-it-work-1919486.html
127 SSC. Indeed. The ARSE Page 3 service will I’m sure be a hugely popular part of my quality production.
Here’s a preview - A Conservative beauty who’s just been assessing both vital qualities of a potential lady candidate :
http://files.posterous.com/sunwalking/2ZuvRLXr7W3KF6brjXGfjExM2JZyVGPEVVEwteXI41JtyyC7UI1DifOFBFIT/Eric_Pickles.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=1C9REJR1EMRZ83Q7QRG2&Expires=1268300969&Signature=RmC25×0eBDthH%2FBsZsun5nOLUok%3D
147 Dez. So if Brogan says something, anybody who disagrees “has lost any fair balance”? Don’t remember your name - is this the normal level of your contributions?
176-Does that mean that Tim and Roger actually want Cameron to win? That’s not the impression I get from reading their posts, but that’s the impression I have with Brogan’s columns.
dizzy_thinks
*snigger* Labour MP’s, blogger et al sign letter calling for increase of public debt and increase of GDP deficit http://bit.ly/cAupoW Genius
I ask if we could have a link on each post, so if you reply to a posting you do not post the wrong number, and it saves doing a copy and paste.
I do not think this type of board could do this, and would require another style of board/site.
This could mean a lot more cost to running such a site, as it would take more space up, but I think most of us would pay a fee to join such a site.
Ooppps ….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/01/20/article-1123152-031CD48E000005DC-586_468×323.jpg
180. bono publico. Fair comment. It does however have the bonus of a spectacularly bad photoshopped picture
185. “Our client voters need your childrens money”
185, Challen (presently my MP) has signed that. Wonder what Balls thinks.
69. Interesting that as in ‘The Crucible’ most of poster’s shouting ‘witch’ are female. Like in Salem the vibrant ‘female fraternity’ doesn’t exist in Torytown
This would rule out a lot of posters on here.
A 57-year-old woman says she was left feeling “past it” after being refused a place in the audience for a televised debate with Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg because she was too old.
But the company selecting the audience for the debate denies it is excluding people because of their age.
Researchers knocked on Marilyn Williams’ door asking if she would be interested in attending the leaders’ debate which will be held in Bristol once the date of the general election is announced.
Mrs Williams, who always makes the trip to the ballot box on polling day, said yes and the pair started filling out the forms.
But when she was asked her age, she claims the researcher apologised and told her she was too old to take part.
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/government/old-57-Bristol-TV-election-debate/article-1903461-detail/article.html
191, good. I don’t want the Sisterhood of feminazi man-haters to spread from Labour and infect the whole political class.
193 - Mrs Dorries said it was the sheer size of the posters that most offended her. “You can’t help but see these. On the Armani ads you can barely see the name of the company,” she said.
“Everyone knows I’m not a politically correct feminist, but this is part of a wider trend towards the objectification of women.”
The backbench MP did not draw attention to similar adverts for Armani underwear featuring David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo sporting nothing but tight briefs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/7416006/Ban-erotic-underwear-ads-from-buses-says-Tory-MP-Nadine-Dorries.html
194. Are the photo’s airbrushed ?
The Silence of the LibDems….
One item worth watching is the Lib Dem reactions to Clegg’s interview in the Spectator. Usually the Lib Dem bloggers pile in quoting Clegg from any article he appears in. So far silence on LibDemBlogs. I wonder why?
http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk/
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5831523/clegg-heir-to-thatcher.thtml
Anything to do with…?
“he even heaps praise in Lady Thatcher. More, he describes her as something of an inspiration: just as she took on vested interests in the 1980s, so he will take on the banks now. ”
“But Mr Clegg says the Lib Dems are the most radical of the lot: they propose no tax rises at all. ‘We’re saying “purely spending cuts”,
Is Mark Senior and the yellow horde around?
Long time Lurker. Regarding the survey, my only suggestion is that you can “Ignore” posts by BenM. Other than that an excellent site. Right, back to lurking.
196
It is on here
http://www.libdemvoice.org/
194. Pictures of Megan Fox in her underwear are a potential hazard. But not for the reasons Nadine thinks.
198 - Oh please, don’t mention Megan Fox.
My mind will turn to thoughts of lust and camshafts now.
John March 11th, 2010 at 10:12 am
John I see no article about the Spectator. Which one quotes the same Clegg statements?
tim
1. we love sarah. As the producer and director of the mad grin youtube expenses video she out-Graylings Grayling by a country mile. Her next film, I can promise you, is very eagerly awaited by the herrrd.
2. spin, spin, spin. DC has consistently said that if you want people to make you PM they have a right to know what sort of bloke you are. That line was plagiarised almost verbatim by fat Gord on Morgan after years of “not props” and kiddies wandering unscriptedly into yet another gord on the sofa interview.
How come the stock markets are doing so well, when economies all over the world are in dire dire trouble?
US posts record budget deficit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8561319.stm
One analyst described it as “frightening”.
Anyone got an explanation for this “bad is the new good” situation we seem to be in?
Speaking as a Tory, I do feel some of the criticism of Brogan is pretty unfair. Whilst I strongly disagree with his assertion that Brown wiped the floor with Cameron yesterday I do think his fundamental point about the feeble Tory response to the hideous and mendacious Labour spin and dark arts is 100% correct. Its not pretty, its not nice, but unless the Tories fight fire with fire and are pepared to get their hands as dirty as Labours, then I’m very much afraid that Labour will sneak through by default.
What will happen at Adam Boulton’s next meeting with Gordon Brown. He lost in in September 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=ERHtMr7QLNQ&feature=related
202. “Anyone got an explanation for this “bad is the new good” situation we seem to be in?”
Nobody is thinking long term, or everybody believes in the greater fool theory.
John @186: “I ask if we could have a link on each post, so if you reply to a posting you do not post the wrong number, and it saves doing a copy and paste. I do not think this type of board could do this, and would require another style of board/site.”
Should be very easy to implement, wouldn’t require another kind of board/site, and wouldn’t have any scaling implications. It’s just a template tweak.
Technical details: Each post already has an ID, like #comment-1469437, which you can link to. This is already used in each post, and will be in the template that creates this page. So in the template, you add a “reply” link next to the poster’s name and posting date. Make the “reply” link jump the user to the comment form, and give it an “onclick” handler which writes the name and date of the post into the comment form, along with a hyperlink back to the original comment.
I’d imagine Robert can figure this out, but if not I’d be happy to help out at no charge.
205: The amount of money pumped into economies by governments would have a large effect.
If governments are creating money (via QE etc), then that money will go into the economy in one way or another.
203 PB
both major parties are at present fighting on the “we’re not the other lot platform”. I agree with you that the Conservatives need to get out and put a message across - simply relying on Brown to win it for them will not give them a decent majority.
211
Old problem.
There are people who are willing to believe lies that Brown will tell simply because the truth is so unpalatable…
211 - what seems to be missing is a top class Tory rebuttal unit to link in with the media.
TSE. Props !!
http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/ed-balls.html
Another Labour MP is to face trial over the expenses scandal.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Harry-Cohen-MP-Under-Investigation-By-Police-Over-Expenses-Claims-According-To-The-Telegraph/Article/201003215571466?lpos=Politics_Carousel_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15571466_Harry_Cohen_MP_Under_Investigation_By_Police_Over_Expenses_Claims%2C_According_To_The_Telegraph
213. Thats true. The moment a Labour politician says something competely untruthful and absurd (which is multiple times everyday) the Tories should be ready to counter within a few moments.
I just thought of an’ improvement’ to the site that didn’t occur to me when I filled in the survey.
If comments awaiting moderation are given a number with ‘awaiting moderation’ on display it would avoid re-numbering all subsequents comments when the moderators give the OK.
213: The key is the working the media bit. Apart from Cameron they don’t have anyone who’s able to be the hit media profile attackdog and sapper of negative stories. Back in the 1990s New Labour were in the media every night hammering away at the tories.
You may not like them, but Mandleson, Balls, Prescott are always up for tory bashing, day in, day out, and the Blue Team don’t have the same grouping which can do that.
216. Like this ?
http://order-order.com/2010/03/11/making-the-most-of-a-rare-treat/
addemdum 212
What is unbelievable is the media (all of them) accepting the fact that Brown is lying, yet not calling him out on his lies.
It is as if Brown’s reputation as a liar is regarded a fact of life and not worth mentioning.
214 - Thank you, and woooo!!!
215. Although he’s standing down at the election, that looks like the sort of seat the Lib-Dems could do very well in if the voters fancy punishing Labour for the alleged behaviour of their ex-MP.
218. Why is that do you think? Are the Tories just reluctant to stoop to Labours level? Or is it another sign that in terms of strength and depth they still haven’t recovered from that catastrophic defeat in 97?
223 - or relentless negativity doesn’t really work for long?
217.
I thought of that as well. The only problem you will have though is if someone has several posts all saying “f off” or something similar. You would have a long line of posts “in moderation” with no hope of ever coming out of moderation.
223. Well it didn’t do Labour any harm did it?
“This site is described(perhaps correctly) as over-whelmingly Conservative- we shall soon know. ”
Err, no.
I filled the survey, and there is no way anyone could draw any conclusion about my political inclinations from my responses.
I don’t read any newspapers per se — I surf the Net; and if I may log into left-wings blogs, I also read right-wings ones So… no. Can’t draw any conclusion from that, me thinks.
In Canada, I read some newspapers; 3 out of 4 are leftwing to a fault; I read them, even if it pisses me off at the end — cause I read those papers available at the coffee houses I hang into. And discuss some of their content with people around.
I just done the Survey. I agree with the excellent idea that moderated and released comments should be unnumbered. Perhaps these comments could then be marked out in some other way - in italics, or something. Or just left unnumbered.
This is surely an easy and cost-free way to improve the site: saving us all the confusion of misnumbered comments being referred to wrongly yadda yad.
One other improvement (more conceptual): can we all agree on nomenclature? POSTS are what Mike (and DC and Morus etc) put at the top of the blog. COMMENTS are what we humble groundlings put after his POSTS.
There. Other than that the site is perfetto.
198 Does anyone read The Spectator ? I have never bought or read it once in my 60 plus years of life .
223: Three main reasons.
1) The ’sense of fair play’ and playing by the rules.
2) The lack of true hunger for the job, with Tory MP’s being too comfortable in opposition.
3) The tory party still have not really recovered from 1997. Lack of true talent coming through due to people hanging on too long and not enough turnover. The waste of 2001 and to a lesser extent 2005 in election terms.
224: Thats not totally the case. Were New Labour not relentless negative? But they also had postive.
229 - I’m subscriber to it, have been since 1997.
Though my subscription will not be renewed when it runs out in july.
Just wanted to say that as a Lurker of a few months standing I just filled in the Survey - I thought it was very good. I think I did post once but there was no response.
I owned up to having the weekend Telegraphs but that’s because my partner likes the supplements. I gave up having it regularly after it devoted two double page spreads to what I considered the complete non-story of Osborne and Yachtgate at a time when I was desperate for some unbiased in-depth info about the impending economic crisis.
I like this site because it gives a broad spread of opinions and even when people disagree they do it in a civilised way. Also there are some excellent links and I learn about things I may have missed when trawling the internet - which is where I read all my newspapers nowadays.
I receive both You Gov and Angus Reid Surveys simply because I signed up to them. You Gov seem to be getting more and more bizarre - the recent one included endless questions about recent UK holidays taken - I gave up on that one in despair so will never know whether there were more pertinent questions further on.
I think AR surveys are very good with questions framed in such a way that you really have to think about your answers.
229. I first subscribed to the Spectator when Alexander Chancellor was editor and it was an entertaining read. I held on through the editorships of Dominic Lawson, Frank Johnson and Boris Johnson, but when the current crop of airhead teenage scribblers took it over I let my subscription lapse. Like everything else in the world it used to be a lot better than it is now
226 - if you’re referring to 1997, that was balanced out by Blair’s messages of hope and change.
Wouldn’t be surprised to find out that focus groups have identified that it’s a turn-off - remember that like many things with politics, what impresses activists and political media doesn’t impress Joe Public.
229
No need to read the Spectator Mark, we can tell you that Clegg admires Thatcher and will not raise taxes and will cut spending and this will be how the LDs plan to cut the deficit.
That’s if Huhne and Cable let him of course.
I forgot to add my most heart felt view to the survey:
Mike, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
17. If it gets even close to 20%, it’ll be down to lurkers. Which would beg the question of why more of them don’t feel comfortable about posting
As a Lurker I can tell you that the main reason I don’t post is because the thread has moved on by the time I’ve read it.
Other reasons include: somebody else has made the point I would have made, there appears to be a conversation going on and I don’t want to butt in, simply don’t have time to engage in a conversation, spend too much time composing a reply that by the time I’ve finished I think it’s not worth posting.
But on this occasion I’m going to post it anyway
229. I think that reflects more on you Mark, than on the oldest political magazine in the country.
It sells a very healthy 75,000 copies a week or thereabouts (dwarfing the New Staggers), it is consistently profitable, and its circulation has been growing for decades.
I would say the content has declined slightly in zip and vim in the last couple of years, since the glory days of Boris, Frank and Dominic. Funnily enough, that’s when I stopped writing for them.
However it is still highly readable. You should try it. Broaden that “mind”.
re 228. You are indeed a simple man to please Sean.
230. That would be my reasoning as well to be honest.
I’ve always said that in a perfect world the Tories could do with a final term in opposition to finally recover from 1997.
Obviously they are going to get a big boost in talent at this election which means in fairly quick order a lot of the shadow cabinet dead wood like Lansley and May will be able to be shunted off to the back benches where they belong. If they had a final term in opposition I’m quite sure they would look like an outstanding government in waiting within a year or two.
The country is in such a mess though that it can’t afford to wait another 4-5 years to get this government out. Yet, are the Tories really, truely ready for office?
Its a nasty mess.
Sorry it was Asquith in 1908 who was the last PM to make a budget statement.
229 Mark, large parts of the Spectator are available free online.
Chocolate cake. This site needs more chocolate cake.
Apart from that, more bonhomie among posters and a bit more in the way of betting contributions from posters, I wouldn’t change a thing.
it’s true — the site is virtually perfect as it is, mike
I live in hope that someone from the MSM will dish the undoubted dirt on Mandelson in the next few weeks but am not holding my breath.
237:
No Mike, the Smithson tribe have created a fine site.
Of course what is most likely to happen to Labour is what happened to the tories in 1992 (if a 1992 type election happens). They will be left with a shortage of able MPs and those will be more demoralised, whilst the opposition will be gaining new, hungry ones with ambition.
If Cameron can get a good 100 or so younger, newer MPs, whilst Labours get older, then even without a majority this time, things should still improve.
244.
“the Smithson tribe have created a fine site”
Please can you tell me where this site is?
Only kidding. Great site, even for people like me who read it a lot but don’t comment much.
Re the Spectator…
Perhaps someone could create a Jeffrey Barnard site similar to Pepys’ Diary where future generations could discuss his weekly peregrinations around Soho and Lambourn? He took the Speccie to the grave with him.
I mentioned it in the survey but the site is pretty painful on a mobile device. Images etc would only make that worse.
227.“This site is described(perhaps correctly) as over-whelmingly Conservative- we shall soon know. ”
I don’t know how. What we will know is what proportion of the people who answered the questions said that they will vote Conservative this time and what proportion said they voted so in 2005. That is not the same thing as the proportion who are Conservatives.
We know that there are some on this site, and I count myself amongst them, who will be voting to get Brown and his gang out of power but who do not care for Cameron and Co. much either. More a case of least worst rather than Conservative support.
Two things on the survey.
1.I read it as have you had a bet in the last 6 minutes and ticked yes. 6 Months?
2.Does commenting on the mobile phone version require downloading something or other?
What time for the ARPO poll Mike?
237. Certain ex girlfriends would disagree. But half of Bangkok would heartily concur.
Back on topic, ish, I see James Kelly asks a very sensible question: why so few Labour commenters? As he says, the old answer - the Tories are winning, so the lefties are too downhearted to make the effort - no longer holds water.
I reckon I have an alternative answer. Lefties are ASHAMED. They are too morally exhausted by all the hypocrisy and failure and disappointment of the last 13 years to bother defending a government they themselves find distasteful, a government led by a man that many of them loathe.
Notice that the few lefties who do post here spend nearly all their time attacking and reviling Tories, they virtually never present any positive reasons for voting Labour, mainly because there aren’t any, apart from the fact Labour aren’t the Tories. And, natch, all the true lefty causes were long ago debauched and betrayed by New Labour themselves.
They even harp on about Mrs Thatcher, still, which shows the redundancy of their position. They have nothing new to say.
It is noticeable, by contrast, how the SNP appear to be over-represented on pb. This is for the opposite reason to Labour under-representation. Whether you agree with the Nits or not, they have a positive argument to present and a moral fire in their bellies - they believe they are RIGHT.
This gives them the motivation and cullions to come on here and state their case.
QED.
I worry that the Spectator is going to the dogs under Fraser Nelson which is odd as he was one of my favourite writers on the magazine. It seems to be turning into a kind of sub UKIP political Readers Wives for neo Tory Boys. Interesting to see the thinking of the crowd that could cause Cameron trouble mid term if the wheels fall off but always enjoyed the Speccies inate liberalism in the broadest sense. A sense of fun and warmth of spirit.
249 — “What we will know is what proportion of the people who answered the questions said that they will vote Conservative this time and what proportion said they voted so in 2005.”
I understand — i didn’t see that section of the survey ’cause I’ve answered I’m not in the Uk. Makes more sense now. Thanks.
250 - Yesterday I had a betfair hyperventilation. I actually had to get up and walk away from the computer screen. I hold this site responsible for that condition.
230 - “224: Thats not totally the case. Were New Labour not relentless negative? But they also had postive.”
See above.
Also, that level of negativity was pretty new anyway, and pretty effective. With the increased cynicism of the general public, it just ends up being counter-productive (as a couple of stories this past couple of weeks prove)
It’s becoming like sex scandals - almost guaranteed to increase ratings rather than lower them.
238 - one of the first things I ever posted on this site was about Cameron needing a 2007 election to clear the dead wood out.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see a second election this year. Even if the Tories end up short of a majority in April/May/June, Brown will doubtless try to form a government with the LDs, who IMO will end up splitting because of it.
It would be utter chaos
252. That could prove difficult if Cameron doesn’t get in, who wants to read about bad old Labour for another 5 years ?
240 Fair enough but as I answered in the survey I rarely read even the major newspapers online . I stopped buying newspapers 5/6 years ago reading the free Metro/ArgusLite and the odd “proper” newspaper left on the train by someone else .
The only universal constants are death and taxes and now Labour will make the latter continue after the former.
254 — ” I had a betfair hyperventilation”
What happened? Premium charges on the way?
205 All sorts of reasons stock market may be doing well. If the pound is declining and lots of ftse comapnies earn dollar profits - as they do - then that boosts sterling denominated share price. QE is pumping billions into the economy and that money has to finish up somewhere. UK corporates are pretty nimble when it comes to dealing with change (such as the recession). None of these reasons are compelling reasons to buy mind you, and I personally thnk that the market is rather precariously poised. One further good save the world effort from Gordo could see the market in a serious tailspin! In some ways I feel we are in a worldwide asset price bubble of sorts - although it may go on for a very long time yet.
256: Papers are just dying as a breed full stop. If you can give something away which is even better (ie via the net), then your business model is broken.
Within 10-15 years a good many more national papers will be bust, if not all of them.
258, the 10% on everything under £325k is quite brilliant. It manages to annoy both the middle *and* working classes.
238 GIN, of the current Cabinet which ones do you consider capable and ready for office?
Brown isn’t PM material, Ed Balls has fumbled in his present role, David Milband is a poor Foreign Secretary, Alan Johnson tends to follow official advice unquestionning then U turn when its unpopular. Mandelson, Adonis and maybe Burnham (though his various postures on the Death Tax are risible) seem competent departmental ministers. Jack Straw was found out as Home Secretary & Foreign Secretary and as Justice Secretary hasn’t been a disaster but neither a success. Darling is a conundrum, he seems to show signs of understanding what needs to be done but unable to stand firm against Balls or Brown.
218 ‘You may not like them, but Mandleson, Balls, Prescott are always up for tory bashing, day in, day out, and the Blue Team don’t have the same grouping which can do that.’
The danger is that acting that way simply turns more and more people off politics as a whole. Witness Balls on Newsnight yesterday; Laws and Gove were continually interrupted by Fat Eddie, and a sensible debate turned into a mess, not helped by Paxman’s arrogance. A sizeable proportion of the audience probably switched off halfway through, thinking ‘a plague on all your houses’. Maybe thats the logic behind Blinky’s actions?
203
Ref Nicks Clegg statements
http://www.libdemvoice.org/liblink-nick-cleggs-demands-for-a-postelection-deal-18296.html#comment-110025
259 - I was in a frenzy placing bets in the constituency betting section. It was exhilarating and traumatic. I’m going to try to ration myself more carefully in future.
257 Mark Senior ” I stopped buying newspapers 5/6 years ago ”
Completely? I find it very hard to browse a newspaper online. If you have a physical copy you end up reading many more interesting articles and finding out a lot more. Online you only read the top stories and miss a huge amount.
(This may explain why you are so ill-informed about subjects such as recessions)
217.”If comments awaiting moderation are given a number with ‘awaiting moderation’ on display it would avoid re-numbering all subsequents comments when the moderators give the OK.”
Really good idea History boy. Its really confusing skimming the threads sometimes because many address the post No and not the poster.
260 Omnium
Thanks! Spare cash will continue to be directed to overpaying the mortgage then, not risking it on shares
John March 11th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Those are not the same statements Clegg is quoted about in the Spectator.
Why do you refer to something that says nothing on Thatcher?
261. The iPad and its inevitable copycats may save a few newspapers that might otherwise have died. Some others will become freebies.
But yes, many will expire.
But those that survive will be global brands. Expect to see a Global Guardian and a Global FT competing with a Global New York Times and Global Wall Street Journal - largely online.
John @186: “I ask if we could have a link on each post, so if you reply to a posting you do not post the wrong number, and it saves doing a copy and paste. I do not think this type of board could do this, and would require another style of board/site.”
Should be very easy to implement, wouldn’t require another kind of board/site, and wouldn’t have any scaling implications. It’s just a template tweak.
Technical details: Each post already has an ID, like #comment-1469437, which you can link to. This is already used in each post, and will be in the template that creates this page. So in the template, you add a “reply” link next to the poster’s name and posting date. Make the “reply” link jump the user to the comment form, and give it an “onclick” handler which writes the name and date of the post into the comment form, along with a hyperlink back to the original comment.
I’d imagine Robert can figure this out, but if not I’d be happy to help out at no charge.
by Edmund in Tokyo March 11th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Thanks for that info.
267 There are always rhe free newspapers and often 2 or 3 assorted newspapers left for me to read on my train journeys to and from work .
266 - Antifrank, it was Andy Cooke’s fault wasnt it?
Someone asked the question yesterday whether it was now too late to change the date of local council elections for this year. I am not sure if the question was answered.
I believe Notice of Polls are due to be issued on 29th March with nominations closing on 8th April, although there may be slight variations by authority. Also, I recall that 3 weeks notice has to be given for any change in the date if issued by an Order in Council.
Can any Constitutionalist confirm that it is now too late to change the date of the 2010 local council elections.
260 The whole debt ridden western world plus Japan is teetering on the edge. We need a comprehensive move away from the baby boomer, post war brown / Obama / Greece / Japan model of borrowing forever - because you can’t. Our lazy lifestyles are not sustainable. How can 67 year old Germans be taxed to pay Greeks to retire at 58? why should a lazy teenger in the USA play with his PS3 while the Chinese work hard to make it? A major, major realignment is coming whether we like it or not. I’m very nervous about the whole world we live in. We need a return to ’sound money’.
And my brother lost his job today. Well paid asset manger - no more.
We’re basically fuc*ed without a wholesale change in mindset. Dave represents that (to an unclear extent). Brown is the arch disciple of ‘as you were - right over the precipice’. If Labour win this country will be Argentina in a decade.
263. Oh I completely agree Ted. Labour are a shambles and need kicking out of office this instant. Just look at the total chaos Browns last reshuffle desended into back in June. It was almost impossible for him to find people to fill in all the jobs last year so what on earth would we be faced with in another five years?
Thats why I say in a perfect world the Tories could do with another term in opposition to properly recover, yet the country is in such a mess we need rid of Labour right now and we can’t afford to wait another four or five years.
I’ll be voting Conservative even though I fear they may not be ready. An unprepared Tory government can’t be any worse than the current shambles. Hopefully, if the Cons do get in, they will improve as the Parliament goes on and a lot of the new faces can be fast tracked to key positions.
C’s comment at 25 is *important*. He’s not complaining about political bias so much as the cliquey and insular flavour. There’s definitely something in this and it’s not something Mike can fix - it’s up to us. I’d suggest:
- Avoid in-group acronyms and go easy on the political acronyms too. Refer to Mike, not OGH (Our Genial Host), no overall majority, not NOM, wealthier/poorer voters rather than ABC1 vs C2DE, etc.
- Explicitly welcome new posters and/or cut them some slack: it’s OK to disagree, of course, but if you don’t like their style, politely suggest ways to put their views in a way that fits with the site ethos better.
- Try to avoid long personal batltes with single posters - they’re a real turnoff for the uniniated (X says Y’s an idiot, Y says X is a moron, who cares exzcept X and Y?).
Ann and Alan Keen asked to pay back £1500 in troughed expenses. No apology required.
Oh blimey…I’m down to £2.98 on my Betfair account…any suggestions ?
262. The Labour Death Tax Part Two seems to be Labour’s first unforced error - potentially SERIOUS error - in quite a while.
However they justify it, it just looks very bad. Not only do Labour tax you to death while you are alive, they tax you after death, twice.
Tories Must Exploit.
Actually I can think of another improvement to the site. Every time I come here to comment I have to rewrite my details - name and email addy etc.
Why? It’s a bore.
I use Google Chrome.
Politically related, but you may need some mind bleach for this
Stephen Moyer has claimed that he pictures Margaret Thatcher during his sex scenes for True Blood.
The actor - vampire Bill Compton on the HBO series - said that the image of the former Conservative leader naked prevents him becoming overexcited while filming with real-life fiancée Anna Paquin.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/cult/s59/true-blood/news/a207926/moyer-i-imagine-thatcher-for-sex-scenes.html
263, and harpie is just a joke, obviously very cunning however, to be able to get the deputy leadership and be so talentless, but she follows in the over sized footsteps of an equally talentless over promoted deputy leader.
He had an over fondness for helping (himself to) women in the workplace.
277: Indeed. So many experienced politicans standing down and to be replaced either with nothing, or Unite parachutists. The quality of the current junior minster? Laughable.
Even if labour do somehow win, they’re far from being able to be a fully functioning government.
278, Mr. Palmer, I agree to a limited extent. No more acronyms FTW.
However, it’s difficult to avoid ongoing disputes if one or two planks continually derail threads and/or smear/attack other posters. Takes two to make peace, and one to make war.
I slightly agree regarding welcoming new members. Obviously proper new members should be welcomed, but with new lefties in particular it can be hard to sort wheat from chaff because of the influx of astroturfing numpties (tim, BenM, Lilly Allen, susanna etc).
281, pretty sure the Tories will go on it, given they went heavily against the Death Tax last time.
252 - Fraser Nelson is just setting himself up to say “I told you so” if there’s a Tory Govt, hoping he’ll benefit from a mid term popularity slump, promoting Boris as leader etc etc etc
Its not difficult to work it out, although the magazine makes so many mistakes nowadays that it’s in danger of losing credibility on anything serious.
Nelsons personal attachment to vaccine scares shows he has issues that need attention.
278 Nick Palmer MP
I agree with the cliquishness comment but NOM, GE, ABC, HP, are all terms of the trade; all good sites develop their community and their own vocabulary. OGH and FPT are a small price to pay for that. Maybe a glossary is a more realistic idea than asking all posters to change their behaviour.
This, by the way, encapsulates the fundamental Labour problem: always trying to change people by imposing their own standards on them by fiat!
249
“We know that there are some on this site, and I count myself amongst them, who will be voting to get Brown and his gang out of power but who do not care for Cameron and Co. much either. More a case of least worst rather than Conservative support.”
I tried looking for an anology for your thoughts. The best thing I arrived at was Bill Shankly who said something along the lines of a goal being scored for Liverpool: “I don’t care how the ball went in, of someone’s backside, knee, own goal or what, as long as it went in.”
torybear
RT @henrymacrory: Breaking: Sir John Chilcot does not rule out recalling Brown to the Iraq Inquiry in letter to Liam Fox
The Thug and the Smug
251: seanT, can’t speak for other Labour posters but I don’t see the point of arguing the toss here about the merits of the parties - we’re nearly all committed. There aren’t many Tory posters discoursing on positive reasons for voting Tory either - it’s all about “we must get rid of Brown”. But Labour posters do get monstered here quite routinely, so it requires a thicker skin than being a Tory poster. I doubt if there’s more to it than that.
When the site shines it’s in discussing likely trends and impacts, when it’s crap is when it gets into a mudfest about who is stupider and more deserving of being voted into oblivion.
290, Mr. P, good news but timing is critical. To be pre-election it’ll have to be pretty sharpish.
Jargon could be dealt with by having a glossary in the margin or at the bottom.
278 - Nick - STFU.
292, presumably you must be horrified by the hypocritical mudslinging regarding Ashcroft?
281. It isn’t that simple.
At the minute people with property assets are forced to sell their homes to go into care, this has been the situation for many years under both Labour and Tory.
The ‘death tax’ which is actually a charge on your property when you die is a good way of raising the funds required.
For the Tories to exploit this they will have to come up with a workable solution, so far they have floated a Retirement Tax, but this is voluntary and would still leave many people who did not take it up or could not afford to take it up having to sell the homes they live in.
The only other solution would be for money to come out of the general income tax/ VAT pot, but with an increasingly aging population this will mean large rises in Income tax/ NI / VAT or all three.
So the Tories can try to exploit it but they will need a thought through costed policy and as voters are noticing those have been conspicuous by their absence so far.
278 - Agree with all that Nick.
282 - That doesn’t happen for me. I use humble old internet explorer.
276 - I agree about the desirability of living within our means, and that Gordon is the ‘more of the same candidate’ - but does Dave really represent change? Even if change is what he wants, I think the reason that people are prepared to look at him is that he is a non-threatening Tory. At best he only represents a bit of change.
I think the electorate have pulled back from the brink, recently. Up until the start of the year it was looking like 1979; the country was f*cked, the electorate knew it, and were ready to support the changes that need to be made. But to me we’re no looking more like 1970 - the country is f*cked, but all we voters really want is a bit of tinkering and a slightly less dicredited government doing much the same sort of thing.
Going through the survey now.
I didn’t vote in the last council election in the last two to three years, but only because it was more than three years ago!
283. I only wish the current crop of women we had in Parliament at the moment could make such an impact, a bunch of third raters.
I am a liberal, in the sense, that i dont really think that everyone is equal, far from it, but that everyone should be given a chance, but following on from that I am loathed to give special privileges to groups who cant hack it.
Can anyone name me a female member of parliament on any side (including lords), that would, on 100% merit be able to sit in a senior position of Cabinet?
I can think of Baroness Warsi in a few years time, could manage it, Anne Widdecombe but she is leaving, possibly, Ruth Kelly, shown to be a bit incompetent, but certainly up for it, Margaret Becket, but she is incredibly lazy, but at least she puts up a show.
The ones we do have can serve a purpose, people like Nadine, Abbot May, Smith are an asset in the sense they allow the Parties to project a softer image, and they are often able to focus on specific issues, with the press deliberately giving them a much easier ride, but none of them are up to the job of holding a Cabinet brief.
286 - Morris, astroturfing numpties are partly in the eye of the beholder. Personally I find Patrick’s posts so extreme as to be barely credible, but they’re literate and civil: he’s simply right-wing and very strongly Conservative. I can’t see a difference in principle from BenM, who is politely but fervently Labour, but gets a lot more hassle than Patrick. As for tim, even his critics tend to concede he’s an asset to the site - the grit in the oyster, if you like.
256. Sarah Brown is the most dangerous woman in Britain. This mini Labour recovery is all fault. I have just seen the Tesco magazine piece which will have been seen by millions and almost entirely slipped under the political radar. However her unique fusion of PR talent and family influence over the PM will only last another 12 days. The budegt and thus the economy will domiate the news cycles from Wednesday the 24th through to the Sundays. After that it will be all disolution talk and the media will give more and more equal air time.
The window of oppertunity she has seized to practice her dark arts is closing. The remarkable recovery of Labours presentaional flair was only possible in this phoney war period where everyone had priced in a Tory victory and there was narrative capacity to write about how poor crippled Gordon might be worth a pitying second look.
292 Nick P - I don’t see the point of arguing the toss here about the merits of the parties - we’re nearly all committed.
It depends on the nature of the discussion, surely. I agree that just slinging insults around is a waste of everyone’s time, but exploring the (real or perceived) strengths and weaknesses of the parties can be illuminating.
Callers into R5 are putting there fingers on the spot re what’s going on the Tory poll drift - too fuzzy, not enough detail is getting through to them, more bread and butter issues needed.
I hope CCHQ are still listening in!!!
Just to claify my comments re Brogan, I do think the Tories are incredibly slow and limp wristed in their response to Labours dark arts.Fo example the spin on the N.Ireland vote this week fom labour was malicious in the extreme basically suggesting that the Tories wee against the peace process. Yet the Tory reponse was late and Labour basically had a clear field for most of the day.Its that sort of Labour tactic which needs ebutting straight away.There are loads of other instances which worry me that the Conservatives have not yet tumbled to just how hard they have to fight to win. I am a great Cameron supporter and I think much of the criticism he gets is wildly off beam but he must bear some of the blame for the shambles of the campaign so far.
298 After a decade of public sector and welfare largesse I am very afraid that the public consensus of what degree of cuts is politically acceptable (witness Greek riots) is no longer commensuarte with the challenge of resolving debt. The USA borrowed over $200billion last month. They have no hope with Obama in charge. Nor do we with Labour.
I hope Dave makes himself the most unpopular PM of all time by sorting out our problem.
We are frogs in the pot. The scale of our crisis is still wholly invisible to 99% of us.
295 tim
No need for that surely?? Or was it an attempt at “humour”?
Well I for one was not ROFLMAO
302 — Wow, that’s a useful comment for a guy like me.
*Logs into WillHill to fire another shot at Conservative Overall Majority @ 8/13*
patrick “I hope Dave makes himself the most unpopular PM of all time by sorting out our problem.”
+1 but how’s he going to get elected on that manifesto? That is the tories’ huge problem.
305 - I think the Cameron is scared if he goes too aggresive, the nasty party label will be stuck to the Tories again.
However there are two people apart from Cameron, in the Tory Party that can really damage Labour (and the Lib Dems) without appearing nasty.
Step forward Ken Clarke and Boris Johnson.
Both of whom must be used extensively in the GE Campaign.
Guido on DP today.
249 Hurst Lama. Provided there are enough replies to the 2010 voting question, I would have thought the result will be a reasonable poll of visitors to the site.A 70/20/10 response would be a strong indication.
297 RedRiding
Everyone who has a home can certainly afford it. Those who don’t have assets get free care anyway.
You simply take out a £8000 mortgage on your home when you retire. Much better than 10% of your estate when you die. If you don’t like that, at 65 when you retire, you can take a lump sum out of your pension pot.
What the Tories are saying, though not explicitly, is that if you’re irresponsible and don’t plan ahead, then you might suffer the consequences. Not a very inclusive message, but a popular one. Whether it is morally valid or not depends on your political philosophy.
However, the Tory plans are also utter rubbish. £8000 is too low according to all the actuaries I know, will disproportionately encourage takeup of residential care amongst those who take out insurance, and doesn’t cover in-home social care at all.
297: The key thing here, for most people, and this links in with inheritance tax, is that people feel they are being punished with being frugal and sensible thoughout their lives and wanting to be able to provide for their loved ones.
So, I think a lot of people would be happy (well not happy, but prefer) direct taxation on earnings, rather than wealth to pay for retirement, which has to be paid for.
It all goes back to the idea that someone which has scrimped and saved all their lives is punished and taxed in an unfair way to those which have spend all their money throughout and expect the state to provide.
292. Nonsense on steroids. Lefties were in a majority on here only a few years ago. Why have they faded? Did they suddenly start getting “monstered” by an unexpected influx of rightwingers?
lol
It’s Iraq, and 10p tax, and the Great Recession, and the failures of multiculti, and Brown, and the world beating deficit, and rising unemployment, and declining education standards, and Iraq, and 90 day detention, and expenses gate, and cash for honours, and cash for laws, and Ecclestone, and Blair’s millions, and Lord Mandelson’s 22k watch, and religious hatred laws, and Afghanistan, and ID cards, and Iraq…
Lefties are morally ashamed of what they have done, and what they have failed to do. Some know this consciously, some subsconsciously, but they know it. They have no fire inside them, any more. So they can’t be bothered to comment.
278 Should we address our comments via ‘Mr Blogger’ and refer to other blogs, such as Con Home or Labourlist as ‘another journal’ or ‘the other journal’?
I would certainly be up for it, especially if we can clean up claiming rent on second blogs, or even better, spurious related costs for second blogs.
309 The huge problem for all of us is the apparent inability to have a mature debate on this.
310 - yes, but that just leads to the counter-slogan “Vote Clarke get Osborne”
Hi I found one fault with the survey. I didnt vote at the euro or council elections ad had to answer as such, but I was too young to vote. However being 18 I am definately going to vote, seeing as readers of political blogs are demographically younger (I believe)and more certain to vote (I expect) then this will have a disproportionate impact when compared to a normal poll.
316.Thank you Sean T,that sort of wraps it up…
281.”Tories Must Exploit”
Here is one they made earlier. Daily Politics - Conservatives launch ‘death tax posters’
Ben Bradshaw rather ironically mentions a current unfair postcode lottery!
301 ‘the grit in the oyster’
The broken sewage outflow into the mussel bed would be a better analogy.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/03/response-from-electoral-commission.html
318 - You make that sound like a bad thing.
I note that the survey included a question about certainty to vote.
I also noted another question about how people voted in a previous GE.
I have always wondered about people who spoil their ballot papers, with hearty exhortations for politicians to do something biblical with their lives, or the simple but polite ‘not today, thankyou’. It seems to me that this is a distinct category from ‘Did Not Vote’ and implies, nay demonstrates, a willingness to enter into the democratic process if the product were more appealing, rather than the simple ‘Nah, couldn’t be bovvered mate, Politicians - all the same, ain’t they?’
315 - TBH there were very small numbers of, roughly evenly, supporters of the three main parties at the beginning.
As the site took off, there was a large influx of Tories prior to the GE and an even larger one following the installation of Dave.
The Labour posters tend to make up in volume what they lack in mumbers.
I’m going to cut Clegg some slack over the “Thatcher” comments. While not at all to my tastes he has to try out some lines for the debates. The comparison between taking on the Unions and now taking on the banks is an interesting one. I doubt it has time to fly this close to an election. However I suppose the whole point of the debates is that it will turbo charge certain lines straight into the conciousness of voters.
Re the policy its self. No tax rises, all spending cuts on the deficit. I don’t see how the party gets traction from that stand point without a political repositioning of the party that would take a parliament to complete.
Unless thats what he is doing of course.
318 Tabman - Still, could be worse. How about ‘Vote Darling Get Balls’?
313 - However, the Tory plans are also utter rubbish. £8000 is too low according to all the actuaries I know
It works if you use the male life expectancy stats from the East End of Glasgow as your start point.
301, not all his critics, perhaps not a majority.
We recently had a small surge in new posters who were all tim clones. I very much doubt their simultaneous appearance and identical viewpoints are coincidence.
There’s no comparison between them and the Lib Dems or Tories or floating voters here.
292. NPMP: There aren’t many Tory posters discoursing on positive reasons for voting Tory either - it’s all about “we must get rid of Brown”.
That’s because, as I keep telling you lefties, there’s a difference between “anti-Labour” and “Tory”.
There simply is no “overwhelming Tory bias” here.
btw:
13) (if you are still reading). Something that I have seen a few more requests for is proxy voting, you could do this.
322. Is it just me, or did elections run a lot smoother, a lot more cheaply, with a greater turnout and with a lot less fraud *before* the electoral commission came into being in 2001?
Let’s hear it for acronyms ! I think ‘OGH’ is hilarious and I wouldn’t part with ‘NOM’ for the world.
What I don’t like are the ZNL’s and the Khamereons etc.
URW.
318. Countered easily with vote Darling get Balls.
328 Or if you utilise relevant long term care insurance policies.
£8000 is not enough for an individual to pay for extended long term care - but it will insure them. Not everybody would use the insurance. That’s kind of the point of it.
It’s pretty simple when you are not dissembling.
301
Nick Palmer MP for Broxtowe
Sorry but I must disagree with that.
Patrick is highly sensible, lucid, clear, and represents the educated and exasperated economically literate, no more no less. He is honest about his expectation of Cameron - he will probably be disappointed he says. Your disbelief of him encapsulates quite nicely how low the understanding amongst our government of exactky how damaged the economy is.
BenM is a total prat who is the very worst kind of blinkered Yah-boo poster who is hypnotically in love with Labour to the exclusion of all reason. Every post of his is drivel.
333 - perhaps seanT could inventsoome form of torture that involves high-voltage cables and balls … :~
334 of course, further to that, you can pay for it by taking cash from the dead. But that is a traditional Labour/Socialist approach - punish wealth, make saving worthless, encourage waste.
326 YS - Isn’t Clegg’s (in itself very sensible) line about a £10bn “down payment” in the next financial year another total U-turn and/or a direct contradiction of what Vince Cable has been saying about not doing anything to damage the faltering recovery?
More confused messages from the LibDems; this one, and the emphasis on cuts rather than tax increases, seem to be 100% backing Osborne.
It seems odd, but the explanation could well be that he is worried that the financial markets will panic about the prospect of a hung parliament. Alternatively, Clegg and Cable are at logger-heads.
re. influx of ‘new’ posters likes of ’susannah’, ‘anaethesia’ almost formulaecic & beyond parody not substitutes for hopi sen, tyson.
Heidfeld reckons the Red Bull will be top dog in Bahrain. Have to see about that. Vettel was the best qualifier last season, so he may well put it on pole.
I very much doubt that the Conservatives are doing as badly as some polls show. You Gov adjustments of polls are due to bad sampling the narrowing of the gap as shown on their data is due to under sampling of Labour traditional voters then weighting their figures assuming that a few Labour traditional voters speak for the many. Surely this increases sampling error. If the sampling error s now 10% that could mean Labour are on 29%, Conservatives on 41% then you have a 12% Conservative lead. Still my prediction is that the lead will be simular to Blair’s in 1997 terms of a 12-13% lead.
338 Clegg’s comments on Thatcher are quite clearly (to me anyway) Rapunzel letting her hair down as the Labourite wing have her locked in the tower, and she wants a Tory knight.
336 - I really want to say something about my personal experience involving high voltage cables and balls.
But I’m going to shut up and talk about some advice i need.
It’s to those chaps who are dads. Am I the only father who put on some pregnancy pounds?
I’m like weighing 4lbs heavier than I was 9months ago.
Any idea on how to burn them off?
I used to treat my body like a temple (open to everybody, day and night boom boom)
342 - gentlmen, its worked.
Rule 1 for any third party leader is Get Noticed.
344 - I’m sure you missed the word “rate” between third and party.
334 - I doubt you have any idea what life expectancy and take up rate the Tories have based their £8000 on, although if you do could you post a link please.
What we’ll edge towards is saying to people something like.
“Do you want to take out x insurance on your retirement or would you prefer x + inflation to come off your house when you die”
Perfectly sensible.
344, tabman, fair enough, but once noticed you don’t want the response to be “who’s that pratt and what’s he wittering on about”.
As Richard N says, very confused messages from Clegg.
343 A little extra weight behind the hammer is no bad thing when you get down to it TSE.
Newton’s first law of shibby.
337
Taking cash from the dead - isn’t that Inheritance Tax?
Isn’t the death tax just Inheritance Tax for the less affluent?
It will all go into the tax pot and be doled out for whatever money pit Labour can devise.
Easiest method is a bottle of sleeping pills and a litre of Tesco’s vodka - do your kids a favour and leave ‘em something useful - something which will be in very short supply thanks to the staunch defender of fiscal probity.
I simply don’t like any charge which takes taxes out of wealth, full stop. Taxing earnings is a much, much better and socially effective way of providing for things.
332:
I think that, given the motivation, if I could get a long enough list of acronyms I could probably combine them to give a sinister message.
346, so, tim, you’re in favour of the taxman rifling through the wallets of the recently deceased? Very Neu Arbeit.
The insurance would be optional. The state seizing money from people who had the temerity to die would be mandatory.
344 Tabman - So can we expect an interview with Clegg where he says his political heroes are Pol Pot, Senator McCarthy, Lord Archer, and Scooby Doo? That would get him noticed even more.
343 - Not quite at fatherhood yet, TSE, but I know I’ve put on a fair bit of weight during the time my wife’s been pregnant.
I’m hoping it’ll all come off again once the bairn gets to toddling.
346 lol, I’ll post a link if you post one to the research into £8k, take up rates and East End of Glasgow life expectancy.
The principle is clear, it is up to the opposition (to the principle) to show why they feel the maths doesn’t add up, or the Tories to show why it does.
I’m happy with the principle of insurance (and presumably creating some sort of appropriate vehicle for the insurance) versus the principle of taking from the dead regardless.
350, Brown becoming a grave robber, ‘twould seem.
349 yes it is
I would scrap IHT altogether personally, it is an inherently wicked tax
338 - “Clegg and Cable are at Logger-Heads”
There’s a house on my road called Logaheads
tim, you raise a good point. Life expectancy for males is lower in Glasgow East than just about anywhere in the developed world.
Who has been in charge for the entire existence of Glasgow East? What have they done to improve the life of the inhabitants of Glasgow East?
Obviously, I am not expecting an answer.
354 - he told me that his political hero was Richard Nabavi. That was pretty shocking
343 — TSE
The most important advice to lose weight: do not eat heavy food in the evening — after 6 or so. You’ll see; it does miracle. It sounds crazy, I know. But you’ll see. We’re not actually hungry in the evening; only programmed to think so. Eat fruits then. And cottage cheese, and stuff like that. No meat, no heavy food.
“Whey Protein Isolates” is a good highly proteined fatless supplement — if your not allergic to milk. Buy the best quality — i.e. the ones made with the best filtering methods. Take a couple of grams per day; more if you’re very active physically; you will be very marginally hungry.
Spirulina is also very good to that effect.
Eat plenty of fresh fruits (before your meals rather than after), and drink plenty of mineral spring water.
Try to hit the gym if you can. And run on the tread-mill. Or cycle. Load you ipod with fast-beat music, electronic; even cheesy pop. Ditch the classical and the jazz.
Do push-ups and set-ups every morning.
No beer; drink spirit or wine instead.
No bread; no noodles; no sweets after meals; no fruit juices or any other highly sweet stuff.
No fried food.
You’ll lose it quite quickly; and if you keep on; the six-packed abs you had in your early adulthood will come back.
352 - The insurance under the Tories would be optional but if you don’t take it you can lose all of your home in residential charges, which is the situation that the charities who suggested the charge on estates wanted to avoid.
I’d give people a choice of paying the insurance or choosing to delay the payment until your house is sold.
If you want to argue that their should be a third option of doing neither but taking the risk that you lose all of your assets then feel free to do so.
358 - I’m going inside a virgin for an hour at 4pm today.
One hour gym induction Virgin active gym at the Printworks in Manchester that is.
Labour & SNP to miss out on 50,000 votes each
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/editor-s-picks-ignore/revealed-the-100-000-missing-glasgow-voters-1.1012572
343, 351 - two stone arrived post-birth and has stubbornly refused to shift
Once you have children there is far less time available to do things like exercise; “You’re not abandoing me here whilst you go down the bl**dy gym, I’ve been stuck in all day now its your turn!”
That, coupled with the fact that lack of sleep tends to leed to increased appetite.
366: Most sensible people have a private pension which pays a lump sum upon retirement. Seems an sensible thing that that part of lump-sum is used to pay the insurance (at the choice of the individual).
Seems any system should be one which rewards good sensible behaviour, and doesn’t punish it. Which is what death charges and IHT do.
343 TSE Simple really. Eat Less and Move More. Worked for me. I lost 5 stone. I suspect if you cut out booze (if you drink) and drink lots of water the 4 pounds will be gone in a week
365 - Thanks for that. I’ll try and follow that.
I had this strange metabolism, no matter what I ate, i never put on weight.
Personally, I see a correlation with the lack of action in the sack and my weight going up.
And my iPod is full of cheesy pop and Dance. In fact there’s more evil in my iPod than in an Al Qaeda suggestion box.
What is the situation when one person dies but the partner is fit and well,and needs to live in the same property..
366, it’s not insurance if you pay the premium if and when you want to. And if it won’t work numerically (your claim) as it stands, then how would it when nobody would take it up but those who definitely need it?
If you have a home you can take £8k out of it for the insurance and avoid the prospect of losing it.
A more important question is this: will you be doing the digging when you go grave robbing?
OT: It seems google has expanded its street view facility greatly.
At the moment, I’m looking around my home-town which I’ve not visited for 10 years. It’s making me sad.
371 - I’ve given up the booze. More or less. Only had the one glass of champagne and one double JD and coke this year.
Don’t plan to drink anymore. Drink makes me want to touch womens breasts. To be fair, I want to do that sober.
TSE — One last thing : Use personal vanity as a stimulation to hit the gym on a regular basis and maintain a proper food regime ; you’ll see your body grow more svelte and muscular, becoming thus more attractive, and do get addicted to the vain manly pride it induces.
366 tim
you really do talk drivel at times. Just how many times do people have to pay for the same service over and over again - and it still doesn’t work. People have seen substantial rises in their personal taxation over the last 13 years as well as a massive rise in public debt.
Taxpayers have got very little value for money from Brown’s spending incontinence. The argument of old-age care is not framed in how much more tax should we pay, but why the current excess in tax and borrowing has not already bought the care we aspire to.
Hannan on Clegg
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100029528/will-the-real-nick-clegg-please-stand-up/
Still, could be worse. How about ‘Vote Darling Get Balls’? said Richard Nabavi.
Would be better put as “Vote Darling, end up Ballsed…”
369, can’t you get an exercise bike?
372, my own weight seems entirely unrelated to what I do. I was very underweight at school, then put on a stone overnight, then a ew years later put on another stone. I’m now about 10st.
370 - Fine you are making the argument that people should have the choice to pay insurance, and if they choose not to they run the risk of losing all their assets.
I’m just adding a third choice that people should be allowed to delay payment of the insurance (plus inflation) until their house is sold when they die.
By making the choice between options 1 and 3 compulsory it would stop the need for situation 2 to happen.
But if you insist on that then I’m not too bothered, most rational people would take the insurance option but disagree when they want to pay it.
Vote Labour get Balls ?
376 drink, gauranteed to make a man want to suck, ruck or f*ck, depending on his pecadillo.
+++ BETTING POST +++
It’s that time again.. an AR poll about to be released.
Time to plunder the Overall Majority market on Betfair and make some trading profit, by betting on the Conservatives and laying NOM.
Current back prices are 1.70 Conservatives and 2.86 NOM.
Expect Conservative’s price to fall and NOM to lengthen om the news from the poll, which appears heavily out of synch wioth all the other polls in Comservative’s favour.
377 - Personal vanity is my main aim. I want to be able to get back into my 32inch waist trousers without losing buttons and damaging the old baby makers.
I bet Mike weights up the Labour share
Not everyone owns a property or has assets to cover the cost.What happens to them..
382. Why does it have to be compulsary ?
378 - Thats a different argument, that current taxes should pay for free long term care for everyone without an individual contribution.
I think that is SWP policy but no one else’s.
385. ramp alert
AR does not move the market much from experience.
We’ll see though.
384 - Well when I was a member of the rugby club, i often sucked, rucked and erm fcuked in the same day.
361. I would scrap IHT altogether personally, it is an inherently wicked tax
Utter cobblers. It is the FAIREST tax there is.
343 TSE worrying about 4 lbs will be the least of your issues.
In about a years time you will realise that spare time was something you can now only dream about, your diet will consist of baby food and takeaway and exercise is only taken to try and quieten the kids down. Your back will be permanently sore from leaning over to change nappies in awkward places, your hands will be chapped from permanent washing, your clothes are covered in various detrious from the kids, you are permanently tired but can’t sleep, sex happens only by accident and results in further “little” accidents, your car smells like a cess pit…. etc etc.
Welcome to fatherhood. 4lbs is a good nights drinking and you have no idea what that is like anymore.
Enjoy it. Remember in 35 years they may have left home.
YouGov
Interesting reaction to GB on Chilcot Enquiry - thinks he should be recalled
http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/TheSun-results_10.03-topical.pdf
Also last night’s poll results are up.
Labour not favoured for improvement for education, crime reduction, immigration and economy.
http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/TheSun-results_10.03-trackers.pdf
307: Richard N - sure, a reasoned discussion is good, but perhaps the exception rather than the rule here. Personally I just have to plead pressure of time - where there’s a direct conflict between discussing policy with constituents and discussing it with pb.com, the constituents have to win. Proper discussion takes more time than I can spend on pb.com.
FWIW this has pretty much everything I’ve ever said about anything, with a search facility…
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BroxtoweInfo/messages
389 TGHF
why are we accepting something framed in the Labour spending mantra ?
why is the first question not “what’s happened to all the money money we gave you, why is that not being used for old-age care ?”
Just how many times over do people in this country have to pay for the same service ?
392, I posted a similar post before the last AR poll TGOHF, as URW will remember, as he disagreed with me and later was gracious enough to acknowledge that I had called it correctly.
We shall see.
393..Why is that BenM?
365, jesus, with a diet like that, you wont just live longer, it’ll feel a lot longer.
I see no place for a chip buttie in such a regiment.
393. Correct Ben - it is the fairest tax - if you are Nu Labour.
Client voters (lower class) don’t pay it
Middle class (evil Tories) pay up in spades
The rich, wealthy and fabulous don’t pay it by using clever accountants and hence have money left over to donate to Labour.
Simples !
392 good man!!
393 If you believe in socialism, I am sure its a beaut of a tax.
I think it is inherently wicked and the state has no place taking from the dead.
Any tax which is not universal cannot be the fairest by the way - ‘fair’ is a subjective viewpoint and everyone will have a differing opinion on where and at what level it shoudl kick in.
By definition, spending taxes are the fairest taxes. A flat income tax would be fairer still. Just nmot everyone’s cup of tea
Yes I asked for an ignore button too.
393 BenM
why ? how ?
Britain’s first female director of hardcore porn films Anna Arrowsmith selected to fight Gravesham for LD.
Her twitter message about her selection: “From porn to Parliament, here I come!”
399.
Because it makes the next generation give something back to society from a wholly unearned windfall.
399. The dead don’t vote (outside Glenrothes)
309. Post should have referred to 391.
401.
That’s just an argument for closing avoidance loopholes and nothing else.
404, maybe she’ll stiffen Nick Clegg’s resolve. Harden the Lib Dem foot soldiers. Ride the wave of popularity. Give her political opponents a damned good seeing to. Attack her foes in debates with an expert tongue lashing.
405..What on earth makes you think its unearned..
400 — some people like sex and flirting more than food. And for this, you gotta be slim and fit. I personally find eating to be quite boring. Unless it’s a dinner with friends, of course. But this doesn’t happen more than twice or thrice a week.
407. Ok budgie - I will place a fantasy £1 on the cons at 1.7 - lets see what my return is by this time tomorrow.
Liam Byrne says they will spell out the entirety of the deficit reduction plan by the budget, including more info on departmental spending but not a CSR (sorry, NPMP, this is my way of cavilling).
This is surely a massive hostage to fortune?
It enables the Tories and LDs to selectively pick and choose fiscal flanks on which to attack - and “go further” in cuts with unpopular things like ID cards or non-considered things like the census.
405 BenM
so why then would people save to pass on money to their kids, or help them out ? Why not just blow it all ? And if there is no saving where does the money come from for investments and pensions ?
386. TSE , It is downhill all the way now. You will be looking for elastic waistbands shortly.
414 exactamundo - Labour, the party of waste, no savings and living for today. Let the future die for a vote today.
TSE
I have been roughly the same weight - 70kgs for the past 35 years.. After stopping exercise when I graduated and had 7 exercise free years, I went on a regime of careful eating - diet when you put on ANY weight - daily running pressups,situps and yoga.
Works for me…
Daily running has unfortunately running every second day due to old age.. still do 20 miles/week…
413 I was very surprised by Byrne - I assume it’s a way of attempting to flush out the Tories.
Ozzy needs to be VERY careful about the elephant trap that has no doubt been planned.
292: “‘Sir John Chilcot does not rule out recalling Brown to the Iraq Inquiry in letter to Liam Fox’”
Well, that says it all. For months the Tories have been dilly dallying about, letting Labour smear and deceive whilst Brown’s wrecked economy and the rest of his evil work goes unmentioned. Then Chilcot allows Dr Fox his first opportunity in ages and what happens? The good doctor engineers Brown’s public disgrace and possibly his lethal humiliation. If the rest of the Tories were only as formidable as Fox we’d now be wondering what seats Labour were likely to hold. Fox rocks!
405. What about encouraging people to save? Considering the debt-fuelled economic bubble we have just seen burst, isn’t that a more more pragmatic policy than your fluffy notion of ‘giving something back’.
412 — Ghost.
I think budgie’s right — personally, I think I’ve placed bet on COM (Conservative Overall Majority, ok!) after every AR poll since the beginning of the year!
400. Notme, You do not live any longer , it just feels that way. Better to enjoy your life and have a chip buttie and a few beers now and again , in moderation.
422 amen to that Malcolm. A little of what you fancy does you good.
414.
You’ll find that most people do end up shrinking their estate in retirement to fund all sorts of adventures or otherwise.
This is a large reason why only 6pc of estates - mainly very wealthy ones, despite the Tory myth - actually pay the tax.
393 BenM
Why is it fairer to tax assets rather than income?
A genuine query.
If I earn £30000 after income tax and NI, and spend it all, I pay £5250 in VAT in extra tax.
If I save it all, my estate pays £12000 in extra tax in real terms when I die, assuming it grows with inflation.
This encourages spending and discourages saving. Do you believe that is a good thing?
For the record, I don’t like the Tory’s IHT cut proposal. The money raised by taxing non-doms should be used to pay off the deficit, not for this.
However, in the abstract, I favour higher thresholds for IHT for the savings vs spending message it sends. Why don’t you?
As an almost full time lurker, I fit into the mold of the majority of voting Tory but from one of the normally wilder fringes of being a devotee of Dan Hannan. I wasn’t old enough to vote in the last GE.
Great website though, with mostly good humoured banter in the comments, but the chances of more than one or two people changing their mind about politics is slim to none, partly because both sides tend to have one or two people who appear to be twitching and foaming at the mouth.
I would wonder if a good reason for the centre-right dominance on here is because a majority or posters live in more rural areas, rather than cities, based on the fairly wide-spread support for fox-hunting…
The problem we face these days is that the old and infirm are looked upon as a burden and that their family assume that they have a God-given right to inherit their parents wealth. The Government should encourage the family to look after their elderly relatives in their own home and pay a PROPER tax free carers allowance to do so…rather than bucketing cash into private care homes where they’ll probably be looked after less well.
416. Learn the economics of the “paradox of thrift”.
If no one spent anything, there would be no economy!
426, welcome to pb posting
418: ‘I was very surprised by Byrne - I assume it’s a way of attempting to flush out the Tories.’
The Treasury (Darling and Byrne) are in a turf war with Number 10 (Brown and Balls). Byrne has been making macho cutting noises for some time to humiliate Gordon and Ed, who’ve been fuming in silence and plotting their retaliation. When the retaliation comes it will be brutal, frightening and swift and Alistair and Liam won’t stand a chance.
424 BenM
I don’t think I will find that. I think I will find that people get taxed on earned income, if they save that income their interest\dividends get taxed again. And now after it’s been taxed twice you want to tax it again. I think I’ll find that with any new taxation what starts off at being aimed at the “rich” quickly ends up coming down the scale and hitting everyone.
416 Dyed in the wool
Good point. I don’t feed trolls but the mendacious distortion in the troll response is indicative of the truthlessness in our socialist kommissariat.
428. Anyone got a pointy hat with a “D” on the front ?
428 BenM
and when you max out on your credit card limit and can borrow no more then the economy also stops. Only it’s worse, you still have to pay the money back so the economic inactivity lasts longer.
428 of course, but there needs to be an encouragement to save in tandem with usual expenditure.
You seem to be suggesting that I am saying nothing should be spent at all which would be a clearly absurd position to take. It is no more valid to argue from that premise than it is for me to ask someone when they stopped beating their wife.
New thread up.
405:Because it makes the next generation give something back to society from a wholly unearned windfall.
Eh what? That comes from a blinkered and naive view that all wealth is ‘unearned’ and a ‘windfall’. Wealth can be generated, and taxed upon during its generation.
432 hehe, indeed!
280, 294 IMO party political point-scoring is a major turn-off as far as this site is concerned. There are very few uncommitted people here and nothing is achieved by those who call posts drivel, cr*p etc etc. More reasoned debate and less mud slinging would make the site much more attractive and, perhaps, even more influential.
429. Not as hard as I expected!
431.
I think I will find that people get taxed on earned income, if they save that income their interest\dividends get taxed again. And now after it’s been taxed twice you want to tax it again.
With IHT, you are dead. So who cares?
Legally the estate gets taxed, but in the end it is the recipients of the inheritance that have to suffer the reduction in value that flows from the tax itself. And they haven’t earned a penny of the windfall. Hence why IHT is fair.
I think I’ll find that with any new taxation what starts off at being aimed at the “rich” quickly ends up coming down the scale and hitting everyone.
I think you’re talking nonsense.
442 BenM
well I do for a start. I would save less and pass money around differently if I thought it was going to be commandeered by the state.
Your observation on how laws are applied are naive in the extreme. You only have to track how tax bands have not been indexed to see how the higher tax rate has made it’s way in to middle incomes. The new thread shows the huge decline in Labour’s economic competence. Your answers confirm it.
443. well I do for a start.
From beyond the grave?!!!
444 BenM
many people plan their financial affairs. That you don’t appear to recognise the concept speaks volumes.
444BenM…as long as your giro is delivered then its all ok eh..
Ref the Death Tax, I wonder how many of those that pay out £8,000 at 65 will live to finish up in a Home?
In my family both my mother and father died at home, in my wifes her mum died at home, while her father died in a Home at 93.
While he was in there he/we paid nothing as he required treatment.
Just before he died they said he no longer required this treatment, and would start charging. He had been in there for 3 years.
So I wonder at present how many of the people that die, are in homes, and of those how may are not paying as they do not own their home, and have savings of under £22,000.
I found the on Google from the States.
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, slightly over 5 percent of the 65+ population occupy nursing homes, congregate care, assisted living, and board-and-care homes, and about 4.2 percent are in nursing homes at any given time. The rate of nursing home use increases with age from 1.4 percent of the young-old to 24.5 percent of the oldest-old. Almost 50 percent of those 95 and older live in nursing homes.
In the UK
In 2004, an estimated 410,000 older people lived in residential and nursing homes across the UK.
>>205.How come the stock markets are doing so well, when economies all over the world are in dire dire trouble? <<
That’s easy. One word. Bubble.
If you’ve got five minutes then please fill in the survey by clicking here.
Am I exceptionally slow-witted or is simply always the case that online surveys always take at least twice as long to complete as claimed and often three-four times as long.
I love it when participating in a phone survey and the interviwer says it will take no longer than say five minutes, maximum. I tell him he’s got five and a half minutes to allow for any hesitation, deviation, etc on my part.
After 5 minutes I tell him he has 30 seconds left, at the end of which I politely say “goodbye” and replace the handset.
449. I ahve done face to face surveys that have lasted more then 90 minutes…..
410
What about Mark Oaten.
406
‘Because it makes the next generation give something back to society from a wholly unearned windfall.’
Surely it works both ways?
They will already be giving plenty back in terms of the massive debts they will be paying off due to this governments mess.