Should you require assistance to repel Ukip I shall naturally rally the Jacobite hordes in Hersham's hour of need.
Sadly the news chez Jack W is dire. A vast LibDem winning here triangle has sprouted in Redbourn and reports of massed ranks of bearded ones infiltrating within 2 miles are not to be taken lightly !!
I fear Hamish and Moira McBonkers (those Jacobites hordes in full) may not be sufficient. In such a dire emergency I may also have to invoke those mad impetuous Passionaras of noble chivalry, Andrea and Neil, as the ultimate weapons of mass obstruction. The barbarian kippers shall not pass.
John O, is it down to personalities, or are there real policy differences?
Oh, the latter but less ideological - they stick together with remarkable discipline but are a real rag, tag and bobtail bunch of opportunists in practice. They love to portray themselves as unsullied by national politics and only guided by the welfare of local residents, but this is entirely spurious.
Much of their attraction is historic (in an ultra safe Tory constituency) and stretches back into the deep mists of time pre 1974 when the independents were strong in the old Esher Urban District Council. From 1992 until 2006 they ran Elmbridge.
Nothing surprising about either CCHQ feeding these stories to the tory press or the panic it reveals in it's last minute nature.
Some of us knew this was inevitable nor is it the first instance since a book by Farage was also culled for anything damaging then fed to the tory press with the resurfacing of quotes from his memoirs and comments on what he is alleged to have said about ethnic minority voters.
You add to that Dacre and the Mail going after Farage's son and the stories about lapdancing and you would have to be a tory spinner of near perfect incompetence not to see the obvious.
For those still struggling to grasp it, who was it who said UKIP was full of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists?"
The amusing thing is that most of what the right wing press are using to attack the kippers is the kind of thing they thrive on with so many stories and commentators on their papers running basically the same kind of things albeit with more polish. Adding to the irony those papers comment threads are filled with precisely the same kind of views they now seem to be having a problem with. Which points to this inept concerted attack's biggest flaw. It's hugely unlikely to upset UKIP voters very much or stop many from voting UKIP.
As for Farage himself, I suspect he will be laughing pretty hard come May the 3rd. Particularly when you consider the types of story about the likes of Boris that have singularly failed to hamper his ability to to do well electorally either. The incompetent fops were not above briefing against Boris either yet that Cammie and Osbrowne master strategy was about as effective as this will one be.
Hows the dating going, as you've got no kids so far you've generated two immigrants in 20 years time. It's either that or Mr Jones' aryan robot's and a Japanese future. So get shagging and stop whining.
Do you have any kids, tim? Seems you don't spend much time with them....
Shapps is a dreadful dreadful manager of CCHQ though. The Tories need someone boring who is process driven. Someone who ran a business and understand how to manage a large bureaucracy.
Shapps just chases headlines which is exactly the wrong approach.
Hows the dating going, as you've got no kids so far you've generated two immigrants in 20 years time. It's either that or Mr Jones' aryan robot's and a Japanese future. So get shagging and stop whining.
Do you have any kids, tim? Seems you don't spend much time with them....
"Alive to the threat, the most marginal Conservatives in parliament have set up the “40 group” – 40 men and women who will fight the next election with exceptionally narrow majorities – to ensure that the leadership listens to the needs of its most vulnerable MPs. “It’s the club that nobody wants to be in,” jokes Rudd, a prominent member of the group founded by Warrington South MP David Mowat, who has a majority of 1,553. Understandably anxious colleagues include Eric Ollerenshaw, MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, with a majority of 333, and Dan Byles, who scraped in for North Warwickshire and Bedworth by just 54 votes.
The 40 swap ideas, network and act as a kind of counselling service for each other. They get some leeway with the whips to be excused from votes so they can focus on their constituencies; Conservative central office also gives them more money for campaigning.
This week will be the first big reality check for Rudd and her colleagues in marginal seats as Britons go to the polls in 35 councils in England and Wales. More than 2,400 council seats are up for grabs in what will be spun as a big dress rehearsal for 2015. The Tories are defending 1,459 seats against just 273 for Labour. Even the most optimistic Conservatives are mentally preparing for a loss of several hundred councillors. The Tories will blame the defeat on the “midterm blues” that befall all governing parties – but privately the party is panicking.
The idea that UKIPs rise and the threat they represent being somehow just normal "midterm blues" is laughable. The tory spinners pushing that line had better find something far more convincing fast.
After consulting with Grant Shapps, I've been instructed to say the following.
I was accessing PB on my phone, and I was having some issues with the site, posts seem to run into the links on the right hand side.
As I was trying to resolve this issue, I must have inadvertently hit the disagree button on your post, I don't use the disagree button, I do apologise if your feelings were hurt by this.
Anyone else having this issue, I've tweeted a picture of the issues I'm having viewing the site.
I have just been nice to you and agreed with your post on UKIP baiting.
No more acorns for you tonight.
Which aspect Seth? The panic it reveals in the timing or the counterproductive nature of it?
Point being UKIP are too big a vote now for this kind of lazy stuff to work and there is in fact only one realistic way of mitigating UKIP now for the tories. But do you know what it is? You should.
After consulting with Grant Shapps, I've been instructed to say the following.
I was accessing PB on my phone, and I was having some issues with the site, posts seem to run into the links on the right hand side.
As I was trying to resolve this issue, I must have inadvertently hit the disagree button on your post, I don't use the disagree button, I do apologise if your feelings were hurt by this.
Anyone else having this issue, I've tweeted a picture of the issues I'm having viewing the site.
Theres now a link between absence of MMR and Toryism, not worth the risk.
Has anyone done a genuine study on the parents who refused to give their children MMR for non-medical reasons? Are they spread evenly throughout the social strata, or are they concentrated in the middle or lower classes?
There's surely a very useful study to be done there, for use the next time the media accentuate a scare.
Hows the dating going, as you've got no kids so far you've generated two immigrants in 20 years time. It's either that or Mr Jones' aryan robot's and a Japanese future. So get shagging and stop whining.
It's going ok, and I'll do what I like, thanks.
I know you think mass immigration is the cure for all society's ills, and that warped statistics are seductive to the man in the street, but you would probably have more luck geting people to vote Labour if you conceded other people had a point now and then. Its a sign of insecurity never to admit being wrong x
This anti UKIP propaganda will not work. On the contrary. It just shows that some people are afraid of them.
- Brat, Bruton, 27/4/2013 14:38 Click to rate Rating 841
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the Daily Mail smear campaign begins
- pockets, Gravesend, 27/4/2013 14:37 Click to rate Rating 747
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There will ba a campaign to discredit UKIP - because the Tories for one know that the rise in UKIPs vote means curtains ro them at the next election as its mainly their voters who will switch. So hes shaking hands with this guy - politicians shake hands with people all the time without knowing anything about them. I havent voted for years but Im voting UKIP next. Enjoy your day in the sun, but get ready for a long winter Cameron
- AliB, Lancashire, United Kingdom, 27/4/2013 14:37 Click to rate Rating 657
Mr. Jessop, there was a brief discussion here of it. The numbers were low, but UKIP were likely to have concerns (but nevertheless immunise more, I think, than any other party). Lib Dems had a lower rate of concern but also of coverage, I think.
I have just been nice to you and agreed with your post on UKIP baiting.
No more acorns for you tonight.
Which aspect Seth? The panic it reveals in the timing or the counterproductive nature of it?
Point being UKIP are too big a vote now for this kind of lazy stuff to work and there is in fact only one realistic way of mitigating UKIP now for the tories. But do you know what it is? You should.
After consulting with Grant Shapps, I've been instructed to say the following.
I was accessing PB on my phone, and I was having some issues with the site, posts seem to run into the links on the right hand side.
As I was trying to resolve this issue, I must have inadvertently hit the disagree button on your post, I don't use the disagree button, I do apologise if your feelings were hurt by this.
Anyone else having this issue, I've tweeted a picture of the issues I'm having viewing the site.
I have just been nice to you and agreed with your post on UKIP baiting.
No more acorns for you tonight.
Which aspect Seth? The panic it reveals in the timing or the counterproductive nature of it?
Point being UKIP are too big a vote now for this kind of lazy stuff to work and there is in fact only one realistic way of mitigating UKIP now for the tories. But do you know what it is? You should.
Photoshop?
To change the polling and local election results I presume. Shapps/Green may just be the man for that job. But no, I'd be intrigued to see if Seth has worked it out yet. It's not rocket science but it's also not risk free and has it's own problems.
Mr. Jessop, there was a brief discussion here of it. The numbers were low, but UKIP were likely to have concerns (but nevertheless immunise more, I think, than any other party). Lib Dems had a lower rate of concern but also of coverage, I think.
Cheers, although I was thinking more of what social groups need targeting with an information campaign when it happens again. And it will.
Ed Miliband has put the shadow cabinet on guard for an autumn reshuffle with a series of warnings that the party cannot afford any ill-discipline or coasting in the buildup to the 2015 general election.
Sources close to the Labour leader say Miliband is likely to make significant changes to his frontbench team after the autumn party conference in Brighton in September.
Michael Dugher, the party vice-chairman who has Miliband's ear, addressed Labour parliamentary private secretaries last week, telling them they would all be under intense scrutiny from the Tories for the next 18 months to two years. Conservative officials have been scouring opposition MPs' Twitter accounts as they attempt to unearth damaging or embarrassing material about them.
I have just been nice to you and agreed with your post on UKIP baiting.
No more acorns for you tonight.
Which aspect Seth? The panic it reveals in the timing or the counterproductive nature of it?
Point being UKIP are too big a vote now for this kind of lazy stuff to work and there is in fact only one realistic way of mitigating UKIP now for the tories. But do you know what it is? You should.
It was only an agreement in general, Pork. It would be too much a leap of faith to agree on all particulars, especially when you single out two of the more contentious for confirmation approval. And I am not falling for your trick of asking me if I want to share your acorns.
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone is far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Leninism was flawed and could be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders. We don't know how the cards will fall any more than the Warsaw pact countries knew in 1988. All that is certain is that new opportunities will arise.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
I can't also help that this last minute attack on UKIP is just like the last minute attack on clegg at the last election.
To little to late.
The Mail's infamous Clegg as a Nazi hilarity being one of the 'best'. That should be a sobering lesson to anyone who thinks such desperate attacks have much currency any more. The electorate can go where it likes for information these days and papers who forget their job is to sell papers, not push a party line, are going to suffer ever more.
HA! Yet more messing around on twitter and facebook. Maybe the Tories should work out how to run an election rather than trying to recreate a student election strategy!
"In essence, there is NO benefit and real risk to giving single jabs due to reduced uptake. As a doctor I can say I would find it unethical to offer an alternative I know to be inferior to what is now offered. Non-inferiority is a key principle of introducing any new treatment. I have absolutely zero interest in perpetuating ambiguity that was created by a fraudster in the first place who was quite rightly struck off for what he did."
Check out the unhinged comments
It depends on how you define inferior. The focus on the combined MMR jab, whilst intellectually the correct thing to do, has led to decidedly inferior results in Swansea.
Would things be better now if a single measles jab had been given, to at least give parents coverage of that disease? Would such a course of action have helped now, or would it have encouraged more parents not to take the combined jab, and a consequent lower take-up on the Rubella vaccine as well?
But Blair deserves a big slapping for this. Especially as Cherie admitted a few years later that Leo had had the jab. I guess her love of quackery did not extend that far.
(Note that aside from a couple of weeks after that article was written in Private Eye, I have been a firm supporter of the MMR jab.)
(Edit: and yes, the comments under the article are very nutty).
"In essence, there is NO benefit and real risk to giving single jabs due to reduced uptake. As a doctor I can say I would find it unethical to offer an alternative I know to be inferior to what is now offered. Non-inferiority is a key principle of introducing any new treatment. I have absolutely zero interest in perpetuating ambiguity that was created by a fraudster in the first place who was quite rightly struck off for what he did."
Check out the unhinged comments
An open debate with no party whip.. thats why we love em!
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
No Seth, it is not. You have gratifyingly managed to land on precisely the wrong way to deal with UKIP. Those councillors up for grabs on the 2nd are not some trifling annoyance but part of the backbone of activist operations for all the parties. The tories can no more afford to write them off than can the lib dems. In a GOTV operation for marginals they are going to matter. UKIP will finally get a decent toehold in places where they have struggled and have something to work with. That is not the same as being able to fully harness that advance but it sure as hell is better than the alternative.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone if far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Lenism was flawed and coud be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
So lets enjoy the fruitcakes while they last.
I don't know how you manage is Seth but yet again you arrive at one of the exact things that should give the tories nightmares rather than any comfort whatsoever.
It's not the tories most animated by the possibilty of an EU implosion or another massive crisis ( which is far from assured) it is UKIP. That's one of their core issues and the tories cannot outflank them on it.
What do you suppose any huge new crisis would do to the gaping fault line between IN and OUT in the tory party? Here's a clue Seth, it certainly won't heal it.
I am pleased to see a new LibDem focus leaflet today. There is a bar chart at last (pointing out that Labour cannot win here!) but sadly no sign of a beard on the candidate. With four days to go there could at least be some stubble.
Still nothing from the other candidates, so two nil to the LibDems.
It depends on how you define inferior. The focus on the combined MMR jab, whilst intellectually the correct thing to do, has led to decidedly inferior results in Swansea.
You're flat wrong there, the press campaign in the area predated the Wakefield fraud, an ambulance chasing solicitor and a press campaign in one area should've led to the NHS changing it's policy and using inferior,unresearched triply expensive jabs with worse coverage?
Firstly, links please.
Secondly, there were scares about the single jabs dating back to the 1970s. Are these what you are referring to?
Thirdly, perhaps it should have changed the NHS policies, especially when the concerns spread in the late 1990s/early 2000s. It might have led to this outbreak not occurring (with the added risk of mumps and rubella outbreaks).
Fourthly, you should answer my point about Blair: I can understand the argument about their not mentioning Leo's status, even if I disagreed with it. But why did Cherie then mention that status a few years later?
Fifthly, can I enquire about your background on immunology? Do you have any professional background knowledge, or are you, like myself on many topics, a Google warrior?
So! As I gathered this morning, it's an all out attack by Sun, Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail and now the Guardian/Observer on UKIP. Can the metropolitan elite of the Con/Lab/LD party be so scared of UKIP? Yes they can. They are literally sh*tting themselves and the more they smear, so the more they are covering themselves in the muck.
Will this damage UKIP? Not from the remarks by the majority of the readers writing in to those newspapers. Most are simply disgusted by the fascist tactics of distortion, lies and scare stories by the MSP's and MSM.
Has anyone done a genuine study on the parents who refused to give their children MMR for non-medical reasons? Are they spread evenly throughout the social strata, or are they concentrated in the middle or lower classes?
According to the poll Mike was trumpeting the other day the main concentration of those refusing to give their children the MMR appears to be Lib Dem voters.
I found this on Twitter (here) purporting to be a campaign leaflet for a 'David Nixon', UKIP candidate in Dudley, Staffs (?) I have not been able to independently verify this. I note only that a candidate by that name purported to resign last year from UKIP (here) but as you can see the leaflet is clearly current (presumably he changed his mind):
The coalition government approx. two years ago gave £100,000 of your money to create a Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Unit in Strasbourg.
Explicit sex education is occurring in our children's schools. When the 'Gay Marriage Bill' becomes law, explicit 'Homosexual Sex Education' will have to be taught to keep schools within the law of the 2010 Equality Bill. In 2011 £203,508 of you money was given by Con/LibDem coalition to further promote homosexual education in schools.
Teachers who cannot teach that homosexuality is an equal lifestyle to heterosexuality will be sacked.
Although the legal age of consent in the UK is 16, you will be aware that prosecutions are rarely brought when the victims are 13 to 15 year olds. On 'equality' grounds, the homosexual abuse of children will be treated in a similar way.
David Cameron stated before the last election that he had no plans to redefine marriage. Another 'Cast Iron' guarantee broken!
Realising the impossibility of redefining 'consummation' and 'adultery' in a homosexual content' the government have said that 'gay marriages' won't need consummation and that a party in a 'gay marriage' can only commit adultery with a member of the opposite sex! What a farce!
If he were my candidate, and this is his leaflet, he would not receive my vote.
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
No Seth, it is not. You have gratifyingly managed to land on precisely the wrong way to deal with UKIP. Those councillors up for grabs on the 2nd are not some trifling annoyance but part of the backbone of activist operations for all the parties. The tories can no more afford to write them off than can the lib dems. In a GOTV operation for marginals they are going to matter. UKIP will finally get a decent toehold in places where they have struggled and have something to work with. That is not the same as being able to fully harness that advance but it sure as hell is better than the alternative.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone if far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Lenism was flawed and coud be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
So lets enjoy the fruitcakes while they last.
I don't know how you manage is Seth but yet again you arrive at one of the exact things that should give the tories nightmares rather than any comfort whatsoever.
It's not the tories most animated by the possibilty of an EU implosion or another massive crisis ( which is far from assured) it is UKIP. That's one of their core issues and the tories cannot outflank them on it.
What do you suppose any huge new crisis would do to the gaping fault line between IN and OUT in the tory party? Here's a clue Seth, it certainly won't heal it.
Pork
I am not going to fisk each point you make but I have two general points to make in rebuttal.
UKIP and the Lib Dems are entirely different kinds of threats at local government level. The Lib Dems are well organised, locally focussed, tenacious and consensual. It is the party's greatest strength. The reason why Keith House not Nick Clegg won the Eastleigh by election. UKIP at a local level is the diametric opposite of the Lib Dems.
A crisis unites rather than divides a country. When the Eurozone implodes what will be needed is competent and supportive intervention not combative isolationism. The main parties will benefit from such crisis, mostly the Tories because of their ambivalent but historic scepticism, in the same way that Churchill's personal anti-appeasement stance in the 1930s qualified him for leadership of a Wartime National coalition. Of all the politicians on the current stage, the one the country would most trust to negotiate a new settlement both with and in Europe would be William Hague. And please don't take this as a tip that Willy will become PM.
John Sullivan, a UK councillor candidate congratulated Russia on banning gay Pride marches and claimed regular exercise in schools can prevent homosexuality. In a series of Facebook posts, Sullivan, who is a member of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) likened gay activists to termites and stated that feminism is evil and being gay is even worse.
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
No Seth, it is not. You have gratifyingly managed to land on precisely the wrong way to deal with UKIP. Those councillors up for grabs on the 2nd are not some trifling annoyance but part of the backbone of activist operations for all the parties. The tories can no more afford to write them off than can the lib dems. In a GOTV operation for marginals they are going to matter. UKIP will finally get a decent toehold in places where they have struggled and have something to work with. That is not the same as being able to fully harness that advance but it sure as hell is better than the alternative.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone if far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Lenism was flawed and coud be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
So lets enjoy the fruitcakes while they last.
I don't know how you manage is Seth but yet again you arrive at one of the exact things that should give the tories nightmares rather than any comfort whatsoever.
It's not the tories most animated by the possibilty of an EU implosion or another massive crisis ( which is far from assured) it is UKIP. That's one of their core issues and the tories cannot outflank them on it.
What do you suppose any huge new crisis would do to the gaping fault line between IN and OUT in the tory party? Here's a clue Seth, it certainly won't heal it.
Pork
I am not going to fisk each point you make but I have two general points to make in rebuttal.
UKIP and the Lib Dems are entirely different kinds of threats at local government level. The Lib Dems are well organised, locally focussed, tenacious and consensual. It is the party's greatest strength. The reason why Keith House not Nick Clegg won the Eastleigh by election. UKIP at a local level is the diametric opposite of the Lib Dems.
A crisis unites rather than divides a country. When the Eurozone implodes what will be needed is competent and supportive intervention not combative isolationism. The main parties will benefit from such crisis, mostly the Tories because of their ambivalent but historic scepticism, in the same way that Churchill's personal anti-appeasement stance in the 1930s qualified him for leadership of a Wartime National coalition. Of all the politicians on the current stage, the one the country would most trust to negotiate a new settlement both with and in Europe would be William Hague. And please don't take this as a tip that Willy will become PM.
Mr Pole, it's pointless arguing, you're casting pearls before swine, why not do something constructive and enjoy The Rezillos, still one of the better things to come out of Edinburgh.
It does indeed reveal panic particularly from the tories but UKIP should also not get carried away.
This does show that the Kippers have graduated from being a fringe party who can safely be ignored to a real threat. However, being the occasional target of the press is what the big three have been dealing with for decades. Now that UKIP make the big league they had better get used to it and start operating with far more professionalism since this is hardly going to be the last time they find themselves under attack. No matter how desperate the timing of this attack makes it look, no serious political party can ever afford to give their opponents easy and unnecessary ammunition.
I fully expect Farage to gather his new arrivals from May the 2nd and lay down the law to them. No hostages to fortune, no shooting your mouth off without considering how it impacts on your party, that kind of thing. If he fails to do so or they don't listen then there will come a time when this can't simply all be blamed on bad press. Politicians who constantly blame the press, if it is obvious that the fault is with with them, never prosper. Genuine bad treatment from the press is usually self-evident as is a politician seeking to hide behind the press as an excuse that when the treatment is merited.
Maybe the Telegraph, Mail and Sun need to stop for a minute and ponder why they've spent the last 12 months attacking Cameron.
They know perfectly well that there are only two choices at the GE - Cameron or Miliband. And the more time they spend attacking Cameron the more likely they are to get Miliband.
If they hadn't thrown their toys out of the pram over the last 12 months they wouldn't need to be attacking UKIP so much now at the last minute - as UKIP wouldn't have got as far as they have.
Hopefully they will have got the message and now realise what to do for the next 2 years.
Agreed Mick. It is worth pointing out that the UKIP have long been aware of this and unlike the other parties do actually get their prospective candidates to confirm they have never been members of BNP.
Of course the reason for that is that when dealing with issues of immigration UKIP have to be more careful than the other parties as they are more vocal about it. Still, we know from past experience that the Tories particularly have nothing to be proud of when it comes to councillors with dodgy views.
There are many reasons to be concerned about the rise of smart consumer networks. But the Mail's taken the wrong angle: the main reason for concern would be that people like Mrs J design the chips behind them, and people like me write the code. ;-)
But in all seriousness, perhaps there'd be less chance of energy shortages if Miliband had actually done his job whilst in charge of DECC?
@Mick_Pork For once I fully agree with you. There is no doubt that if UKIP do well on May 2nd they will have entered the big league of political parties. The main problem with UKIP is that organisationally it is still weak and they will have deal with this on a national basis asap after the elections.
UKIP and the Lib Dems are entirely different kinds of threats at local government level. The Lib Dems are well organised, locally focussed, tenacious and consensual. It is the party's greatest strength. The reason why Keith House not Nick Clegg won the Eastleigh by election. UKIP at a local level is the diametric opposite of the Lib Dems.
A nice easy straw man for you to blunder behind to start with, Seth. At no point have I said UKIP represent the same threat as the lib dems. Yet even to you it should be self-evident that the local organisation and tenacious activism the lib dems can deploy does not emerge from a vacuum but is built up over time and fostered by a very real and very advantageous local council representation. UKIP making a start on that bodes well for them. The other parties tasking a massive hit on it does not bode well for them.
A crisis unites rather than divides a country. When the Eurozone implodes what will be needed is competent and supportive intervention not combative isolationism. The main parties will benefit from such crisis, mostly the Tories because of their ambivalent but historic scepticism, in the same way that Churchill's personal anti-appeasement stance in the 1930s qualified him for leadership of a Wartime National coalition. Of all the politicians on the current stage, the one the country would most trust to negotiate a new settlement both with and in Europe would be William Hague. And please don't take this as a tip that Willy will become PM.
You appear to know very little about the tory party and Europe with that kind of laughable platitude filled pablum. Did the first Eurozone crisis strike you as a particularly unifiying force for the tory party? Did UKIP strike you as being overly upset when it happened?
If there's another EU crisis it will simply focus the public's attention on an issue UKIP are desperate to have a constant spotlight on and a policy area which has torn the tory party apart for decades.
The banking crisis was an economic catastrophe far closer to home than any EU one yet Brown still lost. Try harder Seth, this is poor fare from you.
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
No Seth, it is not. You have gratifyingly managed to land on precisely the wrong way to deal with UKIP. Those councillors up for grabs on the 2nd are not some trifling annoyance but part of the backbone of activist operations for all the parties. The tories can no more afford to write them off than can the lib dems. In a GOTV operation for marginals they are going to matter. UKIP will finally get a decent toehold in places where they have struggled and have something to work with. That is not the same as being able to fully harness that advance but it sure as hell is better than the alternative.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone if far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Lenism was flawed and coud be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
So lets enjoy the fruitcakes while they last.
I don't know how you manage is Seth but yet again you arrive at one of the exact things that should give the tories nightmares rather than any comfort whatsoever.
It's not the tories most animated by the possibilty of an EU implosion or another massive crisis ( which is far from assured) it is UKIP. That's one of their core issues and the tories cannot outflank them on it.
What do you suppose any huge new crisis would do to the gaping fault line between IN and OUT in the tory party? Here's a clue Seth, it certainly won't heal it.
Pork
I am not going to fisk each point you make but I have two general points to make in rebuttal.
UKIP and the Lib Dems are entirely different kinds of threats at local government level. The Lib Dems are well organised, locally focussed, tenacious and consensual. It is the party's greatest strength. The reason why Keith House not Nick Clegg won the Eastleigh by election. UKIP at a local level is the diametric opposite of the Lib Dems.
A crisis unites rather than divides a country. When the Eurozone implodes what will be needed is competent and supportive intervention not combative isolationism. The main parties will benefit from such crisis, mostly the Tories because of their ambivalent but historic scepticism, in the same way that Churchill's personal anti-appeasement stance in the 1930s qualified him for leadership of a Wartime National coalition. Of all the politicians on the current stage, the one the country would most trust to negotiate a new settlement both with and in Europe would be William Hague. And please don't take this as a tip that Willy will become PM.
Mr Pole, it's pointless arguing, you're casting pearls before swine, why not do something constructive and enjoy The Rezillos, still one of the better things to come out of Edinburgh.
Two years too late, Mr. Broke.
I was at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976, when the talk of the town was Tadeusz Kantor's "Dead Class".
This UKIP vs Tory story could get messy. I wonder how many of their activists are ex Tories with some nice dirt on the Conservative MPs in their constituencies. Wouldn't surprise me if a few of them had some emails agreeing with their views from some of Cameron's backbenchers
It's hardly as surprise that some of those up for the locals were previously tory activists and even councillors.
UKIP does indeed have to watch out for who gets in but there is a far larger pool of tory councillors to draw from should this get into a tit-for-tat battle of the 'fruitcake councillor' views. Trusting that Shapps has been totally competent in his supervision of things seems a somewhat risky master strategy.
"In essence, there is NO benefit and real risk to giving single jabs due to reduced uptake. As a doctor I can say I would find it unethical to offer an alternative I know to be inferior to what is now offered. Non-inferiority is a key principle of introducing any new treatment. I have absolutely zero interest in perpetuating ambiguity that was created by a fraudster in the first place who was quite rightly struck off for what he did."
Check out the unhinged comments
It depends on how you define inferior. The focus on the combined MMR jab, whilst intellectually the correct thing to do, has led to decidedly inferior results in Swansea.
Would things be better now if a single measles jab had been given, to at least give parents coverage of that disease? Would such a course of action have helped now, or would it have encouraged more parents not to take the combined jab, and a consequent lower take-up on the Rubella vaccine as well?
But Blair deserves a big slapping for this. Especially as Cherie admitted a few years later that Leo had had the jab. I guess her love of quackery did not extend that far.
(Note that aside from a couple of weeks after that article was written in Private Eye, I have been a firm supporter of the MMR jab.)
(Edit: and yes, the comments under the article are very nutty).
He also misunderstands the concept of non-inferiority, which is a technical standard based on safety and efficacy. The benefits of the MMR vaccine are at a societal level (cost and compliance) rather than at a patient level, so non-inferiority is an inappropriate term to use.
It depends on how you define inferior. The focus on the combined MMR jab, whilst intellectually the correct thing to do, has led to decidedly inferior results in Swansea.
You're flat wrong there, the press campaign in the area predated the Wakefield fraud, an ambulance chasing solicitor and a press campaign in one area should've led to the NHS changing it's policy and using inferior,unresearched triply expensive jabs with worse coverage?
The monovalent measles and rubella vaccines are not inferior or unresearched.
Don't use technical terms in respect of pharmaceutical approvals unless you know what they mean.
Grandiose, it's no big revelation that most UKIP activists oppose gay marriage. So do most Conservative activists.
Mike K, that's clearly a problem for any party that's moving from fringe to mainstream.
Of course, Sean. But for me it is the wrong way of going about arguing against gay marriage and for that reason while I could in principle support any one of the many people who oppose gay marriage in a more careful way, I would not feel confortable supporting that particular candidate.
I am not a fascist, although my editing on Wikipedia has taught me the middle way is always the one where you get called a "proto-communist" and "fascist" in equal amounts. I see nothing wrong in highlighting why I consider particular candidates unsuitable for my vote, and I have never opposed such highlighting in effect to other candidates. I have before, and will do so again, consider the extent to which such cases can be taken to be representative of a party, or any other such induction (whether that induction is made by me or someone else), but in the cases I mentioned earlier I made no attempt to do so.
I think we've seen enough of your voodoo science recently, although thank you for providing the context for today's Telegraph front page on here over the last few weeks.
Can you repost the link to the abstract on monovalents you posted the other day. Was travelling and couldn't find it again.
One other point: I have spent the last 15 years working in vaccines - science, manufacturing, regulatory and marketing. I have experience in multiple species - cattle, swine, fish, poultry, human and companion (although admittedly not much experience of equine or rabbit vaccines) - and in both therapeutic and prophylatic vaccines. From a technological standpoint, I've worked with monovalents, multivalents, combination vaccines, synthetic peptide vaccines, recombinant vaccines, live attenuated and killed vaccines and vector vaccines.
In terms of disclosure, I have personal investments in synthetic peptide vaccine technology, swine and bovine, and therapeutic vaccines for humans. I don't have any investments in prophylatic vaccines for children ('cos the pricing is cr*p).
Can you share with everyone else your expertise in vaccines and/or immunology? Or are you just, as JJ put it, a "google warrior"?
"In essence, there is NO benefit and real risk to giving single jabs due to reduced uptake. As a doctor I can say I would find it unethical to offer an alternative I know to be inferior to what is now offered. Non-inferiority is a key principle of introducing any new treatment. I have absolutely zero interest in perpetuating ambiguity that was created by a fraudster in the first place who was quite rightly struck off for what he did."
Check out the unhinged comments
It depends on how you define inferior. The focus on the combined MMR jab, whilst intellectually the correct thing to do, has led to decidedly inferior results in Swansea.
Would things be better now if a single measles jab had been given, to at least give parents coverage of that disease? Would such a course of action have helped now, or would it have encouraged more parents not to take the combined jab, and a consequent lower take-up on the Rubella vaccine as well?
But Blair deserves a big slapping for this. Especially as Cherie admitted a few years later that Leo had had the jab. I guess her love of quackery did not extend that far.
(Note that aside from a couple of weeks after that article was written in Private Eye, I have been a firm supporter of the MMR jab.)
(Edit: and yes, the comments under the article are very nutty).
He also misunderstands the concept of non-inferiority....
Charles
I believe tim suffers from a non-inferiority complex.
What that polling does suggest, however, is that UKIP should do well on Thursday.
It also suggests that UKIP's positive momentum is going to continue. Lots of sympathetic-but-not-yet-convinced voters out there.
Wonder what would happen if the poll numbers flipped.
Panic! :-) If nothing else, it should bring an in/out referendum back into the Conservative war-gaming. Legislate for a 2017 one now? Hold one at the same time as the 2015 GE?
If nothing else, it should bring an in/out referendum back into the Conservative war-gaming. Legislate for a 2017 one now? Hold one at the same time as the 2015 GE?
They won't want to do that, they don't support out and they don't want a mandate for in. The best they could do is a new line that people who want a referendum will misunderstand as promising one, combined with a new way to wriggle out of it, but I think there's a limit to how many times they can pull that one.
In any case it's not really about the EU - it's general right-wingery.
If nothing else, it should bring an in/out referendum back into the Conservative war-gaming. Legislate for a 2017 one now? Hold one at the same time as the 2015 GE?
They won't want to do that, they don't support out and they don't want a mandate for in. The best they could do is a new line that people who want a referendum will misunderstand as promising one, combined with a new way to wriggle out of it, but I think there's a limit to how many times they can pull that one.
In any case it's not really about the EU - it's general right-wingery.
Sure. But they're going to want to do something, anything, and the EU referendum is an obvious move.
I think the marriage tax break looks like a cert too. But what else is there, that might persuade Con>UKIP switchers to reconsider the Conservatives? Rhetoric won't do it. It has to be action.
But what else is there, that might persuade Con>UKIP switchers to reconsider the Conservatives? Rhetoric won't do it. It has to be action.
I don't think there's any point in trying to follow UKIP to the right with Cameron still in charge. It just wouldn't be credible.
If they got a new, right-wing-sounding leader they may not even need any policy concessions to hold off UKIP, but obviously this has its own problems...
But what else is there, that might persuade Con>UKIP switchers to reconsider the Conservatives? Rhetoric won't do it. It has to be action.
I don't think there's any point in trying to follow UKIP to the right with Cameron still in charge. It just wouldn't be credible.
If they got a new, right-wing-sounding leader they may not even need any policy concessions to hold off UKIP, but obviously this has its own problems...
I'm assuming that Mr Cameron, and the clique that depend on his position for their own, will want to hang onto their positions within the party, so they'll concede other actions before they're pushed.
The referendum looks like the biggie to me. And the lack of credibility is what requires action rather than rhetoric. That would be the case even if Mr Cameron was replaced.
EDIT Actually scratch that. If Mr Cameron was replaced a new leader could probably establish their bone fides by changing HMG energy policy, and closing the DFiD.
That might work for Mr Cameron too, but he's very closely identified with those policies, so it's a tricky one.
Only 19 Labour rebels for a cost-free, government-embarrassing symbolic vote. They'd get even less than that for a real, electorally meaningful one. And there would probably be a few rebels on the Con side, too.
Only 19 Labour rebels for a cost-free, government-embarrassing symbolic vote. They'd get even less than that for a real, electorally meaningful one. And there would probably be a few rebels on the Con side, too.
That doesn't change the logic of the Conservatives moving the legislation.
I think there would also be public pressure on the other parties to support it. Last time the three main parties opposed it, when one breaks rank it makes it harder for the others to ignore the voters.
I think there would also be public pressure on the other parties to support it.
And on individual MPs of both main parties who are nervously looking over their shoulders at increasing numbers of newly-minted UKIP voters in their own constituencies.
I do not agree with Farage on Scots Indy of course, but if I was in England I have to say he and his northern deputy come across as the most normal of people and politics (as much as possible) aside are the sort of people I would vote for, whereas Cam, Miliband, the other Etonians and Balls worry me as self serving. The Libdems simpistically to me are flip-floppers on everything from devolution to education to health to defence and are no longer the voice of protest. Individual candidates aside, I resally believe they will get humped for becoming "yes" men to the Tories.
That is an incredibly low number for New York City. When I arrived there in January 1992, figures for 1991 had just been released recording a DROP in the number of homicides to just 2180-2225, down from 2245 in 1990.
Malcolm, I tried to get Carlotta to understand that independence is not separation. Like teaching a chimp to drink PG Tips but I tried. She does it just to be aprat so let her. I will Cammie a fascist, Miliband a commie and Cleggie a nazi, it is on a par in terms of stupidity with Carlotta. So not hatred, just sick of the patronising holier than thou crap. The poll was skewed by the question. I am sure if the poll had asked a different skewed question, The British pensions are 275 bill in the red thanks to Brown and Osborne. How will England and rUK pay for it without future oil revenues if Scotland leaves? then Carlotta with her knowledge of Scotland being so stratospheric would give us a magic answer.
Comments
Where are our Czechs?
Much of their attraction is historic (in an ultra safe Tory constituency) and stretches back into the deep mists of time pre 1974 when the independents were strong in the old Esher Urban District Council. From 1992 until 2006 they ran Elmbridge.
Some of us knew this was inevitable nor is it the first instance since a book by Farage was also culled for anything damaging then fed to the tory press with the resurfacing of quotes from his memoirs and comments on what he is alleged to have said about ethnic minority voters.
You add to that Dacre and the Mail going after Farage's son and the stories about lapdancing and you would have to be a tory spinner of near perfect incompetence not to see the obvious.
For those still struggling to grasp it, who was it who said UKIP was full of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists?"
The amusing thing is that most of what the right wing press are using to attack the kippers is the kind of thing they thrive on with so many stories and commentators on their papers running basically the same kind of things albeit with more polish. Adding to the irony those papers comment threads are filled with precisely the same kind of views they now seem to be having a problem with. Which points to this inept concerted attack's biggest flaw. It's hugely unlikely to upset UKIP voters very much or stop many from voting UKIP.
As for Farage himself, I suspect he will be laughing pretty hard come May the 3rd. Particularly when you consider the types of story about the likes of Boris that have singularly failed to hamper his ability to to do well electorally either. The incompetent fops were not above briefing against Boris either yet that Cammie and Osbrowne master strategy was about as effective as this will one be.
That sort of stuff helps Ed.
Shapps is a dreadful dreadful manager of CCHQ though. The Tories need someone boring who is process driven. Someone who ran a business and understand how to manage a large bureaucracy.
Shapps just chases headlines which is exactly the wrong approach.
tim has ambitions.
I have just been nice to you and agreed with your post on UKIP baiting.
No more acorns for you tonight.
"Alive to the threat, the most marginal Conservatives in parliament have set up the “40 group” – 40 men and women who will fight the next election with exceptionally narrow majorities – to ensure that the leadership listens to the needs of its most vulnerable MPs. “It’s the club that nobody wants to be in,” jokes Rudd, a prominent member of the group founded by Warrington South MP David Mowat, who has a majority of 1,553. Understandably anxious colleagues include Eric Ollerenshaw, MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, with a majority of 333, and Dan Byles, who scraped in for North Warwickshire and Bedworth by just 54 votes.
The 40 swap ideas, network and act as a kind of counselling service for each other. They get some leeway with the whips to be excused from votes so they can focus on their constituencies; Conservative central office also gives them more money for campaigning.
This week will be the first big reality check for Rudd and her colleagues in marginal seats as Britons go to the polls in 35 councils in England and Wales. More than 2,400 council seats are up for grabs in what will be spun as a big dress rehearsal for 2015. The Tories are defending 1,459 seats against just 273 for Labour. Even the most optimistic Conservatives are mentally preparing for a loss of several hundred councillors. The Tories will blame the defeat on the “midterm blues” that befall all governing parties – but privately the party is panicking.
As local elections loom, #Tories in marginal seats r nervous. @amberruddMP (maj 1,993) draws battle lines in Hastings http://on.ft.com/181HFE1
The idea that UKIPs rise and the threat they represent being somehow just normal "midterm blues" is laughable. The tory spinners pushing that line had better find something far more convincing fast.
If the Conservatives are defending a huge number of seats it stands to reason they'll suffer significant losses. It's just a question of scale.
After consulting with Grant Shapps, I've been instructed to say the following.
I was accessing PB on my phone, and I was having some issues with the site, posts seem to run into the links on the right hand side.
As I was trying to resolve this issue, I must have inadvertently hit the disagree button on your post, I don't use the disagree button, I do apologise if your feelings were hurt by this.
Anyone else having this issue, I've tweeted a picture of the issues I'm having viewing the site.
http://twitter.com/TSEofPB/status/328234342977531906/photo/1
Now, I'm off to swing my pants in Reflex Bar.
Point being UKIP are too big a vote now for this kind of lazy stuff to work and there is in fact only one realistic way of mitigating UKIP now for the tories. But do you know what it is?
You should.
There's surely a very useful study to be done there, for use the next time the media accentuate a scare.
I know you think mass immigration is the cure for all society's ills, and that warped statistics are seductive to the man in the street, but you would probably have more luck geting people to vote Labour if you conceded other people had a point now and then. Its a sign of insecurity never to admit being wrong x
.
"the Daily Mail smear campaign begins"
It's Dacre and the Daily Mail. It never ends.
http://ukipian.com/2013/04/26/mmr-a-dose-of-reality/
Shapps/Green may just be the man for that job.
But no, I'd be intrigued to see if Seth has worked it out yet. It's not rocket science but it's also not risk free and has it's own problems.
To little to late.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Letta
UKIP performance in the council elections is, in the general scheme of things, an annoyance to the Tories rather than a strategic threat. A bit like a bout of measles when the prescribed vaccine hasn't worked: you just have to let the fever run its course.
On Europe, I get a similar feeling to that I had in Eastern Europe between 1985 and 1990. Reagan and Thatcher were flexing their muscles in the West and claiming much progress was being made in their negotiations with Gorbachev, but the reality was that the whole Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact was imploding of its own volition. Although not necessarily knowing why or whither they were going.
What is going on in the Eurozone is far, far more important than any debate we are having in the UK about our membership of the EU. It is a big like East Germany debating whether their implementation of Marxism-Leninism was flawed and could be redirected at the time that the Berlin Wall fell.
The old certainties of the EU are over and a new settlement is inevitable. The UK is inextricably linked to the EU but has the advantage of being able to watch and wait from the borders. We don't know how the cards will fall any more than the Warsaw pact countries knew in 1988. All that is certain is that new opportunities will arise.
All this makes the number of UKIP councillors won on May 2nd of passing significance.
So lets enjoy the fruitcakes while they last.
That should be a sobering lesson to anyone who thinks such desperate attacks have much currency any more. The electorate can go where it likes for information these days and papers who forget their job is to sell papers, not push a party line, are going to suffer ever more.
HA! Yet more messing around on twitter and facebook. Maybe the Tories should work out how to run an election rather than trying to recreate a student election strategy!
Shapps should be fired.
Would things be better now if a single measles jab had been given, to at least give parents coverage of that disease? Would such a course of action have helped now, or would it have encouraged more parents not to take the combined jab, and a consequent lower take-up on the Rubella vaccine as well?
But Blair deserves a big slapping for this. Especially as Cherie admitted a few years later that Leo had had the jab. I guess her love of quackery did not extend that far.
(Note that aside from a couple of weeks after that article was written in Private Eye, I have been a firm supporter of the MMR jab.)
(Edit: and yes, the comments under the article are very nutty).
@SkyNews: OBSERVER FRONT PAGE: 'Emails Reveal UKIP In Chaos Over Policy On Eve Of Key Poll' #skypapers http://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/328237972002598912/photo/1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22306632
A lot more should be being made of this story, and especially any governmental/DTI role in the sales.
Many people will have died because of this idiot, and the gullibility (or corruption) of fools.
It's not the tories most animated by the possibilty of an EU implosion or another massive crisis ( which is far from assured) it is UKIP. That's one of their core issues and the tories cannot outflank them on it.
What do you suppose any huge new crisis would do to the gaping fault line between IN and OUT in the tory party? Here's a clue Seth, it certainly won't heal it.
Just leaving out a mince pie and glass of sherry for @edballsmp #edballseve
Still nothing from the other candidates, so two nil to the LibDems.
Secondly, there were scares about the single jabs dating back to the 1970s. Are these what you are referring to?
Thirdly, perhaps it should have changed the NHS policies, especially when the concerns spread in the late 1990s/early 2000s. It might have led to this outbreak not occurring (with the added risk of mumps and rubella outbreaks).
Fourthly, you should answer my point about Blair: I can understand the argument about their not mentioning Leo's status, even if I disagreed with it. But why did Cherie then mention that status a few years later?
Fifthly, can I enquire about your background on immunology? Do you have any professional background knowledge, or are you, like myself on many topics, a Google warrior?
Will this damage UKIP? Not from the remarks by the majority of the readers writing in to those newspapers. Most are simply disgusted by the fascist tactics of distortion, lies and scare stories by the MSP's and MSM.
I am not going to fisk each point you make but I have two general points to make in rebuttal.
UKIP and the Lib Dems are entirely different kinds of threats at local government level. The Lib Dems are well organised, locally focussed, tenacious and consensual. It is the party's greatest strength. The reason why Keith House not Nick Clegg won the Eastleigh by election. UKIP at a local level is the diametric opposite of the Lib Dems.
A crisis unites rather than divides a country. When the Eurozone implodes what will be needed is competent and supportive intervention not combative isolationism. The main parties will benefit from such crisis, mostly the Tories because of their ambivalent but historic scepticism, in the same way that Churchill's personal anti-appeasement stance in the 1930s qualified him for leadership of a Wartime National coalition. Of all the politicians on the current stage, the one the country would most trust to negotiate a new settlement both with and in Europe would be William Hague. And please don't take this as a tip that Willy will become PM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7FyIwgr3o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKly-dga3Nw
You are really sticking your snout into the dirt G, are you a fascist by any chance?
It does indeed reveal panic particularly from the tories but UKIP should also not get carried away.
This does show that the Kippers have graduated from being a fringe party who can safely be ignored to a real threat. However, being the occasional target of the press is what the big three have been dealing with for decades. Now that UKIP make the big league they had better get used to it and start operating with far more professionalism since this is hardly going to be the last time they find themselves under attack. No matter how desperate the timing of this attack makes it look, no serious political party can ever afford to give their opponents easy and unnecessary ammunition.
I fully expect Farage to gather his new arrivals from May the 2nd and lay down the law to them. No hostages to fortune, no shooting your mouth off without considering how it impacts on your party, that kind of thing. If he fails to do so or they don't listen then there will come a time when this can't simply all be blamed on bad press. Politicians who constantly blame the press, if it is obvious that the fault is with with them, never prosper. Genuine bad treatment from the press is usually self-evident as is a politician seeking to hide behind the press as an excuse that when the treatment is merited.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/27/ukip-local-elections-emails
They know perfectly well that there are only two choices at the GE - Cameron or Miliband. And the more time they spend attacking Cameron the more likely they are to get Miliband.
If they hadn't thrown their toys out of the pram over the last 12 months they wouldn't need to be attacking UKIP so much now at the last minute - as UKIP wouldn't have got as far as they have.
Hopefully they will have got the message and now realise what to do for the next 2 years.
Of course the reason for that is that when dealing with issues of immigration UKIP have to be more careful than the other parties as they are more vocal about it. Still, we know from past experience that the Tories particularly have nothing to be proud of when it comes to councillors with dodgy views.
But in all seriousness, perhaps there'd be less chance of energy shortages if Miliband had actually done his job whilst in charge of DECC?
For once I fully agree with you. There is no doubt that if UKIP do well on May 2nd they will have entered the big league of political parties. The main problem with UKIP is that organisationally it is still weak and they will have deal with this on a national basis asap after the elections.
'Emails Reveal UKIP In Chaos Over Policy On Eve _P
UKIP policy chaos & Labour a policy free zone, great choice for voters.
If there's another EU crisis it will simply focus the public's attention on an issue UKIP are desperate to have a constant spotlight on and a policy area which has torn the tory party apart for decades.
The banking crisis was an economic catastrophe far closer to home than any EU one yet Brown still lost. Try harder Seth, this is poor fare from you.
Mike K, that's clearly a problem for any party that's moving from fringe to mainstream.
http://news.sky.com/story/1083869/ukip-slams-tory-election-smear-campaign
I was at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976, when the talk of the town was Tadeusz Kantor's "Dead Class".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEB2jmYHVsA
Very Antonin Artaud.
they appear to be shouting Salamone a lot, was this the first SNP conference ?
UKIP does indeed have to watch out for who gets in but there is a far larger pool of tory councillors to draw from should this get into a tit-for-tat battle of the 'fruitcake councillor' views. Trusting that Shapps has been totally competent in his supervision of things seems a somewhat risky master strategy.
I half understood the first half.
So you are probably right.
I guess James was a bit young for 1976 so we probably need Pork to confirm.
Don't use technical terms in respect of pharmaceutical approvals unless you know what they mean.
I am not a fascist, although my editing on Wikipedia has taught me the middle way is always the one where you get called a "proto-communist" and "fascist" in equal amounts. I see nothing wrong in highlighting why I consider particular candidates unsuitable for my vote, and I have never opposed such highlighting in effect to other candidates. I have before, and will do so again, consider the extent to which such cases can be taken to be representative of a party, or any other such induction (whether that induction is made by me or someone else), but in the cases I mentioned earlier I made no attempt to do so.
One other point: I have spent the last 15 years working in vaccines - science, manufacturing, regulatory and marketing. I have experience in multiple species - cattle, swine, fish, poultry, human and companion (although admittedly not much experience of equine or rabbit vaccines) - and in both therapeutic and prophylatic vaccines. From a technological standpoint, I've worked with monovalents, multivalents, combination vaccines, synthetic peptide vaccines, recombinant vaccines, live attenuated and killed vaccines and vector vaccines.
In terms of disclosure, I have personal investments in synthetic peptide vaccine technology, swine and bovine, and therapeutic vaccines for humans. I don't have any investments in prophylatic vaccines for children ('cos the pricing is cr*p).
Can you share with everyone else your expertise in vaccines and/or immunology? Or are you just, as JJ put it, a "google warrior"?
I believe tim suffers from a non-inferiority complex.
Is there a squirrel vaccine that might help?
IIRC one of the members of the Rezillos was Jo Callis who went on to become a member of the Human League.
"Simon Singh: Let us now praise a bloody-minded hero":
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2013/04/simon-singh-let-us-praise-a-bloody-minded-hero/
Labour 40%
Tories 31%
Lib Dems 11%
UKIP 11%
And
If every party in your constituency had a realistic chance of winning a seat in the next election, who would you vote for?
Labour 37%
Tories 26%
UKIP 18%
LD 12%
PC/SNP 3%
Other 4%
"If."
What that polling does suggest, however, is that UKIP should do well on Thursday.
Governing Coalition 42%
Labour 40%
If nothing else, it should bring an in/out referendum back into the Conservative war-gaming. Legislate for a 2017 one now? Hold one at the same time as the 2015 GE?
How? By hypnotising the Lib Dems?
In any case it's not really about the EU - it's general right-wingery.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15425256
I think the marriage tax break looks like a cert too. But what else is there, that might persuade Con>UKIP switchers to reconsider the Conservatives? Rhetoric won't do it. It has to be action.
If they got a new, right-wing-sounding leader they may not even need any policy concessions to hold off UKIP, but obviously this has its own problems...
The referendum looks like the biggie to me. And the lack of credibility is what requires action rather than rhetoric. That would be the case even if Mr Cameron was replaced.
EDIT
Actually scratch that. If Mr Cameron was replaced a new leader could probably establish their bone fides by changing HMG energy policy, and closing the DFiD.
That might work for Mr Cameron too, but he's very closely identified with those policies, so it's a tricky one.
I think there would also be public pressure on the other parties to support it. Last time the three main parties opposed it, when one breaks rank it makes it harder for the others to ignore the voters.
It could pass.
The Libdems simpistically to me are flip-floppers on everything from devolution to education to health to defence and are no longer the voice of protest. Individual candidates aside, I resally believe they will get humped for becoming "yes" men to the Tories.
London: 23
New York City: 66
(Both places have almost the same population).
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/shootings-murders-new-york-dropped-2013-article-1.1306037
http://www.murdermap.co.uk/Investigate.asp
I tried to get Carlotta to understand that independence is not separation. Like teaching a chimp to drink PG Tips but I tried. She does it just to be aprat so let her. I will Cammie a fascist, Miliband a commie and Cleggie a nazi, it is on a par in terms of stupidity with Carlotta. So not hatred, just sick of the patronising holier than thou crap.
The poll was skewed by the question.
I am sure if the poll had asked a different skewed question, The British pensions are 275 bill in the red thanks to Brown and Osborne. How will England and rUK pay for it without future oil revenues if Scotland leaves? then Carlotta with her knowledge of Scotland being so stratospheric would give us a magic answer.