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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/10627344/Scottish-independence-Double-blow-for-Alex-Salmonds-economic-plans.html
Do you think Nick Clegg is doing well or badly as leader of the Liberal Democrats?
TOTAL WELL - 19%
TOTAL BADLY - 71%
Don't know - 10%
Triumph for Gove, sorry, Clegg!
Somerset Local News @SomersetNewsUK 8h
Eric Pickles blames flooding on global warming before claiming 'foreign aid ... - Daily Mail: Daily ... http://bit.ly/1ghUVJT #Somerset
What was fascinating is that the squeezed middle is largely a myth. He says:
"One striking result from the official annual survey of hours and earnings is that people who have stayed in work continuously (defined as more than a year in each survey) have done pretty well.
So, taking the 12 months to April in each case their pay rose by 6.8% in 2008, 4% in 2009, 4% again in 2010, 3.7% in 2011, 3.6% in 2012 and 3.3% in 2013. Their pay, and this is a large group, has mainly stayed ahead of inflation."
The apparent drop in real wages has largely been as a result of more less skilled people joining the workforce bringing down the average wage and the average productivity of those in work. Those who have stayed in work are generally better off, even if not excitingly so.
This makes the failure of the tories to make inroads in the Labour support even more disappointing. Austerity, for most, has been nothing of the sort which is why consumption has largely kept up despite an increase in the saving rate and a reduction in debt ratios for the consumer.
Tories at this point must be beginning to wonder what it is going to take to persuade people to re-elect them. It is not proving easy.
It is actually hard to see what the arguments *are*, very hard to get a flavour from Dave's rather sickly "every fibre of my being" salvoes delivered from the safety of London, and Eck's currency flounderings.
I have more time for Eck than Dave - implementing a minimum drink price policy with real teeth in Scotland of all places takes real balls - but he needs a position fast on currency. His boldest and best move would be to announce a Scotch Franc backed by the oil (which the SNP knew nothing about in 1974 because the Whitehall fops covered it up). Given the present policy vacuum on both sides the chances of wild last-minute swings based on Bannockburnery are really rather high.
The tory position on Bannockburnery is also rather pathetic - appealing to history when 1707 is really rather recent compared to, frinstance, Bannockburn. Here's our own dear J R-M stating the unionist case on the grounds that "England did not become a nation until it was united by King Alfred's grandson, Athelstan." WTAF?
Read more: http://www.somersetguardian.co.uk/Unity-lessened-loss-Scottish-brothers/story-20569970-detail/story.html#ixzz2srZTs4pa
Could the Cameroons be fully paid-up 100% Europhiles after all - what a shock.
Constituencies – SNP 44% (-1) : Lab 31% (+1) : Con 13% (-1) : LD 6% (-4) : Oth 6% (+2)
Regional List – SNP 44% (nc) : Lab 28% (+2) : Con 13% (+1) : Green 7% (+4) : LD 4% (-1) : Oth 3% (-5)
I'm still gobsmacked that so few Labour supporters see this - only a few remnant and bitter Blairites, and maybe Hopi Sen. All the rest must think that politics and economics will come to an end on May 7th 2015, and that the means by which Ed Miliband gets into No 10 (if indeed he does), and the promises he has appeared to make, and the anti-business, anti-prosperity policy commitments, and most of all the fact that he actually appears to believe all his 'predators vs producers' nonsense, have no consequences.
By the way, I admire your determination to get across the point of the 2010 Lib Dem to Labour crossovers staying put, I gave up months ago.
Ministers are "playing politics" with the flood crisis and "getting in the way of decent people doing a valiant job", according to an unprecedented outburst from the embattled boss of the Environment Agency, who blamed the government for limiting the agency's response.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/floods-environment-agency-chris-smith-hits-back
Whatever the merits of Lord Smith's case, I suspect the photo editor is not a fan....
Stop griping about Eric Pickles' limo bill... Look how he got to #somersetfloods pic.twitter.com/kUHtD8pyKY
Shirley @shirleykay11
Eric Pickles tea and biscuits bill up to £76,000 but he's lectured others to keep costs down Mirror Online - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/eric-pickles-tea-biscuits-bill-3062584 … #bbcnews
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/92703/the_guardian_sunday_9th_february_2014.html
How have we done this? By subsidising such employment so that only a small fraction of the cost of providing that labour is paid by the employer. So we have WTC, CTC, we subsidise housing through HB and we subsidise these poorly paid workers to have more children through a range of other benefits including CB and free school meals.
Is this a good thing? Probably, yes. Mass unemployment is a bad thing and labour gives people self respect. OTOH, as Robert would point out, the cost of such a welfare state is very high taxes, a very large bureaucracy and a major loss of international competitiveness. The question is whether the point will come that we simply cannot afford this level of indulgence.
Mark Harper, the former immigration minister, claimed more than £2,000 in parliamentary expenses to pay an illegal immigrant to clean his home.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10627741/Former-immigration-minister-Mark-Harper-used-expenses-to-pay-illegal-cleaner.html
Says it all.
Cameron can do this better than most which is why his polling runs ahead of the party but the stereotypes are strong and have affected even him. They need more "ordinary" people, especially women, representing the party. A number of competent women were elected in 2010 (one in a constituency near to your heart) but they have not been given a nearly high enough profile.
AKA Pure economic warfare colluded in by the entire political class at the behest of cheap labour lobbyists with the only real difference being the Tory part of the LibLabCon are the worst at hiding it.
We can't let him forget that.
Very tricky indeed.
That said, I do have some apprehension about whether Labour will actually pull it off, but NOT for the reasons the clueless Westminster village think, that the people who are currently saying they'll vote Labour will change their mind at the last minute and vote Tory instead: these people in almost all cases simply hate the Tories and would never vote for them, even if they maybe think David Cameron comes across as a decent guy on a personal level and would be a more interesting person to have a drink with than Ed Miliband. Nor is there any real danger of the Lib Dems pulling back some of their 2010 lefty voters that have since defected, no matter how much desperate "differentiation" they try.
No, the real danger for Labour is those people who are currently saying they'll vote for them simply don't show up on polling day. It really can't be overestimated how deep the disillusionment is towards politics in general (including Labour) among the working-classes, Labour's supposed core vote. While Westminster groupthink dictates Labour have "lurched to left", in my experience it's actually Labour's middle-class supporters, especially ones who work in the public sector, who are most satisfied with the party and most enthusiastic about voting for them next year. But it's a very different story with their working-class supporters.
I'm willing to nail my colours to the mast and say that if turnout in 2015 is 60% or above, Labour will win a majority no matter what. But if turnout dips below that, then I expect that fall to come disproportionately from poorer and younger people, and in that case Labour would be in real trouble.
He won't end up doing it but it would be good to see one of his off base predictions finally hung around his neck.
They don't get it. For swathes of this country "Tory" is a swear word. Even when Labour needed to be out of office they blamed them on being too much like the Tories so voted LibDem - who lied to their own members to put the Tories into power.
The Tories didn't win the election despite the other choice being a man written off by everyone especially his own party. Yet they find themselves in power thanks to the LibDems lying to the electorate, in direct contradiction of what so many thought they were voting for. In short Gove, Hunt, Osborne, Eric the Silurian - a minority supported them, the majority rejected them. And thats before their own side wrote them off as too soft and went down the pub with Farage. Why would the general population support a government they don't want? Because you say the alternative would be worse? But they don't trust you as far as they can thrown you, why would your word sway them?
Not much sign of that today.
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/12Nov_doctor-who-sontaran-590x350.jpg
1) The Cameroons are mostly taking the blame like good little Europhiles.
2) IIRC the EA's decision to encourage flooding was from 2008 so 5 years ago.
"a minority supported them, the majority rejected them"
I didn't hear you moaning too much when Tony got back in 2005 on 35%.
Just as they will negotiate with the Sçots with more than one eye on a Catalonia et al.
Bit unfair on the Swiss and the Scots, but c'est la víe!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26112330
In fact the UK has the lowest gas prices, apart from Luxembourg, in Western Europe:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25200808
If tory rebels start seriously pondering over yet another referendum but this one on immigration then it won't end well for him. Nor will Cast Iron Cammie's compete lack of details on renegotiation stand up for very long come the EU elections.
Parents are to be given a new power to call in a specialist team to boost the performance of failing schools or teachers, under a set of wide-ranging public service reform plans to be laid out on Monday by the Labour leader, Ed Miliband.
The improvement team, working separately from Ofsted, will have powers to set out school improvement plans, order greater collaboration between schools or even remove failing headteachers. The body would have powers to intervene with academies, free schools and community schools.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/feb/09/ed-miliband-labour-parents-headteachers
But it was an easy thing to overlook as the theft of postal votes by the left is pretty much a rolling and ongoing scandal.
Some scenes were pretty harrowing though, how did humans treat each other like that? Ignorance isn't an excuse, even if you thought black people were animals, who would treat animals that way?