put together a serious programme for what exactly leaving the EU would entail and how it would be done.
You mean as Cameron has done via his repatriation agenda? Remind me of the specific items he says he wants to bring back to UK control again?
Yes, exactly. UKIP would have a big advantage in that respect - they'd have three years to put together a serious alternative plan, whereas the Stay In side wouldn't be able to be specific, and in any case would be divided.
Still, it is not to be. UKIP seem to want half a century of ever-closer union instead. They may well get what they want.
The only way for us to genuinely leave the EU is for UKIP to get a serious presence in parliament, or for a merger to happen on the Right to form a eurosceptic party. If UKIP stood down from the next election, then they would not be able to recover their momentum for a decade, Cameron would fail to get a majority anyway, and even if he stayed on as PM, the EU referendum would be the first thing he would ditch in negotiations with Clegg to continue the coalition. The way that our media coverage of politics is stitched up between the big parties means you need parliamentary representation to even begin to get fair coverage.
I think most people would look back objectively on that whole period and think good at the beginning , mixed in the middle and bad at the end . A Conservative such as yourself would not be objective .
I'm sure a LibDem is impeccably objective, of course. Still, I wouldn't disagree too much with that assessment, with the catastrophic exception of Iraq. The first term, when Brown was still following Ken Clarke's economic plans, was reasonable enough, although that was of course the period when he sowed the seeds of disaster with his dismantling of financial supervision, putting no-one in charge of the stability of the banking system.
Nonetheless, for anyone who is not of the left, and certainly for anyone who shares the stated objectives of UKIP, the idea that there's nothing worse about Labour than the Conservatives is just barmy. On every single measure - the economy, the deficit, immigration, education, state interference, and so on - Labour is further from their views. Labour might be closer to your views, but that merely supports my point.
State interference? When the Tories support giving government bureaucracies access to your health records whether you like it or not, when they support GCHQ tracking your internet communications without probable cause or a warrant, when they force people to sign up to an easily leakable list so they are allowed to watch adult material in their own homes... give me a break.
Oh for a 'Like' Button.
By the way, for those that care about these things - tomorrow (11th Feb) is the focus of a #thedaywefightback campaign to Stop Mass Surveillance - it's time we're treated like citizens not suspects. Details here
Collection of innocent people's entire internet behaviour gives you far more details of people's private lives than any of the above. And how someone can oppose ID cards on civil liberties grounds yet support bureaucrats from a dozen agencies getting access to whether you've suffered from depression or had an abortion is beyond me...
Garbage. ID cards are massively more intrusive - for example, they impose an obligation on the citizen to notify the state when they change address. In any case, you bizarrely seem to be ignoring a raft of case where the coalition is clearly more on the side of civil liberties than Labour, on the eccentric ground that you have identified one where they are the same. In orhter words, do you think a score of 4-1 is a draw?
Notifying the government of your address is more intrusive than access to the emails between husband and wife? You're beyond parody.
I wonder whether the Britons doing this come from one particular community, or whether all ethnic groups and faiths are equally represented in this barbarism. Presumably the left is enjoying the fact their immigration and integration policies over the years have succeeded in "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity".
I don't think ant names were mentioned, so hard to tell.
Might just as easily be a wide boy from Essex or a gruff Northerner in a flat cap
'The inescapable truth is that the kippers most fear a referendum because they know they will lose it. That's why they are desperate for a Labour government.'
By pushing the referendum into the (potentially very) long grass UKIP MEP's continue on the gravy train,what's the point of UKIP after a referendum vote has taken place?
There's flooding in Oxford too. Sorry to disappoint you but the old city of Oxford is on one of the gravel terraces of the Thames valley, so most/all the old colleges should be okay, gardens and footie grounds apart - the old A/Saxons weren't stupid. One or two of the more modern colleges such as Wolfson (not sure about the newer ones) are built on the floodplain or its edge. Wolfson's architecture is IIRC designed to mitigate that, being built on stilts, but St Catherines looks dodgier on the flood risk map which shows plenty of scope for flooding in the Victorian inner suburbs along the Thames channel and side branches - Grandpont and the Hinkseys - through which the train line runs.
My Dad was once "moved on" by the police for trying to know down St. Catz. With a pickaxe.
Mr Charles, your dad is evidently a gentleman of excellent taste - though for my money the Florey Building of Queens College (the bowl fire thing by the roundabout on the far side of Magdalen Bridge was worse. (I also regret the new Business School by the railway station, partly because of the destruction of the LNWR railway station (latterly tyre depot), which was made of Crystal Palace elements. Though this was mitigated by the reconstruction of these elements at a nearby preserved railway. But that is perhaps a little away from the topic.)
Notifying the government of your address is more intrusive than access to the emails between husband and wife? You're beyond parody.
The state doesn't have access to emails between husband and wife, or anyone else for that matter, without a warrant. It has access to metadata (and always has, for phone traffic and more recently email traffic).
But yes, I do think that something which forces the citizen to do something, on pain of criminal sanctions, is massively more intrusive than a computer scanning emails. The difference is that the citizen notices the first, potentially getting fined or worse for forgetting or refusing to comply, and doesn't notice the second. That's pretty much the definition of 'intrusive' in this context.
I wonder whether the Britons doing this come from one particular community, or whether all ethnic groups and faiths are equally represented in this barbarism. Presumably the left is enjoying the fact their immigration and integration policies over the years have succeeded in "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity".
I don't think ant names were mentioned, so hard to tell.
Might just as easily be a wide boy from Essex or a gruff Northerner in a flat cap
The only way for us to genuinely leave the EU is for UKIP to get a serious presence in parliament, or for a merger to happen on the Right to form a eurosceptic party. If UKIP stood down from the next election, then they would not be able to recover their momentum for a decade, Cameron would fail to get a majority anyway, and even if he stayed on as PM, the EU referendum would be the first thing he would ditch in negotiations with Clegg to continue the coalition. The way that our media coverage of politics is stitched up between the big parties means you need parliamentary representation to even begin to get fair coverage.
So 50 years it is. Good luck with that. Meanwhile I'll manage my affairs to mitigate the damage of Miliband.
I wonder whether the Britons doing this come from one particular community, or whether all ethnic groups and faiths are equally represented in this barbarism. Presumably the left is enjoying the fact their immigration and integration policies over the years have succeeded in "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity".
I don't think ant names were mentioned, so hard to tell.
Might just as easily be a wide boy from Essex or a gruff Northerner in a flat cap
Notifying the government of your address is more intrusive than access to the emails between husband and wife? You're beyond parody.
The state doesn't have access to emails between husband and wife, or anyone else for that matter, without a warrant. It has access to metadata.
But yes, I do think that something which forces the citizen to do something, on pain of criminal sanctions, is massively more intrusive than a computer scanning emails. The difference is that the citizen notices the first, potentially getting fined or worse for forgetting or refusing to comply, and doesn't notice the second. That's pretty much the definition of 'intrusive' in this context.
So we should be happy about this, because it's better than the ID card rubbish that the other lot wanted to bring in? How about they are both cr*p and we shouldn't have either?
So we should be happy about this, because it's better than the ID card rubbish that the other lot wanted to bring in? How about they are both cr*p and we shouldn't have either?
Well, personally, I prefer some of what I want rather than none of what I want, but please yourself.
I wonder whether the Britons doing this come from one particular community, or whether all ethnic groups and faiths are equally represented in this barbarism. Presumably the left is enjoying the fact their immigration and integration policies over the years have succeeded in "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity".
I don't think ant names were mentioned, so hard to tell.
Might just as easily be a wide boy from Essex or a gruff Northerner in a flat cap
The only way for us to genuinely leave the EU is for UKIP to get a serious presence in parliament, or for a merger to happen on the Right to form a eurosceptic party. If UKIP stood down from the next election, then they would not be able to recover their momentum for a decade, Cameron would fail to get a majority anyway, and even if he stayed on as PM, the EU referendum would be the first thing he would ditch in negotiations with Clegg to continue the coalition. The way that our media coverage of politics is stitched up between the big parties means you need parliamentary representation to even begin to get fair coverage.
So 50 years it is. Good luck with that. Meanwhile I'll manage my affairs to mitigate the damage of Miliband.
The only way for us to genuinely leave the EU is for UKIP to get a serious presence in parliament, or for a merger to happen on the Right to form a eurosceptic party. If UKIP stood down from the next election, then they would not be able to recover their momentum for a decade, Cameron would fail to get a majority anyway, and even if he stayed on as PM, the EU referendum would be the first thing he would ditch in negotiations with Clegg to continue the coalition. The way that our media coverage of politics is stitched up between the big parties means you need parliamentary representation to even begin to get fair coverage.
So 50 years it is. Good luck with that. Meanwhile I'll manage my affairs to mitigate the damage of Miliband.
More like 10-20 years. I, too, would prefer to avoid PM Miliband, but there would just need to be an acceptable alternative among the major parties. And, for those of us who are truly small-state liberal conservatives, there isn't.
One things for sure I'd no more take the word of a Tory on it than I would take the word of a socialist these days. Sadly for all intents and purposes the two have become indistinguishable.
Well, I am afraid that a few years of Miliband will disabuse you of that particular misconception. For that matter, have you already forgotten 1997-2010?
I think most people would look back objectively on that whole period and think good at the beginning , mixed in the middle and bad at the end . A Conservative such as yourself would not be objective .
Blair lost 2.8 million votes in his first term and 1.2 million in his second term and another million was lost under Brown. The rot set in early.
Certainly Blair polled many fewer votes in 2001 than in 1997 but so did the opposition parties . That suggests content and no desire for change with the Blair government . Iraq was the first major happening that caused Labour to actively lose support and supporters .
Not so Labour polled 43.2% of the vote in 1997, 40.2% in 2001, 35.2% in 2005 and of course 29% in 2010. Their share of the vote declined every election.
Proportionally as well as in actual numbers they lost support between 1997 and 2001 and as we have already established they lost 2.8 million votes. If that is not 'actively losing support' what is?
Furthermore, not voting in sufficient numbers (2001 was the lowest turnout in modern general election history) does not necessarily suggest contentment and a desire for continuity. It can equally suggest that many voters no longer feel any of the major parties represent them and a wider discontentment with the political class. That turnout levels have not returned to 1990's levels despite the worst financial crisis.in 80 years lends to that idea.
I wonder whether the Britons doing this come from one particular community, or whether all ethnic groups and faiths are equally represented in this barbarism. Presumably the left is enjoying the fact their immigration and integration policies over the years have succeeded in "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity".
I don't think ant names were mentioned, so hard to tell.
Might just as easily be a wide boy from Essex or a gruff Northerner in a flat cap
But yes, I do think that something which forces the citizen to do something, on pain of criminal sanctions, is massively more intrusive than a computer scanning emails. The difference is that the citizen notices the first, potentially getting fined or worse for forgetting or refusing to comply, and doesn't notice the second. That's pretty much the definition of 'intrusive' in this context.
Preposterous logic. On that basis, any amount of government interference in somebody's property, papers or effects could be justified if it is done sufficiently stealthily for the subject not to notice. There thus ought to be no restrictions on the government intercepting communications, or searching homes without a warrant while the occupier is at work. Tory authoritarianism lives on as ever.
I, too, would prefer to avoid PM Miliband, but there would just need to be an acceptable alternative among the major parties. And, for those of us who are truly small-state liberal conservatives, there isn't.
No, there isn't. That doesn't mean that the two main alternatives on offer are identical.
Notifying the government of your address is more intrusive than access to the emails between husband and wife? You're beyond parody.
The state doesn't have access to emails between husband and wife, or anyone else for that matter, without a warrant. It has access to metadata (and always has, for phone traffic and more recently email traffic).
But yes, I do think that something which forces the citizen to do something, on pain of criminal sanctions, is massively more intrusive than a computer scanning emails. The difference is that the citizen notices the first, potentially getting fined or worse for forgetting or refusing to comply, and doesn't notice the second. That's pretty much the definition of 'intrusive' in this context.
So a stalker isn't intrusive as long as you don't find out they're watching you?
GCHQ has been monitoring secret fibre-optic cables that carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic – and sharing the data with its American counterpart. GCHQ also spied on foreign allies' phones and computers at the G20 summit in 2009, according to the leaks, and had unlimited access to customers' phone calls, email messages and Facebook entries stored by British telecoms companies, including BT and Vodafone.
Preposterous logic. On that basis, any amount of government interference in somebody's property, papers or effects could be justified if it is done sufficiently stealthily for the subject not to notice. There thus ought to be no restrictions on the government intercepting communications, or searching homes without a warrant while the occupier is at work. Tory authoritarianism lives on as ever.
We were discussing how INTRUSIVE the interception of communications (or, more precisely, the logging of metadata) is. Clearly, by definition, if no-one notices, it's not intrusive. Not hard to understand, surely?
I haven't actually made any statement about whether it is justified, which is a completely separate question. That would depend on the balance between the invasion of privacy and the potential benefit in detecting or preventing terrorist atrocities and other very serious crimes. A grown-up debate on the subject would explore that balance, which is no different in principle from many other state powers (detention on remand, powers of arrest on suspicion, the licensing of premises selling alcohol, firearms licences, etc).
"We'll be going back to the dark days of the late sixties and the seventies"
Actually I wouldn't mind going back to those days. There were plenty of jobs around, beer was cheap, housing was affordable and there was far more personal freedom.
The beer was cheap, but it was generally crap, wasn't it? Warm lager and gassy bitter.
It most certainly was not. True there had been a move towards nasty keg bitter but the early seventies was the start of the fightback (CAMRA was founded in 1971) but even then there were a significant number of good traditional brewers making fine beers. Youngs was still brewing for a start. There was a pub crawl around the Kensington and Chelsea area which entailed drinking 13 real ales, finishing up with a pint Fullers ESB at the Star in Belgravia (both still going I am pleased to say), before going on to the obligatory curry house.
That is good to know. I had always thought of the 70s as a beer black hole.
My own drinking days started properly in the early 1980s with lager beer. A pint of Kronenbourg was 60 pence in my local, 50 pence for Hofmeister. I am pretty sure that ciggies were under a quid as well. I have moved on to better things since.
When me and my missus lived in Spain in the late 80s, you could get a bottle of San Miguel for 100 ptas and a packet of Fortuna for 125 ptas. So a night out would cost about a fiver (200 ptas = £1 approx). The monthly rent was 27,000 ptas bills included, you could get a four course menu del dia for 600 ptas, with a bottle of wine and a coffee afterwards thrown in. Between us we earned 200,000 ptas a month. Living was easy and very, very fine. My kids will never have what we had back then.
I, too, would prefer to avoid PM Miliband, but there would just need to be an acceptable alternative among the major parties. And, for those of us who are truly small-state liberal conservatives, there isn't.
No, there isn't. That doesn't mean that the two main alternatives on offer are identical.
But the issue I, and I suspect an increasing number of people have is that both parties are so far from ideal that the differences between them become small in comparison.
If I want 100, and 1 party is offering 3 and the other 6 - then one is 'twice as good' as the other - but in reality they are both as bad as each other so I may as well vote idealistically for the minor party which is offering me 80. At least in this way I have the hope that either the major parties change as they recognize that they are losing potential voters, or the minor party becomes a major one.
I hope we don't find out, but the question of whether Miliband will just perform a volte face or continuez tout droit [tout gauche?] if he became PM is interesting.
I, too, would prefer to avoid PM Miliband, but there would just need to be an acceptable alternative among the major parties. And, for those of us who are truly small-state liberal conservatives, there isn't.
No, there isn't. That doesn't mean that the two main alternatives on offer are identical.
But the issue I, and I suspect an increasing number of people have is that both parties are so far from ideal that the differences between them become small in comparison.
If I want 100, and 1 party is offering 3 and the other 6 - then one is 'twice as good' as the other - but in reality they are both as bad as each other so I may as well vote idealistically for the minor party which is offering me 80. At least in this way I have the hope that either the major parties change as they recognize that they are losing potential voters, or the minor party becomes a major one.
You fool!
Why don't you just piss away all your momentum and growing support by putting someone into power who holds the complete opposite view to yourself on issues most important to you, and will campaign to deny your true objective?!
in·tru·sion inˈtro͞oZHən noun 1. the action of intruding.
in·trude inˈtro͞od verb gerund or present participle: intruding 1. put oneself deliberately into a place or situation where one is unwelcome or uninvited. "he had no right to intrude into their lives"
But the issue I, and I suspect an increasing number of people have is that both parties are so far from ideal that the differences between them become small in comparison.
If I want 100, and 1 party is offering 3 and the other 6 - then one is 'twice as good' as the other - but in reality they are both as bad as each other so I may as well vote idealistically for the minor party which is offering me 80. At least in this way I have the hope that either the major parties change as they recognize that they are losing potential voters, or the minor party becomes a major one.
That's a fair point, but you have to look at political reality. For example, I hate to break it to Socrates, but there's not a snowflake's chance in hell of any party getting elected on a platform of disallowing the intelligence services from being able to monitor communications in order to prevent terrorists blowing us up, civil liberty concerns notwithstanding. So why accept the proximate disaster of Miliband, in the hope that you might one day get something which you'll never get?
During this parliament, Labour have been polling particularly well among women, and this month their score among female voters rises to 43% (up from 38% last month). Conservative reliance on older voters has developed in parallel, and in Monday's survey the Tories command an outright majority support – 51% – of voters aged 65+.
But perhaps the most closely-watched sub-group of the entire electorate are 2010 Liberal Democrat supporters, the voters who may well hold the key to election 2015. This month, remarkably, more of them – 34% – are actually signalling that they will switch to Labour, than the 30% who are planning to stick with Nick Clegg.
In the European election polling, the only minor party to record an significant score that is not separately shown is the Scottish Nationalists, who are on 3%. In the Westminster polling, the SNP are also on 3%, as are the Greens.
A police constable can arrest anyone he likes, he has the power to do so. However they don't randomly arrest people because there are checks and balances in place. GCHQ can listen to the contents of millions of phone calls, but in the same way the constable doesn't randomly arrest people because he can, GCHQ, don't randomly listen in on people. It is exactly the same there is a huge pool of people available to be arrested, but aren't in the same way there's a massive pool of phone calls that could be listened to but aren't.
Hey, I'm a mystic. Lab on 38 and the lead increased (abeit by just 1).
VERY interesting on the Euros though. Kippers won't be pleased.
We just need for you to predict a Tory lead with YouGov tonight.
Re the Euros, I'm expecting the Kippers to trash ICM.
Steady on, son. I'm swapping my crystal ball for crystal swing for the rest of the evening.
Don't put much credence on the ICM Euro poll.
But the Labour lead for Westminster is back down to 3-5%. Crossover is a little slower than I had predicted in the autumn but it will happen and Dave WILL be PM in June 2015.
During this parliament, Labour have been polling particularly well among women, and this month their score among female voters rises to 43% (up from 38% last month). Conservative reliance on older voters has developed in parallel, and in Monday's survey the Tories command an outright majority support – 51% – of voters aged 65+.
But perhaps the most closely-watched sub-group of the entire electorate are 2010 Liberal Democrat supporters, the voters who may well hold the key to election 2015. This month, remarkably, more of them – 34% – are actually signalling that they will switch to Labour, than the 30% who are planning to stick with Nick Clegg.
In the European election polling, the only minor party to record an significant score that is not separately shown is the Scottish Nationalists, who are on 3%. In the Westminster polling, the SNP are also on 3%, as are the Greens.
It will be a generational election this - Gen X and Y vs the Baby Boomers. Put another way, those of working age solidly in the Red corner, retirees solidly in the Blue. It's confirmed almost daily by YouGov. Decent ICM for Labour.
1% behind the 2009 result is also good because (less than UKIP!) I expect us to do better on the day than polling in February shows. It doesnt take much for the Greens to double MEPs to 4 and on a very good day another seat or two might be possible. Beating the Lib Dems means nothing really (except for what it does for Lib Dem morale to come, presumably, 5th).
I seriously think that the these flood disasters may turn out as bad for Cameron's government as BlacK Wednesday did for for the Tory government of John Major. In this instance the votes lost being split between UKIP and Labour.
Please enlighten us on what they could have done different to prevent flooding from this once in a hundred year rain event?
flooding = rainfall - drainage
if you have 100 units of rain and 10 units per day of drainage then you get 90 units of flooding *and* it lasts 9 days
if you have 100 units of rain and 20 units per day of drainage then you get 80 units of flooding *and* it lasts 4 days
The inescapable truth is that the kippers most fear a referendum because they know they will lose it. That's why they are desperate for a Labour government.
It really is as simple as that. They huff and they puff. But they have not an ounce of credibility.
We certainly would lose it if we followed Richard's suggestion that we cease to run candidates against the Conservative Party in elections, urged our supporters to vote Conservative, and only appeared on the scene for the referendum campaign.
You yourself are an "honourable exception" in that you have said that in your semi-marginal seat you would vote Conservative (assuming UKIP itself had no chance), to prevent Labour winning, but every other of the party's supporters posting here would cheerfully accept a Miliband government under which not only would there never be a referendum but indeed the UK's further integration into the EU would inevitably accelerate.
I'm not convinced this will be as significant as it might be. The number of people affected (40 households a week or two ago, accoridng to ITV, which was staggeringly low given the coverage), and the prolonged and heavy nature of the rain will probably lead many to conclude that whilst dredging's a good idea there was, frankly, little that could've been done to stop enormous tracts of land being flooded.
I expect there's a document somewhere listing all the places where it would be easiest to meet EU biodiversity targets by just adding water. A party like Ukip wouldn't need to claim anything - just put the list of constituencies up.
Consequently that sort of variance would suggest figures along the lines of:
Lab 28% UKIP 27% Con 22% Grn 8% LD 3%
Now whilst I certainly don't expect the Libdems to sink that low ICM are known to be amongst the more generous on Libdem figures.
In reality the Euro polls tend to be a lottery but this ICM one doesn't cause any concern for UKIP except perhaps the propaganda value that it being reported provides.
Comments
By the way, for those that care about these things - tomorrow (11th Feb) is the focus of a #thedaywefightback campaign to Stop Mass Surveillance - it's time we're treated like citizens not suspects. Details here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/24/us-marines-charged-dead-taliban
'The inescapable truth is that the kippers most fear a referendum because they know they will lose it. That's why they are desperate for a Labour government.'
By pushing the referendum into the (potentially very) long grass UKIP MEP's continue on the gravy train,what's the point of UKIP after a referendum vote has taken place?
But yes, I do think that something which forces the citizen to do something, on pain of criminal sanctions, is massively more intrusive than a computer scanning emails. The difference is that the citizen notices the first, potentially getting fined or worse for forgetting or refusing to comply, and doesn't notice the second. That's pretty much the definition of 'intrusive' in this context.
This could spark a diplomatic incident
Proportionally as well as in actual numbers they lost support between 1997 and 2001 and as we have already established they lost 2.8 million votes. If that is not 'actively losing support' what is?
Furthermore, not voting in sufficient numbers (2001 was the lowest turnout in modern general election history) does not necessarily suggest contentment and a desire for continuity. It can equally suggest that many voters no longer feel any of the major parties represent them and a wider discontentment with the political class. That turnout levels have not returned to 1990's levels despite the worst financial crisis.in 80 years lends to that idea.
GCHQ has been monitoring secret fibre-optic cables that carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic – and sharing the data with its American counterpart. GCHQ also spied on foreign allies' phones and computers at the G20 summit in 2009, according to the leaks, and had unlimited access to customers' phone calls, email messages and Facebook entries stored by British telecoms companies, including BT and Vodafone.
http://www.channel4.com/news/gchq-timeline-revelations-snowden-spying
I haven't actually made any statement about whether it is justified, which is a completely separate question. That would depend on the balance between the invasion of privacy and the potential benefit in detecting or preventing terrorist atrocities and other very serious crimes. A grown-up debate on the subject would explore that balance, which is no different in principle from many other state powers (detention on remand, powers of arrest on suspicion, the licensing of premises selling alcohol, firearms licences, etc).
My own drinking days started properly in the early 1980s with lager beer. A pint of Kronenbourg was 60 pence in my local, 50 pence for Hofmeister. I am pretty sure that ciggies were under a quid as well. I have moved on to better things since.
When me and my missus lived in Spain in the late 80s, you could get a bottle of San Miguel for 100 ptas and a packet of Fortuna for 125 ptas. So a night out would cost about a fiver (200 ptas = £1 approx). The monthly rent was 27,000 ptas bills included, you could get a four course menu del dia for 600 ptas, with a bottle of wine and a coffee afterwards thrown in. Between us we earned 200,000 ptas a month. Living was easy and very, very fine. My kids will never have what we had back then.
Which means awesome music!
I'm voting for Ed, because I didn't fully appreciate the 80s the first time around, as I was like only a child.
If I want 100, and 1 party is offering 3 and the other 6 - then one is 'twice as good' as the other - but in reality they are both as bad as each other so I may as well vote idealistically for the minor party which is offering me 80. At least in this way I have the hope that either the major parties change as they recognize that they are losing potential voters, or the minor party becomes a major one.
http://www.channel4.com/news/intercept-text-messages-spy-nsa-gchq-british-phone
Mr. Eagles, I'll believe it when I hear it.
I hope we don't find out, but the question of whether Miliband will just perform a volte face or continuez tout droit [tout gauche?] if he became PM is interesting.
Just my luck I bet it shows an increased Labour lead with them on 38%!!
Why don't you just piss away all your momentum and growing support by putting someone into power who holds the complete opposite view to yourself on issues most important to you, and will campaign to deny your true objective?!
http://youtu.be/Gdhis5Zj4Wk?t=38s
Edited extra bit: hmm, tried to make the video start at 0:38, which is the relevant snippet, but it seemed disinclined to obey.
inˈtro͞oZHən
noun
1. the action of intruding.
in·trude
inˈtro͞od
verb
gerund or present participle: intruding
1. put oneself deliberately into a place or situation where one is unwelcome or uninvited.
"he had no right to intrude into their lives"
Not to mention, the list is sure to get leaked at some point.
Lab 38 (+3)
Con 34 (+2)
LD 10 (-4)
UKIP 11 (+1)
Euros
Lab 35, Con 25, UKIP 20, LD 9, Greens 7
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/10/ukip-better-2009-european-elections-guardian-icm-poll
But perhaps the most closely-watched sub-group of the entire electorate are 2010 Liberal Democrat supporters, the voters who may well hold the key to election 2015. This month, remarkably, more of them – 34% – are actually signalling that they will switch to Labour, than the 30% who are planning to stick with Nick Clegg.
In the European election polling, the only minor party to record an significant score that is not separately shown is the Scottish Nationalists, who are on 3%. In the Westminster polling, the SNP are also on 3%, as are the Greens.
VERY interesting on the Euros though. Kippers won't be pleased.
Re the Euros, I'm expecting the Kippers to trash ICM.
And I hope Richard didnt receive them, it would make the next PB Tory get together quite awkward
Don't put much credence on the ICM Euro poll.
But the Labour lead for Westminster is back down to 3-5%. Crossover is a little slower than I had predicted in the autumn but it will happen and Dave WILL be PM in June 2015.
Put another way, those of working age solidly in the Red corner, retirees solidly in the Blue.
It's confirmed almost daily by YouGov.
Decent ICM for Labour.
1% behind the 2009 result is also good because (less than UKIP!) I expect us to do better on the day than polling in February shows. It doesnt take much for the Greens to double MEPs to 4 and on a very good day another seat or two might be possible. Beating the Lib Dems means nothing really (except for what it does for Lib Dem morale to come, presumably, 5th).
if you have 100 units of rain and 10 units per day of drainage then you get 90 units of flooding *and* it lasts 9 days
if you have 100 units of rain and 20 units per day of drainage then you get 80 units of flooding *and* it lasts 4 days
(proof available at nearest sink)
They still need to build up a Faragian Guard, though.
Why the Conservative party will never again get a majority in just 10 words.
If so, he has gone up in my estimation. I did not think he had any plans.
If you look at their 2009 performance and aggregate their three polls the variance from the result was:
Con -2.6%
Lab -7.3%
LD -6.3%
UKIP +7%
Grn +1.1%
BNP +4%
Consequently that sort of variance would suggest figures along the lines of:
Lab 28%
UKIP 27%
Con 22%
Grn 8%
LD 3%
Now whilst I certainly don't expect the Libdems to sink that low ICM are known to be amongst the more generous on Libdem figures.
In reality the Euro polls tend to be a lottery but this ICM one doesn't cause any concern for UKIP except perhaps the propaganda value that it being reported provides.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/european-elections