It is the response to the hue and cry which follows it.
So far we have had a character called "David Samuel-Camps BA (Hons) Dip. PA" writing a letter to the times telling us how he was taught the 700 times table at school.
We have his geography lesson on West Sussex villages and his snobbish disdain of any association with Bognor Regis.
We have a political party announcing they are not prepared to speak "ever again" to anyone on their Macarthyite list of Times journalists.
We have as a claimed source for the story a Yugoslavian refugee from the Balkan conflicts who became a contract employee of an UKIP MEP before being sacked and subsequently convicted of forging a bank statement.
Such convict now waging twitter war against her former employer under the description "Author of 'Unusual Fascist Hunter - Exposing UKIP dirty secrets', contact me for all info on ukip dirt."
We have a party leader who thinks a 625 square foot agricultural building converted to a party HQ can consume £3,000 of energy each year due to "lots of machines whirring away".
We have a bunch of kippers running around the net crying "Infamy, infamy, they have all go it infamy".
This is the apotheosis of British comedy of manners.
Twitter The Labour Party @UKLabour 3h We want our election campaign to be the first in UK political history funded by the people. Be one of them: http://labour.tw/Q9EYP1
Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick 3h @UKLabour So who has been funding Labour's election campaigns up to now? Giraffes?
Twitter The Labour Party @UKLabour 3h We want our election campaign to be the first in UK political history funded by the people. Be one of them: http://labour.tw/Q9EYP1
Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick 3h @UKLabour So who has been funding Labour's election campaigns up to now? Giraffes?
Ah right. Be interesting to see if others does fall that much, I suspect seeing the ballot paper and being reminded will push a few back to others. Although I suppose the BNP seem to have really dropped off the map recently.
He's only a step away from offering Free Unicorns to everyone in an Independent Scotland.
Unicorns are too common. He will be offering Mermaids fresh from Sandwood Bay, whilst renaming himself Polson and ripping off his shirt Putin-style to wrestle with the last wolf of Sutherland.
I find it difficult to believe UKIP are heading for 24% in London of all places. If they did achieve something like that it would send shockwaves through the London political elite.
On topic, the only way that Nick Clegg is going before the election is of his own volition. He can only be defenestrated by Lib Dem MPs, and too many of them have collaborated with the Government to change course now. Since he's said he's staying, he's staying.
And in truth, any other course of action now would be worse. Which is not to say that staying with Nick Clegg is a good option: just the best of a bad bunch.
It's not the Lib Dem leader that's the problem; it's being in government with the Tories.
Actually it's both which is why Clegg crashed and burned so spectacularly in the debates and why the leadership challengers are so scared of replacing him and becoming as toxic as he is.
No, it is the government factor - but it's a one-way ratchet. Had Clegg not entered government, he'd still be viewed favourably; it's that he went into government that did for both him and the Lib Dems (though gratuitously jumping on the tuition fees pledge compounded the problem). However, having done that it can't be undone: leaving government will restore neither his nor (in the short term) the Lib Dems' previous purity.
Would a new Lib Dem leader do any better? Not in government, though they may get a brief honeymoon. It's still the same Catch-22: if you're fully signed up to the government programme, you just look like Tory-Lite; if you try to be the internal opposition, you look hypocritical for attempting to have it both ways. Cable, Farron or whoever would still be stuck with the same dynamics. They might handle them better (or not) but they'd be there either way.
To state the obvious Cameron will be desperate to avoid a by-election in Newark which UKIP would have a good chance of winning. Problem is the decision is entirely down to Patrick Mercer.
It wouldn't be a comfortable by-election for the Conservatives, but if they were going to lose it you'd expect them to lose it to Labour rather than UKIP. They really should hold it on these figures.
'The First Minister told the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) that the Royal Navy will still procure ships from the Clyde and insisted further jobs would be secured through diversification.'
So Salmoan is now guaranteeing that a foreign country will continue to have its naval ships built in Scotland after independence,you couldn't make it up.
Are they really attacking Farage over an ALLOWANCE? So basically Times hacks hope Times readers are too thick to grasp that an allowance and an expense are rather different concepts.
It wouldn't be a comfortable by-election for the Conservatives, but if they were going to lose it you'd expect them to lose it to Labour rather than UKIP. They really should hold it on these figures.
I don't think Labour would be in contention. It just isn't the sort of place where Ed Miliband would appeal IMO. They might put on 5-6 percentage points in line with the national opinion polls to take them to about 28%, not enough to win.
'The First Minister told the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) that the Royal Navy will still procure ships from the Clyde and insisted further jobs would be secured through diversification.'
So Salmoan is now guaranteeing that a foreign country will continue to have its naval ships built in Scotland after independence,you couldn't make it up.
Project Fib just went up a gear.
Comedy gold at its best..
As if any rUK połitician would dare face the wrath of the electorate by not stipulating the work was undertaken south of the border.
BAE would strip their Scottish yards and weld the gates shut.
'The First Minister told the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) that the Royal Navy will still procure ships from the Clyde and insisted further jobs would be secured through diversification.'
So Salmoan is now guaranteeing that a foreign country will continue to have its naval ships built in Scotland after independence,you couldn't make it up.
For what it's worth, I've had a detailed poke at Dr Fisher's model of poll swings over time. Had to cut this post into 2 parts:
PART ONE
Geeky bit I've queried the probability distribution a while back - he's assumed the Gaussian distribution (aka normal distribution, aka Bell curve), which is usually the right thing to do (Central Limit Theorem, etc). But given the wide distribution of values, it didn't look like a Gaussian would fit very well, and having read both Taleb and Ball's books (where the "fat tails" of non-Gaussian distributions have caught out many eminent statisticians and analysts in the past (including, for example, financial analysts)), I wondered if that was right. When I took the raw data and plotted the variance of the retrofitted "postdictions", I found that: - Con shares coming from Government follow close to a straight line - Lab shares coming from opposition are also pretty linear - Lib shares are all over the place. A linear fit down to 5% with exponential decay after that fits pretty well, though, but I wouldn't want to put any faith in that. Especially as there are only 2 data points for "Libs exitting some sort of Government position" (wartime coalition and 1977-78 Lib-Lab Pact).
What does it mean? The probability bands are far wider than posted. Basically, every point in the 95% probability line is equally likely - based solely on polls varying prior to the election.
Polling accuracy What about the failure of the polls in 1992? What about historical Labour overstatement? Well, in order to compare like with like, I've compared the polls 13 months out with the eve of election polls. Not the result. This shows the polling swingback, otherwise you're overlaying one variable with another. Given all the work that pollsters have done over the years adjusting their techniques, we can't really compare polls from one cycle to another; pollsters use the outcomes to amend their processes. So this compares the polls today with the expected eve of election polls. If you think that these will over/understate one or more parties, then an adjustment would be indicated.
Seats to polls UNS is a rule of thumb, not a rule of law, as we well know. Given that it shifts by usually a couple of points between elections, and given expected incumbency boosts (which may not materialise), given that Lab/LD voters may not share votes as well this time, a decent rule of thumb could be: Con majority: Con needs a 6-9 point lead Con most seats: Con need a 1-3 point lead Lab most seats: Opposite of above; need a deficit of 1-3 points Lab majority: Lab need a 2-4 point lead.
... which makes direct assignment of probabilities difficult. I've also assumed that the Lib Dems will get somewhere in the low teens (ie 10-15 points) and probably 30-40 seats. Your mileage may vary.
PART TWO The "predictions" I'm by no means convinced that this is a very reliable predictive method, but for what it's worth, based on the specifics of the polls and a linear distribution of votes:
Probability Con majority: 33%-47% depending on how far ahead you think they need to be (9 pts-6pts range) Probability Con largest party: 62%-71% (3pts to 1pt range) Probability Lab largest party: 29%-38% (likewise) Probability Lab majority: 9%-18% (2 pt lead to 4 pt lead) Probability Con lead in votes; Lab lead in seats (4%-13%) Probability Hung Parliament: 35-53% Probability Con ahead in Hung Parliament:15%-39% Probability Lab ahead in Hung Parliament:11%-26%
In my personal opinion, those numbers aren't hugely useful, at least, any moreso than intuition at the moment. Too many variables (how will they translate to seats? How accurate will the polls be?) and too wide a linear range (a confident prediction that the Tories will get between 28 and 46 percent may well be accurate, but hardly that useful, and the entire linear thing seems to be driven by the fact that every situation is different with differing contributions of fundamentals). Still, for what it's worth, there are the figures above.
If you want to play around with other leads, the numbers for forecast given eve-of election polling leads leads are (as at Polling Day - 13 months):
Con lead 9+: 32.3% Con lead 8+: 36.9% Con lead 7+: 41.7% Con lead 6+: 46.7% Con lead 5+: 51.7% Con lead 4+: 56.8% Con lead 3+: 61.9% Con lead 2+: 66.3% Con lead 1+: 70.8% Con lead: 74.9% Lab lead: 25.1% Lab lead 1+: 21.3% Lab lead 2+: 18.0% Lab lead 3+: 14.6% Lab lead 4+: 11.7% Lab lead 5+: 9.0%
Are they really attacking Farage over an ALLOWANCE? So basically Times hacks hope Times readers are too thick to grasp that an allowance and an expense are rather different concepts.
Of all the ways to defend this story, aruging the difference between an allowance (a la House of Lords) and expenses (a la House of Commons) is not the way forward. It is like arguing the difference between the Bedroom Tax and a bedroom tax, or the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, and so on. You can be correct to the ends of the Earth, but nobody cares. If you stood in a position of strength, you might carry it, but even Farage isn't that when it comes to politicians and their spending of public money.
If Scotland votes Yes there's going to have to be some kind of agreement over defence. It will just be too expensive and awkward for both countries to completely go it alone.
It's not the Lib Dem leader that's the problem; it's being in government with the Tories.
Actually it's both which is why Clegg crashed and burned so spectacularly in the debates and why the leadership challengers are so scared of replacing him and becoming as toxic as he is.
Had Clegg not entered government, he'd still be viewed favourably
You just said it yourself, "had Clegg not entered government". There is simply no way to separate Clegg from the coalition. Every decision, every choice, every nuance on policy can all be traced back to Clegg's leadership of the lib dems in coalition. He IS the coalition just as much as Cammie is.
Sure, we can speculate on how things might have went if he hadn't but I'd point out that Clegg got less seats than Kennedy and his actions/strategy in the coaliton have been disasterous. Not just short term for his own party but long term on things like Lords Reform and getting rid of FPTP. So I'm not entirely convinced he would have been that impressive as an opposition leader either. It's hardly an easy job as little Ed keeps finding to his cost.
Would a new Lib Dem leader do any better? Not in government, though they may get a brief honeymoon. It's still the same Catch-22: if you're fully signed up to the government programme, you just look like Tory-Lite; if you try to be the internal opposition, you look hypocritical for attempting to have it both ways. Cable, Farron or whoever would still be stuck with the same dynamics. They might handle them better (or not) but they'd be there either way.
I have no problem at all with that analysis but who you have as party leader does still matter a great deal. That's just a fact of campaign politics now. So with the 2015 debates concentrating the focus even more I think it's fair to say there can't be many lib dems outside of Clegg's ostrich faction who won't shudder when they think of Clegg in a debate after the Farage fiasco.
It all comes down to just how desperate some lib dems might get if things don't improve and just how willing (or not) any of the lib dem leadership hopefuls are to put their heads above the parapet. Any possibility of a honeymoon and short term boost might be better than the alternative for some panicking lib dems. Their problem is Clegg doesn't look like he'll give up without a fight and his possible replacements don't look particularly willing to fight him.
Actions speak far louder than words. Closing Rosyth to shore up a marginal in Devon (that especially); scrapping Nimrod without any replacement - even for ASR and EEZ surveillance; closing still more airfields and bases; and generally ****ing up the carriers and their planes.
Evening all and I wonder how ordinary voters will view Nigel Farage telling the media it is for him to decide what to do with his allowances and none of their business. Nigel needs to remember it is the British taxpayers who are funding his Euro jollies.
Actions speak far louder than words. Closing Rosyth to shore up a marginal in Devon (that especially); scrapping Nimrod without any replacement - even for ASR and EEZ surveillance; closing still more airfields and bases; and generally ****ing up the carriers and their planes.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are funding much larger subsidies for rail travel in Scotland and Wales than in England, a report by the regulator has found.
The subsidy varies from an average £2.19 for every passenger journey in England to £7.60 in Scotland and £9.33 in Wales. In all, £4 billion of government money was provided in 2012-13, nearly a third of the train companies’ income, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) said.
Evening all and I wonder how ordinary voters will view Nigel Farage telling the media it is for him to decide what to do with his allowances and none of their business. Nigel needs to remember it is the British taxpayers who are funding his Euro jollies.
If Salmond can buy gold plated trousers and stay in $1,000,000 a night hotels why should Farage worry ? The voters want to be duped.
Oh I don't know. The 'mystery' tory minister who let the cat out of the bag over Osbrowne's inept currency posturing spoke pretty loudly. Curious how quickly the PB tory 'supersleuths' gave up trying to find him and just how vocal Hammond is on various Independence subjects?
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are funding much larger subsidies for rail travel in Scotland and Wales than in England, a report by the regulator has found.
The subsidy varies from an average £2.19 for every passenger journey in England to £7.60 in Scotland and £9.33 in Wales. In all, £4 billion of government money was provided in 2012-13, nearly a third of the train companies’ income, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) said.
I see info-ops is back on manoeuvers: With Dumbos, Herckies, Sentinel and Merlin we have some coverage of SAR/EEZ. As SAR is semi-private - fully come 2016 - why should Westminster care about covering the Edinborough-Parish EEZ.
All savings from said can be rolled in P-8/Triton. Your oil [sic]; you protect it...!
“In the entire global history of the political campaign, has any been more misconceived, wretchedly executed and potentially self-defeating than the one designed to keep Scotland within the United Kingdom?
Until proof is found of a Eugene Terre’Blanche run for mayor of Soweto on the Apartheid Now And Forever platform, the assumption must be not.
With every week that passes, the No campaign’s once lavish and seemingly impregnable lead evaporates. And as it dwindles, its scare stories continue to deluge the debate in the curious belief a) that Scotland, a proud and bellicose nation, is a wee, timorous beastie; and b) that if you double down on a tactic of transparently counterproductive idiocy for long enough, it will metamorphose into one of purest genius.”
As an LD member, I'm as always intrigued by all those who know the party so well despite not being members (and being often very hostile toward it).
The Party cannot and should not ditch Nick in the same way as the Conservatives didn't dump John Major and Labour didn't dump Gordon Brown when both arguably had the opportunity to do so. Nick's role, as I see it, is to act as the lightning rod for the pent-up anti-Lib Dem feeling out there (of which there seems to be plenty).
For the party to have any kind of future, Nick has to be there to be metaphorically kicked by the electorate - the antipathy toward the party becomes personalised in him. Once he's gone, the party can, in time, pick itself off and begin again.
The Conservatives had to do this after 1997, Labour had to do it after 1979 and again after 2010 and for the Liberal Democrats, the coming election looks to be the most painful since 1979 and perhaps 1970. After both, the party had to renew and rebuild and await the opportunities that shape politics.
What then would cause the Party to implode ? Not a bad European result - we're used to those. Oddly enough, the London Borough elections might be worth watching in terms of control of places like Kingston and above all Sutton. A bad night in London could be the lighting of the match - it would cause a summer of discontent and lead to a difficult Conference.
I'll end with two predictions of my own - one, the Party won't split after 2015 (we know our history) and two, we won't be in Coalition with either Party after the election but will be on the Opposition benches (albeit in reduced numbers).
Actions speak far louder than words. Closing Rosyth to shore up a marginal in Devon (that especially); scrapping Nimrod without any replacement - even for ASR and EEZ surveillance; closing still more airfields and bases; and generally ****ing up the carriers and their planes.
To be fair, militarily it makes sense not to have all your eggs in one basket, or your naval facilities at the same end of the country. Therefore one in Scotland to cover G-I-UK, and a southern base to cover the Atlantic makes some sense. The same is true of refitting and repairing submarines or vessels; in an ideal world you would not want them in the same area operationally. That is not true for items like POL or armaments, which are best situated near to the base.
And of course, the carriers were not assembled in Rosyth to shore up Scottish votes under Brown ...
Nimrod was a mess; I have not heard anyone give a good argument as to why that Zombie project should have continued.
The carriers were mucked up by Labour's lie that they were designing them to use either STOVL or CATOBAR; it turned out that the CATOBAR capability hadn't been designed in for many years. Add in Hoon's hideous JFH and you have an absolute mess.
One of funniest episodes on Twitter was SNP Defence MP Angus Robertson's Corporal Jones style panicked tweets when the Russian Navy pulled into the Moray Firth to take shelter from a big storm. The panic then turned to outrage and demands that something be done about them fly tipping, I kid you not. I have this vision now of Alex Salmond standing there like Captain Mannering, and claiming that any enemy will rue the day that they try any incursions into an Independent Scotland as the sum total of the SNP Defence policy!
Actions speak far louder than words. Closing Rosyth to shore up a marginal in Devon (that especially); scrapping Nimrod without any replacement - even for ASR and EEZ surveillance; closing still more airfields and bases; and generally ****ing up the carriers and their planes.
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_constituency)#2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JStm6QyLcw
Poss By-election as ex-Tory minister Patrick Mercer expected to be banned for up to six months | via @Telegraph http://fw.to/WD6OnNS
*chortles*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo
The Labour Party @UKLabour 3h
We want our election campaign to be the first in UK political history funded by the people. Be one of them: http://labour.tw/Q9EYP1
Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick 3h
@UKLabour So who has been funding Labour's election campaigns up to now? Giraffes?
http://www.ukip.org/who_are_the_times_journalists_trying_so_desperately_to_undermine_ukip
http://www.nnh.co.uk/taxidermy/wolfstone.html
I think there's too much blood in my alcohol stream...
Danny Finkelstein
Matthew Parris
Alice Thomson
Hugo Rifkind
Rachel Sylvester
Tim Montgomerie
Alexi Mostrous
http://www.ukip.org/who_are_the_times_journalists_trying_so_desperately_to_undermine_ukip
And in truth, any other course of action now would be worse. Which is not to say that staying with Nick Clegg is a good option: just the best of a bad bunch.
In 2010 they won 43 seats to the Tories' 11:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Council_election,_2010
Would a new Lib Dem leader do any better? Not in government, though they may get a brief honeymoon. It's still the same Catch-22: if you're fully signed up to the government programme, you just look like Tory-Lite; if you try to be the internal opposition, you look hypocritical for attempting to have it both ways. Cable, Farron or whoever would still be stuck with the same dynamics. They might handle them better (or not) but they'd be there either way.
Conservative: 27590 (53.9%)
Labour: 11438 (22.3%)
Lib Dem: 10246 (20%)
UKIP: 1954 (3.8%)
MAJORITY: 16152 (31.5%)
It wouldn't be a comfortable by-election for the Conservatives, but if they were going to lose it you'd expect them to lose it to Labour rather than UKIP. They really should hold it on these figures.
'The First Minister told the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) that the Royal Navy will still procure ships from the Clyde and insisted further jobs would be secured through diversification.'
So Salmoan is now guaranteeing that a foreign country will continue to have its naval ships built in Scotland after independence,you couldn't make it up.
Project Fib just went up a gear.
Comedy gold at its best..
BAE would strip their Scottish yards and weld the gates shut.
TOO STUPID
TOO STUPID
PART ONE
Geeky bit
I've queried the probability distribution a while back - he's assumed the Gaussian distribution (aka normal distribution, aka Bell curve), which is usually the right thing to do (Central Limit Theorem, etc). But given the wide distribution of values, it didn't look like a Gaussian would fit very well, and having read both Taleb and Ball's books (where the "fat tails" of non-Gaussian distributions have caught out many eminent statisticians and analysts in the past (including, for example, financial analysts)), I wondered if that was right. When I took the raw data and plotted the variance of the retrofitted "postdictions", I found that:
- Con shares coming from Government follow close to a straight line
- Lab shares coming from opposition are also pretty linear
- Lib shares are all over the place. A linear fit down to 5% with exponential decay after that fits pretty well, though, but I wouldn't want to put any faith in that. Especially as there are only 2 data points for "Libs exitting some sort of Government position" (wartime coalition and 1977-78 Lib-Lab Pact).
What does it mean?
The probability bands are far wider than posted. Basically, every point in the 95% probability line is equally likely - based solely on polls varying prior to the election.
Polling accuracy
What about the failure of the polls in 1992? What about historical Labour overstatement? Well, in order to compare like with like, I've compared the polls 13 months out with the eve of election polls. Not the result. This shows the polling swingback, otherwise you're overlaying one variable with another. Given all the work that pollsters have done over the years adjusting their techniques, we can't really compare polls from one cycle to another; pollsters use the outcomes to amend their processes. So this compares the polls today with the expected eve of election polls. If you think that these will over/understate one or more parties, then an adjustment would be indicated.
Seats to polls
UNS is a rule of thumb, not a rule of law, as we well know. Given that it shifts by usually a couple of points between elections, and given expected incumbency boosts (which may not materialise), given that Lab/LD voters may not share votes as well this time, a decent rule of thumb could be:
Con majority: Con needs a 6-9 point lead
Con most seats: Con need a 1-3 point lead
Lab most seats: Opposite of above; need a deficit of 1-3 points
Lab majority: Lab need a 2-4 point lead.
... which makes direct assignment of probabilities difficult.
I've also assumed that the Lib Dems will get somewhere in the low teens (ie 10-15 points) and probably 30-40 seats. Your mileage may vary.
(Predictions and probabilities in next part)
The "predictions"
I'm by no means convinced that this is a very reliable predictive method, but for what it's worth, based on the specifics of the polls and a linear distribution of votes:
Cons: 37 +/- 9 (and yes, that's a huge range)
Lab: 33 +/- 7
LD 10-15
Probability Con majority: 33%-47% depending on how far ahead you think they need to be (9 pts-6pts range)
Probability Con largest party: 62%-71% (3pts to 1pt range)
Probability Lab largest party: 29%-38% (likewise)
Probability Lab majority: 9%-18% (2 pt lead to 4 pt lead)
Probability Con lead in votes; Lab lead in seats (4%-13%)
Probability Hung Parliament: 35-53%
Probability Con ahead in Hung Parliament:15%-39%
Probability Lab ahead in Hung Parliament:11%-26%
In my personal opinion, those numbers aren't hugely useful, at least, any moreso than intuition at the moment. Too many variables (how will they translate to seats? How accurate will the polls be?) and too wide a linear range (a confident prediction that the Tories will get between 28 and 46 percent may well be accurate, but hardly that useful, and the entire linear thing seems to be driven by the fact that every situation is different with differing contributions of fundamentals). Still, for what it's worth, there are the figures above.
If you want to play around with other leads, the numbers for forecast given eve-of election polling leads leads are (as at Polling Day - 13 months):
Con lead 9+: 32.3%
Con lead 8+: 36.9%
Con lead 7+: 41.7%
Con lead 6+: 46.7%
Con lead 5+: 51.7%
Con lead 4+: 56.8%
Con lead 3+: 61.9%
Con lead 2+: 66.3%
Con lead 1+: 70.8%
Con lead: 74.9%
Lab lead: 25.1%
Lab lead 1+: 21.3%
Lab lead 2+: 18.0%
Lab lead 3+: 14.6%
Lab lead 4+: 11.7%
Lab lead 5+: 9.0%
Sure, we can speculate on how things might have went if he hadn't but I'd point out that Clegg got less seats than Kennedy and his actions/strategy in the coaliton have been disasterous. Not just short term for his own party but long term on things like Lords Reform and getting rid of FPTP. So I'm not entirely convinced he would have been that impressive as an opposition leader either. It's hardly an easy job as little Ed keeps finding to his cost.
I have no problem at all with that analysis but who you have as party leader does still matter a great deal. That's just a fact of campaign politics now. So with the 2015 debates concentrating the focus even more I think it's fair to say there can't be many lib dems outside of Clegg's ostrich faction who won't shudder when they think of Clegg in a debate after the Farage fiasco.
It all comes down to just how desperate some lib dems might get if things don't improve and just how willing (or not) any of the lib dem leadership hopefuls are to put their heads above the parapet. Any possibility of a honeymoon and short term boost might be better than the alternative for some panicking lib dems. Their problem is Clegg doesn't look like he'll give up without a fight and his possible replacements don't look particularly willing to fight him.
Grow-a-pair; let the penny drop. Freedom!!!
Comedy Gold indeed.
Grow-a-pair; let the penny drop. Freedom!!!
Fluffy for the nats the problem isn't so much growing bollocks as to stop talking bollocks.
Sell you a couple of mermaids for 2 bawbees ?
All savings from said can be rolled in P-8/Triton. Your oil [sic]; you protect it...!
As an LD member, I'm as always intrigued by all those who know the party so well despite not being members (and being often very hostile toward it).
The Party cannot and should not ditch Nick in the same way as the Conservatives didn't dump John Major and Labour didn't dump Gordon Brown when both arguably had the opportunity to do so. Nick's role, as I see it, is to act as the lightning rod for the pent-up anti-Lib Dem feeling out there (of which there seems to be plenty).
For the party to have any kind of future, Nick has to be there to be metaphorically kicked by the electorate - the antipathy toward the party becomes personalised in him. Once he's gone, the party can, in time, pick itself off and begin again.
The Conservatives had to do this after 1997, Labour had to do it after 1979 and again after 2010 and for the Liberal Democrats, the coming election looks to be the most painful since 1979 and perhaps 1970. After both, the party had to renew and rebuild and await the opportunities that shape politics.
What then would cause the Party to implode ? Not a bad European result - we're used to those. Oddly enough, the London Borough elections might be worth watching in terms of control of places like Kingston and above all Sutton. A bad night in London could be the lighting of the match - it would cause a summer of discontent and lead to a difficult Conference.
I'll end with two predictions of my own - one, the Party won't split after 2015 (we know our history) and two, we won't be in Coalition with either Party after the election but will be on the Opposition benches (albeit in reduced numbers).
And of course, the carriers were not assembled in Rosyth to shore up Scottish votes under Brown ...
Nimrod was a mess; I have not heard anyone give a good argument as to why that Zombie project should have continued.
The carriers were mucked up by Labour's lie that they were designing them to use either STOVL or CATOBAR; it turned out that the CATOBAR capability hadn't been designed in for many years. Add in Hoon's hideous JFH and you have an absolute mess.
Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes 6m
Sums Don’t Add Up for Times Front Page UKIP Story http://guyfawk.es/1etbDtG
Someones lying through their teeth, and it aint Nigel