"UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU ...."
I'm not sure enough people care about the EU but if they did or could be persuaded to the big opportunity would lie with Labour.
There are potentially a majority out there who are in support of the EU which so far only the Lib Dems have tapped into. Well that constituency is now up for grabs and if Milliband would just go for it all guns blazing there would be many advantages
1. It would give them a cause and stop them looking so rudderless 2.It would stir up the Tory/UKIP hornet's nest. 3.He could legitimately start claiming to be the Party of business. 4.He could re-attract disillusioned Scots. 5. He could energize the younger vote who are overwhelmingly pro Europe
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Scotland would be much more influential in a UK consisting only of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, or maybe just Scotland.
UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU .... and that he is simply going through the motions and ultimately will settle for minor, window-dressing concessions. The only way he can overcome this perception is to come up with a "shopping list" of measures to tackle voters' discontent with Europe and to promise that these will be tabled immediately after the Tories win next May's General Election, setting a reasonable 18 months time frame for reaching agreement, thereby enabling a referendum thereon to be held in November 2017. If he's not prepared to do this then it's best that he resigns now and passes the mantle to someone who is. This issue simply cannot be ducked any longer.
PfP - I think your post is an example of the problem DavidL identified. The EU renegotiation will be very complex. No doubt our partners will concede ground in order to keep us in the EU, but they will demand concessions too. There is no point the UK government developing a list in isolation that has no prospect of success, or publishing a list that foreign governments reject out of hand (playing to their own galleries), which then allows the BOO wing within the party to declare the negotiations a failure and demand a referendum next week. Cameron has to play a game of three dimensional chess, with the odds somewhat stacked against him. He must be given time to play that game, and we must not pretend that the simple option is a perfect solution.
Case in point. Nothing against you personally but this is abysmal apologia for total willful inaction, disguising it as some sort of Metternich-esque diplomatic wizardry. Total nonsense.
If you want to get powers back from the EU, you don't opt into ones you don't have to opt into (justice and policing). You don't publicly state at every opportunity that you don't want to leave the organisation that you want concessions from -it totally undermines your position.
Indeed Peter (and thanks). It may have been a close run thing though - a few years ago the BNP were getting traction in various parts of the country. Fortunately the abject incompetence of your average racist moron meant that most of their elected officials served a single term, if that, and the party collapsed under the weight of the unpleasantness it attracted. Ukip is a very different animal and the mainstream parties and media were slow to recognise the full implications of that.
I understand (although may be wrong) that the FN has softened its countenance in recent years. Even if so, I guess the suspicion lingers that any conversion to enlightenment is for electoral gain and the rotten core remains.
Fair point, Flock.
I visit France fairly regularly these days and watch the FN closer than most. Please accept my assurance that any 'softening' is purely cosmetic and precisely for the purpose you indicate. I have a Marine le Pen anecdote which will illustrate.
A good friend was at a party in France and was astonished to find herself being introduced to MLP. All she could think to blurt out was 'Mais je suis Juive', to which Marine responded with a smile 'Tant pis.'
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
Their view is that there is a real risk that MLP will come through the middle - she has a surprising left wing economic programme which, combined with nationalism and racism/anti-semitism may well be enough to win her a majority given the lack of alternatives.
Is this the same FN that supported bans on demonstrations against the Israeli attack on Gaza? They are deeply anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and like the BNP and EDL they are pro-Israeli.
WRT the Middle East, they probably take the view my enemy's enemy is my friend, while still not being very fond of French Jews.
The Pieds Noirs were massively pro-Israel in the Sixties.
I suspect that they're all for a strong Israel and to help make it so would be all for French Jews moving there.
Did you see my speculation yesturday on the influence SamCam has politically on Cameron ?
I'd be interested in your thoughts if you're willing to give them.
I've met them both, but not seen them interact for an extended period of time. I'd need to ask my parents who know them much better.
Generically, though, a wife clearly has a great deal of influence over a husband given the nature of the relationship, although I think you were over egging the pudding to suggest that he is terrified of upsetting her friend
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
I'm looking to start an "Ifbeds" (independence for Bedfordshire) movement.
Anyone think a scenario where more Tory MPs resign their seats and fight local by elections, followed by a few Labour MPs doing the same in the lead up to the GE might be a game changer?
I've chucked a couple of quid on UKIP to win, if I don't make a bit on the odds coming in if the above plays out I'll be surprised.
Swiss Bob, I take it you are referring to the Most Seats/Overall Majority markets that are the mainstay of us GE punters on here?
Normally you would just ignore the Others category, usually available at stupendous odds, but I took the precaution this morning of having a small bet, just in case.
I also had a fiver on Farage as next PM some time back. Ok, laugh if you want to but he was 200/1. He's currently 80/1 and I don't think that will be available much longer.
Your last para sums up my thoughts, you could cash out now at a profit. I don't think my scenario is completely off the wall. That more Tories will defect if Carswell wins is not really in doubt, the punt is more on, say a couple of (relatively popular) Northern Labour MPs seeing the writing on the wall and jumping ship to UKIP. That would change the perception of UKIP among many Labour voters and provide serious momentum to them.
I'd need the odds to get down to single figures before I thought about cashing in, Bob, and I don't think that is going to happen.
The bet is a hedge, but it's not a stupid one. I've become a very cautious punter in the politics markets, because the atmosphere is so febrile and the outcomes so difficult to foresee.
"UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU ...."
I'm not sure enough people care about the EU but if they did or could be persuaded to the big opportunity would lie with Labour.
There are potentially a majority out there who are in support of the EU which so far only the Lib Dems have tapped into. Well that constituency is now up for grabs and if Milliband would just go for it all guns blazing there would be many advantages
1. It would give them a cause and stop them looking so rudderless 2.It would stir up the Tory/UKIP hornet's nest. 3.He could legitimately start claiming to be the Party of business. 4.He could re-attract disillusioned Scots. 5. He could energize the younger vote who are overwhelmingly pro Europe
There are very few people who are enthusiastically pro-EU, although there's a much larger number who fear the consequences of leaving it. The Lib Dems got the EU-enthusiast vote in May.
Indeed Peter (and thanks). It may have been a close run thing though - a few years ago the BNP were getting traction in various parts of the country. Fortunately the abject incompetence of your average racist moron meant that most of their elected officials served a single term, if that, and the party collapsed under the weight of the unpleasantness it attracted. Ukip is a very different animal and the mainstream parties and media were slow to recognise the full implications of that.
I understand (although may be wrong) that the FN has softened its countenance in recent years. Even if so, I guess the suspicion lingers that any conversion to enlightenment is for electoral gain and the rotten core remains.
Fair point, Flock.
I visit France fairly regularly these days and watch the FN closer than most. Please accept my assurance that any 'softening' is purely cosmetic and precisely for the purpose you indicate. I have a Marine le Pen anecdote which will illustrate.
A good friend was at a party in France and was astonished to find herself being introduced to MLP. All she could think to blurt out was 'Mais je suis Juive', to which Marine responded with a smile 'Tant pis.'
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
My friends who live in France (admittedly they are so establishment English that their family participated in the burning of Joan of Arc) are desperately worried about MLP. The UMP is tearing itself apart and is unlikely to put up a credible candidate. The Socialists are no better. Their view is that there is a real risk that MLP will come through the middle - she has a surprising left wing economic programme which, combined with nationalism and racism/anti-semitism may well be enough to win her a majority given the lack of alternatives.
Thanks for that, Charles.
I think they are right to be worried.
Part of the platform is to cancel all foreign work visas, so they will be kicked out with 3 months to leave.
The sting in the tail is that MLP doesn't plan to cancel the exit tax before they do so, so effectively they will be forced to hand over 35% of any capital gains they achieve in the next 15 years (and this can't be offset against CGT the UK)
"UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU ...."
I'm not sure enough people care about the EU but if they did or could be persuaded to the big opportunity would lie with Labour.
There are potentially a majority out there who are in support of the EU which so far only the Lib Dems have tapped into. Well that constituency is now up for grabs and if Milliband would just go for it all guns blazing there would be many advantages
1. It would give them a cause and stop them looking so rudderless 2.It would stir up the Tory/UKIP hornet's nest. 3.He could legitimately start claiming to be the Party of business. 4.He could re-attract disillusioned Scots. 5. He could energize the younger vote who are overwhelmingly pro Europe
There are very few people who are enthusiastically pro-EU, although there's a much larger number who fear the consequences of leaving it. The Lib Dems got the EU-enthusiast vote in May.
8 years 153 days until Roger starts voting Conservative. Add two years then he'll vote UKIP.
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
I don't think a politician can credibly promise to control immigration, at the same time as supporting EU membership, and adhering to the ECHR. If a government comes to power that rejects both, then all sorts of possibilities open up.
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Would Scotland be entitled to keep the pound in that scenario do you think? I doubt the English could run off with their money.
On a Le Pen presidency, Will Hutton is pondering the distinct possibility of this in today's Observer. Will, bless him, is prone to hyperbole but the fact it is now taken seriously as a prospect should be ringing all kind of alarm bells. Not in Germany it would appear, where Mrs Merkel remains as stubborn as ever. Of course the current popularity of Le Pen might be a way of sending a message to Germany that they want change. Germany now wears the trousers in the special relationship and threatening them with Le Pen might be the best way to get something out of them.
"Meanwhile, a former minister claimed he was threatened with the sack by his then boss, the foreign secretary Jack Straw, for calling on Muslims in the UK to choose between the "British way or the way of the terrorists" after a 24-year-old from South Yorkshire tried to bomb Israelis in a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. Former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane said he was forced to agree to a "grovelling climb-down" over his remarks because he was warned it risked upsetting community relations.
In a bizarre twist, it also emerged that Mr MacShane was disciplined for his remarks following protests led by one of the Muslim politicians at the centre of the child-grooming scandal in Rotherham."
It is hardly surprising we have a problem with young men going off to fight for ISIS and, according to today's Sunday Times, a young British woman wanting to behead Christians with a blunt knife, if this is how our government behaved: sidestepping criminality and terrrorism just to keep the Muslim community onside. No wonder people are voting UKIP when they see how the political class has behaved.
Indeed Peter (and thanks). It may have been a close run thing though - a few years ago the BNP were getting traction in various parts of the country. Fortunately the abject incompetence of your average racist moron meant that most of their elected officials served a single term, if that, and the party collapsed under the weight of the unpleasantness it attracted. Ukip is a very different animal and the mainstream parties and media were slow to recognise the full implications of that.
I understand (although may be wrong) that the FN has softened its countenance in recent years. Even if so, I guess the suspicion lingers that any conversion to enlightenment is for electoral gain and the rotten core remains.
Fair point, Flock.
I visit France fairly regularly these days and watch the FN closer than most. Please accept my assurance that any 'softening' is purely cosmetic and precisely for the purpose you indicate. I have a Marine le Pen anecdote which will illustrate.
A good friend was at a party in France and was astonished to find herself being introduced to MLP. All she could think to blurt out was 'Mais je suis Juive', to which Marine responded with a smile 'Tant pis.'
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
Their view is that there is a real risk that MLP will come through the middle - she has a surprising left wing economic programme which, combined with nationalism and racism/anti-semitism may well be enough to win her a majority given the lack of alternatives.
Is this the same FN that supported bans on demonstrations against the Israeli attack on Gaza? They are deeply anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and like the BNP and EDL they are pro-Israeli.
WRT the Middle East, they probably take the view my enemy's enemy is my friend, while still not being very fond of French Jews.
The Pieds Noirs were massively pro-Israel in the Sixties.
Most French Jews are Shephardic post war immigrants from the Magreb, the prewar Ashkenazi having suffered the same fate as most European Jewry.
The pied noir French may have seen them as allies, but the metropolitan French often have no great love for Magrebi immigrants, whether muslim, jewish or even pied noir.
@Gadfly Thanks, looks as if there are some 'technical issues' on BBC website's newspaper review. Must be some sort of problem with the words, or the pixels, or the content. Its so frustrating, perhaps there is an innocent explanation.
Indeed Peter (and thanks). It may have been a close run thing though - a few years ago the BNP were getting traction in various parts of the country. Fortunately the abject incompetence of your average racist moron meant that most of their elected officials served a single term, if that, and the party collapsed under the weight of the unpleasantness it attracted. Ukip is a very different animal and the mainstream parties and media were slow to recognise the full implications of that.
I understand (although may be wrong) that the FN has softened its countenance in recent years. Even if so, I guess the suspicion lingers that any conversion to enlightenment is for electoral gain and the rotten core remains.
Fair point, Flock.
I visit France fairly regularly these days and watch the FN closer than most. Please accept my assurance that any 'softening' is purely cosmetic and precisely for the purpose you indicate. I have a Marine le Pen anecdote which will illustrate.
A good friend was at a party in France and was astonished to find herself being introduced to MLP. All she could think to blurt out was 'Mais je suis Juive', to which Marine responded with a smile 'Tant pis.'
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
Their view is that there is a real risk that MLP will come through the middle - she has a surprising left wing economic programme which, combined with nationalism and racism/anti-semitism may well be enough to win her a majority given the lack of alternatives.
Is this the same FN that supported bans on demonstrations against the Israeli attack on Gaza? They are deeply anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and like the BNP and EDL they are pro-Israeli.
WRT the Middle East, they probably take the view my enemy's enemy is my friend, while still not being very fond of French Jews.
The Pieds Noirs were massively pro-Israel in the Sixties.
I suspect that they're all for a strong Israel and to help make it so would be all for French Jews moving there.
AR good to see you back.
Now where's Avery so we can have more dadaist economics ? ;-)
I agree that the samples look a bit weird, but I don't feel it's worthwhile nitpicking the methodology of a poll which shows such a decisive lead.
I think that's right. I'm sure the actual result will be closer once everyone has had a zillion by-election leaflets, but Carswell looks to be safe.
Incidentally, the YouGov again (Labour 4 ahead, UKIP om 16) shows the dangers of reading a national shift into any one poll (Populus's on Friday showing a 1-point Tory lead), as some here did. I don't think anything has changed in the national mood yet. Possibly a big UKIP win in Clacton would shift things a bit.
The position at the moment is that there is a pretty solid Labour and Tory core which delivers a steady, modest Labour lead, and a big chunk of the electorate floating about feeling we're all a bit rubbish, and maybe they should try this new(ish) lot. To have any chance in May, Cameron needs to squash that and get much of that chunk for the Tories (he needs about half of that 16%), and he's running out of time.
Too late to edit but just remembered I didn't include UKIP or LD in the overround figure for single Most Votes or Most Seats markets. They add around 1.5% and 2% respectively.
Bit muzzy-headed this morning, JJ, so couldn't work through the detail you provided but I suspect the answer to your little conundrum is that the doubles (or some of them) are effectively related contingencies.
I don't think it's to do with related contingencies; that would explain why ConMostVotes/LabMostSeats is 4/1 rather than 4/6*8/11 etc, but not why the overround is so much bigger in the doubles markets.
I think that this is down to Shadsy's canniness, knowing that people will be more tempted by the attractive looking odds in the doubles markets.
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
So when things were a mess under Labour, it was all Gordon Brown's fault.
But when things are a mess under the Tories it's not Cameron and Osborne's fault, they're good eggs pluckily doing their best in difficult circumstances.
"Meanwhile, a former minister claimed he was threatened with the sack by his then boss, the foreign secretary Jack Straw, for calling on Muslims in the UK to choose between the "British way or the way of the terrorists" after a 24-year-old from South Yorkshire tried to bomb Israelis in a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. Former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane said he was forced to agree to a "grovelling climb-down" over his remarks because he was warned it risked upsetting community relations.
In a bizarre twist, it also emerged that Mr MacShane was disciplined for his remarks following protests led by one of the Muslim politicians at the centre of the child-grooming scandal in Rotherham."
It is hardly surprising we have a problem with young men going off to fight for ISIS and, according to today's Sunday Times, a young British woman wanting to behead Christians with a blunt knife, if this is how our government behaved: sidestepping criminality and terrrorism just to keep the Muslim community onside. No wonder people are voting UKIP when they see how the political class has behaved.
Oh, but don't forget Government is so difficult and sadly not easy for the baying mob (public) who want actual change to understand the complexities, the poor dears.
"UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU ...."
I'm not sure enough people care about the EU but if they did or could be persuaded to the big opportunity would lie with Labour.
There are potentially a majority out there who are in support of the EU which so far only the Lib Dems have tapped into. Well that constituency is now up for grabs and if Milliband would just go for it all guns blazing there would be many advantages
1. It would give them a cause and stop them looking so rudderless 2.It would stir up the Tory/UKIP hornet's nest. 3.He could legitimately start claiming to be the Party of business. 4.He could re-attract disillusioned Scots. 5. He could energize the younger vote who are overwhelmingly pro Europe
I do hope this happens. All that would then be required would be a Brexit seeking Labour offshoot to emerge and we could see the total flushing away of the legacy parties.
Most French Jews are Shephardic post war immigrants from the Magreb, the prewar Ashkenazi having suffered the same fate as most European Jewry.
The pied noir French may have seen them as allies, but the metropolitan French often have no great love for Magrebi immigrants, whether muslim, jewish or even pied noir.
I agree that the samples look a bit weird, but I don't feel it's worthwhile nitpicking the methodology of a poll which shows such a decisive lead.
I think that's right. I'm sure the actual result will be closer once everyone has had a zillion by-election leaflets, but Carswell looks to be safe.
Incidentally, the YouGov again (Labour 4 ahead, UKIP om 16) shows the dangers of reading a national shift into any one poll (Populus's on Friday showing a 1-point Tory lead), as some here did. I don't think anything has changed in the national mood yet. Possibly a big UKIP win in Clacton would shift things a bit.
The position at the moment is that there is a pretty solid Labour and Tory core which delivers a steady, modest Labour lead, and a big chunk of the electorate floating about feeling we're all a bit rubbish, and maybe they should try this new(ish) lot. To have any chance in May, Cameron needs to squash that and get much of that chunk for the Tories (he needs about half of that 16%), and he's running out of time.
I'm not sure he's "running out of time" because I don't think the electorate is in a mood to commit to anyone right now.
Sure he needs to be doing the planning and preparing, but I reckon (if we see any movement at all) it will be large and late as voters focus on the task at hand.
Would Scotland be entitled to keep the pound in that scenario do you think? I doubt the English could run off with their money.
The English would do a deal with the UK whereby they got to keep using the pound in return for honouring their share of the debt.
I am sure the rUK would agree a CU with England to allow them to continue to use the pound. rUK would not be petty and spiteful and cut off their nose by denying the sensible option of England using the pound.
"Meanwhile, a former minister claimed he was threatened with the sack by his then boss, the foreign secretary Jack Straw, for calling on Muslims in the UK to choose between the "British way or the way of the terrorists" after a 24-year-old from South Yorkshire tried to bomb Israelis in a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. Former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane said he was forced to agree to a "grovelling climb-down" over his remarks because he was warned it risked upsetting community relations.
In a bizarre twist, it also emerged that Mr MacShane was disciplined for his remarks following protests led by one of the Muslim politicians at the centre of the child-grooming scandal in Rotherham."
It is hardly surprising we have a problem with young men going off to fight for ISIS and, according to today's Sunday Times, a young British woman wanting to behead Christians with a blunt knife, if this is how our government behaved: sidestepping criminality and terrrorism just to keep the Muslim community onside. No wonder people are voting UKIP when they see how the political class has behaved.
Jack Straw was heavily criticised himself for his comments on muslim men and "easy meat"
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
So you accept that Cameron's promise on immigration was either a deliberate lie to trick people into voting for him or was made with total ignorance of the actual immigration issue.
Please explain then why anyone should trust his promises on the EU ?
As to Osborne's deficit failure are you suggesting his promise was a lie or that he didn't know what he was doing either ?
And you're wrong 'steps in the right direction' are not all we can legitimately hope for. Cameron and Osborne set their own targets and people have the right to judge them by their results.
Which in the cases of immigration and deficit reduction have been failures.
If I promised by boss at work X or Y, failed to achieve them and then told him that 'steps in the right direction' were all he could legitimately hope for it wouldn't be long before I was out on my arse.
Underpromise and overperform is what competent people do not overpromise, underperform and then make mealy mouthed excuses.
Sorry, this 'Government and economics is so difficult, leave it to the experts; don't expect 'miracles'' is utter ______'s. At every opportunity, our political class shows us what a bunch of third rate, posturing, supine, student politicians they are. It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier. It isn't hard not to decimate your armed forces yet ludicrously and wastefully spend on overseas aid. It's not hard to save money by shutting down quangos like The Arts Council (still in rude health the last time I checked) -you just stop signing the cheques. It's not hard to have a foreign policy where you don't go around insulting everyone (like Russia and China), and following the US into ever disastrous conflict. It's not difficult to have a procurement policy that helps the UK economy (we have never done this), and for Government to step in to stop takeovers and mergers when they fundamentally threaten UK interests -these things are done elsewhere. It's not difficult to take action when you see gross perversions in our justice system and sort them out rather than covering them up. It's not difficult to stand up to calls to operate mass surveillance of innocent citizens. None of these things are *technically* difficult, they are *politically* difficult. Competence would be nice, but what is missing is simply will. Will to use the levers of power to improve the prosperity, security and well being of the nation. Will to stand up to the US, and the EU to do this..
Luckyguy, you have just proved my point. Almost every single thing you have listed is "simple" but has serious adverse consequences. Shut down the arts council, and watch local culture wither on the vine, degrading local communities and you degrade Britain's heritage and the economic advantages of its cultural attractions. A procurement policy that helps the Uk economy would breach EU law and countless international treaties, inviting reciprocity and destroying global trade, impoverishing us all. Still, British Leyland made perfectly good cars, didn't they? Powers for the government to step in to prevent takeover and mergers that fundamentally threaten Uk interests? What, like Cadbury? You must be joking. Where do you draw the line? Would you have stopped Tata making a success of Jaguar Land Rover? Again, you would invite reciprocity, limiting opportunities for Uk companies to expand overseas, restricting global trade and forcing capital to be allocated inefficiently. Still, small price to pay to keep those coal mines open, eh? Don't insult Russia and China? So we should appease international aggressors and stay silent about the most appalling mistreatment of people? You sure nothing bad can come from that
Another Richard (10.02am) If I promised by boss at work X or Y, failed to achieve them and then told him that 'steps in the right direction' were all he could legitimately hope for it wouldn't be long before I was out on my arse.
It would in the public sector. The need to ensure that no one was ever unfairly dismissed, jealously policed by the unions, would mean that most bosses would give up in despair when faced with the complexity of the procedure. You can be fair, or you can be effective, but you sure as hell can't be both.
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
So you accept that Cameron's promise on immigration was either a deliberate lie to trick people into voting for him or was made with total ignorance of the actual immigration issue.
I imagine it was made with no expectation that the UK economy would be growing quite so remarkably in relation to the rest of the EU. The rise in job creation has been the most spectacular element of this Coalition Govt's management of the economy and I suspect has wrong-footed just about everybody.
Not least those on the Left predicting 5 million unemployed....
The biggest flaw in this 'Government is so difficult -don't expect any substantive results on anything, ever' argument is that the same people claim it's totally vital for us a) not to let in Labour and further down the line b) not to let in the mad Kipper brigade. Why? If radical progress is impossible, why should we mind if the deckchairs get re-arranged?
UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU .... and that he is simply going through the motions and ultimately will settle for minor, window-dressing concessions. The only way he can overcome this perception is to come up with a "shopping list" of measures to tackle voters' discontent with Europe and to promise that these will be tabled immediately after the Tories win next May's General Election, setting a reasonable 18 months time frame for reaching agreement, thereby enabling a referendum thereon to be held in November 2017. If he's not prepared to do this then it's best that he resigns now and passes the mantle to someone who is. This issue simply cannot be ducked any longer.
PfP - I think your post is an example of the problem DavidL identified. The EU renegotiation will be very complex. No doubt our partners will concede ground in order to keep us in the EU, but they will demand concessions too. There is no point the UK government developing a list in isolation that has no prospect of success, or publishing a list that foreign governments reject out of hand (playing to their own galleries), which then allows the BOO wing within the party to declare the negotiations a failure and demand a referendum next week. Cameron has to play a game of three dimensional chess, with the odds somewhat stacked against him. He must be given time to play that game, and we must not pretend that the simple option is a perfect solution.
If Cameron can not come up with a list of demands that is both acceptable to the UK public and that the rest of the EU is at least ready to engage with, then that says it all about the UK-EU relationship.
Sorry, this 'Government and economics is so difficult, leave it to the experts; don't expect 'miracles'' is utter ______'s. At every opportunity, our political class shows us what a bunch of third rate, posturing, supine, student politicians they are. It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier. It isn't hard not to decimate your armed forces yet ludicrously and wastefully spend on overseas aid. It's not hard to save money by shutting down quangos like The Arts Council (still in rude health the last time I checked) -you just stop signing the be nice, but what is missing is simply will. Will to use the levers of power to improve the prosperity, security and well being of the nation. Will to stand up to the US, and the EU to do this..
Luckyguy, you have just proved my point. Almost every single thing you have listed is "simple" but has serious adverse consequences. Shut down the arts council, and watch local culture wither on the vine, degrading local communities and you degrade Britain's heritage and the economic advantages of its cultural attractions. A procurement policy that helps the Uk economy would breach EU law and countless international treaties, inviting reciprocity and destroying global trade, impoverishing us all. Still, British Leyland made perfectly good cars, didn't they? Powers for the government to step in to prevent takeover and mergers that fundamentally threaten Uk interests? What, like Cadbury? You must be joking. Where do you draw the line? Would you have stopped Tata making a success of Jaguar Land Rover? Again, you would invite reciprocity, limiting opportunities for Uk companies to expand overseas, restricting global trade and forcing capital to be allocated inefficiently. Still, small price to pay to keep those coal mines open, eh? Don't insult Russia and China? So we should appease international aggressors and stay silent about the most appalling mistreatment of people? You sure nothing bad can come from that
You want the world to be simple. It is not.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
Given they have 8% of the MP's voting , whereas in the other case the party has 92% your point is? I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
Labour don't seem to be suffering any 'Rotherham' effect, if the you gov is correct.
I don't think people quite believe it, or have really woken up to the implications.
It isn't (yet) being perceived as Party Political.
That could change, of course, but then there could be much more to come out of the woodwork, and who is to say which Parties will take the most flak as a consequence?
I repeat, it seems to me a very dodgy time to be placing political bets.
I'm not sure he's "running out of time" because I don't think the electorate is in a mood to commit to anyone right now.
Sure he needs to be doing the planning and preparing, but I reckon (if we see any movement at all) it will be large and late as voters focus on the task at hand.
Not my reading of voters FWIW, and I do talk to a few hundred every weekend. People are quite focused already: those who seem genuinely undecided and open-minded between several parties are few and far between, and specifically I've not encountered many people floating between Labour and Con. Historically, sudden moves don't usually come out of the blue.
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
So you accept that Cameron's promise on immigration was either a deliberate lie to trick people into voting for him or was made with total ignorance of the actual immigration issue.
I imagine it was made with no expectation that the UK economy would be growing quite so remarkably in relation to the rest of the EU. The rise in job creation has been the most spectacular element of this Coalition Govt's management of the economy and I suspect has wrong-footed just about everybody.
Not least those on the Left predicting 5 million unemployed....
Non-EU net migration is running at 150k a year and is currently increasing. Even if the EU numbers were zero, net immigration would be 50% above target. In a realistic scenario where just a net 50k came in from the EU, non-EU is triple what they should have planned for. The Tories can not blame the EU for their utter failure to meet a very reasonable target here.
So we see on here, in a group a lot more politically aware than most, criticism of Osborne for failing to eliminate the deficit almost as if the only problem was that he cannot be bothered, criticism of Cameron because he has not eliminated net immigration
How terrible of people that they compare what Osborne and Cameron promised to do with what they have actually achieved.
The facts are that Osborne HAS failed to eliminate the deficit and Cameron HAS failed to reduce immigration.
Of course they have. Both are very difficult and steps in the right direction are all that we can legitimately hope for.
Let's take the example of immigration. The biggest problem the government have is that the success of their economic policies has turned the UK into employment Central creating more jobs than the entire EZ and acting as a magnet to the unemployed and ambitious of the EU.
The second problem is that we accept that the government has no right to say who UK citizens can and can't marry and that we have a right to bring our spouse here to live with us. Given the size of our existing immigrant communities this creates an enormous pressure for immigration which can only be mitigated by authoritarian challenges and diminution of basic rights.
The third problem is that education is a major export industry for us bringing many foreign students here. They then get involved in UK life and with UK citizens and want to stay.
Cameron can be criticised for promising to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands because unless we had an economic disaster of Brownian proportions it was never going to happen but when did we last elect a politician whose response to every problem is that it is all terribly difficult?
So you accept that Cameron's promise on immigration was either a deliberate lie to trick people into voting for him or was made with total ignorance of the actual immigration issue.
I imagine it was made with no expectation that the UK economy would be growing quite so remarkably in relation to the rest of the EU. The rise in job creation has been the most spectacular element of this Coalition Govt's management of the economy and I suspect has wrong-footed just about everybody.
Not least those on the Left predicting 5 million unemployed....
LOL, all those zero hour no pay jobs are wonderful for the plebs, how clever they are to have such a boom. Thick rich Tory parasites hail it as superb.
Case in point. Nothing against you personally but this is abysmal apologia for total willful inaction, disguising it as some sort of Metternich-esque diplomatic wizardry. Total nonsense.
If you want to get powers back from the EU, you don't opt into ones you don't have to opt into (justice and policing). You don't publicly state at every opportunity that you don't want to leave the organisation that you want concessions from -it totally undermines your position.
I am afraid you don't know anything about the art or psychology of negotiation. Cameron is clear that the EU needs reform and that it would be in our interests to be in a reformed EU. He may or may not be correct in that and you are entitled to your view. But the other leaders will not humour Cameron for one second if he said he would support leaving no matter what the terms the EU offers. He knows, and they know, that the threat comes from the British people via a referendum, and that threat gives Cameron the ability to negotiate from a reasonable (not strong) position. Again, you want to believe this stuff is easy and that Cameron is being craven or wilfully ignorant, but it is actually hugely complex - Cameron has to build a consensus within Europe for reform, working with leaders facing pressure from their own electorates; he has to carry his party; win the backing of the media and the electorate, face down attacks from outright europhiles and the BOO tendency, keep business on side and try to win support from political nerds and the indifferent alike.
It views slightly differently in light of Rotherham, and in particular Sues relationship with the Asian taxi driver.
Everyone knew what was going on, just no-one wanted to address the issues at the time. That time has arrived.
IIRC Sue was still technically a schoolgirl when she moved in with the taxi driver and I think she says to him at one point "you might sell me to an old Paki".
There's also the argument scene on the council estate when an old Irish man shouts out "Get them on Manningham Lane", that being the Red Light district in the Asian area.
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
Given they have 8% of the MP's voting , whereas in the other case the party has 92% your point is? I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
English education: the English get 92% of the vote on what happens to them. Scottish education: the Scots get 100% of the vote on what happens to them.
Labour don't seem to be suffering any 'Rotherham' effect, if the you gov is correct.
The YouGov Poll (just one poll) seems to be showing a greater effect of Clacton than Rotherham.
The 2010 Cons show a 21% defection to UKIP - highest for ages - whilst the LAB defection may be up by a couple of points on recent polls, However regionally the greatest benefit for UKIP is the North> So is it mainly Cons from the North moving parties - perhaps not.
Looking at the subsidiaries and UKIP, these show a mixed picture.
Of the four parties, UKIP:
Is most against the RAF dropping humanitarian supplies to those fleeing IS Is most against the REF taking part in air strikes against IS Is joint most against the USAF doing the same Is most against the British Army training Kurds to fight IS
and yet is is: Least in favour of stopping UK citizens going to Syria or Iraq to fight. Yet UKIP is most in favour of Control Orders.
Sorry, this 'Government and economics is so difficult, leave it to the experts; don't expect 'miracles'' is utter ______'s. At every opportunity, our political class shows us what a bunch of third rate, posturing, supine, student politicians they are. It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier. It isn't hard not to decimate your armed forces yet ludicrously and wastefully spend on overseas aid. It's not hard to save money by shutting down quangos like The Arts Council (still in rude health the last time I checked) -you just stop signing the be nice, but what is missing is simply will. Will to use the levers of power to improve the prosperity, security and well being of the nation. Will to stand up to the US, and the EU to do this..
Luckyguy, you have just proved my point. Almost every single thing you have listed is "simple" but has serious adverse consequences. Shut down the arts council, and watch local culture wither on the vine, degrading local communities and you degrade Britain's heritage and the economic advantages of its cultural attractions. A procurement policy that helps the Uk economy would breach EU law and countless international treaties, inviting reciprocity and destroying global trade, impoverishing us all. Still, British Leyland made perfectly good cars, didn't they? Powers for the government to step in to prevent takeover and mergers that fundamentally threaten Uk interests? What, like Cadbury? You must be joking. Where do you draw the line? Would you have stopped Tata making a success of Jaguar Land Rover? Again, you would invite reciprocity, limiting opportunities for Uk companies to expand overseas, restricting global trade and forcing capital to be allocated inefficiently. Still, small price to pay to keep those coal mines open, eh? Don't insult Russia and China? So we should appease international aggressors and stay silent about the most appalling mistreatment of people? You sure nothing bad can come from that
You want the world to be simple. It is not.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
Risible. If the French elect the FN then not much will change. They will be constrained by the law, perhaps not quite as fantastically as in the UK but I cannot see the France turning into the next Nazi state.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
I have already accepted that I will be amongst the first against the wall. Still, I am enjoying myself while it lasts...
Sorry, this 'Government and economics is so difficult, leave it to the experts; don't expect 'miracles'' is utter ______'s. At every opportunity, our political class shows us what a bunch of third rate, posturing, supine, student politicians they are. It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier. It isn't hard not to decimate your armed forces yet ludicrously and wastefully spend on overseas aid. It's not hard to save money by shutting down quangos like The Arts Council (still in rude health the last time I checked) -you just stop signing the be nice, but what is missing is simply will. Will to use the levers of power to improve the prosperity, security and well being of the nation. Will to stand up to the US, and the EU to do this..
Luckyguy, you have just proved my point. Almost every single thing you have listed is "simple" but has serious adverse consequences. Shut down the arts council, and watch local culture wither on the vine, degrading local communities and you degrade Britain's heritage and the economic advantages of its cultural attractions. A procurement policy that helps the Uk economy would breach EU law and countless international treaties, inviting reciprocity and destroying global trade, impoverishing us all. Still, British Leyland made perfectly good cars, didn't they? Powers for the government to step in to prevent takeover and mergers that fundamentally threaten Uk interests? What, like Cadbury? You must be joking. Where do you draw the line? Would you have stopped Tata making a success of Jaguar Land Rover? Again, you would invite reciprocity, limiting opportunities for Uk companies to expand overseas, restricting global trade and forcing capital to be allocated inefficiently. Still, small price to pay to keep those coal mines open, eh? Don't insult Russia and China? So we should appease international aggressors and stay silent about the most appalling mistreatment of people? You sure nothing bad can come from that
You want the world to be simple. It is not.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
Risible. If the French elect the FN then not much will change. They will be constrained by the law, perhaps not quite as fantastically as in the UK but I cannot see the France turning into the next Nazi state.
I wish I could be confident of that, Bob, and I have a huge personal interest in the matter, but I am very concerned.
Another Richard (10.02am) If I promised by boss at work X or Y, failed to achieve them and then told him that 'steps in the right direction' were all he could legitimately hope for it wouldn't be long before I was out on my arse.
It would in the public sector. The need to ensure that no one was ever unfairly dismissed, jealously policed by the unions, would mean that most bosses would give up in despair when faced with the complexity of the procedure. You can be fair, or you can be effective, but you sure as hell can't be both.
Nonsense. Getting rid managers for failing to meet targets is commonplace in the public sector, and all part of a "lick up, kick down" management culture.
The problems come from what the targets enforce. A lot of targets were met in Mid Staffs NHS Trust, and Rotherham Council, but all they did was draw a veil over a lot of bad practices.
The targets are all set nationally, so the fish rots from the head.
Labour don't seem to be suffering any 'Rotherham' effect, if the you gov is correct.
I don't think people quite believe it, or have really woken up to the implications.
I suspect many people have just written it off as an isolated case of something which happens to 'poor people up north'.
As to political implications if this government had exposed it back in 2010 then Labour would have taken the political hit, but by ignoring it themselves they're now going to share the blame as more and more is revealed.
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
Given they have 8% of the MP's voting , whereas in the other case the party has 92% your point is? I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
English education: the English get 92% of the vote on what happens to them. Scottish education: the Scots get 100% of the vote on what happens to them.
There's your disparity.
Yes 100% based on how much money the 92% decide they are going to get , so equals ZERO powers, it is 100% dependency.
Looking at the subsidiaries and UKIP, these show a mixed picture.
Interesting. Perhaps what defines a kipper most is concern about the domestic situation. Kippers want Britain to stay out of world conflicts and look after its own.
I'm not sure he's "running out of time" because I don't think the electorate is in a mood to commit to anyone right now.
Sure he needs to be doing the planning and preparing, but I reckon (if we see any movement at all) it will be large and late as voters focus on the task at hand.
Not my reading of voters FWIW, and I do talk to a few hundred every weekend. People are quite focused already: those who seem genuinely undecided and open-minded between several parties are few and far between, and specifically I've not encountered many people floating between Labour and Con. Historically, sudden moves don't usually come out of the blue.
I was meaning more those who are flirting with UKIP could shift in this manner.
My view since the last election has been that 2015 will be a re-run of 2010 with little change in Lab/Con. The changes in that field are Red Libs plus some potential Lab-->Con converts who were scared by the Labour campaign last time plus any changes in Scotland from EdM not being as Scottish as Brown.
The "other" factors are UKIP/protest/alienation and what happens to the SNP depending on the result in September.
The biggest flaw in this 'Government is so difficult -don't expect any substantive results on anything, ever' argument is that the same people claim it's totally vital for us a) not to let in Labour and further down the line b) not to let in the mad Kipper brigade. Why? If radical progress is impossible, why should we mind if the deckchairs get re-arranged?
That's not a flaw.
The ship of state is like an oil tanker. It takes a long-time to change course, but once there is momentum you can go a long way.
The Tories have started to move us in the right direction - not as fast as we'd like, but movement at least. Labour will reverse that trend to the extent they can.
I hope Douglas Carswell causes UKIP to have a strong platform on political reform:
1) STV or primaries 2) An end to Commonwealth voters being able to vote here 3) An elected Lords 4) Recall elections 5) English votes for English laws 6) An end to proxy voting 7) Postal voting limited to those who can not get to a voting booth
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
Yet again, a comment suggesting that your opponents will shoot you/others.
Would not be surprised if similar events have been happening in Luton, Slough, High Wycombe and parts of Bristol and Cardiff.
Shredding of files, senior managers, politicians and police looking the other way and passing the buck, moving vulnerable children in taxis from care homes by drivers without CRB checks.
"8 years 153 days until Roger starts voting Conservative. Add two years then he'll vote UKIP."
It's getting more difficult. So when I see Ed flapping around mouthing Tory slogans looking like a goldfish on a carpet I say 2 GAZAS followed by 5 PHILIP GREEN WASTE TZAR and 10 LYNTON CROSBYS and it disappears!
(One Youtube of Farage with Van Rompuy is enough for UKIP)
Morning all and sorry but I fail to see what is so surprising about the numbers highlighted above. In a seat where at the last election more than 50% of voters voted Tory, it stands to reason that IF UKIP is surging to the extent this poll suggests, the overwhelming majority of that surge must come from 2010 Tory voters.
Have any Clacton Tory councillors defected yet in the wake of Douglas Carswell's bizarre defection to UKIP?
If UKIP did start to have a good run of polls in the Autumn regularly achieving15%+ with the Tories back down near 30%, what would the Tories do about this ? Would Cameron decide to talk much more about the UK leaving the EU soon after a referendum in 2017, if the EU does not accept major changes to UK membership terms ? I think this could well happen, that Cameron decides that his party is more EU-sceptic that he is and that he would need to move closer to where most Tory support is. The problem is that some don't trust Cameron and they will go on about cast iron guarantees etc. Then there are the lost votes of pro-EU supporters, who won't like the talk of leaving the EU. This latter should not be under estimated, as many companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
Given they have 8% of the MP's voting , whereas in the other case the party has 92% your point is? I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
English education: the English get 92% of the vote on what happens to them. Scottish education: the Scots get 100% of the vote on what happens to them.
There's your disparity.
Yes 100% based on how much money the 92% decide they are going to get , so equals ZERO powers, it is 100% dependency.
If you think money per student is the defining aspect of education, you know nothing about the international PISA scores or what anyone that has studied them believes.
And the Barnett formula gives more money to Scotland per capita than to England, so there's that.
The biggest flaw in this 'Government is so difficult -don't expect any substantive results on anything, ever' argument is that the same people claim it's totally vital for us a) not to let in Labour and further down the line b) not to let in the mad Kipper brigade. Why? If radical progress is impossible, why should we mind if the deckchairs get re-arranged?
That's not a flaw.
The ship of state is like an oil tanker. It takes a long-time to change course, but once there is momentum you can go a long way.
The Tories have started to move us in the right direction - not as fast as we'd like, but movement at least. Labour will reverse that trend to the extent they can.
Will our plucky heroes make it, stay tuned to find out!
Sorry but on this the PBKippers are spot on. Cameron and Osborne aren't just failing, they're failing by standards they set themselves
All this tremble-lipped "but but but it's soo difficult" stuff is frankly pathetic.
Standard pro-Tory party political fayre, pseudo-intellectually dressed up as profound comment on the state of politics and governance in general.
Luckyguy, you have just proved my point. Almost every single thing you have listed is "simple" but has serious adverse consequences. Shut down the arts council, and watch local culture wither on the vine, degrading local communities and you degrade Britain's heritage and the economic advantages of its cultural attractions. A procurement policy that helps the Uk economy would breach EU law and countless international treaties, inviting reciprocity and destroying global trade, impoverishing us all. Still, British Leyland made perfectly good cars, didn't they? Powers for the government to step in to prevent takeover and mergers that fundamentally threaten Uk interests? What, like Cadbury? You must be joking. Where do you draw the line? Would you have stopped Tata making a success of Jaguar Land Rover? Again, you would invite reciprocity, limiting opportunities for Uk companies to expand overseas, restricting global trade and forcing capital to be allocated inefficiently. Still, small price to pay to keep those coal mines open, eh? Don't insult Russia and China? So we should appease international aggressors and stay silent about the most appalling mistreatment of people? You sure nothing bad can come from that
You want the world to be simple. It is not.
Arts Council -hogwash. This quango was for the chop by Cameron anyway, with good reason, but he backed down. The Arts Council distributes funding that could till be distributed to much greater effect by other bodies more focused on the heritage and tourism benefits that you mention.
We choose to be bound by EU law in letter and in spirit. Some have said we should adopt a more buccaneering French style approach to compliance with it, some have said the only solution is withdrawal. Either way, you can hardly use being beholden to it as an excuse for failing to protect our industry in a way that every other country in the world seems to manage to do. Believe me, I would love it if we had never had socialist governments that allowed British companies to stagnate under subsidy, and we had a stable of world beaters that had made it all on their own in the white heat of capitalism, but we don't, and just as the French protect Danone, or the US prevents of the takeover of Unocal by CNOOC, so the British Government can and must at times use its power to protect and foster British business.
As for appeasement -two words -Saudi Arabia. A country that has possibly one of the worst human rights records in the world, as well as being the world's biggest sponsor of terror. What do we do there? Looks an awful lot like staying silent to me. We have chosen to dig in with allies who are not worth the name, and blot our copybook with the world's rising powers. It is diplomatic ineptitude on an epic scale.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
Yet again, a comment suggesting that your opponents will shoot you/others.
But you are the only one who raises the idea.
He's channeling Robert Lindsay's Citizen Smith:
"That's it mate. Come the revolution, you'll be first against the wall bop-bop-bop!"
The Tories promised English votes for English law, another political reform that was quietly dropped.
And Dave was recently seen writing cheques for further devolution to the Scots in a desperate attempt to save the union - without even for a moment thinking about how his English base would take it.
The Sunday Express has a SIndy poll - which along with the usual currency union stuff (only 18% support in rUK) had some depressing, if predictable feedback on the way the Nats have conducted the campaign:
Scope for reconciliation was thin on the ground with members of the public saying relations had already been damaged by the debate.
More than 40 per cent felt the issue had caused permanent damage to relations between Scotland and the home nations, with 13 per cent saying the damage was significant.
Almost half (44 per cent) said they did not support Scots getting an automatic right to joint citizenship in the case of independence. With 31 per cent not sure, that left only 25 per cent supporting the idea.
The French, in my opinion, appear more racist because unlike the UK, in my experience, people who make racist comments in France do so straight out. They couldn't give a fig what other people think, whereas in the UK, in my experience, people tend to be a bit more veiled until they think they are in 'safe' company. Possibly because they fear arrest, prosecution, loss of their livelihood. Something that wouldn't happen in France to the best of my knowledge.
A lot of French are voting FN for the exact same reason many of the people in the UK are voting UKIP, they have seen their cities overrun by mass Muslim immigration and pandered to by their own Government, they are not happy about it. Rotherham et all etc makes it worse. It doesn't mean all those voters are going to don white sheets and start burning crosses outside Mosques.
I hope Douglas Carswell causes UKIP to have a strong platform on political reform:
1) STV or primaries 2) An end to Commonwealth voters being able to vote here 3) An elected Lords 4) Recall elections 5) English votes for English laws 6) An end to proxy voting 7) Postal voting limited to those who can not get to a voting booth
He has many objections to the EU, but curiously immigration does not number amongst them. So far as I can see it does not feature elsewhere in the book.
My suspicion is that he takes a libertarian view on a fairly open door immigration policy. If true, then we could have an interesting case of the only UKIP MP being opposed to the central policy of UKIPs manifesto.
Martin Vander Weyer makes an interesting point in today's Spectator:
If Alain Juppe is the UMP candidate and Montebourg runs from the left it could be amusing.
Montebourg's rise to the prime time was based on his prosecution of Juppe's son in 1995 for his occupation of a "luxurious but unusually low rent Paris council flat"...
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
Yet again, a comment suggesting that your opponents will shoot you/others.
But you are the only one who raises the idea.
He's channeling Robert Lindsay's Citizen Smith:
"That's it mate. Come the revolution, you'll be first against the wall bop-bop-bop!"
Don't worry, there is a group which has been singled out viz The The Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation ("who were the first against the wall when the revolution came").
Luckyguy, I am not saying don't expect anything from government, ever. My message is: don't think your incredibly simplistic ideas haven't been considered, tested, even implemented by others and found to be lacking.
There is much to criticise this and previous governments for. There is also much to praise them for. We live in an era of extraordinary prosperity and relative peace, with schools that educate us, hospitals that heal us, politicians who are accountable to us, abundant leisure time and facilities, high levels of employment, flowing taps, operational sanitation, good public transport etc etc. While governments should be challenged constantly to improve, by any reasonable historical and global perspective, we are actually quite well governed.
I fear people are losing sight of that, even if, in light of Rotherham and many other failures, I can't blame them for doing so.
The biggest flaw in this 'Government is so difficult -don't expect any substantive results on anything, ever' argument is that the same people claim it's totally vital for us a) not to let in Labour and further down the line b) not to let in the mad Kipper brigade. Why? If radical progress is impossible, why should we mind if the deckchairs get re-arranged?
That's not a flaw.
The ship of state is like an oil tanker. It takes a long-time to change course, but once there is momentum you can go a long way.
The Tories have started to move us in the right direction - not as fast as we'd like, but movement at least. Labour will reverse that trend to the extent they can.
Which at the pace you suggest, will make little difference.
On an unrelated note, another Tory promise that went astray -they said they would stop advertising jobs in the Guardian, and put them on a Government recruitment page. Thus: -saving money -ceasing to prop up a publication that is totally opposed to The Conservatives and everything they stand for Has this happened? Can you blame people for wondering if they are more interested in perpetuating a duopoly than actually getting into Government themselves?
I hope Douglas Carswell causes UKIP to have a strong platform on political reform:
2) An end to Commonwealth voters being able to vote here
Mum may have an issue with that (she doesn't get a vote in Indian elections)!
But seriously, you'd remove Commonwealth voters' right and let EU voters vote here?
If I had my way, the Commonwealth would be a formal political union with shared sovereignty with membership open to all English-speaking countries, even the Yanks(!), and all former UK and US colonies. Multi-racial and multi-confessional.
The French, in my opinion, appear more racist because unlike the UK, in my experience, people who make racist comments in France do so straight out. They couldn't give a fig what other people think, whereas in the UK, in my experience, people tend to be a bit more veiled until they think they are in 'safe' company. Possibly because they fear arrest, prosecution, loss of their livelihood. Something that wouldn't happen in France to the best of my knowledge.
A lot of French are voting FN for the exact same reason many of the people in the UK are voting UKIP, they have seen their cities overrun by mass Muslim immigration and pandered to by their own Government, they are not happy about it. Rotherham et all etc makes it worse. It doesn't mean all those voters are going to don white sheets and start burning crosses outside Mosques.
If FN win, we won't have to worry about renegotiating with the EU. The French will pull the plug on the organisation.
If UKIP did companies promote being in the EU, as a factor in their trade and people will fear loss of jobs.
I wouldn't expect any new EU announcements until after the IndyRef.
Yes Cameron probably would not talk about the UK leaving the EU until after the IndyRef. But people in Scotland have a confusing choice anyway. A YES vote means that Scotland would have to leave the EU for a period and negotiate re-joining. A NO vote and Tories/UKIP winning a general election could mean that the UK votes to leave the EU.
If Scotland want in the EU and England want out, the obvious solution is for England to leave the UK while Scotland stays in.
Hard for Scotland at present when England have all the powers and Scotland are unable to make any decisions without their permission.
Except for the fact that Scotland have the powers to decide on all the devolved matters unilaterally, while being able to still vote on the same matters affecting England.
Given they have 8% of the MP's voting , whereas in the other case the party has 92% your point is? I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
English education: the English get 92% of the vote on what happens to them. Scottish education: the Scots get 100% of the vote on what happens to them.
There's your disparity.
Yes 100% based on how much money the 92% decide they are going to get , so equals ZERO powers, it is 100% dependency.
If you think money per student is the defining aspect of education, you know nothing about the international PISA scores or what anyone that has studied them believes.
And the Barnett formula gives more money to Scotland per capita than to England, so there's that.
You cannot have education without money to fund it, nobody mentioned money per student. Barnett only looks good because it does not take into account Scotland's revenue. If done correctly we get much less than we pay in , but the money i siphoned off to fool plebs like you that you subsidise Scotland. Given England controls Scotland's budget , Scotland cannot ever have control of its education whilst that is the case. It has the responsibility for sure but not the power.
Sorry, this 'Government and economics is so difficult, leave it to the experts; don't expect 'miracles'' is utter ______'s. At every opportunity, our political class shows us what a bunch of third rate, posturing, supine, student politicians they are. It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier. It isn't hard not to decimate your armed forces yet ludicrously and wastefully spend on overseas aid. It's not hard to save money by shutting down quangos like The Arts Council (still in rude health the last time I checked) -you just stop signing the cheques. It's not hard to have a foreign policy where you don't go around insulting everyone (like Russia and China), and following the US into ever disastrous conflict. It's not difficult to have a procurement policy that helps the UK economy (we have never done this), and for Government to step in to stop takeovers and mergers when they fundamentally threaten UK interests -these things are done elsewhere. It's not difficult to take action when you see gross perversions in our justice system and sort them out rather than covering them up. It's not difficult to stand up to calls to operate mass surveillance of innocent citizens. None of these things are *technically* difficult, they are *politically* difficult. Competence would be nice, but what is missing is simply will. Will to use the levers of power to improve the prosperity, security and well being of the nation. Will to stand up to the US, and the EU to do this. It's obvious our senior politicians and civil servants don't have this will.
"It isn't hard not to sell off all your Harriers at a knock down price to the yanks to rot in a field, so you've nothing to put on your shiny new aircraft carrier."
Care to step back from your impotent rage to tell us how 'saving' the Harrier GR9 fleet would have improved military effectiveness? In addition, how the previous out-of-service date of 2018 for the GR9's would have been much use on the Queen Elizabeth, which is only due in initial service in 2017?
Whilst you are at it, you may want to look at the differences between the GR9's and the Sea Harriers, and see why the former are not particularly suited for naval warfare, especially Falklands-style operations.
Another Richard (10.02am) If I promised by boss at work X or Y, failed to achieve them and then told him that 'steps in the right direction' were all he could legitimately hope for it wouldn't be long before I was out on my arse.
It would in the public sector. The need to ensure that no one was ever unfairly dismissed, jealously policed by the unions, would mean that most bosses would give up in despair when faced with the complexity of the procedure. You can be fair, or you can be effective, but you sure as hell can't be both.
"You can be fair, or you can be effective, but you sure as hell can't be both. "
You bloody well can, even in the public sector. I never had any problems with the unions in getting rid of staff that couldn't perform, probably because I never tried to be unfair. Quite the reverse I went out of my way to be scrupulously fair, involved the union at every stage and when the day came when it was clear the employee had to go I usually found the union telling them to resign rather than be sacked.
The idea that one can't be a fair and an effective manager is arrant nonsense..
There are certainly cultural differences of the type you indicate, Bob.
There is also an edginess to race relations in France that is incomparably sharper and more frightening there than here.
I do not think that FN could introduce the sorts of laws that its headbangers would want without leaving the EU.
That would be a good thing for two reasons 1) it would make the EU better for us to stay in, by closing down the CAP. 2) It would stop several million French of North African extraction coming here without our borders staff being able to deny them entry.
The biggest flaw in this 'Government is so difficult -don't expect any substantive results on anything, ever' argument is that the same people claim it's totally vital for us a) not to let in Labour and further down the line b) not to let in the mad Kipper brigade. Why? If radical progress is impossible, why should we mind if the deckchairs get re-arranged?
That's not a flaw.
The ship of state is like an oil tanker. It takes a long-time to change course, but once there is momentum you can go a long way.
The Tories have started to move us in the right direction - not as fast as we'd like, but movement at least. Labour will reverse that trend to the extent they can.
Will our plucky heroes make it, stay tuned to find out!
Sorry but on this the PBKippers are spot on. Cameron and Osborne aren't just failing, they're failing by standards they set themselves
All this tremble-lipped "but but but it's soo difficult" stuff is frankly pathetic.
Standard pro-Tory party political fayre, pseudo-intellectually dressed up as profound comment on the state of politics and governance in general.
I never said it's "soo difficult". I just said that it takes a long time.
Comments
"UKIP continues to prosper, principally at the expense of the Tories, because no one believes that Cameron will seriously take on the EU ...."
I'm not sure enough people care about the EU but if they did or could be persuaded to the big opportunity would lie with Labour.
There are potentially a majority out there who are in support of the EU which so far only the Lib Dems have tapped into. Well that constituency is now up for grabs and if Milliband would just go for it all guns blazing there would be many advantages
1. It would give them a cause and stop them looking so rudderless
2.It would stir up the Tory/UKIP hornet's nest.
3.He could legitimately start claiming to be the Party of business.
4.He could re-attract disillusioned Scots.
5. He could energize the younger vote who are overwhelmingly pro Europe
If you want to get powers back from the EU, you don't opt into ones you don't have to opt into (justice and policing). You don't publicly state at every opportunity that you don't want to leave the organisation that you want concessions from -it totally undermines your position.
Nearly all his family have left France, and it wasn't because they don't like Jews.
Generically, though, a wife clearly has a great deal of influence over a husband given the nature of the relationship, although I think you were over egging the pudding to suggest that he is terrified of upsetting her friend
The bet is a hedge, but it's not a stupid one. I've become a very cautious punter in the politics markets, because the atmosphere is so febrile and the outcomes so difficult to foresee.
The sting in the tail is that MLP doesn't plan to cancel the exit tax before they do so, so effectively they will be forced to hand over 35% of any capital gains they achieve in the next 15 years (and this can't be offset against CGT the UK)
On a Le Pen presidency, Will Hutton is pondering the distinct possibility of this in today's Observer. Will, bless him, is prone to hyperbole but the fact it is now taken seriously as a prospect should be ringing all kind of alarm bells. Not in Germany it would appear, where Mrs Merkel remains as stubborn as ever. Of course the current popularity of Le Pen might be a way of sending a message to Germany that they want change. Germany now wears the trousers in the special relationship and threatening them with Le Pen might be the best way to get something out of them.
"Politicians are getting scared how this is shaping up to be the biggest political scandal since WW2 "
Sadly, Mike, I think this is right, and another reason why I have become a cautious political punter.
These scandals could lead anywhere.
"Meanwhile, a former minister claimed he was threatened with the sack by his then boss, the foreign secretary Jack Straw, for calling on Muslims in the UK to choose between the "British way or the way of the terrorists" after a 24-year-old from South Yorkshire tried to bomb Israelis in a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003. Former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane said he was forced to agree to a "grovelling climb-down" over his remarks because he was warned it risked upsetting community relations.
In a bizarre twist, it also emerged that Mr MacShane was disciplined for his remarks following protests led by one of the Muslim politicians at the centre of the child-grooming scandal in Rotherham."
It is hardly surprising we have a problem with young men going off to fight for ISIS and, according to today's Sunday Times, a young British woman wanting to behead Christians with a blunt knife, if this is how our government behaved: sidestepping criminality and terrrorism just to keep the Muslim community onside. No wonder people are voting UKIP when they see how the political class has behaved.
The pied noir French may have seen them as allies, but the metropolitan French often have no great love for Magrebi immigrants, whether muslim, jewish or even pied noir.
http://imgur.com/a/vuwW8
Now where's Avery so we can have more dadaist economics ? ;-)
Incidentally, the YouGov again (Labour 4 ahead, UKIP om 16) shows the dangers of reading a national shift into any one poll (Populus's on Friday showing a 1-point Tory lead), as some here did. I don't think anything has changed in the national mood yet. Possibly a big UKIP win in Clacton would shift things a bit.
The position at the moment is that there is a pretty solid Labour and Tory core which delivers a steady, modest Labour lead, and a big chunk of the electorate floating about feeling we're all a bit rubbish, and maybe they should try this new(ish) lot. To have any chance in May, Cameron needs to squash that and get much of that chunk for the Tories (he needs about half of that 16%), and he's running out of time.
I think that this is down to Shadsy's canniness, knowing that people will be more tempted by the attractive looking odds in the doubles markets.
But when things are a mess under the Tories it's not Cameron and Osborne's fault, they're good eggs pluckily doing their best in difficult circumstances.
Good stuff.
Sure he needs to be doing the planning and preparing, but I reckon (if we see any movement at all) it will be large and late as voters focus on the task at hand.
That's very interesting, Charles, and has serious personal implications for me.
Thank you again.
In the Independent article Blunkett appears to want something other than an inquiry.
“There are people who need to be held to account, whether it is in Rotherham or Rochdale or elsewhere, for their sheer neglect. managerial neglect."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12142177
And also that the Niqab made him uncomfortable.
Incidentally, pb film buffs may want to re watch the gritty eighties drama "Rita, Sue and Bob too"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita,_Sue_and_Bob_Too
It views slightly differently in light of Rotherham, and in particular Sues relationship with the Asian taxi driver.
Everyone knew what was going on, just no-one wanted to address the issues at the time. That time has arrived.
Please explain then why anyone should trust his promises on the EU ?
As to Osborne's deficit failure are you suggesting his promise was a lie or that he didn't know what he was doing either ?
And you're wrong 'steps in the right direction' are not all we can legitimately hope for. Cameron and Osborne set their own targets and people have the right to judge them by their results.
Which in the cases of immigration and deficit reduction have been failures.
If I promised by boss at work X or Y, failed to achieve them and then told him that 'steps in the right direction' were all he could legitimately hope for it wouldn't be long before I was out on my arse.
Underpromise and overperform is what competent people do not overpromise, underperform and then make mealy mouthed excuses.
Yes, JJ, I'm sure you are right. Shadsy's canniness explains much.
You want the world to be simple. It is not.
Remember that there is still the inquiry into the 1970, 80's allegations involving senior politicians at the time.
It would in the public sector. The need to ensure that no one was ever unfairly dismissed, jealously policed by the unions, would mean that most bosses would give up in despair when faced with the complexity of the procedure. You can be fair, or you can be effective, but you sure as hell can't be both.
Not least those on the Left predicting 5 million unemployed....
Then everyone will want to leave....
I am sure you will notice a slight disparity
It isn't (yet) being perceived as Party Political.
That could change, of course, but then there could be much more to come out of the woodwork, and who is to say which Parties will take the most flak as a consequence?
I repeat, it seems to me a very dodgy time to be placing political bets.
If you'll fancy a go, by all means seek election.
There's also the argument scene on the council estate when an old Irish man shouts out "Get them on Manningham Lane", that being the Red Light district in the Asian area.
As you say it views differently now.
Exclusive! This week's Sunil on Sunday ELBOW - Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week -
six polls fieldwork 25th to 29th Aug:
Lab 36.0% (-1.1)
Con 33.2% (-0.3)
UKIP 14.0% (+1.1)
LibDem 7.5% (-1.0)
(changes from last week's ELBOW - last week's adjusted for the YouGov Sunday Times)
Scottish education: the Scots get 100% of the vote on what happens to them.
There's your disparity.
The 2010 Cons show a 21% defection to UKIP - highest for ages - whilst the LAB defection may be up by a couple of points on recent polls, However regionally the greatest benefit for UKIP is the North> So is it mainly Cons from the North moving parties - perhaps not.
Looking at the subsidiaries and UKIP, these show a mixed picture.
Of the four parties, UKIP:
Is most against the RAF dropping humanitarian supplies to those fleeing IS
Is most against the REF taking part in air strikes against IS
Is joint most against the USAF doing the same
Is most against the British Army training Kurds to fight IS
and yet is is:
Least in favour of stopping UK citizens going to Syria or Iraq to fight.
Yet UKIP is most in favour of Control Orders.
Flockers, it will be for Luckyguy and his ilk when they've shot the likes of you and me. They may not want to to-day, but as the rise of Mlle Le Pen across the Channel shows, to-morrow is not that far away.
I have already accepted that I will be amongst the first against the wall. Still, I am enjoying myself while it lasts...
It is less than 92% because Welsh MPs vote on English education too, don;t they?
The problems come from what the targets enforce. A lot of targets were met in Mid Staffs NHS Trust, and Rotherham Council, but all they did was draw a veil over a lot of bad practices.
The targets are all set nationally, so the fish rots from the head.
Is it currently Labour policy to reduce immigration, by the way?
As to political implications if this government had exposed it back in 2010 then Labour would have taken the political hit, but by ignoring it themselves they're now going to share the blame as more and more is revealed.
Interesting. Perhaps what defines a kipper most is concern about the domestic situation. Kippers want Britain to stay out of world conflicts and look after its own.
My view since the last election has been that 2015 will be a re-run of 2010 with little change in Lab/Con. The changes in that field are Red Libs plus some potential Lab-->Con converts who were scared by the Labour campaign last time plus any changes in Scotland from EdM not being as Scottish as Brown.
The "other" factors are UKIP/protest/alienation and what happens to the SNP depending on the result in September.
But you talk to more voters than I do.
The Tories promised English votes for English law, another political reform that was quietly dropped.
The ship of state is like an oil tanker. It takes a long-time to change course, but once there is momentum you can go a long way.
The Tories have started to move us in the right direction - not as fast as we'd like, but movement at least. Labour will reverse that trend to the extent they can.
1) STV or primaries
2) An end to Commonwealth voters being able to vote here
3) An elected Lords
4) Recall elections
5) English votes for English laws
6) An end to proxy voting
7) Postal voting limited to those who can not get to a voting booth
Would not be surprised if similar events have been happening in Luton, Slough, High Wycombe and parts of Bristol and Cardiff.
But you are the only one who raises the idea.
"8 years 153 days until Roger starts voting Conservative. Add two years then he'll vote UKIP."
It's getting more difficult. So when I see Ed flapping around mouthing Tory slogans looking like a goldfish on a carpet I say 2 GAZAS followed by 5 PHILIP GREEN WASTE TZAR and 10 LYNTON CROSBYS and it disappears!
(One Youtube of Farage with Van Rompuy is enough for UKIP)
Have any Clacton Tory councillors defected yet in the wake of Douglas Carswell's bizarre defection to UKIP?
Osborne is starting to come under pressure. He can;t do anything because he hasn;t cut the deficit enough.
And the Barnett formula gives more money to Scotland per capita than to England, so there's that.
Sorry but on this the PBKippers are spot on. Cameron and Osborne aren't just failing, they're failing by standards they set themselves
All this tremble-lipped "but but but it's soo difficult" stuff is frankly pathetic.
Standard pro-Tory party political fayre, pseudo-intellectually dressed up as profound comment on the state of politics and governance in general.
We choose to be bound by EU law in letter and in spirit. Some have said we should adopt a more buccaneering French style approach to compliance with it, some have said the only solution is withdrawal. Either way, you can hardly use being beholden to it as an excuse for failing to protect our industry in a way that every other country in the world seems to manage to do. Believe me, I would love it if we had never had socialist governments that allowed British companies to stagnate under subsidy, and we had a stable of world beaters that had made it all on their own in the white heat of capitalism, but we don't, and just as the French protect Danone, or the US prevents of the takeover of Unocal by CNOOC, so the British Government can and must at times use its power to protect and foster British business.
As for appeasement -two words -Saudi Arabia. A country that has possibly one of the worst human rights records in the world, as well as being the world's biggest sponsor of terror. What do we do there? Looks an awful lot like staying silent to me. We have chosen to dig in with allies who are not worth the name, and blot our copybook with the world's rising powers. It is diplomatic ineptitude on an epic scale.
"That's it mate. Come the revolution, you'll be first against the wall bop-bop-bop!"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075492/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu
And Dave was recently seen writing cheques for further devolution to the Scots in a desperate attempt to save the union - without even for a moment thinking about how his English base would take it.
Well now he knows.
Scope for reconciliation was thin on the ground with members of the public saying relations had already been damaged by the debate.
More than 40 per cent felt the issue had caused permanent damage to relations between Scotland and the home nations, with 13 per cent saying the damage was significant.
Almost half (44 per cent) said they did not support Scots getting an automatic right to joint citizenship in the case of independence. With 31 per cent not sure, that left only 25 per cent supporting the idea.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/505295/Alex-Salmond-s-currency-union-plans-prove-unpopular
Had trouble quoting you but in reply:
The French, in my opinion, appear more racist because unlike the UK, in my experience, people who make racist comments in France do so straight out. They couldn't give a fig what other people think, whereas in the UK, in my experience, people tend to be a bit more veiled until they think they are in 'safe' company. Possibly because they fear arrest, prosecution, loss of their livelihood. Something that wouldn't happen in France to the best of my knowledge.
A lot of French are voting FN for the exact same reason many of the people in the UK are voting UKIP, they have seen their cities overrun by mass Muslim immigration and pandered to by their own Government, they are not happy about it. Rotherham et all etc makes it worse. It doesn't mean all those voters are going to don white sheets and start burning crosses outside Mosques.
Did anybody here actually bet that he would? Come on, own up.
Both of you.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/08/if-dave-and-his-pals-are-our-clever-elite-who-does-nigel-make-them-look-so-stupid.html
http://www.labour.org.uk/home
He has many objections to the EU, but curiously immigration does not number amongst them. So far as I can see it does not feature elsewhere in the book.
My suspicion is that he takes a libertarian view on a fairly open door immigration policy. If true, then we could have an interesting case of the only UKIP MP being opposed to the central policy of UKIPs manifesto.
Martin Vander Weyer makes an interesting point in today's Spectator:
If Alain Juppe is the UMP candidate and Montebourg runs from the left it could be amusing.
Montebourg's rise to the prime time was based on his prosecution of Juppe's son in 1995 for his occupation of a "luxurious but unusually low rent Paris council flat"...
There are certainly cultural differences of the type you indicate, Bob.
There is also an edginess to race relations in France that is incomparably sharper and more frightening there than here.
There is much to criticise this and previous governments for. There is also much to praise them for. We live in an era of extraordinary prosperity and relative peace, with schools that educate us, hospitals that heal us, politicians who are accountable to us, abundant leisure time and facilities, high levels of employment, flowing taps, operational sanitation, good public transport etc etc. While governments should be challenged constantly to improve, by any reasonable historical and global perspective, we are actually quite well governed.
I fear people are losing sight of that, even if, in light of Rotherham and many other failures, I can't blame them for doing so.
On an unrelated note, another Tory promise that went astray -they said they would stop advertising jobs in the Guardian, and put them on a Government recruitment page. Thus:
-saving money
-ceasing to prop up a publication that is totally opposed to The Conservatives and everything they stand for
Has this happened? Can you blame people for wondering if they are more interested in perpetuating a duopoly than actually getting into Government themselves?
But seriously, you'd remove Commonwealth voters' right and let EU voters vote here?
If I had my way, the Commonwealth would be a formal political union with shared sovereignty with membership open to all English-speaking countries, even the Yanks(!), and all former UK and US colonies. Multi-racial and multi-confessional.
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/world/islamic-state-militants-gang-raping-selling-hundreds-women-report-article-1.1921553
Maybe they got the idea from the British recruits?
Given England controls Scotland's budget , Scotland cannot ever have control of its education whilst that is the case. It has the responsibility for sure but not the power.
Care to step back from your impotent rage to tell us how 'saving' the Harrier GR9 fleet would have improved military effectiveness? In addition, how the previous out-of-service date of 2018 for the GR9's would have been much use on the Queen Elizabeth, which is only due in initial service in 2017?
Whilst you are at it, you may want to look at the differences between the GR9's and the Sea Harriers, and see why the former are not particularly suited for naval warfare, especially Falklands-style operations.
Good post Flockers, but if what you say is true, why are so many people in Britain so angry?
if we look back in history, it seems people have been far more content with far less.
You bloody well can, even in the public sector. I never had any problems with the unions in getting rid of staff that couldn't perform, probably because I never tried to be unfair. Quite the reverse I went out of my way to be scrupulously fair, involved the union at every stage and when the day came when it was clear the employee had to go I usually found the union telling them to resign rather than be sacked.
The idea that one can't be a fair and an effective manager is arrant nonsense..
That would be a good thing for two reasons 1) it would make the EU better for us to stay in, by closing down the CAP. 2) It would stop several million French of North African extraction coming here without our borders staff being able to deny them entry.
I hope that FN lose.
At least they are heading in the right direction.