Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
I'm not a USA junkie. But I do wonder how many people have stopped to think how f*cked we in Europe would be if they withdrew their all forces from the continent.
If I were an American, I'd be seriously pissed off at the European attitude that I should afford them military protection, do the bulk of their fighting for them, while still having the luxury of criticising me.
"We all know where the BNP voters have gone: Ukip."
The collapse of the BNP took place about two years before UKIP started to perform strongly.
From 2007-2011, there were successive purges of people who opposed Griffin. The party did quite well in the 2010 general election, but a lot of them were expecting to get MPs elected, so the results set off a load of infighting. They also lost most of their councillors in the local elections held on the same day.
UKIP only really got going in the Autumn of 2012. While there are ex-BNP voters who now vote UKIP, it's obviously a good thing that they're now voting for a mainstream party, rather than the BNP.
As you have a copy of the FT read its leader: Cameron trades economic credibility for votes.
It really is that simple - to deny a change in focus is to deny that night follows day I'm afraid. Yet still you try.
I'm starting to wonder whether you can read.
Is there a change in focus? Yes, there's been a new theme introduced, one of tax cuts.
Does that mean that the deficit is going to be dropped as a key theme? No, because it's the Conservatives' single greatest asset. As last week showed abundantly well. The Labour party conference was ruined by their leader's failure to mention the deficit. You seem to see that as some kind of unfortunate accident, but if the Conservatives had not positioned the deficit as a defining issue, the rug wouldn't have been pulled from under Ed Miliband.
Indeed, as I explained at length earlier, it's precisely because the Conservatives have worked so hard to keep the deficit at the forefront of voters' minds that they feel able to offer tax cuts.
Is it good economics? Almost certainly not, for the reasons that DavidL gives. Are there risks in this strategy? Yes, because the Conservatives risk looking incoherent. But will the general public therefore transfer their trust on the economy to Labour? Almost certainly not.
You are going off on a tangent.
My point was that there has been a shift in focus, which you denied.
Now, at last, you accept that simple point.
Oh don't talk rubbish. You have said ad nauseam that the deficit is not going to be a central theme in the general election. It is. Get used to it and stop rewriting history.
Correct. It won't be. The government has just thrown in the towel on that idea.
I did an analysis of Scottish sub samples prior to the 2010 General Election.
Basically they were as accurate as an American war film
As bad as a Mel Gibson one, or not quite that bad?
For example, the final YouGov which had a Scottish sub-sample of 634 (six hundred and thirty four)
Here's how much they over/(under) stated the parties
Lab -5
Con -2
LD +5
SNP -1
I'll have to dig out the research for the other pollsters, but some were very Mel Gibson.
634 is too small a sample.
Although worth 3 regular ones you need to look at more data than that.
I did look at more data than that. Scottish subsamples remind me of John Nance Garner's quote about the Vice-Presidency.
They may well be wrong, because they aren't weighted specifically to Scotland. YouGov may have idiosyncrasies in its panel composition in Scotland.
But the change Pulpstar identified is significant. A grasp of Bayesian methods will tell you that we should be updating - and uprating - our estimate of current SNP G.E. support. That's not to say it will necessarily endure.
Similar surges happened in the last parliament.
Perhaps, but I'd be surprised to see such a marked difference between the first 10 and second 10 of a group of 20 at any stage last time (except maybe vis-a-vis the Holyrood election?)
But what's really important is that we [or some of us] had a prior expectation of a surge, because of the referendum result. The YouGov figures back that up, which should make us more confident in that hypothesis, even if you wouldn't trust any single subsample in the slightest.
For example in August 2008, YouGov did a Scottish specific poll.
Sure, that's one poll. We all know they can be wrong, especially with the challenging two-government environment in Scotland.
What's relevant about the recent data is (a) the change; (b) the repeatability of that change in several polls, even if they're not properly weighted; (c) the fact that such change has a clear explanation; and possibly (d) the fact that just such a change was anticipated should the referendum be a narrow No.
As you have a copy of the FT read its leader: Cameron trades economic credibility for votes.
It really is that simple - to deny a change in focus is to deny that night follows day I'm afraid. Yet still you try.
I'm starting to wonder whether you can read.
Is there a change in focus? Yes, there's been a new theme introduced, one of tax cuts.
Does that mean that the deficit is going to be dropped as a key theme? No, because it's the Conservatives' single greatest asset. As last week showed abundantly well. The Labour party conference was ruined by their leader's failure to mention the deficit. You seem to see that as some kind of unfortunate accident, but if the Conservatives had not positioned the deficit as a defining issue, the rug wouldn't have been pulled from under Ed Miliband.
Indeed, as I explained at length earlier, it's precisely because the Conservatives have worked so hard to keep the deficit at the forefront of voters' minds that they feel able to offer tax cuts.
Is it good economics? Almost certainly not, for the reasons that DavidL gives. Are there risks in this strategy? Yes, because the Conservatives risk looking incoherent. But will the general public therefore transfer their trust on the economy to Labour? Almost certainly not.
You are going off on a tangent.
My point was that there has been a shift in focus, which you denied.
Now, at last, you accept that simple point.
Oh don't talk rubbish. You have said ad nauseam that the deficit is not going to be a central theme in the general election. It is. Get used to it and stop rewriting history.
Correct. It won't be. The government has just thrown in the towel on that idea.
You're not really getting anywhere with this meme.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
@Morris_Dancer "but the media was shockingly incompetent."
The "media" is shockingly incompetent, and always will be. It deals in headlines not facts, and while there might be some astute analysis buried inside the covers (or a more in depth program) it will usually contain some form of editorial bias.
While many of them are shouting about Dave's genius at the conference, they miss out on one pertinent fact. He was forced into the speech by UKIP and the defections, and was left with firing off most of the stuff he would have preferred to keep covered till later in the campaign. This is not denigrating his speech in itself, which was confidently and well delivered as one would expect, but was strategically sub optimal in terms of the upcoming campaign. (less room for "maneuver" later)
What the Conferences have shown, to the small minority that were listening at least, is that the Tories have a major advantage in leadership and policy credibility which has the potential to offset the better brand of Labour and at least some of the advantages that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the old boundaries give the reds.
Looking ahead, it may be that we are heading for an election where the campaign actually makes a difference. This is a potential problem for Labour. At present they have no one even close to Osborne's class as a political operator. Ed seems extremely reluctant to learn anything from anyone (must be all that intellectual self confidence) but if he was going to learn one thing from his old master Gordon Brown it surely has to be that Labour has never had a political operator like Mandelson and the boys around him are absolutely no substitute.
Brown probably denied Cameron a majority by bringing Mandelson back into the fold and he hated him. Will Ed have the sense to do the same? Osborne will be hoping not.
I haven't read his memoirs but I will look out for them. He has a waspish sense of humour.
It's also worth recalling what a class act Blair and Brown were in their hey day. Brown gets a continual stream of negative abuse these days (less so after the 'No' vote), but in his day in the mid to late 90s he would routinely destroy the Tory economic spokespeople at the dispatch box and generally run rings around them. These two, Alistair Campbell, Mandy, and, let's not forget, Philip Gould and Robin Cook. It was quite a gang.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
As you have a copy of the FT read its leader: Cameron trades economic credibility for votes.
It really is that simple - to deny a change in focus is to deny that night follows day I'm afraid. Yet still you try.
I'm starting to wonder whether you can read.
Is there a change in focus? Yes, there's been a new theme introduced, one of tax cuts.
Does that mean that the deficit is going to be dropped as a key theme? No, because it's the Conservatives' single greatest asset. As last week showed abundantly well. The Labour party conference was ruined by their leader's failure to mention the deficit. You seem to see that as some kind of unfortunate accident, but if the Conservatives had not positioned the deficit as a defining issue, the rug wouldn't have been pulled from under Ed Miliband.
Indeed, as I explained at length earlier, it's precisely because the Conservatives have worked so hard to keep the deficit at the forefront of voters' minds that they feel able to offer tax cuts.
Is it good economics? Almost certainly not, for the reasons that DavidL gives. Are there risks in this strategy? Yes, because the Conservatives risk looking incoherent. But will the general public therefore transfer their trust on the economy to Labour? Almost certainly not.
You are going off on a tangent.
My point was that there has been a shift in focus, which you denied.
Now, at last, you accept that simple point.
Oh don't talk rubbish. You have said ad nauseam that the deficit is not going to be a central theme in the general election. It is. Get used to it and stop rewriting history.
The irony is that if the coalition had actually succeeded in its 'central mission' ie eliminating the structural deficit, then Labour wouldn't have much to worry about. Te problem is they have failed. After 5 years of the coalition and an intense squeeze on many areas of public spending, there'll still be a massive black hole in the government finances? Why? Well firstly because the fact the economy is now growing cannot make up for the fact that for a couple of years it was stagnating. Secondly this extremely low pay recovery leaves many people dependent on welfare payments.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
I'm not a USA junkie. But I do wonder how many people have stopped to think how f*cked we in Europe would be if they withdrew their all forces from the continent.
If I were an American, I'd be seriously pissed off at the European attitude that I should afford them military protection, do the bulk of their fighting for them, while still having the luxury of criticising me.
As you have a copy of the FT read its leader: Cameron trades economic credibility for votes.
It really is that simple - to deny a change in focus is to deny that night follows day I'm afraid. Yet still you try.
You are going off on a tangent.
My point was that there has been a shift in focus, which you denied.
Now, at last, you accept that simple point.
From The Times - '' Another respected think-tank, the Resolution Foundation, said that the implication of Tory plans to clear the deficit by 2018 was that tax cuts would come after that date, paid for by “deep spending restraint [that] will run throughout the entire parliament”. Matt Whittaker, its chief economist, said: “The tax cuts announced today by the prime minister suggest that the path of austerity set by the chancellor will continue right to the end of the next parliament, with any upside that arises later going on tax cuts rather than easing the pressure on spending.” ''
And that is totally unrealistic. The NHS is already stressed because they have had 4 years of nil to minimal increases whilst the demands on them get ever greater. People are already talking about a £30bn black hole there. That is overdone but there is no doubt whatsoever that the overall rate of inflation in the provision of medical services is higher than the average meaning that the NHS is currently suffering from real terms spending pressures that can only increase over the next Parliament.
I do not dispute we need another 4 or 5 years of even greater austerity but it is absurd to think that by the end of that period the public sector will not be suffering serious stress and delivery failures in a range of places.
We would be back to where we were in 1999. Not all of the additional funds that were poured into public services by Brown were wasted. Some met needs that had not been addressed for far too long. Some of the Tory plans to shrink the state, which lie behind the tax cut theory, strike me as wildly ambitious and frankly incompatible with the views of the majority of the electorate.
The fall will be reflected in lower revenues, and is hardly a help to the logic of the ScotNats. I'll keep my eye open at the pumps.
Now below $92, when New York comes on line will they correct the fall?
Shite for oil co shareprices, shite for tax revenue, but great for the economy generally and for balance of payments. And potentially terminal for some of the oil kleptocracy dictatorships of the world.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
I'm not a USA junkie. But I do wonder how many people have stopped to think how f*cked we in Europe would be if they withdrew their all forces from the continent.
If I were an American, I'd be seriously pissed off at the European attitude that I should afford them military protection, do the bulk of their fighting for them, while still having the luxury of criticising me.
I don't think Europeans want the US here.
Russian 'Europeans' yes, but that's because they can't throw their weight around whilst the US acts as a deterrent.
The problem with Ed may get worse if he becomes PM. Gordon was passable as a Chancellor but the strain of being PM seemed to unbalance him. Once relieved of that stressful task (indref), he seemed to improve.
Fortunately, Ed, being a posh lad like Cameron, may take to leadership more naturally. But his reign as LOTO doesn't bode well. The first PM to be sectioned?
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
As you have a copy of the FT read its leader: Cameron trades economic credibility for votes.
It really is that simple - to deny a change in focus is to deny that night follows day I'm afraid. Yet still you try.
You are going off on a tangent.
My point was that there has been a shift in focus, which you denied.
Now, at last, you accept that simple point.
From The Times - '' Another respected think-tank, the Resolution Foundation, said that the implication of Tory plans to clear the deficit by 2018 was that tax cuts would come after that date, paid for by “deep spending restraint [that] will run throughout the entire parliament”. Matt Whittaker, its chief economist, said: “The tax cuts announced today by the prime minister suggest that the path of austerity set by the chancellor will continue right to the end of the next parliament, with any upside that arises later going on tax cuts rather than easing the pressure on spending.” ''
And that is totally unrealistic. The NHS is already stressed because they have had 4 years of nil to minimal increases whilst the demands on them get ever greater. People are already talking about a £30bn black hole there. That is overdone but there is no doubt whatsoever that the overall rate of inflation in the provision of medical services is higher than the average meaning that the NHS is currently suffering from real terms spending pressures that can only increase over the next Parliament.
I do not dispute we need another 4 or 5 years of even greater austerity but it is absurd to think that by the end of that period the public sector will not be suffering serious stress and delivery failures in a range of places.
We would be back to where we were in 1999. Not all of the additional funds that were poured into public services by Brown were wasted. Some met needs that had not been addressed for far too long. Some of the Tory plans to shrink the state, which lie behind the tax cut theory, strike me as wildly ambitious and frankly incompatible with the views of the majority of the electorate.
I think that's correct. Are you sure you want to vote for it?
It does seem that our wonderful mongrel nation is going to return to its vomit in May.
Or, there is a strange lag going on between people's views of each individual area of policy and their current voting intention. The latter could be dramatically different by March/April as people finally focus on the reality of the choice in front of them.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
What the Conferences have shown, to the small minority that were listening at least, is that the Tories have a major advantage in leadership and policy credibility which has the potential to offset the better brand of Labour and at least some of the advantages that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the old boundaries give the reds.
Looking ahead, it may be that we are heading for an election where the campaign actually makes a difference. This is a potential problem for Labour. At present they have no one even close to Osborne's class as a political operator. Ed seems extremely reluctant to learn anything from anyone (must be all that intellectual self confidence) but if he was going to learn one thing from his old master Gordon Brown it surely has to be that Labour has never had a political operator like Mandelson and the boys around him are absolutely no substitute.
Brown probably denied Cameron a majority by bringing Mandelson back into the fold and he hated him. Will Ed have the sense to do the same? Osborne will be hoping not.
The Blairites need to reassert themselves that's for sure.
As regards the Tories this conference has demonstrated that at last they are showing signs of maturing and knowing what the're about. After 13 years in opposition and with young rookies Cameron and Osborne taking the helm in 2010 while facing an unprecedented economic situation and with their hands tied by coalition I think some of their critics on the right have been unduly impatient shall we say. If they are fortunate enough to somehow gain a second term with a majority we could potentially see the best the Cameron years.
My one concern strangely if they win is the EU referendum. Giles Dilnot carried out a straw poll at the conference and delegates were literally split down the middle as to in or out. The potential for the party to fracture in half in 2017 together with the risks a contentious and prolonged campaign present to UK plc cannot be understated. Cameron will need all his skills.
It does seem that our wonderful mongrel nation is going to return to its vomit in May.
Or, there is a strange lag going on between people's views of each individual area of policy and their current voting intention. The latter could be dramatically different by March/April as people finally focus on the reality of the choice in front of them.
So the EU budget is a bigger issue for voters than health, education etc? Laughing.
What the Conferences have shown, to the small minority that were listening at least, is that the Tories have a major advantage in leadership and policy credibility which has the potential to offset the better brand of Labour and at least some of the advantages that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the old boundaries give the reds.
Looking ahead, it may be that we are heading for an election where the campaign actually makes a difference. This is a potential problem for Labour. At present they have no one even close to Osborne's class as a political operator. Ed seems extremely reluctant to learn anything from anyone (must be all that intellectual self confidence) but if he was going to learn one thing from his old master Gordon Brown it surely has to be that Labour has never had a political operator like Mandelson and the boys around him are absolutely no substitute.
Brown probably denied Cameron a majority by bringing Mandelson back into the fold and he hated him. Will Ed have the sense to do the same? Osborne will be hoping not.
I haven't read his memoirs but I will look out for them. He has a waspish sense of humour.
It's also worth recalling what a class act Blair and Brown were in their hey day. Brown gets a continual stream of negative abuse these days (less so after the 'No' vote), but in his day in the mid to late 90s he would routinely destroy the Tory economic spokespeople at the dispatch box and generally run rings around them. These two, Alistair Campbell, Mandy, and, let's not forget, Philip Gould and Robin Cook. It was quite a gang.
Fair points although I don't recall Brown getting much change out of Ken Clarke. He was much more formidable when clothed with the authority of office. Blair was a disappointingly ordinary PM but a phenomenal campaigner able to range deep into enemy territory and thus able to constantly keep his opponents on the back foot.
Campbell was poisonous but did more to change the relationship between the media and the political parties, particularly his political party, than anyone else.
As an outsider I do not see anyone in the Labour hierarchy fit to clean the boots of any of this lot. Maybe that is unfair but the suggestion from Watson, for example, is that it is not.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
Thank goodness we have your repeating of the Kremlin's bulletins from Russia Today.
That LabourList bit on the self-employed is a bit... vacant.
What are they actually proposing?
I think the idea is to spend some taxpayers money "supporting" self-employed workers.
On a bit of a tangent, some mentioned earlier the idea of banning exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts and that people should be free to juggle commitments between multiple contracts. Sounds fine, however it would mean that the person concerned would have the right to say "No" to any offered work, and that they would have multiple sources of income. The Revenue have no problem in regarding people in such a position a self-employed. The agencies might also start taking the view that if the people are self-employed contractors then the agency has no need to run payroll, PAYE, holiday pay and all the other things that go with employing someone. So what seems to be a benefit to an employee may well have unintended consequences.
Those are fascinating - it's a bit like half of Labour voters preferring Cameron over their own bloke to be PM.
But even when you like a Party - there's no amount of *Facts* that will change your mind unless you get mentally divorced from them. Even Labour voters floated back finally after Iraq.
Yes but Labour still have a vestigial memory of what first attracted 1/3 of people to them. But these people are aging and getting wiser and eventually will either die or some may come to their senses. What Labour do not have is lots and lots of reasons for people to stay in the relationship. They have lots and lots of reasons to leave.
How do you square that with Labour being MUCH more popular with people of working age than with pensioners? The key Labour cohort is the 45-65 age bracket. It's the Conservatives who are ageing.
A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official says that Moscow has a responsibility to protect ethnic Russian citizens of other countries, "regardless of where they live," and that "we will do everything possible to defend the rights and interests" of ethnic Russian minorities in the neighboring Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Those that think just letting Putin getting away with invading and annexing parts of neighbouring countries would avoid be the end of the matter are idiots.
For the unconvinced: change Moscow to 'Berlin', and Russians to 'Germans', and then see how that reads again.
Remind you of anything?
Yes, I know I'm danger of invoking Godwin's law, but you see my point. This is quite chilling.
An entirely foreseeable going back to the invasion of Georgia in 2008. The willingness of people to keep their heads down in the hope it won't affect them always amazes me. On the individual or the national level, we are nothing if we do not stand up for what is right, and we reap the whirlwind when we do not. Moscow invaded and annexed part of its neighbour and what did they get for it? Some travel bans and sanctions on minor industries.
The more absurd part of it was that Russia knew full well that it could face ramifications, so it always denied it was connected to the militias as a way to leave a retreat path open: they could always save face by ditching their support and allow the militias to negotiate an amnesty as if they were independent groups. They would have surely done this had a strong international response happened, but they shocked how weak the West was and just kept going. Now they have Crimea annexed and a frozen conflict in the East that they can explode every time Ukraine does something they don't want. If Ukraine ever tries to reassert control over its own country, it will be claimed they are the aggressor. Just as they can in Georgia over South Ossetia.
So now that's control over Georgia and Ukraine established, and they're moving on to manufacturing crises in the Baltics. Moldova will be next.
What about the evisceration of Serbia. It was Clinton and Blair who started arbitrarily redrawing European boundaries.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
Thank goodness we have your repeating of the Kremlin's bulletins from Russia Today.
Actually I only rebut your boring habit of bringing up every thin piece of propaganda you read and then think to post here.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
Excellent post. And spot on. The essential problem is that EdM is not a leader and so is incapable of providing Labour with a proper sense of urgency or direction. As a result, they are bereft of a coherent, credible message, let alone a set of policies that can be put in front of voters with a straight face. The only strategy Labour under Ed has is to rely on the unpopularity of the Tory brand. Even if that turns out to be successful to the extent of winning most seats in a hung parliament it is no mandate for government.
What would be best and very interesting for this site is if the remaining SNP posters could give us their insights into what is likely to happen in Scotland at GE2015. Much better for all concerned if they could add to the sum of knowledge on this website than the diatribes, threats and insults. Come on Malc, Uniondivvie etc etc. Give us your political insights! What are you betting on for Scotalnd at GE2015?
TC , not gave it a lot of thought but believe it could go many ways depending on , SNP leadership/direction changes impact , the RIC labour party impact and how many labour voters will stay away from them , how the LD's will vote as they desert them and what if any impact there is based on Westminster confirming the Devomax/home rule promises or not. You would have to think there will be a big boost for SNP/Greens/RIC but how the votes are channeled may help or hinder that. Then there is the ingrained vote Labour at Westminster herd instinct to beat the Tories to be overcome , it may be broken this time but given the fearties vote in the referendum they may again resort to cowardice and vote Labour. Does not seem to be any confidence in stepping up to take responsibility , they still prefer to let nanny make their decisions. Bit rambling but it could really go either way , huge bang or another damp squib. Given past evidence I would not bet the house on big bang but I have lost confidence in the country.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
A blogpost written by some bloke (who claims to be a movie critic) in response to a comment on his own blog certainly qualifies as an alternative perspective. It's the content that matters.
Sadly, in this case, that's best described as 'round objects'. It's an unstructured rant full of inaccuracies - both historical and typographical. I stopped taking it seriously when I got to "the conflict was basically Germany's fault."
What the Conferences have shown, to the small minority that were listening at least, is that the Tories have a major advantage in leadership and policy credibility which has the potential to offset the better brand of Labour and at least some of the advantages that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the old boundaries give the reds.
Brown probably denied Cameron a majority by bringing Mandelson back into the fold and he hated him. Will Ed have the sense to do the same? Osborne will be hoping not.
I haven't read his memoirs but I will look out for them. He has a waspish sense of humour.
Fair points although I don't recall Brown getting much change out of Ken Clarke. He was much more formidable when clothed with the authority of office. Blair was a disappointingly ordinary PM but a phenomenal campaigner able to range deep into enemy territory and thus able to constantly keep his opponents on the back foot.
Campbell was poisonous but did more to change the relationship between the media and the political parties, particularly his political party, than anyone else.
As an outsider I do not see anyone in the Labour hierarchy fit to clean the boots of any of this lot. Maybe that is unfair but the suggestion from Watson, for example, is that it is not.
I don't deny they were skillful political operators but I think Ed Miliband is a much more decent human being and actually far more thoughtful in a serious way than those guys were. Whether he is up to the job I'm not sure, but despite being useless he's still the favourite to be PM this time next year.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
A blogpost written by some bloke (who claims to be a movie critic) in response to a comment on his own blog certainly qualifies as an alternative perspective. It's the content that matters.
Sadly, in this case, that's best described as 'round objects'. It's an unstructured rant full of inaccuracies - both historical and typographical. I stopped taking it seriously when I got to "the conflict was basically Germany's fault."
Another interesting post that I learned a lot from.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Your username is very apt: it really does reflect the merits of your posts on here.
Must be irritating to have an alternative perspective than yours presented. Still I wonder why why you need to tediously regurgitate what I can read in the papaers on here.
A blogpost written by some bloke (who claims to be a movie critic) in response to a comment on his own blog certainly qualifies as an alternative perspective. It's the content that matters.
Sadly, in this case, that's best described as 'round objects'. It's an unstructured rant full of inaccuracies - both historical and typographical. I stopped taking it seriously when I got to "the conflict was basically Germany's fault."
Another interesting post that I learned a lot from.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election. [snipped for space]
I'm afraid I can’t reassure you that Ed will improve – but I do admire your candour @respect.
Mr. Llama, whilst I do need more of this fabled 'money' I have heard so much about (you missed a fascinating discourse on the merits of imperial systems, including monetary, the other day), I'm not quite sure how that would work and, if it were practical, whether it would be justified.
Incidentally, there's an off-chance the traditionally published version of Sir Edric's Temple might be out a shade earlier than I'd expected. [Of course, it remains available at all good retailers in self-published format, and I don't expect significant changes from one to the other].
Nick Palmer - I think there is a point though that older Labour voters are much more true believers in the party. You meet a fair number of them. Amongst younger people there are lots who will 'lend' Labour their votes, for lack of any alternative, but they don't really believe in Labour.
Those are fascinating - it's a bit like half of Labour voters preferring Cameron over their own bloke to be PM.
But even when you like a Party - there's no amount of *Facts* that will change your mind unless you get mentally divorced from them. Even Labour voters floated back finally after Iraq.
Yes but Labour still have a vestigial memory of what first attracted 1/3 of people to them. But these people are aging and getting wiser and eventually will either die or some may come to their senses. What Labour do not have is lots and lots of reasons for people to stay in the relationship. They have lots and lots of reasons to leave.
How do you square that with Labour being MUCH more popular with people of working age than with pensioners? The key Labour cohort is the 45-65 age bracket. It's the Conservatives who are ageing.
We're all ageing Nick, sad to say, but there is evidence that the Blairite generation is remaining a lot more loyal to Labour than those that came before it or since. This too will pass but it is undoubtedly the single most important factor in Labour's current strength.
As regards your kind invitation I think I will pass. The Tories aspire to go too far in one direction but reality will hold them back. Labour demonstrated that they feel no such constraints whatever the consequences.
Reckless to win Rochester matched on Betfair above evens for the first time this morning. Watching the respective efforts of the tories and UKIP yesterday, I wonder if he's sat somewhere contemplating what on earth he's done
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
Excellent post. And spot on. The essential problem is that EdM is not a leader and so is incapable of providing Labour with a proper sense of urgency or direction. As a result, they are bereft of a coherent, credible message, let alone a set of policies that can be put in front of voters with a straight face. The only strategy Labour under Ed has is to rely on the unpopularity of the Tory brand. Even if that turns out to be successful to the extent of winning most seats in a hung parliament it is no mandate for government.
Wonder if anyone is going to act.
IMO Cameron's speech, whilst well delivered, was only possible because of the acres of political space he has been given. His claims go unchallenged, his mistakes go unpunished.
If Milliband had claimed to have "paying down the debt" or come up with £7bill of free money he would have been eviscerated. Cameron gets away with it.
And that is totally unrealistic. The NHS is already stressed because they have had 4 years of nil to minimal increases whilst the demands on them get ever greater. People are already talking about a £30bn black hole there. That is overdone but there is no doubt whatsoever that the overall rate of inflation in the provision of medical services is higher than the average meaning that the NHS is currently suffering from real terms spending pressures that can only increase over the next Parliament.
I do not dispute we need another 4 or 5 years of even greater austerity but it is absurd to think that by the end of that period the public sector will not be suffering serious stress and delivery failures in a range of places.
We would be back to where we were in 1999. Not all of the additional funds that were poured into public services by Brown were wasted. Some met needs that had not been addressed for far too long. Some of the Tory plans to shrink the state, which lie behind the tax cut theory, strike me as wildly ambitious and frankly incompatible with the views of the majority of the electorate.
Mr L., The proposal is as I understand it to uprate the starting point of the 40% band to somewhere close to where it should have been if it had kept place with the increase in wages over the years. When the band was first introduced it was applicable to people earning very good salaries indeed. The use of "Fiscal Drag" by successive chancellors has meant that the higher rate is now being paid by millions more people and most of those are in relatively modest jobs (e.g. mid-range public employees). Each year more and more people are being caught in the net and are having their taxes increased.
You proposal is therefore not an argument against a tax cut but and argument for everyone (because fiscal drag applies a the bottom end as well) to pay more and more tax ad infinitum.
The problems of the Health Service and other areas of public spending cannot be resolved by further salami slicing or ring fencing or by endlessly increasing taxes, and certainly not by ever increasing borrowing. Real reform and a long hard look at what government does and what it actually needs to do is required.
What the Conferences have shown, to the small minority that were listening at least, is that the Tories have a major advantage in leadership and policy credibility which has the potential to offset the better brand of Labour and at least some of the advantages that the collapse of the Lib Dems and the old boundaries give the reds.
Brown probably denied Cameron a majority by bringing Mandelson back into the fold and he hated him. Will Ed have the sense to do the same? Osborne will be hoping not.
I haven't read his memoirs but I will look out for them. He has a waspish sense of humour.
Fair points although I don't recall Brown getting much change out of Ken Clarke. He was much more formidable when clothed with the authority of office. Blair was a disappointingly ordinary PM but a phenomenal campaigner able to range deep into enemy territory and thus able to constantly keep his opponents on the back foot.
Campbell was poisonous but did more to change the relationship between the media and the political parties, particularly his political party, than anyone else.
As an outsider I do not see anyone in the Labour hierarchy fit to clean the boots of any of this lot. Maybe that is unfair but the suggestion from Watson, for example, is that it is not.
I don't deny they were skillful political operators but I think Ed Miliband is a much more decent human being and actually far more thoughtful in a serious way than those guys were. Whether he is up to the job I'm not sure, but despite being useless he's still the favourite to be PM this time next year.
I have not read or heard anyone seriously suggesting that Ed is not a nice person. The brother stuff is massively overplayed and probably an accident. He did not show himself to be particularly trustworthy on the Syria vote but he is a politician so too much cannot be expected.
It is just that winning elections is about a lot more than being nice. It is about framing the argument, framing or characterising your opponent, building blocks of voters, ensuring you inspire your activist base and ensuring the efficient deployment of resources on the ground. Who is going to do all this? It is not the leader's job.
And that is totally unrealistic. The NHS is already stressed because they have had 4 years of nil to minimal increases whilst the demands on them get ever greater. People are already talking about a £30bn black hole there. That is overdone but there is no doubt whatsoever that the overall rate of inflation in the provision of medical services is higher than the average meaning that the NHS is currently suffering from real terms spending pressures that can only increase over the next Parliament.
I do not dispute we need another 4 or 5 years of even greater austerity but it is absurd to think that by the end of that period the public sector will not be suffering serious stress and delivery failures in a range of places.
We would be back to where we were in 1999. Not all of the additional funds that were poured into public services by Brown were wasted. Some met needs that had not been addressed for far too long. Some of the Tory plans to shrink the state, which lie behind the tax cut theory, strike me as wildly ambitious and frankly incompatible with the views of the majority of the electorate.
Mr L., The proposal is as I understand it to uprate the starting point of the 40% band to somewhere close to where it should have been if it had kept place with the increase in wages over the years. When the band was first introduced it was applicable to people earning very good salaries indeed. The use of "Fiscal Drag" by successive chancellors has meant that the higher rate is nor being paid by millions more people and most of those are in relatively modest jobs (e.g. mid-range public employees). Each year more and more people are being caught in the net and are having their taxes increased.
You proposal is therefore not an argument against a tax cut but and argument for everyone (because fiscal drag applies a the bottom end as well) to pay more and more tax ad infinitum.
The problems of the Health Service and other areas of public spending cannot be resolved by further salami slicing or ring fencing or by endlessly increasing taxes, and certainly not by ever increasing borrowing. Real reform and a long hard look at what government does and what it actually needs to do is required.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
You've touched on a very important point there - it wasn't just the fact that Ed's speech was so poor, it was the conference as a whole which lacked seriousness. At this conference, Labour just didn't look like a party which was preparing to be in government in a few months' time. Ed's speech was a symptom of that, rather than being the problem in itself.
I think the underlying reasons for that are strategic rather than ones of presentation.
Has anyone ever done an analysis of how much different governments spend in different policy areas? I would be fascinated to see how the public pension spend per capita, the welfare spend per capita, the public education spend per capita for different nations. We must be overweight somewhere and it could bring to light which other countries save money relative to us and in which areas.
Incidentally, there is one fox still remaining to be shot by Osborne. He has it penned in and is no doubt biding his time so as to get the maximum bang when he pulls the trigger. It's a very obvious one.
Mansion tax derailed by extra council tax bands, presumably?
And the energy companies won't be allowed to raise bills for the first five years of that. Keep in mind that as you close in on 100%, it gets increasingly expensive to get each extra percent of renewables because all the cheap and moderate options have been fully exploited. You're not only decommissioning all the coal power plants, but all the gas-run ones too. And we can't use the shale gas either.
How on Earth are the electricity companies to pay for to meet this demand and these commitments without more revenue? The blindingly obvious answer is that they won't. The government will have to step in with a massive bailout. This will be a huge explosion of the deficit.
Do Labour people not think about these things? Do they just think "well energy companies are rich, we can just milk them for all our needs"? Is there no second-order thinking at all?
I guess that explains how such a terrible policy managed to get through.
Carry on fighting on the side of the vested interests.
I bet you believed jobs would be lost when LAB introduced the minimum wage too didnt you?
Anyone who thought that was, I suspect, approximately right in an unexpected way. The minimum wage made the UK attractive to Poles, sucks in immigration and ensures that most newly created jobs go to foreigners.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
Excellent post. And spot on. The essential problem is that EdM is not a leader and so is incapable of providing Labour with a proper sense of urgency or direction. As a result, they are bereft of a coherent, credible message, let alone a set of policies that can be put in front of voters with a straight face. The only strategy Labour under Ed has is to rely on the unpopularity of the Tory brand. Even if that turns out to be successful to the extent of winning most seats in a hung parliament it is no mandate for government.
Wonder if anyone is going to act.
IMO Cameron's speech, whilst well delivered, was only possible because of the acres of political space he has been given. His claims go unchallenged, his mistakes go unpunished.
If Milliband had claimed to have "paying down the debt" or come up with £7bill of free money he would have been eviscerated. Cameron gets away with it.
It's not free money: it's the money that's been saved by the years of austerity leading up to 2018.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
BenM, trying to look dispassionately at your worries, the thing that strikes me is the incompetence of the people Ed trusts and has surrounded himself with. It may be partly down to insecurity bred from the membership and the MP's not supporting him as their Leader. It may just be his innate self-doubt rising to the surface.
But where it truly troubles me is if he does become our Prime Minister, it does not augur well for the Cabinet he will choose to govern this country. Ed should take the next couple of weeks to look over his team - and show a ruthless streak in ditching those who have advised him into his current troubles.
As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, Cameron and Osborne were going to be brutal in trying to hold on to power. Surrounding himself with light-weight yes-men was always going to put the May election in grave jeopardy for Ed. He needs a few gruff Northern types who know their way round the smoke-filled* back room of a Working Men's Club, who will tell him his strategy is bollocks, rather than ineffectual metrosexuals fluffing him endlessly....
*Obviously, historically they were smoke-filled. I would not wish to suggest that Ed employ a raft of advisers who broke the law by filling them with smoke today....
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
Excellent post. And spot on. The essential problem is that EdM is not a leader and so is incapable of providing Labour with a proper sense of urgency or direction. As a result, they are bereft of a coherent, credible message, let alone a set of policies that can be put in front of voters with a straight face. The only strategy Labour under Ed has is to rely on the unpopularity of the Tory brand. Even if that turns out to be successful to the extent of winning most seats in a hung parliament it is no mandate for government.
Wonder if anyone is going to act.
IMO Cameron's speech, whilst well delivered, was only possible because of the acres of political space he has been given. His claims go unchallenged, his mistakes go unpunished.
If Milliband had claimed to have "paying down the debt" or come up with £7bill of free money he would have been eviscerated. Cameron gets away with it.
There is no obvious replacement. Ed is hampered by having to deal with Labour's legacy, his own link to it through his close relationship with Brown, a Conservative media/establishment and Clegg's duplicity in moving from centre left to centre right and therefore making the Tories look much more reasonable than they are. Still there is no point complaining, the way Britain is run simply means that whilst a second rate Tory may have a chance of succeeding in politics, Labour needs a true first rater to have any chance. However it is very hard to judge how someone will turn out in office. He'll never be a great communicator, but when it comes to successful governance, Ed could surprise people.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
You've touched on a very important point there - it wasn't just the fact that Ed's speech was so poor, it was the conference as a whole which lacked seriousness. At this conference, Labour just didn't look like a party which was preparing to be in government in a few months' time. Ed's speech was a symptom of that, rather than being the problem in itself.
I think the underlying reasons for that are strategic rather than ones of presentation.
Not sure about "seriousness". Ed does "serious" too well. But Labour is in a weird place at the moment. It was much better last year. I wonder what happened.
Reckless to win Rochester matched on Betfair above evens for the first time this morning. Watching the respective efforts of the tories and UKIP yesterday, I wonder if he's sat somewhere contemplating what on earth he's done
You think UKIP gaining a £1 million donation makes it less likely that Mr Reckless will win the Rochester by-election?
Mr L., The proposal is as I understand it to uprate the starting point of the 40% band to somewhere close to where it should have been if it had kept place with the increase in wages over the years. When the band was first introduced it was applicable to people earning very good salaries indeed. The use of "Fiscal Drag" by successive chancellors has meant that the higher rate is now being paid by millions more people and most of those are in relatively modest jobs (e.g. mid-range public employees). Each year more and more people are being caught in the net and are having their taxes increased.
You proposal is therefore not an argument against a tax cut but and argument for everyone (because fiscal drag applies a the bottom end as well) to pay more and more tax ad infinitum.
The problems of the Health Service and other areas of public spending cannot be resolved by further salami slicing or ring fencing or by endlessly increasing taxes, and certainly not by ever increasing borrowing. Real reform and a long hard look at what government does and what it actually needs to do is required.
I am not suggesting increases in taxes ad infinitum. What I am saying is that in round terms the government spends £750bn and only gets £650bn in tax. The gap in recent years has been sufficient to double our national debt.
So how do we bridge the gap? Certainly cuts in spending. Beyond any doubt and to a greater extent than the state of the economy has allowed in this Parliament. But do we get ourselves into a position where we are chasing a moving target by reducing the tax take as well? It really is not possible or at least sensible.
If we get ourselves in the happy position of running a £50bn surplus in an economy which is growing in nominal terms at 5% a year reducing the ratio of debt: GDP and we have a choice of spending more or cutting taxes I vote for cutting taxes. But we are a very long way from there.
"BenM, trying to look dispassionately at your worries, the thing that strikes me is the incompetence of the people Ed trusts and has surrounded himself with. It may be partly down to insecurity bred from the membership and the MP's not supporting him as their Leader. It may just be his innate self-doubt rising to the surface. "
I don't think it's either of those things. It's that Ed Miliband himself is incompetent, which means he's not very good at judging competence in others. He seems like a nice bloke who nods along and takes at face value what people tell him. If the left says break up the banks, he supports breaking up the banks. If the greens say we need to entirely decarbonise, he sets a 100% target for renewables. If Ed Balls says we have to have something to say on the deficit, he pledges to run a surplus on current spending. When the polling folks say he people are upset by the cost of living, he talks about the cost of living crisis. Whether the things said to him are right or wrong, he nods along and goes along with it. The guy doesn't have the intellectual rigour to challenge and tear into ideas that are put to him or assess who's talking sense and who isn't, much less put together an intellectually coherent and credible vision for the nation. The result is a policy platform that could have been dreamt up by Guardian journalists.
I'm on the YouGov panel and every now again on certain dates I get asked about voting intentions etc.This happened yesterday and I guess You Gov know my answers just do not change by now so it looks to me that YouGov may have been seeking to up their Lab tally so as to reduce it when polling resumes today.Thus,magically Dave's speech is seen to have a miraculous effect on the polls.I'll see if I get asked today and tomorrow but it's 1-100 I won't,a test of YouGov's objectivity.
Reckless to win Rochester matched on Betfair above evens for the first time this morning. Watching the respective efforts of the tories and UKIP yesterday, I wonder if he's sat somewhere contemplating what on earth he's done
You think UKIP gaining a £1 million donation makes it less likely that Mr Reckless will win the Rochester by-election?
Except it isn't a million pounds straight away and secondly there's limits on by election spending.
How to pin it down? The noteless gimmick, the banal anecdotes, forgetting critically important issues, the sheer impotence over economics, the lack of necessary seriousness and gravitas that should have pervaded the speech and indeed the whole conference 7 months out from the election.
You've touched on a very important point there - it wasn't just the fact that Ed's speech was so poor, it was the conference as a whole which lacked seriousness. At this conference, Labour just didn't look like a party which was preparing to be in government in a few months' time. Ed's speech was a symptom of that, rather than being the problem in itself.
I think the underlying reasons for that are strategic rather than ones of presentation.
Not sure about "seriousness". Ed does "serious" too well. But Labour is in a weird place at the moment. It was much better last year. I wonder what happened.
Maybe:
- the polls have narrowed.
- UKIP is no longer a wizard wheeze that only damages the Tories, but is also a massive threat to Labour's WWC base.
- a chunk of the Scottish vote went Yes and may stay with the SNP
- there is no policy on the economy to sell on the doorstep. A year ago there was at least a hope it would be forthcoming
- the blank sheets of paper on other policy areas are still blank. There are no other policies to sell on the doorstep
- the economy really has improved, jobs in particular having been created at a truly surprising level
- the improving economy and lack of any alternative economic strategy feeds the nagging doubt that not just Ed, but Labour as a whole is crap...
If we get ourselves in the happy position of running a £50bn surplus in an economy which is growing in nominal terms at 5% a year reducing the ratio of debt: GDP and we have a choice of spending more or cutting taxes I vote for cutting taxes. But we are a very long way from there.
And until we get to that happy point we should just keep increasing taxes?
By the way when was the last time the UK economy grew at 5% per annum fro any sustained period? When other than, by increasing borrowing, was the last time the UK economy grew? Any offers?
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Still, Clinton and Blair got the avenues named after them in Pristina. There´s a brewery on Bill Clinton Prospekt if it makes you feel better. Cook died so was exonerated from too much questioning as to why some UN resolutions are more necessary than others. And of course Kosovo was "totally different" - enough to shut down most awkward questions and move on. Tony invented some "duty of care" you see, or some such nonsense, to auto-exonerate himself from "international law" after the event.
@HurstLama said: And until we get to that happy point we should just keep increasing taxes?
By the way when was the last time the UK economy grew at 5% per annum fro any sustained period? When other than, by increasing borrowing, was the last time the UK economy grew? Any offers?
I replied:
The economy is growing at 5% in nominal terms (obtained by adding "real" growth to inflation) right now. So that box is ticked.
And the UK economy is growing right now. Not all of that growth is being generated by government borrowing although that is clearly sucking in far too many imports. Investment is strongly up, employment is up and construction is up (on the revised figures). So that box is ticked too.
The box that isn't is the deficit. Until that is eliminated tax cuts really have to wait. This government has done an excellent job in very difficult circumstances by paying attention to the real. Fantasies of tax cuts now are, unfortunately, just that.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Still, Clinton and Blair got the avenues named after them in Pristina. There´s a brewery on Bill Clinton Prospekt if it makes you feel better. Cook died so was exonerated from too much questioning as to why some UN resolutions are more necessary than others. And of course Kosovo was "totally different" - enough to shut down most awkward questions and move on. Tony invented some "duty of care" you see, or some such nonsense, to auto-exonerate himself from "international law" after the event.
Genocide kind of does make things a bit different.
Global oil prices have fallen to their lowest level in more than two years after Saudi Arabia cut its official selling price.
Concerns of oversupply after higher output in the US, together with forecasts of lower global demand by the International Energy Agency (IEA), are driving prices down.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia announced it was reducing its selling price for oil in a move to protect its market share, analysts said.
Has anyone ever done an analysis of how much different governments spend in different policy areas? I would be fascinated to see how the public pension spend per capita, the welfare spend per capita, the public education spend per capita for different nations. We must be overweight somewhere and it could bring to light which other countries save money relative to us and in which areas.
That's a good question. From memory, we're at the European average at health, but I don't know about the rest. We might be slightly under on education. Of course, there's an obvious distinction between European countries and other anglosphere nations (with exception of Canada probably) and the Asian tigers, for sure.
Those are fascinating - it's a bit like half of Labour voters preferring Cameron over their own bloke to be PM.
But even when you like a Party - there's no amount of *Facts* that will change your mind unless you get mentally divorced from them. Even Labour voters floated back finally after Iraq.
Yes but Labour still have a vestigial memory of what first attracted 1/3 of people to them. But these people are aging and getting wiser and eventually will either die or some may come to their senses. What Labour do not have is lots and lots of reasons for people to stay in the relationship. They have lots and lots of reasons to leave.
How do you square that with Labour being MUCH more popular with people of working age than with pensioners? The key Labour cohort is the 45-65 age bracket. It's the Conservatives who are ageing.
The problem, Nick, is surely that the 45-65 age bracket will only ever encompass people aged between 45 and 65, whereas the over-65 bracket is getting bigger.
Reckless to win Rochester matched on Betfair above evens for the first time this morning. Watching the respective efforts of the tories and UKIP yesterday, I wonder if he's sat somewhere contemplating what on earth he's done
Hello Schards#2. As with many things, I agree with you. Hope you're well. I'll be back to the other place some time.
Because we at the Sunil on Sunday use sample size aggregates to calculate weekly ELBOWs (instead of merely using the average of the headline percentages - which we sometimes find to be at variance with the actual data!!), we get very slightly different figures to the PBC average for September, when we tot up the four Weekly ELBOWS for last month:
Total sample size 54,548 (from 39 polls 31st August to 26th September):
Home Office source responding to Lib Dem attack on Theresa May: 'Nick Clegg is a w******'
This is going to be a tricky few months for the Coalition as the partners seek to differentiate themselves. We have not seen this before and our politicians will be making up the rules of engagement as they go along.
The squeals from Danny Alexander yesterday suggested his big idea had just been snaffled. The Lib Dems will have to be careful to make sure their conference does not just become a commentary on the others. They need to find some things to believe in themselves.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Still, Clinton and Blair got the avenues named after them in Pristina. There´s a brewery on Bill Clinton Prospekt if it makes you feel better. Cook died so was exonerated from too much questioning as to why some UN resolutions are more necessary than others. And of course Kosovo was "totally different" - enough to shut down most awkward questions and move on. Tony invented some "duty of care" you see, or some such nonsense, to auto-exonerate himself from "international law" after the event.
Genocide kind of does make things a bit different.
What genocide? The one the media made up? And quietly stopped talking about when too many questions were asked. A bit like MH17 actually.
I don´t want to get into a numbers games but Saddam killed many more people than Milosevic ever did, but this was not the reason for invading Iraq.
Reckless to win Rochester matched on Betfair above evens for the first time this morning. Watching the respective efforts of the tories and UKIP yesterday, I wonder if he's sat somewhere contemplating what on earth he's done
You think UKIP gaining a £1 million donation makes it less likely that Mr Reckless will win the Rochester by-election?
Except it isn't a million pounds straight away and secondly there's limits on by election spending.
Interesting question - given that the writ hasn't been moved yet, when do the spending limits for the by-election kick in?
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
I hope the gloves come off on Labour too. Their leader is a gimp, their frontbench a kindergarten creche, their policies a blank slate - yet they lead. To close the polling gap and win in May it is necessary for Dave to inflict reputational / brand damage on Labour (as opposed to Ed - the media and Ed himself will do that free of charge).
I'm hoping for a sustained monstering of Labour for the next few months. It's not as if they are short of things to be monstered about: Rotherham, PC, multiculti, ruined the finances, EU, England, spin, buying votes, client state, welfare party, abandon WWC, etc, etc. Dave needs the country to wake up and say: 'Hang on a mo, Labour are in fact a bunch of useless cnuts aren't they? Nasty, self satisfied cnuts.'.
Mr. Socrates, you must be mistaken. The EU is a Nobel Prize-winning champion of peace. War is impossible now in Europe thanks to the EU*.
*A pity nobody informed the Russians about this. Or Yugoslavia, for that matter.
Peace only happened in Yugoslavia after the USA stepped up to enforce "collective" deterrence against the aggression of Serbia after European nations endlessly equivocated. Militarily, economically, and politically Europe is led by people who are not prepared to do what is needed. That's why we're fools to cast our lot into a European superstate. It will be forever weakly managed.
The European people have experience of the consequences of war hence our strong opposition to US military adventurism. It's good to see the European people standing opposed to NATO again.
Hmm. Reminds me of some of the old CND lines from the 70's and 80's. It was always rumoured that they'd been infiltrated by Moscow.
How times have changed! Now the Americans are the bad guys, Kosovo was the turning point.
Still, Clinton and Blair got the avenues named after them in Pristina. There´s a brewery on Bill Clinton Prospekt if it makes you feel better. Cook died so was exonerated from too much questioning as to why some UN resolutions are more necessary than others. And of course Kosovo was "totally different" - enough to shut down most awkward questions and move on. Tony invented some "duty of care" you see, or some such nonsense, to auto-exonerate himself from "international law" after the event.
Genocide kind of does make things a bit different.
What genocide? The one the media made up? And quietly stopped talking about when too many questions were asked. A bit like MH17 actually.
Why don't you fuck right off? I know people that survived that genocide, so don't give me shit about it not happening. People don't quietly stop talking about either. They probably just stop mentioning it to Russian apologists like yourself because it's a similar experience to talking to a creationist or a Holocaust denier.
Home Office source responding to Lib Dem attack on Theresa May: 'Nick Clegg is a w******'
This is going to be a tricky few months for the Coalition as the partners seek to differentiate themselves. We have not seen this before and our politicians will be making up the rules of engagement as they go along.
The squeals from Danny Alexander yesterday suggested his big idea had just been snaffled. The Lib Dems will have to be careful to make sure their conference does not just become a commentary on the others. They need to find some things to believe in themselves.
Coalition ending event?
Remember it is in the interest of the Tory party for the Lib Dems to have a revival.
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
Plus their constant shifting of position - agreeing to something one day and then backing out the next - makes them look completely gutless.
To work as a potential junior coalition party, you have to appear trustworthy - willing to agree to a programme and then stick to your word. The LibDems have forfeited any claim to that with their behaviour over the past 4 years.
Home Office source responding to Lib Dem attack on Theresa May: 'Nick Clegg is a w******'
This is going to be a tricky few months for the Coalition as the partners seek to differentiate themselves. We have not seen this before and our politicians will be making up the rules of engagement as they go along.
The squeals from Danny Alexander yesterday suggested his big idea had just been snaffled. The Lib Dems will have to be careful to make sure their conference does not just become a commentary on the others. They need to find some things to believe in themselves.
The current Lib Dem leadership doesn't believe in much, that is the problem. Simple maths tells you that the government is 80% Tory, so the Lib Dems can't have that much influence. They need to set out a direction that is radically different from the Tory dominated coalition. They won't because actually Clegg and Co are quite happy with a Tory dominated government. So their poll ratings will continue to fall. Why vote for an imitation when you can have the real thing instead?
It's fascinating that the Tories feel at liberty to be so nasty about Clegg and yet Labour have obviously gone soft on him. Why aren't the Tories afraid of alienating someone who they will likely rely on after the next election? Clegg tries to act like a dom but everyone knows he's a sub. He just looks silly. He'll take any abuse from the Tories because he knows which side his bread is buttered.
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
Plus their constant shifting of position - agreeing to something one day and then backing out the next - makes them look completely gutless.
To work as a potential junior coalition party, you have to appear trustworthy - willing to agree to a programme and then stick to your word. The LibDems have forfeited any claim to that with their behaviour over the past 4 years.
Home Office source responding to Lib Dem attack on Theresa May: 'Nick Clegg is a w******'
This is going to be a tricky few months for the Coalition as the partners seek to differentiate themselves. We have not seen this before and our politicians will be making up the rules of engagement as they go along.
The squeals from Danny Alexander yesterday suggested his big idea had just been snaffled. The Lib Dems will have to be careful to make sure their conference does not just become a commentary on the others. They need to find some things to believe in themselves.
Coalition ending event?
Remember it is in the interest of the Tory party for the Lib Dems to have a revival.
I disagree. It is in the best interests of the Conservatives for those LD2010 voters that have gone to Lab to go elsewhere. Cons, Greens, SNP (Scotland), Plaid (Wales) and ....... UKIP.
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
Plus their constant shifting of position - agreeing to something one day and then backing out the next - makes them look completely gutless.
To work as a potential junior coalition party, you have to appear trustworthy - willing to agree to a programme and then stick to your word. The LibDems have forfeited any claim to that with their behaviour over the past 4 years.
Yes the trust problem of the LDs. Break the uni fee Pledge and then reinforce that negative by showing how they are untrustworthy coalition partners. It is a branding image problem.
It's fascinating that the Tories feel at liberty to be so nasty about Clegg and yet Labour have obviously gone soft on him. Why aren't the Tories afraid of alienating someone who they will likely rely on after the next election? Clegg tries to act like a dom but everyone knows he's a sub. He just looks silly. He'll take any abuse from the Tories because he knows which side his bread is buttered.
For some reason, I can't think why, that brings to mind a Dorothy Parker verse:
It costs me never a stab nor squirm To tread by chance upon a worm. Aha, my little dear, I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.
Just received a directive from Lord Sunil (the Sunil on Sunday's proprietor and headline-finder pursuivant) authorising the release of a "part-ELBOW" for the six polls with field-work since last Sunday 28th inclusive. He also instructed us to include the corrected data for Ashcroft's supposedly "tied" poll that actually shows a Tory lead of 1%:
Lab 35.9 (-0.2 from the "whole" ELBOW w/e 28th Sept) Con 31.3 (-0.4) UKIP 15.0 (+0.3) LD 7.6 (+0.3)
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
Plus their constant shifting of position - agreeing to something one day and then backing out the next - makes them look completely gutless.
To work as a potential junior coalition party, you have to appear trustworthy - willing to agree to a programme and then stick to your word. The LibDems have forfeited any claim to that with their behaviour over the past 4 years.
Works both ways : HoL reform?
The Lords reform plans were not fully formed and no-one could agree on the way forward. The way the LDs blocked the redrawing of the constituency boundaries so that we could restore some sense of balance and fairness to them was completely unacceptable.
Comments
From 2007-2011, there were successive purges of people who opposed Griffin. The party did quite well in the 2010 general election, but a lot of them were expecting to get MPs elected, so the results set off a load of infighting. They also lost most of their councillors in the local elections held on the same day.
UKIP only really got going in the Autumn of 2012. While there are ex-BNP voters who now vote UKIP, it's obviously a good thing that they're now voting for a mainstream party, rather than the BNP.
What's relevant about the recent data is (a) the change; (b) the repeatability of that change in several polls, even if they're not properly weighted; (c) the fact that such change has a clear explanation; and possibly (d) the fact that just such a change was anticipated should the referendum be a narrow No.
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/what-really-happened-in-balkans.html?m=1
"but the media was shockingly incompetent."
The "media" is shockingly incompetent, and always will be.
It deals in headlines not facts, and while there might be some astute analysis buried inside the covers (or a more in depth program) it will usually contain some form of editorial bias.
While many of them are shouting about Dave's genius at the conference, they miss out on one pertinent fact. He was forced into the speech by UKIP and the defections, and was left with firing off most of the stuff he would have preferred to keep covered till later in the campaign.
This is not denigrating his speech in itself, which was confidently and well delivered as one would expect, but was strategically sub optimal in terms of the upcoming campaign.
(less room for "maneuver" later)
What are they actually proposing?
http://order-order.com/2014/10/02/tories-out-poll-labour-on-almost-every-issue-except-for-who-are-you-going-to-vote/
It does seem that our wonderful mongrel nation is going to return to its vomit in May.
I do not dispute we need another 4 or 5 years of even greater austerity but it is absurd to think that by the end of that period the public sector will not be suffering serious stress and delivery failures in a range of places.
We would be back to where we were in 1999. Not all of the additional funds that were poured into public services by Brown were wasted. Some met needs that had not been addressed for far too long. Some of the Tory plans to shrink the state, which lie behind the tax cut theory, strike me as wildly ambitious and frankly incompatible with the views of the majority of the electorate.
The problem with Ed may get worse if he becomes PM. Gordon was passable as a Chancellor but the strain of being PM seemed to unbalance him. Once relieved of that stressful task (indref), he seemed to improve.
Fortunately, Ed, being a posh lad like Cameron, may take to leadership more naturally. But his reign as LOTO doesn't bode well. The first PM to be sectioned?
NB Not totally serious.
FWIW, you might like to read my pitch on it:
http://www.nickpalmer.org.uk/
I'd have thought it obvious to the strategists that this was a Labour conference to play dead straight. I think Cameron may well have outdone Ed on the speeches regardless, but to use football parlance better a competitive 2-1 defeat than the 6-0 drubbing Miliband allowed himself to receive by such a shambolic showing.
The first result merits a dusting down, learn the lessons, but cherising the positives and getting on with it. The second requires a wholesale root and branch reassessment of the team's outlook.
No doubt my vexation will pass! Like too many Labour activists I'll delude myself that no one takes any notice of conference speeches and their aftermath. Last week I was merely very disappointed for a few days, but by the weekend felt back to being reasonably confident about Labour's prospects. Cameron ignited a harsher assessment yesterday.
As regards the Tories this conference has demonstrated that at last they are showing signs of maturing and knowing what the're about. After 13 years in opposition and with young rookies Cameron and Osborne taking the helm in 2010 while facing an unprecedented economic situation and with their hands tied by coalition I think some of their critics on the right have been unduly impatient shall we say. If they are fortunate enough to somehow gain a second term with a majority we could potentially see the best the Cameron years.
My one concern strangely if they win is the EU referendum. Giles Dilnot carried out a straw poll at the conference and delegates were literally split down the middle as to in or out. The potential for the party to fracture in half in 2017 together with the risks a contentious and prolonged campaign present to UK plc cannot be understated. Cameron will need all his skills.
Campbell was poisonous but did more to change the relationship between the media and the political parties, particularly his political party, than anyone else.
As an outsider I do not see anyone in the Labour hierarchy fit to clean the boots of any of this lot. Maybe that is unfair but the suggestion from Watson, for example, is that it is not.
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/did-us-okay-2008-south-ossetian-war.html?m=1
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-war-over-war-of-2008.html?m=1
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/thinking-like-russian-about-croatia.html?m=1
On a bit of a tangent, some mentioned earlier the idea of banning exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts and that people should be free to juggle commitments between multiple contracts. Sounds fine, however it would mean that the person concerned would have the right to say "No" to any offered work, and that they would have multiple sources of income. The Revenue have no problem in regarding people in such a position a self-employed. The agencies might also start taking the view that if the people are self-employed contractors then the agency has no need to run payroll, PAYE, holiday pay and all the other things that go with employing someone. So what seems to be a benefit to an employee may well have unintended consequences.
What about the evisceration of Serbia. It was Clinton and Blair who started arbitrarily redrawing European boundaries.
You would have to think there will be a big boost for SNP/Greens/RIC but how the votes are channeled may help or hinder that. Then there is the ingrained vote Labour at Westminster herd instinct to beat the Tories to be overcome , it may be broken this time but given the fearties vote in the referendum they may again resort to cowardice and vote Labour. Does not seem to be any confidence in stepping up to take responsibility , they still prefer to let nanny make their decisions.
Bit rambling but it could really go either way , huge bang or another damp squib. Given past evidence I would not bet the house on big bang but I have lost confidence in the country.
Sadly, in this case, that's best described as 'round objects'. It's an unstructured rant full of inaccuracies - both historical and typographical. I stopped taking it seriously when I got to "the conflict was basically Germany's fault."
Incidentally, there's an off-chance the traditionally published version of Sir Edric's Temple might be out a shade earlier than I'd expected. [Of course, it remains available at all good retailers in self-published format, and I don't expect significant changes from one to the other].
As regards your kind invitation I think I will pass. The Tories aspire to go too far in one direction but reality will hold them back. Labour demonstrated that they feel no such constraints whatever the consequences.
IMO Cameron's speech, whilst well delivered, was only possible because of the acres of political space he has been given. His claims go unchallenged, his mistakes go unpunished.
If Milliband had claimed to have "paying down the debt" or come up with £7bill of free money he would have been eviscerated. Cameron gets away with it.
You proposal is therefore not an argument against a tax cut but and argument for everyone (because fiscal drag applies a the bottom end as well) to pay more and more tax ad infinitum.
The problems of the Health Service and other areas of public spending cannot be resolved by further salami slicing or ring fencing or by endlessly increasing taxes, and certainly not by ever increasing borrowing. Real reform and a long hard look at what government does and what it actually needs to do is required.
It is just that winning elections is about a lot more than being nice. It is about framing the argument, framing or characterising your opponent, building blocks of voters, ensuring you inspire your activist base and ensuring the efficient deployment of resources on the ground. Who is going to do all this? It is not the leader's job.
I think the underlying reasons for that are strategic rather than ones of presentation.
Has anyone ever done an analysis of how much different governments spend in different policy areas? I would be fascinated to see how the public pension spend per capita, the welfare spend per capita, the public education spend per capita for different nations. We must be overweight somewhere and it could bring to light which other countries save money relative to us and in which areas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-29448185
...which means that the new target for Wales in 2021 would put it on a par with Scotland in 2013.
Public services in the principality continue circling the drain.
But where it truly troubles me is if he does become our Prime Minister, it does not augur well for the Cabinet he will choose to govern this country. Ed should take the next couple of weeks to look over his team - and show a ruthless streak in ditching those who have advised him into his current troubles.
As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, Cameron and Osborne were going to be brutal in trying to hold on to power. Surrounding himself with light-weight yes-men was always going to put the May election in grave jeopardy for Ed. He needs a few gruff Northern types who know their way round the smoke-filled* back room of a Working Men's Club, who will tell him his strategy is bollocks, rather than ineffectual metrosexuals fluffing him endlessly....
*Obviously, historically they were smoke-filled. I would not wish to suggest that Ed employ a raft of advisers who broke the law by filling them with smoke today....
So how do we bridge the gap? Certainly cuts in spending. Beyond any doubt and to a greater extent than the state of the economy has allowed in this Parliament. But do we get ourselves into a position where we are chasing a moving target by reducing the tax take as well? It really is not possible or at least sensible.
If we get ourselves in the happy position of running a £50bn surplus in an economy which is growing in nominal terms at 5% a year reducing the ratio of debt: GDP and we have a choice of spending more or cutting taxes I vote for cutting taxes. But we are a very long way from there.
I don't think it's either of those things. It's that Ed Miliband himself is incompetent, which means he's not very good at judging competence in others. He seems like a nice bloke who nods along and takes at face value what people tell him. If the left says break up the banks, he supports breaking up the banks. If the greens say we need to entirely decarbonise, he sets a 100% target for renewables. If Ed Balls says we have to have something to say on the deficit, he pledges to run a surplus on current spending. When the polling folks say he people are upset by the cost of living, he talks about the cost of living crisis. Whether the things said to him are right or wrong, he nods along and goes along with it. The guy doesn't have the intellectual rigour to challenge and tear into ideas that are put to him or assess who's talking sense and who isn't, much less put together an intellectually coherent and credible vision for the nation. The result is a policy platform that could have been dreamt up by Guardian journalists.
- the polls have narrowed.
- UKIP is no longer a wizard wheeze that only damages the Tories, but is also a massive threat to Labour's WWC base.
- a chunk of the Scottish vote went Yes and may stay with the SNP
- there is no policy on the economy to sell on the doorstep. A year ago there was at least a hope it would be forthcoming
- the blank sheets of paper on other policy areas are still blank. There are no other policies to sell on the doorstep
- the economy really has improved, jobs in particular having been created at a truly surprising level
- the improving economy and lack of any alternative economic strategy feeds the nagging doubt that not just Ed, but Labour as a whole is crap...
By the way when was the last time the UK economy grew at 5% per annum fro any sustained period? When other than, by increasing borrowing, was the last time the UK economy grew? Any offers?
Still, Clinton and Blair got the avenues named after them in Pristina. There´s a brewery on Bill Clinton Prospekt if it makes you feel better.
Cook died so was exonerated from too much questioning as to why some UN resolutions are more necessary than others.
And of course Kosovo was "totally different" - enough to shut down most awkward questions and move on. Tony invented some "duty of care" you see, or some such nonsense, to auto-exonerate himself from "international law" after the event.
And until we get to that happy point we should just keep increasing taxes?
By the way when was the last time the UK economy grew at 5% per annum fro any sustained period? When other than, by increasing borrowing, was the last time the UK economy grew? Any offers?
I replied:
The economy is growing at 5% in nominal terms (obtained by adding "real" growth to inflation) right now. So that box is ticked.
And the UK economy is growing right now. Not all of that growth is being generated by government borrowing although that is clearly sucking in far too many imports. Investment is strongly up, employment is up and construction is up (on the revised figures). So that box is ticked too.
The box that isn't is the deficit. Until that is eliminated tax cuts really have to wait. This government has done an excellent job in very difficult circumstances by paying attention to the real. Fantasies of tax cuts now are, unfortunately, just that.
Maybe a 55%:45% mix?
Concerns of oversupply after higher output in the US, together with forecasts of lower global demand by the International Energy Agency (IEA), are driving prices down.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia announced it was reducing its selling price for oil in a move to protect its market share, analysts said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29459149
I'm told Nick Clegg demanded early sight of Theresa May's conf speech (in which she attacked him) and was told to 'f*** off' #coalitious
James Chapman (Mail) @jameschappers
Home Office source responding to Lib Dem attack on Theresa May: 'Nick Clegg is a w******'
Total sample size 54,548 (from 39 polls 31st August to 26th September):
Lab 19,494 = 35.74%
Con 17,323 = 31.76%
UKIP 8,270 = 15.16%
LD 4,122 = 7.56%
F*** off, W*****, fat arse, f****** c*** who deserves a red hot poker up his a***, a fat a****
No more Mr and Mrs Nice Guys, the gloves are off.
The squeals from Danny Alexander yesterday suggested his big idea had just been snaffled. The Lib Dems will have to be careful to make sure their conference does not just become a commentary on the others. They need to find some things to believe in themselves.
What genocide?
The one the media made up? And quietly stopped talking about when too many questions were asked. A bit like MH17 actually.
I don´t want to get into a numbers games but Saddam killed many more people than Milosevic ever did, but this was not the reason for invading Iraq.
*ducks*
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2014/10/matt-hancock-mp-deletes-tweet-saying-labour-is-full-of-queers/
The LDs really are in a bad position. The one real positive, the uprating of tax allowances to £10,000, has been subsumed by the Coalition and they look like the bystander holding the coats while the big boys fight it out. NOTA has been snaffled by Ukip.
I hope the gloves come off on Labour too. Their leader is a gimp, their frontbench a kindergarten creche, their policies a blank slate - yet they lead. To close the polling gap and win in May it is necessary for Dave to inflict reputational / brand damage on Labour (as opposed to Ed - the media and Ed himself will do that free of charge).
I'm hoping for a sustained monstering of Labour for the next few months. It's not as if they are short of things to be monstered about: Rotherham, PC, multiculti, ruined the finances, EU, England, spin, buying votes, client state, welfare party, abandon WWC, etc, etc. Dave needs the country to wake up and say: 'Hang on a mo, Labour are in fact a bunch of useless cnuts aren't they? Nasty, self satisfied cnuts.'.
Remember it is in the interest of the Tory party for the Lib Dems to have a revival.
To work as a potential junior coalition party, you have to appear trustworthy - willing to agree to a programme and then stick to your word. The LibDems have forfeited any claim to that with their behaviour over the past 4 years.
It's fascinating that the Tories feel at liberty to be so nasty about Clegg and yet Labour have obviously gone soft on him. Why aren't the Tories afraid of alienating someone who they will likely rely on after the next election? Clegg tries to act like a dom but everyone knows he's a sub. He just looks silly. He'll take any abuse from the Tories because he knows which side his bread is buttered.
Works both ways : HoL reform?
It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
Aha, my little dear, I say,
Your clan will pay me back one day.
Lab 35.9 (-0.2 from the "whole" ELBOW w/e 28th Sept)
Con 31.3 (-0.4)
UKIP 15.0 (+0.3)
LD 7.6 (+0.3)
Lab lead 4.6 (+0.3)