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Guardian's @patrickwintour on Ofcom decision not to classify Greens as "major party" for GE15 http://t.co/BYOYE7Uu57 pic.twitter.com/0HRwgv9cnX
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Curse you OFCOM
Why don't @YouGov state in the tables the exact number of respondents in their base who say they will vote Green? Lab/Con/UKIP/LD are there.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11332680/Farage-Paris-attack-the-product-of-having-a-fifth-column-living-in-Western-countries.html
They seem very accurate and balanced to me. What is Clegg's and Cameron's problem? That Farage is pointing out these attackers probably hold French passports?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgHSxWnhqk
"To be a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles."
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/01/07/maher-mainstream-muslims-applaud-murder-for-insulting-mohammed/
"That makes a HUGE difference to the amount of coverage they will get in April/May."
But will that increase their votes through the coverage, or put people off them when they realise they are not the solution?
" it does make one question the whole really gross attempt at encouraged division within society that we have had in the past few decades in the name of multiculturalism."
The point being that France hasn't taken the same approach as the UK under Labour particularly did. There are no religious schools, religion and race are kept largely out of government and civil life, and religious dress in schools is banned.
Unlike in Britain or the US, where people are often asked to tick a box about ethnic origin, in France it is illegal to classify people by ethnicity or to ask census questions on race or origins. The foundation stone of the secular French republic is that all citizens should be equal and free from distinctions of class, race or religion.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/23/france-race-sarkozy-ethinic-minorities
The worm remains an indefensible aspect of these stupid debates, incidentally.
Being excluded from the debates could actually help them in an anti-establishment kind of way though.
There seems to be a word-of-mouth movement from the ground up among young people, at colleges and universities in particular, to support the Greens
Membership is increasing at around 1000 a week - compare that to any other party. Greens are aligned to the values of these supporters in a way other parties are not. They are excited by issues that the other parties do not focus on.
Being a party that is outside the bubble and excluded by the system only serves to strengthen the resolve of this growing group to take action through the ballot box.
For them, to have such a doltish populace subjected to a Kipper message virtually guarantees 50+ seats.
I find it incredibly stupid of the tory leaders to go after Farage one day after this atrocity. Incredibly stupid.
Even on the Guardian Owen Jones' attack on islamophobia is going down like a lead balloon.
Too dumb to have an original thought of your own you blindly follow the party line right or (more often) wrong. Its no wonder your party is considered out of touch and elitist.
There is NO Green surge
The increase in support shown by some pollsters is a MYTH .
These pollsters need to look at their methodology and discover where they are going wrong .
It may help them stop getting egg on their faces in May .
The Green party is a national party which has representation in Parliament and is within touching distance of one, if not two, of the parties who will now apparently be included in debates. They should have been given equal footing with UKIP and the Lib Dems as far as major/minor is concerned and been allowed into the debates in some form of graded debate system as some have proposed on here before.
In brackets are the simple poll averages for those who want to see how different they are:
Lab 33.7 (33.8)
Con 32.5 (32.4)
UKIP 14.2 (=)
LD 7.6 (=)
Green 6.5 (6.4)
Lab lead 1.2 (1.4)
Compared with the final ELBOW for 2014:
Lab 34.2
Con 31.6
UKIP 15.4
LD 7.5
Lab lead 2.6
Calm Down Dear
Coming from you, every comment about "thick Tories" or "blindly following this or that" I take as a badge of honour.
self-important much?
Its the timing though. One day after this atrocity our leaders think the big problem is Nigel Farage. Or in Owen Jones' case 'Islamophobia'.
Its very stupid politics in my view.
It seems only a couple of months ago there were worryingly large numbers of people (in both the US and UK) prepared to support mass internment of people simply because they *might* have been exposed to Ebola -- remember what a threat Ebola supposedly was to the West? (And I work in a hospital, so consider my comments neither flippant nor uninformed.) Meanwhile, the less said about the polling which shows support for torture, the better...
Violence and extremism alarm me, but the fragility of mankind's liberal instinct does so no less.
OTOH, you want right wing eurosceptics to vote Conservative to keep out Milliband. On the other hand, you want us not to vote Conservative so that you can "detoxify" the party.
And on such a day Jones thinks we should be worrying about having an irrational fear of being murdered by Islamic terrorists. The man's a cretin.
surbiton said:
» show previous quotes
You could add that until about a hundred years ago, it was so in this country too ! After all, what are blasphemy laws ?
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Yes we are quite mad to import people from a totally alien culture, and in numbers to swamp the indigenous culture in many places. We can blame Labour and Tory equally for this. But you are quite wrong, surbiton and RodCrosby, no one in the West pisses on Islam in the manner that Islam pisses on ALL other religions and none. Don't be Dhimmies please.
Yesterday's YG is now up (was delayed for some reason. Unremarkable except for a low SNP score: 34%, lead of 6). Subsample, meh.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/08/labour-lead-1/
Indeed.
Monster Raving Loony retweeted
LBC @LBC · 9m9 minutes ago
Nick Clegg gets angry with a caller who made excuses for the #CharlieHebdo attack. Watch here: http://l-bc.co/B2RP6V
Jeez. They just don;t get it, do they??? they don ;t have the first inkling of what drives UKIP and why people vote for it. The motto carved upon its foundation stone
Liblabcon. They are all the same.
How we deal with such a threat needs to be thought out sensibly and intelligently. But that it needs dealing with is - or should be - uncontroversial.
The fact that mainstream politicians do not like it being pointed out to them that their policies may, in part, be responsible for the problem we are now facing, a problem which puts ordinary members of the public rather more at risk than politicians, frankly, is their problem.
Shooting the messenger is, given the events of these days, a darkly ironic avoidance of the issue.
There wont be any debates with all the party leaders in them - may well be sequential interviews on same show - not sure you would learn any less from them than last time.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/grenades-thrown-at-mosque-in-france-day-after-charlie-hebdo-attack-officials-645903
As an aside I have already pointed out that it is Cameron's obvious dishonesty about the renegotiation that leads us inevitably to this position and that, in leaving insufficient time for him to conclude meaningful and enforceable repatriation of powers he has made it clear that he is only playing lip service to the whole EU debate. Something of course that has already been confirmed by the comments to the 1922 committee.
If I can reach into the quagmire of your post to draw out its meaning - I want right-wing eurosceptics to vote in the way that maximises their utility. As must we all, you must choose the least bad option.
If you are a right wing eurosceptic then the Kippers probably most closely reflect your views. But (dilemma!) voting UKIP won't get you out of Europe. For about 30 years let's say. Or very very possibly earlier given a possible path of: Cons lose, Cam out, Paterson (say) in, Cons win in 2020, referendum with active OUT campaigning)
What to do!??
I know - why don't you vote Cons which does a couple of things: gives you a chance to register your euroscepticism and keeps Milliband out.
I don't care what you do with your vote - that is up to you. It is not a Morton's Fork because a Cons govt will give you something you say you want.
But the way you are all going off at the thought of getting what you want makes me wonder (as another poster pointed out earlier) if you actually really want it.
You Kippers, eh! Can't take yes for an answer.
UKIP at 20 by the end by end of next week??
Fifth column is a perfectly accurate term. We have home-grown terrorism, almost all of which is based around Islamic extremism.
The journalists and policemen weren't killed by Islamophobes. Unless the mainstream of politics reflects justified concern about extremists rather than castigating those who express such worry as racists and bigots then the situation will only get worse.
Ahem.
They have produce this beautiful montage of cartoon responses to yesterday's outrage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2901459/jesuisCharlie-world-s-cartoonists-react-Paris-massacre-poignant-drawings.html
Nice to see Marf (of this parish) included.
It's difficult to believe the gunmen still haven't been apprehended despite robbing a service station.
Warsi entitled to her opinion. I'm just wondering if letting her express it to the multitudes who are considering UKIP/tory in may is altogether wise.
Terrorists. And Western states have sufficient strength and powers to tackle terrorism without resorting to phrases -- see also: 'Islamofascism' -- which seek to scaremongeringly liken our position to that of Britain in 1940.
"I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda." -- Lord Hoffmann, 2004
Yes, as remarked to @Sean_F above, hold on I'll even quote myself:
A position seeking: "a possible path of: Cons lose, Cam out, Paterson (say) in, Cons win in 2020, referendum with active OUT campaigning"
is understandable.
But it is complicated and high-risk and the chances of it all playing out (when the Cons have been moving soft-and-cuddlywards for years) are very low. Plus it doesn't alter my basic thrust of this morning:
You believe that an incumbent govt campaigning for or against a position (in this case the EU) will sway the voting public because that voting public is not sophisticated enough to understand the issues and will vote according to what it is told by the party it supports.
Which is IMO arrogant and patronising. Analogous to much of the argument of the left in fact.
You are saying that if given a referendum tomorrow you would lose because the public wouldn't have been told to vote OUT. Whereas if there was a referendum tomorrow the public would vote IN.
Nigel speaks sense, but where's the booze?
That's not to say that here the tolerance of extreme religious views isn't a problem. In my view it stems from the fact that we've never been as hot on our ability to criticise religion as we'd like to think. After all the blasphemy law was only formally repealed in 2008, with a conviction under it occurring as recently as 1977. As such we've always rather pandered to the religious desire to be devoid of criticism and that has left the left and right talking past each other. The error on the left, was rather than demand that we become more secular in our laws, demanded the same extended rights, entrenchment and freedom from criticism for other beliefs as the right often demanded (and still does on occasion) for Christianity - seeing those who'd deny them as doing so (correctly in many cases) for reasons of prejudice. Then when unpleasant groups promote more virulent strains they hide behind the privilege of religious belief.
If there's any hope from the Charlie Hebdo tragedy it's that perhaps it might unite those on both left and right who see liberty in the way of that celebrated Voltaire quote to say enough's enough, rather than leaving the arguments to those who spend their time whipping up one group of people against one another.
Job done @pulpstar
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2901459/jesuisCharlie-world-s-cartoonists-react-Paris-massacre-poignant-drawings.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/19/isis-islamic-state-threat-short-lived
Given that those in power are spending the day after this atrocity trying to silence a politician millions voted for, I don;t hold out much hope.
Wouldn't you be more concerned if he didn't feel that way?
(although Cam is IMO far from a conviction politician)
(Edit: oh god - were you being sarcastic in which case it was v funny and made the point I then tried to make...so confusing on PB...)
The plane flying into 2 pencils is very powerful, as is the one of the beheaded figure sticking its tongue out at the executioner.
http://rt.com/uk/220895-hammond-speech-shooting-paris/
"Paris shooting ‘product of West’s conflict with ISIS’" – Foreign Sec Hammond
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.[12]
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire