on the upside, with their austerity plans you knew what you were going to get: “at least the Tories say they are going to screw you and then they screw you”.
NumbrCrunchrPolitics @NCPoliticsUK · 35s36 seconds ago Ashcroft: "Last week’s Budget appears to have had no overall impact on people’s assessment of whom to trust with the economy."
Lord Ashcroft @LordAshcroft 1m1 minute ago Ashcroft National Poll, 20-22 March: CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5%. Details on @ConHome, 4pm.
Labour +4
Lord Ashcroft may spend a fortune on his polls but he still does not understand basic M of E Maths . He states that only 1 change in a party's VI is outside the M of E from his previous poll but in fact 3 are Labour , UKIP and Greens .
Perhaps you would prefer Andrew Marr, a man whose politics have been known about for a decade, - unlike Paxman, who appears to have demonstrated neutral professionalism throughout his tenure on Newsnight, without an inkling of his recently declared interests.
I'd like an interviewer who politely asks searching questions but doesn't either have a known preference or attempt to elevate himself into the main focus of interest. Is that too much to ask? Frankly I'd rather have someone like Sean Fear who does have a known preference but nonetheless expresses his views civilly and respects facts, rather than one of the blustering shock jocks who infest the media.
But interesting to see the Big Party Surge sweeping all before it in Ashcroft :-).
Lord Ashcroft @LordAshcroft 1m1 minute ago Ashcroft National Poll, 20-22 March: CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12%, GRN 5%. Details on @ConHome, 4pm.
I don't think that really lives up to "should be interesting".
Lab+Con up 6% is pretty interesting.
Only if you thought the combined LAB-CON total of 60% was anything other than a huge outlier. This poll looks slightly more plausible.
If each of the leaders were a band or singer, which band or singer would they be?
Mr Miliband: something inoffensive but perhaps not entirely current – Wham, say, or Daniel O’Donnell. Mr Clegg? Something middle-of-the-road – the Lighthouse Family or Simply Red, or Cliff Richard who “pops up at Christmas then goes back down again” , or “someone’s sidekick, like Sonny in Sonny and Cher”. Mr Cameron: Take That (“he’d be Gary Barlow”), Coldplay, Justin Bieber or Keith Urban – though some saw him as Simon Cowell, the impresario rather than the performer. Mr Farage: three of our four groups spontaneously said he would be Johnny Rotten or the Sex Pistols: “he just wants to swear and drink beer and wee all over people”. That or The Wurzels.
That old line doesn't really wash. We know that under any form of proportionality blocs of parties emerge - there would be a centre-left bloc and a centre-right bloc as happens in most countries with variants of PR.
I don't think you can rely on that, Israel being a good example of the contrary argument - the country held to ransom by a series of extreme or single-issue parties. Or, nearer home, Ireland doesn't fit the pattern you mention.
I agree that, if we did have a different electoral system, we'd end up with a very different set of parties
I simply find it hard to support a system that delivers 100% of the power on 36% of the vote (2005).
Well, at the moment we've got a government based on 59% of the vote. I hadn't noticed spontaneous street parties celebrating that fact. Those who voted for the party which for the last 50 years has advocated coalition government seem to be very disgruntled at getting what they asked for.
FPTP means we have to endure horrendously anti-democratic arguments from the likes of Nabavi, arguing that a vote for UKIP is a vote to elect PM Miliband. Such reasoning simply would not be the case with an electoral system that allowed the electorate to choose between more than two parties.
Nonsense.
The simple fact of the matter, which advocates of PR don't seem to be able to get their heads around, is that choosing a government is to choose between conflicting alternatives, and that means voters don't get everything they want. Mish-mashing in a percentage of MPs from different parties doesn't alter that simple fact, it merely means that the choice is made in haggling in smoke-free rooms after the election, rather than by an explicit choice by voters at the election.
Cobblers.
If you just have two big tent parties then you have haggling in rooms as the parties try to maintain their internal coalitions behind closed doors, "splits" being electoral poison. Far better to have whatever debates and haggling that needs to be done out in the open, so that the voters can give their judgement on how their interests and views have been represented.
As it happens I prefer for the plurality party to provide the Executive and for individual Bills to be debated on their merits, rather than to have the sort of Coalition horse-trading represented by the Coalition Agreement, where both sides agreed to vote for a bunch of stuff they didn't want in return for the other side doing the same. If all issues are debated in the open and voted on their merits then it makes such horse-trading less likely.
and people also perceive bigger differences between Con and Lab than in recent GEs.
Do they?
Yes, I think so.
Con is seen as more "nasty" than last time - so people more worried about Con "nastiness" will be more likely to vote Lab than risk a minor party.
On the flip side, Miliband is seen as a much less credible PM than Brown, so people worried that Lab would mean a non-credible PM will be more likely to vote Con than risk a minor party.
If you just have two big tent parties then you have haggling in rooms as the parties try to maintain their internal coalitions behind closed doors, "splits" being electoral poison. Far better to have whatever debates and haggling that needs to be done out in the open, so that the voters can give their judgement on how their interests and views have been represented.
Sure you do, but the differences are that (a) the haggling takes place before the election, so that voters know what the total package is before they place their vote, (b) the overall package is more likely to be coherent, or if it's not the press and the other parties have an opportunity to point out the incoherence, and (c) to get elected at all, the parties have to put together a manifesto which is not directly unpopular.
In a PR system, there's no such constraint, so you can get single-issue or frankly bonkers parties who happen to hold the balance of power ending up imposing their particular obsession on the government, even (in an extreme case) if it's something which the vast majority of voters abhor.
Of course, FPTP doesn't guarantee we won't get this (as indeed the SNP threat makes clear). But that is up to voters: they know what the choice is. If they don't want to make it, or feel that it doesn't matter, then they can vote accordingly. That's democracy.
Indeed. If the Department on Education spends more of teabags, then a proportion of that needs to be sent north of border, anything at all can be defended as "having an impact on Scotland".
Hell even the changes to tuition fees which had no impact in Scotland were counted as addition taxation, so more money got sent to Scotland even though they don't have any tuition fees.
IN practice, as I should have been clearer, it is evident that the SNP will be selective - as it historically has been in contrast to SLAB and the LDs.
Tuition fees - other way round surely: the grants to universities to pay them were cut so the unis had to replace them by getting the fees off the students.
Apparently not, Here is the relevant quote from wikipedia (usual caveats apply):
Taxation and charges applied in only one nation or region controversially affect the Barnett formula. In one example, the top-up tuition fees introduced in England are counted as additional English public expenditure (as the extra income is spent by the universities) and, therefore, an equivalent amount from the Consolidated Fund, paid for by UK-wide taxation, has been transferred to the Scottish Government. It was argued that this meant that only the English paid tuition fees, yet this money is shared with Scottish universities, despite Scottish students studying at those universities not having to contribute any extra fees.
That would surprise me very greatly as it is a subject that has always interested me and I have never seen such an outcome mentioned in all the discussions on this - and it would have been latched on to by the anti-SNP side. I don't know enough about the technicalities but it doesn;t make sense to me. Surely the Consolidated Fund is hardly the same thing as the relevant Department budget which does determine the Barnett payment - I may pay £2000 for a new computer out of my bank account but it has no bearing on whether I actually budgeted £3K or £0.
I see that the Wikipedia article does not give a source for this. I have to say I'm sceptical - not of you, no, I'm grateful to you for drawing my attention to it - but of this.
What is this odd myth that Ed did a good job in responding to the budget? He was poor. His reply was 'thanks for that, but we don't believe it' (wasn't it?), and that's just ridiculous.
I'd really like to be pointed at the 'good bits', because frankly I don't see anything that's worthy of any praise from him. I'd like to see the good stuff from Ed not because I'm considering voting for him, but merely that I'll sleep easier at night if I can identify some good points in the possible next PM. (The Gordon Brown years weren't a great time for sleep)
Comments
Arf
Ashcroft: "Last week’s Budget appears to have had no overall impact on people’s assessment of whom to trust with the economy."
Suspended Tory candidate Afzal Amin has resigned with immediate effect, a party source said
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2015-03-23/conservative-candidate-i-was-target-of-far-right-sting-operation …
But interesting to see the Big Party Surge sweeping all before it in Ashcroft :-).
Tick tock. When will the tide turn blue then? It keeps failing to do so and there's so little time left...
If each of the leaders were a band or singer, which band or singer would they be?
Mr Miliband: something inoffensive but perhaps not entirely current – Wham, say, or Daniel O’Donnell.
Mr Clegg? Something middle-of-the-road – the Lighthouse Family or Simply Red, or Cliff Richard who “pops up at Christmas then goes back down again” , or “someone’s sidekick, like Sonny in Sonny and Cher”.
Mr Cameron: Take That (“he’d be Gary Barlow”), Coldplay, Justin Bieber or Keith Urban – though some saw him as Simon Cowell, the impresario rather than the performer.
Mr Farage: three of our four groups spontaneously said he would be Johnny Rotten or the Sex Pistols: “he just wants to swear and drink beer and wee all over people”. That or The Wurzels.
I agree that, if we did have a different electoral system, we'd end up with a very different set of parties Well, at the moment we've got a government based on 59% of the vote. I hadn't noticed spontaneous street parties celebrating that fact. Those who voted for the party which for the last 50 years has advocated coalition government seem to be very disgruntled at getting what they asked for.
If this turns out where labour have more poll leads,what do we blame for it,Osborne budget ?
If you just have two big tent parties then you have haggling in rooms as the parties try to maintain their internal coalitions behind closed doors, "splits" being electoral poison. Far better to have whatever debates and haggling that needs to be done out in the open, so that the voters can give their judgement on how their interests and views have been represented.
As it happens I prefer for the plurality party to provide the Executive and for individual Bills to be debated on their merits, rather than to have the sort of Coalition horse-trading represented by the Coalition Agreement, where both sides agreed to vote for a bunch of stuff they didn't want in return for the other side doing the same. If all issues are debated in the open and voted on their merits then it makes such horse-trading less likely.
Con is seen as more "nasty" than last time - so people more worried about Con "nastiness" will be more likely to vote Lab than risk a minor party.
On the flip side, Miliband is seen as a much less credible PM than Brown, so people worried that Lab would mean a non-credible PM will be more likely to vote Con than risk a minor party.
So the result is a "big 2 squeeze".
Dennis Skinner asks what's wrong with an early retirement age. Ummm...
Then the only SNP member present asks a question. The others are off writing Labour's budget.
I am either having a really nice holiday or not going away at all dependent on the result
In a PR system, there's no such constraint, so you can get single-issue or frankly bonkers parties who happen to hold the balance of power ending up imposing their particular obsession on the government, even (in an extreme case) if it's something which the vast majority of voters abhor.
Of course, FPTP doesn't guarantee we won't get this (as indeed the SNP threat makes clear). But that is up to voters: they know what the choice is. If they don't want to make it, or feel that it doesn't matter, then they can vote accordingly. That's democracy.
I see that the Wikipedia article does not give a source for this. I have to say I'm sceptical - not of you, no, I'm grateful to you for drawing my attention to it - but of this.
I'd really like to be pointed at the 'good bits', because frankly I don't see anything that's worthy of any praise from him. I'd like to see the good stuff from Ed not because I'm considering voting for him, but merely that I'll sleep easier at night if I can identify some good points in the possible next PM. (The Gordon Brown years weren't a great time for sleep)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32024045