Also if we are talking optics then I think trying to use the Fox Hunting ban as the justification for EV4EL is myopic at best.
"Deny Scots Democracy So We Can Kill Cute Furry Animals"
I need to work on the slogan as I'm sleep deprived due to sick baby but that's the base of it and why it would be a bad idea.
No, you just say the SNP have gone back on their principled stand not to vote on English matters, INCLUDING foxhunting, indeed they have acted in express contradiction of their own leader's vow to abstain on certain English issues. Therefore we have no choice but to enact a measure which holds the SNP to their apparently meaningless promises. EVEL.
The SNP going back on their word is hardly a surprise.
I'd put more faith in a Greek politician's ability to make good on a promise.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
I've gone from about 70% to voting IN to about 55%. We really need Cameron to negotiate major repatriations to protect us from the mess.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Well well well, the French are demanding Britain to foot some of the bill in support of the French veto of Grexit. I think this is once more the time for the French President to hear some good old British expletives and middle fingers along with a loud NO.
Sounds all set up so that Dave can save the British Sausage.
@JacksonMSP: @NicolaSturgeon to @EvanHD "very clear with people in England/legitimate to press me" SNP key test "budgetary interest for Scotland". Oops.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Weren't those (apart from the hyperbolic 2 & 3) actually in the manifesto?
Edit: for 5, cutting tax credits was in the manifesto. Not the pledge to push children into poverty! Thankfully, the pledge to continue eating babies remained).
I've double checked and none of those policies were in the manifesto.
Unlike most people, I actually read manifestos!
Edit: And I guess it makes sense that the right doesn't see the logical consequence of "cutting tax credits" as "pushing children into poverty", making it easy for them to rationalise the policy.
The narcissistic misery and flailing impotence of the whining Left, including you, has been one of the great delights of the summer.
Thankyou. Sincerely.
I'm glad right-wing sociopaths like you can get enjoyment out of things other exploiting Filipino sex slaves.
I like you. You're funny.
Oliver I think you missed out inheritance tax .. You can have a nice bawl about how its all so unfair. Perhaps your party ought to have thought a bit more before choosing suck an obviously weird loser as their leader... not long before they choose another one from the list of 4 new candidate losers.
I don't agree with an inheritance tax cut, but at least that was in the Tory manifesto, unlike the other policies which magically appeared from nowhere post-election despite clearly being on their agenda. It's almost as though they thought they would be unpopular.
And "my party"? Seriously? It's typical of the right to be ultra-tribal. I guess in the absence of normal empathy for people, they focus on winning instead.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
A quick Google shows that UK banks have about ~£5bn in exposure, so the UK didn't "avoid it" - it's yet another bailout of the banking sector by the public.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Well well well, the French are demanding Britain to foot some of the bill in support of the French veto of Grexit. I think this is once more the time for the French President to hear some good old British expletives and middle fingers along with a loud NO.
Sounds all set up so that Dave can save the British Sausage.
Nope, the French want to give Greece a bridge loan through the EFSF which Britain is a member.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Weren't those (apart from the hyperbolic 2 & 3) actually in the manifesto?
Edit: for 5, cutting tax credits was in the manifesto. Not the pledge to push children into poverty! Thankfully, the pledge to continue eating babies remained).
I've double checked and none of those policies were in the manifesto.
Unlike most people, I actually read manifestos!
Edit: And I guess it makes sense that the right doesn't see the logical consequence of "cutting tax credits" as "pushing children into poverty", making it easy for them to rationalise the policy.
The narcissistic misery and flailing impotence of the whining Left, including you, has been one of the great delights of the summer.
Thankyou. Sincerely.
I'm glad right-wing sociopaths like you can get enjoyment out of things other exploiting Filipino sex slaves.
I like you. You're funny.
Oliver I think you missed out inheritance tax .. You can have a nice bawl about how its all so unfair. Perhaps your party ought to have thought a bit more before choosing suck an obviously weird loser as their leader... not long before they choose another one from the list of 4 new candidate losers.
I don't agree with an inheritance tax cut, but at least that was in the Tory manifesto, unlike the other policies which magically appeared from nowhere post-election.
And "my party"? Seriously? It's typical of the right to be ultra-tribal. I guess in the absence of normal empathy for people, they care only about winning instead.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
A quick Google shows that UK banks have about ~£5bn in exposure, so the UK didn't "avoid it" - it's yet another bailout of the banking sector by the public.
That £5 Bn in exposure is probably already mostly written off on the balance sheet of HSBC though, it's not really "Britain's exposure" - they're plenty big enough to absorb it, it's very different to the taxpayer contributing a billion to the fund.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
The quotes from Cameron will be joyous if Brussels is mad enough to approve this. "I am happy to say that, because this Government got us out of the bail-out zones, we are not one of Greece’s creditors." [HC Deb 23 Feb 2015, col. 44] "We have already returned a power to Britain by getting out of the bail-out fund." [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1125] "[W]e got Britain out of the euro bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1122]. "[We] got Britain out of the bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 25]. "I have said no in Europe: I said no to a rise in the EU budget; I said no to an entire treaty; I said no to the European bail-out funds. People in Europe know that when I say no, I mean it." [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 32]
I could go on. Either the man is a fool or he is a cozening mountebank. Either way, he is the worst possible person to be "renegotiating" British membership of the EU.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
I've gone from about 70% to voting IN to about 55%. We really need Cameron to negotiate major repatriations to protect us from the mess.
What is becoming increasingly apparent is that the EU is being run for the benefit of big business and EU bureaucrats. There has been a significant rise in the number of anti-EU articles the Guardian is churning out. I am suprised it has taken them this long to realise the EU could not care less about what is best for EU citizens.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
Either the man is a fool or he is a cozening mountebank.
I hope it's the latter, it sounds great! Though the almighty Google tells me it could be interpreted to mean a deceiving deceiver, which sounds less great I'll admit.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Of course, none of this should be be any surprised when you consider the type of highly privileged sociopaths that would join the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s. They fundamentally believe they are superior to the poor, in the same mindset that led to slavery.
The Tory/"libertarian" dream is for children to grow up in poverty, inevitably neglected by parents who have to force two jobs to make ends meet, have no state whatsoever support after 18, if they have the good fortune to go to university then force them into a lifetime of debt, then a lifetime of unskilled-or-semi-skilled servitude to the super-rich who control giant corporations in near poverty.
Then claim that's "freedom" and "liberty" and those people refused to "do the right thing".
Bloody hell those Tory proposals give me the horn.
The hunting horn presumably.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the SNP's decision to oppose the amendment to the Hunting Act, you have to marvel at the absolute ineptitude of the Government's handling of all this. Had they limited the amendment to bring it in line with Scottish law it would have been inconceivable that the SNP would have voted against it. Instead they included two additional clauses that would have allowed hunting of an animal with a pack of hounds for "research and observation purposes". It was that clause that shot the Tory fox,
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
The quotes from Cameron will be joyous if Brussels is mad enough to approve this. "I am happy to say that, because this Government got us out of the bail-out zones, we are not one of Greece’s creditors." [HC Deb 23 Feb 2015, col. 44] "We have already returned a power to Britain by getting out of the bail-out fund." [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1125] "[W]e got Britain out of the euro bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1122]. "[We] got Britain out of the bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 25]. "I have said no in Europe: I said no to a rise in the EU budget; I said no to an entire treaty; I said no to the European bail-out funds. People in Europe know that when I say no, I mean it." [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 32]
I could go on. Either the man is a fool or he is a cozening mountebank. Either way, he is the worst possible person to be "renegotiating" British membership of the EU.
Quite. I feel about the EU much as the Germans feel about Greece. They will say and promise anything to win the referendum and will then renege. The recent revelations about how they intend paying for a bailout reinforce that view. I simply don't trust the EU to stick to any promises or concessions they may make to Cameron. Only treaty changes with wording leaving no wiggle room can be relied on. After all, what happened to all those promises to reform the CAP in return for giving up part of our rebate?
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Of course, none of this should be be any surprised when you consider the type of highly privileged sociopaths that would join the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s. They fundamentally believe they are superior to the poor, in the same mindset that led to slavery.
The Tory/"libertarian" dream is for children to grow up in poverty, inevitably neglected by parents who have to force two jobs to make ends meet, have no state whatsoever support after 18, if they have the good fortune to go to university then force them into a lifetime of debt, then a lifetime of unskilled-or-semi-skilled servitude to the super-rich who control giant corporations in near poverty.
Then claim that's "freedom" and "liberty" and those people refused to "do the right thing".
Bloody hell those Tory proposals give me the horn.
The hunting horn presumably.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
As hard as I try, hunting does nothing for me, either way.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Weren't those (apart from the hyperbolic 2 & 3) actually in the manifesto?
Edit: for 5, cutting tax credits was in the manifesto. Not the pledge to push children into poverty! Thankfully, the pledge to continue eating babies remained).
I've double checked and none of those policies were in the manifesto.
Unlike most people, I actually read manifestos!
Edit: And I guess it makes sense that the right doesn't see the logical consequence of "cutting tax credits" as "pushing children into poverty", making it easy for them to rationalise the policy.
The narcissistic misery and flailing impotence of the whining Left, including you, has been one of the great delights of the summer.
Thankyou. Sincerely.
I'm glad right-wing sociopaths like you can get enjoyment out of things other exploiting Filipino sex slaves.
I like you. You're funny.
Oliver I think you missed out inheritance tax .. You can have a nice bawl about how its all so unfair. Perhaps your party ought to have thought a bit more before choosing suck an obviously weird loser as their leader... not long before they choose another one from the list of 4 new candidate losers.
I don't agree with an inheritance tax cut, but at least that was in the Tory manifesto, unlike the other policies which magically appeared from nowhere post-election despite clearly being on their agenda. It's almost as though they thought they would be unpopular.
And "my party"? Seriously? It's typical of the right to be ultra-tribal. I guess in the absence of normal empathy for people, they focus on winning instead.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
A quick Google shows that UK banks have about ~£5bn in exposure, so the UK didn't "avoid it" - it's yet another bailout of the banking sector by the public.
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
For interest - Team2020 are already building the groundwar game for the Mayoral Election, EU ref and others
CCHQ aren't missing a beat here. I'm rather impressed and will be signing up again. The Staggers piece about Labour's ground game was worth a look - though it's packed with excuses such as Evil Tories Had Money We Didn't blah blah http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/does-canvassing-matter
For interest - Team2020 are already building the groundwar game for the Mayoral Election, EU ref and others
CCHQ aren't missing a beat here. I'm rather impressed and will be signing up again. The Staggers piece about Labour's ground game was worth a look - though it's packed with excuses such as Evil Tories Had Money We Didn't blah blah http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/does-canvassing-matter
The answer to the question "does canvassing matter?" YES YES YES.
You identify support, you see where you have growth, where you are losing. You pick up what is happening on the ground, you get to sell your candidate.
But it is a fruitless exercise if what you are selling is tainted goods. A local labour PPC went for the 'local girl' thing, and did a lot of canvassing, it didnt help her to win (the swing in England to labour would have been enough to win, she ended up tripling the cons majority though) because she was a poor candidate. A plucky hard worker, but not a prospective MP.
If you are a bad candidate then clearly that does not help, but Tim Farron, for instance, is a good example of an effective local candidate who has campaigned hard, taken a seat and built up a huge majority he has held even when the trend is against his party nationaly
He HAS to thwart this proposed British bail in. Could split the party wide open, and ruin his referendum plans.
As others have noted, perhaps this is all theatrics and Cameron will now successfully pose as the man who prevented something that was never gonna happen,
OTOH the eurocrats were tired and desperate and maybe they voted through a mad idea that no one thought through: Britain paying for the euro. Who knows. Interesting test for Dave if the Telegraph report is correct.
This measure looks certain to get a qualified majority in the Council should it be proposed, even if we vote against. All the eurozone states will vote in favour, since their collective position was determined this morning. That is more than 55% of member states, and almost exactly 65% of the EU population, which constitutes a qualified majority.
The only other route of challenge would be in the Court of Justice. That court has a naked political bias towards integration. Furthermore, there are certain dicta in Pringle v Ireland [2013] 2 CMLR 2 which seem to suggest that the earlier use of article 122(2) TFEU was lawful (see p. 53 of the report). The Court might also take the view that we should have challenged the Council regulation of 2010, and that any challenge to the legality of the EFSM is five years out of time. A legal challenge, especially in the unlikely event that interim relief was granted by the court, could also produce a Grexit, simply because the money must be paid in a very short space of time. It is unlikely but not impossible Cameron would have the bottle to launch such a challenge. We could just refuse to pay, but no British government has ever done that.
In some ways, being forced to pay would be good for Britain. It would be a £1 billion gamble on an insolvent emerging from bankruptcy. It would increase public suspicion of the EU institutions, and would prove that Cameron is an inept negotiator, reducing the chances of the credulous believing Cameron will produce a substantial "renegotiation" of British membership.
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
I'll never forget that night
Politics can't get any better than that (let's not forget the subplot of the SNP surge, which on any normal election night would have been the main story).
It was the geekological equivalent of the 2005 Ashes.
I was editing PB and couldn't believe some of the stuff I was seeing and having to write about.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Of course, none of this should be be any surprised when you consider the type of highly privileged sociopaths that would join the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s. They fundamentally believe they are superior to the poor, in the same mindset that led to slavery.
The Tory/"libertarian" dream is for children to grow up in poverty, inevitably neglected by parents who have to force two jobs to make ends meet, have no state whatsoever support after 18, if they have the good fortune to go to university then force them into a lifetime of debt, then a lifetime of unskilled-or-semi-skilled servitude to the super-rich who control giant corporations in near poverty.
Then claim that's "freedom" and "liberty" and those people refused to "do the right thing".
Bloody hell those Tory proposals give me the horn.
The hunting horn presumably.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
As hard as I try, hunting does nothing for me, either way.
The harder you try, the further away from you it's slipping?
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
The quotes from Cameron will be joyous if Brussels is mad enough to approve this. "I am happy to say that, because this Government got us out of the bail-out zones, we are not one of Greece’s creditors." [HC Deb 23 Feb 2015, col. 44] "We have already returned a power to Britain by getting out of the bail-out fund." [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1125] "[W]e got Britain out of the euro bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1122]. "[We] got Britain out of the bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 25]. "I have said no in Europe: I said no to a rise in the EU budget; I said no to an entire treaty; I said no to the European bail-out funds. People in Europe know that when I say no, I mean it." [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 32]
I could go on. Either the man is a fool or he is a cozening mountebank. Either way, he is the worst possible person to be "renegotiating" British membership of the EU.
Quite. I feel about the EU much as the Germans feel about Greece. They will say and promise anything to win the referendum and will then renege. The recent revelations about how they intend paying for a bailout reinforce that view. I simply don't trust the EU to stick to any promises or concessions they may make to Cameron. Only treaty changes with wording leaving no wiggle room can be relied on. After all, what happened to all those promises to reform the CAP in return for giving up part of our rebate?
It's amazing how CAP is now something we're not even trying to renegotiate on. Half the EU budget is spent on something everyone knows is terrible policy, but there have been so many failed attempts to address it we've given up entirely on even slimming it slightly.
It's full of emotive virtue signalling that I found entirely pointless - this was apposite
We railed against the obscenity of England imposing governments we didn’t vote for, yet now we are to support the supposed right of Scottish MPs to impose policy on the rest of the UK?
Well, that's it, then. The SNP have given up the slightest pretence of being principled, have made themselves moral laughing-stocks even amongst the remaining few who believed anything they said. There is not a smidgen of wriggle room on this issue: it has nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, to do with Scotland, not even the fig-leaf of Barnett which they've previously relied on to hide their abject dishonesty.
Well, that's it, then. The SNP have given up the slightest pretence of being principled, have made themselves moral laughing-stocks even amongst the remaining few who believed anything they said. There is not a smidgen of wriggle room on this issue: it has nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, to do with Scotland, not even the fig-leaf of Barnett which they've previously relied on to hide their abject dishonesty.
Ed Conway's reporting some very strange new things imposed on Greece as part of their deal - deregulating bakeries, extended sell-by dates on milk... looks like piddling micromanagement is alive and well in the box tickers of the EU and IMF.
For interest - Team2020 are already building the groundwar game for the Mayoral Election, EU ref and others
CCHQ aren't missing a beat here. I'm rather impressed and will be signing up again. The Staggers piece about Labour's ground game was worth a look - though it's packed with excuses such as Evil Tories Had Money We Didn't blah blah http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/does-canvassing-matter
The answer to the question "does canvassing matter?" YES YES YES.
You identify support, you see where you have growth, where you are losing. You pick up what is happening on the ground, you get to sell your candidate.
But it is a fruitless exercise if what you are selling is tainted goods. A local labour PPC went for the 'local girl' thing, and did a lot of canvassing, it didnt help her to win (the swing in England to labour would have been enough to win, she ended up tripling the cons majority though) because she was a poor candidate. A plucky hard worker, but not a prospective MP.
If you are a bad candidate then clearly that does not help, but Tim Farron, for instance, is a good example of an effective local candidate who has campaigned hard, taken a seat and built up a huge majority he has held even when the trend is against his party nationaly
Tim is a rarity though. Hes like one of those people who runs ultra marathons. He's inexhaustible, and he's a rarity. It is true that the LibDems tended to have more such people in their ranks than other parties. Maybe its do with the libdems having to fight for every single vote, and the concept of a safe seat doesnt really exist in Libdem land.
It's full of emotive virtue signalling that I found entirely pointless - this was apposite
We railed against the obscenity of England imposing governments we didn’t vote for, yet now we are to support the supposed right of Scottish MPs to impose policy on the rest of the UK?
Well, that's it, then. The SNP have given up the slightest pretence of being principled, have made themselves moral laughing-stocks even amongst the remaining few who believed anything they said. There is not a smidgen of wriggle room on this issue: it has nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, to do with Scotland, not even the fig-leaf of Barnett which they've previously relied on to hide their abject dishonesty.
It's useful to have cleared that up.
It's a shame that the Tory government is doing nothing to rid us of this mad legacy of Blair's, but is extending and entrenching it.
@PaulBrandITV: Sturgeon told me before the election the SNP would not deliberately antagonise England. #foxhunting decision somewhat questions that promise
@PaulBrandITV: Sturgeon told me before the election the SNP would not deliberately antagonise England. #foxhunting decision somewhat questions that promise
Lots of English people in towns will be delighted.
Virgins separated out, so as to be gangraped. Pregant women forced to miscarry. Ten year olds raped then killed.
ISIS are mere beasts. So butcher them.
And hundreds upon hundreds of men, women and children raised in this country think they're worth giving up everything to go and join. That is about as damning an indictment of multiculturalism as you can get.
@SeanT - I think you might have retired for the night a few days ago when I revealed the verdict of the Sussex book club on the Ice Twins (and a rewrite of the ending). End of this thread:
Well, that's it, then. The SNP have given up the slightest pretence of being principled, have made themselves moral laughing-stocks even amongst the remaining few who believed anything they said. There is not a smidgen of wriggle room on this issue: it has nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, to do with Scotland, not even the fig-leaf of Barnett which they've previously relied on to hide their abject dishonesty.
It's useful to have cleared that up.
It's a shame that the Tory government is doing nothing to rid us of this mad legacy of Blair's, but is extending and entrenching it.
If Cameron repeals devolution, how can the Conservatives win a Holyrood majority in 2016?
Well, that's it, then. The SNP have given up the slightest pretence of being principled, have made themselves moral laughing-stocks even amongst the remaining few who believed anything they said. There is not a smidgen of wriggle room on this issue: it has nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, to do with Scotland, not even the fig-leaf of Barnett which they've previously relied on to hide their abject dishonesty.
It's useful to have cleared that up.
It's a shame that the Tory government is doing nothing to rid us of this mad legacy of Blair's, but is extending and entrenching it.
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
If Cameron repeals devolution, how can the Conservatives win a Holyrood majority in 2016?
The answer today is not to repeal devolution, but to prevent Scottish MPs from voting on legislation applying to England whose subject matter is within the devolved competence of the Scottish Parliament.
All the SNP care about is advancing the cause of an independent Scotland, and f*cking the Tories - their hated enemy.
This proposal does both, but it's also possible it backfires. It could push a few wavering Tory fox-hunting sceptics into the Yes camp out of anger at the SNP perfidiousness, and a few Labour MPs - who might otherwise have voted No - to abstain.
It will be very close. I reckon 290-285 for an amendment.
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
All the SNP care about is advancing the cause of an independent Scotland, and f*cking the Tories - their hated enemy.
This proposal does both, but it's also possible it backfires. It could push a few wavering Tory fox-hunting sceptics into the Yes camp out of anger at the SNP perfidiousness, and a few Labour MPs - who might otherwise have voted No - to abstain.
It will be very close. I reckon 290-285 for an amendment.
I don't know why any Labour MP who intends to vote No would abstain now that defeating the government looks more likely.
Given the chance to get one over the majority Conservative government they will take it.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
Encouraging. I hope we Outers can continue to have a conversation to (perhaps) persuade you.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
If the EU goes ahead with this, then it will show two things:
1) We are completely at the mercy of economic decisions taken by the Eurogroup, as they can then vote through the wider EU on QMV easily. It will be essential for the EU to change to a system where you need to get a double majority of both Euro and non-Euro nations.
2) The EU can not be trusted to stick to signed agreements with the UK, and only full treaty change will be acceptable in the renegotiation.
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
I have to agree with @RichardN on this one. Although the values of the metropolitan left have little currency among electorate, they are very widely held by those occupying positions of key cultural and political influence, even dare I say it, by several members of the parliamentary Conservative Party.
For interest - Team2020 are already building the groundwar game for the Mayoral Election, EU ref and others
CCHQ aren't missing a beat here. I'm rather impressed and will be signing up again. The Staggers piece about Labour's ground game was worth a look - though it's packed with excuses such as Evil Tories Had Money We Didn't blah blah http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/does-canvassing-matter
The answer to the question "does canvassing matter?" YES YES YES.
You identify support, you see where you have growth, where you are losing. You pick up what is happening on the ground, you get to sell your candidate.
But it is a fruitless exercise if what you are selling is tainted goods. A local labour PPC went for the 'local girl' thing, and did a lot of canvassing, it didnt help her to win (the swing in England to labour would have been enough to win, she ended up tripling the cons majority though) because she was a poor candidate. A plucky hard worker, but not a prospective MP.
If you are a bad candidate then clearly that does not help, but Tim Farron, for instance, is a good example of an effective local candidate who has campaigned hard, taken a seat and built up a huge majority he has held even when the trend is against his party nationaly
Tim is a rarity though. Hes like one of those people who runs ultra marathons. He's inexhaustible, and he's a rarity. It is true that the LibDems tended to have more such people in their ranks than other parties. Maybe its do with the libdems having to fight for every single vote, and the concept of a safe seat doesnt really exist in Libdem land.
She was no Tim.
Maybe, but at the same time a lazy candidate with good paper qualifications in what should be winnable seat for their party is by no means guaranteed to win it if they do not put in the groundwork
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
They're addressing the BBC well, but they do need to address the Lords. The majority of the public last time voted for right-wing parties. If Cameron was just prepared to give UKIP their fair share of new Lords, then that would drastically tilt the field back towards parity.
SNP desperate to distract the voters from their abject record on the domestic front - ooh look am English fox ...!
Yeah, they are hurting after that thrashing they got at the hands of the voters in May.
Tell that to the girl found dead in the car this week after being left there by the centralised police run by an SNP lackey and mismanaged by a Holyrood justice minister more concerned whether the Hokey Cokey is offensive or not.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
Encouraging. I hope we Outers can continue to have a conversation to (perhaps) persuade you.
1) Don't use Farage to try persuade me
2) Show me the economic case for withdrawing from the EU rather than staying in
3) Don't try and use UKIP's culture wars argument for withdrawal
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
I'll never forget that night
Politics can't get any better than that (let's not forget the subplot of the SNP surge, which on any normal election night would have been the main story).
It was the geekological equivalent of the 2005 Ashes.
I was editing PB and couldn't believe some of the stuff I was seeing and having to write about.
I'd had a very bad week at work, and some awful news in the family. I thought the Tories were done for.
I was speechless (literally, not figuratively at the exit poll) and it just got better and better.
I was walking on water for the rest of the weekend.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
Encouraging. I hope we Outers can continue to have a conversation to (perhaps) persuade you.
1) Don't use Farage to try persuade me
2) Show me the economic case for withdrawing from the EU rather than staying in
3) Don't try and use UKIP's culture wars argument for withdrawal
And I might vote OUT.
The economic case isn't decisive either way. It's all about self-government.
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
One has to choose the right battles (as Maggie was careful to do).
I said, before the 2010 election, that it would take three terms to get the country back on track. 2010-2015 was much more successful in that respect than seemed possible on the morning after the election, but even so didn't allow as rapid progress as a majority government would have allowed. Now there is a majority, but it is small, and there's a hell of a lot to do with only a limited stock of political capital. Osborne (rightly) spent a lot of that last week. There's the EU referendum, which will absorb more political capital. UKIP don't help. One has to be realistic.
1) We are completely at the mercy of economic decisions taken by the Eurogroup, as they can then vote through the wider EU on QMV easily. It will be essential for the EU to change to a system where you need to get a double majority of both Euro and non-Euro nations.
2) The EU can not be trusted to stick to signed agreements with the UK, and only full treaty change will be acceptable in the renegotiation.
The first suggestion would require treaty change under the ordinary revision procedure (TEU, art 48(1)). That requires a qualified majority in the Council to call an IGC, which must then unanimously agree treaty amendments, which must then be ratified by every member state in accordance with their constitutional requirements. That takes several years, and in any event, there is no chance of it being agreed.
As for the second, why should the EU institutions be blamed for relying on their supposed rights under the treaties? The blame lies solely with Cameron. He settled for a gentleman's agreement when he had an unassailable opportunity to secure binding treaty change. He is either a fool or a fraud.
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
I'll never forget that night
Politics can't get any better than that (let's not forget the subplot of the SNP surge, which on any normal election night would have been the main story).
It was the geekological equivalent of the 2005 Ashes.
I was editing PB and couldn't believe some of the stuff I was seeing and having to write about.
I'd had a very bad week at work, and some awful news in the family. I thought the Tories were done for.
I was speechless (literally, not figuratively at the exit poll) and it just got better and better.
I was walking on water for the rest of the weekend.
Sorry for your bad news, but election night was perfect for me, everything I wanted bar one thing happened.
1) Tory Majority - check
2) Reckless losing - check
3) Farage losing - check
4) Cable losing - check
5) Lots of winning bets - check
6) Balls losing (so I could do the Balls deep in trouble gag once again) - check
7) SNP surge - So I could use Ajockalypse Now in a thread header - check
I was hopeful that Labour would have fewer MPs in Scotland than the Tories, but we only 300 votes short of that.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Of course, none of this should be be any surprised when you consider the type of highly privileged sociopaths that would join the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s. They fundamentally believe they are superior to the poor, in the same mindset that led to slavery.
The Tory/"libertarian" dream is for children to grow up in poverty, inevitably neglected by parents who have to force two jobs to make ends meet, have no state whatsoever support after 18, if they have the good fortune to go to university then force them into a lifetime of debt, then a lifetime of unskilled-or-semi-skilled servitude to the super-rich who control giant corporations in near poverty.
Then claim that's "freedom" and "liberty" and those people refused to "do the right thing".
Bloody hell those Tory proposals give me the horn.
The hunting horn presumably.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
As hard as I try, hunting does nothing for me, either way.
The harder you try, the further away from you it's slipping?
Looks like TSE missed my subtle pop music reference
Adulterers, petty thieves, magicians, women, blasphemers, heathens, homosexuals, Syrian soldiers, Kurds, Yazidis, Shias, western tourists, ISIS will butcher them all given the chance
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
Encouraging. I hope we Outers can continue to have a conversation to (perhaps) persuade you.
1) Don't use Farage to try persuade me
2) Show me the economic case for withdrawing from the EU rather than staying in
3) Don't try and use UKIP's culture wars argument for withdrawal
And I might vote OUT.
(1) I won't (2) I will (3) I think it's solely about British democracy. Immigration is one obvious part of that, but I think it's counterproductive to use it to create dividing lines.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
Many other so called 'Charities' should be in for a well deserved thumping over their scandalous fundraising and chugging activities, the likes of which would make your average gangster blush. In many cases, it's nothing more than a racket, on a par with the criminal activities of boiler house share salesman.
All the SNP care about is advancing the cause of an independent Scotland, and f*cking the Tories - their hated enemy.
This proposal does both, but it's also possible it backfires. It could push a few wavering Tory fox-hunting sceptics into the Yes camp out of anger at the SNP perfidiousness, and a few Labour MPs - who might otherwise have voted No - to abstain.
It will be very close. I reckon 290-285 for an amendment.
I don't know why any Labour MP who intends to vote No would abstain now that defeating the government looks more likely.
Given the chance to get one over the majority Conservative government they will take it.
Not all Labour MPs are the same. A handful won't be pleased.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
So called 'Charities' are in for a well deserved thumping over their scandalous fundraising and chugging activities, the likes of which would make your average gangster blush. In many cases, it's nothing more than a racket, on a par with the criminal activities of boiler house share salesman.
Telegraph is reporting that Britain will be on the hook for £1bn of the Greek bail out.
So we're having to pony up for the total catastrophe that is the euro, a catastrophe we nationally avoided, and which we explicitly warned against, at the time of the euro's inception.
twitter.com/hendopolis/status/620697026494365700
Somehow don't see this going down too well.
As someone who is a Pro-EU chap, I have to admit this has not been the finest moment for the British Pro-EU movement.
Even I'm having my doubts, and can see a lot of my left wing turning into committed outers.
I've gone from being 90% certain to voting for IN to maybe 60% certain.
Encouraging. I hope we Outers can continue to have a conversation to (perhaps) persuade you.
1) Don't use Farage to try persuade me
2) Show me the economic case for withdrawing from the EU rather than staying in
3) Don't try and use UKIP's culture wars argument for withdrawal
And I might vote OUT.
(1) I won't (2) I will (3) I think it's solely about British democracy. Immigration is one obvious part of that, but I think it's counterproductive to use it to create dividing lines.
Thanks for the tips.
Number 2 is what has always been crucial to how I was planning to vote, up to the last week, I was sure remaining in the EU was in the country's best economic interest, but now I'm not sure.
The priorities for the Conservative Party since the election:
1. Private Royal Mail
2. Remove support for the poorest at University
3. Gut the BBC
4. Cut Corporation Tax
5. Remove tax credits to push children into poverty
Labour need to learn from the Conservatives and let their manifesto have no reflection to their actual beliefs.
Of course, none of this should be be any surprised when you consider the type of highly privileged sociopaths that would join the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s. They fundamentally believe they are superior to the poor, in the same mindset that led to slavery.
The Tory/"libertarian" dream is for children to grow up in poverty, inevitably neglected by parents who have to force two jobs to make ends meet, have no state whatsoever support after 18, if they have the good fortune to go to university then force them into a lifetime of debt, then a lifetime of unskilled-or-semi-skilled servitude to the super-rich who control giant corporations in near poverty.
Then claim that's "freedom" and "liberty" and those people refused to "do the right thing".
Bloody hell those Tory proposals give me the horn.
The hunting horn presumably.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
As hard as I try, hunting does nothing for me, either way.
The harder you try, the further away from you it's slipping?
Looks like TSE missed my subtle pop music reference
After realising there are several other Bros fans on PB, I have Bros on the brain
What puzzles me is why the Conservative Party is so nervous. 2015 delivered a solid right wing majority, in voting terms. The liberal left are a paper tiger.
The liberal left (and their more extreme cousins) are by no means a paper tiger. They have nearly half the seats in the Commons. They dominate the Lords. They completely dominate the BBC, which in turn dominates the news media. They are very well entrenched in the quangos and charities. They are very well entrenched in the legal profession. They completely dominate schools and universities.
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
I think around 26 Conservative MPs are on the record as planning to vote against a repeal, and a further 2 to abstain.
It will be interesting to see how those numbers move now following the SNP shenanigans.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
Adulterers, petty thieves, magicians, women, blasphemers, heathens, homosexuals, Syrian soldiers, Kurds, Yazidis, Shias, western tourists, ISIS will butcher them all given the chance
In the end ISIS will surely kill each other, like the Khmer Rouge, as their bloodthirsty God demands more victims, in the name of ideological purity.
Question is how long it will take for them to reach their hideous Singularity, and what we can do to accelerate the process.
Clever use of special forces, particularly in terms of targeted airstrikes, arms shipments to the Kurds will all help, but you are correct, ultimately they are likely to destroy themselves
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
Many other so called 'Charities' should be in for a well deserved thumping over their scandalous fundraising and chugging activities, the likes of which would make your average gangster blush. In many cases, it's nothing more than a racket, on a par with the criminal activities of boiler house share salesman.
There's a revolving door between the Labour party, charitable sector, public sector, publicly funded broadcast media and the performing arts.
Where's scrapheap? BBC just showed the glorious exit poll moment...
Glorious And even then they still under-predicted the Tory seat number!
I confess I have watched the entire 2015 BBC General Election Special TWICE. There are so many delicious moments, from Ashdown's pompous scoffing at the exit poll, through the slow painful realisation by the entire media classes that the poll is right, all the way to Balls' exquisitely delayed execution.
Narrative genius.
It is much better in dramaturgical terms than 1997. Better pacing. And more unexpected, of course.
I'll never forget that night
Politics can't get any better than that (let's not forget the subplot of the SNP surge, which on any normal election night would have been the main story).
It was the geekological equivalent of the 2005 Ashes.
I was editing PB and couldn't believe some of the stuff I was seeing and having to write about.
I'd had a very bad week at work, and some awful news in the family. I thought the Tories were done for.
I was speechless (literally, not figuratively at the exit poll) and it just got better and better.
I was walking on water for the rest of the weekend.
Sorry for your bad news, but election night was perfect for me, everything I wanted bar one thing happened.
1) Tory Majority - check
2) Reckless losing - check
3) Farage losing - check
4) Cable losing - check
5) Lots of winning bets - check
6) Balls losing (so I could do the Balls deep in trouble gag once again) - check
7) SNP surge - So I could use Ajockalypse Now in a thread header - check
I was hopeful that Labour would have fewer MPs in Scotland than the Tories, but we only 300 votes short of that.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
They won't, because they're all cut of the same cloth.
1 in 30 are employed by charities these days - that's quite a slice for what was once a voluntary activity.
Charities involved in politics? Surely not...
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
Many other so called 'Charities' should be in for a well deserved thumping over their scandalous fundraising and chugging activities, the likes of which would make your average gangster blush. In many cases, it's nothing more than a racket, on a par with the criminal activities of boiler house share salesman.
There's a revolving door between the Labour party, charitable sector, public sector, publicly funded broadcast media and the performing arts.
just as there is between tory ministers and "defence contractots". i know which i think is more dubious
Then, put the boot in. You have 332 MP's, plus another 12 who'll generally side with you.
One has to choose the right battles (as Maggie was careful to do).
I said, before the 2010 election, that it would take three terms to get the country back on track. 2010-2015 was much more successful in that respect than seemed possible on the morning after the election, but even so didn't allow as rapid progress as a majority government would have allowed. Now there is a majority, but it is small, and there's a hell of a lot to do with only a limited stock of political capital. Osborne (rightly) spent a lot of that last week. There's the EU referendum, which will absorb more political capital. UKIP don't help. One has to be realistic.
To be fair, I think you're broadly right. The Tories are implementing the vast majority of their manifesto. And more besides that pleases me, such as the 2% GDP on defence.
Where I've been (and continue to be) disappointed is on the continuity of new-labour socio-cultural priorities, pussyfooting around on standing up meaningfully for British values against Islamism (although there are signs of improvement), immigration, and the EU.
So far, I'd say this government is better than the coalition. I hope that continues.
Comments
I'd put more faith in a Greek politician's ability to make good on a promise.
And "my party"? Seriously? It's typical of the right to be ultra-tribal. I guess in the absence of normal empathy for people, they focus on winning instead. A quick Google shows that UK banks have about ~£5bn in exposure, so the UK didn't "avoid it" - it's yet another bailout of the banking sector by the public.
"I am happy to say that, because this Government got us out of the bail-out zones, we are not one of Greece’s creditors." [HC Deb 23 Feb 2015, col. 44]
"We have already returned a power to Britain by getting out of the bail-out fund." [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1125]
"[W]e got Britain out of the euro bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 23 Mar 2015, col. 1122].
"[We] got Britain out of the bail-out schemes" [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 25].
"I have said no in Europe: I said no to a rise in the EU budget; I said no to an entire treaty; I said no to the European bail-out funds. People in Europe know that when I say no, I mean it." [HC Deb 27 Oct 2014, col. 32]
I could go on. Either the man is a fool or he is a cozening mountebank. Either way, he is the worst possible person to be "renegotiating" British membership of the EU.
Night all.
Apropos of not much, I seem to recall that Proust described a young woman as having tits like hunting horns.
The only other route of challenge would be in the Court of Justice. That court has a naked political bias towards integration. Furthermore, there are certain dicta in Pringle v Ireland [2013] 2 CMLR 2 which seem to suggest that the earlier use of article 122(2) TFEU was lawful (see p. 53 of the report). The Court might also take the view that we should have challenged the Council regulation of 2010, and that any challenge to the legality of the EFSM is five years out of time. A legal challenge, especially in the unlikely event that interim relief was granted by the court, could also produce a Grexit, simply because the money must be paid in a very short space of time. It is unlikely but not impossible Cameron would have the bottle to launch such a challenge. We could just refuse to pay, but no British government has ever done that.
In some ways, being forced to pay would be good for Britain. It would be a £1 billion gamble on an insolvent emerging from bankruptcy. It would increase public suspicion of the EU institutions, and would prove that Cameron is an inept negotiator, reducing the chances of the credulous believing Cameron will produce a substantial "renegotiation" of British membership.
It's useful to have cleared that up.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4496803.ece
She was no Tim.
Thanks for your recommendation of Tom Baker's autobiog. Just ordered it from Amazon and only £2.80 to boot. :-)
Unfortunately, as with many of the messes left to us by the 1997-2010 governments, fixing the problem is much easier said than done.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2015/07/06/at-exactly-2200-on-may-7th-uk-politics-totally-changed-in-the-biggest-shock-election-since-1970/
All the SNP care about is advancing the cause of an independent Scotland, and f*cking the Tories - their hated enemy.
This proposal does both, but it's also possible it backfires. It could push a few wavering Tory fox-hunting sceptics into the Yes camp out of anger at the SNP perfidiousness, and a few Labour MPs - who might otherwise have voted No - to abstain.
It will be very close. I reckon 290-285 for an amendment.
Given the chance to get one over the majority Conservative government they will take it.
@JournoStephen: The Tories are already fuming over SNP plans to vote against repeal of the hunting ban. This will infuriate them. http://t.co/VbO1UjBbv0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11737286/EU-demands-Britain-joins-Greek-rescue-fund.html
If the EU goes ahead with this, then it will show two things:
1) We are completely at the mercy of economic decisions taken by the Eurogroup, as they can then vote through the wider EU on QMV easily. It will be essential for the EU to change to a system where you need to get a double majority of both Euro and non-Euro nations.
2) The EU can not be trusted to stick to signed agreements with the UK, and only full treaty change will be acceptable in the renegotiation.
Goodnight all.
@davidtorrance: That Salmond/Miliband poster is now running in newspapers, including today's Independent #GE2015 http://t.co/1u2zt3vDmd
2) Show me the economic case for withdrawing from the EU rather than staying in
3) Don't try and use UKIP's culture wars argument for withdrawal
And I might vote OUT.
I was speechless (literally, not figuratively at the exit poll) and it just got better and better.
I was walking on water for the rest of the weekend.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/television/9577492/dispatchess-secret-footage-inside-isis-is-ghastly-but-unmissable-says-james-delingpole/
I said, before the 2010 election, that it would take three terms to get the country back on track. 2010-2015 was much more successful in that respect than seemed possible on the morning after the election, but even so didn't allow as rapid progress as a majority government would have allowed. Now there is a majority, but it is small, and there's a hell of a lot to do with only a limited stock of political capital. Osborne (rightly) spent a lot of that last week. There's the EU referendum, which will absorb more political capital. UKIP don't help. One has to be realistic.
As for the second, why should the EU institutions be blamed for relying on their supposed rights under the treaties? The blame lies solely with Cameron. He settled for a gentleman's agreement when he had an unassailable opportunity to secure binding treaty change. He is either a fool or a fraud.
1) Tory Majority - check
2) Reckless losing - check
3) Farage losing - check
4) Cable losing - check
5) Lots of winning bets - check
6) Balls losing (so I could do the Balls deep in trouble gag once again) - check
7) SNP surge - So I could use Ajockalypse Now in a thread header - check
I was hopeful that Labour would have fewer MPs in Scotland than the Tories, but we only 300 votes short of that.
(2) I will
(3) I think it's solely about British democracy. Immigration is one obvious part of that, but I think it's counterproductive to use it to create dividing lines.
Thanks for the tips.
In all seriousness, I liked it. It's Wilkie Collins for the 21st Century.
I knew a couple of charity fundraising directors a while ago and harder nuts would be hard to find. The ends justify the means in their minds.
It will be interesting to see how those numbers move now following the SNP shenanigans.
1) it's about sitting down later to hash out the details of the deal
2) It does nothing to solve the fundamental problem of Greek debt
In short a classic EU 'deal' - it relieves the immediate pressure but doesn't solve the problem.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/13/walker-announces-2016-white-house-bid/?intcmp=latestnews
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ05ROmWUAA9wfp.jpg
http://abcnews.go.com/live?stream=1
Where I've been (and continue to be) disappointed is on the continuity of new-labour socio-cultural priorities, pussyfooting around on standing up meaningfully for British values against Islamism (although there are signs of improvement), immigration, and the EU.
So far, I'd say this government is better than the coalition. I hope that continues.