As you're widely regarded as a Conservative mouthpiece it might be better if you didn't comment when drunk or indeed in a provocative manner at all.
I'm sure that I'm not the only person to still remember your 'bombing ragheads' contribution to the Syrian debate.
The Conservative party has built up more than enough ill will towards itself and already has a sizeable image problem.
I only speak for myself but Avery is welcome to post drunk or not. If he was the authentic voice of the Conservative Party that would be even better because we'd get to hear the authentic voice of the drunk Conservative Party, but in reality people here only represent themselves, and nobody else really cares what we think.
Edmondo
My thanks for your comment but I would be disappointed if the parties totally ignored our comments.
An efficient party chairman would be wise to have a group of interns headed by a SpAd monitoring and reporting daily on social media, perhaps with "single page of A4" summary sent upstairs to keep the leaders hand on the pulse.
This would only be an extension of the MSM clippings and comments service which has been standard for decades.
All this effort put in and then we find we don't get an MI5 file in our names would be most disappointing. And here I am counting on a recommendation for an honour by George. Please don't destroy my hopes.
That's something I've always advocated political parties doing.
The Cameroons have no better advocate than RN for example nor have they ever demolished Labour's economic record as several of us here have done over the years.
And there are certainly better psepholgists at various sites than the parties have themselves.
As you're widely regarded as a Conservative mouthpiece it might be better if you didn't comment when drunk or indeed in a provocative manner at all.
I'm sure that I'm not the only person to still remember your 'bombing ragheads' contribution to the Syrian debate.
The Conservative party has built up more than enough ill will towards itself and already has a sizeable image problem.
I only speak for myself but Avery is welcome to post drunk or not. If he was the authentic voice of the Conservative Party that would be even better because we'd get to hear the authentic voice of the drunk Conservative Party, but in reality people here only represent themselves, and nobody else really cares what we think.
Edmondo
My thanks for your comment but I would be disappointed if the parties totally ignored our comments.
An efficient party chairman would be wise to have a group of interns headed by a SpAd monitoring and reporting daily on social media, perhaps with "single page of A4" summary sent upstairs to keep the leaders hand on the pulse.
This would only be an extension of the MSM clippings and comments service which has been standard for decades.
They should certainly be doing that but this site isn't where floating voters get their information. It matters more what's getting shared on Facebook, or even what they're talking about on Mumsnet.
All this effort put in and then we find we don't get an MI5 file in our names would be most disappointing. And here I am counting on a recommendation for an honour by George. Please don't destroy my hopes.
Don't worry about that, they have everything anybody posts anywhere stored in a great big SAN array in Utah. They even have things you type into Facebook, but think twice and delete without posting.
I am not and have never been a member, activist or employee of the Conservative Party. I am certainly not, in any official sense, a "Conservative mouthpiece".
In most cases it is up to the reader to determine whether to take my comments at face value or to regard them as ironic.
In vino veritas.
Its the attempts to spin anything and everything and the triumphalism you seem to indulge in.
And its in effect irrelevant whether you're an official Conservative mouthpiece or just imitating one for a laugh or just accidentally appearing to be what other people might think one looks like. If people think you're a Conservative mouthpiece then the image you present inevitably affects people's perceptions of the Conservative party.
RN, by comparison, for all his elegance and eloquence in support of the Conservatives does come across as his own man. Albeit one with a regrettable blind spot towards George Osborne.
ar
I don't regard Richard Nabavi as a competitor but as a comrade in arms. My admiration for him is unbounded.
You are quite right to talk of "people's perceptions of the Conservative party". It continually provides a source of both comic relief and despair.
But it is not the battleground upon which the General Election will be won or lost however much the Conservatives' political opponents would wish it to be so.
The election will be won on the performance of the incumbent government and the perceptions of competence which derive from such measures.
And it is that approach, and that alone, which unites both Richard Nabavi and myself in our mutual respect for George Osborne.
I think you're wrong on the importance of public perception of the Conservative party.
The negative image of which cuts out a significant amount of potential support even before the record of the Conservative party is examined.
Its also likely that negatives views on the Conservative image are behind anti-Conservative tactical voting.
For these reasons I would say the Conservatives were right to highlight the importance of a 'detox' strategy.
Where they went wrong was to mistake in whose eyes they needed detoxing. They chose middle class leftists when the gains were to be made among the provincial wwc. The whole detox strategy thus proved to be counter productive.
I am not and have never been a member, activist or employee of the Conservative Party. I am certainly not, in any official sense, a "Conservative mouthpiece".
In most cases it is up to the reader to determine whether to take my comments at face value or to regard them as ironic.
In vino veritas.
Its the attempts to spin anything and everything and the triumphalism you seem to indulge in.
And its in effect irrelevant whether you're an official Conservative mouthpiece or just imitating one for a laugh or just accidentally appearing to be what other people might think one looks like. If people think you're a Conservative mouthpiece then the image you present inevitably affects people's perceptions of the Conservative party.
RN, by comparison, for all his elegance and eloquence in support of the Conservatives does come across as his own man. Albeit one with a regrettable blind spot towards George Osborne.
Osborne is doing a good job as chancellor, but he has awful personal poll ratings !
Osborne's awful personal poll ratings are a great advantage to Cameron. It saves the country from seeing George as a rival and prevents the appearance of dysfunctionality and continual warring which characterised the Blair-Brown governments.
Dave is also extremely lucky in having Hague as Foreign Secretary, who must be the most generous of all in that office in allowing his PM to take praise for all triumphs and shielding him from unpopular events and policies.
The combination of the two has forced Dave's political opponents to look to Theresa May as the regicidinal threat. And all Theresa has done in this arrear is to give a few bloggers the opportunity to run the occasional unconvincing header on the subject.
I am not arguing though that Osborne has deliberately courted unpopularity for this reason but it has been useful.
As for your scenario of the talks failing, again it is obvious to anyone who actually knows anything about it that Cameron will never come back and say he has failed. He will get whatever scraps he can and dress it up as a great achievement in order to ensure an In vote in a subsequent referendum. He has already said he will never agree to a British withdrawal from the EU so unless you are claiming he was not being honest then I am afraid you are left with the scenario I present.
If the Conservatives are so desperate for the return of the relevant UKIP voters then Cameron has to go.
I used to have a nickname for UKIP - The I've-Been-Shafted-By-David-Cameron Party.
Current membership conditions: to have been expecting a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty or to have expected the institution of marriage to have been conserved as per last several thousand years or to have been expecting not have been called swivel-eyed, racist or fruitcake by the Conservative Party leader or his tennis partner.
So, Cameron has to go, but I hope he doesn't. This move to the Left has left the UK without a proper mainstream Right-wing party and when the Tory Party gets crushed at the next General Election I want the Cameroons to get all the blame.
I don't regard Richard Nabavi as a competitor but as a comrade in arms. My admiration for him is unbounded.
You are quite right to talk of "people's perceptions of the Conservative party". It continually provides a source of both comic relief and despair.
But it is not the battleground upon which the General Election will be won or lost however much the Conservatives' political opponents would wish it to be so.
The election will be won on the performance of the incumbent government and the perceptions of competence which derive from such measures.
And it is that approach, and that alone, which unites both Richard Nabavi and myself in our mutual respect for George Osborne.
I think you're wrong on the importance of public perception of the Conservative party.
The negative image of which cuts out a significant amount of potential support even before the record of the Conservative party is examined.
Its also likely that negatives views on the Conservative image are behind anti-Conservative tactical voting.
For these reasons I would say the Conservatives were right to highlight the importance of a 'detox' strategy.
Where they went wrong was to mistake in whose eyes they needed detoxing. They chose middle class leftists when the gains were to be made among the provincial wwc. The whole detox strategy thus proved to be counter productive.
ar
I am not saying that public perception of the Conservative party is unimportant, just that a winning general rarely chooses to fight a battle on the ground of his opponent's choosing.
That said, the performance of the government and its relationship with perceptions of competence is more significant and the battleground of choice. for the Tories
There is also the natural ebb and flow of government parties (the Lepo and North argument) and the global and national economic environment to take into account. In 2015, the Conservatives, albeit in coalition, will have only governed for a single term and will have broadly delivered on what they promised the electorate in 2010. The global economy will also not have reached boom times and collective memory of the 2007-9 financial crash.will still be raw.
So Cameron should not need to worry too much about perceptions of the Conservative Party as a priority problem. Still it would help to work on this over the long term and to secure sufficient party resources to pursue the necessary communications programme to back up changes in policy and presentation.
A difficult, if not critical, job but one that would be an interesting and rewarding challenge.
I think you're wrong on the importance of public perception of the Conservative party.
The negative image of which cuts out a significant amount of potential support even before the record of the Conservative party is examined.
Its also likely that negatives views on the Conservative image are behind anti-Conservative tactical voting.
For these reasons I would say the Conservatives were right to highlight the importance of a 'detox' strategy.
Where they went wrong was to mistake in whose eyes they needed detoxing. They chose middle class leftists when the gains were to be made among the provincial wwc. The whole detox strategy thus proved to be counter productive.
The reason Cameron chose White middle class liberals as his goal is that that's all he knows.
Let's look at his background:
Eton Oxford (Bullingdon) Did not get involved in local politics. Job in TV (found by his mother-in-law) Special adviser MP
He simply hasn't known or even met ordinary people, let alone ethnic minority or religious people.
SeanT article on the Telegraphs Blogs illustrated this phenomenon perfectly.
My example of this would be Cameron's strange commitment to Foreign Aid. I think it's because he knows people who work for Aid charities, who are paid because the charities they work for are large charities. Small, local, often church-based charities using unpaid volunteers are unknown to him.
On the M&S story, refusing to serve a customer buying your employer's products is surely gross misconduct and, therefore, a sackable offence. Has the company commented? This smells ever so slightly of something being made up or not reported quite right. It is also something that a lot of different people would want so much to be true - for a wide variety of reasons. If it is true, then M&S is in deep doggy-do.
I agree, it's so barmy, it can't be totally true. The Mail (I know, I know!) are reporting it as fact, along with other Supermarket responses. If it is true, then M&S better brace themselves, and look after any obviously Muslim employees, 'cos they'll get gangs of idiots targeting them, itching to get pork 'n' booze declined at the till.
It all makes sense now, it's the M&S Christmas pork 'n' booze bigot promotion! They should throw in a free copy of the Daily Mail if you guess the right till.
As I read it they're fessing up to that happening once in one store - or I think they are, but they might just have been unable to confirm it didn't happen and decided they couldn't fight the newspaper reports - but not to it being their actual policy.
The best guess at this point looks like low-level management twonkery.
I think you're wrong on the importance of public perception of the Conservative party.
The negative image of which cuts out a significant amount of potential support even before the record of the Conservative party is examined.
Its also likely that negatives views on the Conservative image are behind anti-Conservative tactical voting.
For these reasons I would say the Conservatives were right to highlight the importance of a 'detox' strategy.
Where they went wrong was to mistake in whose eyes they needed detoxing. They chose middle class leftists when the gains were to be made among the provincial wwc. The whole detox strategy thus proved to be counter productive.
The reason Cameron chose White middle class liberals as his goal is that that's all he knows.
Let's look at his background:
Eton Oxford (Bullingdon) Did not get involved in local politics. Job in TV (found by his mother-in-law) Special adviser MP
He simply hasn't known or even met ordinary people, let alone ethnic minority or religious people.
SeanT article on the Telegraphs Blogs illustrated this phenomenon perfectly.
My example of this would be Cameron's strange commitment to Foreign Aid. I think it's because he knows people who work for Aid charities, who are paid because the charities they work for are large charities. Small, local, often church-based charities using unpaid volunteers are unknown to him.
It's easy to forget how the Tories were doing before Cameron, but whole package - him, overseas aid, little windmills, being nice about the NHS - moved them to a durably higher level in the polls. You can argue that the positioning that worked then isn't sustainable now, but I don't think it makes sense to assume it's all related to his personal experience rather than poll-tested strategy.
If we ever have a European referendum. I suspect Ukip will find the campaign a massive anticlimax.
At the moment, I'd prefer us to stay in but with changes.
In 1975, I was very pro-Europe, yet even I was embarrassed by the one-sided nature of the debate. The BBC, for once, gave up all pretence of being balanced and were blatantly on our side. Dissenting voice were sniggered at. I voted against on principle but I was glad we won (I was younger then).
Comments
The Cameroons have no better advocate than RN for example nor have they ever demolished Labour's economic record as several of us here have done over the years.
And there are certainly better psepholgists at various sites than the parties have themselves.
Reminded me why I don't generally vote Lib Dem
The negative image of which cuts out a significant amount of potential support even before the record of the Conservative party is examined.
Its also likely that negatives views on the Conservative image are behind anti-Conservative tactical voting.
For these reasons I would say the Conservatives were right to highlight the importance of a 'detox' strategy.
Where they went wrong was to mistake in whose eyes they needed detoxing. They chose middle class leftists when the gains were to be made among the provincial wwc. The whole detox strategy thus proved to be counter productive.
Dave is also extremely lucky in having Hague as Foreign Secretary, who must be the most generous of all in that office in allowing his PM to take praise for all triumphs and shielding him from unpopular events and policies.
The combination of the two has forced Dave's political opponents to look to Theresa May as the regicidinal threat. And all Theresa has done in this arrear is to give a few bloggers the opportunity to run the occasional unconvincing header on the subject.
I am not arguing though that Osborne has deliberately courted unpopularity for this reason but it has been useful.
Current membership conditions: to have been expecting a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty or to have expected the institution of marriage to have been conserved as per last several thousand years or to have been expecting not have been called swivel-eyed, racist or fruitcake by the Conservative Party leader or his tennis partner.
So, Cameron has to go, but I hope he doesn't. This move to the Left has left the UK without a proper mainstream Right-wing party and when the Tory Party gets crushed at the next General Election I want the Cameroons to get all the blame.
I am not saying that public perception of the Conservative party is unimportant, just that a winning general rarely chooses to fight a battle on the ground of his opponent's choosing.
That said, the performance of the government and its relationship with perceptions of competence is more significant and the battleground of choice. for the Tories
There is also the natural ebb and flow of government parties (the Lepo and North argument) and the global and national economic environment to take into account. In 2015, the Conservatives, albeit in coalition, will have only governed for a single term and will have broadly delivered on what they promised the electorate in 2010. The global economy will also not have reached boom times and collective memory of the 2007-9 financial crash.will still be raw.
So Cameron should not need to worry too much about perceptions of the Conservative Party as a priority problem. Still it would help to work on this over the long term and to secure sufficient party resources to pursue the necessary communications programme to back up changes in policy and presentation.
A difficult, if not critical, job but one that would be an interesting and rewarding challenge.
Let's look at his background:
Eton
Oxford (Bullingdon)
Did not get involved in local politics.
Job in TV (found by his mother-in-law)
Special adviser
MP
He simply hasn't known or even met ordinary people, let alone ethnic minority or religious people.
SeanT article on the Telegraphs Blogs illustrated this phenomenon perfectly.
My example of this would be Cameron's strange commitment to Foreign Aid. I think it's because he knows people who work for Aid charities, who are paid because the charities they work for are large charities. Small, local, often church-based charities using unpaid volunteers are unknown to him.
The best guess at this point looks like low-level management twonkery.
If we ever have a European referendum. I suspect Ukip will find the campaign a massive anticlimax.
At the moment, I'd prefer us to stay in but with changes.
In 1975, I was very pro-Europe, yet even I was embarrassed by the one-sided nature of the debate. The BBC, for once, gave up all pretence of being balanced and were blatantly on our side. Dissenting voice were sniggered at. I voted against on principle but I was glad we won (I was younger then).
I can't see why it will be any different now.