The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Whilst Ed may be spectacularly crap, I still believe he is a symptom of a broken Labour Party, with nothing to say on the economy or immigration - both of which they ran exceedingly badly when last in power. A slightly less weird front man might get a hearing - but what are they going to say when they have the voters' ears? Is the absence of policies down to Ed as well? No....
The Tory record on the economy is abysmal.
Labour's problem is not their record its their toothless attack.
However that said the cost of living angle breached Osborne's bull and did - and still does - real damage to all the Tory propaganda.
It got voters to look at their own circumstances which are much worse than they'd be under another government in a recovery.
Labour cannot go on the attack on the economy because:
1. Of their own record - voters still (rightly) buy the argument as to why there's no money now i.e. Labour blew it all last time. 2. They can't say what they'd do differently. 3. Osborne is more trusted than Balls.
Given another slowdown is coming to undermine Tory numbers on the economy - I presume, or why else would Osborne try to prepare us for it, as the narrative of improvement was going ok so I doubt it was a feint on his part - I wonder if 3. Will remain the case.
2. Is key to me as there does not seem much wriggle room but people seem to want a superficial change even if they don't like what they are changing to much is what I'm getting from the polls. A 'probably won't work but worth a try' sort of thing, which if people think a recovery is taking hold they can risk.
If another slowdown is coming, particularly one from the Eurozone, then that plays to the Tories' hands: the economy will go back up the issues index with Labour not having erased their failures from last time. Voters don't necessarily do gratitude but they do remember both successes and failures.
Hmm well Osborne screwed up in the last slow down so I can;t see that being something to shout about.
An economic, international or health crisis would tend to make people rally round the government. It even worked for Brown.
I did my Ebola preparations yesterday. If it does break out then it will be pretty grim. In Leicester we have only half the intensive care beds that we need (compared with national recommendations) before we even start. We have stocked up on personal protective equipment though.
It is indeed a confusing picture but I think that Ed's speech at Conference and the failure to mention the largest issue he will have to face was something of a Rubicon for him personally and, to a lesser extent, his party. It showed that he and they were not serious about running this country and had nothing relevant to say on the subject since the deficit will inevitably dominate all other considerations.
As I said yesterday there are increasing storm clouds looming on the horizon and the days of consistent over performance by the UK in terms of growth are already behind us. By May growth will be notably slower than it is today, albeit it will still be positive.
The not insignificant risk that we are already reaching the end of a cycle of international growth without getting the deficit under £100bn should really scare our entire political class. If there is a slow down we will face the dilemma that Osborne chose to duck the last time: of serious pro cyclical cuts in spending threatening to put the economy into the sort of tail spin we saw in Greece and Portugal. In fact it will not be a dilemma, it will be an inevitability.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Nonsense. Marriage is about two people who love each other committing to that relationship for life.
Those who think it's about procreation should consider whether it ought also to be banned for women over 45, those who've had operations rendering them infertile, and the like.
Not so much a question, but why aren't the 92% of UKIP supporters who are not feeling the benefit of the recovery asking why not?
I mean could it be them?
No, its got to be the fault of those awful hard-working immigrants hasn't it?
If the coalition wants to hit UKIP's vote, why not just introduce a rule that all benefits, credits, etc. have to be renewed on the first Thursday of each month. That should reduce their vote to manageable proportions.
You're going to have to sharpen up your trolling. Your efforts so far have been uniformly dull.
Not sure what trolling is, but if it's pointing out the fear, racism and homophobia that UKIP is exploiting to gain electoral advantage then I think I'll carry on.
Any democrat must; we all know the end result of a failure to do so in the 1930s.
Farage has intentionally sought out the vote that used to go to the BNP and uses atavistic sentiments to create political advantage. Any pretence he has to respectability must be exposed on every possible occasion and in every available forum. As UKIP's policies make no economic sense his manifesto needs to be simplistic and the 'it's not your fault' line is very appealing - and appalling.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. The idea of Connservatism being a static narrow creed is a post-Thatcher effect. Her governments undoubtedly changed British society. They changed the Labour Party. Unfortunately the side effect was changing the Conservative party.
All parties change over time. Thatcher's conservative party of the 1980s was very different to Macmillan's, and his very different from Baldwin's.
The Labour Party also underwent similar changes, although there was a sudden step-change in the mid-1990s.
I don't disagree: all parties change. Not quite what I was saying though.
On topic though, if 90% of UKIP voters are not feeling recovery what can be done? Digging down, what percentage are economically inactive so realistically will not feel it one way or the other?
I’m not at all surprised to see that 90% of UKIP voters are not feeling “recovery”! The only improvement I’m aware of is a small fall in the price of petrol. Yes my pension has risen but that was happening anyway. And I know that my former colleagues in the NHS haven’t had a rise for a long time. “My” GP is tightening up on services too and it’s taking longer to get a routine hospital appointment. Prices in the shops have risen and are still rising. My grandchildren tell me that it’s not been easy to get a job, and the one who is a teacher is leaving as soon as she can; she can’t stand the continual micro management from the Dept of Education.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way hips as to be simply a te first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. Thathe principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
I imagine that would depend on how one defines what marriage is and is for, and how it is to be conducted, things governments have always interferred with. If people don't like the current way if interpreting it,or that under their definitions the current way is not proper, they can continue to believe that just fine, secure that whatever the law says they know the truth. I disagree with them, but nothing is to stop them believing that so no need to worry.
From BBC ticker (no story yet, just this line): "The Tory party is to politics what HMV is to music: "It's defunct," says UKIP's Douglas Carswell"
Hasn't HMV reported an improvement in performance recently?
If it was so defunct, why did Carswell join it? And how remarkable he suddenly realised, as his seat was under threat and UKIP's polling was at an all time high, that this was this case.
This is the flip side of the coin to the establishment parties claiming UKIP's just bad, and people backing it are 'doing voting wrong'.
Yes indeed. I see Carswell has the passion of the converted right now, even though if he is so certain of the defunct nature of the party he was still arguing for a couple of months ago, he must have been a bloody idiot not to have seen it then.
Mr. Foxinsox, reminds me of the BBC's piece on the evening news. First 5-10 minutes was about a 'leaked' e-mail from a couple of doctors criticising the screening, and there was a single sentence at the end suggesting the majority of doctors supported it. Utterly skewed reporting.
Anyway, let's hope it stays a hypothetical matter.
BTW the 64% of UKIP supporters who prefer Cameron to Miliband tells us what the Tory strategy will be in the run up to May and I'm still betting on 2 UKIP MP's; Carswell and Farage.
Whilst Ed may be spectacularly crap, I still believe he is a symptom of a broken Labour Party, with nothing to say on the economy or immigration - both of which they ran exceedingly badly when last in power. A slightly less weird front man might get a hearing - but what are they going to say when they have the voters' ears? Is the absence of policies down to Ed as well? No....
The Tory record on the economy is abysmal.
Labour's problem is not their record its their toothless attack.
However that said the cost of living angle breached Osborne's bull and did - and still does - real damage to all the Tory propaganda.
It got voters to look at their own circumstances which are much worse than they'd be under another government in a recovery.
Labour cannot go on the attack on the economy because:
1. Of their own record - voters still (rightly) buy the argument as to why there's no money now i.e. Labour blew it all last time. 2. They can't say what they'd do differently. 3. Osborne is more trusted than Balls.
Given another slowdown is coming to undermine Tory numbers on the economy - I presume, or why else would Osborne try to prepare us for it, as the narrative of improvement was going ok so I doubt it was a feint on his part - I wonder if 3. Will remain the case.
2. Is key to me as there does not seem much wriggle room but people seem to want a superficial change even if they don't like what they are changing to much is what I'm getting from the polls. A 'probably won't work but worth a try' sort of thing, which if people think a recovery is taking hold they can risk.
If another slowdown is coming, particularly one from the Eurozone, then that plays to the Tories' hands: the economy will go back up the issues index with Labour not having erased their failures from last time. Voters don't necessarily do gratitude but they do remember both successes and failures.
Or would they think the Tories have shown they cannot fix it either - blame all failures on outside factors eventually all your successes are attributed to them too- and so why not a change to those who say they be less harsh. Would probably be wrong but there's little risk if our rises and falls are beyond our control.
Storms at sea are beyond our control but how a captain sets his course and how he handles his vessel are not, and he has to accept the consequences for those decisions.
A very interesting thread from Mike, full of the complexities of the current landscape. Different people of different persuasions will cling onto whatever piece of flotsam they can find in the torrent. For me, two salient points stand out.
1. 7 months is a long, long, time in politics
2. In answer to Mike's question: 'Will at the end of the day people vote for a party if they view the leader in such a negative light?' No. They never have in the past, and I don't believe they will in the future.
It is indeed a confusing picture but I think that Ed's speech at Conference and the failure to mention the largest issue he will have to face was something of a Rubicon for him personally and, to a lesser extent, his party. It showed that he and they were not serious about running this country and had nothing relevant to say on the subject since the deficit will inevitably dominate all other considerations.
As I said yesterday there are increasing storm clouds looming on the horizon and the days of consistent over performance by the UK in terms of growth are already behind us. By May growth will be notably slower than it is today, albeit it will still be positive.
The not insignificant risk that we are already reaching the end of a cycle of international growth without getting the deficit under £100bn should really scare our entire political class. If there is a slow down we will face the dilemma that Osborne chose to duck the last time: of serious pro cyclical cuts in spending threatening to put the economy into the sort of tail spin we saw in Greece and Portugal. In fact it will not be a dilemma, it will be an inevitability.
I agree. The Eurozone is tipping back into recession. The stockmarket is at its lowest for a year.
If we cannot fix the deficit now, then we face some major retrenchment in a couple of years time.
Want to pass laws to prevent sexting, want to make it a crime for third parties to view sext sent by teenagers to other teenagers. Warn teenagers about sending texts to complete strangers.
If another slowdown is coming, particularly one from the Eurozone, then that plays to the Tories' hands: the economy will go back up the issues index with Labour not having erased their failures from last time. Voters don't necessarily do gratitude but they do remember both successes and failures.
Or would they think the Tories have shown they cannot fix it either - blame all failures on outside factors eventually all your successes are attributed to them too- and so why not a change to those who say they be less harsh. Would probably be wrong but there's little risk if our rises and falls are beyond our control.
1. The "great economic recovery" hasn't happened for most people. And even the paper recicvery has stopped - all UK measures bar construction are down and Osborne has the cheek to try and claim its just the UK 2. Tories proposal for 2015 - we need savage austerity to pay down the debt. That the debt is 44% higher than when they started even after austerity is a millstone that Labour should have hung round their necks had they not been inept 3. The reality is there is no obvious solution to the collapse of the West's economic ponzi scheme. They keep drawing red lines where they will raise interest rates, we cross the red line, they redraw. And Europe cuts rates to negative. Rates can't go up - the banks are zombies kept alive by zero interest rates and money printing - the multiples of global GDP derivative exposure they have is why rates can't go up.
This is beyond party politics - the economic system is broken. And when you reach this kind of crisistge solutions are often radical, aren't they Marine le Pen?
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Wow! You've said some things I've disagreed with on this forum, but none so utterly cretinous.
How can you even compare gay relationships to marriage when there are pitifully few children involved? What bizarre succession policy do have in mind? Mass immigration, I presume? Yet you disingenuously do not mention it, despite it having risen to the top of the political agenda this week.
To put it in simple terms that perhaps you can understand: when Blair abolished Clause 4 the nationalised industries had gone and the communist world had collapsed; when Cameron undermined marriage it was still producing children as successfully as it had always done and chimed neatly with his Big Society mantra (whaterever happened to that, incidentally?).
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
An economic, international or health crisis would tend to make people rally round the government. It even worked for Brown.
I did my Ebola preparations yesterday. If it does break out then it will be pretty grim. In Leicester we have only half the intensive care beds that we need (compared with national recommendations) before we even start. We have stocked up on personal protective equipment though.
Not so sure in this case Doc F.
Yet another Euro crisis, Osborne makes noises about how UK is keeping out of it and Farage sits on the sidelines saying see told you we shouldn't be in it etc. Cameron's keeping us tied to a corpse.
If it was so defunct, why did Carswell join it? And how remarkable he suddenly realised, as his seat was under threat and UKIP's polling was at an all time high, that this was this case.
Carswell looked incredibly uncomfortable when asked to support Farage's views.
Not so much a question, but why aren't the 92% of UKIP supporters who are not feeling the benefit of the recovery asking why not?
I mean could it be them?
No, its got to be the fault of those awful hard-working immigrants hasn't it?
If the coalition wants to hit UKIP's vote, why not just introduce a rule that all benefits, credits, etc. have to be renewed on the first Thursday of each month. That should reduce their vote to manageable proportions.
You're going to have to sharpen up your trolling. Your efforts so far have been uniformly dull.
Not sure what trolling is, but if it's pointing out the fear, racism and homophobia that UKIP is exploiting to gain electoral advantage then I think I'll carry on.
Any democrat must; we all know the end result of a failure to do so in the 1930s.
Farage has intentionally sought out the vote that used to go to the BNP and uses atavistic sentiments to create political advantage. Any pretence he has to respectability must be exposed on every possible occasion and in every available forum. As UKIP's policies make no economic sense his manifesto needs to be simplistic and the 'it's not your fault' line is very appealing - and appalling.
I love your claim to be a "democrat". On one view 26% of the electorate want to vote for Farage. (A bit more than "the vote that used to go to the BNP", incidentally). Therefore an ubermensch like you has to rise up and tell the proles how wrong they are. Do you think it would be prudent to suspend their right to vote for say five or ten years, till they come to their senses?
Farage has, in case you hadn't noticed, got real MPs on his side now. Your tedious posts are years past their sell-by date.
Want to pass laws to prevent sexting, want to make it a crime for third parties to view sext sent by teenagers to other teenagers. Warn teenagers about sending texts to complete strangers.
Then they copy teenage behaviour...
Brooks Newmark is due to attend a non-political consituency function on Friday. I wonder ......
Whilst Ed may be spectacularly crap, I still believe he is a symptom of a broken Labour Party, with nothing to say on the economy or immigration - both of which they ran exceedingly badly when last in power. A slightly less weird front man might get a hearing - but what are they going to say when they have the voters' ears? Is the absence of policies down to Ed as well? No....
The Tory record on the economy is abysmal.
Labour's problem is not their record its their toothless attack.
However that said the costcovery.
sted than Balls.
Given
If anothures.
Or would they thiney be less harsh. Would probably be wrong but there's little risk if our rises and falls are beyond our control.
Storms at sea are beyond our control but how a captain sets his course and how he handles his vessel are not, and he has to accept the consequences for those decisions.
But governments don't. Any setback is blamed on outside events not how they set the course, which was correct at the time, of course, and will prove true in time as well. Even when the captain changes course, they don't acknowledge they were just flat out wrong even if they were, just that they needed to adjust, or the person supplying the coordinates was wrong, not them, but that ultimately they were surely right somehow.
Leaving the metaphor aside for a second, I don't think people consider things like this rationally, they go with how they feel, and they may well feel that Labour are not ready to be trusted on the economy again, their figures on that continue to be poor. But in a recovery people may feel secure enough to risk it if they dislike the current lot enough, and if there is another setback to the recovery then, even if they are not to blame, I think it more likely that people would risk even discredited Labour given the current crop have failed in the public estimation.
I don't think the Tories can be sure of reward either direct or passive on the economy. That Labour's polling looks like winning them the election despite the confused figures listed in the header says to me that even if they deserve a win and the alternative would be a disaster, the Tories could well lose just because people don't like them and they don't like even the level of cuts we have had. Or rather, enough people who don't like both have abandoned them, and even if Labour are not picking up all of those people, or even most of them, the Tories are undercut the most. May well be unfair, but them's the breaks.
2. Tories proposal for 2015 - we need savage austerity to pay down the debt. That the debt is 44% higher than when they started even after austerity is a millstone that Labour should have hung round their necks had they not been inept
And Labour would have hung that millstone how? By saying the Tories should have cut further, faster? See your problem there?
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. The idea of Connservatism being a static narrow creed is a post-Thatcher effect. Her governments undoubtedly changed British society. They changed the Labour Party. Unfortunately the side effect was changing the Conservative party.
All parties change over time. Thatcher's conservative party of the 1980s was very different to Macmillan's, and his very different from Baldwin's.
The Labour Party also underwent similar changes, although there was a sudden step-change in the mid-1990s.
I don't disagree: all parties change. Not quite what I was saying though.
On topic though, if 90% of UKIP voters are not feeling recovery what can be done? Digging down, what percentage are economically inactive so realistically will not feel it one way or the other?
I’m not at all surprised to see that 90% of UKIP voters are not feeling “recovery”! The only improvement I’m aware of is a small fall in the price of petrol. Yes my pension has risen but that was happening anyway. And I know that my former colleagues in the NHS haven’t had a rise for a long time. “My” GP is tightening up on services too and it’s taking longer to get a routine hospital appointment. Prices in the shops have risen and are still rising. My grandchildren tell me that it’s not been easy to get a job, and the one who is a teacher is leaving as soon as she can; she can’t stand the continual micro management from the Dept of Education.
Health service catches up with life for everyone else shock.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
BTW the 64% of UKIP supporters who prefer Cameron to Miliband tells us what the Tory strategy will be in the run up to May and I'm still betting on 2 UKIP MP's; Carswell and Farage.
I prefer tinned pears, to tinned peaches. I buy fresh fruit.
Unfortunately, most of our politicians and countrymen are too wedded to the infallibility of the so called "free market" to realise that it is as insane as "communism" was. Systems of finance are never true or false, only advantageous.
BTW the 64% of UKIP supporters who prefer Cameron to Miliband tells us what the Tory strategy will be in the run up to May and I'm still betting on 2 UKIP MP's; Carswell and Farage.
Well, I'd prefer getting shot to being stabbed to death.
Doesn't mean I'm going to volunteer to go in front of a firing squad, does it?
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too soon to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institution there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
.
You will have to forgive me my confusion, but I don't quite follow how the gay marriage issue attacks one group at the expense of another. It had the backing of public opinion, so politically it cannot be total madness, but it didn't damage one demographic in favour of another, even if it did anger a significant proportion the Tory base. However angry they are (or were, given many may not be Tories any more), they were not harmed by it. If people don't think gay marriage can or should be 'true' marriage, they can just add an * to the phrase in their heads secure that they are right, and just let the rest of us delude ourselves. Everyone's happy then.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Well quite. It was desperately revealing straw-clutching at the time, anyone with eyes and bothered to look could see he's *weird*. Having him as LotO for 4yrs has just allowed most of the population to discover it for themselves.
Some don't care as they'd never vote any other way, some may find his intellectualism/fondness for solving Rubic's Cube puzzles a point in his favour. The rest of us just think WTF have you done? It's the personification of political self-harm. That all the Tories on here were delighted at Labour's IDS choice should've been enough.
I'm mildly amused the next election may hinge on whether Ed Miliband is very crap, or so incredibly crap the nation will unite in revulsion at his crapness and vote for someone they aren't very fond of but who does at least appear to be less crap.
The clue was there for Labour 4 years or so ago. The slogan 'Ed speaks human' should've been a sign. When the best slogan that can be managed for a politician is affirming his capacity to communicate with his own species it's not a great omen.
If another slowdown is coming, particularly one from the Eurozone, then that plays to the Tories' hands: the economy will go back up the issues index with Labour not having erased their failures from last time. Voters don't necessarily do gratitude but they do remember both successes and failures.
Or would they think the Tories have shown they cannot fix it either - blame all failures on outside factors eventually all your successes are attributed to them too- and so why not a change to those who say they be less harsh. Would probably be wrong but there's little risk if our rises and falls are beyond our control.
1. The "great economic recovery" hasn't happened for most people. And even the paper recicvery has stopped - all UK measures bar construction are down and Osborne has the cheek to try and claim its just the UK 2. Tories proposal for 2015 - we need savage austerity to pay down the debt. That the debt is 44% higher than when they started even after austerity is a millstone that Labour should have hung round their necks had they not been inept 3. The reality is there is no obvious solution to the collapse of the West's economic ponzi scheme. They keep drawing red lines where they will raise interest rates, we cross the red line, they redraw. And Europe cuts rates to negative. Rates can't go up - the banks are zombies kept alive by zero interest rates and money printing - the multiples of global GDP derivative exposure they have is why rates can't go up.
This is beyond party politics - the economic system is broken. And when you reach this kind of crisistge solutions are often radical, aren't they Marine le Pen?
I'll give you 1., but I cannot accept 2. The debt was always going to be higher no matter who took over because the deficit even under Tory plans would only just have been eliminated, so necessary austerity from either side was not going to prevent some massive increases in the debt. So Labour cannot hand it around Tory necks. They can argue about incompetence and the extent of the rise, but saying under their plans it would have been 34% higher not 44% or whatever is a much harder argument to make.
3.Yeah, you're probably right. From what I can gather we're totally screwed, just kicking the can down the road and the sorts of systemic changes that would be needed to even attempt to address our problems are politically impossible to make as any politician would be eviscerated for attempting them even if they had the guts.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
If the price of doing something manifestly right by the people of this country is the death of the Tory party, then so be it.
The party is merely a vehicle for good governance of our great nation. It has no right to exist in its own right.
The point is that very few people cared
I was at Brighton university in 2010-1, possibly the lgbt rights capital of the country. Gay marriage wasn't mentioned once as a concern.
Yup gay marriage was issue 100+ on voters concerns and yet Cameron chose to spend his political capital here rather than on issues 4 5 or 6. It just fed the theme of an out of touch political class.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Wow! You've said some things I've disagreed with on this forum, but none so utterly cretinous.
How can you even compare gay relationships to marriage when there are pitifully few children involved? What bizarre succession policy do have in mind? Mass immigration, I presume? Yet you disingenuously do not mention it, despite it having risen to the top of the political agenda this week.
To put it in simple terms that perhaps you can understand: when Blair abolished Clause 4 the nationalised industries had gone and the communist world had collapsed; when Cameron undermined marriage it was still producing children as successfully as it had always done and chimed neatly with his Big Society mantra (whaterever happened to that, incidentally?).
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
And I don't care how "right" you think it is.
This just shows how little you know about marriage and relationships - and why they are important.
The modern development and concept of state regulated marriage is all about property and ownership and nothing to do with child production. It was dressed up in all different forms but at the heart was the need/desire of the state to regulate property and ownership issues.
In practical terms it is about the financial benefits that flow from it.
In emotional terms it is about standing up and making a public declaration of your commitment to another person.
Having different, discriminatory forms of official relationship recognition ceremonies (and the benefits/responsibilities that flow from them) was a fudge created by Labour and was never satisfactory, just or equal.
There can be no justification for discrimination when it comes to providing official recognition of the love between two consenting adults. And full equality when it comes to marriage is an appropriate and proper thing for a modern society to embrace.
The only cretinous comments I can see are those made by people who use their bigotry to deny all citizens equality - and I am very sorry that those people have to live with such hatred in their lives.
@Plato What the country needs is someone who looks the part, and can PR and bluff his way through problems, while never changing the fundamental thinking that got us into this position? You may be right, but it is an indictment of what politics has become. We might as well go watch Britain's got strictly X factor baking talent.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
Agree with your sentiment entirely. This authoritarian nanny state rubbish is utterly out of hand.
But Labour must be relying on the short term memory of the electorate to press the hyperbole button quite as recklessly as you do in this post. Plenty of examples littering your own record of similar nonsense.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Alanbrooke, the “shock” is that this is happening and the Government keeps insisting that everything’s getting better.
No wonder Kippers, for many of whom life isn’t what it was when they were young, don’t feel any recovery.
Life has been difficult for most of this century for ordinary people in the private sector, this isn't just a 2010 issue. Wages were stagnant under Blair and Trades Unions just shut up and took the money. Hardly a just a coalition issue.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Wow! You've said some things I've disagreed with on this forum, but none so utterly cretinous.
How can you even compare gay relationships to marriage when there are pitifully few children involved? What bizarre succession policy do have in mind? Mass immigration, I presume? Yet you disingenuously do not mention it, despite it having risen to the top of the political agenda this week.
To put it in simple terms that perhaps you can understand: when Blair abolished Clause 4 the nationalised industries had gone and the communist world had collapsed; when Cameron undermined marriage it was still producing children as successfully as it had always done and chimed neatly with his Big Society mantra (whaterever happened to that, incidentally?).
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
And I don't care how "right" you think it is.
Do you seriously believe that enabling gay couples to marry rather than form a civil partnership is going to have the slightest consequence for the birth rate? And you called my post cretinous.
A very interesting thread from Mike, full of the complexities of the current landscape. Different people of different persuasions will cling onto whatever piece of flotsam they can find in the torrent. For me, two salient points stand out.
1. 7 months is a long, long, time in politics
2. In answer to Mike's question: 'Will at the end of the day people vote for a party if they view the leader in such a negative light?' No. They never have in the past, and I don't believe they will in the future.
I'm agnostic on this, but I've found a paper by John Curtice which concludes:
"Parliamentary elections continue then to be very different from presidential contests, even when they are dominated by two parties. In such elections voters still primarily make a judgement about the collective merits of the parties as a whole rather than their leaders in particular" www.crest.ox.ac.uk/p110.doc
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
And by the way, Hague, IDS and Howard all lurched right and lost. Cameron has this spot on.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
Probably, but this doesn't seem populist. And as you say, how will it be done. It's like attaching conditions to planning or licensing consent; they have to be reasonable, proportional, achievable - things that don't need to apply to political ideas sometimes. Honestly, I don't mind Cameron but he either supports or permits in his ministers a lot of niggling interference and attempts to control people that do get my back up.
Edit: I don't think my irritation at such minor issues being done is equivalent to my support of the gay marriage change, but given its the same argument some opponents to that policy use, I feel I should acknowledge that here just in case I am suffering from acute hypocrisy.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
If the price of doing something manifestly right by the people of this country is the death of the Tory party, then so be it.
The party is merely a vehicle for good governance of our great nation. It has no right to exist in its own right.
The point is that very few people cared
I was at Brighton university in 2010-1, possibly the lgbt rights capital of the country. Gay marriage wasn't mentioned once as a concern.
Many people, despite not liking the EU at all, do not raise it as a key issue for them (Immigration, of course linked to the EU, is a different story) all the time, but would nevertheless be thrilled at the chance to vote on leaving it as soon as possible (I would probably vote to stay in, but we should have had a vote on it already, and as soon as possible). Many people, like myself, would not have been marching in the streets angry at the failure to approve gay marriage, but would and were still very supportive that it was done.
People care about things at different levels. Gay Marriage was hardly a priority even for most of those who supported it, but it was still supported by a majority and there is plenty of time in a parliament to do the smaller things.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Wow! You've said some things I've disagreed with on this forum, but none so utterly cretinous.
How can you even compare gay relationships to marriage when there are pitifully few children involved? What bizarre succession policy do have in mind? Mass immigration, I presume? Yet you disingenuously do not mention it, despite it having risen to the top of the political agenda this week.
To put it in simple terms that perhaps you can understand: when Blair abolished Clause 4 the nationalised industries had gone and the communist world had collapsed; when Cameron undermined marriage it was still producing children as successfully as it had always done and chimed neatly with his Big Society mantra (whaterever happened to that, incidentally?).
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
And I don't care how "right" you think it is.
Do you seriously believe that enabling gay couples to marry rather than form a civil partnership is going to have the slightest consequence for the birth rate? And you called my post cretinous.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
piffle.
Blair fought on the basis his left wing had nowhere else to go so he could bank the votes and court the centre.
Cameron and Miliband have tried to repeat the trick but now voters do have a choice and are using it. Neither Cameron or Miliband will get enough votes to win in their own right.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
No, I have 3 children and my wife assures me that I played a significant part in all of them coming into this world. My marriage has not been undermined, threatened or even diminished by the fact that others can now share the same institution.
These views are really bizarre. Are you really suggesting that the existence of gay marriage is somehow going to reduce the birth rate from what it would be otherwise? Maybe you are the one in need of sex education.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
And by the way, Hague, IDS and Howard all lurched right and lost. Cameron has this spot on.
If you call not winning an election spot on so be it, the Conservative party has certainly lost its hunger for power over the years.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Nonsense. Marriage is about two people who love each other committing to that relationship for life.
Those who think it's about procreation should consider whether it ought also to be banned for women over 45, those who've had operations rendering them infertile, and the like.
Not that I care, but fringe counter-examples like that don't really alter the anthropological background which is that marriage in all societies and all languages has always meant the kind of heterosexual relationship which produces legitimate offspring. (This is circular, because "legitimate" means "offspring of married parents" but don't blame me, blame Ugg the caveman who invented the system). So calling gay marriage, marriage is a bit like legislating that all cats are dogs: it don't make it so. And I am pretty certain that if I were gay I would find the concept of gay marriage kitsch, naff, patronising and Uncle Tom-ish.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
What is it about people who declare religious belief that makes them so intolerant?
As for marriage being solely for the production of children, where does that leave people who are unable to have children or use contraception? Should they be banned from marriage.
Basing the way you run your life on a badly translated series of poorly remembered stories does not put you on the high moral ground.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
My reading of history may be entirely wrong, but I feel Mr Cameron is more akin to an old-world Tory than many currently believe - at least those who loved Mrs T.
She was a force of nature and what the country needed back then, but I never felt she was the epitome of Conservatism. Those who liked her brutishness have attempted to apply it to everything else in her name.
IMO In her earlier years, she was a more complex character than she's given credit for. Becoming a deposed back-seat driver was the worst way to go. It began to make Heath's Longest Sulk In History look dignified. I was totally baffled by what she did with John Major at at the time, but her instincts were right - he was a good man. Shame the Party were a mess in her wake/she was unwilling to stay in her professional coffin. Surely this is why Mr Major hasn't repeated this behaviour...
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. The idea of Connservatism being a static narrow creed is a post-Thatcher effect. Her governments undoubtedly changed British society. They changed the Labour Party. Unfortunately the side effect was changing the Conservative party.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
No, I have 3 children and my wife assures me that I played a significant part in all of them coming into this world. My marriage has not been undermined, threatened or even diminished by the fact that others can now share the same institution.
These views are really bizarre. Are you really suggesting that the existence of gay marriage is somehow going to reduce the birth rate from what it would be otherwise? Maybe you are the one in need of sex education.
Well, how are people supposed to create more babies (within wedlock of course) if the thought of gay people, like many straight people who may marry for reasons other than children, keeps popping up in their heads? Stands to reason.
In all seriousness marriage means different things to different people. For some, and historically many, it will be at least in part sacred, for others it will be about shared rights and the ultimate expression of their relationship with no desire to have kids at all, for others it may purely be that they think it the best model to raise children (and while plenty of people get by just fine in 'broken' homes, strong family units seem a good thing). Others may feel able to offer these things in a relationship without the need to get married. Given all this disparity, it seems reasonable to let as many people who wish to have the option do so, as it doesn't impact on the reasons for marriage or the personal definitions of marriage of anyone else.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
It's like women who marry a man because they fell in love with him, then spend the next 20yrs trying to change him into something else - and wonder why he isn't happy about it.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
What they promised and what they delivered.
If the issue bothers 20,000 voters nationwide that's all it bothers.
I think you will find that the issue that conservative voters went to bed in 2010 with an apparently conservative, pro-British Tory leader – and woke up in the morning to find it was all just thick make-up, and that he was a fervent Europhile, a politically correct sexual revolutionary and a Green fanatic." bothers several zeroes more than 20,000 people.
You've broadened your ground somewhat. I directed my first reply to your original comment.
Not really, the original post illustrated the two cardinal deceptions that sum Dave & co up. The promise to have a referendum on Lisbon which was ratted on, and the sneaky issuing a conservative equalities document three days before the election suggesting civil partnerships may be renamed as marriages, which was not in the manifesto and would have lost them a good number of votes if it was.
I think 20,000 is a good number! (At least, it's never done me any harm that I know of.)
You've also forgotten that Cameron is leading a coalition government, and that he was chosen as his Party's leader precisely because he was the "heir to Blair". Your "apparently" says a lot: he only seemed that way to diehards who projected on to him qualities and beliefs he didn't have and didn't pretend to have.
I think that Cameron was always explicitly a non-ideologue, green leaning, socially liberal leader with a reforming and modernising agenda for the Conservative party. This was as true of him as a candidate, and why the party chose him after the leaderships of Haig, IDS and Howard. The Tory party chose him with their eyes open.
The only deception was self deception by those who hoped he would be different in power.
Not so much a question, but why aren't the 92% of UKIP supporters who are not feeling the benefit of the recovery asking why not?
I mean could it be them?
No, its got to be the fault of those awful hard-working immigrants hasn't it?
If the coalition wants to hit UKIP's vote, why not just introduce a rule that all benefits, credits, etc. have to be renewed on the first Thursday of each month. That should reduce their vote to manageable proportions.
You're going to have to sharpen up your trolling. Your efforts so far have been uniformly dull.
Not sure what trolling is, but if it's pointing out the fear, racism and homophobia that UKIP is exploiting to gain electoral advantage then I think I'll carry on.
Any democrat must; we all know the end result of a failure to do so in the 1930s.
Farage has intentionally sought out the vote that used to go to the BNP and uses atavistic sentiments to create political advantage. Any pretence he has to respectability must be exposed on every possible occasion and in every available forum. As UKIP's policies make no economic sense his manifesto needs to be simplistic and the 'it's not your fault' line is very appealing - and appalling.
How is that different from Labour. Their policies make no economic sense and it´s alla bout we hate the Tories. And the NHS. Oh yes, and they project hatred towards the indigenous majority.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Morning loser. Hangover troubling you? Bit early to be trolling otherwise.
Alanbrooke, the “shock” is that this is happening and the Government keeps insisting that everything’s getting better.
No wonder Kippers, for many of whom life isn’t what it was when they were young, don’t feel any recovery.
Life has been difficult for most of this century for ordinary people in the private sector, this isn't just a 2010 issue. Wages were stagnant under Blair and Trades Unions just shut up and took the money. Hardly a just a coalition issue.
Without checking, I don’t think that’s entirely the case. What did happen under both Major and Blair was an enormous explosion in “offered” credit and, as a consequence an increase in household debt. The back end of the last century was, generally, a time of high, or high-ish inflation and the belief grew, and was fostered, that inflation was a means of paying off debt. Then it all crashed and “ordinary hard-working people” feel cautious.
The really frightening potential parallel is with post-Weimar Germany!
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
They should be locked up for being stupid , rather than getting out and seeing it for real.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
It's too early to say that neither appears capable of doing so. There are easily-painted scenarios that could see either produce a majority. Whether they'll come about is another matter but all remains to play for.
Your point about only being able to win power at the centre if you can hold on to your core vote is, however, spot on.
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
They should be locked up for being stupid , rather than getting out and seeing it for real.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Morning loser. Hangover troubling you? Bit early to be trolling otherwise.
LOL, our resident cockroach comes out from under his rock. You found a brain cell to match your one yet.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damagn made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Thcounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agtial building block of society.
ained.
Nonsense. Marriage is about two people who love each other committing to that relationship for life.
Those who think it's about procreation should consider whether it ought also to be banned for women over 45, those who've had operations rendering them infertile, and the like.
Not that I care, but fringe counter-examples like that don't really alter the anthropological background which is that marriage in all societies and all languages has always meant the kind of heterosexual relationship which produces legitimate offspring. (This is circular, because "legitimate" means "offspring of married parents" but don't blame me, blame Ugg the caveman who invented the system). So calling gay marriage, marriage is a bit like legislating that all cats are dogs: it don't make it so.
Sure it does. We redefine terms all the time, and what is needed for a marriage to be 'proper' as well, even if altering the sexes permitted to do so is a bigger change. In any case, it's just broadening what it means. So there's the umbrella of marriage, and beneath that we can have 'traditional marriage' for those who only wish to focus on procreational aspects, and 'other marriage' for people who marry for other reasons. We can refer to the umbrella term for legal purposes, and everyone else is free to define their type as the one true type as much as they want, like sects of the same religion. To tie it in to your cats and dogs example, legal marriage, which governments have always interfered with, can be 'mammals', and then we can subdivide down.
You also seem to ignore those people who marry but are unable to conceive despite being heterosexual, and in this day and age may be fully aware of that fact before they marry, or those who just don't want kids, and are telling these hetero couples they are not proper marriages either, but we'll let that go for now I guess.
"In recent years the three older parties have together turned politics into a ghetto for the liberal metropolitan elite – a space from which most of the British public is ruthlessly excluded.
All back Britain’s prohibitively expensive and anti-democratic subservience to the European Union, all are signed up to an energy policy that drives bills ever higher and all back continued enormous increases in spending on foreign aid.
In short, all have fallen prey to the conceit of being generous with other people’s money."
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Nitwit Nat Loser.
Shouldn't you be sulking somewhere like your friend in Sweden?
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
.
You will have to forgive me my confusion, but I don't quite follow how the gay marriage issue attacks one group at the expense of another. It had the backing of public opinion, so politically it cannot be total madness, but it didn't damage one demographic in favour of another, even if it did anger a significant proportion the Tory base. However angry they are (or were, given many may not be Tories any more), they were not harmed by it. If people don't think gay marriage can or should be 'true' marriage, they can just add an * to the phrase in their heads secure that they are right, and just let the rest of us delude ourselves. Everyone's happy then.
I think an award for ignoring the point is due to you.
Completely ignoring succession policy for the "group"; completely ignoring religious institutions, of which there are many; ignoring the fact that voluntary groups will have to take over the running of services hitherto provided by the state.
You remind be of the Labour hierarchy when the Bengalis of Tower Hamlets decided to dispense with their services.
Or Cameron when social conservatives decided to dispense with his.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
piffle.
Blair fought on the basis his left wing had nowhere else to go so he could bank the votes and court the centre.
Cameron and Miliband have tried to repeat the trick but now voters do have a choice and are using it. Neither Cameron or Miliband will get enough votes to win in their own right.
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
They should be locked up for being stupid , rather than getting out and seeing it for real.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Morning loser. Hangover troubling you? Bit early to be trolling otherwise.
LOL, our resident cockroach comes out from under his rock. You found a brain cell to match your one yet.
LOL = loser opines loudly. And about as accurately as your predictions of the referendum result.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
It's too early to say that neither appears capable of doing so. There are easily-painted scenarios that could see either produce a majority. Whether they'll come about is another matter but all remains to play for.
Your point about only being able to win power at the centre if you can hold on to your core vote is, however, spot on.
Well as you say David it's still early days but at this point it's hard to see much changing.
Cameron struggles to manage a broad church and has been losing members, Miliband can't motivate and I suspect large numbers of Labour voters will just sit at home.
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
They should be locked up for being stupid , rather than getting out and seeing it for real.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Morning loser. Hangover troubling you? Bit early to be trolling otherwise.
LOL, our resident cockroach comes out from under his rock. You found a brain cell to match your one yet.
LOL = loser opines loudly. And about as accurately as your predictions of the referendum result.
Alanbrooke By election 2005 post Iraq Blair was clearly losing votes and seats to the LDs and Respect on his left, Labour won 35% in 2005 a drop of over 5% from 2001
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Do you have to come on here just to be so rude? His point about homophobia was perfectly reasonable and did not warrant such a foul-mouthed response from you. This site is normally a great online debating chamber, free from the sort of trolling that fills other places.
Flame me now if you like too but try and be civilised on here for everyone's sake.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
[…]
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
And by the way, Hague, IDS and Howard all lurched right and lost. Cameron has this spot on.
Audrey times have changed or are you still living in a time warp.
All those leaders from the early 90`s lived through an era of wage growth. If you think Cameron has this spot on , I am sure you said the same in 2010.
You could be correct as in 92 in the US election with Ross Perot letting the centrist candidate in. However from your point of you, it could be the wrong one in the UK , this time.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Liberal bigotry is the only bigotry allowed on the media.
We´re back to the Mandie-Campbell school of politics. Anyone who disagrees with a "progressive" (read pet project for the metropolitan elite) is a bigot/racist/-"phobe", etc The true intention is of course to shut down debate.
Luckily it´s overuse has led to ever decreasing returns on its use.
I do notice no one is claiming REd is a bigot for wanting immigrants to contribute before taking out benefits. Probably because no one believes him. Just imagine had Cameron or Farage said similar.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
Unfortunately there is a trend of thought that using a particular medium for something imbues the action with special menace and evil. Hence hysteria about many things taking place on or through the internet which may well be terrible, but they are no more terrible than if they took place over the phone for example, and other things may not even be wrong in person but are seen as sinister if done some other way.
The test for Cameron is whether he can gain more votes in the centre than he is going to lose on the fringes to UKIP. I personally believe that UKIP has the ability to detoxify the Tories better than anything else but I accept this is guided by my own personal preferences.
What is undeniable is that Cameron is having some success in this approach to date. The Tories are 5 or 6% down on 2010 despite UKIP being 12-15% up. The Survation poll was an extreme example of this but there is no doubt the Tories have gained votes from elsewhere to compensate for at least some of those lost to UKIP.
Whether this proves to be an election winning strategy is of course much more uncertain. The consolidation of the left on the collapse of the Lib Dems is a major problem for him and he runs the risk of suffering the same problems Labour had in the 80s and early 90s. On the other hand there is the Ed factor. All to play for but those wailing in the wilderness or claiming Cameron is not what he never claimed to be should at least understand the game he is playing.
(I use Cameron as the simple exemplar of this but there is no doubt much of the intellectual heft and planning come from Osborne.)
"But the Conservative message soon changed to the familiar yet increasingly bizarre claim that Ukip’s success means Ed Miliband is likely to win the next election. The claim was propagated by Tory chairman Grant Shapps, a man so devoid of genuine political ideas that he makes a blank canvas look like a Jackson Pollock." Nigel Farage
With Ed, his own party didn't really want him, but he got the gig.
The public think he's hopeless, but he's still there.
Does that mean he's lucky, or that Cameron, Clegg, Salmond and Farage are?
It means the unions felt they could could own him more than his brother.
I have to say, it is probably the biggest mystery to me in modern politics - how in the name of everything holy did holding up a banana kill off David Miliband as a serious politician? The media seemed fine with him wandering around as our most dangerously embarrassing Foreign Secretary, like a grenade with the pin out. Secret rendition flights. All that.
But then he holds up a soft fruit - and his world collapses.
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
.
You will have to forgive me my confusion, but I don't quite follow how the gay marriage issue attacks one group at the expense of another. It had the backing of public opinion, so politically it cannot be total madness, but it didn't damage one demographic in favour of another, even if it did anger a significant proportion the Tory base. However angry they are (or were, given many may not be Tories any more), they were not harmed by it. If people don't think gay marriage can or should be 'true' marriage, they can just add an * to the phrase in their heads secure that they are right, and just let the rest of us delude ourselves. Everyone's happy then.
I think an award for ignoring the point is due to you.
Completely ignoring succession policy for the "group"; completely ignoring religious institutions, of which there are many; ignoring the fact that voluntary groups will have to take over the running of services hitherto provided by the state.
You remind be of the Labour hierarchy when the Bengalis of Tower Hamlets decided to dispense with their services.
Or Cameron when social conservatives decided to dispense with his.
I wasn't ignoring the point, I just didn't understand what you were saying - so feel free to accuse me of being stupid, but don't be angry that I ignored your point intentionally.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
No, I have 3 children and my wife assures me that I played a significant part in all of them coming into this world. My marriage has not been undermined, threatened or even diminished by the fact that others can now share the same institution.
These views are really bizarre. Are you really suggesting that the existence of gay marriage is somehow going to reduce the birth rate from what it would be otherwise? Maybe you are the one in need of sex education.
I remember a doctor telling me how rare it was for a married woman to ask for an abortion. It was almost always an unmarried women.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
It does seem bizarre to me that a couple of 16 or 17 sending intimate pictures to each other could face prosecution when they can quite legally see the same thing for real.
They should be locked up for being stupid , rather than getting out and seeing it for real.
In this scenario maybe they are, but are sharing some intimate pictures to tie themselves over, or rev themselves up, for when they will next be with each other in person? No reason they might not be doing both, they aren't mutually exclusive actions.
I think I will head off now, as things are getting bitter and vicious and I lack the energy or willpower to get all angry and worked up right now - though it is amusing when people trade insults about how unfair it is that they are getting insulted while portraying their and only their side as the ones being treated unfairly, btw.
"In recent years the three older parties have together turned politics into a ghetto for the liberal metropolitan elite – a space from which most of the British public is ruthlessly excluded.
All back Britain’s prohibitively expensive and anti-democratic subservience to the European Union, all are signed up to an energy policy that drives bills ever higher and all back continued enormous increases in spending on foreign aid.
In short, all have fallen prey to the conceit of being generous with other people’s money."
Hmm - doesn't that depend on who contributes the money in the first place? The liberal metropolitan elite - presumably the high-profile supporters and funders of the major parties - are likely to pay a lot more tax than the average UKIP voter, so maybe they are actually being generous with their own money. Now, if Farage were arguing for redistributionist policies he might have a stronger point, but he's not a left-winger, is he?
Alanbrooke, the “shock” is that this is happening and the Government keeps insisting that everything’s getting better.
No wonder Kippers, for many of whom life isn’t what it was when they were young, don’t feel any recovery.
Life has been difficult for most of this century for ordinary people in the private sector, this isn't just a 2010 issue. Wages were stagnant under Blair and Trades Unions just shut up and took the money. Hardly a just a coalition issue.
Have yet to see any of the parties tackling the issue of the widening gap between rich and poor.This has contributed to the "feel bad" factor associated with falling living standards for a large part of the population.
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support. [… It] shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
Did it though? It may have hacked off many of the old fogeys and hardliners, but as I repeat (sorry Woger) you win power at the centre in Britain.
It's far too early to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institutions there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
You only win power at the centre if you hold on to your core vote at the same time, neither Miliband or Cameron appears capable of doing so.
Completely untrue.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
I don't agree there. Blair was able to win because he dominated the centre ground, true, but also because he kept hold of Labour's core vote sufficiently. Indeed, he probably overdid it, forging an electoral coalition that relied too greatly on the centre ground that he still won even while Labour's core was melting. That's fine in the short term but it means that when you're in trouble - as Brown soon was - you have neither the centre nor a core vote to retreat to.
It's true that Hague followed a core-vote strategy that was doomed to lose but it was still the right thing at the time. Had he tried to compete with Blair in the centre (which he did briefly), he'd have been hammered both in the centre and on the flanks. The best strategy was to wait and shore up the core, which he did.
It's always a difficult balance, not least because you have to please floating voters in the centre and activists in the core at the same time, and their demands are different. But then as I think Bob Hawke once said, if you can't ride two horses you should get out of the circus.
With Ed, his own party didn't really want him, but he got the gig.
The public think he's hopeless, but he's still there.
Does that mean he's lucky, or that Cameron, Clegg, Salmond and Farage are?
It means the unions felt they could could own him more than his brother.
I have to say, it is probably the biggest mystery to me in modern politics - how in the name of everything holy did holding up a banana kill off David Miliband as a serious politician? The media seemed fine with him wandering around as our most dangerously embarrassing Foreign Secretary, like a grenade with the pin out. Secret rendition flights. All that.
But then he holds up a soft fruit - and his world collapses.
Who would be a politician?
It was NOT the banana which did it, it was David Miliband. Had he been the leader, you would have said "David is crap" which would ring true because , at least, one of them is crap !
The tombstone of the Conservative Party will read:
LISBON REFERENDUM GAY MARRIAGE
Eh? How do you work that out?
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expecr drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the cociety.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Please keep you ill-informed and bigoted views about homosexuality to yourself. You keep spreading your hatred - and it is not welcome or appropriate.
Freedom of speech?
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
Homophobia has no place in modern society and I will continue to call out people who express it.
Pompous stuck up twat, go get a life
Do you have to come on here just to be so rude? His point about homophobia was perfectly reasonable and did not warrant such a foul-mouthed response from you. This site is normally a great online debating chamber, free from the sort of trolling that fills other places.
Flame me now if you like too but try and be civilised on here for everyone's sake.
I notice malc has 7000 posts and you have 400. I suspect he has a much better view of what has and hasn't been PB convention over the years; I also suspect he's had a lot more personal abuse than most posters but takes it as it comes along without complaint and often good humour.
"But the Conservative message soon changed to the familiar yet increasingly bizarre claim that Ukip’s success means Ed Miliband is likely to win the next election.
Before I go, I would say that the claim is not exactly bizarre, as it probably will be true - Labour despite being wounded are in a better position at present from UKIP's rise than the Tories, even if they are far too complacent about it - it's just not something that concerns UKIPers all that much. Sure, polling says a majority may technically prefer Cameron to Ed M, but they aren't going to take direct action to save Cameron due to how much they dislike him, surely.
Rudeness flaring up is pretty normal, but at least it is the exception rather than the norm, thankfully.
I feel the prizes will go to the politician who right now levels with the public, and tells them OK we can stop immigration if you want, you are the voters, but it is not a cure all.
We cannot hide from globalisation. It is here. Connection with the wider world isn't a choice, it is a necessity.
Stopping immigration may not drive up wages. The bald truth is that it is more likely to drive out companies.
The reference to Jan Moir on this subject reminded me of Tim Minchin's song 5 poofs and 2 pianos which includes the lyrics:
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth. writing further brilliant stuff about the myth of being both happy and gay."
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
Wow! Another person who thinks babies are delivered by storks!
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
No, I have 3 children and my wife assures me that I played a significant part in all of them coming into this world. My marriage has not been undermined, threatened or even diminished by the fact that others can now share the same institution.
These views are really bizarre. Are you really suggesting that the existence of gay marriage is somehow going to reduce the birth rate from what it would be otherwise? Maybe you are the one in need of sex education.
I remember a doctor telling me how rare it was for a married woman to ask for an abortion. It was almost always an unmarried women.
It seems you are in need of social education.
More tosh.
"One woman in five who has an abortion is married; many others are in stable relationships. Abortion is not only an issue for single women. Forty-seven per cent of women who have abortions have at least one child already. "
I disagree with Paul's hyperbole but the fundamental point is right: gay marriage did a lot of damage to the Tory Party's support.
I have to say, I was shocked, saddened and surprised by that outcome, which was way beyond what I'd expected. The way I, and most people I knew, saw it, gay marriage was so similar to civil partnerships as to be simply a tidying-up exercise needed for equality. However, clearly a lot of people object to that equality in the first place; far more than I'd have estimated before the event.
That was the prompt that shifted a lot of support and even if it's no longer the driver, the break has been made and there are other drivers reinforcing it.
The reaction is surprising in that marriage is a declining trend so coopting a group enthusiastically in favour is more likely to see its continuation. That's a very Conservative worldview and the principle behind that accounts for the Conservatives continued relevance. ...
I agree. I supported the change partly because the equality is a good thing in its own right and partly because, as you say, abolishing the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage strengthen the institution and the role of the family unit, which most conservatives would believe is the most essential building block of society.
Homosexual 'relationships' are the antithesis of what marriage is about as the courageous Jan Moir explained.
Nonsense. Marriage is about two people who love each other committing to that relationship for life.
Those who think it's about procreation should consider whether it ought also to be banned for women over 45, those who've had operations rendering them infertile, and the like.
Not that I care, but fringe counter-examples like that don't really alter the anthropological background which is that marriage in all societies and all languages has always meant the kind of heterosexual relationship which produces legitimate offspring. (This is circular, because "legitimate" means "offspring of married parents" but don't blame me, blame Ugg the caveman who invented the system). So calling gay marriage, marriage is a bit like legislating that all cats are dogs: it don't make it so. And I am pretty certain that if I were gay I would find the concept of gay marriage kitsch, naff, patronising and Uncle Tom-ish.
Interesting that you should reference Uncle Tom, because the difference between civil partnerships for gays and marriage for straight couple struck me as much more akin to the "equal but different" apartheid policies of Jim Crow-era southern states.
Comments
I did my Ebola preparations yesterday. If it does break out then it will be pretty grim. In Leicester we have only half the intensive care beds that we need (compared with national recommendations) before we even start. We have stocked up on personal protective equipment though.
As I said yesterday there are increasing storm clouds looming on the horizon and the days of consistent over performance by the UK in terms of growth are already behind us. By May growth will be notably slower than it is today, albeit it will still be positive.
The not insignificant risk that we are already reaching the end of a cycle of international growth without getting the deficit under £100bn should really scare our entire political class. If there is a slow down we will face the dilemma that Osborne chose to duck the last time: of serious pro cyclical cuts in spending threatening to put the economy into the sort of tail spin we saw in Greece and Portugal. In fact it will not be a dilemma, it will be an inevitability.
Those who think it's about procreation should consider whether it ought also to be banned for women over 45, those who've had operations rendering them infertile, and the like.
Any democrat must; we all know the end result of a failure to do so in the 1930s.
Farage has intentionally sought out the vote that used to go to the BNP and uses atavistic sentiments to create political advantage. Any pretence he has to respectability must be exposed on every possible occasion and in every available forum. As UKIP's policies make no economic sense his manifesto needs to be simplistic and the 'it's not your fault' line is very appealing - and appalling.
And I know that my former colleagues in the NHS haven’t had a rise for a long time. “My” GP is tightening up on services too and it’s taking longer to get a routine hospital appointment. Prices in the shops have risen and are still rising. My grandchildren tell me that it’s not been easy to get a job, and the one who is a teacher is leaving as soon as she can; she can’t stand the continual micro management from the Dept of Education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCk42tldwqw
eat your heart out LibLabCon..
Anyway, let's hope it stays a hypothetical matter.
1. 7 months is a long, long, time in politics
2. In answer to Mike's question: 'Will at the end of the day people vote for a party if they view the leader in such a negative light?'
No.
They never have in the past, and I don't believe they will in the future.
If we cannot fix the deficit now, then we face some major retrenchment in a couple of years time.
Want to pass laws to prevent sexting, want to make it a crime for third parties to view sext sent by teenagers to other teenagers. Warn teenagers about sending texts to complete strangers.
Then they copy teenage behaviour...
2. Tories proposal for 2015 - we need savage austerity to pay down the debt. That the debt is 44% higher than when they started even after austerity is a millstone that Labour should have hung round their necks had they not been inept
3. The reality is there is no obvious solution to the collapse of the West's economic ponzi scheme. They keep drawing red lines where they will raise interest rates, we cross the red line, they redraw. And Europe cuts rates to negative. Rates can't go up - the banks are zombies kept alive by zero interest rates and money printing - the multiples of global GDP derivative exposure they have is why rates can't go up.
This is beyond party politics - the economic system is broken. And when you reach this kind of crisistge solutions are often radical, aren't they Marine le Pen?
How can you even compare gay relationships to marriage when there are pitifully few children involved? What bizarre succession policy do have in mind? Mass immigration, I presume? Yet you disingenuously do not mention it, despite it having risen to the top of the political agenda this week.
To put it in simple terms that perhaps you can understand: when Blair abolished Clause 4 the nationalised industries had gone and the communist world had collapsed; when Cameron undermined marriage it was still producing children as successfully as it had always done and chimed neatly with his Big Society mantra (whaterever happened to that, incidentally?).
In political terms, to attack a demographically strong groups in favour of a smaller, demographically weak group is utter political madness.
And I don't care how "right" you think it is.
An economic, international or health crisis would tend to make people rally round the government. It even worked for Brown.
I did my Ebola preparations yesterday. If it does break out then it will be pretty grim. In Leicester we have only half the intensive care beds that we need (compared with national recommendations) before we even start. We have stocked up on personal protective equipment though.
Not so sure in this case Doc F.
Yet another Euro crisis, Osborne makes noises about how UK is keeping out of it and Farage sits on the sidelines saying see told you we shouldn't be in it etc. Cameron's keeping us tied to a corpse.
Double edged sword.
Farage has, in case you hadn't noticed, got real MPs on his side now. Your tedious posts are years past their sell-by date.
Leaving the metaphor aside for a second, I don't think people consider things like this rationally, they go with how they feel, and they may well feel that Labour are not ready to be trusted on the economy again, their figures on that continue to be poor. But in a recovery people may feel secure enough to risk it if they dislike the current lot enough, and if there is another setback to the recovery then, even if they are not to blame, I think it more likely that people would risk even discredited Labour given the current crop have failed in the public estimation.
I don't think the Tories can be sure of reward either direct or passive on the economy. That Labour's polling looks like winning them the election despite the confused figures listed in the header says to me that even if they deserve a win and the alternative would be a disaster, the Tories could well lose just because people don't like them and they don't like even the level of cuts we have had. Or rather, enough people who don't like both have abandoned them, and even if Labour are not picking up all of those people, or even most of them, the Tories are undercut the most. May well be unfair, but them's the breaks.
"the Daily Mail will bring the big guns out
Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth.
writing further brilliant stuff about
the myth of being both happy and gay."
It is a very funny song highlighting the absurdity of those who choose to discriminate in this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIm8WgwkTeI
Gay marriage was something that is inevitably a part of a civilised society and, the odd flood apart, there is no evidence whatsoever that marriage or the structure of society has been anything other than strengthened by it. You keep kinda hoping this is a debate that is over but apparently not.
"The former culture secretary Maria Miller is calling for action to prevent teenagers from trading naked photos. There is no news on whether Tory MPs will face similar restrictions."
There are a lot of things one might worry about for the next generation. Sharing nude photos over the age of consent seems to me quite low on the list. And I'm curious how Ms Miller would go about it. Should ISPs appoint a Nudity Watchdog, with powers to check the age of anyone sending a friend a photograph? Should offenders be imprisoned, or merely fined, or made to wear burqas 24 hours a day? Is there a Meaningless Populist Demand of the Week award?
" the economic system is broken."
Unfortunately, most of our politicians and countrymen are too wedded to the infallibility of the so called "free market" to realise that it is as insane as "communism" was.
Systems of finance are never true or false, only advantageous.
Doesn't mean I'm going to volunteer to go in front of a firing squad, does it?
It's far too soon to make a sweeping statement about the Conservatives in the past tense like that. Looking at the polls I'd say that 7 months out from the election their platform for power is just fine.
Re. marriage, unless you take the theological but entirely non-anthropological view that marriage comes from God then there's no sustainable argument against gay marriage. Most of the agitators against Cameron on this are part of the Telegraph's Catholic mafiosi (Jan Moir was part of that cabal).
Marriage has existed in some form in tribes around the world since the dawn of cultures, not merely as a means of embedding procreation, but to sustain faithfulness and companionship. If you wish to maintain marriage as an institution there's really no logic in the modern age for saying gays cannot marry. The only coherent objection comes from religious people, and on this I have to say that Islam is generally even more antediluvian than Christianity.
I was at Brighton university in 2010-1, possibly the lgbt rights capital of the country. Gay marriage wasn't mentioned once as a concern.
Some don't care as they'd never vote any other way, some may find his intellectualism/fondness for solving Rubic's Cube puzzles a point in his favour. The rest of us just think WTF have you done? It's the personification of political self-harm. That all the Tories on here were delighted at Labour's IDS choice should've been enough.
No wonder Kippers, for many of whom life isn’t what it was when they were young, don’t feel any recovery.
3.Yeah, you're probably right. From what I can gather we're totally screwed, just kicking the can down the road and the sorts of systemic changes that would be needed to even attempt to address our problems are politically impossible to make as any politician would be eviscerated for attempting them even if they had the guts.
Rather less cretinously, immigration is another source of population replacement, but again left curiously unmentioned despite it being the salient political issue of the week.
Politicians think of the next election, statesmen think of the next generation.
Cameron thinks of neither.
You have just showed exactly what is meant by liberal bigotry
The modern development and concept of state regulated marriage is all about property and ownership and nothing to do with child production. It was dressed up in all different forms but at the heart was the need/desire of the state to regulate property and ownership issues.
In practical terms it is about the financial benefits that flow from it.
In emotional terms it is about standing up and making a public declaration of your commitment to another person.
Having different, discriminatory forms of official relationship recognition ceremonies (and the benefits/responsibilities that flow from them) was a fudge created by Labour and was never satisfactory, just or equal.
There can be no justification for discrimination when it comes to providing official recognition of the love between two consenting adults. And full equality when it comes to marriage is an appropriate and proper thing for a modern society to embrace.
The only cretinous comments I can see are those made by people who use their bigotry to deny all citizens equality - and I am very sorry that those people have to live with such hatred in their lives.
What the country needs is someone who looks the part, and can PR and bluff his way through problems, while never changing the fundamental thinking that got us into this position?
You may be right, but it is an indictment of what politics has become.
We might as well go watch Britain's got strictly X factor baking talent.
But Labour must be relying on the short term memory of the electorate to press the hyperbole button quite as recklessly as you do in this post. Plenty of examples littering your own record of similar nonsense.
Neil Kinnock to Tony Blair: pushed out their 'core' and won the centre ground: the unaffiliated in the middle.
I'm agnostic on this, but I've found a paper by John Curtice which concludes:
"Parliamentary elections continue then to be very different from presidential contests, even when they are dominated by two parties. In such elections voters still primarily make a judgement about the collective merits of the parties as a whole rather than their leaders in particular"
www.crest.ox.ac.uk/p110.doc
So maybe there's hope for Labour.
Edit: I don't think my irritation at such minor issues being done is equivalent to my support of the gay marriage change, but given its the same argument some opponents to that policy use, I feel I should acknowledge that here just in case I am suffering from acute hypocrisy. Many people, despite not liking the EU at all, do not raise it as a key issue for them (Immigration, of course linked to the EU, is a different story) all the time, but would nevertheless be thrilled at the chance to vote on leaving it as soon as possible (I would probably vote to stay in, but we should have had a vote on it already, and as soon as possible). Many people, like myself, would not have been marching in the streets angry at the failure to approve gay marriage, but would and were still very supportive that it was done.
People care about things at different levels. Gay Marriage was hardly a priority even for most of those who supported it, but it was still supported by a majority and there is plenty of time in a parliament to do the smaller things.
Blair fought on the basis his left wing had nowhere else to go so he could bank the votes and court the centre.
Cameron and Miliband have tried to repeat the trick but now voters do have a choice and are using it. Neither Cameron or Miliband will get enough votes to win in their own right.
These views are really bizarre. Are you really suggesting that the existence of gay marriage is somehow going to reduce the birth rate from what it would be otherwise? Maybe you are the one in need of sex education.
The public think he's hopeless, but he's still there.
Does that mean he's lucky, or that Cameron, Clegg, Salmond and Farage are?
As for marriage being solely for the production of children, where does that leave people who are unable to have children or use contraception? Should they be banned from marriage.
Basing the way you run your life on a badly translated series of poorly remembered stories does not put you on the high moral ground.
She was a force of nature and what the country needed back then, but I never felt she was the epitome of Conservatism. Those who liked her brutishness have attempted to apply it to everything else in her name.
IMO In her earlier years, she was a more complex character than she's given credit for. Becoming a deposed back-seat driver was the worst way to go. It began to make Heath's Longest Sulk In History look dignified. I was totally baffled by what she did with John Major at at the time, but her instincts were right - he was a good man. Shame the Party were a mess in her wake/she was unwilling to stay in her professional coffin. Surely this is why Mr Major hasn't repeated this behaviour...
In all seriousness marriage means different things to different people. For some, and historically many, it will be at least in part sacred, for others it will be about shared rights and the ultimate expression of their relationship with no desire to have kids at all, for others it may purely be that they think it the best model to raise children (and while plenty of people get by just fine in 'broken' homes, strong family units seem a good thing). Others may feel able to offer these things in a relationship without the need to get married. Given all this disparity, it seems reasonable to let as many people who wish to have the option do so, as it doesn't impact on the reasons for marriage or the personal definitions of marriage of anyone else.
Most peculiar behaviour. And surprisingly common.
How is that different from Labour. Their policies make no economic sense and it´s alla bout we hate the Tories. And the NHS.
Oh yes, and they project hatred towards the indigenous majority.
Then it all crashed and “ordinary hard-working people” feel cautious.
The really frightening potential parallel is with post-Weimar Germany!
Your point about only being able to win power at the centre if you can hold on to your core vote is, however, spot on.
You also seem to ignore those people who marry but are unable to conceive despite being heterosexual, and in this day and age may be fully aware of that fact before they marry, or those who just don't want kids, and are telling these hetero couples they are not proper marriages either, but we'll let that go for now I guess.
"In recent years the three older parties have together turned politics into a ghetto for the liberal metropolitan elite – a space from which most of the British public is ruthlessly excluded.
All back Britain’s prohibitively expensive and anti-democratic subservience to the European Union, all are signed up to an energy policy that drives bills ever higher and all back continued enormous increases in spending on foreign aid.
In short, all have fallen prey to the conceit of being generous with other people’s money."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2789592/nigel-farage-did-win-don-t-play-fools.html
Shouldn't you be sulking somewhere like your friend in Sweden?
Completely ignoring succession policy for the "group"; completely ignoring religious institutions, of which there are many; ignoring the fact that voluntary groups will have to take over the running of services hitherto provided by the state.
You remind be of the Labour hierarchy when the Bengalis of Tower Hamlets decided to dispense with their services.
Or Cameron when social conservatives decided to dispense with his.
You win by winning the middle, not the so-called 'core'. Less than 1% of the UK electorate is a member of the three main parties http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN05125/membership-of-uk-political-parties
I rest my case.
Cameron struggles to manage a broad church and has been losing members, Miliband can't motivate and I suspect large numbers of Labour voters will just sit at home.
Flame me now if you like too but try and be civilised on here for everyone's sake.
All those leaders from the early 90`s lived through an era of wage growth.
If you think Cameron has this spot on , I am sure you said the same in 2010.
You could be correct as in 92 in the US election with Ross Perot letting the centrist candidate in.
However from your point of you, it could be the wrong one in the UK , this time.
Liberal bigotry is the only bigotry allowed on the media.
We´re back to the Mandie-Campbell school of politics. Anyone who disagrees with a "progressive" (read pet project for the metropolitan elite) is a bigot/racist/-"phobe", etc The true intention is of course to shut down debate.
Luckily it´s overuse has led to ever decreasing returns on its use.
I do notice no one is claiming REd is a bigot for wanting immigrants to contribute before taking out benefits. Probably because no one believes him. Just imagine had Cameron or Farage said similar.
What is undeniable is that Cameron is having some success in this approach to date. The Tories are 5 or 6% down on 2010 despite UKIP being 12-15% up. The Survation poll was an extreme example of this but there is no doubt the Tories have gained votes from elsewhere to compensate for at least some of those lost to UKIP.
Whether this proves to be an election winning strategy is of course much more uncertain. The consolidation of the left on the collapse of the Lib Dems is a major problem for him and he runs the risk of suffering the same problems Labour had in the 80s and early 90s. On the other hand there is the Ed factor. All to play for but those wailing in the wilderness or claiming Cameron is not what he never claimed to be should at least understand the game he is playing.
(I use Cameron as the simple exemplar of this but there is no doubt much of the intellectual heft and planning come from Osborne.)
This must be the quote of the day:
"But the Conservative message soon changed to the familiar yet increasingly bizarre claim that Ukip’s success means Ed Miliband is likely to win the next election. The claim was propagated by Tory chairman Grant Shapps, a man so devoid of genuine political ideas that he makes a blank canvas look like a Jackson Pollock."
Nigel Farage
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2789592/nigel-farage-did-win-don-t-play-fools.html#ixzz3FvDuvfyn
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I have to say, it is probably the biggest mystery to me in modern politics - how in the name of everything holy did holding up a banana kill off David Miliband as a serious politician? The media seemed fine with him wandering around as our most dangerously embarrassing Foreign Secretary, like a grenade with the pin out. Secret rendition flights. All that.
But then he holds up a soft fruit - and his world collapses.
Who would be a politician?
It seems you are in need of social education.
I think I will head off now, as things are getting bitter and vicious and I lack the energy or willpower to get all angry and worked up right now - though it is amusing when people trade insults about how unfair it is that they are getting insulted while portraying their and only their side as the ones being treated unfairly, btw.
Does that mean that in some SE London seats, swings could actually make Labour win through the middle.
It's true that Hague followed a core-vote strategy that was doomed to lose but it was still the right thing at the time. Had he tried to compete with Blair in the centre (which he did briefly), he'd have been hammered both in the centre and on the flanks. The best strategy was to wait and shore up the core, which he did.
It's always a difficult balance, not least because you have to please floating voters in the centre and activists in the core at the same time, and their demands are different. But then as I think Bob Hawke once said, if you can't ride two horses you should get out of the circus.
Rudeness flaring up is pretty normal, but at least it is the exception rather than the norm, thankfully.
We cannot hide from globalisation. It is here. Connection with the wider world isn't a choice, it is a necessity.
Stopping immigration may not drive up wages. The bald truth is that it is more likely to drive out companies.
"One woman in five who has an abortion is married; many others are in stable relationships. Abortion is not only an issue for single women. Forty-seven per cent of women who have abortions have at least one child already. "
http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/suppl_2/ii33.full
I heard that claimed about Rochester the other day.
It ain't gonna happen tho'