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All the published Thanet South polls pic.twitter.com/oILe6nAltf
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All the published Thanet South polls pic.twitter.com/oILe6nAltf
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Looks like Cameron's electoral strategy is going to be Lib Dem delenda est
David Cameron's plan to 'destroy' the Liberal Democrats
Interview: The Prime Minister tells the Telegraph that the road to a Conservative victory will run through Nick Clegg's heartlands
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11518408/David-Camerons-plan-to-destroy-the-Liberal-Democrats.html
What I can't understand though is why Clegg thinks it'll do him any good publicising this fact when it reflects so badly on them.
Roger, you're going to love the front page of the Nat rag, note the second bullet point
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CB7-b4pWMAErGg8.jpg
Farage will fail, possibly coming third.
Just think the actual width and depth of support you need to win with over a hundred majority. Cameron and Miliband are fighting over who can possibly scrape enough to be largest party. Each of them would consider 300 to be a breathtaking and resounding endorsement of their policies etc. Lady Thatcher got 397 seats the second time of asking. Blair managed 418 on the first and barely changed the second.
Toxic my a*se.
There are arguments you can thrown at Brown. His decision to pump up public spending in 2001, which was largely funded by the revenue from the city of london, and to run a sustained deficit right up to the crash.
The public finances in 2001 were in an incredibly good position. The deficit up until the crash was perfectly sustainable. Brown presented himself as a fiscal conservative, we had a golden rule that spending would be fiscally neutral over the economic cycle.
All good and well, but he (and everyone else it seemed) believed that boom and bust had ended and we had no real economic cycle anymore, just sustained perpetual economic growth. If that was true, then a small managed deficit was fine.
He allowed the debt to move from 30% of gdp (it peaked at 43% in 1996 and was dropping considerably from there on) in 2001 to rise to 38% in 2008. A totally unnecessary increase, in a period of mass employment, low unemployment, the economy firing on all cylinders and revenues flowing in like no ones business.
In 2008, as Ken Clarke has pointed out about budgets in the past, a small deficit in the good times swells out of all control when the economy turns.
Gordon Browns solution to the crash was to spend spend spend. He turned all the taps on, full. He couldnt flush money through the system quick enough.
Between 2008 and second quarter of 2010 debt jumped from 38% to 60%. By the fourth quarter of 2011 it was 70% and now sits at about 75%.
The lesson is of course, once you turn those taps on, it becomes almost impossible to turn them off.
Health outcomes are long term consequences, you don't change them in 5 years. You don't change them dramatically in less than 20 years. 60 years of Labour policy of "Make poor people poorer, make sick people sicer" takes a lot of work to undo.
I have mixed feelings about The National, it's made a good, solid start and has the potential to become a decent paper. But I don't trust The Herald team to avoid the trap of turning the whole thing into a Shortbread Tin instead of a Scottish equivalent of The Mail.
"Roger, you're going to love the front page of the Nat rag, note the second bullet point'
There's something fascistic about nationalism in any form and like most things fascist it attracts some pretty unattractive people. If that's their rag it's a good insight into Scottish Nationalism but it's not a pretty sight
Whilst you may believe Thatcher is not considered toxic, there is a huge amount of hatred for her in northern towns. The sort of hatred bland politicians such a Major have not received.
Blair is equally toxic. If not more so, as at least Thatcher is generally well liked amongst Tories. If you think he is not toxic then why were Labour candidates up and down the country refusing his donations. There are few politicians alive today who would have their generous donations turned down. Blair may have been popular when in power but he is certainly not popular now.
Surely the good thing for him is the Tory vote dropping back and making it a two horse race, encouraging tactical voting to save him rather than being tempted to go for the win themselves. He's got a chance.
I very much hope he wins. The LDs have a tough and interesting set of decisions to make after the GE, whether they are in a position to decisively help someone else become PM or not, and it would be far too easy on them and Clegg for them to be able to ignore him and his impact in that stage.
Even though Labour would need to win one more seat elsewhere if Clegg did win, a case could be made it would not be the worst thing in the world for them if he did win, if it helped add to LD paralysis and confusion afterwards (I discount the possibility the LDs would be inclined to go straight back into a coalition with Cameron under Clegg's stewardship even if they had the numbers, which they will not).
Lead story on election - didn't use stopwatch but would estimate 50% Cameron, 40% Balls, 10% Clegg. Reporter sum-up exactly the same. UKIP - not mentioned, not one single second.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32193807
We all know this is the truth. Both of them were political giants.
demandingasking Ed to come to Edinburgh for a chat, he'll be one of the compilation of Portillo moments alongside the Alexanders, Clegg, Murphy, Curran and Cable.Nigel's 20 seconds could well keep Alistair Carmichael's portillo moment off the main news!
Farage's desperation was in the papers today. He's begging party workers from every other seat to hit Thanet and help him out.
Brown increased spending between 2000 and 2010 by 50% in real terms.
http://www.economicsuk.com/blog/002073.html
''In inflation-adjusted terms, 2013-14 prices, there was a massive increase in total managed expenditure over the 2000-2010 period. Spending in real terms in 2009-10, £737.3bn, was 51% higher than it was in 1999-2000, £488.5bn. ''
''The increase in spending in the last 2-3 years was not out of line with its average in the rest of the 2000s. The rise in spending was overwhelmingly deliberate.''
In 1972 North Karelia had the highest cardiovascular mortality in Finland, which was the highest national cardiovascular mortality in the world.
The project (see refs 2 and 3) substantially reduced cardiovascular disease within 5 years:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Karelia
Why cannot Scotland do the same? It is a lack of will rather than lack of means.
An EU referendum isn't about winning 35-40% of the vote like at a GE but winning over 50%. In order to do that they would have to obtain support from all political parties.
I have no doubt that if Thatcher was in charge of the Tories they would walk this GE. But an EU referendum is not the same as a GE.
Kippers were predicting 100 seats not so long ago. Even if it was only the most lunatic fringe going with 100, the rest of the loonies were confident of 50+. There was no evidence to support it - just the opposite - all empirical evidence says even 25% for a new party doesn't result in more than a couple of seats.
But the Kippers did insist.
Now we have Farage desperately begging other candidates to send their activists to Thanet. I'm sure Mark Reckless can't wait for his activists to pop over to Thanet for a day or two...
Just googled the article... Here it is, interesting how a few paragraphs stick in your mind, fairly accurately as well!
http://iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/do-you-know-how-big-psbr-is.html
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Long-Term-Conditions/Heart-Disease
Scott P's typically anti-Scottish rant was based on comparative rates (outcomes) not improvements. Outcomes will remain outside the UK norm for a long time to come no matter how much progress the Scottish Government make.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/nigel-farage-asks-ukip-followers-for-personal-favour-of-one-or-two-days-support-in-south-thanet-after-poll-shows-he-may-lose-seat-10158336.html
And not just on his fashion sense.
There are times I think he takes his Arthur Daley impersonation a bit too far.
It should be about Cammo's call for Kippers to swim home to his lair.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11518250/David-Cameron-tells-Ukip-voters-its-time-to-come-home.html
David Cameron tells Ukip voters - it's time to come home
I have heard the message of frustrated Tories loud and clear, says Cameron
Yep, he wants all those fruitcakes, racists and homophobes, to come home to the tories, say all is forgiven, if only they give him their vote.
No chance of that. More tories are leaving that party and coming over to UKIP or not voting at all in disgust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOSm9wvf5o
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e804dfd2-d9e6-11e4-ab32-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3WZX0UPlZ
http//:youtube.com/watch?v=SM3jgkChV6M
They only need to publish one statistic on the Labour leaflets this time, his voting record is 92% coalition.
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/40356&showall=yes#divisions
Goodnight.
Slugger O'Toole made a prediction model for Westminster wins based on local election results. It suggested 38 UKIP MPs.
http://sluggerotoole.com/2015/01/24/forecasting-the-2015-uk-general-election/
The history of FPTP elections is the empirical evidence you need, the early history of the Labour Party, the Liberal Surge of the 1970s and the first years of the SDP in the 1980s ALL demonstrate that new insurgent parties do not get a seat return in FPTP systems.
'I don't believe you're all I ever need
And I need to feel that you're not holding me
But the way I feel just makes me want to scream 'Come Home'
http://youtu.be/xWd9mqC80BU
Local election wins within a constituency demonstrate concentration of support.