Re: The UK General Election Thread (II)

[lardbucket]

... and still fewer people vote when the result is irrelevant.

[JKLever]

Farking hell..... Ed balls' eyes scare the fark out of me.

[Allan D]

Its quite simple Allan, less people vote if the result is already a foregone conclusion. Tony Blair was clearly going to win in 1997 and 2001 so less people could be bothered to vote.

9m more people voted in 1983 than they did in 2001 when Michael Foot had as much chance of winning as the Zimbas have of winning the T20s.

O, another wicket falls. Recount called for. :o

[JKLever]

Another poll out in the marginals points to a slender Tory majority.

[eowyn]

Ed Balls has been foisted on my Mum and Dad's constituency, as his got lost in the boundary changes, the whole town is rather pissed off by the fact. He might not even be an MP come Friday morning......

[Allan D]

From Telegraph website:

The latest Ipsos MORI marginals poll for Reuters has the Conservatives on track to win an overall majority. According to the poll of 1,007 adults in the 57 LAB-CON marginals where the Tories need a swing of between five and nine per cent, the blue team will win 327 seats, giving them a majority of two.

The poll has the two main parties neck and neck in these constituencies, meaning there’s been a swing of 7% from Labour to the Conservatives. That’s the best result yet for the Tories

[Allan D]

Ed Balls has been foisted on my Mum and Dad's constituency has his got lost in the boundary changes, the whole town is rather pissed off by the fact. He might not even be an MP come Friday morning......

Balls could provide the "Portillo Moment" on Election Night as this suggests:

[JKLever]

What about Harriet Harman & Jaqui Smith? Or are they relatively safe?

[eowyn]

They won't be voting for him either, Allan, Morley has had a Labour MP for the last 80 years, hence Balls was sent there but they've always hated being told what to do. That film makes me laugh I was born and brought up there and it makes me realise where I got my "don't trust anyone" gene from.

[Guest]

Ed Balls has been foisted on my Mum and Dad's constituency has his got lost in the boundary changes, the whole town is rather pissed off by the fact. He might not even be an MP come Friday morning......

Balls could provide the "Portillo Moment" on Election Night as this suggests:

Hope so, can't stand the twat.

[Allan D]

NuLabour "castrated"

[Allan D]

Well-known potential candidates for the "chop" on Thursday:

Ed Balls (Morley & Outwood)
John Bercow (Buckingham)
Hazel Blears (Salford)
George Galloway (Poplar & Limehouse)
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Kilburn)
Tessa Jowell (Dulwich & West Norwood)
Jacqui Smith (Redditch)

and a long shot but a welcome one if it happens:

Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West)

Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant

trans: Good riddance to the lot of you!

or, as Oliver Cromwell, in 1657, and Leo Amery, in 1940, more eloquently put it:

You have sat here too long for what good you have done. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the Name of God, go!

[Basil]

Oliver Letwin and Liam Fox for the Tories - if the Lib Dem surge really takes off.

[Basil]

Ipsos Mori poll in 57 Lab/Con marginals:

Tories 36%
Labour 36%
Lib Dems 20%

A big enough swing to the Tories according to the Telegraph to give the Tories a tiny majority. I would have thought that the Tories are likely to lose a handful of seats to the Lib Dems, which puts us back in Hung Parliament country.

[Allan D]

Conservatives may well pick up some Lib Dem seats though - Winchester, currently held by Mark ("rent boys") Oaten, seems a fairly straightforward pick-up (as does the neighbouring new seat of Meon Valley). Chris ("7 Homes") Huhne is looking distinctly fragile in Eastleigh, which he was highly fortunate to hold onto 5 years ago. Andrew George, one of the few Lib Dems to be caught up in the expenses scandal, may be vulnerable in St Ives and the new seats of Camborne and Redruth, and St Austell and Newquay (which Cameron visited at the weekend) could well be Tory captures so Lib Dem-Con traffic may not be all one way on Thursday night/Friday morning..

[JKLever]

Why are Labour mincing on about the Tories cutting child tax credits when the only people affected will be those households earning £50,000 and above.

No wonder the country is in such a financial pickle if it can afford to give state money to people on that much.

Whilst not 'rich' i'd describe 50k as 'comfortable' enough not to be nannied by the state.

[Allan D]

Because Labour are so hooked on the idea of welfare they believe in giving it to everybody. Labour believes in making the middle class as dependent on state handouts as the lumpenproletariat are despite the fact the more widely the jam is spread the thinner it is for everyone including those who might benefit from it most. Broon & Co want us to believe that taking away child credits from those earning £50k+ and making them pay for their children's pre-school education is somehow increasing the level of child poverty. Pull the other one, Gordy!

[Mick Sawyer]

70 odd pages on a general election. Stout work!

[Growler]

Mick - over the last 30 years or so, this country has been "dumbed down" to such an extent that the trend has been downwards in number turnout at elections ..... as low as 25% or less in some locals ( parish / town councils etc ).

For perhaps the first time in a generation, a train of events has stirred the populace to sit up and take notice of what our leaders are up to.

They include two foreign wars, one of which ( Iraq ) was of dubious legality, and almost certainly sold to both parlaiment and the country on an outright lie - the other ( Afghanistan ) which won't go away from the news bulletins while soldiers come home with flags draped over their coffins.

Even worse, those pesky newspapers will keep highlighting cases such as Ben Parkinson - the most seriously injured soldier ever to survive. As a result of a landmine, he lost both legs and the use of his left arm. Brain damage left him unable to speak, and spinal damage was among 30 odd other separate injuries. The maximum compensation for injured soldiers was (at the time ) £285,000. Incredibly, the MOD awarded him just £152,150. At about the same time, a tribunal awarded a civilian typist working forthe MOD an astonishing £400,000 for Repetitive Strain Injury.

Factor in the fact that the country is on its arse, the credit crunch is hurting many people, but the fat cat bankers are still getting 7 figure bonuses while charging ordinary people 30 quid for a letter telling them they're overdrawn by a fiver, while the government sits by and lets them rob us blind.

Las, and probably most telling - MPs have finally been caught with their feet in the trough ...... fiddling expenses on a scale that would have most people in a prison cell.

People are angry, and rightly so. They are questioning politicians in a way I can't recall since I first qualified to vote. Thats why we've got 70 pages of it.

[Mick Sawyer]

Mick - over the last 30 years or so, this country has been "dumbed down" to such an extent that the trend has been downwards in number turnout at elections ..... as low as 25% or less in some locals ( parish / town councils etc ).

For perhaps the first time in a generation, a train of events has stirred the populace to sit up and take notice of what our leaders are up to.

They include two foreign wars, one of which ( Iraq ) was of dubious legality, and almost certainly sold to both parlaiment and the country on an outright lie - the other ( Afghanistan ) which won't go away from the news bulletins while soldiers come home with flags draped over their coffins.

Even worse, those pesky newspapers will keep highlighting cases such as Ben Parkinson - the most seriously injured soldier ever to survive. As a result of a landmine, he lost both legs and the use of his left arm. Brain damage left him unable to speak, and spinal damage was among 30 odd other separate injuries. The maximum compensation for injured soldiers was (at the time ) £285,000. Incredibly, the MOD awarded him just £152,150. At about the same time, a tribunal awarded a civilian typist working forthe MOD an astonishing £400,000 for Repetitive Strain Injury.

Factor in the fact that the country is on its arse, the credit crunch is hurting many people, but the fat cat bankers are still getting 7 figure bonuses while charging ordinary people 30 quid for a letter telling them they're overdrawn by a fiver, while the government sits by and lets them rob us blind.

Las, and probably most telling - MPs have finally been caught with their feet in the trough ...... fiddling expenses on a scale that would have most people in a prison cell.

People are angry, and rightly so. They are questioning politicians in a way I can't recall since I first qualified to vote. Thats why we've got 70 pages of it.

With the public sector growing from 40% to 50% of the national aggregate in the time since Blair moved into #10 & the incumbent lot of twats spending 135% of what the country pays in tax, or so the BBC World Service tells me.

The trends you've highlighted are the truly lametable part of democracy in the 21st century. How do we turn it around? The dumbing down, the spin, the corruption, the flagrant lies .................

[Zat]

Well, if you could take out everyone who says 'I've voted for [insert party name here] all my life and I always will' and have them shot, or at least revoke their right to vote, it would be a start.

[Merlin]

With the public sector growing from 40% to 50% of the national aggregate in the time since Blair moved into #10 & the incumbent lot of twats spending 135% of what the country pays in tax, or so the BBC World Service tells me.

This could be NuLabour's epitaph.

The public sector explosion, in both size and funding- always under Labour - creating the nannie state that inevitably creates a laziness in large sections of the populace who just can't be bothered to get off their arses and work - which then attracts an unwanted and unnecessaryily high immigration count who see "soft opportunities" to con an income, which ultimately create job losses for the indiginous population.

All of this compounded by an society encouraged to be litigous conscious, the Courts dismissal of all things Christian yet shit scared to do the same against Islam for fear of inciting riots - and the final straw where MP's, believing it to be their God-given right to steal money from their tax paying employers, do so in the full knowledge that they are protected by one of the 5,000 NuLabour laws passed over the past 13 years.

Add to that the illegality of Afganistan and Iraq together with the absurd f**k up of the Economy .. and you begin to seriously wonder whether people who reflect a NuLabour 30% share of the vote are either blind or dead from the shoulders up.

Such is the power of spin and indeed the inherrent belief from the days of Keir Hardie, that Labour helps the working classes. Sadly, they still believe it ....

[horace]

"Sadly, they still believe it ...."

but they know what thatcher and her tories did to them...

[Merlin]

"Sadly, they still believe it ...."

but they know what thatcher and her tories did to them...

Ah, the old chestnut oft cast out to create a deflection from the sordid reality of NOW ...
Thatcher took this country from a time when it was on the bones of its arse... post Labours "winters of discontent" and moved it to a place where it was both economically sound and a fairer reflection across society ... oh wait - except for those who demanded school milk as a god given right and sections who were cross about Community Charges (now perfectly acceptable under the banner of Council Tax) ! Funny that .... innit !!

But as I see you as a die-hard Keir Hardie type, it's senseless pursuing any logical debate with you ol' 'orrie ...
So we'll agree to disagree and all Hail Dougie Jardine instead.

[Allan D]

It's that Stanley Baldwin, I blame...

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