I’m seriously considering starting a new blog dedicated to awful BBC ‘satirical’ computer graphics features on ‘The Daily Politics’ and ‘This Week’
The Ed Balls file database is overwhelming.
Political nerd-out trawling through these…
Day 5 of Labour Love God Series: Ed was always a ‘player’ and he never missed his chance with an experienced woman.
I absolutely bloody love awkwardedmilibandmoments.
I’m voting yes to AV…
, mostly because Polly Toynbee told me to…
“Tory donors, unrevealed, have outgunned the yes campaign by many millions, buying voluminous local and national ads claiming babies and soldiers will die because of funds wasted on AV: the Treasury itself says AV costs no extra…
…Contrary to the lie put out by the no campaign – but plainly passionately believed by Tories guided as ever by “gut”, not evidence – AV will not make coalitions more likely. Had AV been used for the last 30 years, the only hung parliament would have been last year’s – which happened under good old “British” first past the post. With or without AV, there are likely to be more hung parliaments anyway as voters increasingly spread themselves between many more parties. That means less than a third of MPs secured a majority of votes last time.
An excellent report yesterday from the Institute for Public Policy Research spells out the shift. YouGov polling for the report shows that 20% of voters now vote tactically, unable to register their true vote for fear of letting in their worst choice. AV at least lets people express their first preference, though without proportional representation it may not turn those preferences into MPs. Small parties with wide appeal – such as the Greens – may gain, while narrow parties like the BNP – which have no appeal beyond their niche – will lose out, as Nick Griffin has realised. That’s why he supports no.”
In all honesty I have yet to truly engage with the debate on AV, but realising the problems of first-past-the-post, (and after reading a couple of articles full of heavily pro-AV rhetoric) I’m voting yes.
Andy Burnham died on his arse a bit here. I don’t think his leadership bid should, nor will, be taken too seriously. As much as I hate to admit it, Labour have got to win the PR war again. This last general election has proved that unfortunately, style sometimes wins over policy with the public vote. Of course Andy Burnham’s lack of any charisma or character isn’t the sole reason for me discounting him in the leadership race. He has no other angle to come at from other than ‘i’m a different face’. Not. Enough.
As for Diane Abbot entering the race, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend this as a serious bid. Her terribly annoying persona and dare I say sometimes snobbish attitude will surely instantly put people off. I did like Andrew Neils quip on the politics show: ‘Do you even know 33 MP’s Diane?’.
I do hope labour listen to the public. On Newsnight last week they conducted a small scale sample of previously ‘floating voters’ and showed them clips of each of the candidates. There must have been 8 or 10 and all said that David Miliband would be their person of choice. Some (naive/silly) people even said that had David Miliband been leader of the labour party at the Election just gone, they would have voted for labour instead of conservative.
The mind boggles at such silly reasons for voting, but it highlights the need for labour to pick a candidate with style as well as substance. Enter David Miliband. Maybe?
Or Ed. I like Ed too.
(Milliband. Obvs. We can’t make it too easy for the tabloids by electing Ed BALLS)
Democracy doesn’t work. The tories make me sad…
I know this is a bit ‘late’ given that the election has been and gone and the tories somehow managed to gain the largest vote, but I’ve been feeling terribly glum about it ever since.
I fail to understand why there are people that i know whose parents have relied on benefits to bridge the gap between their income and their cost of living, who decided to vote tory on thursday because they were clinging to that empty, fascile word of ‘change’ without even questioning what ‘change’ would actually come. I have to commend Cameron and his team for managing to convince the general public that his party will bring anything new to politics other than draconian and largely unnecessary tax increases and spending cuts that will primarily effect those already struggling to get by. It always annoys me when cameron says that sensible people “who worked hard and saved hard” should be rewarded. Undertsandable, but not everyone was in a fortunate enough position to ‘save’ and these ‘sensible hard workers’ you refer to are people with relatively good incomes. People on lower incomes can work bloody hard too and it’s unfair to penalise them for not being in a position to save. Fair enough if you think “ok, so there will be tax cuts for those worst off, but at least they’ll get the economy moving”. WRONG. This whole jobs tax, national insurance rise malarky has really annoyed me. Cameron scared everyone by saying that the likes of mothercare and sainsbury’s etc agreed the labour plans were bad for the economy. Fair enough, it’s not like they’ll oppose this because it will directly affect them or anything right? They of course wont think solely for themselves. Whereas the institute for fiscal studies, who are completely impartial, said that it would be a GOOD idea and agreed with labour plans. But what do they know eh? Mothercare of course knows better…. People are STUPID!
It’s also disgusting how he wants to be seen just like Barack Obama. Not only did he steal Obama’s slogan, but he even launched a hideous poster campaign (one of several) depicting him in a white shirt, open collar, in front of a large audience. Hm, who does that resemble? But NO David Cameron, you are NOTHING like Barack Obama. Obama described David Cameron as ‘lightweight’….
I had to laugh when Cameron claimed that the labour campaign was ‘negative’. Was that because labour pointed out your skewed morals and overwhelming self-interest where you’d cut taxes for the rich and cut benefits for lower income earners? But you’re right cameron, that was rather ‘negative’ wasn’t it, even if they were technically exposing you for the twat that you are and letting the public know exactly what you’re planning. It could have been worse though ‘Dave’, don’t worry, they could have launched a rather tasteless poster campaign and have a photo of you next to bold black letters saying what’s wrong with the country and effectively equating everything wrong in society down to you. Oh no, wait, YOU did that didn’t you. What was that you were saying about ‘negative politics’?…
I genuinely am annoyed at stupid people who voted tories without even knowing what they were voting for, other than apparent ‘change’ (um, they’re called ‘conservatives’ for a reason…) It annoys me when people complain that poiticians never give answers, and i realise it’s infuriating to sit through 90 minutes of politics and still not understand what each candidate proposes to do, but you can actively find out for yourself! READ THEIR MANIFESTO! I hate people that don’t like Gordon Brown just because he isn’t PR enough. FFS, put Gordon brown under a grilling from the likes of Paxman or Marr and Brown triumphs. He knows what he’s talking about. Just because you put him in a supermarket in an awkward social situation where he has to make small talk to hundreds of strangers, and the best he comes up with is “this is a great store, you’ve got a lot of produce” is NOT a sufficient reason to dislike the man. We are in a GLOBAL recession and yet everyone seems to think Brown caused the collapse of franny mae and freddie mac himself by pressing a button in a controlled demolision. You only have to look across the rest of europe to see that things could have been much much worse. The tories criticised labour for the huge deficit but THEY AGREED WITH LABOURS SPENDING PLANS AT THE LAST GENERAL ELECTION. They only changed their mind after the collapse of leeman brothers. They had no intention of nationalising the banks which in the end proved to be the right decision.
I’ve decided democracy doesn’t work. If people are too ‘lazy’ or stupid to find out what a party is planning on doing, then you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If you had to put down three reasons why you were voting for your chosen party, which had to be policy based rather than ‘he’s got great style’ (Fuck you Joan Collins you imbecile) or “i want change” then the tories would have lost 10% of their vote straight away.
It’s bad enough when people ditch their working class roots and vote tory as soon as they start raking in major dollar, at least i can understand that they’ll benefit from them, but when people who are in worse off positions than myself vote tory in blind ignorance, it really makes me sad for the human race.
I guess the liberal democrat/conservative agreement may be a tiny ray of hope in an otherwise massive shitstorm.
