DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

murdoch meeting the dowlers this a'noon...anonymous tipoff

from me i mean

Dowlers, please surreptitiously tape the meeting.

Sometimes I wonder how anyone over 25 takes Laurie Penny seriously.[NB: the cenotaph incident wasn't what he was jailed for]

True but...

Passing sentence, Judge Nicholas Price QC accepted that Gilmour's behaviour at the Cenotaph did not form part of the violent disorder, but accused him of disrespect to the war dead.

Seems v. harsh - does he have any previous?

friend of a friend who has a brother in the know just let me know that police have opened an investigation into r brooks' involvement in maddie abduction, also got me google plus invites

None. Dumbfuck judge, my taxpayer friends and I really don't want to hear your opinion on matters outside the actual charge. Hope they appeal. xp

Fair point. Judge had no cause to mention cenotaph at all.

The judge gave another student 12 months last week for throwing a stick.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9128855.Talented_student_jailed_over_riot/

Judicial appointments
Senior Circuit Judge Appointment - Price QC

11 July 2011

The Lord Chancellor, the Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke QC MP has appointed His Honour Judge Nicholas Peter Lees Price QC to be a Senior Circuit Judge, Resident Judge based at Kingston Crown Court Centre effect from Monday 11 July 2011.

hmmn

They're charged with 'violent disorder' rather than criminal damage, which means the penalties are much more severe. Being part of a large group and being in a public place are aggravating factors.

The whole area of the law is extremely controversial as you're not really being judged on the acts you carried out but the wider context of the event. Someone got five years, a while back, for throwing stones at police during a 'riot'.

i see that martin rowson still hasn't mastered the felt tip

3.47pm: Breaking: David Cameron hosted Andy Coulson at Chequers this spring after his resignation in January ... More details soon ...

He was calling him his friend a week ago

don't forget The Official Newscorp/UK end of season finale/Rebekah Brooks did 9/11 thread

probably not going to keep murdoch and uk politics completely separate (am i right?!?!), but started another thread because the newscorp stuff going international and it was drowning out good honest tory scum news.

OK, to repost (which is disappointing) I notice that this thread has managed to spend even less time on the defense review than the mainstream media. Do people really have nothing to say? (I spent my afternoon with journos and people waiting to lose their jobs) It's another tory attack on Scotland, but this time it leaves British armed forces in an impossible position.

As a lily-livered pacifist type, I'm not entirely unhappy that cuts are being made in defence spending, but yes, this whole thing sounds like it has fucked an entire community over. DOn't seem to be any real plans for creating new jobs there.

I come from an air force family btw and spent my childhood on various bases, so I appreciated what a huge thing this is for the people that live there.

Yeah, me too - I've lived my whole life on or near RAF bases (and I'm a lily-livered pacifist too, though I've recently decided on certain revolutionary exceptions). But Fox even referred to the SNP's (very unlikely to succeed) threat of independence as a reason for the decision. He's punishing communities for how they vote.

Hadn't caught that aspect of it, but Fox has always been a huge cock.

Should say best wishes to you and yours dowd, dunno what you do but I hope yr okay.

It's kinda up in the air at the mo, but cheers.

i had thought the scots wanted uk armed forces off their patch??

Doubtless some of them do - the minority who support independence. But no-one in communities around these bases wants them to go. We should have found another of Ewen MacGregor's siblings to protect Leuchars, as they (thankfully) did Lossiemouth.

Quite sad about this. I worked at Leuchars for 8 years and had a great time, still know a few people there and hope things will work out ok for them.

Brooks's husband Charlie says bag belonged to him not Rebekah. Spokesman says: "A cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin.

What cleaner throws a computer in a bin? loool

scotland hates tories, tories hate us. this will never change.

also the nats don't want rid of the brit armed forces, salmond campaigned against this iirc.

Yes, he did - he gave a speech n the village hall across the road from my house. The SNP's position was that we've already lost a base, so expecting Scotland to bear 2 of it's 3 bases closed was ridiculous, so both Lossiemouth and Leuchars should stay open.

At least it will be quieter here - the Typhoons are noisy as hell. Now it'll just be rifle drills and the odd helicopter (assuming the vague ideas about an army barracks come to fruition, and even then it'll probably be about five years)

imo the defence review is classic osbornomics, ie unserious. it wasn't a real review: if they don't want the uk to be one of the big clubs, they should make that case, but doing it as part of a defence review *and then launching into a new war* was just derrrrrrrrrrrrp.

Fox kept responding to questions by saying things like 'in order to achieve a regular/reservist proportion similar to the US we have to...' but he never explained why such a ratio was desirable. Of course, it's all about the £££'s, but he should have the guts to say so.

November 2006:

Shadow Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said: "The secretary of state has admitted to a 40% increase.

"She has failed to disclose the true cost of VAT, contingency, building cost inflation and security, much of which was entirely predictable at the time of the bid.

"Today's increase is just a starting point. While the figures remain ambiguous, we can only expect further increases."

July 2011:

The Olympic Delivery Authority has announced 88% of the building programme for London 2012 is now complete.

It has also been announced the anticipated final cost of the project fell by £16m during the last quarter.

This has prompted Sports Minister Hugh Robertson to say for the first time he is "confident" the project will come in under its £9.3bn budget.

He said: "With one year to go construction is 88% complete, ahead of time and under budget."

NHS services opened to competition

FUCK THESE PEOPLE.

Wheelchair services an interesting choice for the first round, given Cameron's been talking about his troubles with them.

Seriously, fuck these guys. They know it's completely buried.

I hear Champneys in Tring treats people in wheelchairs well...

Interesting choice of day to announce this eh?

The Guardian has the Lansley announcement story on page 15, the Independent on page 21, The Times on page 17 and the Daily Mail on page 31. And that's your lot.

iirc this was something that was going to happen. and now it has happened, kind of thing.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100098140/george-osborne-wants-a-single-euro-state/

what does this all mean?

Osborne's lost his (Jonny) marbles?

Dorset County Council is closing 9 of its 34 libraries, with 11 of those left to be run by unpaid volunteers and community groups.

Apparently it's OK because 75 per cent of Dorset residents never set foot inside a library.

Wonder what the percentage of primary school age children is. Oh.

They all vote Tory down there anyway, so fuck 'em, they're getting what they voted for

those primary school age child tory voters are the fuckin worst

Let them take it up with their parents

d-cam is editing the next issue of the big issue o_0 o_0

whose ideas was that? good god

sure that's "editing" and not "selling" ?

get on with running the country into the ground you prick

Yeah, in this current situation, that's bound to be a good idea.

Next up, Harold Shipman opens his own old people's home...

d-cam is editing the next issue of the big issue o_0 o_0

whose ideas was that?

[Big Issue founder, John] Bird revealed in 2010 "My guilty secret is that I’m really a working class Tory. There, I’ve said it. I’d love to be a liberal because they’re the nice people but it’s really hard work – I can’t swallow their gullibility and I think their ideas are stupid. I’d love to be someone who wonders around in a kind of Utopian paradise seeing only the good in everybody but I just can’t. I support capital punishment for a start. I know this will destroy my reputation among middle-class liberals but I’m 64 now and I should be able to breathe a bit. Wearing the corsetry of liberalism means that every now and then you have to take it off."

My guilty secret is that I’m really a working class Tory

Form what i've seen of this guy over the years I wouldn't exactly call that a secret

Given that Labour have been running around Scotland for weeks espousing the "biggest party forms the government" line, they wouldn't want to look like hypocrites in the face of being hoisted on their own petard, would they?

fear of deselection/losing seat next go round might well come into it

I think we said that last time.

i wonder if there are any salient differences between this election and the last one

The Independent wants more of the same, please:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/in-defence-of-liberal-democracy-10224221.html

It is clear that not only our democracy, but our kingdom, is in some peril.

handwringing over democracy and the feudal system in the same sentence, nice touch

I still think we'll end up with a more or less workable Tory minority

You've kept saying that since day one - what does workable mean? Do they get through 12bn in welfare cuts?

I'm beginning to wonder what century we're living in, tbh. If the Labour-SNP thing ever happens, I would strongly recommend the authorities double security patrols on the cellars in the Houses of Parliament and MI6 keep tabs on men in doublet and pointed beards and on the movement of barrels of gunpowder.

I always lived wanted to live through some of history's greatest moments tbh.

From the Independent editoral:

... if the present Coalition is to get another chance, we hope it is much less conservative, and much more liberal.

UK General Election 2010 (share of vote):
Conservative Party - 36.1%
Liberal Democrats - 23%

BBC Poll Tracker, May 2nd, 2015:
Conservative Party - 34%
Liberal Democrats - 8%

Xyzzz - I mean that I think they and the Lib Dems will hang onto more seats than people are expecting and that'll be enough for them to push some legislation through with support for smaller parties.

Suspect they won't be able to get £12bn of welfare cuts through because those Lib Dems who do remain are likely to be less obliging when out of a formal coalition. My guess is that one of the reasons the Tories have been throwing around obviously uncosted pledges on tax and spending is that they will be able to water them down later under the guise of post-election "negotiations". No matter how batshit the party is, the leadership must surely have been planning for a hung parliament as the most likely outcome.

I know a few people within the Treasury and the general feeling is that the Tories have thrown a lot of post-election planning out of the window in the last couple of weeks and no one has any idea where the money is going to go and how they propose to keep their pledges on tax, NHS spending and deficit reduction all at once.

To elaborate, the Treasury obviously plan with various scenarios in mind based on how they expect the various parties to behave and were reasonably confident they knew what the Tories were going to do in the event of re-election, and the Tories have basically blown that up completely now.

I liked this quite a bit.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/04/30/john-lanchester/episode-16-the-balance-of-power/

M ost scenarios covered. The role of Lib Dems as king makers this time around has been underdiscussed.

Lib Dems tearing themselves in two over which way to coalesce wd be one of the more palatable outcomes of this election

One scenario that I've not seen covered is if Nick Clegg loses his seat the Lib Dems will have to choose a new leader who may think differently enough to Clegg - who of course would love to keep his job.

Tim Farron is often mentioned as the next leader, and he's supposedly about as far left as you can get in the Liberal Democrats. Supposedly.

The UKIP Scotland site http://ukipscotland.org/ on their manifesto posters doesn't exist. David Coburn blamed "Cybernats".

― mea nulta (onimo), Monday, 4 May 2015 12:30 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They launched their Scottish manifesto without a Scottish manifesto (apparently because of some printing/courier/bank holiday mix up).

They gave out a British manifesto, which didn't mention Scotland once, instead.

A journalist discovered their promoted UKIP Scotland domain was for sale when trying to find a manifesto online.

UKIP's Scottish chairman Arthur Thackerey then didn't have a hard copy of his speech because of a different printing error and couldn't read the speech from his laptop because it kept freezing.

Their candidate for Perth didn't show at hustings because he's busy campaigning for a council seat in England.

I think it's safe to say they're not expecting to return many MPs from Scotland.

It's looking like Clegg will end up pulling in enough tactical Tory votes to get himself over the line, but if he were to lose his seat I'd guess the LibDems would have to poll their remaining MPs to decide on who to support in coalition/confidence and supply?

Was in Cornwall at the weekend, in a LIB seat that is genuinely in play, and there were these LibDem canvassers in a pub there who were expressing how much they wished Clegg has stepped down before the election because "the man's fucking poison on the doorstep".

Also reminded me how little campaigning I've seen in London this time around.

Depends where you are I suppose, obv. no point in campaigning in my constituency f'rinstance but I imagine a few doors are being knocked in Bermondsey.

our door's been knocked an aggravating number of times (marginal constituency) but i've seen almost no posters or signs in people's houses contra other years, you could walk through most residential neighbourhoods round here and have no idea there's an election on

i was saying on the other thread or maybe this one, that nobody has called to my door. i guess bg/bow is nailed on labour.

yesterday a car drove down my (quiet and one-way) street and a child was shouting "vote glin robbins" (local socialist candidate) into a megaphone - it was extremely loud and weird and overall kind of wrong. who would have their child do this? it was nice to see some community spirit rising as people beeped their horn and shouted abuse, i think the car was moving very slowly. i mean, is this even legal?

Yeah, we had a SNP guy megaphoning/driving round our part of the East End of Glasgow on Sunday morning, which seemed incredibly counterproductive - difficult to think he's making many converts, and more likely to piss off the slumbering undecideds.

yeah i was thinking that, that ending up 10 minutes late for something due to a politician or their son screaming into a mic is prob going to influence a person more than any policy. though i doubt anyone is voting for glin robbins anyway, it had a feeling of wacky british "banter" or something which made it even worse.

i guess bg/bow is nailed on labour.

Can Respect really not be arsed these days or has that ship sailed?

dunno if they're even running. i didn't see any flyers or anything. you'd barely know anyone is running here, i got a few flyers but no other sense of anything going on.

i find it kind of pathetic that they wouldn't canvass based on "o well labour are going to win this anyway" - like is it not part of the point of this that you might meet your future mp or whatever? it's p symptomatic of the rank state of politics in this country.

FPTP

it's just such a farcical system, the powerlessness...

bg & bow I've had a few election flyers in the past fortnight but half as many as takeaway flyers

otm - they really bombard you with those - tho i've voted top taste szechuan on roman road since about 2013 and they've always got the job done.

Time for a change?

possibly, recently i was in my room listening to music and didn't hear the bell and the driver rang expressing concern for my safety - "you always answer the door quickly so i wondered if something was up"

Christ the front pages this morning are abysmal. The Mail's in particular is farcical with the "Don't Vote Ed!11!!1!/In other news the NHS is fucked" double-hit.

i was saying on the other thread or maybe this one, that nobody has called to my door

Tory/LD marginal here and nobody has called, or at least not while I've been in. Labour haven't even sent any leaflets round.

There are as many posters up around me as I've seen in any previous election or maybe more, though; have seen quite a few for each of the 3 (formerly?) main parties, plus Greens, but no UKIP that I recall.

Some of the Tory and Lib Dem posters are comically huge, like a couple of places have Lib Dem diamonds several feet across, just on a suburban fence or the side of their house or w/e. Also the Lib Dem ones say "winning here" which is slightly questionable since they didn't win in 2010 and they're not ahead in the most recent local poll I saw either.

I'm not really sure who'll win scrape into govt locally or nationally (not even sure who I'll vote for), but I am beginning to brace myself for either another 5 years of horrible Tory-led coalitions or 5 years of Labour ever more desperately pretending to be the Tories and having any non-horrible policies defeated (if they think of any), all to daily shrieking front pages about nanny state reds under the bed end of proud tradition of British democracy whatever. What fun we'll have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Yx0X-eHn8

i was promised a "short-lived" era, wtf

Given this overlong era is drawing to a close (in one way or another) I'm going to lock this one and keep the conversation going on the other thread:

2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.