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

Michael Grovel

Cycled past Andrew Neil a while ago, he was slogging up the slight incline that is the cycle track by the side of the Serpentine, fighting the bars of his bike like a boxer on the ropes, in a suit, face red and sweating under a lopsided helmet. I nearly shouted out 'Knees up Brillo you old cunt' as I went past but refrained out of a no doubt misplaced sense of decency.

huh. that interview quote is pretty good. he is a cunt tho.

Michael Gove is so manifestly not up to a job of this size. It would be hilarious if, y'know, it weren't real kids' education he was fucking up.

But he's supposed to be one of the more intelligent Tories, isn't he? His original performance at the Dispatch Box, the one where he lied, made Osborne seem like a veritable charmer in comparison: arrogant, high-handed and full of himself.

A worthy successor to Ed Balls then!

Dunno, David Willets is the one who always gets mentioned as the brainy one. Admittedly in the way Labour MPs used to refer to David Miliband ie awkward and very geeky.

saw this described as a honeymoon period yesterday, and in a fucked-up way, i guess it is

the news is incredibly bad, but things seem to tick along. there isn't any meaningful opposition or an alternative proposal from labour. so far i don't know anyone who's lost their job as a direct result of the new budget. but at a certain point there has to be a break. even with a tiny amount of perspective the 2010 election has to be regarded as a bad joke, the most undemocratic shit ever pulled. they got away without saying what they would do. now they're doing it, surely people will... i dunno, *do something*.

i get the strong impression gove is one of those people who comes across as much brighter and more reasonable on tv than he does to his friends, colleagues, family, etc.

I think the lack of meaningful opposition thing is the key. But it's also good for Labour at the moment because they're not getting the William Hague/Michael Foot style hazing ritual from the press. The tabloids don't really care what Harriet Harman does because she isn't permanent and Labour aren't the news right now.

Heard the other day that every time Ed Balls appears on TV, George Osbourne is all "we NEED him to win".

Like I said upthread though all indicators are pointing towards another recession and the Tories are going to get hammered for that, especially if they are putting hundreds of people out of work at the same time.

just hundreds would be nice

even with a tiny amount of perspective the 2010 election has to be regarded as a bad joke, the most undemocratic shit ever pulled. they got away without saying what they would do. now they're doing it, surely people will... i dunno, *do something*.

This is striking to me as well. We in effect seem to have a hard ideological tory govt, acting as if they have a big majority, not a minority govt who did not win the election at all. It baffles me that no-one in the media seems to...care about this?

It's what the media want though, isn't it?

I know, "the media"

yep. the bbc is shit-scared. and the rest of it is tory anyway.

Beeb = Nick Robinson, Andrew Neil...

It was the ultimate "oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them" election.

All I can see happening is that the Tories are forcing through their agenda, letting the LibDems take the agenda on things they don't care about/agree in the first place, and simultaneously trying to undermine and/or fuck the LibDems in the hope that the coalition collapses and they get back in with a majority. Which is quite a risk.

the rest of it is tory anyway.

Not all, don't forget the twats who supported the Liberal Democrats!

That said it was pretty difficult to think of positive reasons to support Labour in the last election. "They won't be as shit as these other guys" doesn't really hold up until people have had a chance to see how shit.

Note to Andrew Neil - it's the vest and baseball cap, dude. I don't hear anyone mocking your girlfriend.

http://northernheckler.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/hague-cap.jpg

^^^ Is that Andrew Neil in the background?

Never knew that cap actually said "Hague" on it!

That said it was pretty difficult to think of positive reasons to support Labour in the last election. "They won't be as shit as these other guys" doesn't really hold up until people have had a chance to see how shit.

― Matt DC, Thursday, July 8, 2010 12:39 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

in the same way that i think lindsay lohan has a glittering future in the movies, i think labour will be able to pull in/pull back a lot of support if they can show that the what the tories are doing is far in excess of what would be needed to keep down interest rates etc, and is actually endangering the economy. brown said this during the election, but people hated him. it's not enough to be basically right (especially when you sort of helped cause the monumental fuck-up that we're all paying for).

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/music/Pix/pictures/2009/1/19/1232380816672/William-Hague-at-Notting--001.jpg

the 2010 election has to be regarded as a bad joke, the most undemocratic shit ever pulled. they got away without saying what they would do. now they're doing it, surely people will... i dunno, *do something*.

Undemocratic? Hardly. The formed the govt legitmately. Getting away without saying what you're gonna do is exactly as Matt says, good opposition practice and very much a judgement on the incumbent. People don't get to 'do something' until the next general election, imo. Best off hoping that LibDems opt out early.

I never realized before how insufferably smug Hague's voice is! He comes on the radio and he sounds like a cartoon villain. Like he's been so pampered, so entitled, so looked-after his entire life that he never needs to raise his voice above this bemused it's-all-in-hand drone.

Getting away without saying what you're gonna do is exactly as Matt says, good opposition practice

Except this isn't what I said, this was the least scrutinised opposition in history, at least among those that had a realistic chance of forming a government. And clearly they didn't get away with it, because if they had they wouldn't be subject to the indignity of having to ask the LibDems to prop them up in a coalition they clearly hate.

Getting away without saying what you're gonna do

How about getting away with doing the opposite of what you said you were gonna do? Like their coalition partners?

The Jamie Oliver-approach will not work in tackling public health problems like obesity and smoking, the health secretary says... Andrew Lansley told the British Medical Association conference in Brighton ... He said the TV chef's approach to school food had not had the desired effect - the number of children eating school meals had gone down instead of up.

'More pupils' eat school lunches

How about getting away with doing the opposite of what you said you were gonna do? Like their coalition partners?

Very elastic use of the term "getting away with" going on here.

Re: the Lansley and G(r)ove(l) stories, could this be devious civil servants saying, "These fuckers might be putting us out of a job soon, maybe we can help them lose their jobs before then"

There are rather a lot of unauthorised leaks coming from sources close to ministers, aren't there? It took a good couple of years for the Labour govt to get this leaky, and even then it was usually rival spin doctors trying to steal a march on one another.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7880253/UK-austerity-drive-threatens-to-snuff-out-recovery-IMF-warns.html

Not gonna click that link but is the accompanying picture got Osbourne with his fingers in his ears going "ner ner not listening"?

There is no plan B here, they seem to be staking everything on private sector growth picking up the slack but haven't really explained how that's going to happen.

Well, once interest rate cuts kick in.. oh wait.

How about once the price of oil drops? Er.

OK OK, we'll just export our way to growth by selling to all those other countries that have import-led strategies.. hmm.

Not gonna click that link but is the accompanying picture got Osbourne with his fingers in his ears going "ner ner not listening"?

Nah, it's better, Economics Hard Man Osbourne...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01446/george_1446276c.jpg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7885753/NHS-shake-up-grants-new-powers-to-doctors-and-patients.html

Patients will be handed more choice over how and where they are treated, pledged Mr Lansley.

i dunno who's asking for this. there *is* a problem to do with gps not wanting to prescribe the more expensive drugs (relative of mine is in a situation where a hospital consultant has said "u need these expensive drugs" and dbag GP is saying "no, have these shitty ones"... GPs are overpaid arseholes on the whole). but idk about having choice over how im treated. should schoolchildren get to choose how they are educated? doesn't sound very conservative to me.

Annoying. Can the consultant issue the prescription from his own budget as opposed to the GP's? Also would have thought in a game of NHS paper/scissors/rock, consultant crushes GP.

xp re choice... no, patients want to be treated as well as possible, as close to home as possible.

If I were properly sickly ill, the last thing I'd want to be stressed about is trying to choose a consultant/ surgeon/ whatever.

Also, I assume this info will be available online? if so then they're disadvantaging people (eg elderly / disabled etc) who may not have access to the internet or the appropriate research skills. More power to the people already in power, right? Conservatism in fucking ACTION.

Already saving money.

http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0134856cc10a970c-500wi

Ah Bloxwich, land of my birthing.

She can't fucking write, though...

How much investment in schools?

200 million

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/gfx/1956farthing220x224.jpg

She gets my vote for being In Touch and recognised for being hands on.

Putting a stop on more speed camera's

^ investment in education too late for her obv.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10649459

This doesn't strike me as an inherently terrible idea if it were to replace student loans altogether, although I've no idea how one would go about actually implementing it.