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

Not as LOLsome as that pre-election "Why we're voting Liberal Democrat" list of twats (xp0

Yeah the only way to overturn this is to put together a credible set of reasons why higher public spending would be a way out of the deficit rather than just going "wah racists and millionaires".

Never mind higher public spending, fingers crossed for some public spending!

i think there's a place for a mainstream left-wing [more left wing than new labour, if you can imagine such a thing] movement agains the cuts. but not one led by (basically) the swp and its famous mates.

Won't need to be particularly left-wing once people start feeling the pinch.

yeah, i just mean kind of social-democratic, kind of willing to make the case for equality of access to education/health/______, etc.

not saying renationalize the car industry or anything

Won't need to be particularly left-wing once people start feeling the pinch.

Not so sure about that. I fear the Tories have won the (largely uncontested) argument that the cuts are "necessary" and "unavoidable", it just seems to have been accepted.

OTM #1 (xp)
OTM #2 (xxp)

I fear the Tories have won the (largely uncontested) argument that the cuts are "necessary" and "unavoidable", it just seems to have been accepted.

People are happy to "accept" things as long as they aren't actually affecting them.

They'll just blame the Labour government or the unemployed or the immigrants

i dunno. you can't "do" anything to register your dissent -- yet, the cuts haven't started to cut. i don't know if people do accept it that much. do they even poll that kind of thing? so far it's mostly been announcements. but (e.g.) the schools programme seems to be a damp squib -- they just aren't signing up.

as matt said, you would need a convincing picture of "what happens next", which neither the tories nor the guardian letter writers have provided. but cameron has made it explicit now that the cuts are not just done out of expediency, and there are strong arguments that they've gone way overboard. i think the elements are there. be kind of nice if the new labour leader were able to mobilize them.

be kind of nice if the new labour leader were able to mobilize them.

yeah, it's not a case of the voting masses 'accepting' it so much as (like we have over here) a lack of credible opposition focusing, expressing and hitting the govt with people's discontent

Seriously, please just fuck off now?

oh ok, that's a link

wait that's absolutely indefensible, that's fucking scandalous

booming comment from pissedoffman there

we could all learn something

A Home Office spokeswoman said Mrs May had made clear she regarded tackling violence against women as a priority. "However, in tough economic times, we are now considering our options for delivering improved protection and value for money," she added.

Thank you once again Liberal Democrat voters everywhere

pissedoffman- if raoul moat had gotten that college course back in 1995

wow independent commentators are like the most vile i've ever read?

Was just thinking that myself.

A Home Office spokeswoman said Mrs May had made clear she regarded tackling violence against women as a priority. "However, in tough economic times, we are now considering our options for delivering improved protection and value for money," she added.

Honestly, there's "saving money" and then there's "defending the indefensible". How much longer is this going to wash?

Honestly, there's "saving money" and then there's "defending the indefensible"

Seriously- random picks out of a hat couldn't be less suitable of a way to manage these cuts.

The Big Society will no doubt come to the aid of these abused women - if indeed they are abused and they are not the ones doing the abusing, of the system and of taxpayers money

A Home Office spokeswoman said Mrs May had made clear she regarded tackling violence against women as a priority. "However, in tough economic times, we are now considering our options for delivering improved protection and value for money," she added.

Honestly, there's "saving money" and then there's "defending the indefensible". How much longer is this going to wash?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 5 August 2010 17:09 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

this wouldn't even cost anything extra! it just uses existing police resources.

Maybe Cameron told her that wife beaters have nuclear weapons?

Nice one:

From: “Dominic Raab”
Subject: Re: Re:
To: Johnny Chatterton
Date: 19 July 2010 09:30

Dear Johnny

I have now had my email address removed from the public HoC internet, to avoid it being used by lobby groups such as your own. I have spoken to the Information Commissioner’s Office who inform me that – as it is no longer in the public domain – I am entitled to request that you stop using it on your campaign website, so that I no longer receive pro-forma emails.

Please understand that MPs get a high volume of correspondence and emails. Just processing the emails from your website absorbs a disproportionate amount of time and effort, which we may wish to spend on higher priorities, such as helping constituents in real need or other local or Parliamentary business.

These emails from your and other lobby groups are becoming a real nuisance. I am easily contactable by constituents, who can write to me at the House of Commons, and readily accessible via surgeries and other public meetings.

So, I am now formally requesting that you remove my email from your website system. If you refuse, I will submit a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Regards,

Dominic Raab

LOL. He's entitled to request. I'm entitled to request a lot of things - a pony, from my mom; the nuclear launch codes; my own television network - but that doesn't mean I'm ever going to get any of those things. Hope the Information Commissioner buries his complaint in deep cyberspace.

Please understand that MPs get a high volume of correspondence and emails. Just processing the emails from your website absorbs a disproportionate amount of time and effort, which we may wish to spend on higher priorities,

Classic if the Information Commissioner responded in kind

It's just such a classic posh-person-tries-it-on letter; the apoplexy kind of oozes from between the lines - and any card-carrying member of the lower orders can tell you that if they don't mention a law you're violating, you're not breaking anything except the guy's poor ickle heart. Diddums!

ah but suzy in fairness he's a very busy man.

Cow-milk is not especially good for non-cow kids but y'know kill a hippy every day

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is one of a string of cabinet ministers who have been allowed to keep their chauffeur-driven taxpayer-funded cars.

The Hallam Lib Dem MP has retained the use of a car for "security" reasons - even though the Government said they would ban the use of chauffeur-driven cars "other than in exceptional circumstances".

Before entering Downing Street David Cameron said: "If there is something that really annoys people, it's politicians swanning around in chauffeur-driven cars."

But it appears the ban on the use of dedicated cars has been restricted to ministers outside the cabinet.

A Cabinet Office spokesman confirmed Mr Clegg had retained a car, saying his travel arrangements "are all made according to security advice."

Mr Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, Home Secretary Theresa May, Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Foreign Secretary William Hague are keeping their cars for "security reasons". Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Ulster Secretary Owen Paterson also retain cars.

"If there is something that really annoys people, it's politicians swanning around in chauffeur-driven cars."

the guy just knows what the public thinks, you have to give him that. chauffeur-driven cars, terrible.

does he still cycle around with a man driving a car behind him taking his bag?

pretty sure he knows more than most about swans tho.

It is really obvious that Dave has not been at his cycle. Time-lapse would show, amusingly, he's put on about a stone since the election.

What's Fatso up to today?

Sentences to make your blood run cold:

Mr Cameron has said errors will be reduced by a simplified benefits system being developed by Iain Duncan Smith.

By the way, if he carries on like this, Private Eye will have to change their parody comic strip of him from Lord Snooty and His Pals to Billy Bunter

And uh, why is this a priority over and above TAX CHEATS like TESCO who deprive the government of MANY BILLIONS by SHELTERING their assets in OFFSHORE SHELL CORPORATIONS for fuck's sake. In what alternate universe does it make more sense to pay private companies to nickel and dime poor people one by one???

Welcome to Toryville!

xp otmfm. today programme this morning was all "benefit fraud is only 1.6b, what about the 3.7b overpaid due to error?" WHAT ABOUT THE 70 BILLION IN TAX EVASION?

Love the fact that all the articles about this in this morning's papers touted some article Cameron wrote for the Manchester Evening News - on the Number 10 website here - and then the MEN went and used six sentences of it.

"...and then I got rid of speed cameras and some child got run over and died...oh lord, such a palaver...but you've got to try these things you know..."

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/10/article-1301910-0AC08C68000005DC-366_468x286.jpg

What's to-day's policy incidentally?

Who needs playgrounds?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10912723

I hear these unelected officials are going to use decommissioned speed cameras on post boxes to fine whoever dares use a county name when addressing a letter:

Protecting county names

SIR – I share the public’s concern (Letters, August 9) at the recommendation of the Postcode Address File Advisory Board to delete counties from the Royal Mail’s address database by 2016. It speaks volumes that unelected officials regard our counties – and over 1,000 years of English history – as a “vanity attachment”.

But the new Government is taking steps to defend our counties. We have scrapped Labour’s gerrymandering which sought to break up the counties of Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk for electoral advantage and we are dismantling the tiers of regional assemblies and development agencies.

Eric Pickles MP (Con)
Secretary of State for Local Government
London SW1

You could be in England.

You could be in Wales.

you'd never know it from your POSTCODE!

Cheshire in England = CH1
Holywell in Wales = CH8

Counties be blowed!

I live in a village attached to a military base (I grew up on such bases, so the fact that most of my social contacts are military doesn't seem strange ti me). I would say that a higher than average proportion of people here vote Tory (my parents always did). This is because of Thatcher's raising of the wage for servicemen. The Tories are the party of the military, I grew up hearing.

But what the hell are they up to? They don't have any intention of withdrawing from the stupid fucking wars they supported (and many of my friends have served in, and think are fucking stupid), yet they seem determined to slash the budget the military has to fight with. The clash between Fox and Osborne has resolved itself with the MOD Paying for Trident, essentially slashing the military budget further.

Where are the 'support our boys' tabloids during this process? Could it be that they couldn't give a shit about servicemen getting blown up (to be paraded through the nearest town so a grotesque carnival can cheer them on - an event I have never found a serviceman meet with anything other than nausea)

Blech, too drunk. But a friend of mine just got given yet another posting to Afghanistan, while the Tory cabinet bent over backwards to cut costs so they don't have to raise taxes for their rich friends.

Liberal Democrat MPs should have a veto on policies put forward by the coalition government, the party's deputy leader Simon Hughes has said.

Good luck with that one.