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

hearts and minds and other people's wombs
such a load of stupid counterfactual bullshit

the most watched debate on the parliament channel is not such a hot endorsement either

i really just can not extract any logic or even work out what she's arguing for from that - a reduction to twenty weeks, to allow women the ability to choose, apart from if they're in the typically vulnerable group seeking terminations in that period

could have bothered to check how to spell 'Stopes' as well eh

Protesters are claiming to have closed the Vodafone store on London's Oxford Street store in a demonstration over an unpaid £6bn tax bill.

Ooh. That sounds promising.

They all look a bit bored:

http://imgur.com/202LK.jpg

Like, it would be awesome to have a sustained protest campaign against corporate entities shirking their taxes (alongside the weekly drumbeat of govt spending cuts)

xpost Where the oompah band when you need it????

protester hash tag is #UKUncut

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118522394874856

"11 Attending"

what taxes are vodafone not paying?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/vodafone-tax-case-leaves-sour-taste

ta.

hmrc say its settled? protest to them, surely? no company is going to voluntarily give up billions, even in the face of a hashtag. obviously they've litigated to get the outcome they want, but unless you actually know the details of the litigation and know that vodafone have done something wrong in that process, i can't see why you would blame anyone other than hmrc and the government for this.

on the other hand, this will probably get more press than "lol gideon"

Attack the PR people, they are weak.

with a diet of only Deliverance takeout and skinny lattes they may be brought down easily on the edges of the herd

this will probably get more press than "lol gideon"

― caek, Wednesday, October 27, 2010 12:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

oh god, what is it with complete idiots and calling him 'gideon'?

'gordon brown's REAL first name was JAMES but i bet he doesn't FEEL GOOD geddit lol'

hmm, Gideon was that bloke having the affair with RobMugabe's wife. Which strikes me as the ultimate extreme-sport.

Mr Miliband accused Mr Cameron of being "out of touch" and warned that thousands of people would be forced out of their homes as a result of the changes.

He told the prime minister: "You are about to make 500,000 people redundant. Your policy on housing benefit is a complete shambles. In London councils are saying 82,000 people will lose their homes. How many people do you think will lose their homes as a result of this policy?"

This is better from Labour, hammer hammer hammer has to be the way to go for now.

this isn't :(

I wonder who leaked that?

Everyone does this of course, and has done for years. PMQs are a waste of time.

Also, where are all these politicians getting their poppies? I haven't even seen any for sale yet.

all the background on the vodafone thing:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1273

big issue guy is a bit of a cunt isn't he

Eh?

I'm jealous of his slimline, lightweight laptop:

Prime Minister David Cameron sent his own message of farewell to Anthony Steen during the former MP's goodbye bash at Dartington.

The message was read out during a three-hour lunch at Dartington's Great Hall, revealed former constituency chairman and president Justine Holmes.

She said: "A message was also read out from the Prime Minister, particularly commending Anthony's current work on trafficking." Tory heavyweight Kenneth Clarke joined local Conservative figures to say thank-you and goodbye to the former MP and his wife Carolyn.

The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice joined the buffet lunch along with 250 other guests at the historic Great Hall venue on the Dartington Estate.

During the lunch, organised by the constituency business club, Mr Steen was presented with a slimline, lightweight laptop as a goodbye gift.

His wife Carolyn was presented with a Kindle electronic book reader.

She went on: "After a welcome from Vaughan Lindsay, chief executive of Dartington, the Mayor of Torbay Nick Bye, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Lord Michael Spicer and the Rt Hon. Kenneth Clarke, the Lord Chancellor, all spoke warmly of Anthony Steen's many contributions, locally and in Parliament."

Michael Gove's education department failed to invite bids for a £500,000 grant to assist parents setting up free schools, before awarding it to his former adviser.

The New Schools Network, a charity and company run by the education secretary's former colleague, Rachel Wolf, 25, was awarded the grant by the Department for Education in June. No other organisation was asked to tender for the contract, which was not publicly advertised.

what the fuck

No other organisation was asked to tender for the contract, which was not publicly advertised.

Big Society in action there.

Saving a lot of money on placing needless advertising for Government non-jobs.

hiyo http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/27/oxford-university-education-funding

Yesterday evening OUSU Council, the sovereign representative body of the Student Union, mandated me to inform you of the protest taking place this afternoon against the proposals set out in the Browne review and the Comprehensive Spending Review, and timed to coincide with the planned visit of Business Secretary Vince Cable.

Mr Cable has now cancelled his visit to Oxford, with his spokesperson citing "advice from Thames Valley Police about threats of a protest and his concern about the level of disruption this could cause to the people of Oxford plus the possible cost of policing". Thames Valley Police have since confirmed that they did report to Mr Cable that there would be a protest but did not advise him against coming on safety grounds. The decision not to come was entirely Mr Cable's.

The protest will go ahead as planned. The Government may not be willing to listen to the students of Oxford peacefully and respectfully making their opinions heard, but this afternoon the national media will be. This is our chance to come together and show what we think about a 40% cut in the teaching budget for Humanities and the Social Sciences and the possibility of an open market in University fees.

Each College will meet at its own Lodge at 3pm. All students will then meet at the bottom of Cornmarket St (outside Boswells) at 3.30pm. At 3.45pm, we will march down Cornmarket turning left onto the High Street and on to Exam Schools. We will arrive at Exam Schools between 4pm and 4.30pm, and will then demonstrate peacefully outside Exam Schools until 5.30pm.

what a fucken pussy

i would call that the 'top' of cornmarket

george st surely the arse end

Cameron was due to meet Nicolas Sarkozy on HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth next week. Until someone realised it was cut in the Defence Review and it might not look good for the PM to toddle along for a visit, so they moved the meeting to Downing Street.

http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/10/28/child-benefit-cut-unenforceable-treasury-in-a-flap/?mod=wsj

"At root is a problem that should have been apparent to those designing the policy, if detailed advice had been sought from civil servants before it was announced at Conservative party conference."

Not policy made on the hoof, then.

The savings are negligible and I suspect the whole idea was cooked up in order to give people the impression that higher earners were taking their share of the pain. That mission has been somewhat accomplished so it'll be alright to ditch it in a few months. They might even try to take credit for having a compassionate change of heart!

oh man, lolz

Child benefit is generally paid to the mother. She is under no legal obligation to tell the father that she receives it. The Treasury confirms this. It is her benefit. The father’s tax status is irrelevant. If a mother claims it there is nothing forcing her to flag up to the taxman that her husband earns above the level that Osborne stipulates should mean no child benefit.

generally being the operative word. single parent men are entitled to it. but the basic point, that the mechanism in place attaches a particular CB to one adult, not of the home, and there's no way of knowing the income of both guardians is true.

£1bn per year is 25% of trident renewal (via lib dems) or more like 50% of trident (via lab/con). it's not negligible.

Is it that much? Huh. So it's a sixth of Vodafone's unpaid tax bill. But yes I see your point. Of course once you subtract the cost of designing, engineering, implementing and monitoring a brand-new nationwide database of every household in the UK...

ha, yes

the easy alternative not mentioned in the wsj piece is to deny child benefit to any individual above the threshold. it's not "paid to the mother", so if you do that, a couple with one parent above and one below the threshold could claim (via the low-earning parent), but a couple with two parents above could not.

that's slightly different from their dream policy of "no CB for families with an earner above the 40% threshold", in that families like ned's where one is below the threshold no longer lose it. so the savings are not quite so big (dunno by how much), but the implementation seems simple.

if they do it like that, single parents on 50k lose out, which seems unfair when couples on 40k each don't, but that was true of their dream policy too.

I am in favour of your solution.

Boris Johnson criticised for 'Kosovo' benefits remark expands a little on chris bryant's use of "cleansing"

Love how Boris makes the usual get-out-clause claim of "my remarks were taken out of context", and then you read them three paragraphs down with the added context and nothing about what he said changes at all.

ed davey, human shield

well, almost human

In an election tomorrow Nick Clegg would hold onto his Sheffield Hallam seat by the skin of his teeth, with 33% to Labour’s 31%, and the Conservatives on 28% – a swing of 17.5% to Labour. And in Eastleigh, according to a poll I conducted in August, Chris Huhne would be comfortably trounced by the Conservatives, 43% to 31%, with Labour doubling their vote share to 20% – a swing of 10% to the Tories and 13% to Labour.

forgetting about closing tax loopholes used solely by millionaires with expensive accountants and shit for a moment the government says it will impose fines on anyone claiming child benefit without disclosing their partner's income and all the related shit that supposes and implies

even labour did absolutely nothing -- the opposite of nothing -- about millionaire tax avoiders for 13 years so yeah pretty sure that's a non-starter with the tories