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

what a heroic final sentiment

ha

policeman who inserted song titles into his testimony at the inquest for a drunk lawyer whom he shot, what's on your ipod?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11671164

if prisoners do get the vote is this likely to have much impact on future election results? 70k doesnt sound like a massively influential number when spread across all the constituencies.

Just the thought of Cameron/Clegg/Milliband going to jail to Canvass....

Mass movement of prisoners based on their voting intentions on the way then?

Cameron vs Bronson

Portsmouth MP Mike Hancock grabbed a screwdriver and repaired a door at the House of Commons after it was damaged by a colleague following a row with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

The Portsmouth South MP and his friend Bob Russell, the MP for Colchester, had attended a meeting for Lib Dem MPs to question Mr Clegg, their party leader.

A discussion about changes to housing benefits became heated - and on the way out, Mr Russell slammed the door, causing it to come off its hinges.

Mr Hancock returned early the next morning with a screwdriver to re-hang the door and spare Mr Russell's blushes.

The two MPs had taken Mr Clegg to task about government plans to cap housing benefit at £400 a week, and to make new social housing applicants pay 80 per cent of the average private market rent for council houses.

Mr Hancock said: 'It was a strong debate. It took place behind closed doors, so I don't want to say exactly what was said. 'But feelings were high, and when Bob left the room, having had enough of what we heard, it's fair to say he shut the door harder than would normally have been expected.' He added: 'I came back because I wanted to save everyone's embarrassment. The door was off its hinges. It was pretty big, like most of the doors in the House, and it was pretty heavy.

Man charged with task of preventing David Cameron looking like a fat-faced cunt given job paid by taxpayers

Protection of frontline public services in action there.

i know this isn't strictly relevant to this thread but what's the general take on the US mid-term results and how does it impact on the UK, if at all? did the obamacrats do better/worse than expected?

really hoping palin & co do/have done to the republicans what benn & the gang did to early 80s labour

It will enbolden the right, any perceived failure on Obama's part will undermine the case for any continued fiscal stimuli. Cameron and Obama's relationship has been non-existant for now and I think the PM would be much more comfortable standing alongside a Republican on the international stage.

for the general take, see the us politics thread. they went pretty much exactly as expected based on recent predictions.

don't really affect the uk. the current uk government is almost totally focussed on domestic policy. gridlock in the U.S. really only affects their own domestic agenda too. there is still no credible republican leader for cameron to stand alongside, so that's not changed. as you were.

xp i don't think that's true: cameron-supporting tories love obama and were all over twitter last night celebrating eg christine o'donnell's failure. they're fighting against their own socially-conservative right wing after all (assuming that the tea party isn't really about fiscal prudence).

cameron-supporting tories

all ten of them

I think the number of "Cameron-supporting Tories" is overstated, especially in relation to the number of Tories who tolerate Cameron because they want to win elections.

sure, these are young party activists mainly that i'm talking about. but victories for a hard-line right in the usa make cameron's position weaker with his pragmatic tolerators, especially given cameron didn't manage to win an election himself.

Don't get the sense that there are any real Cameronistas. The idea of young Tory activists being on the left of the party is straight lulz tho.

Essentially, they like Obama because he is photogenic and American and not too left wing and they don't ever have to think about the bits of his politics they may disagree with.

and it makes them look like they're not racist.

it's apples and oranges to a great extent, much more than uk-based "lol democrats = uk right wing" commentary implies. but yes, cameron is more ideologically aligned with the democrats than the republicans. this is probably even true of the wider tory party agenda. the number of tories or reliable tory voters who are comfortable with this idea, believe it to be true and rejoice in democrat victories is absolutely tiny though.

so yes, to a degree i agree with "victories for a hard-line right in the usa make cameron's position weaker with his pragmatic tolerators, especially given cameron didn't manage to win an election himself."

it's very far from clear yet that this is a victory for the hard-line right in the u.s. though. the estabilishment republican party has done well overall, but there were quite a few cases of palin-endorsed tea party people failing. and more importantly for the uk: it wasn't a presidential election, which is the only thing 99.9% of the uk electorate are aware of. if obama loses in 2012 (to who though?) then that's something that would probably give a feeling of momentum in the UK. but that might end up just being anti-incumbent momentum, rather than momentum that strengthens the uk right.

basically, this election has consequences for the uk that are either totally insignificant or, for now at least, ambiguous.

dunno, the deadlock and poor economy are not good signs for anyone in the capitalist west

yeah, that's what i mean by anti-incumbent (rather than rightwards) momentum in a few years.

basically, this election has consequences for the uk that are either totally insignificant or, for now at least, ambiguous.

I'm confused as to what the consequences are for the USA, let alone the UK.

Man charged with task of preventing David Cameron looking like a fat-faced cunt given job paid by taxpayers

Protection of frontline public services in action there.

― Tom A. (Tom B.) (Tom C.) (Tom D.), Wednesday, November 3, 2010 11:19 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Being grumpy about this on PMQs to-day, quite amusing.

Seriously though - fuck all this crappy banter the pair of you...

12.14pm: Miliband says Cameron claims to be making a hard choice about tuition fees. But who has Cameron put on the civil service payroll this week? His own personal photographer. (See 10.47am.) Mililband imagines what the photographer would say: "We're all in this together - just a little bit to the right, Nick."
Cameron asks if this is what Miliband's opposition has been reduced to. The last Labour government spent £500m on communications. The coalition will cut that by two thirds. Cameron suggests Miliband should engage with the serious issues.
Miliband says this is a government of broken promises. "That is what they meant by broken Britain." Cameron is destroying trust in politics.
Cameron says Miliband can have a succession of "lame soundbites", or he can decide to engage in a debate about the government of the country. People know what Miliband is against. But they don't know what he stands for.

Communications Budget slashed to "lots of nice pictures of me"

That was shit on Miliband's part. Beyond shit actually.

As many as three people could go to university for the cost of that photographer.

Or one for a whole degree.

ed miliband is so rubbish

£9k a year tuition fees! Clearly when the coalition talks about not wanting to make the next generation pay for this generation's mistakes, they're full of shit.

yeah. fucking incredible. i felt hard-done-by when they were a grand a year. im still like eight thou down, but £27k and rising on graduation? fuk dat.

It's outrageous that Cameron's photographer can still claim child benefits.

Whatever happened to Punch and Judy politics?

hey folks! just checkin in to say i'm thinking of you...

no really -- funny to see ppl wondering about what the US midterms mean for the UK (no idea btw) because i've been thinking about the UK example in terms of what the new crop of hard-right legislators have said they want to do: cut everything now. and the cameron plan, in general, looks like a good test case. gee, what happens when you dump another few hundred thousand public employees into the labor market in the middle of a recession? i don't think any american pundit has made this connection, but i'll be curious to see how the two economies and political systems handle the next two years.

thanks for your time!

what happens when you dump another few hundred thousand public employees into the labor market in the middle of a recession?

see: ireland, republic

we're not really like ireland (labour try to make this comparison). or like greece (the tories try to make this comparison). but yes it is going to be shit.

I dunno about consequences of US politics for the UK, but looking at any US pol thread is sure to make me terrified of a(n even more) 2-party system

thanks Lib Dems for so eagerly making yourselves Tory fall guys; thanks everyone who never voted for them being so gleeful at being able to say "I told you so"

my pleasure

things can only get better guys

This pundit suggests the UK horrorshow will dissuade the US from austerity measures, but I doubt it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/economics-economy

Republicans get elected by promising "smaller government"; in office they tend to spend more than Democrats. They cut benefits and gut regulatory regimes so it FEELS smaller but it's more than made up for by corporate giveaways.

For the past 20 weeks I have been engaged in a very strange dialogue with the two noble Lords, in the course of which I have been trying to bring to their attention the willing availability of a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy in this country. For want of a better name, I shall call it foundation X. That is not its real name, but it will do for the moment. Foundation X was introduced to me 20 weeks ago last week by an eminent City firm, which is FSA controlled. Its chairman came to me and said, "We have this extraordinary request to assist in a major financial reconstruction. It is megabucks, but we need your help to assist us in understanding whether this business is legitimate".

...

I found myself between a rock and a hard place that were totally paranoid about each other, because the foundation X people have an amazing obsession with their own security. They expect to be contacted only by someone equal to head of state status or someone with an international security rating equal to the top six people in the world. This is a strange situation.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2010-11-01a.1463.8#g1536.0

wtf? he's just got one of those nigerian emails, right?

Fell asleep reading a Dan Brown book, more like.

haha what the fuck

is he just an old nutter? biggest lol comes after this guy has bumbled on for 30 minutes, ranting about "finding out the truth!" and some lib dem lord interrupts with "My Lords, back to the spending review..."

if someone is losing their marbles in a big way, why are they still ok to sit in the house of lords and waste everyone's time like this?

hundreds of years of tradition.

Something very lolworthy about this:

"Our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make east London one of the world's great technology centres."

East London is already full of Nathan Barley-looking cunts and I'm sure the Olympic Park has already got plenty of companies signed up for the tax breaks, so in my many ways this plan can't fail.

*in many ways*, even.