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

Bankers salaries up 40%

rock and roller cola wars, i can't take it any more!!

Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like that racist cunt Jack Straw is back in the game.

The Government was urged today to introduce a £2.50 an hour training wage for internships lasting for three months or longer.

The idea was part of a number of measures suggested by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) aimed at boosting the UK's economic recovery.

Also, surprise surprise, the Tories are moving to "create jobs" by making it easier to sack people.

Straight doublespeak from the Mail on this:

David Cameron plans to get Britain back to work by making it easier to sack staff in the first two years of their employment.

uh....

you sack someone, you hire someone else, bingo, two jobs for price of one.

Bad news for Nick Clegg that.

Love the idea that employers are too scared to employ people in case they suddenly stop doing any work after 366 days.

Hilarious commenters on the Telegraph site worried about how this affects white middle-aged males.

You could say that about any story on any newspaper website, I know, but still.

An amazing piece of mad brainstorming disguised as a policy proposal from yesterday: killing two birds with one stone by making parents pay for the administrative costs of arranging child support, in order to cut costs and encourage couples to stay together for the kids!

"The aim would be to be act as a deterrent and help convince parents that splitting up should be an option of last resort when all other avenues had been taken. The whole system needs to be made more family friendly."

In fact, there should be a tax break for marriages to involve three people. One to work (main job), one to also work and raise kids, and one to act as spare child care, and sexual substitute for when the other two are too busy for it.

the easy-to-sack-within-first-two-years* is a lot like the french rule that a bunch of cars got flipped over, and was then repealed/not enacted, no?

* also i have never had a job for two years, feel like i'm not alone in this.

Lib Dems up one point

Lib Dems support up 9%! :)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3341539/Well-help-the-Alarm-Clock-heroes-keep-Britain-ticking.html

Every time Clegg talks about taking the poor out of income tax altogether I picture a load of Tory MPs standing behind him and guffawing.

According to ComRes, the Tories trail Labour among voters in every age group below 55 and in every region of Britain except the Midlands

That has to be bollocks, doesn't it? Surely the Tories would be ahead of Labour in the south-east (outside of London) and the south-west.

all depends how you draw the boundaries (which is why the tories want to redraw them)

Snap election for May? http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/01/12/a-snap-election-promises-cameron-the-glory-he-craves/

Seems mental on the face of it, but could the Tories benefit more than Lab from the strange death of the Lib-Dems?

A snap election leading to another hung parliament would be *awesome*

That could possibly (even probably?) lead to a centre-left/centre-right split in the LDs attempting to form separate coalitions with Lab & Con. Or we could keep going around till enough people on one side give up voting altogether.

the self-imposed five-year rule would make that hard for lib dem mps to swallow

i think they'd reject it on principle

;)

I'd say the Tories are more likely to benefit from LibDem meltdown. Unless I'm mistaken the majority of Liberal seats have the Tories in second place, so it depends how the candidates had previously been presenting themselves in those seats (ie fluffy lefties or fluffier Tories).

being serious, i don't know how the tories could justify it, given the five-year thing

they'd need to engineer a split in the lib dems, or some kind of crisis, to be able to say the coalition isn't working therefore we must break our own rule

there's more than one they, of course, and whoever leaked this must have had their own purpose in mind

Gleefully introducing a ridiculously unpalatable right-wing policy would help achieve that end.

war

Wars are kind of expensive though. Needs to be something that doesn't cost money.

Reintroduction of fox hunting innit

life sentences for all drug dealing

shot on spot for heroin

hanging for liberals

say they can't prove that the labour cabinet may or may not be pedophiles

Education Secretary Michael Gove says he wants parents to "go compare".

shit miliband joke about meerkats at next week's PMQs then

Crazy idea off the top of my head here, but what about if the Gov made the shit schools not shit, then there wouldn't be any need for parents to shop around eh?

You are a dangerous revolutionary, set on upending the structure of our society, obv.

Oh, come on, Edna, we both know these children have no future!

Crazy idea off the top of my head here, but what about if the Gov made the shit schools not shit, then there wouldn't be any need for parents to shop around eh?

― Tinker Tailor Soulja Boy Tell 'Em (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, January 12, 2011 8:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

wtf is wrong with you? trying to give ALL kids a decent education?

Peston is totally dripping with insinuation about Jeremy Hunt here...

comments to that story are very depressing.

like, the BBC has its moments of being shit, many of them in fact (thinking of the wonderful justin webb on the today programme this morning, arguing that violent talk in american politics was equally a problem for both sides, and defending this point with the words "and some years back someone [who?] famously said "I hate george bush""). but i think most of these anti-BBC commentators would hate the world under murdoch's purview.

Labour hold a seat they've held since the 1950s, every political journalist goes overboard about "what this means for the coalition". It doesn't really mean anything.

it's not rly insinuation is it? just saying "look at this effing corrupt tory cunt"

Yeah, there needs to be a big noise made about this.

xp - it doesn't mean much but a bigger majority than 1997 is probably worthy of some comment.

Suppose - I'd put that down to core vote out in force plus collapse in working class Tory vote? Labour can expect far more of their supporters to vote in the next election than they did in 2005 or 2010.