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

Don't know if anyone saw the Tory who was on Newsnight last night defending the government's pensions reforms - I didn't even catch his name - but, you know, smug, loathsome, unprincipled, the same way they have been since the year dot. I will never forgive the Liberal Democrats for unleashing these cunts on the country.

oh there's a lot of blame to go around.

Yes, but they really deserve it

Paxman?

I jest of course, although his sneering about school holidays was revolting. There was such a lot of tories on there last night it's difficult to single one out, Francis Maude, Nick Boles, Brian Coleman?

Boles, thank God I didn't see all of the programme!

Jesus, his wiki page...

Boles was a scholar at Winchester College before studying PPE at Magdalen College, Oxford, then winning a Kennedy Scholarship

i often wonder, when feeling cynical, whether 'studying PPE' is a euphemism for 'buying an oxbridge degree in order to go into politics'.

would love to see the class breakdown of PPE entrants and final results.

would love to see the class breakdown of PPE entrants and final results

good to see the Labour party standing by its principles and supporting a Trade Union's right to oh hang on Burnham

i often wonder, when feeling cynical, whether 'studying PPE' is a euphemism for 'buying an oxbridge degree in order to go into politics'.

would love to see the class breakdown of PPE entrants and final results.

― whatever, Tuesday, June 28, 2011 8:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

it's what they all do, but no, p sure you can't buy in.

i sold my ppe degree to a posh person

nrq what did you do? english?

it's what they all do, but no, p sure you can't buy in.

― where ilxor ends and markers begins (history mayne), Tuesday, June 28, 2011 10:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

£326,000 of private schooling might be a counterargument?

ppe is probably the least idle-rich-friendly degree you can try to get into at oxford fwiw.

Blimey public school fees gone up a fair bit since I was at school. I was on an assisted place but we used to get an invoice each term anyway with the assisted place cancelling out the fees, so I know how much it would've cost and it was about £800 a term, so £16800 for 7 years. I guess that was at a fairly minor school though? I dunno.

Duncan Smith urges firms to hire unemployed Britons

David Frost, CUNT, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce:

"After 11 years of formal education, employers say they get kids coming to them who can't read, who can't write, who can't communicate, and don't have that work ethic."

Mr Frost added that the UK's benefits system "did not incentivise" some young people to seek employment.

He also called for reform of the benefits system, saying that able-bodied young people in areas of the UK where jobs are available should not be eligible for any benefits.

How does cutting benefits improve reading and writing skills etc? But pbviously being really poor and desperate more than makes up for any other shortcomings, so that's good :)

nrq what did you do? english?

― caek, Wednesday, June 29, 2011 10:28 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

im not called english mayne

Oops, tag malfunction:

Duncan Smith urges firms to hire unemployed Britons

David Frost, CUNT, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce:

"After 11 years of formal education, employers say they get kids coming to them who can't read, who can't write, who can't communicate, and don't have that work ethic."

Mr Frost added that the UK's benefits system "did not incentivise" some young people to seek employment.

He also called for reform of the benefits system, saying that able-bodied young people in areas of the UK where jobs are available should not be eligible for any benefits.

How does cutting benefits improve reading and writing skills etc? But obviously being really poor and desperate more than makes up for any other shortcomings, so that's good :)

£326,000 of private schooling might be a counterargument?

― sometimes all it takes is a healthy dose of continental indiepop (tomofthenest), Wednesday, June 29, 2011 10:59 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

i seriously doubt the parents of privately educated ppe graduate ed balls had that kind of wonga, but it's a bit of an overstatement anyway:

A recent report from the Halifax bank claimed that if you are about to embark on paying for a private education now for your child from the age of three to 18, then you can expect to fork out £326,000, assuming fees continue to rise at about 6% a year and including extras such as uniform and books.

mine cost about £25k all in, i think. not including books, which, apparently, no state school kid need buy. the schools do seem to be more pricey now and have many more rich chinese kids.

but being real, yes, elite universities tend to be packed with the children of the educated middle classes, wherever they were schooled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverclyde_by-election,_2011

Candidate Sophie Bridger
Party Liberal Democrat
Popular vote 627
Percentage 2.2%

down from 13.3% in the 2010 GE.

Tory candidate's share down 0.1 percent less than the "Labour" candidate.

Thinking of doing a tribute/nostalgia thread for the Labour Party now it's dead.

good idea do it on facebook

I think lots of trad Labour votes went to SNP while lots of LDs went to Labour making it look like a swing from LD to SNP with everyone else fairly static. Really low turn-out too. I don't think the LD candidate being about 12 years old helped her already difficult task.

The Tory guy's been on the council for years and is fairly well known and liked in the area, for a Tory. He was visiting my sister-in-law's neighbour the other day and gave me a wee "well done" for being out in the pissing rain helping a woman (my s-i-l) with a flat tyre - didn't roll his fucking sleeves up to give me a hand though. All in this together my arse.

He left his car's lights on when he nipped into the neighbour's for a cuppa. We didn't tell him.

not sure what thread this should go on, here?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

Holy shit. Seriously?

Seriously???

The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance so as to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive. Police feared evidence may have been destroyed.

what the FUCK

Really, the News of the World, of 'hang all paedophiles' fame, should rightly see its circulation completely collapse for deleting evidence in a well-publicised child murder case but I bet you any money people keep buying it.

Shameful.

whoa

Really the baying mob that the NOTW has encouraged for 10yrs should be turning up at NewsInt with flaming torches right now.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/Denied2.gif

I meant karmically, not that they actually should, btw.

Haha my gif was intended for NotW, not you.

incredible

I'm assuming that Murdoch could come out as the murderer without it affecting the BSkyB deal but, really, this should affect it.

In defence of dignity
Justice for victims vilified in courtroom

Exclusive by David Wooding
July 3, 2011

RUTHLESS lawyers will be banned from berating murder victims' families in court in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial.

Tough new rules to be unveiled this week will protect their privacy and dignity - with judges forced to halt intimidating, humiliating or distressing questioning.

The safeguards come in a revamped courtroom code aimed at ending the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime.

It follows the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler by lawyers defending their 13-year-old daughter's killer Levi Bellfield.

The distraught couple endured cruel questions about their sex life, Bob's porn collection and letters which showed Milly was unhappy.

vs

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention.

whenever dignity needs defending, there's the news of the world

wtf

Harry Cole is currently doing some mad Cap'n-Save-A-Murdoch on Twitter, especially re: the Sky deal. More "they're on our side so it doesn't matter" obviously.

so the police knew that the notw had hacked her phone and ignored it?! wtffff.

no:

"Detectives from Scotland Yard's new inquiry into the phone hacking, Operation Weeting, are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World."

yes:

After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly's phone, the paper informed police about it. It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly's parents also were being targeted.

One of those who was involved in the original inquiry said: "We'd arrange landline calls. We didn't trust our mobiles."

However, they took no action against the News of the World, partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: "There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on."

ah right. tbf that doesn't sound like they happily chose to do nothing about it. this concrete evidence appears to be new.

Bloody hell, I knew they were conniving unprincipled bastards but this is really shocking. I hope these fuckers end up in jail.

That Harry Cole - he's a right wag.

http://twitter.com/#!/MrHarryCole/status/87922477283549184

"wag" is one word you might use, yes.

he seems to be back-pedalling quite hard now. Wade was editor in 2002, right? Wonder if she'll survive this one.

can we have harry cole's twitter background as the background of all ilx pages

This was mentioned in an article in the NS back in April by..er..Hugh Grant. It's an illuminating read.
http://www.newstatesman.com/newspapers/2011/04/phone-yeah-cameron-murdoch

Me Do you think Murdoch knew about phone-hacking?

Him Errr, possibly not. He's a funny bloke given that he owns the Sun and the Screws . . . quite puritanical. Sorry to talk about Divine Brown, but when that came out . . . Murdoch was furious: "What are you putting that on our front page for? You're bringing down the tone of our papers." [Indicating himself] That's what we do over here.

Me Well, it's also because it was his film I was about to come out in.

Him Oh. I see.

Me Yeah. It was a Fox film.