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

well, making the system work effectively would require that they train, employ and pay people to do a not-insignificant amount of work? and that's tantamount to encouraging red tape bureaucracy.

The old student visa regime was open to abuse but was much more tightly regulated than ten years ago. It's crazy that they're boasting about Q1 student visa applications being down 62% when universities and colleges are saying that the net cost to the country could be in the region of £5bn - £7bn. 62% of students weren't "bogus". They've sent out a message to legitimate students that the UK simply doesn't welcome them. The sensible thing to do would be to stop counting them as immigrants and start counting them as visitors.

Given that they're happy to significantly harm the economy by restricting student visas in pursuit of headlines, i can't imagine mere human feeling will get in their way on spouse visas.

May defended the 550,000 individual requests for data each year made by security officials as a vital tool to catch serious criminals and terrorists.

She told the Sun: "I just don't understand why some people might criticise these proposals. I have no doubt conspiracy theorists will come up with some ridiculous claims about how these measures are an infringement of freedom. But without changing the law, the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and paedophiles."

May has been going great guns in the race to overhaul Osborne as most hateful member of the Cabinet.

its a hell of a queue waiting for a head on a pike in that cabinet.

are terrorists and paedophiles not crims?

if you mean "convicted of a crime" then not necessarily in the go-go British justice system of the 21st century

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/24/housing-benefit-under-25s-welfare

fuckin ell, a couple of years ago I sent a letter to my MP about the possibly discriminatory under-25 benefit laws of the time (altruistically too late for myself as I had already spent the previous two years not being able to afford heating in winter, and had then thankfully turned 25, but I didn't receive anything in response anyway), nothing has changed, so I guess if you can get away with it you may as well run with it.

He's just trying to look like a hard man for the Tory right, he won't do it. This is more despicable: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/9351796/David-Laws-calls-for-deeper-tax-and-spending-cuts.html">David Laws calls for deeper tax and spending cuts. Dishonest lying money-grabbing little cunt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18575453

Cut benefits for the poorest people in the poorest areas aka non Tory seats.
Cut benefits for those least able to find work.
Cut benefits for poor people daring to have children.
Lose your council house if you ever manage to earn enough to live in it without claiming benefits.
etc

Will the "Liberal" Democrats ever bite back on any of this?

well 'the opposition' don't seem to give a shit so i don't see why the coalition partners would bother

The opposition gets to do what all oppositions do, mouth off in protest and fire a few zings. The liberal part of this coalition can actually prevent this shit.

the opposition in this instance seem to be so focused on placating Daily Mail Island with anti-immigration machismo that any response they've made to this latest foofaraw has been woefully negligible IMHO

decided it's too depressing for an ILX poll, but that list in full.

Benefits rates may depend on where you live
Reduce the amount of benefit paid to people over time
Expecting people on benefits to be able to read, write and count
Out-of-work benefits linked to wages rather than inflation, if wages are lower
A cap on the amount people can earn and still live in a council house
Reduce the current £20,000 housing benefit limit
Stopping the out of work being better off by having children
Consider paying some benefits "in kind" rather than in cash
Expecting parents on income support to prepare for work while children have free nursery care
Getting the physically able to do full-time community work after a period out of work
Sickness benefit claimants should take steps to improve their health

"take steps to improve their health", well shiiit i bet they wish they'd thought of that.

they should just bring back the workhouses and have done with it.

ahem debate ideas for workhouse reintroduction prior to the drafting of the next manifesto tax what tax

Sickness benefit claimants should take steps to improve their health

similar themes becoming more prevalent in workplaces now if mine's anything to go by: more stringent sickness monitoring coupled with lifestyle questions/advice along the lines of 'are you doing all you can to ensure you're healthy enough to work for us, because, you know, we have to pay you to do that.'

i for one am impressed that a Tory PM has been brave enough to suggest cutting benefits

Are there seriously Tory MPs backing Ed Balls in a fite against George Osbourne right now?

Yes. And also LOL.

Balls more valuable to the Tory part long-term than Osborne is presumably

Osborne is a walking disaster area these days

Everyone hates both of them, so yes.

Osborne is supposed to be the tactical genius of the Tory Party!

He is?

He is indeed, their master-strategist. No wonder they couldn't win the election outright.

Osborne keeps digging himself deeper on this one. By all accounts there's no Ed Balls smoking gun to be found, but he is doubling down on his insistence that it was all Balls' fault. As if that means he doesn't need to come up with any actual response for the current situation. So long as he can say "was their fault" the job is done, apparently.

It feels like a dumb self-inflicted wound of the type Osbourne excels at, the Treasury could have just tutted and gone "this is unacceptable", paid some lip-service to changing things, and sailed through the Libor crisis relatively unscathed. They must have some pretty dumb advisors right now.

No Andy Coulson!

http://i.imgur.com/wY4ty.jpg

GQ's 'Politician of the Year'.

has he really gained so much weight or is that a dodgy angle?

he's melting

coke bloat

George Osborne can #HMD

Nell Diamond was right tbh

I don't want george osbourne #HMD tbh

Seb Coe on R4 this morning - you can't attend Olympics in a Pepsi tee-shirt, maybe you can in Nike trainers but who knows?

I literally can't believe it.

it's all a load of shit but the tragic fact is that one bunch of fuckwit marketeers will try and piss on another bunch of fuckwit marketeers' paid-for parade by street-teaming events, seem to remember this happening in a previous Olympics or World Cup.

also fuck you if you desperately want to wear a Pepsi t-shirt.

What if the T-shirt says 'Pepsi & Shirlie'?

that wd be acceptable

paddy power pants?

also fuck you if you desperately want to wear a Pepsi t-shirt.

you know it's going to be, like, youngish dads who pull one shirt from their collection of vintage-looking tshirts with faded logos on, who don't even realise it says pepsi or budweiser or burger king or whatever until they're at the gate.

Bye, Louise.

Woah, proper marginal seat and everything.

From http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/local/northamptonshire-mp-louise-mensch-quits-for-new-life-in-usa-1-4132726

The author recently launched her own social networking site menschn.com, as a rival to twitter where she has 100,000 followers. She is now expected to concentrate on building the popularity of the site.

I googled menschn and the site isn't on the first five pages of results. Going to menschn.com redirects to a "Louise Bagshawe" search on amazon.co.uk. Some work required.

The Chronicle has spelled it wrongly. It's menshn not menschn. She says it's no supposed to be her name!

Having a URL that nobody can spell is probably not the best way to launch a new site. I mean, Google got over it but in those days there were only 10 places on the Internet anyway.

True. Though I think it matters less with social media platforms. I mean, once you're in, you're in.

I'm not saying people will be in.

There are hundreds of article about the site that all call it menschn.

ok I can get to menshn - which apparently was initially only launched in the US. Menshn aims to avoid twitter's irrelevant chatter and stay on topic with subjects such as twitter, facebook and celebrities

2012olympics
america
atheism
catholicism
celebrities
christianity
disaster
exploremars
facebook
fooddrink
mormonism
music
scientology
scotland
taxes
tourism
twitter
ukhistory
ukpolitics
uselection

I think I'll join.