Guess what Nigel Farage is forcing me to do?

asydhouse said:
.......If everyone pissed off with the mainstream voted Green, they would be the government, and we'd get stimulus and a recovering active economy a whole lot quicker.
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But we've got a recovering economy.

You would rather risk a very healthy recovery by ..........you know............spending even more money we don't have? Can you not remember what got us into this mess in the first place?
 
asydhouse said:
See I just don't understand this attitude. I will vote Green, because they are the only party not on the austerity bandwagon. The whole austerity thing is a con, and Labour and the Lib-Dems are just as culpable as the Cons in pursuing a false metaphor about household economies just to put us all into the same hole that the IMF have been imposing on "developing countries" for decades, and now they've got us all pegged down into their baloney.

If everyone pissed off with the mainstream voted Green, they would be the government, and we'd get stimulus and a recovering active economy a whole lot quicker.
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Stimlus meaning huge deficit spending...that really works real well.
 
Francesca R said:
I'm certain that the LibDems would have gone into coalition with Labour had the latter been middle of the road. Or middle of the road enough to win the most seats, or enough seats that made a coalition work. But Labour had tracked rather to the left (not too left for many LibDems of course, just for the electorate)
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That's the sort of calculus that makes the Lib Dems look a bit sleazy now and again. "Left" or no "left" one gains the impression that the LD would coalesce with either side to grab a share of power.
 
MikeG said:
I think the Lib Dems were wrong to apologise for the tuition fees thing.
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I think they were wrong to make the promise in the first place, so when the policy was ditched it improved their policy mix

Of course they were proposing a graduate tax prior to 2010 anyway, and a graduate tax coupled with government-paid tuition kinda works rather similar to underwritten loans that only attract repayment once graduates are above median income. So in my view the outrage was a rather bizarre hoo-hah.
 
Craig B said:
That's the sort of calculus that makes the Lib Dems look a bit sleazy now and again. "Left" or no "left" one gains the impression that the LD would coalesce with either side to grab a share of power.
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Depends on your perspective. Dyed-in-the-wool types that are rooted in dogmatic ideology turn me right off.
 
asydhouse said:
If everyone pissed off with the mainstream voted Green, they would be the government, and we'd get stimulus and a recovering active economy a whole lot quicker.
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If the Green Party became power-maker and joined a coalition, they would compromise, abandon policies, move closer to mainstream ones, and likely suffer the same reversal as the Lib Dems.

Voters who want an alternative are their own worst enemy sometimes.
 
Francesca R said:
Depends on your perspective. Dyed-in-the-wool types that are rooted in dogmatic ideology turn me right off.
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As well they may; but is that the only alternative to complete self interested opportunism?

Are you an admirer of Jim Murphy by any chance?
 
MikeG said:
But we've got a recovering economy.

You would rather risk a very healthy recovery by ..........you know............spending even more money we don't have? Can you not remember what got us into this mess in the first place?
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Recovery? Not that I've noticed.

Paul Krugman the Nobel winning economist says austerity is a false analogy imposed for ideological reasons because European "leaders" want to appear to be responsible when in fact they are abdicating responsibility, and that it is a mistake which has delayed and reduced the economic recovery which America has achieved through stimulus, even though it was not enough stimulus thanks to obstruction from the opposition to Obama.

And what got us into this mess was repeal of regulations and controls on banking which allowed criminals to create bad deals which they sold fraudulently, and brought the entire world to its knees as all that unfolded. The false narrative that we somehow spent too much is just Tory propaganda that Labour have sucked up to because they think the entire electorate are the tabloid press. Cowards they are.

The whole show is barking up the wrong tree, and revisionist history to blame the booming economy we had, and could still have today, for the criminality of the banks, is why we feel our entire political class are a canker on our culture.
 
asydhouse said:
European "leaders" want to appear to be responsible when in fact they are abdicating responsibility, and that it is a mistake which has delayed and reduced the economic recovery which America has achieved through stimulus
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So Europe is ruled by tiny government ideologues hell bent on shrinking the state, whereas America is a champion of spending and largesse?

Think that might be a little muddled.
 
dudalb said:
Stimlus meaning huge deficit spending...that really works real well.
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Stimulus in America meant a bigger and faster recovery. Austerity in Europe is creeping into a complete disaster.

Why can't the investors take a break and give up one year's worth of interest on their "loans"?

We could just decide to agree that poverty shouldn't exist. I don't accept this entrapment of us all by some force of physics? No, just what we all agree, that the banks and investors are gods, and we all are their serfs.
 
Francesca R said:
So Europe is ruled by tiny government ideologues hell bent on shrinking the state, whereas America is a champion of spending and largesse?

Think that might be a little muddled.
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Paul Krugman explained it better than I have. It was one of his columns in The Times, I happened to see it. Sorry I've no link.
 
For what got us into this mess, I really wish that we'd had some folks who did both of strip bare regulations so they could ram dodgy derivatives down unsuspecting innocents' throats, and who incessantly threw public money at anything that moved as well, at the same time.

If they were the same folks doing both, we'd have 'em bang to rights yes? (And bang to lefts)
 
dudalb said:
Not really. I have been in the same situation of voting for somebody I do not really like very much because the guy running against him is even worse.
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Yes, but to characterise that as you being forced to vote that way by a candidate is absurd. You're choosing to vote for a person you don't support - don't pretend that you aren't responsible for your own actions just because you're choosing to do something you are ashamed of.
 
MikeG said:
For the first time in my life I am likely to vote Conservative in the forthcoming election, mainly to bolster the centre right vote against the extreme right of UKIP. My constituency has no chance of going to Labour or the Lib Dems (who normally get my vote), so I am almost certain to vote tactically to keep the nutters at bay.

It won't quite be like that French election where thousands went to the polling stations with a peg on their nose to vote for one of the main party candidates to keep Le Penn of the Front Nationale away from power, because this government has been pretty much exactly where my politics lie......centre right economically, with a restraining hand provided by the Lib Dems on the Eurosceptic, homophobobic illiberal element which unfortunately you get with the Tory right.

Anyone else considering casting their vote in a tactical manner in this most unusual election?
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with tactical voting. What you are, in effect, is voting for the "least, worst" candidate. IOW, the candidate who will do the least damage. This is, of course, perfectly valid and far, far better than abstaining.
 
asydhouse said:
Stimulus in America meant a bigger and faster recovery. Austerity in Europe is creeping into a complete disaster.
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And austerity in the UK has largely been rhetoric. The promised overall cuts in public spending really haven't happened and yet because the government cut capital spending immediately we got a lot of the pain of austerity (economic contraction IMO mainly due to a collapse in public and business confidence more than actual austerity measures and economic fundamentals themselves) without experiencing the benefits (a significant reduction in government spending).

Personally I would have preferred a U.S. style stimulus but I accept that the UK economy is very different to the U.S. economy and it may not have worked. The austerity-lite we have had seems to me to be the worst combination.
 
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