I agree with this completely, and I wonder if this is due to the Lib Dem influence within the coalition. As I think I hinted at somewhere earlier, we really haven't done austerity deeply enough for my taste. Spending cuts to date have been half-hearted, to say the least.
Guess what Nigel Farage is forcing me to do?
- Thread starter MikeG
- Start date
I agree with this completely, and I wonder if this is due to the Lib Dem influence within the coalition. As I think I hinted at somewhere earlier, we really haven't done austerity deeply enough for my taste. Spending cuts to date have been half-hearted, to say the least.
There is a limit to the number of characters you can fit into the headline box of a new thread on this forum, and there is also a limit to the impact that posting a fully fleshed out argument as a headline would make. Obviously (well, obvious to those who aren't seeking an opportunity to make a spurious point), the headline hints at the real story, and no-one in their right mind would assume that Nigel Farage had my arm twisted up behind my back literally forcing me to do anything.
I'm not ashamed of voting conservative at all. It's just that I have never done it before, and I abhor the hang-em fox-hunting racist homophobic Eurosceptic right wing of that party. The centrist elements, the Ken Clarkes of this world, are absolutely fine by me. Were it not for the threat of UKIP, I would still, most likely, be voting Lib Dem.
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This doesn't sound very Lib Dem to me.
Seismosaurus
Philosopher
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2003
- Messages
- 6,092
You're suggesting you couldn't think of a more honest title that would fit the box? Ridiculous.
You're suggesting you don't understand a common turn of phrase?
This
3point14
Pi
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2005
- Messages
- 23,089
Am I then alone or in the minority of those working in the public sector who have had, effectively, a pay cut every year for the last three?
Francesca R
Girl
What threat of UKIP is that? As far as I know (based on over-under betting spreads) UKIP are only predicted to win 2 or 3 more seats nationally. Is one of those yours? Other than that the "threat of UKIP" is that its support hands seats to Labour (at least 30 according to Ashcroft). But you say that won't happen where you are.
Of all the pundits out there, the bookies are the ones I'd most trust
(Seriously, in case anyone thinks I'm joshing).Francesca R
Girl
Me likewise. Paddy Power and Ladbrokes are the most informative IMO, Betfair third. The probabilities favour the Cons getting 285 seats and Labour about 267. No two party coalition is very likely. The three party coalition with the biggest majority is currently Lab-LibDem-SNP. But many different coalitions are possible, as are minority governments.
Miliband is more likely to be PM than Cameron despite the seat predictions. The TV debates made a big difference in 2010 though. Clegg probably won't repeat the same trick as back then. Cameron may "beat" Miliband. Sturgeon will probably do very well. Farage for all his polarisation probably will too. Natalie Bennet may rally support from a low base.
Miliband is more likely to be PM than Cameron despite the seat predictions. The TV debates made a big difference in 2010 though. Clegg probably won't repeat the same trick as back then. Cameron may "beat" Miliband. Sturgeon will probably do very well. Farage for all his polarisation probably will too. Natalie Bennet may rally support from a low base.
Francesca R
Girl
(Error)
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
Got anything to offer other then tired, old, Anti Capitalist rhetoric?
The best anti-capitalist rhetoric imaginable derives from the behaviour of the bankers during the credit Bubble. Some of these guys, in an honest capitalist economy, would be in jail. We've been bailing them out. A bit of rhetoric about this is quite in order.
At the dawn of finance capitalism the miscreants responsible for the South Sea Bubble were dealt with more sternly, and rightly so.
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Gulliver Foyle
Philosopher
Where I live, how I vote will make little difference, it's solid Tory. I shall probably waste my vote as usual.
I've never understood the vitriol aimed at the Lib Dems; as the minor party in a coalition, they were never going to get all their policies adopted, but I believe they acted as a brake on some of the more extreme Conservative ones.
As the minor party in a two party coalition they had an effective veto on the more extreme of the tory policies. They never used it.* That is one of the reasons for the vitriol against them by former Lib Dem voters. The Lib Dems never once used their power to implement their policies while in government, constantly supporting Tory lead, right-win policies instead of their own.
The second part happened before the election, two weeks before to be precise, when Nick Clegg categorically ruled out a coalition with Labour under any circumstances. He hadn't realised that the core of his party's pre-election support came from natural social-democrats who wanted to see a Lib Lab coalition, and who would have voted Labour only for it having morphed into the right wing Nu Labor. Hence why in the two weeks to the election the party's polling went from about 33% (remember when they were consistently highest in polls?) to less than 22% in the actual vote, and a big reason why they never recovered.
*As an Irishman it is very easy to see how much power junior partners in coalitions have, even down to the extent that single-issue Independent TDs can get millions spent in their constituencies on white elephants (google Jackie Healy Rae or Michael Lowry for examples) simply because of their power of having a one vote veto in coalitions. The fact of the matter is that the smaller party(s) have a power in excess of their numbers in coalitions simply because of their effective veto on the larger party.
Frankly, that's a ridiculous thing to say. Why do you think that the last Queen's speech was just about the emptiest in post war history? Why do you think that MPs have debated virtually nothing of substance for the last couple of years?
Within a coalition, exercising a veto, as you describe it, would not be some great big public moment of newspaper headlines and grandstanding in the House......it is in the daily meetings, the conversations in corridors, the email exchanges. The Conservatives, dozens of times, have quietly said that they haven't been able to do X, Y or Z because of opposition from their coalition colleagues.
Remembering the relative sizes of the two parties, I think the Lib Dems have, in the vernacular, punched well above their weight in this parliament. Anyone who is daft enough to have expected a Conservative led coalition government to have contented itself with just delivering the Lib Dem manifesto in full are either delusional, or are really trying very hard to find a way of blaming the Lib Dems for everything they haven't liked about the government of the last 5 years. The Lib Dems hold 57 seats to the Conservative 307, for christ sake. What on earth do people expect?
You have no proof that this happened, have you?
Gulliver Foyle
Philosopher
No ye don't. What ye have is a combination of a renewed housing bubble in the capital combined with an increase in financial services in the City (essentially the chancellor has passed a number of laws making it easier to use the UK as an offshore tax haven if you're living elsewhere, or use other offshore tax havens to evade UK tax).
You'll notice that neither of those things (the sum total of Tory economic policy) are actually any good at helping the economy in real terms. They increase the reported GDP and GNP numbers but they are false increases, because the housing bubble is not actually creating new houses and the financial services are simply shuffling money around so as to appear to be generated in a place other than where it is actually being made.
A proper stimulus package, where the government invests in public goods and services (think the NHS and railway network, buying back in public transport) and offering grant aid and cheap loans to genuine, innovative, small to medium size native companies would actually help the economy. Instead the only stimulus tried has been quantitative easing which is simply printing money so that the banks and the rich can salt it away in Monaco.
Yes we do. GDP is up. That's a recovery. You can't wish it away because it doesn't suit your politics, and any attempt to deny fact (there are countless ways of verifying this if you had any interest, but the OECD might be a good place to start) renders anything else you say pointless.
We get it. You want to borrow more money, and spend more money. Great. The Tories will have to come along and clean up the mess, yet again, after that fails, yet again. Advocates of tax and spend economics are really, really, really slow learners.
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What about your unsupportable assertion about Nick Clegg and the a refusal to countenance a coalition with Labour before the election? Any chance of attempting to back up that falsehood?
We get it. You want to borrow more money, and spend more money. Great. The Tories will have to come along and clean up the mess, yet again, after that fails, yet again. Advocates of tax and spend economics are really, really, really slow learners.
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What about your unsupportable assertion about Nick Clegg and the a refusal to countenance a coalition with Labour before the election? Any chance of attempting to back up that falsehood?
If you want to let the bankers run amok and cut public spending, then I think Farage is the boy for you! The NHS nearly killed the poor lad, so I imagine he won't want to coddle it.
As well as saving his life on two times much more recently, which you might think would carry a bit more weight.