drat01

 

 

I past govts of both colours, Home Secretaries were sacked for single effups. May has overseen a whole sequence but stayed in place. Border agency, immigration figures, prisoners, inquiry appointees and so on.

They're incompetent, the Tories. They mess everything up.

 

Do you think her gender has anything to do with it?

 

No, I think she is seen as a potential threat if she was allowed to stand outside the tent pissing in. Boris is nailed on for next leader if he wants it but May would fancy a tilt at it too. 

 

 

One of the common things thrown at Cameron is the lack of women in the Gvmt and sacking May would be an own goal of massive size - probably will do it then going on past performance :-)

 

Also as Eames says you get the feeling that May sees herself as a Thatcher type who could run the Tory party, and she will certainly be the anti-Boris when Cameron gets booted out next year

The Tate Modern - I go often as its near one of our London offices and it never ceases to amaze me what some people classify as art. Occasionally there is a head noddingly good 'un,

 

The Smiths - The adulation they receive, typically to make the person think they are being "cool", why?

 

Crocs - They just look like badly moulded shoes, something a school kid would make as part of their GCSE. Why would anyone really pay OTT amounts for these?

 

The Cinema - To sit looking up at a far too large screen, listening to other people eat over priced fast food and slurp high sugar drinks, what the hell is that all about?

they would be incontinent but they hate Europe 

 

Mate of mine (electrician) popping round tonight to help me with a broken outdoor socket. Great, however, He didn't specify a time and I've got other stuff to do...

Difficult to ring and ask when he's coming without sounding like an ungrateful moaner!

 

if he's like every other tradesman in the world he'll have forgotten and been in the pub or on the gulf course since 14:00

 

The Gulf course? You are the English / French policeman from Allo Allo I claim my 10 Euro's

Band Aid 30 announced - money to go to the Ebola crisis

 

I've bought the wife a Christmas thong today. She wanted "Do they know it's Christmas?" by Band Aid, but with my lisp there's no chance

I like the John Lewis advert. I like last year's more though.

But which one is really better? There is only one way we can find out ................................... FIGHT !!!

 

 

I'm not sure of the sense in including Short money in party 'donations'.

 

I thought that it was "officially" counted in the donations total  ?

 

Separately as 'public funds', I think.

Obviously it's right that it's accounted for as money coming in but to lump it in with donations (without also quantifying the benefit to a party of being in government) rather skews things.

 

Indeed

 

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/political-parties-campaigning-and-donations/donations-and-loans-to-political-parties/quarterly-donations-and-loans

 

The link above shows the current donation info

 

Political parties' latest donations and borrowing figures - Quarter 2 2014

13-08-2014

 

Nine political parties registered in Great Britain reported accepting almost £15.5 million in donations between 1 April and 30 June 2014. Seven parties also accepted over£2.5 million from public funds....... more on link

 

Me thinks Tony has just got his copy of the Gideon Osborne guide to spin :-)

 

 maybe you should have just got a big crayon and written Tory=  bad  labour = Good  on it

 

Companies like JML  in it's donation avoided tax  .. even the new darling of many Umunna took a donation from a  company that specialises in tax avoidance  ..( This here is the Labour thread so its even On topic to mention it  ) 

 

Labour currently receive more donations than the Tory Party  ...  they receive £8m in Union donations who get Falkirk in return and £7m from the house of commons for being in opposition ... private donations they lag behind the Tory party as you would expect by virtue of them being in opposition and not so influential  ... and without doubt influence is what the large donors are buying  .. however , I guess before we get too hung up on it , one should also think how many business jolly ups we've  been on in our careers where suppliers try to win favour and sweeten deals , same thing is it not  , buying influence ?  ... Sure with some clients you have to go through a tender process to show that the contract is justifiably being awarded on the basis of the pitch and best practise and not the corporate tickets that went via the decision maker , but the world and his dog knows that the corporate stuff is a big part    ...  of course Public office should be above that , but it never will be

 

 

Tony you have missed the point completely (and where did I say good / bad to any?)

 

Also to claim that Labour receive more in donations that the Tory party is an interesting claim - it would be good to see where these figures come from and who donates - I appreciate with the Tory party typically that is something that is very often hidden.

 

The key thing was about membership and influence. I do not buy into your idea of a floating set of donations to reflect which party is in office else why would Ashcroft and JCB etc not donate to Labour when they were in power. Likewise why would the union monies flow into Tory party coffers etc. The membership of the political parties and what they expected back was the initial question and as such there seems nothing to indicate what the expectations are both from the members and just as key from the parties themselves. In the past members would seemingly be very key to election campaigns but now we seem more media influence and monies from large donations being used to present negative smear campaigns - another bad thing we have seemingly inherited from the US? Which brings around to the campaign that the right are seemingly running about Milliband (at a time when Cameron was really struggling), where is this coming from, because it as was being shown it does not seem to be from the Labour membership

 

Perhaps you should avoid details and just stick to paint and pictures. 

 

The Guardian puts the big increase in Labour numbers down to the forming of the coalition in May, 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/13/labour-party-record-surge-membership

 

So when Ed became their Leader, Labour had a membership of 193,000

 

Now they have a membership of 190,000.

 

All these figures are in the Appendix to the Library document

 

 

I must say that's some spin to claim the membership is rising. 

 

Did you do some work for George Osborne, to convince us we got a 50% discount on the EU increase aswell.

 

The question is, why aren't there more members?

 

According to the Guardian article it took nearly two decades of the Tory jackboot to push the membership up to 405k but as soon as Blair unleashed his miracle, half the members decided not to renew.

 

It looks like people ditch their Labour values as soon as they move into the comfort-zone, even when that comfort-zone has been created by a Labour government.

 

I would cynically conclude that when things are going well for people, they personally take credit for it, and when it goes badly they blame the government.

 

So you could say that by making people more prosperous Labour undermined their own position.

 

Considering the number of people who count themselves amongst the Lefties, there is surprisingly few willing to join the Labour Party - it is cheap (£3.80/mth - discounts for scrotes and paupers).

 

I suppose it is has to be listed as one of life's great ironies that Lefties are always saying how they support Labour and hate Murdoch, but in reality pay nothing to the former and vast amounts to the latter, in the form of TV subscriptions.

 

They then complain about the right-wing influence of The Sun.

 

That is a very interesting point that you make in terms of membership - and it applies to any political party not just the Labour one.

 

What do you expect from a membership? Take the Tory party for instance, we have seen vast amounts of monies contributed to them (a lot from areas that are surrounded in "mystery" and a lot more from tax avoidance), what exactly are the people donating expecting back? What do the Unions expect back from Labour as one of its biggest backers in terms of finance?

 

I consider myself to be reasonably OK for finance, and know of a lot more people who are wealthy who actively support the Labour party, both members and regular voters, who sometimes find themselves subject to questioning about finance. Why is that? Likewise Murdoch and his empire, many non Tories will in one way or another contribute to the organisation(s) that he oversees, but again where do you stop? Would you not use a JCB for example if you were in that industry for the major amounts of monies that he has contributed to the Tory party? What about the funding that comes from financial "bods" to the Tory party, should / would people move their pensions, and other assets away from these organisations and where do the borders exist to stop this?

 

Good subject matter about why people engage (or not) with politics and the political parties, maybe one for another thread, but it certainly is a good topic rather than not voting Labour because of the appearance of the leader !

There is a fundamental point that keeps getting overlooked, especially by those posters who are supportive of the manager. At what point does "enough is enough" actually happen? Disregarding the extreme posts of some who clearly are working to a different agenda and mindset, it's interesting to listen and read some of the comments from the minority now who are prepared to give him longer (IMO continuing to ruin the club).

 

The compelling reasons for a change of manager are there, and have been for some time now. The leadership at the club are running the club with a strange attitude I think everyone accepts, but there still seems to be a hard core of fans who will not accept that Lambert is not the right man for the job. We see, give him a few more games, give him until Xmas, wait until Randy has gone etc, which I can accept as being views - not agree with them at all - but there seems little in the way of justifying them based on Lambert's woeful performance to date. It's not as though this is a blip either, this has been a steady decline from the start if you look back at it and now we see evidence all over the club playing side of the shambles he is inflicting on the club.

 

So what are the criteria that some who are not ready to call for his replacement using? I think it will add to the reasonable debate if people understand what compelling reasons are being given for keeping him

 

 

 

Having looked at that graph you'll know that Labour membership was on the slide from around 1998 to 2010 when it went back up and has leveled out.

 

So it's not rising at all then

 

As compared to the other major parties then the membership of the Labour party is significantly healthier than the others. Now (before the idiocy of deflection and ahhh but comes from .....) if you then take that into context the membership certainly is not showing a unhapiness with the leadership.

 

Agreed?

 

 

Not disagreeing with your evaluation. Just pointing out the claim that membership is rising, is a false claim.

 

Nit and picking are waiting at the door - they have received an invite :-)

 

You edited that post and didn't correct 'your' to 'you're'?

His got a problem with he's grammar.

 

Especially since she left his granddad

 

No names to these rumoured back benchers though, no real substance to these stories.

Not sure about specific names, but surely you'd be harder pushed to find people who think he isn't a hopeless mong and any Labour majority would have to be in spite of him. I don't see what they have to lose at all by getting rid, in fact I think it would give them the necessary push to get a comfortable majority, especially if they went for Umunna. I know I'm boiling it purely down to personality but it's not as if this election is likely to be decided either way by political genius.

 

 

"hopeless mong" - what a crass thing to say

 

Having looked at that graph you'll know that Labour membership was on the slide from around 1998 to 2010 when it went back up and has leveled out.

 

So it's not rising at all then

 

As compared to the other major parties then the membership of the Labour party is significantly healthier than the others. Now (before the idiocy of deflection and ahhh but comes from .....) if you then take that into context the membership certainly is not showing a unhapiness with the leadership.

 

Agreed?

Finnair have a crap selection of films.

the end of air France films

Another depressing villa afternoon - lambert out

think ive mentioned before but my best mate at the time once propositioned me, not full on sex but hand relief. i politely said no especially as it was up my grans house and she was in the bedroom next door watching tv.

 

See good manners cost nothing

 

hahahaha there you got VTers ismail is officially worse than me. dirty dirty man

I don't whack off to it though! Have to admit i have over midget porn lool

 

That's not big .........

on the sublect of chocolate i have my own cupboard for all things chocolate, also plenty of cake bars in there as well.

 

Someone just told me that they had heard from a friend who heard from another friend that Cadbury's are bringing out a new bar for the Asian market. Then again it could be a Chinese whispa

Only statistics and records that matter to me are things like league position, win ratio, goals scored etc.

 

As it happens they've been dreadful under Lambert, so it makes the focus on relatively trivial things a bit odd. It's not like there isn't more than enough ammunition against him already.

 

???  The records often mentioned are all linked to the things that you say matter to you. To try and dismiss them as "trivial" is baffling because it's as a result of those that the wins, goals etc are all collated

 

On a more general point the thread is showing though that there is another run of the "emperors new clothes" pantomime starring messers LLLLLLLLambert and others - crowds are down though this year .....

Going back to the chocolate debate. I've got a lion bar for later. Haven't had one in ages.

edit: sorry, should have put that in the boring thread

are you lion or telling the truth ?

As we see on this thread with the vt Tory / ukip supporters making so many comments, there seems to be a push from that side of the uk political spectrum to try and personalise the whole leadership thing rather than question the policies of the respective parties. We all know that Cameron has failed on so many levels, from his inability to win an election despite the many millions of tax avoidance donations through to his failure to get even the basics right. As tony rightly says ish the uk has not had radical change for a while the biggest - and worst - was the selfish greed driven society of thatcher. Regarding milliband he has strong principles but is he a great leader ? Probably not, but compared to cuckold clegg and Cameron then the traits what political should be judged against he wins hands down

The next couple of months are key for all parties especially Cameron with ukip stealing his mps and the debacle over the eu , you just have to wonder of how much scrutiny of milliband is a deflection from the real issues surrounding a weak ineffectual pm

presumably yourself and Ajax wont be using the "Ahhh but " and "deflection " argument in the other thread any longer ....

rumours of another pact today between the wannabe leaders .. of course the last pact between would be Labour leaders worked well

Don't play that one Tony because we all know that if you were asked what is 2+2 your answer would be "Ah, but Labour...", it's like your trademark.

I believe my trademark would involve the French , people in suits , cyclists and teachers way before that one

however the point you are missing is that you and Mr D constantly referred to the "Ahh but" and "deflection" in your posts in the Tory thread and yet you've both been guilty of it in the spaces of a few posts ... I'll have to get my Hypocrisy card out for you both soon

tony nice try but where you fail was that we were talking about a general subject, ie personality politics that affects all of the leaders as we said. No deflect or anything but 6 out of 10 for trying mate but rather like a villa forward missed your goal :-)

I have trademarked all if Tony's traits - next week on dragons den I will present it as the Surrey I haven't got a clue ..... :-)

Had to snigger at Osborne (and who the hell advised him on the change of appearance ?) trying to claim some sort of victory re the payments to the eu . Pretty contradictory to what he and Cameron have been bleating recently . It's as though they have been saying words for the blue rinse brigade of their party :-)