Bollitics: VT General Election Poll #5 - Leaders Debate Two

[choffer]

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the Part Election Broadcast by the BNP which I caught last night (maybe someone has mentioned it but I missed it).

What a scary load of nonsense it was. Lots of talking heads of average Joe's on the street (including one Sikh) who were clearly reading off cue-cards spouting nonsense. Every point they made was emblazoned across the screen for emphasis (for the idiots watching who couldn't understand people speaking and needed a summary).

From what I saw they only had two main points:

1 - We are the only party who commit to immediately bringing back our troops from Afghanistan if we win the election (fairly hollow promise that one).

2 - Shut the gates and look after British people only. This country has gone to the dogs with johnny-foreigner everywhere and the average British man is now a second-class citizen in his own country.

All this, interspersed with lots of old footage of Churchill (Oh yes!) who presumably would definitely have been a BNP member. I guess the scary thing is that even as I was watching it, I could just see lots of people agreeing with every word that was said.

[Guest Ricardomeister]

Tories coming out with a big scare party political broadcast tonight apparently, warning that a hung parliament will be the death of us, and ruin the country and economy.

good work!

trying to scare voters into voting Tory FTL.

I hope the people will not succumb to such scare mongering. The polls suggest so far that they won't.

If the people want a hung parliament and coalition government, then let it be so.

I fully agree there Jon. More Tory hypocrisy, especially after Call Me Dave made so much of an issue of Labour's supposed scare tactics in the last leaders' debate. Call Me Dave is seemingly getting more and more desperate as more people see through his lack of substance and realise some of the characters lurking behind him. If the votes mean a hung Parliament then the politicians should be locked in a room until they can learn to compromise and if they cannot then the death penalty for treason should be put back automatically onto the statute books and applied to all of the sorry lot! :winkold:

Amsterdam Neil, I fully agree with you also. The desperation of the Sun and the Daily Fascist is laughable and even some of their readers are starting to realise their biased lies and smear campaigns will still seemingly not give their beloved Tories a majority so their opinins are as irrelevant as they are biased.

[Awol]

OK AWOL,

Lets call it £30 billion for Trident, we have a £37 Billion hole, scrapping it fills a hell of a chunk of that hole.

It is a good plan in theory, but the nuclear deterrent isn't funded from the defence budget and never has been because it is viewed - rightly - as the biggest strategic asset to this country and therefore comes from central government funds. If they bin it will not:

a) Instantly save 30 billion because that is the cost of the programme through life (25-30 years). We don't make a down payment of 30 billion up front that is there to be saved.

or

Even if it did come from defence funding there is not a chance that the Treasury would then use the funds saved to be invested in conventional defence spending. The hole will still exist, sadly.

Independent nuclear deterrent, against whom.

If we're worried about "The Islamic Bomb" worry about it but they have no credible delivery system to getvit to the UK so what exactly are we worrying about.

The new subs will provide us with a nuclear shield out to approx 2050. I don't have a chrystal ball to say what may or may not happen in the world during that time but if we take an approximate time period during the recent past it encompasses the entire Cold War. Nuclear weapons are proliferating to unstable, undemocratic regimes and imo will continue to do so. Unilaterally giving up that capability could leave us at a distinct disadvantage in an uncertain future. I simply don't think it is a responsible course of action.

Lets say thay start to develop a delivery system to worry about, fine we've already got the technology we can respond to that threat quicker than they can develop it.

Again I disagree, once you lose a highly specialised skill from the workforce it cannot simply be turned back on at will, that is the reason why we maintain vital industrial capability by purchasing inferior kit from the likes of Westlands.

There is also a lead time to these things which can easily run to a decade or more, it's not like churning out tanks or more simply military kit. You then have to train the personnel to man them, again not a quick or simple process. Who is to say that even if we tried we couldn't be threatened by a nuclear power effectively blackmailing us to prevent us doing it?

Like it or not it's still very much a dog eat dog world and extracting our own teeth won't make us any safer.

Won't happen as having a seat on the UN Security Council fills to big an ego need for politicians

The clout that seat continues to give us in the world is frankly worth a lot more to the British national interest than 1/20 of the cost of the recent bank bailout, imho.

[wiganvillain]

OK Jon,

We agree to differ

We both think the other's wrong and it won't change.

Still doesn't help filling the hole though

[Awol]

OK Jon,

We agree to differ

We both think the other's wrong and it won't change.

Still doesn't help filling the hole though

True, that will come from the massive public spending cuts that the Lab/Con/Lib party are all studiously avoiding mentioning. The election debate currently is a total sham imo because they are avoiding the elephant in the room - spending cuts and big tax rises.

[snowychap]

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the Part Election Broadcast by the BNP which I caught last night (maybe someone has mentioned it but I missed it).

What a scary load of nonsense it was. Lots of talking heads of average Joe's on the street (including one Sikh) who were clearly reading off cue-cards spouting nonsense. Every point they made was emblazoned across the screen for emphasis (for the idiots watching who couldn't understand people speaking and needed a summary).

From what I saw they only had two main points:

1 - We are the only party who commit to immediately bringing back our troops from Afghanistan if we win the election (fairly hollow promise that one).

2 - Shut the gates and look after British people only. This country has gone to the dogs with johnny-foreigner everywhere and the average British man is now a second-class citizen in his own country.

All this, interspersed with lots of old footage of Churchill (Oh yes!) who presumably would definitely have been a BNP member. I guess the scary thing is that even as I was watching it, I could just see lots of people agreeing with every word that was said.

'Ere, don't you read my posts?

(I mentioned it yesterday as I saw the one on BBC2 just before 6pm)

I think The Respect party also have point 1 in their manifesto.

[choffer]

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the Part Election Broadcast by the BNP which I caught last night (maybe someone has mentioned it but I missed it).

What a scary load of nonsense it was. Lots of talking heads of average Joe's on the street (including one Sikh) who were clearly reading off cue-cards spouting nonsense. Every point they made was emblazoned across the screen for emphasis (for the idiots watching who couldn't understand people speaking and needed a summary).

From what I saw they only had two main points:

1 - We are the only party who commit to immediately bringing back our troops from Afghanistan if we win the election (fairly hollow promise that one).

2 - Shut the gates and look after British people only. This country has gone to the dogs with johnny-foreigner everywhere and the average British man is now a second-class citizen in his own country.

All this, interspersed with lots of old footage of Churchill (Oh yes!) who presumably would definitely have been a BNP member. I guess the scary thing is that even as I was watching it, I could just see lots of people agreeing with every word that was said.

'Ere, don't you read my posts?

(I mentioned it yesterday as I saw the one on BBC2 just before 6pm)

I think The Respect party also have point 1 in their manifesto.

Oops - didn't occur to me that the one I saw at about 8 wouldn't have been the first showing so I didn't go back far enough in the thread to see your comment :oops:

[snowychap]

Oops - didn't occur to me that the one I saw at about 8 wouldn't have been the first showing so I didn't go back far enough in the thread to see your comment :oops:

No worries, I was only joking.

[tonyh29]

'Ere, don't you read my posts?

assume i don't have to waste pixels by answering that one :winkold:

[Richard]

On the hung parliament thing seeing as Clegg is cosying up to Labour but saying not if Gordy is still leader then people could actually get a PM that once again they have not voted ofr or even considered. For example if Clegg does form a coalition with Labour and prop them up on the proviso of a new labour leader then Gordy needs to stand down and effectively an election within the Labour party will take place for a new leader.

Step forward any or all of Milliband, Balls, Johnson, Byrne, Harriat Harmful etc etc who would all fancy being PM no doubt.

A contest that would not be a quick thing (labour do not move that quickly even when it is a Gordy style coronation) so a lack of Pm for a while , at a time when we need strong leadership, and at the end a PM that the country did not know it was going to get and who hasn't persuaded the country to vote for them and their ideas.

[Awol]

On the hung parliament thing seeing as Clegg is cosying up to Labour but saying not if Gordy is still leader then people could actually get a PM that once again they have not voted ofr or even considered. For example if Clegg does form a coalition with Labour and prop them up on the proviso of a new labour leader then Gordy needs to stand down and effectively an election within the Labour party will take place for a new leader.

Step forward any or all of Milliband, Balls, Johnson, Byrne, Harriat Harmful etc etc who would all fancy being PM no doubt.

A contest that would not be a quick thing (labour do not move that quickly even when it is a Gordy style coronation) so a lack of Pm for a while , at a time when we need strong leadership, and at the end a PM that the country did not know it was going to get and who hasn't persuaded the country to vote for them and their ideas.

Quite, I've been saying for a lot longer than the Tories have that a hung Parliament and all that it entails will most probably see the markets rape UK Plc.

[tonyh29]

A contest that would not be a quick thing (labour do not move that quickly even when it is a Gordy style coronation) so a lack of Pm for a while , at a time when we need strong leadership, and at the end a PM that the country did not know it was going to get and who hasn't persuaded the country to vote for them and their ideas.

Do you not think that Clegg has designs on it being him as PM ? he seems to be dictating terms rather a lot

Out of interest , How would the 10% of "Other " voters equate into seats ? if Cameron got around 37% of the vote could the "others" give him enough for a majority government ?

Big problem as i see it is whoever is in charge has to make some unpopular choices .. so if for any reason the coalitions break down in say 6 -8 months time the chances are that who ever has been leading for those months is doomed

[Jon]

On the hung parliament thing seeing as Clegg is cosying up to Labour but saying not if Gordy is still leader then people could actually get a PM that once again they have not voted ofr or even considered. For example if Clegg does form a coalition with Labour and prop them up on the proviso of a new labour leader then Gordy needs to stand down and effectively an election within the Labour party will take place for a new leader.

Step forward any or all of Milliband, Balls, Johnson, Byrne, Harriat Harmful etc etc who would all fancy being PM no doubt.

A contest that would not be a quick thing (labour do not move that quickly even when it is a Gordy style coronation) so a lack of Pm for a while , at a time when we need strong leadership, and at the end a PM that the country did not know it was going to get and who hasn't persuaded the country to vote for them and their ideas.

WOT TONE said.

Plus, if labour come in in the 3rd in the "popular" vote (ie get more seats than libs but less votes) then why would there have to be a Labour PM?

:?

IMHO, if Libs get a larger % of the popular vote, he may well angle for the keys to No. 10.

There should be NO WAY a party getting the 3rd largest share of the vote should get the keys to NO. 10.

Interesting times ahead

[Jon]

Out of interest , How would the 10% of "Other " voters equate into seats ? if Cameron got around 37% of the vote could the "others" give him enough for a majority government ?

I don't think it would give them anywhere near enough Tone.

Plus are these others not the likes of UKIP, SNP, Indy's etc.

Not natural allies of the Tories, in the main.

[Richard]

o you not think that Clegg has designs on it being him being PM ? he seems to be dictating terms rather a lot

Probably but could you see that actually happening? I mean say labour get 27% that equates to around 260 seats I think, Lib dems get 30% that gives them around 100 or so. So in terms of pure seast in Parliament the Labour party would not accept a coalition government which did not give them the PM role. Clegg would have to settle for Foreign secretary or some such

An absolute ludicrous bun fight of a plan that Clegg wants to take us to it seems. He is promising all things to all men safe in the knowledge that he is not going to get the power to implement them but knowing that by making these promises he will more than likely force a hung parliament and guarantee himself a role in government . Outrageous state of affairs

[Jon]

An absolute ludicrous bun fight of a plan that Clegg wants to take us to it seems. He is promising all things to all men safe in the knowledge that he is not going to get the power to implement them but knowing that by making these promises he will more than likely force a hung parliament and guarantee himself a role in government . Outrageous state of affairs

WTF are you going on about Trickie. :shock: :?

Do you think then Lib Dems should stop campaigning or something, so the Tories can win it outright.

Democracy FTL surely?

[Richard]

Not saying that Jon but I think the bit of my post which clarifies my position is this "He is promising all things to all men safe in the knowledge that he is not going to get the power to implement them but knowing that by making these promises he will more than likely force a hung parliament and guarantee himself a role in government"

That is, he is not being entirely accurate with his campaigning and the promises he is making because he knows he is not going to implement them. In fact I would say looking at the only aspect that he really wants is voting reform, a reform that will benefit his party and not the electorate

[drat01]

Absolutely Jon - the arrogance of the Tory party is shining through now and the quest for power at any cost. If the country decides under the current unfair system that a hung parliament is what we have then so be it.

And Jon (AWOL) that is an absurd statement to make about "Quite, I've been saying for a lot longer than the Tories have that a hung Parliament and all that it entails will most probably see the markets rape UK Plc.".

[Richard]

One thing that does irritate me immensely as a Tory is the accusation from some quarters, predominantly Labour quarters, that all Tories are evil, the party is evil and therefore people who are a member of is are also evil. Well I know for a fact that I am not the evil one, I also know that the Tories I know are not evil.

For me it says more about the people making that inference than it does about me or the other Conservatives I know.

[tonyh29]

arrogance of the Tory party

love the way the word Arrogant keeps getting thrown about at the Tory party as if it's exclusive to them ..next we will have Labour standing as the anti-Sleaze party :shock:

Clare Short quit the labour party over what she called an "arrogant, error-prone Government" for example

and it's a pretty much accepted opinion that labours large majority over the years caused them to act with complete arrogance and is one of the reasons why they are taking a kick in at the polls ..and most likely at the election as well