Bolitics The New Condem Government

[drat01]

Single-issue parties are pointless, except as consciousness-raising groups.

Hence why my "come as Captain Kirk from Star Trek circa 1968" was never going to be a good one I suppose, should have just left it as general fancy dress

[tonyh29]

UKIP 3rd in Corby , and Lib dems to lose their deposit is the latest rumour

Labour way out in front , be interesting to see what % the swing is

[tonyh29]

I know it doesn't belong in here , but this story made me think of VT and smile

Lord Prescott has reportedly been involved in a 'near punch-up' with a man who heckled him during a street rally.

Witnesses said the man threw a punch at the Labour candidate to become Humberside police and crime commissioner as he campaigned in Hull city centre.Lord Prescott was confronted by the man, who was carrying an empty bottle of beer, after saying: "We need to take back our town centres from drunken thugs"

After he was shouted at by the man, Lord Prescott said: "Oh yeah? Come here and say something.

"We've got to do something about you lads. This is the case with the problem round here."

The man then said: "I'm not the problem, you're the problem. You don't do nowt."

Hull East MP Karl Turner is then reported to have tried to drag the man away.

[drat01]

Corby by-election result

• Andy Sawford (Lab) 17,267 (48.41%, +9.71%)
  
• Christine Emmett © 9,476 (26.57%, -15.63%)
  
• Margot Parker (UKIP) 5,108 (14.32%)
  
• Jill Hope (LD) 1,770 (4.96%, -9.48%)
  
• Gordon Riddell (BNP) 614 (1.72%, -2.93%)
  
• David Wickham (Eng Dem) 432 (1.21%)
  
• Jonathan Hornett (Green) 378 (1.06%)
  
• Ian Gillman (Ind) 212 (0.59%)
  
• Peter Reynolds (Cannabis) 137 (0.38%)
  
• David Bishop (Elvis) 99 (0.28%)
  
• Mr Mozzarella (Ind) 73 (0.20%)
  
• Dr Rohen Kapur (Young) 39 (0.11%)
  
• Adam Lotun (Dem 2015) 35 (0.10%)
  
• Chris Scotton (UPP) 25 (0.07%)
  

According to Grant Shapps - Ed Milliband should be worried because the Tories won in Crewe before by 11,000 !! - sometimes politicians make it so easy to ridicule them

[tonyh29]

interesting that the Lib / Labour gains /loss % and Tory / UKIP gains/loss % are very similar

wonder if that is where the relevant votes went ?

[snowychap]

Mr Mozzarella:

Don't cook party

In recent years a disturbing trend has been growing in the UK, the rise of the so-called ‘Celebrity’ chef and their brainwashed followers, the Foodies. These ‘experts’ have been hectoring us all into feelings of mass guilt for not being able to cook poncy food, like a Truffle Ballotine of Quail or Squid Bonbons. It’s time to launch a counter revolution to save us all from these nags acting like they’re a cut above the rest.

Here at the Don’t Cook Party, we believe cooking is cobblers. Everyone has the right to get home from a hard day at work, order a nice chef-cooked meal and kick back on the sofa and wait for it to arrive, without being made to feel guilty. Cooking every night of the week is an awful experience. It’s all choppy choppy, messy messy.

Why waste your precious time being chained to the stove cooking ’15 minute meals’ (which actually take 2 hours and taste no good), when you could be doing so many other things, like watching the X Factor, playing Cluedo, or making love to a woman, or a man – or both?

Comrades, it’s time to strike back! Stand up for your basic human rights to enjoy a night off. Show your support and join the Don’t Cook movement by liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter.

Don’t Cook. Sing it, Shout it, chant it, tattoo it onto your chests, but don’t stop until every cooker in the country is kicked into touch! We won’t

Don’t Cook Party Manifesto and Anti-Cooking Agenda:

• COOKING IS COBBLERS. We want people to burn their aprons and liberate themselves from the tyranny of cooking.
  
• CHEFS IS BEST. People must stop trying to do the jobs of hard-working takeaway chefs, and leave the cooking to them. Plus, food always tastes better when someone else has cooked it.
  
• EATING GOOD. COOKING BAD. Eating is easy, unless you suffer from a goiter. Cooking is all choppy, choppy, messy, messy. While eating is social, cooking is anti-social.
  
• PLAY PING PONG WITH SAUCEPANS. We want people to stop cooking and use their time more wisely.
  
• BURN ALL COOK BOOKS. This is our recipe for a better world.
  
• COOKING IS VERY DANGEROUS. People should avoid losing limbs or even death by staying out of the kitchen.
  
• SILENCE ALL CELEBRITY CHEFS. Take a cheese grater to their noses and stop them from spouting culinary views we find quite unnecessary. We will fight against being told what, and how, to cook by celebrity chefs.
  

[chrisp65]

a night of red faces especially for the Tory party.

Previously we have seen many a rent-a-quote about validity of strike ballots in respect to the percentage of people voting. Oops, it seems that the hundreds of millions spent by the Gvmt for the PCC are then worthless? Also previously Cameron called it a "disaster for Labour" when they polled just over 1000 in the Henly by-election, the Tory party last night got 750 odd in the Manchester one.

Good to see they have probably lost their deposit also.

I see that Teresa May screwing things up again also, the woman is a walking disaster

I paraphrase, but Ms May was tucked up wonderfully on R4 earlier.

She was asked if a 15% turn out was legitimate and went on to say how it was and how for various reasons we could be satisfied that gaining just over half of a 15% turn out was democracy. So, having lined herself up, the journo then asked why in that case she felt a union ballot that gained 30% turnout last year was dismissed as illegitimate by her.

Can't really paraphrase her answer, t'was a bit waffly.

[drat01]

I paraphrase, but Ms May was tucked up wonderfully on R4 earlier.

She was asked if a 15% turn out was legitimate and went on to say how it was and how for various reasons we could be satisfied that gaining just over half of a 15% turn out was democracy. So, having lined herself up, the journo then asked why in that case she felt a union ballot that gained 30% turnout last year was dismissed as illegitimate by her.

Can't really paraphrase her answer, t'was a bit waffly.

:-) - as said sometimes politicians make it too easy

[drat01]

interesting that the Lib / Labour gains /loss % and Tory / UKIP gains/loss % are very similar

wonder if that is where the relevant votes went ?

I am wondering if we will see UKIP become the UK "tea party" and take Tory votes more and more. Looks like the LibDem's have been killed by Cuckold Clegg, that does leave a void for some voters as they wont vote Labour, if they move too far to the left in policy.

Overall though a good result for Labour in all of the By-Elections and a particularly bad one for the Tories, and catastrophic one for Lib Dems

[blandy]

I am wondering if we will see UKIP become the UK "tea party" and take Tory votes more and more. Looks like the LibDem's have been killed by Cuckold Clegg, that does leave a void for some voters as they wont vote Labour, if they move too far to the left in policy.

I think UKIP will grow, and the Tories are terrified of it. A fair lump of tory MPs could easily be UKIP types, they seem to have similar anti EU "get out of Europe" views. And as AWOL posted, apparently a large part of the UK population shares that view. So the tories will be either dragged to the right, or dragged apart, pulled in the other direction by the Lib Dems, who have their own reason to try and do something that will recover them some of their voters, though that looks like a lost cause.

We've got the tories, who mess everything up, the Lib Dems who are basically defunct, and Labour who just have to sit there and watch the other two implode.

I wonder if we won't see both the tories and Lib Dems have new leaders before the next election - the lib Dems to avoid decimation, and the tories to fight off the UKIPs.

[Awol]

I think UKIP will grow, and the Tories are terrified of it.

Cameron could shoot the UKIP fox at a stroke by holding an in or out referendum before or in tandem with the next general election. As stated most UKIP supporters are basically Tory voters who believe the EU has now encroached so far into national sovereignty without a genuine mandate that it should be put to a popular vote. From a democratic perspective that is not an unreasonable point of view. I suspect very few UKIP supporters see Farage and co as a credible party of government but will vote for them anyway out of principle - much like those who vote for the Greens from that perspective.

If Cameron did that he'd have a good chance of uniting the centre right vote and winning next time. Sadly he lacks the moral courage to that and also lacks the steel to jettison that cheese pilot Osborne, another massive vote loser, imo.

[peterms]

The Tories pulled themselves apart over Europe in the 1990s. I suspect there's every chance of them doing so again, regardless of Ukip. It always seems to be simmering away in the background, ready to go off.

I really can't see any Tory leader, even one less evidently witless than Dave, managing to unite them on this.

[snowychap]

PM to crackdown on 'time-wasting' appeals

The right to legally challenge government policies will be limited to help bolster the economy, PM David Cameron is expected to say later.

Opponents will have less time to apply for judicial review, face higher fees and will have their chances of appealing halved.

Mr Cameron will tell business leaders this is so "people think twice about time-wasting" to delay developments.

He will call for wartime thinking when "rules were circumvented".

...more on link

There may well be a case that there is a lot of timewasting but, in a similar way to tribunals, the government appears to be using the fact that there may be timewasting and problems in an area to push an agenda (the one where rules are circumvented because 'rules and bureaucracy is always bad, mkay' and where governments don't believe they ought to be held up to legal scrutiny).

So we have a government that wants to reduce access to judicial review against their policies; to make it so that a secretary of state can dictate that some evidence cannot be heard in civil cases (if it is to do with 'national security'); to make it more difficult to access employment tribunals, and is reducing access to justice by cutting the legal aid budget and excluding some things from legal aid.

There I was thinking the last lot were bad.

[Dr_Pangloss]

It's heart warming to see the west effectively assimilate Stalinist practices.

[tonyh29]

PM to crackdown on 'time-wasting' appeals

There may well be a case that there is a lot of timewasting but, in a similar way to tribunals, the government appears to be using the fact that there may be timewasting and problems in an area to push an agenda (the one where rules are circumvented because 'rules and bureaucracy is always bad, mkay' and where governments don't believe they ought to be held up to legal scrutiny).

So we have a government that wants to reduce access to judicial review against their policies; to make it so that a secretary of state can dictate that some evidence cannot be heard in civil cases (if it is to do with 'national security'); to make it more difficult to access employment tribunals, and is reducing access to justice by cutting the legal aid budget and excluding some things from legal aid.

There I was thinking the last lot were bad.

Wonder if David Davis will make a move against Cameron soon ?

[snowychap]

Ooh, you remind me: Dispatches tonight is on MPs' expenses again (some of it about letting and renting - including Whittingdale and Denham according to The Torygraph).

[tonyh29]

Don't get me started on that oaf Blunkett.

The heil is reporting now that

Abu Qatada has told his family that he plans to sue the British government for £10million for ‘unlawful detention’.

[villaajax]

Abu Qatada has told his family that he plans to sue the British government for £10million for ‘unlawful detention’.

Can't we have our tax money put to good use for a change and have him poisoned or something?

[peterms]

Can't we have our tax money put to good use for a change and have him poisoned or something?

You've been listening to Mr Cameron, haven't you? He seems to think there should be no way to hold the government to account in a court of law.

If our government holds someone in captivity for many years and refuses to bring charges against them, then don't squeal about that person seeking redress in law.

That's been our system for many hundreds of years, I believe.

The alternative is what we call a police state.

Not only should the person imprisoned get legal redress, but we should hold to account the people responsible for doing it.

[Ads]

I think you're allowed three secret murders as PM.