Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Thank you for your support gf.

It's galling for a tory to slag off the party, but what can you do when the tory party is no longer a functioning tory party, but merely a set of slightly smelly liberals?

Haystack is living in loonytown, he cant seem to grasp that life has moved on and the normal doesent work anymore...hence, ukip.

Ukip is a labour nightmare as well :-)

gf
The trend is towards the Conservatives and has been that way for months,

snooze.

Hays 4 just four remember hays just 4 seats required and were in with a majority.

enough of all you gibbering monkeys :-)

herebelow a proper balanced analysis ......

Labour's Ed Miliband faced the most serious questions after Labour failed to make the sort of gains to suggest he can win an outright majority in next year's general election.

But David Cameron was again forced to dismiss backbench calls for a pact with Ukip after it shouldered its way into "bellwether" parts of Essex like Basildon.

And severe Liberal Democrat losses in several former strongholds intensified pressure on Nick Clegg over the consequences of remaining in coalition with the Conservatives.

Projections of national vote share suggested that despite remaining in third place ahead of the Lib Dems, Ukip support was down since last year's local elections from 23% to 17%.

The findings of a large-scale opinion poll in marginal seats crucial to the general election result will also be pored over today when they are unveiled by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft.

With all but a handful of results yet to be declared, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had 173 and 244 fewer seats respectively - with the Tories in control of 11 fewer authorities and the Lib Dems two.

Ukip saw an extra 128 councillors elected, though it did not succeed in taking power in any town halls, and Labour gained 330 seats and took the reins in six areas.

Labour is well short of the 500 the Opposition should be looking for to be on course for a Westminster majority.

The BBC's projection of national vote share put Labour on 31%, only two points ahead of the Conservatives and again an indication it was falling short of outright victory.

You have to be realistic. UKIP only got a hundred odd seats out of 7,000. They don't have the party machinery to mount serious campaigns. Even the wildest Sky predictions show UKIP with just one MP. What a waste of votes.

gf
Don't forget that it was only roughly a month ago that polls were predicting a Labour majority of 78, then it was 44, then 28 and now hung parliament. That looks like a trend towards the Conservatives!

Local elections 2014: surge by Ukip throws Labour into poll crisis

Ed Miliband's hopes of winning 2015 general election severely undermined by Nigel Farage's success in the local elections



By James Kirkup, Political Editor

9:30PM BST 23 May 2014



Ed Miliband's hopes of winning next year’s general election were seriously undermined by the UK Independence Party’s surge in the local and European elections on Friday.


Nigel Farage proclaimed that Ukip had become a “serious player” in British politics after it managed to win council seats in traditional Labour strongholds – and areas which Mr Miliband must secure if he is to become prime minister.



Previously, Ukip’s major advances had largely been at the expense of the Conservatives, who also continued to suffer in the latest polls.


The development saw Labour MPs openly attacking their leader with members of the shadow cabinet at odds over how to counter the emerging Ukip threat.



Full story : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/10853181/Local-elections-2014-surge-by-Ukip-throws-Labour-into-poll-crisis.html

The hash tag #WhyImVotingUkip was set up last week as a serious place for UKIPers. It has been hijacked by sarcasm.

#WhyImVotingUkip because my university is being overrun by Librarians and we need to send them back to Libraria

#WhyImVotingUkip because my German car ran out of Saudi Arabian petrol on the way to my Japanese employer where I sit at my Swedish desk.

max - you may also enjoy reading the fuller picture in 41333
to give that its attribution, it was courtesy of BBC and found on the net easily enough

A good sum up c (41333)

The hens (all flavours) in the HoC's are very upset, a lot must be fearing for their futures.


More power to his elbow, shake the complacent bastards up!

Local elections: The capital fails to see the heartache and pain beyond

'London’ has become shorthand for faraway people with no grasp of the nation’s problems



Ukip leader Nigel Farage celebrates with local councillors in South Ockenden Photo: Getty Images



Charles Moore
By Charles Moore

8:30PM BST 23 May 2014


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/10852204/Local-elections-The-capital-fails-to-see-the-heartache-and-pain-beyond.html


"These results show London as an open, tolerant and diverse city,” tweeted Tessa Jowell. Dame Tessa, Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, Minister for the Olympics under the last Labour government, is a liked and respected figure. Nevertheless, her tweet could have been precisely calculated to turn the stomach of anyone living more than 10 miles from Hyde Park Corner.


London, in her implication, is an open, tolerant and diverse city because so few of its voters went for Ukip in Thursday’s local elections, whereas so many did so in the rest of England. Not only is she saying how wonderful London is: she is also saying how frightful the rest of the English are. Unintentionally, she expressed the metropolitan sense of moral superiority of which the electorate has now had more than enough.


The same point was put the other way round yesterday by Suzanne Evans, one of the articulate and seemingly sane spokesmen whom Ukip is at last managing to rustle up. The difference in the results, she said, was “because London is its own person – its own body, its own character – and it’s very different for the rest of the country”. She thought that London finds it hard to understand “the heartache and the pain” beyond.


Actually, this “London” of which they were speaking is mainly inner/middle London. The suburban bits – Havering, Bexley, the sort of places where Dame Tessa never goes to dinner – have moved towards Ukip like most other parts of England, and share their anxieties. It is surely no coincidence that Nigel Farage lives (and voted) at Cudham in Kent, just where the Greater London limits lie.


One reason Tessa Jowell and co can feel open, diverse and tolerant is that, like Harry Enfield’s character, they are “considerably richer than yow”. The average house price in London is now reported to be £593,763. This is well over 20 times more than the average wage (£26,000). It is highly unwise to borrow more than four times your annual earnings to buy property, so no new family paying the standard rate of income tax can remotely afford to join the property-owning democracy and live in Jowell’s London unless they have private capital of their own.

On a day trip from Gillingham or Southend (which could easily cost them about £200 for four unless they take a packed lunch), these frustrated citizens can wander the silent and shuttered streets of Belgravia and Holland Park and admire the empty palaces where Russians or Arabs park their money but not their children. Such an average family would not be human if it did not sometimes ask itself how much all this openness, diversity and tolerance do for it. Hence the rise of Ukip.

If London is, in Suzanne Evans’s phrase, its own body, it has a very rich head. As well as the numerous multi-millionaires from the financial services, many of whom are not British citizens and therefore cannot vote, the head consists of top lawyers, media and advertising executives, lobbyists, civil servants and those industries and quangos that prosper from government contracts. It also consists of those who formally rule us. If you look at the present Cabinet, I can find only two English members – Patrick McLoughlin (a former Derbyshire miner) and Owen Paterson (a former Merseyside leather manufacturer) – with private-sector careers pursued completely out of London.

This head forms a collective view without even realising it. By polling day, BBC producers had sent out so many anti-Ukip tweets and emails that the corporation’s newsroom was forced to issue a belated instruction telling them not to. Their unthinking hostility was perfect propaganda for Mr Farage.

That is the head of the London body. Its hands, however, are often those of immigrants, many of whom serve – as nannies, cleaners, drivers, doormen and waiters – those at the head. Most of these probably can’t or won’t vote, but those who do tend not to share the resentments of the wider population because they feel happier to be here than in, say, Somalia. They tend to live in public or rented housing, often subsidised, rather than trying to buy.

They may also be corralled into the divisive ethno-religious politics of the modern inner city. In Thursday’s elections, to take a preposterous example, a group of Muslim councillors in Newham, who had defected from Respect, were permitted to campaign for an Islamic state under the banner of the Conservatives. But for the most part, the immigrant vote is Labour’s. It is almost a deference vote: people like Dame Tessa are the benevolent feudal lords giving handouts to the ethnic serfs. It is easy to be “tolerant” of people whose presence reinforces your economic advantage rather than challenging it.

Yesterday I heard a BBC reporter, in a comical but telling slip of the tongue, describing London as “ethically diverse”. This is true. A strange coalition, first forged by Ken Livingstone, somehow knits together gay-rights activists with Islamist fanatics who want homosexuals thrown off cliffs, the more right-on sort of cosmopolitan entrepreneur with the most bloody-minded public-sector trade unionist. As long ago as 2010, Labour’s national membership was revealed to be more than a fifth drawn from London (though London is only 12.5 per cent of the national population), with five times as many members in Hampstead as in Hartlepool. This trend has strengthened, and Ukip’s incursions into Labour’s northern territory on Thursday are a reaction against it. Ed Miliband sits for a seat in Doncaster (where Labour just lost two council seats), but his heart, and his house, are in Primrose Hill.

It is true that Ukip supporters are very concerned about immigration, but for the most part their animus is not against immigrants themselves, but against this occupying army of the powerful in central London. In particular, voters have come to see all the three main parties as no more than different brigades in the same force. When David Cameron made his Conservatives go big for single-sex marriage, for instance, lots of people from out of town were outraged, but even greater numbers were simply perplexed. Was this the issue that mattered for the life of a nation in hard times? That view was shared by more than half the population, but none of the three established parties expressed it.

Another example is petrol prices. Large numbers of Londoners do not drive and so give little thought to the cost at the pumps. Outside big city centres, however, the car is a virtual necessity for work and family. It took the reaction to the “omnishambles” Budget of 2012 to get the Coalition to see that this might be a more salient political issue than leading the world in carbon reduction. Even today, public figures play with wind turbines on our utility bills as gaily as Marie-Antoinette pretending to run a peasant dairy in the gardens of Versailles. They seem puzzled at the hostility this generates.

This separation between capital and country is a fairly new thing for Britain, and a dangerous one. Hitler is said to have been envious of the British phrase “the Home Counties” because it showed that we regarded London as our heart. Today, the word “London” in political rhetoric has become rather like “Washington” in America – shorthand for faraway people who do not understand the rest of the nation. Link it with “Brussels” – as Ukip unhesitatingly does, and will again as the Euro-results come in – and you have a place apart from its hinterland. That is not a clever idea in a parliamentary democracy

Had a read of posts this morning (and note Hays you havent read the latest figure on that site re- to overal majority).
But this still stands, the way you cynic are talking is as if it was an outstanding day for the Tories, it was a disaster, for god sake man they lost 200 plus seats!!!!!!!!

Your listening to the right wing press.

These are the facts..............

Labour are just 4 seats short of an overal majority.

Just been on SKY news.

Given the cost of living crisis, interest rate rises on the horizon and inflation ready to take off again dont bet against labour getting that and a lot more by May next year.

You would think though that by the way the right wing media and press are reporting the results that Camoron had had a good night, this is absolutely way off the mark, the tories have had a diastorous night given that its 4 parties now chalenging for the leadership of the country.

Admitedly Milliband didnt have a last good week but to be within 4 seats of that overal majority it will only take the Yank axle to spruce his act up and Labour will be returned to power needing no assistance.

Here you are Hays that overal majority poll lead............

LATEST UNS PROJECTION
28

sticky - you, hays and fred can believe what you like and then gibber on interminably between yourselves .... for myself, i'm happy that the report i posted from BBC is fair and accurate even if it does not coincide with what you would like

Its a load of bunkum that report cyners.

Fact.....Tories lost over 175 seats and lost 11 councils.

Fact..... Labour gained 280 seats and gained 6 councils

Fact......UKIP nabbed most of the Tory dont knows.

Fact.......Labour are just 4 seats short for an overal GE majority.

Now if thats a positive for the Conservative Party .....well im a Dutch Man.

whatever you say, and as i said before, you believe what you like .... for myself, i thought the BBC report both balanced and fair .... by and large, (all) other professional and knowledgeable commentators (which you most certainly are not) conclude the same as BBC

Cyners READ THE FACTS (above) NOT THE SPIN.

Back to the drawing-board (again?) for Universal Credit



It is a testament to the ineptitude of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain ‘Sunken’ Smith that his flagship scheme has been sent back to square one – listed as “reset” by the government organisation responsible for grading its progress.

Mr… Smith (otherwise known as RTU or Returned To Unit, in tribute to a lifetime of failure) is determined that Universal Credit – which rolls all the major benefits into a single payment which the government can manipulate to make life extremely uncomfortable for claimants – will be his legacy; the achievement that marks him out for posterity.

Well, it will certainly remind us all of the man’s nature. Universal Credit has been beset with one false start after another and remains capable of handling only the simplest of tasks while promising miracles – and when it fails to deliver, its faults are explained away with implausible excuses.

The latest is that the Major Projects Authority (MPA) assessed the project last September and its judgement is out-of-date because there has been progress in implementing the scheme through pilot projects in Job Centres.

That seems about as plausible as RTU’s claim that the scheme has not written OFF £140 million of taxpayers’ money; instead the cash has been written down (meaning, it seems, that the value of the investment has been downgraded in the same way your computer is worth less now than the amount you paid for it – “the amortisation of cost over a period of time”). That’s not an acceptable answer as the money has still been spent.

Alternatively, you may wish to consider cabinet colleague Francis Maude’s claim that UC implementation has been “pretty lamentable”. The Secretary-in-a-State said this was a reference to a time before he made emergency changes to the project; changes that he did not mention to anybody – even the Commons Work and Pensions select committee, when it was investigating the project, maintaining that all was well.

In fact, this latest excuse is also among the oldest in Mr… Smith’s arsenal; it was used last year in response to the rating UC had received at the time.

The MPA rates major schemes according to a ‘traffic light’ system – green, amber or red. Universal Credit was previously marked as amber/red, meaning it was in danger of failure.

The organisation’s new report, released yesterday (Friday), possibly in an attempt to bury bad news, states: “This time last year, we rated 31 projects red or amber/red. Of these 31 projects, more than half did better this year and only one has got worse.”

You won’t get any prizes for guessing which one!

The bad news is that, despite everything, Universal Credit remains an ongoing project and will therefore continue to haemorrhage taxpayers’ pounds – that’s your hard-earned shekels – by the million.

The good news is that we can look forward to more media humiliation for Smith himself.

The man has caused more misery than anybody since Margaret Thatcher; it is right that he should face a little suffering of his own.