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.

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.

Well that would be a first for a long time - "the BBC report both balanced and fair"!:-)

Indeed, the facts again.......

electionista @electionista ·
UK - BBC projected national vote share based on local election results:

LAB 31%
CON 29%
UKIP 17%
LDEM 13%

That's marginal for just one UKIP MP. Not good as they got 23% last time in council elections, which was last year! Who would have thought that UKIP would be doing worse?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The long awaited Lord Ashcroft Marginal Poll is just out and gives a MASSIVE boost to labour. See it below, read and weep HAYS.

Saturday, 24 May 2014
LORD ASHCROFT MARGINAL POLLS
This is from Lord Ashcroft site http://lordashcroftpolls.com/

By Lord Ashcroft

In the last few weeks I have polled more than 26,000 voters in 26 constituencies that will be among the most closely contested between the Conservatives and Labour at the next general election.

Across the battleground I found a 6.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour – enough to topple 83 Tory MPs and give Ed Miliband a comfortable majority. But this is a snapshot, not a prediction. The research also found that most voters in these seats are optimistic about the economy, and only three in ten would rather see Mr Miliband as Prime Minister than David Cameron. As I have found in the Ashcroft National Poll, half of voters say they may change their mind before the election – and there is still a year to go.

The full results are below.

Con-Lab Battleground - Results summary
Con-Lab battleground - full data tables

Amber Valley
Broxtowe
Cardiff North
Hendon
Great Yarmouth
Lancaster & Fleetwood
Morecambe & Lunesdale
North Warwickshire
Sherwood
Stockton South
Thanet South
Thurrock
Waveney
Wolverhampton South West
Bolton West
Birmingham Edgbaston
Derby North
Dudley North
Halifax
Hampstead & Kilburn
Great Grimsby
Morley & Outwood
Southampton Itchen
Telford
Walsall North
Wirral South

Must be difficult for Lord Ashcroft to publish these figures.

Bet hes been biting his tounge.

Full marks though to a man who goes againt the PRESENT Tory grain of being a cheat and lieing all the time ie, IDS and Camoron himself.

Well done Lord Ashcroft. An old fashioned Tory a tory who if thier was more of them I would consider rejoining the party. Im sure others would aswel.

It pays to be honest.

Not Spin like the Tory press but FACTS.

Why would Ed feel good about Thurrock?

UKIP took 5 extra seats there.

2 from old Lab

3 from nu Tory


https://www.thurrock.gov.uk/vote2014

This should have been one of the best weeks of Ed Miliband’s career. In fact, it has been by far the worst. Disaster followed disaster.

Having made the ‘cost of living crisis’ the centrepiece of his local and Euro election campaign, the hapless Miliband suggested that his family’s weekly shop cost around £70 or £80 — a figure most commentators agreed was a woeful underestimate, suggesting that he didn’t really know what he was talking about.

Then the man who lives in a London house worth £2.5 million announced rather coyly that he is only ‘relatively comfortably off’.

Elsewhere, he floundered in a cringe-making radio interview in Swindon, unable either to remember the name of the borough’s Labour leader, or identify that the Tories ran the council.

Worst of all were those pictures of him clumsily scoffing a bacon-and-ketchup sandwich in a desperate attempt to look like a man of the people. Those images, above all, will remain in the public’s minds.

To cap it all, yesterday — a day when he might have expected to be celebrating victory in the local elections and telling his troops to ‘prepare for Government’ — Mr Miliband found that Labour had turned in a shockingly poor performance.

It's grim oop north...


http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/local-elections-major-political-earthquake-not-many-dead/

he he ho ho ha ha

Hays I suspect when Ed sees that poll from lord Ashcroft it is one of his best weeks ever. .................................. and thats when conditions favour the tories , just think when the economy turns down those 83 seats tory to labour could easily double.

*Max I reckon you should be focusing in on the Tory press and asking why they have chosen to give UKIP about only 20% of the headlines and space they deserve in thier newspapers, instead they have chosen to try and bury the Excelent news and deflect from Tory woes to labours solid showing.

The spin is deafening, they are overlooking facts and are running scared of labour trying to discredit Milliband instead of asking why Camoron has performed so poorly a real disaster election for the tories

Lets face it he couldnt produce an overal majority against the weakest priminister this country as ever had(Brown)so what chance now with Nigel stealing his followers.

It was written on Camorons face yesterday afternoon when he did that outside interview for SKY, his face all screwed up he was fuming, livid, agressive. He knew UKIP had truely given him a good kicking.

UKIP wont take Rotherham in the GE, as per my post yesterday it was a special one off protest vote.

LOL
Just one special protest vote that saw UKIP take 45% of the vote in a Labour stronghold. Of 21 seats being voted on, UKIP took 10.
What would be the protest be about? Labour are not even in government. Silly gf.

Hays fool. It was a protest over Asian men grooming white girls. They picked on the labour council for that. Its a one off, I have relations and freinds in Rotherham.

I suggest you look up the facts before embarassing yourself in the future.