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.

Ukip’s popularity is no surprise given the main parties’ neglect of voters

Nigel Farage has toured the country speaking to real people while the established parties offer only stage-managed events



Matthew Goodwin


theguardian.com, Saturday 19 July 2014 11.30 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/19/ukip-popularity-main-parties-neglect-voters-nigel-farage



Nigel Farage (centre) celebrates with newly elected Ukip councillors in Basildon, Essex in May 2014. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters


How do you campaign against a party like Ukip? This is the question occupying Labour and Conservative strategists as they prepare for the 2015 general election. One place they could start is by recognising the scale of political inequality in modern Britain and that a large number of voters feel utterly disconnected from our political process.

The depressing scale of political inequality was brilliantly captured by the Electoral Reform Society, which looked at how our main parties spent money at the last general election. It found huge geographical differences. If you lived in the most valuable seat in the country (Luton South) it is good news; £130,000 was ploughed into contacting voters, including almost £3,000 on public meetings. This meant a vote was effectively worth £3. But if you lived in the least valuable seat – the ultra-safe Labour seat of Bootle – it is a different picture; barely £5,000 was spent, no money was devoted to public meetings and a vote is worth less than 20p. This is not exactly what John Stuart Mill had in mind when he talked of an equal democracy representing every citizen in a proportionate manner.

It’s not the fault of the parties (although their failure to offer serious alternatives to first-past-the-post speaks volumes). It is the fault of the system, which only prospered when Labour and the Conservatives could attract more than 80% of the vote and there was no appetite for challengers. But that era is gone. In other systems, parties have incentives to engage with more voters. But in Britain – where only one in three of us live in a marginal seat – such incentives do not exist. Instead, we are left with a democracy where parties spent 162% more money in the 50 most competitive seats than in the 50 least competitive. Chances are, you are one of the 20 million who live in a safe seat and so won’t be hearing much from our parties next year.

Is it any wonder that voters are turning to parties like Ukip? When some voters are valued 22 times more than others simply based on where they live, you have space for populists. This political inequality validates their claim that politicians “are not listening”. It is why last month Ukip announced that it wants to rebuild trust in politics and give voters a greater say through Swiss-style referendums. It is also why Nigel Farage ordered his activists at the last elections to hold as many public meetings as possible. Perhaps he had read the research; in almost one in three seats at the last election, almost no money was spent by the main parties on public meetings. My own calculations suggest the picture is bleaker; in more than half of all seats not even £100 was spent on public meetings.

As our grassroots democracy has hollowed, Farage has toured the country, speaking to voters and (as he told me) “hanging around for a couple of hours afterwards to hear whatever was on their minds”. Compare this with the stage-managed events of our main parties – a few workers huddled in a factory, glazed expressions, listening to an overly wonkish policy announcement.

The main parties often ridicule Ukip for not having a voter identification system that can match their short-term electoral professionalism. But they miss the point; over the long haul, the strength of populist parties flows from their repudiation of these bland techniques. You will not resolve voters’ grievances by treating them like a focus group.

The implications of all this are reflected in other evidence. I’ve looked at the 20 seats that saw the lowest amount of spending. They include places such as Ashton-under-Lyne, Doncaster Central, Halton, Knowsley, North Tyneside, Rotherham and Sheffield, where parties spent a paltry 34p per vote. Fast forward to the European parliament elections this year. In all these places Ukip finished second, with at least 20% of the vote. Bottom of the list was Bootle, where Ukip averaged 28% – just six points behind Labour.

Labour and Tory strategists will respond with something like: “Yes, but Ukip will not win parliamentary seats.” This is what is wrong with our representative democracy – it ignores a groundswell of public discontent with how the system is working. Elections are supposed to offer us all an equal chance to join a national conversation about our society and how it can be improved. But our system is encouraging the main parties to ignore a large swathe of voters and is chipping away at our basic right to participate meaningfully in politics, thus creating fertile soil for populists.




Read the comments:

Hilary,

Just paste up your address and I'll drop them off sometime tomorrow.



What are you promising to drop for GF?

Does your mother know?

A senior pro-Russian rebel commander in eastern Ukraine has suggested that many of the victims of the MH17 plane crash may have died days before the plane took off.

Igor Girkin said, on the pro-rebel website Russkaya Vesna, that he was told by people at the crash site that a "significant number" of the bodies were not fresh.

What rubbish.

ps, Hilary, hows that gammy leg of yours.

Hays been kissing it right for you.???

You really are a nasty piece of work, God help your poor husband.

Poll: David Cameron's reshuffle boosts Tories

Six in ten voters believe the reshuffle - which demoted Michael Gove and promoted several female ministers - was “a step in the right direction” for the Conservatives, ORB International survey shows





By Tim Ross, and James Kirkup

10:00PM BST 19 Jul 2014



David Cameron’s Cabinet reshuffle has boosted the Conservatives’ chances at the next election as most voters give his new ministerial team their approval, a new poll shows.


The ORB International survey for the Telegraph shows that six in ten voters believe the reshuffle - which demoted Michael Gove and promoted several female ministers - was “a step in the right direction” for the Tories.


Some 59 per cent of people questioned backed the shake-up of ministerial jobs, while 41 per cent had doubts.


The reshuffle received the most positive response from Tory voters, 87 per cent of whom approved. And in a result that will encourage Downing Street, half of Ukip voters took a positive view of the shake-up.


Even 45 per cent of Labour supporters said the reshuffle was good for the Tories, according to the survey of 2,000 adults, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday last week.



More unbelievable bollox here from team Cameron:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10978470/Poll-David-Camerons-reshuffle-boosts-Tories.html



ps, no comments allowed.....read into it what you want.

This is a better image of Wavy Dave being fierce:

Gosh he really frightens me!

,

Will Netanyahu go down in history as the Jewish Hitler, after all he is changing Gaza into a Ghetto and using the same tactics as the Nazis?

What he is forgetting is that Hitler's actions in the end failed!

Will he be tried for War Crimes.

We are prepared to use sanctions against Russia where is is unlikely to be effective, but not against the Israeli government when it may be effective and drive a decent resolution to the continuing "strife" in Gaza.

The film Gran Prix is on at the moment. I was at the British Grand Prix in 1965 when they filmed some of it at Brands Hatch. They asked the crowd to stay behind for a couple of hours after the race so they could film a crash and a car burning. Jim Clark was in the race I saw. Phil Hill was driving a white AC Cobra with a cameraman in front of and behind racing cars to get the movie footage. I still have photos I took in the race of Jim Clark and of Phill Hill. The film cast is amazing :- Bruce McLaren, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, and lots of racing car drivers plus the actors.

..How interesting -):

Stan,

Do you know my father knew Lloyd George!

8-)

Emily Benn, daughter of Labour dynasty, to run for Parliament

Emily Benn, 24, grand-daughter of Tony Benn, selected to fight Croydon South



Emily Benn, speaking at Westminster Academy school in London back in 2010 Photo: EPA



By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent

10:50AM BST 20 Jul 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10978794/Emily-Benn-daughter-of-Labour-dynasty-to-run-for-Parliament.html



The granddaughter of the late Labour grandee Tony Benn is poised to become the fifth generation of her political family to sit in the Commons after being selected to stand in next year's general election.


Emily Benn, who will contest Croydon South for Labour in May next year, insisted that her famous surname was not the reason she was selected for the seat.


Ms Benn, 24, who was elected as a councillor in Croydon earlier this year, faces an uphill battle to join her uncle Hilary Benn, the shadow communities secretary, in the Commons.


She will have to overturn a 15,818 majority to unseat Richard Ottaway, the sitting Conservative MP. Labour came third in 2010.


It is not her first attempt to enter the Commons. She lost in the battle for the East Worthing and Shoreham seat in 2010.


She works at UBS investment bank. She is quoted as having told a Labour in the City event that her colleagues regard a Labour victory as a "political risk".

Earlier this year, Prime Minister David Cameron attacked Labour's political dynasties as the “Red Princes”.

Jack Straw's son Will and Lord Kinnock's son Stephen are also candidates, while the sons of John Prescott and Tony Blair are also known to be seeking selection.

In the Commons last month Mr Cameron said: "It is the same families with the same message - it is literally the same old Labour. That is what is happening."

Last month Jon Cruddas, the Labour policy chief, was recorded criticising the trend of “certain families are reproducing their control over the Labour Party through inheritance of seats”. It had “hollowed out” the party, he claimed.

Ms Benn said it was "insulting" to the local party to suggest her selection was for any other reason than her abilities as a would-be MP.

She said her family name placed no extra pressure on her. "The pressure and responsibility comes from the people who voted for me as their candidate and from Labour supporters."

Ms Benn said: "It"s obviously a challenge for Labour, but I firmly believe that there should be no 'no go' areas for the Labour Party."

As well as her uncle and grandfather, Ms Benn's great-grandfather William Wedgwood Benn and her great-great-grandfather, Sir John Williams Benn were MPs. Another great-great-grandfather, Daniel Homes, was also an MP.

No I didn't Fred,

..Do you know my father was Lloyd George -):

I wish Emily Benn the best of luck.

At least she is not being parachuted in to a safe seat like some of the tory are-nots who suck up the party grandees and slip a few bob into right hands.

Name em and shame em Fred, the tory ones.

Go on!

Do you own homework!

Mind the con party seems to me to be more incestuous than the lib/dems and labour parties.

God help them in their choices!

lol, you cant find any Fred, cos the cons haven't thought of it ...yet!


As for Emily Benn, she is being put through the wringer to make it look good, why else the puff piece?

No doubt a safe seat will be forthcoming.