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.

Cameron said we'd have a referendum on Europe if the Conservatives win a majority, a majority isn't very likely now so neither is the referendum... Yet he still insists on pretending he's open to a democratic vote on Europe when in reality the vote will never happen..!

He is hanging on to his own skin!

His place in history is noted!

I like the way Cameron, Osborne and Clegg claim to have created jobs, fabricating the facts when reclassification of people who work in further education etc. have simply been reclassified from public sector workers to private sector workers..

There are plenty of examples like this, they all feed the myth that the government has a handle on the economy.... LIE!!

Well said Shortie you should post here more often, Fred and I could do with a man like you.

It also helps you get rid of stress this thread until Manuel turns up ....he he

A very good thread for the trader who needs to blow off steam and reinvigorate ones self.

Nigel Farage gambled, and Nigel Farage won. On the day of his speech to Ukip conference I explained how the leader of the People’ Revolution had rolled the dice by pledging to park his tanks on Labour’s lawn in Heywood and Middleton. “9 October was supposed to be Ukip’s purple letter day,” I wrote. “the moment they secured their first elected MP. Now a win in Clacton will not be enough. They have to run Labour close in Heywood as well, or else run the risk of undermining their own conference narrative”.

They didn’t run Ed Miliband close. They ran Ed Miliband over.

Yes, the turnout was a pitiful 36 per cent. A lot of Ukip’s tanks broke down before they made it as far as Labour’s northern heartland. But those that did get that far ran amok. Labour had been expecting to win the seat by 15-20 points. They clung on by just 2.

Clacton will get all the headlines this morning. Rightly, because Ukip now has its first elected member of parliament. Or, if we’re being accurate, its first appropriated member of parliament.

“Happy birthday!”, Nigel Farage cheekily said to David Cameron via Sky News. It was not a happy birthday. It was a terrible result for the Tories, right at the bottom end of their expectations.

But it was an even worse result for Labour. In fact, it was a catastrophe.

The Tories knew Clacton was coming. They had priced defeat in. No one on Labour’s side saw Heywood coming. There had been whispers circulating Labour conference that the party had a problem in the seat. But over the past fortnight the whispers had ceased. Opinion polls gave Labour a 20-point lead. Even in the minutes after the polls closed Labour officials were confidently briefing that victory would be theirs by a comfortable margin. In the end they came within a whisker of losing.
This morning both the main parties believe they are staring down the barrels of Nigel Farage’s tanks. They are both wrong, but there’s no point arguing the point now. Common sense is no match for the narrative of a people’s revolution.



But only one party is in a position to do anything about it. Cameron can shift his party to the Right to meet the Ukip threat. If he shifts too far it will be electorally disastrous. But he can reach out incrementally to disaffected Ukip supporters in a range of areas – immigration, welfare, English votes, Europe, law and order, etc, and still go with the political grain of his party.

Miliband can’t. Last night wasn’t the moment he nearly lost a parliamentary seat. It was the moment he lost his entire electoral strategy.

He has built his hopes of victory around taking the 29 per cent of people who voted Labour in 2010, and bolting on an additional 6 per cent of disaffected Lib Dem voters. The 35 per cent strategy.

That strategy is dead. His 35 per cent coalition is fracturing (or is at least perceived to be fracturing). And there is nothing – literally nothing – he can do about it.

To beat back Farage he needs to move Right on all those issues I listed above. But he can’t. Because if he turns right on immigration or welfare or law and order, the Left of his party will turn on him and the Lib Dem refugees will abandon him.

This morning every Left-of-centre commentator and blog will be shrieking about how Heywood demonstrates the extent to which Labour is losing touch with its working-class base. And they will be correct. But what have those commentators and blogs spent the past week doing? Demanding Miliband defends the Human Rights Act. Insisting he rejects Tory welfare cuts. Telling him to attack the Tories for prioritising tax cuts ahead of increased public sector spending.

Labour has spent the past four years convincing itself it could win from the Left. And as a result it has no defence against an assault from the Right.

Miliband is in serious, serious trouble this morning. Heywood was supposed to act as a firebreak to a disastrous fortnight for Labour’s leader. Instead he finds himself encircled by flames.

His personal authority collapsed with his disastrous conference speech. His policy offer was shredded by Cameron’s own audacious conference address. And his electoral strategy has just been shredded by Farage.

Yesterday, even before the polls had closed in Heywood, a story appeared that underlined the extent to which Miliband’s position as leader of his party is slowly but surely becoming untenable. A briefing had been given to the New Statesman in which Miliband had let it be known he was seeking to cut tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000. But, according to the magazine’s political editor George Eaton, he had been prevented from doing so by senior members of his shadow cabinet.

I phoned a member of the shadow cabinet to ask what they thought of the fact Miliband and his team were now briefing against them. "So that's what Ed and his people are up to?” they responded, “Fine. Bring it on".

Last night Nigel Farage also challenged Ed Miliband to “bring it on”. But he can’t.

Dan Hodges
Daily Telegraph

Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation

sticky - into every life a little rain (and pain) must fall :-)

The MRL party only got 127 votes. They had been gaining at various elections until now. It appears that a newLoony party has donned their mantle.

Cynic and a bird in the bush is worth an egg in the frying pan.

half a loaf is better than a dead dog.

A hot dog is better with mustard on.

Doc Proc hit the nail on the head some months back, when he stated on this very thread that all Cameron needs to do win a majority at the general election is to UKIPise some Tory policies. He's got plenty of room to maneuver.

The major battle will still be fought with Labour over the middle ground, it's just that the middle ground is shifting a little bit to the right.

Milibland, on the other hand, as is rightly stated in Doods' article, is caught between a rock and a hard place. He'll be gone à la Kinnock, straight after Labour lose the election in spectacular fashion.

How do you cut your mustard then, Fishfinger?

with tomato sauce :-)

DB4,

I wouldn't wrapped chips up in the Telegraph and even less so the fish.

Ask Nigel and Cameron about

1) Bedroom tax?
2) Tuition fees?
3) Failings of NHS?
4) Doctors fleeing abroad to escape paying tuition costs?
5) Number of PhD students going to USA for avoid repayments of fees and guaranteed career structures?
6) Number of relatives using food banks?
7) Number of hours they are actually working?
8) Social services and welfare cuts?
9) Lack of pay rises in public services?
10) Job expectancy?
11) Are they benefiting from George Osborne's improving economy?
12) Do they feel they are all in it together?
13) Are the rich getting richer at their expense?
14) Do they think it is a fair country
15) Ask them if they feel the Mansion tax is fair?
16) Do they think somebody earning a high salary should be paying a higher rate of tax?
17) How long do they have to wait for a doctors appointment or in casualty departments?
18) How long do they have to wait for an ambulance or fire service?
19) if they have been broken into, do the police inspect the scene of crime or even log the event?
20) School buildings, roads and other infrastructures failing or not being repaired.
21)To cap all that if there is a flu epidemic this winter, the cracks will show even more!
ETC. ECT. ECT.


These are some of the questions that labour will be asking at the next election. No hurry, they can wait to do so and concentrate for the time being on long term policies not pie in the sky U-turns.

The focus will be on the economy and the failures and lies of the present government.

Racist immigration mantra, increasing the fear levels (terrorism) and scapegoating real problems won't get tories or kippers elected as a government!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11148942/Ed-Miliband-has-the-electoral-appeal-of-Gordon-Brown-warn-NEC-members-ahead-of-crunch-Labour-meeting.html

Ed Miliband has the electoral appeal of Gordon Brown, warn NEC members ahead of crunch Labour meeting

Members of Labour's ruling body expected to challenge Ed Miliband over leadership drift at key meeting on November 4

The Telegraph!!!!!!!whos the editor Fred Ive got doodlebug on filter.

UKIP wins in Clacton – but what does it mean? 10/10/2014

It means people in Clacton actually like Douglas Carswell and Lord Ashcroft was right in his tweeted appraisal of him:



Of course, that’s not what David Cameron has been saying. His mantra is – as many of you will be aware: “Vote UKIP – get Labour.”

He’s wrong, of course. People aren’t thinking in those terms at all.

They’re thinking: “Vote UKIP – get rid of the Conservatives.”

It’s just a shame that they are also wrong; Carswell is still a Conservative – all he has done is swap a conservative party for another conservative party, that is more extreme than the one he just left.

The other notable factor in yesterday’s by-elections is the BBC’s continuing (if tacit) support for UKIP – which can be seen most clearly in its references to the Heywood and Middleton election.

“Labour held on to Heywood and Middleton but UKIP slashed its majority to 617,” states the BBC report, which merrily misses the fact that UKIP remains unable to take Parliamentary seats from Labour.

Labour supporters don’t want UKIP.

Labour supporters don’t need a political party that is more regressive than the Tories.

Labour supporters agree with Ed Miliband, that UKIP “do not represent the interests of working people”.

Read between the lines. Who was UKIP’s candidate in Heywood and Middleton? The BBC report doesn’t name this person until very far down its story.

If you read the mass media coverage, you’ll think UKIP was the only party in these by-elections. Don’t.

If we are to learn anything from the result, it is that the Conservative Party is in deep, deep trouble.

If we are to learn anything from the result, it is that the Conservative Party is in deep, deep trouble.

Hays,

The smearing and denigrating of Kinnock the tories and the gutter press controlled by you friend Rupert, Daily Mail, Express and similar, as various sycophants (and said commentators) worked in 1992.

I think it will repulse many and rebound on the tories.

I suggest you look at the cracks in the confidence trick party, with the likes of Redwood, Jenkins, Cash, Boris, Osborn, Cruella and Gove, playing their games.

Must get a picture of the above and put on the walls of an urinal!

=====

GF,

It is just a right winged rant by a frightened press trying to keep the tory party in their pockets!

Diversionary tactic to try to draw attention away from the catastrophy which is creeping up on them.

Haze and DB4 can't imagine how the "blue" party is split.